Why Ryan Trahan FAILED at Mowing Business

Recently, Ryan Trahan went on a quest to use one penny and get across America and deliver that penny to Mr. Beast. Along the way, he had to come up with money and generate some income. How did he do that? One day, he actually mowed lawns. You don't make any money mowing someone's lawn one time. I've mowed lawns since I was 11 years old. I have 15 years of experience. And then at Augusta Lawn Care, we have almost 100 locations that I help start. So I have a thing or two to say about how he did his business, what you can learn from it and potentially actually grow a real lawn care business that doesn't just get one for $20. So we're gonna go ahead and watch the video together. I'm gonna break down his performance. How did he do mowing the grass? How did he do when it came to business and running a lawn care company? And let's go ahead and jump into it.

Okay, let's go get this lawnmower.

We made it to the lawnmower rental. I put my bike on a discreet wall for the day. It's kind of hard to spot. Fingers crossed it doesn't get taken by anyone. But if it does, it's my fault. Let's be honest. I don't have a lock, but I'm gonna go in here, get our $31 lawnmower rental, and then I like.

Howdy. Hey, I have a lawnmower rental for the day. You know what I mean?

Gotcha.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Thank you so much. Have a good one. All right, lawn mowing mafia, it's time for the game plan. I was, like, me pulling a lawnmower.

So the first thing is to pay $30 for a lawnmower. Just remember that if you mowed, like, 15 lawns, you'd be able to afford this lawnmower. This lawnmower is probably worth about 300 to $400. It's not super complicated. Not a commercial. It's just a residential Honda push mower. You could probably get us about 400, $500, which is with inflation. It's expensive. It probably used to be 300, but you can absolutely get 15, 20 lawns, and you'll be able to pay this thing off. So if you actually want to build a business, you don't need to be spending months or years saving up for a mower like this. This is relatively cheap.

That was. Come on, We've all been there. Step one, mow at least two lawns today so that we break Even and profit a little bit. My plan is to charge $20 per lawn. I feel like that's a pretty good deal. I'm not going to be able to weed, eat, or do.

Okay, so these are bad profit margins. Because think about it. If you got $30 to rent the lawnmower and you're gonna get two push mowing jobs, $20 each, that's only $40 in total revenue, which means I'm only gonna make 25% profit because $40 in revenue, $30 in cost, and by the way, that doesn't include things like gas. So not great profit margins through the.

Edge of the driveway or anything. So I think that's fair. I think that's a good deal. Step two, push the lawnmower two miles to a neighborhood. There's literally no houses over here, so I'm going to have to walk for about an hour. But hey, we're here. I have it all day. Step three, mow as many lawns as it takes to buy a plane ticket by the end of the day. I'm so serious. We're getting the heck out of here tonight. No, it won't be tonight. I'm pretty sure the cheapest plane ticket is in a few days. So regardless, the goal is to lock it in and get to the next city as soon as possible. Screw you. Great reset. How about that? How about them apples? All right, I'm going to start walking.

That's actually this way. I actually have to get the camera as well. All right, let's go.

To a neighborhood. I'm gonna go knock on doors and ask if they. If I can mow their lawn for $20.

All right, so let me just say this. If you're trying to do one day's worth of work and make money to like go on a flight, for example, don't do lawn care and mowing because it's such a low margin service. It's only $20. Like he's charging. I would have preferred he actually not rent the mower and go buy a rake. Or even just rent the rake for like five bucks and go do a property cleanup where you trim these. This, you know, look at this person's lawn here. You got some ground cover and bushes that could be trimmed away from the house. That could be a couple hundred dollars. Instead of just going after the lawn, which you have to rent the piece of equipment for, and it's expensive and you gotta push around, just go after the low hanging fruit. You don't need the mower even to get started with Lawn care and mowing services. Just go ahead and get a rake or a bin and a broom and get started. It's really, really simple. And you can get a higher ticket per day in terms of $20 for a cut instead of. You could get $200 for trimming their bushes, maybe get some loppers or even just rake out their beds, pull their weeds. You get $200 to $300 for one of those property cleanups.

I don't think they're home.

Nothing.

Oh, gosh. Hey, you know what they say. Three L's 6 L's make a W.

Let's go. This is the one. Hi.

Hey.

I'm just trying to make some mowing lawn. Okay, no worries. Have a good one. Hey, at least we got a human. He said, no.

We got a client. We got a client. Thank y'. All.

So you gotta remember, when it comes to knocking on doors, it's simply a numbers game. So it took him 15 houses, basically, to get his first customer. That's actually really, really, really good. You're gonna see afterwards. Cause he knocks on another 50, probably and gets all rejected. But that's simply a numbers game. And if you do the math, you can make this work. When it comes to knocking on doors, it's gonna take a lot of rejection, but you absolutely can make it work. And trust me, it's probably the best ROI compared to any other marketing service when it comes to lawn care and mowing services, Especially if you're young, especially if you're hungry. And he could have done a little bit better on the professionalism side, you know, if you would have had a nice Carhartt pants on, a nice polo shirt like this, some ear protection and a nice mower and maybe a nice truck they roll up in. He'd probably do better at knocking on doors. If you just roll up like he is with a backpack on and a shirt, and person doesn't think you're serious, they potentially might think you're going to do something wrong to their property. So if you have a professional service, you'll get more response when you're knocking on doors.

Started. All right, Kyle, Come on, baby. Come on, come on. We've all been there.

All right, so bad mistake here by Ryan. He started mowing in one direction next to the driveway there. And then he switched directions. Perpendicular, 90 degree difference. Stay in the same direction when you're mowing. Go back and forth. Go around that flower bed. Yes. It takes a few extra seconds, but it looks so much better. And if you have those Lines going to and away from the road, that's when you see them the best, going perpendicular to the vision, the sight. You don't see the lines as well. So just my two cents. Foreign.

This is why you have to make sure that if you're going to do mowing services that you charge more for the initial cut. Because this lawn is gonna take three to four times longer to mow it now than it will next week. Because the first cut takes so long. So the first cut, Instead of charging $20, the first cut really should probably on this lawn be at least 80 or 90 or $100. Then again, that's gonna include edging and getting those edges nice and crisp and established, which he's not doing. But it's definitely worth a lot more than $20. Just the wear and tear on this piece of equipment probably cost you five or ten bucks. And then you got fuel. Like you're not making any money on $20 per cut.

We're almost done mowing the lawn. J.C. brought me water. Technically part of the pavement. I appreciate it. Look at that. Alkaline.

What does that mean?

You know, it's like to balance out the acidity. This is alcohol.

No.

Now I don't have a weed eater. I only have a lawnmower. I got my own weed eater right here, buddy. I'm gonna use my hands to get some, some of the extra big ones.

Let's get it.

Okay. In my opinion, what actually sets a lawn apart from being a professionally cut lawn to someone, some Joe Blow homeowner doing it is the edging. So get yourself a weed eater and you'll be able to charge instead of $20, you'll probably charge 30, 40, or $50 for the same lawn because your edges are nice and tight and then you're able to blow things off. So I know Ryan's just doing this as a one time project, but if you're actually wanting to make a business, get yourself a weed eater, get yourself a blower, it's gonna make it look ten times better. And instead of just cutting the lawn, get those nice crisp the concrete ends, there's a nice little quarter inch gap, and then the lawn starts. It's a beautiful thing.

JC all done. What do we think?

Dude?

It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

I got you a tip.

Yo, are these lottery tickets, dude? Thank you. That's so good. $20 for the yard. Appreciate you. Cheers.

And then you can't not pay the camera guy, so.

Oh, thank you, man. See you, J.C. thank you, brother. Thanks so Much So nice to meet you.

So this outlines the next problem with this whole equation is don't take cash from your customers. If you actually want to really run a legitimate business, I recommend that you invoice them at the end of the week or end of the month so they can have it on file, a credit card on file that you can charge or potentially at least just keep track of their payments. So if you're wanting to run a real lawn care business, use what's called a CRM, Customer Relationship management. You keep track of all their payments, all their invoices, all their jobs and stay organized. You might be able to do what he's doing here with cash right after the job for a few customers. But even 20, 30, 50, 100, 1,000 customers, you gotta have a software system to keep track of everything. And don't take cash from the customer. What happens if this cash blows away in your truck? Or if you're at the next job and you got some cash sitting in a truck, someone just snatches it out or it gets lost underneath the seat. Like that happens all the time. Just don't take cash. Go without cash. Just go cashless. Take credit cards and don't take cash right after a job. And by the way, if you're taking cash off the job, what happens if they're not home right after the job? You don't get paid. So I recommend use some credit cards, use a CRM.

Scratch these bad boys off. Oh, this is nuts. Okay, this one is your number, winning number and prize.

No matches. This is the one. This is the one.

Come on.

$50 ring cactus 27. Oh, bro, I feel like we're win something. $500.

Imagine.

Nothing. Hey, it was fun. I had a good time. So back to mowing. We are getting rejected over and over and over and over and over.

Okay, so here's the deal. I feel like there's more pain. Like if you look at these, these properties that he's going to look at the flower beds, they're overgrown, there's weeds, there's leaves in the flower beds. That could absolutely be a bigger pain point than some of these lawns that are, you know, maybe an inch or two overgrown. So address the need and the pain point of the customer and potentially get 5, 10 times more from them in one service. Like I love mowing because it's recurring, it's all the time. But in the case of Ryan, he's only trying to do a one time job. Go after the thing that's $200, not the thing, that's $20. I genuinely believe he could have got two or three property cleanups out of all these properties and gotten $100 or $200 per cleanup and not even need the mower. So again, a great way to get started. Just focus on pulling weeds and property cleanups where you're going to have a higher revenue per service. And then down the road, you want to build out the recurring revenue. You want to build up the customers, because honestly, that customer just mowed that grass for. He could have easily told them, hey, I'll be here next week and the week after you give me $20 every single time. Of course, again, I think he should have got a weed whacker and a blower and went up to 30 or 40 or 50. But he could absolutely sold that on a recurring basis where every single week he was coming back and doing the lawn.

Game plan update. Hey, we mowed a lawn. We did for $20. We also lost four and a half hours of daylight. That's not amazing. So in total, we lost $11 on this money making method. That's what I call a bad investment. I probably knocked on the doors of 100 houses. Truly, the walk there, the walk back, it's gnarly. I figured I'd cut my losses and go back to more reliable money making methods. It's going to be tough to get a plane ticket by the end of the day. It will, it will. But all I can do is keep moving. I'm going to return this, have a quick water break, and then we'll get back out there.

All right, so let's break this down. So he did a hundred doors. He said, he knocked on. He said about four hours. Probably an hour of that was actually mowing the grass for the one customer. So just say it took three hours, he knocked on 100 doors and got one customer. This is the thing. If you're actually trying to build a real business lawn care mowing company, you could easily make this. This is great. This is just a numbers game. In three hours, you get one customer. Now, if you can sell that customer on a recurring basis where you come back to their property every single week and mow the lawn for $20, and you get one customer a day. So you knock on doors for three hours, you get one customer, knock on doors the next day for three hours, get one customer. You do that for several weeks or a couple months, you literally have yourself a little business get started doing that. And then you take those customers, make sure you sell them on a recurring basis, not just a one time mowing job. You don't make any money mowing someone' lawn one time. That's what just happened to Ryan. You never make money mowing someone's property one time. You make money when you get them on a recurring basis, but then once you get them on a recurring basis, you try to upsell them and do property cleanups. You can install some mulch. These are all things that you can do to make more money from these mowing customers and actually make a legitimate business. If you want more information on how to get your business from zero getting started to 250,000 revenue per year. Not one dollar, not one penny, but $250,000 per year, check this video out. Here I talk about the one thing, the one penny thing. Penny for your thoughts. Here's the one penny for my thoughts about how to get to two hundred and fifty thousand in annual revenue using mowing and lawn care.