Why Most Home Service Businesses Will Die in 2026

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn care. We have 200 locations around the world and also the founder of Homeworks. We process over a million dollars in daily transactions for home service business owners. And today I was thinking a lot about the difference between those that are ultra successful in this thing called business and, you know, monetary success. Because we could have a whole different discussion about success, personally, physically, etc. In someone's relationship. But I started peel it back because like, like many of us, we are trying to be students of those that have been successful and we try to replicate the things that they have done that have made them successful. And I started peeling back, really, what is it that makes the ultra successful successful at business? And it reminded me of an interview that Michael Jordan did when an interview asked like, they wanted their kid to be really good at basketball. So what do I do? What's the tactic? What's the thing I'm supposed to do in order to get my kid to be a great basketball player? And the answer that Michael Jordan gave is something that I thought a lot about. And he said, you've got to do whatever you got to do to make sure they love the game. And there's several things I think are so important about that. Number one, it's very difficult to manufacture love, especially when you are trying to impose on someone else. And so for like a, a mom or dad that wants their kid to do well at basketball, how do you get them to love the game? It's probably not going to be super rigid structured rules. They're gonna allow your kid to fall in love with the game. Now the rigid structured rules might give conformity and in the short term increase metrics or increase the performance of the child's ability to play basketball. But the actual unlock long term is that they love the game. Because if they love the game, the results will become a byproduct of them applying themselves to it so much that they simply become good at it. And, and so I think the same thing is true with business. And I could be wrong. It's just that when I look at the people who are the best at business, they just love the game. They just love doing it. And they're not necessarily the most skilled, they're not the most articulate, but they simply love the game. And one thing about love is that if it's super structured and it's super tactical, it's very difficult to actually manufacture. So for example, I love my wife, but it would be very weird if everything about our relationship was structured. It's like, you must be at home at this minute, and before I give you a kiss, you must take off your shoes. And then after you take a kiss, you must change your clothes before we then have dinner. And then once we have dinner at exactly 6:33pm we will then like that. Rigidity in the short term might have the conformity of creating. Creating more space or more time or having more quality time together. But in the long term, you lose the love. And the love is the thing that actually keeps the couple together. Because there are plenty of people that make rules, but they fall out of love. And so falling out of love is the ultimate sin, in my opinion. If you are trying to apply yourself to something in the long term, whether it be a relationship, whether it be the gym, whether it be business, whether it's. Whether it be making money, if you fall in love with the game, you will keep doing it over and over and over again. And it's not a function of conformity. It is a function of desire. And this was apparent to me a couple years ago when I started, like, realizing, okay, I am starting to need to find a life partner and a wife. And when I met Brianna on our second date, Brand is my wife, if you didn't know, I told her, I said, there's something. I want to be very upfront with you. And she didn't know when we originally met about the businesses and everything I did online, nothing like, literally on our third date, it was like, what's this Augusta thing? And copilot? So she didn't under. She didn't know those things and didn't come into meeting me knowing about the businesses. But on our second date, I said, look, I need to be upfront and honest about something. And that is if this is gonna go anywhere, I wanna be very clear that I love business. And it's not that I love the result of business, which is maybe making money or having a big office or employing a lot of people, but I love business. And I said, I would rather die than to lose that. And it wasn't being hyperbolic. I wasn't trying to be dramatic. I was being honest after realizing after years that, like, that was going to be a requirement for me just to survive in life. And that if I did not have that, it would make me unsatisfied. But more importantly, I would resent whoever took it away from me. And I truly believe that that is what separates the people that I look up to from a business perspective. They love the game and if you, if you look at their browser history, if you look up their YouTube videos, if you were to look at what they're looking at on their apps, it is just business. It is. They want to learn and understand the game of business. And they will beat the person that has the 5am routine in the morning, the person that's looking for the next biohack, the person that's looking for the next productivity, you know, hot thing. Jumping from drop shipping to cryptocurrency to flipping real estate to Amazon fulfillment, like from thing to thing to thing. They just love the game of business and they don't mind applying themselves their entire life to it. The same way that loving a partner and just applying yourself and being committed to them for your entire life usually nets out in a pretty positive relationship. And so that was. I've been thinking about that a lot recently, and I think that falling in love with the game is the most important thing. And I would also say that if you understand that and you believe that it's actually very difficult to manufacture, it's very difficult to be like, oh, yes, I agree with that. Now I will go try to fall in love with the game. I would just say go look at your browser history, go look at the YouTube videos you're watching and maybe start there, because that's probably the thing you love most, the thing that you're spending your time. The thing. Look at your bank balance, look at your credit card statement. Where are you spending your money? Because those are votes every single moment, every single hour of every single day as to what you do actually love. Because you spread your. You spend your discretionary effort on it. The time you spend on the toilet, the time that you spend on the couch while there's ads playing while you're brushing your teeth, whatever you're spending your time on there is probably the thing that you love. And if you fall in love with the game, whatever that game for you is, I think you'll be in the top 1 or 2%. And if you fell out of love with the game, the same way that you can fall out of love in a partnership or in a relationship, there are ways to be able to reinspire that. Looking at your calendar like, okay, out of the hundred things I do in the day, what are the two or three things I actually do love? Let's do more of that and delegate these other things. Like, I don't have the money. No, if you spent all of your time on the 10 or 15% of your day, that really lit you up that you loved, you'd probably do more of it. And so people that look at other individuals and say, how do they work so long? How do they work so early? How do they work on the weekends? How do they come with ideas in the middle of the night? It's the fact that they love the game. They love it. And so the more time you can put towards the things that you love and delegate everything else that is required to start the business, the sooner you can get there, and it's not right away. And there are years of grinding and doing the things that you absolutely despise doing because it's simply required to be able to get the business off the ground. There is a season for that. But as you pass that stage, 500,000, a million, $2 million in annual revenue, the next mountain is what do I love, what turns me on? Because that I will be able to deploy 200 to 300% more discretionary effort towards discretionary effort is effort that is not required, but I voluntarily give it out of my own goodwill. So time in the shower, time that I'm sitting there looking out the window, what am I thinking about? That's discretionary effort. And many times when you love something, it pulls the discretionary effort towards that thing. So that's what I've been thinking about. Okay, we're doing Q and A today. We're doing live call in show. So if you have a question and you would like to call in on the cellular device, the phone number there up on the screen, give that one a call and I will answer your phone call. Also, I was gonna pull up the chat here and see if I can't answer some chats live. So, okay, if you have a question, 361-733-3333. I'm taking calls today. Let's see here. See if I can do this without getting a bunch of feedback. I want to see if I can see the chat. There it is. Okay. Chat. Oh, man, this is so small. My screen. Give me a second here. I want to see the chat better. There you go. Okay, let's see here. Quantum Bigfoot. I love all your content, man. Been watching for a decent amount of time now. Thank you, sir. Doc Outdoors, Brandon Fisher, welcome. Why can't I scroll? I'm going to say. Okay, there we go. All right, fantastic. I started watching after I started cutting on the side for extra income four years ago. Doc Outdoor says ride the equipment until it dies. Clean Earth Outdoor Services. Do I need good credit to get an Augusta franchise? Talk to the Team credit is one part of something that we look at, but it is not everything we are looking at your ability to lead, your ability to sell, your experience in the industry, capital requirements and constraints, skill when it comes to marketing. So book a call with team that lawn dude. Howdy, J. P.J. durkin. Mikey's advice is excellent. For a normally functioning economy. The high expenses small businesses have now are extraordinary. If your business is off in any area now, you're finished. All right, P Day, I love you. I'm going to give a different perspective because I agree with you that there are egregious amounts of costs. I live in one of the highest tax states in the country, Washington state. So I feel you. I will say this. There has been and always will be a reason as to why average people fail. And I'm not calling you average, P.J. i'm just making this as a statement. There will always be a reason as to why, and there will be an excuse as to why average people will fail. And yet, forever in the past and forever in the future, there will be people that somehow rise in the exact same environment, have worse conditions, have the exact same interest rates, the same politics, the same taxes, if not worse, and still somehow they come on top. And so I don't see any correlation to economic environments to the probability that someone will win. Will the percentage of people win be greater? If economies are easier, the labor market is easier, money is flowing, interest rates are low, yes, the probability will be higher. But there has never been in any economy, any politic, left or right, there has never been a time when, when there has not been someone win. And so I would rather just focus on being in that group than trying to give reason as to why I am not in that group. And so there will be high cost, there will be high interest rates, there will be bad labor markets, there will be bad housing markets. There will be times when politicians are against you and taxes are increased. These things will happen. And inflation, it will happen. And if it is today's, it's just, you know, same news, different headlines. No, same headlines, different names, whatever it is that will continue. And there will always be a reason why average people will have an excuse as to why they will not win. And the average person will always point to the people who are succeed, succeeding and say, it's easy for you to say. It always has been this way and it always will be this way. And coming from someone that was very much raised in the notion that being poor and struggling is somehow admirable and something to aspire to be. And somehow being that is humility. I will say that many times. This is the thing. This mentality will keep you poor. And I do not want you to be poor because being rich is better. And when I say that, I say it obviously to be pointed and it gets people's attention. That's a horrible thing to say. Being poor only allows you to think about yourself. And everyone wants to point at billionaires and say how greedy they are. And I think you are correct. There are plenty of examples of that. I will also say there are plenty of people who are poor who are also very greedy. And the reason I consider greed as thinking for oneself instead of the greater good. And so someone who does not have any money and is struggling from paycheck to paycheck, 100% of their time and 100% of the discretionary effort goes towards feeding themselves, I do not think that's bad. Everyone needs to start from somewhere. And I've been there. As you begin to gain more wealth, and this is why I love home services so much, is like, I believe that the quality of people, that once they have more resources, that the money flows from them to other people. Once you have more money and you don't have to keep worrying about what's gonna go in your mouth on the next meal, you have something to give. This is why in all I believe in tithing. And whether. Regardless of whether or not you're religious or not, this is why I think that people that are givers will many times make more money. And many times, if you look at people who are very, very charitable, they were charitable before they made a bunch of money. From a percentage perspective, they actually gave more of their income when they had less than when they had more. And the reason for that is because it unlocks inside of your brain this idea that if. If there is abundance that I have, I have something to give. Therefore there I live in abundance versus if I have to be scarce with my. If there are scarcity of resources, I have to pull in, I have to withdraw. I cannot give to other people, and I have to be greedy and think about only myself. And so I believe that giving, tithing, charity, whatever you want to call it, unlocks a certain thing in your brain that says there is excess. And you're like, no, no, I'm struggling paycheck to paycheck. But the ability to be able to give, the ability to be able to think about other people, the ability to be able to think in terms of abundance allows you to be able to create and generate more. And some might say that that's not fair. You can generate so much and you can have so much excess and so much abundance that it is quick, unfair. I'm not there here to argue that point. I am here to debate the fact that if you are poor, you can unlock the mentality of abundance by simply thinking more about other people and giving more to them instead of thinking about why politics are against me. The taxes are against me, inflation's against me, everything is against me. Everyone's playing the same game. Everyone. All of your competition has the same taxes, all of your competition has the same politics. All of. All of your competition today has the same access to the Internet where they can sell, where they can make ads. And so the level playing field of competition allows us to be able to say we all play the same game. And sometimes the game gets harder, sometimes it gets easier. But ultimately there are going to be winners and there will be losers. I will do everything in my power to be a winner so that when I get mine, I can pass it along to someone else. All right, next in the chat we got see here. Well, we got a bunch of comments coming in, a couple calls waiting in queue too, if you want to do that. Okay, let me knock out some comments and I'll get to calls in the queue. Okay, we got 60 second boost. How do you think about the transition from one salesperson to a team of salespeople? And how do you add coaching, structure, et cetera needed in larger sales teams? So as you begin to go from an estimator, usually the owner, to then having a sales manager and then having eventually salespeople underneath the manager, the hardest thing to usually nail down is their comp plan because salespeople are generally, they're in it for the hunt, they're in it for the commission. And that's fine. You just got to make sure that the incentives are aligned with operations and admin. I'm going to get rid of this pillow, sorry, making me hot. You got sales, you have operations, you have admin and all jobs that come in sales, I have to get the work. Operations I have to do the work. Admin, I have to get paid for the work. Ultimately, if the salesperson, they can hit their commission, they can hit their gig, make their percentage, commission, whatever. But if they make the job of operations bad because their budget hours are inaccurate and they make the admin really difficult because they take on jobs they shouldn't be taking on, it's very hard to collect on them. They don't collect the deposit, et cetera. That's where I have a problem. And so I think the biggest struggle I see people making when it comes to having a sales team is accountability for KPIs that affect operations and admin. And so I'd be very careful with building a comp plan because your whole objective of a salesperson, if that's all they're doing, is like close rate, percentage amount of jobs sold, the amount of budget hours sold, like this is the dollar amount, like commission amount, upsell rate. All these things are good, but if they aren't correctly incentivized, you'll create perverse incentives that then mess up. Operations and admin and news alert. You don't make any profit with sales. Sales is and always will be an overhead expense. You need it to get the jobs. But operations and admin do the work and they get paid for the work. And so if these two parties, these two departments, get thrown out of whack because you have the salesperson over here going rogue, you can really mess up the business fast. All right, what's more important, cash flow or cash reserves? Depends what you're trying to build for. Kind of depends if you're trying to build like more of a lifestyle business or enterprise value and try to flip the business, etc. How do you typically structure your day while delegating all tasks? It really comes down to if you have enough cash. If you don't have enough cash, you can't really afford to delegate. And most time, myself included, will not delegate things, mostly because of lack of money. And so as you begin to grow the business, being able to take a salary and then knowing that everything left in the business is fair game to be able to spend on buying my time back. Not to go watch Netflix, but I could do more of the things that I know will have higher leverage in the business. So if I'm doing admin, answering the phones, I'm going to do everything in my power to make enough money so I can go hire VA or someone answer the phone so I can go do more operations, doing more work, fulfillment. And then as I do more and more fulfillment, get more crews, get more people on the truck. I'm getting more budget hours. Eventually my whole goal, whole goal is to get enough cash in the bank to be able to then hand off operations and go just focus on sales because there's higher leverage going from admin to operations to sales. All right, let's bring on a caller or two. I will come back to the chat first. Call is coming from 51 2. Welcome the show. Thank you for coming on.

Hey, Mike, Sam with troops going, how are you?

Good. How you doing, Sam?

Doing good. I have a question more so just getting your opinion on a potential hole I see in profit mode at scale. And I'm going to use like a dramatized example for some context.

Okay, cool.

Excuse me. What if you lived in like, what if your service area was five minutes east to west, very tight service area. The population in there could support a $10 million business. And we follow profit mode where we just want to scale to a million at capacity, raise rates, continue over and over and over again. But we don't want to get past six to eight employees, don't want to get past a million. And in theory we can get up to net 40% right if we just keep going that playing a game. My opinion, or correct me if I'm wrong, is at a certain point all of your best customers would get price increase fatigue. And you could be again being dramatic here. Let's say you have a $200 labor rate. @ a certain point you might lose like 60% of your customer base and then kind of piss off your employees because you have to jack rates down and they won't make as much on P4P and potentially lose a large percentage of your top eight players. Can you help provide more context here on when is profit mode dangerous and when we should actually not continue profit mode at a certain.

Point. Cool. Yeah. So the assumption is that there is a point when profit mode is dangerous. I don't believe that here. Let me explain though. Why is the part that in the book I really try to stress is that profit mode is not possible if the churn from my customers cannot be replaced with organic traffic. And so the fact is, if you did this profit mode thing going really fast, like 40% increase in price and the next year another 40%. If you started jacking rates super fast, this potentially would be a problem once you're in profit mode. I am going to do this only when I exceed capacity and then by raising rates. What I'm actually doing is I'm putting pressure downward on my close rate so that the amount of leads that are coming organically from my website, organically from my trucks, is enough to replace the people who do leave. And so new leads coming in don't have any pricing fatigue. They're simply judging you on your last at bat. In other words, you versus the competition, you versus everyone else's website, you versus everyone else. That doesn't answer their phone calls. So I am going to replace the customers who have, in your words, pricing fatigue with customers who are brand new to that are willing to pay a premium price. They have never had a price increase for my business, but they're willing to take that. And here's what's crazy. I've actually seen churn rates decrease as time goes on in profit mode because the people who joined at a higher rate are less price sensitive as you do price increases. So when someone raises their first price increase, like the first year by 10 or 15%, they lose like 10% of customers. Then the next year they do another 10 or 15% increase and they lose 7% of customers. And then they raise prices again by 10 or 15% and lose 4% of customers. I've seen this happen. Because now the people that are joining that are replacing your churn are the customers who see value in a higher premium service. Does that make sense.

Sam? Yeah, it makes sense. So you're saying that really there's no ceiling because at a certain point you won't have to raise prices because that like equilibrium and the demand levels.

Out, you got new customers. That's the thing that people forget about with profit mode is like, in five years, the vast majority of your existing customers will have been flushed through the system and there'll be other customers. And you're like, I don't wanna lose them. They're good pain. You're right. But I'm willing to take someone else on that doubles my profit because I raised prices by 20%. Right. And so the bottom line to your question is, yes, some people may get price fatigue. They're your lowest value customers, the ones that will churn out each year when you raise your prices. And the people who stick are the ones who see the value in your service, that take all your upsells, that would never get rid of you. And the people that are replacing the people who leave and they're the ones that do see value in your service because they called five other people and they didn't answer their.

Phone. Gotcha. So how do you navigate? Like if you had a bunch of people you view as family, right? Like your day one customers, are you just kind of saying, like, screw them and just continuously raise prices on.

Them? Okay, this is a good point. Chase, Jason can take down the call because we got the call cues fill up. Yeah. So how you word that? I wouldn't use that word terminology. How I like to think of it is, first off, you're emotionally connected them. And the reason Is because I know that is because you call them family. And we are connected to family because of the emotion. The thing that is different is when it comes to customers is they choose you. And you choose them every single time you show up to their service family, you're stuck with them. And so, in my opinion, if someone really was, quote, unquote, your family and cared about you, they would want to make sure that you could take care of your team and you would be able to keep showing up to their property year after year after year by having a healthy profit margin. And furthermore, the retention of your team increases dramatically if you don't reduce the percentage on P4P and you just let your team start making more and more money on profit sharing because they don't want to leave. And so that actually helps your customer. And so retention of the customer goes up when the retention of your team members goes up. And the retention of my team member goes up when I can pay them a whole lot more than anyone else in the market. And so the quality of my product goes up, my level of support, my level of service. So there is inherent value. And we're all attached to the fact, like, well, I've always done it. It's always been really good. So, like, nothing's improved. No, the comparison is that they're gonna leave your service, save an extra 10, $15 per service, but now have a different employee every six weeks because that company can't pay their employee enough to.

Stay. Right. So this is simply our employees. 11, go ahead. I was in. Our employees are loving pay for performance in our profit mode location. They're making like 45, 50 an hour, so definitely.

Working. Awesome, man. Best of luck to you. You have a good one. All right, next caller. Again, don't be offended if I have to cut you off. I just met every guy. Move to the queue. No. Next caller is coming from 81 6. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming.

On. Hey, Mike, it's Felix. How you.

Doing? Good, brother. How you.

Doing? We had talked. Good, good. We had talked. I want to say a few months ago just a little bit about my positioning. I've been in business for two years, and we just finished up the year at around 450k. I still live at home. I'm 20. I turned 20 this year. I still live at home and plan on living at home one year. So I really want to maximize my growth. I just wanted to see. I mean, I have tons of capital on hand, and I feel like it's just kind of wasted Sitting in the bank. So I wanted to see your advice on what you think, you know, comfortable, or I guess it doesn't have to be comfortable, but what's a safe, you know, jump to make and what obstacles am I going to run.

Into? What do you consider a lot of capital? Like how much is sitting in the bank right.

Now? Right. Right now I have about.

275,000. Okay. And so the thing that you want to be careful is when you're flush with cash, when you look at the for all framework, the thing that you turn liquidity in typically is into more leads. And then for more leads, you get into more labor, for more labor than you hire a leader, a good general manager and operations manager and office manager, etc. And so at 4, 400, 450, like you did this year, I'm assuming next year you're going to make a big jump to like 800 grand. Is that kind of your.

Goal? Yeah, somewhere in the 800 to a million. But I didn't know if that was my sign. You know, I know you say not to step out too soon, but with the amount of capital I do have on hand, do you think that's safe to say to just step out and just go full sales and I mean, try to reach that 800 to.

A million cash liquidity in the 400 framework allows you to move faster. And so if you had, if you had $30,000 in the bank, this is a very different conversation when you have $200,000 in the bank. What I want you to be careful of, because we immediately, when we have cash in the bank, it's like, I will go buy trucks. Why? Because it's a fast way to go. Get rid of cash, buy equipment, upgrade your shop space. The thing that will allow the business to grow in the 40 framework is getting more leads. And so I would do every, every dollar possible. I would be spending on my branding of my trucks. I would be fixing my website, and then I would figure out ads. Because if you can get more leads, if you doubled your leads, you double your business. If you went and bought twice as many trucks tomorrow, you would not double the size of your business. And so the conversion from liquidity into leads in the 4L framework is the part that most people in your scenario fail to do. They'll immediately go, like, I'll buy another business. I'll do like, if you go buy another business, it's likely that you will pay three to four times your customer acquisition cost. At least if you just figured out how to do ads. And so many times liquidity, it allows you to go faster, but it also allows you get sloppy. This is why private equity and venture capital poured on a lot of businesses. They all, a lot of times they fail is because they just the guardrails and the training wheels go off and they start to spend money like crazy. All right, we're gonna go to the next caller. Jace, if you want to put the slash question up and maybe we'll see if some videos come in. Cause I got several more calls here. Next call is coming in from 8 to 8. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on. Thank.

You. Yeah, so I'll ask my question and give you a little bit of context. So I own a painting franchise and we'll do just over a million dollars this year and the goal is to grow from 1 to 2 million dollars this next year. The first year we had around a 15% net profit margin. After my salary this year we'll have around 24%. What do you anticipate and what are the stumbling blocks that I'm likely to underestimate as I try to scale from 1 million to 2 million? Kind of the structure is it's myself, I have one salesperson, I have two virtual admins, and I have four project managers with a bunch of painters as well. And yeah, so that's my.

Question. Awesome. Very cool. Yeah, so many times going from a million to 3 million. What you're moving from is a full time GM, which mostly you're focusing on sales and you're moving into the GM plus model where you're going to need a sales manager, an operations manager and an office manager, administration. And so I think the next thing for you is gonna be finding a stellar operations manager to make sure that everything throughout the day with your painters and your crew leads is going smoothly. You should no longer be thinking about paint. You should no longer be thinking about getting jobs done, subcontractors, timelines, scheduling, invoicing, none of that. And so I think if I was you, I would be focusing on delegating everything. In admin, it sounds like you have some VAs. Might be time to upgrade that. And you're like, well, I don't know if I should upgrade. It's going pretty good. Okay, cool. I'm okay with that. I recently made a video. It's going to come on a home service millionaire channel in a few weeks. When you have a phone call that goes to voicemail, 37% of people leave a voicemail. So you can just assume that if Someone's calling you and you don't answer the phone, 37% of your leads actually get through. FYI that's lower for new leads compared to people that do leave a voicemail, but they're just telling like I want to cancel my service or I want to change my credit card information, etc. So blended average 37% but it's really like 25%. Okay, that being said, that's voicemail. You can go one level up against that which is like AI AI done well will usually get 70 to 73, 74% of calls to get all their information submitted, get all their contact and you might be able to call some of them back if they don't get it all through. And then it's like they're human agents. And then there's this other level of like in person, US based agents that are trained to upsell and turn defense into offense. And so I made this video come out in a few weeks like turning cost centers into profit centers. And we've, I have gone like so different than I was thinking a few years ago when it comes to support because you can take a cost center and make it into a profit center. And so I've been running some data recently and on like our command center and, and realized that by just training them on how to upsell, I can cover all the wages of the team by just making up for what used to be a service call or used to be like hey, I want to get a mowing quote. And we would sell them the mowing. We wouldn't do a thoughtful upsell on two or three other services we could sell them. Those upsells pay for the increase in support that you get when you get human agents and you get them live, you get them in person and you get them us based. It's hard to show in a P and L but over the course of time it pays for itself. And if you can turn a cost center into a profit center, that's where like so much can be made. If you can turn admin into a profit center, you will do, you will run laps around your competition. And so I think for you going from a million to 2 this year unlock is going to be getting a rock star operations manager. And at your 24% profit margins, just expect that to probably go down this this year because you're going to go get an all star operate, someone who's done painting, they know how to manage multiple crews and you're going to find them or take one of your current crew Managers and upgrade them to being sort of the, I think you called them foreman. Like upgrade one of them to be your operations manager. But the, the objective would be that you don't think about paint again. Sales get the work. Operations do the work. Administrator get paid for the work. I think that the two hires I'd be looking at if I was you is a solid operations manager that just will take everything to do with doing the work off your plate. And then someone in the office that is going to absolutely blow your mind when it comes to systems processes, scripting and upselling customers. And they will allow you to get to 4 million with the same amount of capacity you have in the office currently. Because they're so good at tracking, they know exactly how to get the most efficiency from the team on the phone as well as doing all the other admin tasks. There's so much waste there that can be potentially squeezed out with the right person. All right, next call is coming from two six nine. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming.

On. Hey, Mike, My name is John. How you.

Doing?

Fantastic. So I got kind of a two part question, I guess I own a small lawn care business in southwest Michigan. Just got copilot still trying to learn how to use it. How can I grow the company and everything like that and try to put it into profit mode, get out of debt and everything, but still have that family time? You know, I got two little kids at home and I'm, you know, late nights and my computer and everything is. I don't want to be spending that anymore. I want to be spending time with the kids and everything when I get home. I just. It's very hard for me to find that work and then family balance and I don't know if you have any insight on.

That. Yeah. How many years you've been in business now.

John? So I started in 2017 but kind of went full time 2019. But within the last year or so the company has like almost doubled. Like last year. This last year I've hired two full time employees. By not doing all the work myself, I finally hired employees and we do like about 50 people plowing right now and about 100 to 110 lawns to like mow and everything like that in the summertime. And I do want to grow but I feel like we're not as profitable with a three man crew as we should.

Be. Yeah. Okay, so let's attack this from a different angle. What, what allowed you to grow so quickly in the past year and a half, two years versus the first six or seven. Was it just you marketing? Was it just that you're like, okay, I'm going to finally hire someone and like what was that.

Difference? I was, I finally, I moved out of my parents house and I had a lot more bills that need to be covered. So I got more customers, raised my prices more and just kind of kept getting employees because the phone kept going off and everything like that. And I just don't know how to say no.

Toy. And so right now are you. Is it harder to find employees or find.

Customers? Probably find decent employees and I feel like I'm paying decent, you know, but it's just I haven't really advertised for employees either because I've been so busy doing the work and then getting home and trying to do the admin.

Work. Yep. So what was, what's your revenue this year going to be.

John? So my gross income I would be like 160 to 175k. Don't really know the net because we've been so busy with snow removal. I've not had time to try to do a profit and loss for the last couple months. And I'm trying to transfer to copilot from yard books. So it was a little bit difficult trying to do that with the profit loss.

Statement. Got it. If you had to guess, John, what percentage of your current estimates get accepted? If you had to.

Guess, I would say lately with plowing because I upped it maybe like one in five people because we got so busy during plowing. I was just raising it really high because we couldn't really do any more work. But I would make the time if they wanted to pay a.

Lot. Okay, so what I would say, John, is you are at capacity. At capacity means you are maxed out your trucks, you've maxed out your current team and now you're taking the brunt of anything above capacity. That's why you're working extra hours, you're out in the field, you're working the nights, et cetera. And so you're at that stage. Do you have two trucks right now, John, or.

One? I have two trucks, I'm in one and then my other employees are in the.

Other. Got it. So you, you're basically at capacity because you're trying to run around doing some estimates, you're doing some operations, doing the work itself. You're also doing admin, answering the phones, et cetera as well as having them do their work. So two trucks at 200,000. You're almost maxed out with the, with the current setup. I also think that if you have two to three employees doing 200,000 annual revenue and you're still in the field, it's going to be a squeaky profit margin. And so I do think you, you can and should raise prices. And what's really good is you're at capacity. It's the perfect time to do this. And so you. It sounds like to me over the past couple months, it's caught up to you. It's almost so evident. And this is why I love, like, just identifying. I am at capacity. This is where I raise prices. And it's almost been forced on you recently because you just realize, like, I cannot unless I go buy more trucks and hire more people, I have to raise prices. And so I would stay in that mode throughout all of spring rush. And that is you're going to feel constantly like tail on fire, like you are pushing because you're at capacity. The good thing about capacity is I give you license to raise prices and you have to, because you can't take any more jobs on. And I would say you need to do that for one solid season in the spring. Because I have a feeling you've been underpricing quite a bit on the mowing side. And just based upon your revenue. Yeah, go.

Ahead. On some jobs we have and everything. I lost a little bit on some.

Jobs. Great. So what's gonna happen? You're gonna hit spring rush this year. You're gonna get a whole influx of new jobs, and then you're going to raise prices across the board by at least 15% to all of your customers. And 5% of them, 6% of them are going to leave. Those are gonna be your worst paying customers. They're the ones you're probably losing money on right now. If you're sending a crew of two employees to right now and you're propping up the finances of the business by filling the gaps and doing all the extra. And so hitting capacity is the best thing. So when. When I hear someone's working out, like late nights, they're trying to work in the field, I think it's horrible. It's the thing I'm trying to fix with software and with. With all the courses, everything. Like, that's why I do what I do. Asterisks. It's a great problem to have. Cause it means you're at capacity and it's at capacity, you can raise prices. Because if you were telling me, John, that I don't really have enough work, we're working three days a week right now the guy they're working kind of part time. It'd be hard for me to tell you to go raise prices and reduce your number of customers and reduce your close rate. But the same thing that's happened with plowing. We just need to go and now do it in spring rush for mowing and that is increase prices, cut the lowest paying customers, allow for space at the top for existing customers or new customers to come in that are willing to pay a more premium price and in doing so buy back your time. Also identify what capacity is so you don't hit it again. And so I would take very much inventory of how many budget hours is this thing up moving into copilot soon to be homeworks the advantage I think that it has is it tracks budget hours. Use it religiously John and what you're going to start figuring out on the calendar view for weekly and monthly is it shows how many budget hours you have for recurring jobs and one time jobs. You're going to very quickly identify what is my budget hour capacity as a net net for my whole team. And when you start exceeding that you're gonna start feeling the same way you feel now which is working in the evenings. You're trying to make up for jobs at night. On the weekends you're late at night when you should be with your kids and you're okay. That was at 220 budget hours. I'm considering 200 my cap and whenever I get above 200 budget hours for four straight weeks in advance. So I'm booked out with 200 budget hours for four more weeks. I'm raising all my prices on one time jobs and and recurring jobs that are on the schedule. Easy as that. Now you've established what capacity is and now you're raising prices based upon math. Not when you're burnt out. Next caller coming in from three eight five. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming.

On.

Hello.

Hello. How you.

Doing? Fantastic. How you doing?

Fantastic. Just got a couple questions for.

You. Go for.

It. I am just trying to understand how I can do better leads with my company. Been in company for two years now. My company's called 20 Weed Landscaping. I just need to figure out how I can improve sales and I have have customers. It's awesome. I just don't understand how I can approve more about last year made ten grand. This year I'm almost making a rough ten grand as well. I'm just trying to understand how much I can make.

More. Absolutely. So the first thing I would do is I have A free course for your exact size of business, landscapebusinesscourse.com. it's completely free. It's. It'll walk through everything you need to know to get to probably 5x your business. Very much like it'll. You don't need anything else that has all the resources. It's completely free. It'll walk you through basics of door hangers, Facebook ads, all the basics for your website, the whole nine yards. So highly recommend checking that out so much. At $10,000 in annual revenue, you can 5x that business by simply talking to people online and making sure you have good Google reviews. And so like from zero to a hundred thousand when it comes to leads, you just need to have a website of any sort with Google reviews and talk to people on Facebook and Facebook groups next door, et cetera. Next caller is coming in from 9:1 8. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming.

On. Hey Mike, thanks for giving me a chance. I had a question. So we have, right now we're, we have 110,000 in the bank and 55,000 in credit card debt, which about 20 to 25% on each card of interest rate. Would you recommend us paying that down to at least getting it down below 30% and going into the, you know, December, January, February. We basically start picking back up in February when we start doing lawn scalpings and things like that. Would you recommend making like a payment of like $38,000 and having less cash in the bank for marketing, or would you much rather just keep doing smaller payments throughout the month? What, What? Just Kind of want to see what your take was on something like.

That. Just to be clear, are you actually carrying that balance and paying that percentage right now? The.

58,000? Right now? Yes. Right now we're carrying balance.

Yeah. Okay, and then what's your annual revenue right now, like for.

2025? Right now we're at.

550,000. Okay, and so your best month this year was what, like.

65,000? I best start. I think our best month was around like.

75,000. Cool. Okay, so in the 4L framework, anything above a one month of revenue I consider distributable cash. Now, that is assuming we're trying to distribute cash. There's no way in the world I would just take a distribution or take money out of the business instead of just paying off debt when I know I have a guaranteed 25% return on, on my investment. So like, if you put the money in the stock market and the market like went on a tear, it'd get like 15, 16%. So I would do everything in my power to take those distributions out of the business and go pay off the credit card debt. Because even if you paid off 30 or 40 grand of that and got to 60, $70,000 in your bank account, you'd pay off most of the debt and you'd still pass the 4L framework, which is one month of revenue in the.

Bank. Okay. Okay. And just to verify, just to let you know the fit, the credit card debt is in the business name. Like the credit cards are under the business name.

Not. But yeah, yeah, I would still pay them off. And mostly because the alternative is that money sits in the bank account and makes 0.01% on a checking account. If you have better use of the money, you could do that. However, I would say if you're like, well, I got to keep powder dry for next spring. Okay, hold. What's going to happen in spring that is going to require you to spend $50,000 unless you're losing a whole bunch of money during the winter? If you're losing a whole bunch of money in January, February, I would say, okay, maybe we keep a little more powder dry. But let's assume we pay off 50 grand of this debt. We still have 60 grand in the bank. Let's assume we lose a little bit of money in January and February. Cut slow. I don't think that's happening because it sounds like you're running this very efficiently. But let's assume 10 more grand. You go into spring rush with 50 grand. If you spent 10,000 of that on marketing to juice the Spring Rush, you still are going to be okay. It's going to run a little bit tight, but there's just. It's very difficult to be a 25% interest rate on a credit card. And so that money's in the bank accounts burning your hole in the pocket. It's your pocket. Cause $50,000. Let's just divide this out. Over the course of a year, you're gonna pay 12,000. You're paying 1,000. You're paying about $1,200 a month in interest right now. And so if you just paid that off over the course of five months, that interest, if you just put it towards your advertising, you'd be able to grow the business a whole lot more. And you have like six or seven grand in what would have been interest payments that you'd spend on advertising next spring. So next April, May, June, if you just pay it off now, you'll have five or six grand. That you would've otherwise spent in interest. You'd just be able to now put towards marketing and grow the business still. And so the only reason that you would be wanting to keep that cash if you're gonna go buy a bunch of trucks with that cash instead of advertising, in which case I would say still pay off the credit card. Cause I'd rather go get debt on the trucks at 4, 5, 6% interest than 25% interest on a credit card. So I'd pay the credit card off, keep myself $10,000 for marketing. So we'll expand next spring. That's a lot in your size. 10, $15,000, you're still fine. But save 1,000 plus dollars a month in interest that could be used for that juice in the spring. And if you're like, well, I need the trucks and equipment, great. You will get better equipment loans or truck loan debt than credit cards. All right, last caller for the day. Or maybe we'll get one or two more. Six two, zero, welcome to the show. Thank you for coming.

On. Hey Mike, thank you for having me and thank you so much for doing this for us. I appreciate.

It. My pleasure. Oh, do we lose them? Earth. Earth. Oh, there we go. We're back. Oh, we're.

Cutting. Our owner finally saw the light and they decided we can raise.

Prices. Hey, let's.

Go. Nothing cure right now for our business over the winter months. But I know the prices are going to raise up dramatically from last year. So I'm wondering if I should let the customers know now while it's dead end of the season. No one's really doing much searching for sprinklers. Let them know, hey, we've raised our prices and but we are offering a deal that gives you 20% off if you sign up for our beginning of the year and end of the year winterizations and activations or if I should wait until spring season and send that out like, hey, we're raising our prices. Yeah, but again you get that that off or if I should not even mention it at all. And if someone brings it up or we can just tell people, hey, for any of our loyal customers that start and end with us, you get 20%.

Off. Is this mostly like sprinkler.

Repair? Yes. The owner wants to stop. I don't. They don't want to completely end landscaping, but they want to stop doing everything that requires tractors and trailers and all that kind of stuff. We'll still be able to do most things but our main thing revenue producing thing is service work. We do installs but landscaping is just way too big of a monster for our crew. So we're trying to cut off most of that and focus on service.

Work. Yeah, the nice thing about one time jobs when it comes to price increases is you don't need to tell anybody because they get a bid and they roll with it. Now when it comes to sprinklers, there is that time where you might charge by the hour but again if they've done service with you in the past, I would address it on a one off basis when they get a bid and it says $120 an hour instead of $110 or whatever it might be. I don't think you need to actually announce this because this is a bid, this is jobs. The thing that I would focus on, the thing that I like zeroing in on is selling a package up front. And then what you do is you preset, you pre sell the price increase inside of the discount. Say hey Mr. Jones, last year, you don't even have to dress last year like this year if you want to get for $720. I'm making up numbers. Get your, your sprinklers turned on and adjusted and turned off in the fall. This saves you 25% if you, unless if you did this, if you don't sign up for the package. So I would do that. I would probably then just use last year's prices if they sign up for the package and pre, you know, give you all the money up front. And then for everyone else I would just as they come in, I would be doing the price increase baked into their new, their one time.

Jobs. Yes. Because this year we did kind of raise prices and very few of those people actually even brought it up. And the ones that did were always kind of like price sensitive. We knew they were going, going to, but now that it's actually going to be a bigger jump and it going to be flat across everyone. I didn't know if we did need to announce it, but I think I will go with just using that promotion. Now that promotion, when do you think would be best? Because usually it starts in April and I didn't know if we should send that promotion out before, like a month before or like as people schedule and send out that blast. What would you.

Recommend? Yeah, so I would do a text blast. All my customers through homeworks and what I'd be telling them is a month before, six weeks before when you know there's a rush of people that want this service from the public and they're calling you all the time I am going to say, hey, early bird gets the worm. You get 20% off if you pay up front and you get to beat the spring rush and we'll get your service done now. And so I'm pre selling it to them with a discount upsell so I'm able to collect all that cash. I then take that cash and convert it into more customers. Now I have the bandwidth to do it because I pulled all my existing customers forward into March instead of April when everyone else is calling. So I can actually take on more capacity and more customers during the rush because I pulled all that demand forward using the discount and I collected the cash to be able to use on customer acquisition cost and be able to expand in April. One more caller and then. Jace, do we have any video questions that came in today or not? Yeah, we've got a couple that came in. Awesome. We'll go to video questions. If you have one, go to mikeandys.com? but last caller on the phones today is gonna be from 71 9. Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on. Hey, Mike can hear me. Okay, I can hear you. What's.

Up? Perfect. Bryson actually gave me the number to call Bryson Turner from.

Augusta. Let's.

Go. I'm so shout out to him. I have a bit of a. I have a profit mode versus growth mode question for you. So I'm 19. We did about.

125,000. That's why you're friends with Bryson. That's why you're friends with Bryson. Bryson's a stud too. Yeah, go. Good.

Job.

Exactly. Okay, sorry, rewind. I missed. How much revenue did this year? Go ahead.

Again. We did 125 this.

Year.

Okay. So my question is my, my parents want me to live at home for one more year. They want me to grow this thing closer to like half a million and then flip into profit mode. I want to move out really badly. I know financially it might not make a ton of sense. So I want your opinion on does it make, does it make sense to like leave now and kind of just go straight into profit mode like early in the spring or should I, you know, stay at home, save the living expenses and use that toward growth and make this thing.

Bigger? Well, I think this is, this is kind of goes outside of the business spectrum because I'm assuming the reasons you want to move out have nothing to do with.

Business. It's not necessarily. I mean, yeah, I suppose it's not like I have a terrible relationship with my parents or anything. I Just want to be my own man, you know, it's like, I feel like I'm grown and it's time to.

Move. And so are they just concerned financially that you can't take that.

On?

Exactly. And do you need to prove that to them or is this a matter of, like, they're just kind of like, they're being cautious. They're being great parents. And you're like, maybe they're right and you're kind of questioning.

It. Yeah, that's pretty much right where it is. What's weird about this question is I almost know what, like, the. The correct answer is, like, what the optimal answer is. But I guess really what my question is, is it stupid to leave now? We have, like, 13,000 in the bank going into next year. And then personally, I have, like, you know, a couple hundred bucks, but I could. I would pay myself out of the business. And at 125,000 in annual revenue, is that enough to, like, make this work long term? Or would that just be. Would that be like, jumping off of the.

Bridge? Well, sometimes having your back up against the wall and being forced to take the business pro is not a bad thing if you're trying to grow a business. And so there's a reason why the average male that gets married makes more money and the average male that has kids makes more money. It's because they have a lack. They need to make more money. And so the moment that you move out, you might actually have scarcity involved for the first time ever, and you might triple the business. But because now you have to. And so sometimes being pushed out of the nest, whether it be pushed out from them or you jumping out of the nest, forces you to fly. And so if I was you, I think that I would have a conversation with them, like, hey, I really appreciate you all, as parents being so concerned for me. I gotta be my own man. I'm gonna make this jump. And I might make a fool of myself, but I'm gonna give it all I got. And I think if you do that, from a business perspective, it's gonna be better. I think the thing that I would be most cautious of is ruin the relationship with them. It doesn't sound like that's actually a big issue. Like, I think I feel like they would have this conversation pretty well. And I also know, like, just the fact that you're talking with Bryson, he's a savage. And I think that when you move out, it'll unlock a whole bunch of discretion or whatever can now your back is up against the wall. And so, like, the moment that I moved out, I kind of moved out. Like, I got a space. I rented out to my parents, the house, and then I lived up in the adu. Like the. Up above the garage. But like, that, like, separation of, like, okay, I'm not being. I'm not. Like, my food is not being covered. I am my own man. I'm paying my own taxes. Like, that separation, like, it really cut me free to just not just be my own man, like, from a social perspective, but just put everything into the business. And I had to. It wasn't like I could just fall back on anything. So I have. I have the opinion, especially knowing that you're friends with Bryson, who crushes it, and he's right around your age, that you have the friend group and the support that is needed to be able to put your head down and grind. And I think you'll unlock a huge amount of discretionary effort when you have to make it.

Work.

Okay. Was that the answer.

You. I think that Answer. That.

Purpose. Did you think. Did you think I was going to say you need to stay with your parents for another.

Year? I thought so, because, you know, I mean, I could probably. When you look at it purely financially, without any, you know, like, okay, I have to make this work without that piece of it, you know, financially, it's more correct to stay at home because I can keep, you know, a couple thousand dollars a month in the business. Yeah. So that's what I thought you were gonna say. So. But thanks for your.

Input. You got it, man. Discretionary effort is a beast. And I think that sometimes when you have your back up against the wall, I think one of the most healthy things for a young man to do as you pass 18, 19, 20 years old, is to spread your wings, is be forced to do hard work because your livelihood depends on it and you have something to prove. Someone said you can't do it, and it's not like you have to be against your parents. It is a function of they were concerned and they had doubts, and you'll prove them wrong. And not like in a matter of you show them like, that sort of thing. Just a function of you got your back against the wall, and now it's time to fight. All right, let's do some video calls. Mikeannies.com? we'll do some of these video calls, and then I will go to the chat, and then I have a little bit of a more content I want to share with everyone. Let us know in the chat if you like, oh, let's skip this question. I want to do this one on its own. I saw this one already. This is from Zack Beyer. Great turnaround show that we recently went to. But I want to come back to this one, Jase, by itself next week. All right, Matthew, go ahead. Hi Mike, this is Matthew here. I own Deschutes Clean. It's a house cleaning company that I just started about three and a half months ago. Anyway, I just had some questions for you for Solo Operator. Last month I did 2500 about in revenue and so my question is I dislike cleaning and I do have a decent amount of savings saved up before I started this business. I don't really need to make any money from it for the next like three months. And was wondering what your thoughts are on hiring before I'm clear booked out and to get out of operations, a lot of cash. I do really want to grow this thing to about, you know, kind of what you did with Augusta per location. Anyway, my big goals. But yeah, I have about 20 grand that I can spend on the company and not I don't need to pay out anytime soon really and I have some other sources of income. Anyway, just wondering what your thoughts are on that or if you think I should really focus on dialing in the work and staying a solar operator till I have full routes for someone. So anyway, that was my question. So in my opinion I want to follow the 4L framework at all times. I would rather this be a demand issue than a supply issue. Like you're trying to make this a demand problem which is like I just need a bunch of leads after I find an employee. And a lot of times the reason we do the 4L framework out of order is because we default to the one that's easiest for us. So there are some people who are really good gift of gabbers and really good at being visionary and they can attract great leadership. And what they do is they'll get leaders before they have a bunch of employees and they have like two or three management style employees and they have a team of like five people. It's like no, you don't need leadership, you need laborers at this point. So when we look at liquidity, when we look at then leads, labor and and leadership, I want to do them in that sequence. And the only reason I would get way ahead of myself if I have a lot of money. So if you had like a couple hundred thousand dollars, I'd be okay, great, go get a general manager. That is leadership. And then work backwards. They might Go hire a couple employees, laborers, and then you go spend 20 to $30,000 on marketing and fill up your lead funnel. So if you have tons of capital, then you can jump steps in the 4L framework. But you are going to burn money if you skip steps in the 4L framework simply because you're in a rush. And so I made this, this, this post recently that said many people fail to build a million dollar business because they're in a rush to build a $10 million business. I'm not saying that's you, Matthew. I'm just saying you're, you're trying to jump over the fact that you need leads to keep these laborers busy. I would rather you go do this, deploy this money that you have on marketing so much to the point where you have to get a labor like you just overflowing with work, 10, $15,000 a month of work. It's just pouring in. Because when you do, you'll now be able to afford a higher wage and hire a better quality labor. And if you do that several times, the same thing is then true for a leader, a general manager. You probably will promote one of them and be able to pay them better because you've done this in sequence. The 4L framework in sequence, which is, I have money, I turn it into leads, I turn more customers into labor, and then labor into leadership. If you go from liquidity, I'm like, I'm going to go jump into labor and hire someone. It's very high likelihood you're not going to hire a good person because you don't have the skill yet. Unless there's some skill, like you have experience I don't know about. But even still, it's unlikely you're going to keep them because you're not going to keep them busy. You have about 20% of their capacity, maybe 25% of their capacity in cleaning to actually fill their schedule. So I believe that if you deployed this capital, 20 grand, let's just call it 5 to 10 of that, deployed against marketing, advertising, website, driving, leads, and you nailed your sales system. You'd convert leads into customers and then you'd have a labor constraint and then you would likely be able to find better laborers because you'd be able to hire them full time and you'd be able to pay them more. Great question. Fantastic. Next one. Jase, do we have another.

One? That's actually all we.

Got. Okay, that's fine. I'll go to the chat. All right, let's see what we got in the chat. I'm Going to scroll to the bottom. There's a whole bunch that I missed, but here we go. I tried hiring him, but it didn't work out. Bryson, that's hilarious. If I click on these, do they show up? No, they don't. Okay, Bryson, Turner, let's go. The only competition you should have is yourself. Strive to do better and be better every day. Let's go. What's up? Marco Garcia. Everyone should follow Marco Garcia on YouTube. If you. If, especially if you are out in the field as an operator, you're at 50, 60, 70,000amonth in revenue. You're trying to then scale up or go to multiple locations. Follow Marco. Great young man. I still think he's 18 or 19. He's night. Do you turn 19, Marco? I think you turned 19. Now you're no longer 18. Let's go. I remember the day I turned 19 and my mom and dad were like, you're no, I don't know when I turned 18. They're like, you're no longer a minor. People aren't going to give you the benefit of the doubt anymore. All right, let's see here. Bryson says, heads up, the producer, that I keep getting ads midstream. Are you serious? I think lives are like, not monetizable. At least the ads should be turned off. Okay, let's see here. Good luck to any. Okay, here we go. Mike, I'm in profit mode this year for next year. Should I continue to track just standard KPI or everything possible? Marco, you're still 18. What a goat. All right, so Angel Karas. Sorry, I'm just not good at names. Angel, I'm in profit mode this year for next year. Should I continue to Track just standard KPIs or everything possible in profit mode? It really depends the level of granularity you need in KPIs. Kind of comes down to your level of involvement in the business. So if you're showing up every day, you can keep much better pulse on projects, scheduling, anything in operations, the trucks, if things are getting fixed, sending the sales. You kind of know, like, are we behind? Are we booked way out? What's our close rate? Like? It's very easy to keep your kind of pulse and everything. It's when you go virtual, like if you're actually gonna move away or have someone else run the business day to day operations and you show up like once a month, that's when the granularity of the numbers is required even more. So I would say the intermediary is having good software that you can Just quickly check and like, what's our close rate? How far are we booked out? Are we filled our budget hours? So those are the type of things that I would be kind of leaning on software as an intermediary between my business is super profitable and then trying to get it to where it runs without you. All right, next question from Marky. Marky Mark, I run an epoxy coatings company in the northeast Pennsylvania. We do $1.4 million a year, but we are definitely constrained with leads and talent. Okay, so Marky Mark, assuming that I have, I have no disrespect, my same market, that is what your username is. Congrats on the 1.4. So $1.4 million doing epoxy coatings. Let's go. I like the epoxy business. If you're constrained with leads and not liquidity, this is a solvable problem. So if you look at the four framework liquidity, then we have leads, then we have labor, then we have leadership. So the holes, if you're having a constraint with leads and labor, that means I can't find the customers and I can't find employees. What I would say is I need more and better. I need more customers and I need better customers that pay me more so I can then hire higher quality laborers, that is pay them more. I happen to believe if you were able to be able to pay $5 more per hour, $10 more per hour, you would be able to find better laborers. But to do that, I need more and better customers. And so assuming that you don't have a constraint in liquidity, in other words, you have more than one month of revenue in the bank. I should be able to convert that cash, that liquidity into more leads, and I should be able to do so with high quality leads because I don't need every single one. I can drive enough traffic, I can filter them out, I can qualify them. And so, for example, I'll just use this as an example for Augusta. Back in the day, we used to have dozens of calls every week of people that were just getting started and they wanted to start a franchise. I, I have nothing against them. I have tons of content and free courses at landscape Business course for people like that. But they're not going to be able to join Augusta and really tap into the systems and all the marketing and really scale quickly. You should just grow on your own without us when you don't have that kind of capital. So we just have a very simple form that weeds out anyone that we just know from Day one doesn't have the experience or enough capital, which for us is a very low number when it comes to franchising. $50,000. If you can't get access to 50 grand, whether it be loans or cash, you're not going to be able to tap into and scale quickly and use the systems of Augusta. And so that's a form of qualifying your customer so that when I dump money on ads, I don't get 10x the amount of leads that are unqualified. I might get twice as many leads, but they're qualified now. And so I would do more and better. I would do more by getting better advertising, optimizing your website and your CRO customer conversion rate optimization on your website. And then I would be focused on how do I then qualify those leads so that when I dump gasoline I don't get a bunch of trash leads. Then by doing that you'd be able to hire better quality talent because you're able to pay them more. Daniel. Oh man, I'm going to butcher all these names Daniel's calling in. Let's go. What would be the best form of advertising for a landscape hardscape business? Last year we did local service ads and just word of mouth. We started SEO but heard it takes a while. Thanks. Yeah, like SEO for home service Web design we see usually takes three to six months in terms of seeing a return on SEO, Search engine optimization, showing up on Google, et cetera, has a lot to do with whether or not you're responding to Google reviews. If you have an address on your Google listing, a lot of other factors. That's the first thing. Second thing is the best form of advertising is the one you're currently using. Excuse me, the one you are currently testing, using and optimizing. And so what I mean by that is I can take any form of marketing and make sense of it as long as I keep applying myself to it and optimizing over the course of time. And so for the people that I consistently I'll see sometimes people will say like on Facebook groups like Facebook ads don't work or Google Ads don't work or whatever, fill in the blank doesn't work. And then what's cool about online is I can just see which business they are. I can go to Facebook, find them. I can then see in the ads library which ads they're running. I can look at their ads and like, oh yeah, they ran one ad all last year. Of course it's not going to work. I ran 450 ads in the past few weeks and 380 of them didn't perform like I wanted, but the other 30 or 40 performed enough for me to make a return. And so many times the reason that we don't succeed is simply a lack of volume. And many times if you just took one platform, any platform from ads perspective, and just constantly tweaked it, modified it, beta test it, split test it, not over the course of a few weeks, but comparatively to the year prior. I use this example all the time because the most cut dry and simple, and that is at Augusta. About six years ago, we started using door hangers. We have 5x the response rate on those door hangers. Has the economy gotten better? No. When we started doing the door hangers is 2020, 2021 much better economy in terms of people wanting to buy anything and everything. But the reason we 5x is because over the course of five years, we constantly tweet things like, should we put the price, okay, should we put two prices on there? Should we x off one of the price? Should we use a red marker? Should we use a black Sharpie? Should we do it with print or should we do it with an actual marker? Should we use a QR code? Should we have them where they write on the paper, or should they just scan something? Should they take a picture of the door hanger or should they just be able to call in? These are all the little things we just kept testing. And the thing is, you can't test it over the course of a few months because because of seasonality, you've got to compare it to last year during that period of time and so many times. The reason the ads don't work for someone is simply the lack of application to that channel and consistently refining it over and over again. And no one wants to wait. No one wants to wait 3, 4, 5, 6 years to refine instant quotes on a door hanger. I don't want to wait. But you have to in order to get good data to be able to consistently know which variable is actually driving you closer to a higher conversion rate. And so there's no way you 5x like if back in 2020, 21, when we started doing door hangers a lot more, let's just assume the return was $150 per customer. That same door hanger now gets like 30 to $40, almost a 5x better conversion. But I would not have got here if I was thrown in the towel after a year or even year two when it was 120, 130, 140 and I'm like, Ah, it doesn' things working better 100 any channel. Just apply yourself to it and become expert at it and get used of doing tests over and over again. All right, what's up next here we got. Yo, what's up, Mike? Wonder what happened to the fence company that Mike tried to help. Up until last year, it was handled by a random company. Now we're taking it over and I'm trying to find the best way to be able to turn on the leads when we want. Yeah, like if you're talking about your website side of things, you know, for anyone out there, home service, web design, go to the our work tab and see the stuff we do as a good starting point for how it should work. Like how your website should work. 30 inch mowers, are they any good? Honestly, they're tough. A lot of times it's all the little, the wires and the little gadgets that break, not the actual motor or like the deck. They're very heavy. A lot of times. Kind of depends on what you're using them for. But most people, I have found, eventually move away from them. Maverick K Lawn mowing. I've been paying my one employee 22.3% of labor revenue for P4P, although I haven't been doing profit sharing. Should I add that in. In 2026? Yeah. So this is the trinity of the trade. You do P4P and then you do open book management and then you do profit sharing. I believe you need all three to have a really solid culture. Highly recommend it. Okay, we're going to wrap things up with some content. Let me go ahead and give me one second and I'll share my screen here. We're going to go over something that comes from. Where is it from? The book. Copy and paste millionaire. You can take that off the screen there, Jace. Thanks. We're going to talk about the seven stages of success. The copy and paste millionaire. And I believe that 95% of people, if they follow this, would make more money. Now, the other 5%, they will think they're like everyone thinks they're the part of the 5%. But after doing a bunch of turnarounds, after talking to hundreds, if not thousands, probably tens of thousands of home service business owners, the vast majority of people, if they use this process, would make a lot more money. These are the seven stages of success. And when we look at these, which they look horrible on your screen, I apologize. The first stage is growing your revenue past $500,000 in annual revenue. Now, if you Have a business that has a whole bunch of materials, a bunch of subcontractors, then you are likely not going to have 500,000 revenue. You're likely going to have a lot more. But you're going to have material costs, contractors and other cost of goods that are baked in. I'm talking about $500,000 of labor revenue, okay, annually. Now once I pass that, I'm gonna go move on to stage two, which is I'm gonna enter profit mode and raise my prices when I hit capacity. As we talk about inside the book, when I hit capacity is when I raise prices and I have the opportunity to move into profit mode. That's stage two. And then stage three is I'm gonna simplify and focus on recurring revenue. So you're like, well, I don't do, I don't. I only do projects. Okay, that's fine. But I'm trying to get the business to be more stable where it's not as lumpy of revenue. And if I do projects, on every project you sell, you can sell a warranty, you can sell a maintenance package, you can sell ongoing repairs and fixes to the system that you've installed. These are all things that you can bake. Recurring revenue doesn't have to be recurring jobs. It can be recurring revenue. And insurance is the best form of something that is one time. But they sell recurring revenue every single month you pay on your house. And maybe once every 30 to 50 years that policy is issued and they actually have a claim. You'd say that's a one time job. No, it's a recurring revenue. They just spread it across all your monthly payments. And so this is recurring revenue. Any business can install recurring revenue. Inside of my other book, which is the off season I talk about in Cure 4 the Ways to be able to create more recurring revenue not just during your off season, but throughout all of your business. And why it's so important to enterprise value and handing the business off. Because lumpy revenue is not systematized. What is systematized, it is simplified and standardized. And so recurring revenue is the closest thing to be able to have a system in the business. Cause it predictably creates revenue. And a system is where I take predictable inputs and have a predictable outcome. And the inputs are I sell more recurring work. On the other side, I have a very predictable amount of revenue that I make every single month, every single quarter. And I don't have months where I make 100,000 and then months where I make 10,000. I never want to make less than 50% of my best month's revenue any other month of the year. So If I make $100,000 in monthly revenue, I never want a month to be under 50,000 in monthly revenue. That is if that's happening in your business. What we call seasonitis, and that's the disease that affects many home service businesses. The number one way to solve it is to use recurring revenue. The same way that insurance companies make sure they don't have massive spikes in payments. They just make it recurring. They spread it out over the course of a whole bunch of payments. So you can do this for any home service business, even if you only sell. I install H Vac systems. You can sell recurring revenue like, oh no, only like 10 or 15% of people accept. Okay, give them a discount on the install to where you're basically giving away a year's worth of warranty or a year's worth of fixes, maintenance and repairs. But then you know that 80% of people convert into year two, three and beyond. And every single time you come back to that customer is another opportunity to sell them another job. Recurring revenue allows me to upsell one time jobs every single time I come back to the property. If you're using copilot soon to be homeworks, take a stinking video and attach it to the visit of jobs that can be upsold every single time you show up at the property. You teach your team to do that. You create an incentive program. Recurring revenue allows me to create one time revenue. You're like, I make all my profit and one time jobs. Great. Create the recurring revenue to keep your crew busy year round. Never have a month where you lose money regardless of your overhead. It's covered. Focus on that first. That's number three. Simplify and focus on recurring revenue because there's no way this business is going to be high enterprise value run without you as the owner and not create huge amounts of stress during the off season. If you have months of where you lose money, you never want a month where you lose money. If you solve that problem in home services in a seasonal quote unquote seasonal business, which by the way, it is a feature, not a bug of home services, you're going to have seasonal work. There are gonna be times when there are more people calling than others. The goal is how do I figure out how to weed out the schedule to where I push one time jobs off, I push time insensitive jobs, I push them off. And I also pull demand forward when it's slow. I give discounts, I give Offers to pull demand forward when, when. Otherwise people start in April. Well, great. I'm gonna give them a discount in February, March to pull that demand forward so that I can get more new customers during the actual rush. Simplify and focus on recurring revenue. That's stage number three. Stage number four is you're gonna start growing. This is scale. This happens organically over the course of two to three years if you stay in profit mode. Because remember, every single time I hit capacity, I'm raising prices by a minimum of 15%. And if you do that a few times, that is a few years during your spring rush, you're going to get above 800,000 annual revenue. So my one location this year will probably be like 1.1, $1.2 million in annual revenue. They're in profit mode. They're not buying more trucks, they're not hiring more people. They're going to stay between six and eight employees with one working GM and that's it. But because they've been in profit mode for several years, they get well above $800,000 and they're still inside this system. Number five. Now, this is the most conservative approach that I'm outlining here. If you want to accelerate and go faster, because this is going to take five plus years to get here. If you want to accelerate and go faster, you can. It's just not going to be as conservative and you're not going to be as profitable and you're going to have a little more stress because growth sucks cash and cash creates cushion so you don't have stress. So step stage number five, get a general manager. Hire a general manager that gets you out of daily operations. Out of daily operations means when you leave, sales, operations and admin are all taken care of, meaning the work gets sold, the work gets done, and the work gets paid for without you being there. Now, the easiest way to make this happen is make sure that your admin is completely systematized. And ideally, admin takes phone calls to sell jobs because it makes the sales position much easier to get rid of. If every single job is customer, if every single project requires an estimate that has a whole bunch of experience, it's very difficult to get out of daily operations. And so this is why systems in stage three are so required and getting on recurring and simplifying the services so that when I hire gm, the level of skill and the compensation I have to pay them is as low as possible. If I'm trying to find a unicorn that has 10 years of excavation experience, has years of horticulture has years of hardscaping and concrete and fixing fences and doing decks. If I require all of these services, the likelihood of me do number five is so low. And this is why people have $1.52 million businesses and they burn out making good money, but they can never hand off. In stage five, they can never hand the business off because nobody has their skill level without getting paid an exorbitant amount of money. And if they had all those skills, they'd just go start their own business. Stage number six is repeat as copy and paste multiple locations. That is where I believe instead of trying to figure out the next level of business, which is get mid level managers, create regional managers inside of the company, division leaders, multiple assistants in the office, multiple sales and estimators. I just want to copy and paste this model over and over again. They did not have to reinvent the wheel to make Panda express go from 10 locations to 2,500. They just did the same exact thing for 40 years. Same exact thing, Chicken, rice sauce. They didn't reinvent anything, they didn't change anything. Then like we're changing the game, we're moving to AI and we're gonna keep this app. No, they just keep it really simple. And so we get fancy. And so many times we build a million dollar, two million dollar business in home services and the next we somehow think that we gotta move on to the next thing. When if you just take what you're done and just copy and paste it over and over again and now this just becomes a leadership game of finding great general managers and finding great people, that becomes the obstacle which is, by the way, not easy. That's why in the book I talk about the whole constraint of the copy and paste method, ie stage number six is finding great general managers. In other words, becoming a better leader hard skill, easier in my opinion than reinventing the business model that you've already built. If you've got through stage five and you have a million dollar business pumping out $200,000 in profits, why would I go try to reinvent the wheel and have to create brand new systems for whole new departments when I can just take that model and copy and paste it over and over again. And in doing so, I will have to gain the skill of leadership and managing managers. And that can take three to four years. But I believe that is a more scalable thing. Once you figure out that leadership hack, once you figure out that skill and you've gained that and it can take a few years and you will turn through A few general managers and, and it only takes reps many times to actually solve the obstacle of not having that skill. But once you have it, you should be able to copy and paste this much faster. And only then after stage six, when you have so much distributable cash you can't copy and paste fast enough? That is when I would invest into things outside of the industry, diversifying the stocks, real estate and other businesses. What's crazy is a lot of us jump from number four to number seven and then we wonder like oh man, stock's like making 8, 9% great. Your business can annihilate that. If you can put $200,000 into a new location and in a matter of three to five years it's giving you $150,000 in distributions. There's no stock market or real estate market that's gonna compete with that. And what's crazy, if you've done it once, the likelihood of doing it again, much higher. Also why in the world, why in the world would I get into another industry like the stock market or real estate where everyone else is competing in that market and you are at best average in that industry. When if you have built a million dollar business that has a general manager in place that is able to produce six figures of distributable cash to you as the owner, you are the top 1 to 2% of your industry. Why would you not use that advantage to just copy and paste it? Here's why. Leadership is very, very difficult and we hit up against this leadership problem when we start having to go to number six and it is finding more general managers, finding and attracting great talent, keeping them, compensating them, motivating them, inspiring them, that is a hard skill. It is not easy. But many times we hit up against it and then we just think, I've got to go different industry, I've got to go add more services, I've got to go to a new, I've got to add more. Something I've got to. This real estate thing is so much better. Like ah, eventually you know, it's not McDonald's, they're serving burgers, they're doing real estate. And we get all the, we give all the reasons as to why another industry or another service is going to somehow be the next leg in our entrepreneurial journey. When reality, we have simply hit up against the obstacle of leadership. And for the person that is doing two, three million dollars, many times it's actually a function of the. They failed to solve the leadership problem. So they stayed in operations. Cause until an owner can leave operations and sales, operations, admin be fully handled without them being showing up for a week or two and things go well. Jobs get sold, jobs get done and jobs get paid for without them being there. Until that time, they have not solved the constraint of leadership. And so what a lot of people do, they just give up on ever trying to have the business run without them ever having the leadership skills. Because it's hard. It's very difficult to gain that skill. They give up on it and they just stay in daily operations and run a 2 to 3 million dollars business. Working crazy amounts of hours hoping and praying that their operations manager sticks on board. Hoping and praying that that nothing happens them physically because they are working crazy amounts of hours juggling admin operations and sales when people don't show up. All right, that is it for today's livestream. You can take off. Take off the slide. Thank you, Jace. I appreciate you all tremendously. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your week. If you have not already, go check out Copilot CRM. Highly recommend soon to be homeworks. By the way, I have a video coming out in a couple of weeks of all the things we've done this year and what's coming on the docket. There's a lot of really cool stuff. But one of the things that you got to do by the end of the year is send a text blast to all your customers. I guarantee you outperform your Facebook ads, your email, your Google Ads, any other marketing platform and it's free right now inside of copilot CRM. Send a text blast and immediately get customers. Don't be out here seeing like the top four customer. The next 10 customers only get $89 off the answer today. Text us back like no. Don't just be like hey Mr. Jones or hey merge tag first name. It's Mike over here at Augusta. And this time of year before the holidays we like to get our. Our. Our most. What's the word I'm looking for our most. Most loyal customers. A property cleanup before the holiday season. If you'd like to get on the schedule, we have limited spots available. Let me know and tomorrow I'll get you an estimate. Just let me know. Either way, happy holidays. Have a great evening. If you send that email out, it will not only get opened up. Turn out email, text message, it will not only get opened up 98 to 99% of the time instead of email which could like open up like 30% of the time. You will get responses out to wazoo. And so if you're slow right now, I would encourage you to tap into your existing contact database. Don't go spend a bunch. I saw someone yesterday. It was just boggled my mind. They were joining copilot on the onboarding call and they asked, I asked them how much you spend on Facebook ads. They're spending $3,000 between Facebook ads and Google Ads and local services ads. And they have not never sent an email or text message to their customers and they had 3,000 contacts. So I told them, hey, could you do me a favor? Send a text to all of your customers today. I gave them the script kind of like I just told you and I said within 48 hours, can you send me an email and let me know how it did? They sold 16 jobs. No, no, no, no, no. It was 12 jobs one time and four recurring jobs. They said they scheduled for the next two weeks. They're booked out to the end of the year and they have recurring work now for the winter services during the off season. Why would I spend like he said, the equivalent ad spend was about $1,500. If he spent money on Google Ads and Facebook ads at its best and it cost him nothing. So go check it out. Go check out the book. Appreciate everyone's support on this tremendously. We have just started shipping out all the donors books from the book launch. You'll be getting those packages in the mail. This is the best textbook in my opinion. Home services. A lot of work went into this. So this is. Consider this my Christmas card to you. Starting in February of next year, we'll start giving these away. So thank you to everyone that donated the books during the book launch. Tens of thousands of books will start going out in February. Appreciate all tremendously. Have a great evening and we'll see you in the next live.