Winter Nearly Bankrupted His Business (Here’s What Saved It)

Then we stayed right around 4:12, 4:50.

My ops manager leave at the end.

Of the year to just move on to greener pastures.

It seems really enticing to want to grow like an $800,000 business just in Northampton. I think it is possible. But we went from full financial collapse. You know, we would have been in the negative if we had higher expenses for the past three years because it's just been figuring it out doing residential and the condos 2. We had one commercial account this year.

And we changed all of our residentials over to, to a flat rate because.

It hasn't been real winter here in three years.

So everyone was, you know, saying I don't want to pay. I barely had any income.

I would dip into the savings. But so this year I changed them.

From like 800 to 1200 on average.

For salt snow, walkways, steps or even brushing the cars off. And that ended up. And then it ended up being real winter and they got a hell of a deal. So now they're all like pretty locked in and hopefully next year when I.

Try to raise the price they'll still.

Still be game for that because usually residential the, you know, they don't. It's commercial and condos that'll go for a flat rate.

Right. And then the residentials will this I will all. I'm not going to risk that.

I'll, I'll shovel myself or I'll find.

Someone else willing to do it.

It's like 1200 and then regards how much snow happens?

Yeah, I didn't put any cap on it, you know, which I could also do. Say if this is up to 30 inches and then you hit your cap.

And then we're going to have to charge out from there just to get smoke smarter about it, right?

Yeah, for sure.

So 65 grand, that's pretty good though not a lot better than.

Yeah, yeah, not too bad. Honestly, I was happy with our snow operation and I also was like, you know, it's, it's the double edged sword. Like I, you know, we need income and I wish I had year round services to offer and more snow for folks that like it used to be a consistent thing where every week, every.

Two weeks you could count on it.

But not for the last seven to.

10 years it hasn't been quite like that. And then these past three were brutal compared. Like people didn't believe in winter.

And then this year it finally came back. But I was able to get it to a point now where I hired enough folks and had experienced folks that came Back from prior years that knew what they were doing.

And I was able to, like, be out of town or even out of state for some snowstorms, you know, which I never thought, you know, I might be able to do again. It was like last winter.

For the previous two winters, it's just been grind time. Like six hours on the computer, doing.

Back end, you know, writing the training manual, getting all my marketing for the next year and just hitting the gym. And then that was my day.

Super consistent, working on the business.

Gave up my winter passions of snowboarding and, you know.

Yeah, yeah, I like to do a lot of, like, backcountry snowboarding. So split boarding, trying to get out, like, you know, into nature, decompress, take.

A couple months off. And this year I was able to do that. You know, I got back out there and my crew, I had trips planned.

For weekends, and then it would end up snowing.

I wake up in a cabin and be zero degrees, and they'd be calling me, like, yeah, we got to get going.

Like, where's the, you know, key for this thing? And they.

They handled business and no complaints, you know, which was awesome to see.

That's good. So 2023 was 325, approximately.

Yeah.

Then 2024, last year's 400. A little over 400,000. Y for this year, you shooting for like, basically 500,000. That's kind of your goal.

Probably closer to 600. I mean, 150 a year is a comfortable growth rate for me because I've done it every single year since inception.

In 2021, we.

Our first year, we did 150, then we did 312. Then last year, I was hoping for.

500, but we had all these setbacks with employees, you know, either having to be let go or getting injured. And we stayed right around 412, 450.

And then this year, I think easily.

Granted, we have another truck, you know, we're going to get another mower, and we have a more experienced crew, and we have that many more, you know, clients.

Plus we have. I can show you all this marketing in here. We got stacks and stacks and stacks of, you know. Yeah, we got 5,000 every door, direct mail, postcards, plus your. Your old school instant quotes. These worked well, you know, so we're looking to make a push somewhere, you know, this year.

And so last year, like, the kind of. The trouble with the growth was just retaining employees.

Yes. So it's been a saga, man. I'll tell you. I can't. I didn't count how Many I've actually.

Hired like between inception and, and now.

But last year essentially I had my ops manager leave at the end of.

The year to just move on to greener pastures.

He wants, his heart's not in it.

He doesn't see himself as, you know, in the landscaping and lawn care. Like a, you know, he's not passionate about leadership. But he was great and really helped.

Me standardize the processes. And he was, had more, you know.

Blue collar experience than even me. And he's like, you need to be like whipping people into shape. This way, this way, this way. He helped me come up with the.

Training manual, but he's gone. My mowing Foreman hurt his knee on.

The job and has been out of work ever since. Doing rehab for his knee. No, no set comeback date. You know, he was an older guy and then I had to let one.

Go, you know, due to theft with.

Filling up his own gas tank, like petty stuff. And he was all, honestly, in every way, shape or form, one of the best people to work with and was.

Super fast, agile on his feet, learned.

All the services really quick. And he was a young gun who was, I was looking to help, you know, grow with the business, but that didn't end up working.

So how many employees was there? Like a peak. So for example, a month like fall season, I know last year during November we had 50,000.

Yep.

During May, spring rush we had 63,000. Like during those period times. How many employees are staffed at that point?

Usually I'd say like I have around, you know, 10 to 12, but only six to eight full time equivalents. So that's the thing with how I've started the business. I had a lot of friends that helped me and weren't in it, you know, full time because they had other goals. They're either going to school, have other aspirations, but. But yet they have too much institutional knowledge, do too good a work and.

I trust them too much to just like think that they're not worth, you know, to keep around.

So I'd have, you know, four or.

Five full time people that were newer and then I'd have some part timers helping me out on the weekends to try and keep from, you know, folks working too much overtime or people's bodies who couldn't handle it. Right.

But that's the thing. I've been trying to move away from.

You know, part time help. So this is going to be the first season, I think, where I'm just, you know, it's either full time or bust sort of a thing. Right. Because that's really, you know, what I've, what I've seen works the best in terms of getting, you know, the production that we need out of everybody and setting people up to grow with the business into a position where they know the ins and outs are here every day, know everybody's first and last name, know what makes them tick, know what makes them.

It's also just easier to manage like if you hit. Right. Because like on 600,000 revenue you can do that with five to six and full time employees.

Right.

But when you have like 10, 12 part timers, it's hard to build the culture because they, with someone new all the time.

Right.

It's also hard to manage 12 people. Yeah. And so they get less efficient, they get less training, they have more time with you to be able to figure out how to actually do things reckless and cause more callbacks, etc.

Right.

So, so that's what we're moving towards and I'm set up for that. You know, I have seven on staff.

Right now that are going to be my full time employees.

But then I always, based on how my hiring and you know, turnover has.

Gone based on medical, not work, you know, people not cutting it, I don't know really if they're going to work out unless I work with them every day, day in and day out for a month to see if they're, you know, up for the job and what their attitude's like. On the fifth Friday in 100 degree heat, I always have people in the pipeline. I'm like ready to go. I'm going to start staggering. April 1st will be the next soonest hire date and we'll get to know like the, during this first week of March cleanups, in case anybody doesn't work out the first week, I got someone to step in. You know, I'm always nervous about not having enough help because I don't think we could do, you know, six, I don't think, you know, based on where my prices are at. If we need more folks to do that amount of revenue and I'm willing to have to step up and realize like it'll take more to manage that but in order to get there and then find the right squad that actually wants to work, you know, 50 hours a week in the busy seasons and their bodies can handle it, you know, taper off and figure out, you know, down the line when we can really make it efficient enough to do it exactly as, you know, as the book says, so to say, do people quit.

Or is it like they just want part time because like technically if you say you're charging an hour, which we're not hitting that now, but let's say it's 80 bucks an hour, able to actually hit that target. Right. And everyone works 30 budget hours a week. So about full time, right. We should be pulling in around ten grand of labor revenue per employee per month. And so that's where I think five to six employees what we need. Yeah, but that does require them all working full time.

Right.

And so like on your, in your hiring ad is are you attracting a lot of part?

We are. No, no.

So we haven't. It's just that's the way the cookies crumbled, I guess.

And like, you know, I've hired on some folks that have other full time commitments and then have just worked as.

Weekends because I know, you know, I.

Can'T count on my staff to show up every time I require them for a weekend.

So it's like some of them aren't.

Productive by the fifth or sixth day.

But they're, they're really good employees and.

They'Re trustworthy and they want to be with the company for a couple of years. So it's like, do I let them.

Work 30 hours or you know, say.

Goodbye because they can't work a full time week and then spend another five, ten grand finding someone who might work out, who might be a better fit.

You know, but for now, but we just, you know, all my high school friends are pretty much doing their own.

Thing at this point. Point that's helped me, started the business and really helped me standardize and when.

You have that fluctuating, you know, you never know what your revenue is going to be. It can be helpful to be able.

To pull from a part time employee and not have to give them a ton of guaranteed hours. With our summer slump, when things fall off, it's like I'm not, you know, required by law to be paying them, you know, X amount per week.

So it's been helpful up till now.

But definitely this year we're going to see how few people we can get away with and you know, try to find the folks that are, you know, really gung ho to get, get after it with as many hours as possible to make hay while the sun shines because at the end of the day that's what's, you know, best for their finances and, and for the businesses too. It's just hard to convince them of that when it's, when it's just, you know, go time in the Spring season, so.

Okay, cool. Very cool. I know you have some questions. We'll go over that and then what we'll try to do is figure out like the. From a 4L framework perspective, like, what are the aspects that we need to improve in each area?

Right.

Kind of the targets for those, which I kind of have an idea of now. But like, I know you have a bazillion questions, so let's go.

Yeah.

And that will inform me better in.

Sure, sure. Let me grab a pen too, so I can take some notes when we.

Get you, like a marker too.

Yeah, I got sharpie work.

Yeah, it works totally fine. We got questions for days. Let's go.

All right.

So I feel like it seems really enticing to want to grow like an $800,000 business just in Northampton.

I think it is possible.

I just don't know whether that's where.

I want to focus all of my marketing efforts this year.

Right.

Is it better to have a higher customer value spread out among multiple towns or a lower, you know, customer lifetime.

Value all in one town and just keep taking mowing only maybe spring clean up here, fall cleanup there.

Doing the bids right around now. Like when it's two minutes in between.

Each house is nice.

Fall cleanup season, it's five minutes.

We forgot something. You know, down the road, someone has to go pick up a rake.

It's nice, but is it limiting me, you know, when there's this, you know, equal equivalent sized town with just as many folks that are interested in the.

Electric component with no other competitors, just, you know, about 15 minute drive from the Hadley shop.

But that leaves that it's about 35 minutes from here. So it would be smarter to probably just. I think what you're going to say is move Southampton and East Hampton, those.

Are also viable markets, granted. Much smaller, a little more rural. You probably not as many folks who care as much about the electric thing, but still do need lawn mowing that we could branch into and do, you know, work our way this way towards the shop in Hadley, which is just moving north. Amherst is a little further north even, but it's a huge untapped market.

So moving, expanding your service here is always going to increase. Increase in my customers. You can have like, it's the fastest way to grow because you just simply increase the amount of surface area of people that could potentially use your services. Right. The challenging part, I think is by saying, hey, we have to tap into people who care about electric that all of a sudden just cut our market by like 90% yeah. Because most people don't care.

Yeah.

And so my thought is we use the electric part and if that's something that means a lot to you and you think there are a portion of people that care, but can we make it efficient enough to where anyone that needs lawn care service, anyone that needs landscaping, we can still serve them and be profitable on them and be competitive. Because like most customers, 90% of them don't care about the electric thing. They literally just look into the price.

Yeah.

And if it's a little quieter, cool. But they could care less.

Right.

And so if we can become competitive in that market, we can 10x the, the market that we can serve here. Right. And if you're building a $600,000 business in this market, I look, I look at like the lead side, like your website and other things that I see. We can double it easily.

Easily.

So like I think going into a different market is always the simplest solution because yes, you will immediately unlock that 10% cares about electric and you don't have any competition. So like you will get those customers. And so it seems then intuitive we'll go to the next city and also use massive service area.

Right.

Driving 35 minutes from here saps all your electric stuff. Now you got stuff so far away, it becomes even more. You have to invest more in batteries because you can't afford them to come back here. So I would really say like based upon what I've seen on the marketing side and if you just focus on this area, you can easily get to like a million. Million. Yeah, it just a matter, it's a function of can we get more efficient so we can, we can actually serve a market that doesn't care. Electric just needs the lawn care side. That's 100% of the market versus maybe 10%.

Right, right.

And so I think that's what I would be focusing on because as soon as you get into a wider, a wider service area, you're less efficient now.

Yeah.

So you can only serve that 10% of the market because you have to go up market. You have to, you have, you can only be the higher cost option for electric.

Right, Right.

So I, I would really encourage you to stay, stay in the current area. You are at 600000 when I look at your website and I see like $450,000.

$600 is the goal. But we didn't do much marketing last year besides a truck wrap and some lawn signs and we grew 150.

So let's just call it 450 though. Like, I think when I look at the website work, we're on the second page of Google. We only have 15 Google reviews. Like, there's so much opportunity there. Just putting your estimate request form on the front, front of the page, above the fold, that alone will get you 30, 40% more leads. So, like that, those are the things that, like when I look at the leads opportunity, like, I see, I see the thing is if we get dumped leads, like if tomorrow you're getting like 10, 15 leads a day.

Yeah.

You would, you would end up forcing yourself to raise prices.

Right.

Because right now, like the function, the real problem is the fact that we have such a low hourly rate.

Right.

Right. Like, we're just not making enough per hour. Therefore we can't pay our guys enough on P4P to keep them sticking around. So we go back to hourly rate simply because 40% on a low margin service is still not enough for them.

Right.

Like, if we could pay everyone 28, $29 an hour, we would keep a better crew.

Yeah.

But we can't afford to do that because the margin, like our prices are too low.

Yeah.

We're too inefficient. And so the only way for me to convince you that, to raise that to where you're actually making the 80 to $100 per hour is just dump leads on you.

Right.

And that's where I actually see the opportunity. And that's why you're wanting to go in a different market. Because I need more leads.

Right.

I agree with you. Like, in the world of leads just being dumped on you, you raise prices, you can be able to pay your employee employees more. You buy the extra mower, whatever you need. Right. And so I actually see this as a lead problem. And you know, I rarely actually say that. Like, usually I'm like, efficiency, like, let's nail this thing down, let's get weight, you know, cut P for P. All this other stuff, it's very rare as, hey, we just need done tons and tons of leads.

Yeah.

And that's why I say going to another market is so attractive to you because you know, immediately you unlock leads.

Right.

But when I look at what you currently have with the website, the current operations, like what you can do with the marketing, we're not tapping into it.

It's true.

I mean, at the beginning of this.

Foray, like I took an online course to get some design work done, you know, I've done, I got, you know.

The AI skills to build out all.

These, you know, postcards, door hangers and.

Then I bought your stuff too, just.

To help me, you know, solidify that and make that a bit easier.

But I really haven't found the time.

To get a good Facebook up, you know, do the Instagram, because I've had enough, you know, you know, success, I suppose, just with lawn signs. And we have 12 up right now from customers who have agreed to do that for a couple of free mowings or for free, you know, bless them.

So that's, that's work for now. But tapping into, I mean, I wanted to call around and see about someone.

On upwork helping me get the SEO dialed in.

So that leads me to my next question of. I mean, I have the option of putting 36 Lawrence Plain Road in Hadley as a official address.

We could ask the landlord about that on Google.

But right now my service area is Northampton. And 99% of the calls that I.

Get or the website visitors I do get on the intake form is, are from Northampton. So that helps me. I'm wondering if I put in Hadley.

We had a Hadley route last year.

So that's where our shop's located. But the lawns are a lot bigger. And I think, you know, there's probably a little more, you know, price discretion in that market. So I'm wondering, should I do that?

You think to having on any address on Google is gonna be positive because at least you show up on the map. And right now with Google listing integrated directly. Now with maps like you want an address, right, you're showing up on the second page, but you are showing up first on dual listing. And that's because no one around here has Google Reviews. You have 15 and it's like the most, Right. So if you can get above 30 at least in terms of reviews, that'll help. If you can also get an address verified on the map, even better. Now, ideally it is in Northampton, right? So this is Northampton, Southampton. This is Sounds away.

Yeah, I don't want to put it here.

And then Hadley's kind of in between.

Hadley is further. It's even further north than North Hampton.

North Northampton is Southampton, East Hampton, Northampton, Hadley.

Got it. But if I'm looking at a map, like, are we what, three, four miles from the center of your kind of like service area?

About probably closer to 10 right now.

No, I mean your shop space.

Oh, my shop space, yeah, my shop space a little closer.

Yeah. Verify that one. Use that one as a verification. It's already a commercial address. It'll be easy to verify.

Right.

I'm assuming all your stuff is sitting There. So you have to do a video verification for Google but if you just have that verified and you get 30 Google reviews, just that alone will probably put you in the first page of Google.

Yeah.

And so like that alone, just that one move will get you 20% more leads. I'd say just like on the second page of Google, everything dies. Like no one cares. You've got five competitors above you from an organic search.

Right.

None of them have Google listing like none of, none of them are taking Google reviews seriously.

Right.

And so inside service autopilot if you can just simply make an automation based upon when you complete a job it's sending them an automated. I have that.

Yeah. I mean it going, it's going out with the invoice. I don't know if that's a mistake.

It should be a separate email.

Well, do you have cards on file?

Say again?

Do you have cards on file for customers?

What kind of what are you the.

Credit cards on file? Yes. So do they get an actual invoice?

No.

So only it's only one time jobs are getting it.

Only one time jobs are folks paying by check.

I suppose.

So what you can do is just have it where it's like every 90 days or 120 days you send a review request to customers. Now instead of asking for review, what you want to do is you want to say was your service satisfactory? And then if they click yes, it goes to Google. If they click no, it goes to a Google form and sends information to you.

Okay.

And then what I would say is in inside that tell them that you're if they leave a review for your crew that they get a $50 bonus or whatever you want to put it on that because then they're much more inclined to leave a review.

So do say $50 incentive for free.

Mowing for the cut to the customer.

I wouldn't do anything free mowing or anything like that. I would just say hey, if you leave a review for us, the crew that was at your site, your property last gets a bonus. Because most of the time feel good about especially so I like to do is for recurring service I like to go was your property status, was the service satisfactory? Yes or no. More of a survey based. And if they say yes, it's going to Google they say no, it's going to a Google form to keep that internal information for one time projects. I would change that one because the reason you're getting very few reviews on that is people typically don't care about your business but they do care about the guys who showed up to their property and did the work, right? And so you say, hey, Mr. Jones, Billy Bob, Joe and whatever was at your property, they love doing the service. If you leave us a review, they get a $50 bonus. If you do that, you'll get way more from the one time jobs. Because now the customer cares about the people who show up for their property. They really could care less about ecobound.

That's what I found. I mean, when I was doing, I mean, I still know every customer on a first name basis nearly, you know.

But it's, it's true as, as we start getting more and more folks, you know, doing the service and I'm not there, they're getting to know my folks and I'm making sure they're gregarious, outgoing, knowledgeable and can take the, you know, the place of the, as the face of the business. And that's really, you know, people care more about that than, you know, the business itself. That's why, I mean, you know, that.

I forget Florida turf Pros, the other YouTuber, he does the like, he puts him in his family on the postcard.

And then it says, this is what I promise you.

Like, you know, it, it rings true. It makes a lot more sense if.

People feel like my crews are getting a tip, you know, from the business based on how good of a job they did.

And then you give that, you give that money to like whoever was the last. So like the one, the challenging part is like, let's say so we do every 90 days. It's going out as the survey and that way if they, you know, get it multiple times, it's not a big deal every 90 to 120 days. But the one time jobs ones are the ones where I mentioned the $50 bonus and those ones we just crush on, right. We're printing one to two a week just from like spring cleanups, mulch installs, bush trims just from that side, right.

And we do really good mulch work. That's where we were priced pretty good. We were like 200 bucks a yard.

Installed for some of our malts. Because we're taking so much time with.

It really like edging crazy to the.

Point where there's like two or three inches of sod removed. We have to get a lot of material off site to do it like that. But I think that's one area where, you know, customers really, we go above and beyond. We're not, we don't have a bark blower. We're not running in and out we're probably like, you know, twice as expensive as the, you know, the next company in terms of install. But we still have folks going for that from us.

Like if you even wanted to get 20 reviews in a week, this is what I would do. I would put a picture of your team.

Yep.

I would say we're, we're gonna, we're getting ready for the spring season. You know, this is our team. If you've done service with us in the past and our, our work was quality, let us know, leave us a review. And for every review that we get, we're gonna put $50 towards a party for our team or whatever. Like, and we're gonna go off site, do a meeting, do it all around. The team though, they don't care about your business, they care about the team. Especially because they, you know all their names, they know your employees names. They like Bob last year because he installed the mulch, like focus on that side and you'll get 15 to 20 pretty quickly.

Yeah.

And then just set up the automation to that, that it's every three months, every four months is collecting reviews organically all the time.

Right, Right. Wow. Yeah. Novel. Awesome. Yeah.

Because I just been, I mean I've had it on my high, high priority.

List to call every customer this year over the winter and say.

But it seems, you know, at this.

Point, you know, if I'm just touching on that and that's the main point of the call, it's like, I don't think that's a good idea.

Yeah. Especially because on a call they still have to go log in on their, their, their device. They make it where they click on something, it's immediately there.

Right.

So even text, do you have text inside service hub or not?

No, I did not opt for that feature.

Unfortunately, email though is sufficient. Like just make the, like behind the yes and the no is pictures.

Right.

And so they just say like, was your, you know, service satisfactory? That makes it easier.

Yeah. Right. Right.

Cool.

That's, yeah, that's definitely something I can focus on. That would be high impact, low cost for sure.

So two properties. You know, what would you do in my shoes and what do you think the best step is? Trying to, you know, I don't, I don't want to get ahead of myself.

And try and think about, you know, 100 locations before I have two. Right. Like in your most recent visit to the Carolinas. Like that's not something I'm gung ho on. The only reason, I mean I'm thinking.

About this this early Already is because.

We now have to plug this in here.

Right.

Is it going to be, you know, a distraction or a detraction or, you know, is the business at a place.

Where I think it can, can, can sustain that and start branching out into.

Two locations under one roof with me.

As you know, you know, still managing everything. As long as I can get some ops managers who are going to be coming back, you know, for next year and then be able to have people leaving from here with a crossworthy, trustworthy crew and not have to be in two places at one time.

Yeah. Like, I would try to get one location in, in profit mode with higher prices, well above 500,000 before I start breaking it apart.

Right.

Also from a leadership perspective, no one to be able to like start p meeting at the other spot, anything like that.

Right.

What was, what's nice is like as you hire this year, you can say, hey, this is on the horizon, next few years, what we want to do. And then potentially you get someone that's a little early and you can kind of foster them into that role. But I would not be pushing for that. Especially like the fact that right now you're only splitting the two locations because you can charge the truck here.

Right.

Like you're driving extra 15 or 20 minutes now simply to charge the truck. Yeah. And so, like, can we charge that truck there any way, shape or form? Like, can we put an inverter there or anything?

It's not going to work.

No. So you would have to bring that truck basically then every day.

Yeah.

Which is not possible.

Right.

So it's, it's starting a mo crew from here. And I mean, I have hired a foreman with, to be an ops manager in training, you know, throughout this season. Like, I'm ready to start handing off. They're actually out doing quotes today. They're doing property inspections, taking pictures of everything, taking a video and then, you.

Know, they're sending that to me over and then I'm actually coming up with the prices for the customers.

But I have people who are well.

Fit for those roles who now seem like they'd be committed for at least a year, two years, three years, you.

Know, so it's not, you know, out of the question. But from a revenue perspective, I'm trying to hand off certain administrative and sales and ops manager tasks without giving them.

A true, you know, salary and like, you know, gung ho. This is, this is it. Because at 500k, we can't quite afford it yet.

Right. But it just starts to feel janky for the Employees when like there's two different start sites.

Yeah.

The one that you currently have over there at the shop space is at different landscaping companies property.

Yeah.

Here's your house.

Right.

So like it starts to feel janky from an employee's perspective.

Right.

And that's where churn. Because they don't feel like it's a real business. Yeah. And there's no camaraderie, no culture. You don't start in the same place every day. See. See you every day.

Right.

And that's when you start to get low morale. People leave because they don't see you for three or four days. They think you're out partying like doing whatever, like. So that's where I get concerned at the size of business is splitting is extra from a cultural perspective.

Yeah.

Attention.

Right.

Can we move the whole thing here? I mean we could in theory with enough work.

Yeah.

In space and we have enough electric capacity and you know, parking capacity.

But that becomes a question of over there.

You'll see when we cruise over there.

There's some serious benefits to have in a spot like that. He's loading us up with mulch. He's hooking us up with salt any time of night. He, you know, any bulk material we need, he's got.

He's got the loaders for those.

We're not having to drive to get them.

Well, 800 bucks a month isn't so bad either.

Yeah.

So like what you could do is like you could probably grow into this. So even if you didn't like full scale going like, let's build this whole shop sale now. Great. We're going to slowly move into this.

Yeah.

But when we hit the 800, a million plus now it's an 8. 800 bucks a month is not going to kill. You have a secondary spot, might have a couple pieces of equipment there. It's closer to your service area. And don't treat a separate. Like separate locations, but more or less here's where we keep maybe the trailers or like the landscape stuff. It's closer to our service area. They have the loaders, etc. You can make sense of spending 800 bucks a month to have those type of savings. But I would not split the locations up Right. Until you have someone that has been here for a few years. They're like your general manager. They're not just like here and they're a good worker. But like they run team meetings, they do hiring, they do all aspects of the business. I wouldn't split the two because you're Going to have like the whole notion of part time employees and like very much like a transient employment base happens when it's like, oh yeah, we kind of start here sometimes, we start over here sometimes. We never really see the owner. There's no real leadership. There's no accountability. They get less efficient throughout the day. They forget stuff throughout the day. Like it just becomes a mess.

Yep.

So I would really try to keep it centralized and if that means starting here, fine. You know, three trucks, you could start here pretty quickly. Right. You just need to park the trucks, then have parking for the employees. You say you park the. You pull the truck out, you park where the truck was at.

Right, right.

And then have like $800 a month is not a horrible thing to keep. If you can have saving, if you make some of it financially from a just savings of like material parking up there, whatever it might be.

Yeah. Yep. Interesting.

Do you need that? If you had this all built out, would you even need that, you think?

I suppose we wouldn't. Honestly, like, but then there's the risk of this not being zoned and it's like.

Right.

That fall back.

It's like a long term. I want to go all in. And you know, we have no other.

Option because this is, you know, now our home and we have, you know, a mortgage out on it.

Right.

But you know, there's already set up.

And change is so hard. You know, moving from a, you know, all that from that space over to here. Like, there's a lot of equipment, 40 foot shipping container.

But that's closer to your service area, right?

It is.

Well, you could just have like a, a scaled down version of all the equipment on the trucks here. And that's like your equipment depot. It's like, hey, if you guys are out throughout the day or you need more batteries or you need to go pick up one of the, you know, battery luggage things that's all over there. But then they start here. You have meetings, you're like, this is a good environment, I feel like for the team.

Yeah.

Versus being in someone else's yard. It's a weird thing for an employee. Like, yeah, I show up here, but yeah, I know it says other landscape all around me. It's a massive company. Like, it's also very appealing for them to just like fail.

Right, Right.

So, like, personally, I think this would be a more controlled environment. You have really nice space for them. It, you know, you can build this out exactly the way you want it, organize the shop space. You don't have a competitor around you, it's just a weird experience for an employee. They feel very much like second rate.

Yeah. Yeah, that's an interesting point for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I hadn't thought about that so much. Right.

So trying to move into this spot.

As the main HQ and keeping that.

As like a depot, you think depot slash, insurance policy. Like if it was just the depot, I'd say let's get rid of it for 800amonth. Yeah. But the fact is, like, if you got the card pulled out from under here, you don't want to be like going back and begging to go back. And he's like, sorry, I already like put stuff in that.

Yeah, exactly.

So. So it'd really be an insurance policy.

Right, right.

Which you can't afford that insurance policy at 400,000 in revenue, but you can if you can grow.

Right?

Yeah.

The way I'm treating this on the.

From an accounting perspective on this property is the mortgage is 2600. We're paying three grand total. Between my wife and I, the business pays 1,000, I pay 1,000 and she pays the other thousand.

And so I'm treating that as rent.

On the, on the balance sheet though, because technically it's not a commercial property. It's never going to have any worth on the balance sheet itself. So it's just I'm renting to myself.

Yeah.

For a thousand bucks a month. So all in, we're like 1800.

You actually write yourself a check from the business too?

Yes, yeah, I just do the direct deposit automated kind of a thing.

Yeah, that's good. As long. As long as you can actually put it as an expense on the P and L. And then like on your side you'll claim as income.

Right.

But it'll wash itself out. So. Okay. Okay, good.

So yeah, we talked a little bit about winter and winter struggles. And I'm curious now that you have so many, you know, Augusta locations in winter markets, winter layoffs have been a struggle.

Right.

Like even for folks who have worked.

For me for the year, sometimes the, the red tape of like they don't receive payments for two months and then they only back date it a month or folks haven't received a single payment all year. So like I need an HR department to be able to call like department Department of Unemployment Assistance and be able to get them on.

So how you're talking about your employees when they go on, when they get.

Laid off for four months, you know, our, our seasons in the past have been closer to like off season is.

Three months, December 15th through March 15th, I say we can get boots on the ground now. This month, it was more like December through April 1st is what I say.

So that's four months of, you know, it's a hard sell, even. You know, I thought about. I've seen you mention, like, the cash.

Bonus for a return. I've talked to other folks about them paying their employees a flat, like $500 a week just to be able to show up if they have, you know.

Really good snow accounts.

Those are folks more with, like, loaders and things where, like, if they don't have people show, they're really, you know, up an alley.

But how have you dealt with that? I mean, it's the turnover. I don't want to put anyone else in a financially precarious position to say, look, you need to show up to work because you work for me, but I only have work for you maybe once a month. And then don't go look for another job or at least tell them that.

You'Re going to actually have to miss a bunch of days every time it snows, right? And. And then that ends up being, you know, them having such a limited income throughout the entire, you know, season.

And it's hard to find folks even that have been in the industry for.

A while that are like, okay with just going on unemployment, milking it, and pretending to look for a job, Right. They make it so you actually have to be applying, following up, what was the rejection reason, etc. Etc. You can't really just, you know, it's so hard, you know.

Yeah. There's two things you can do. One is if you're not paying people, like, just trying to, like, pay them to do nothing, Right. You can afford to pay more during the snow, right. And just make it so much per hour. Like, they are willing to miss a day of work. They're willing to work on the weekends, willing to work at night. Yep. Because so high, right? Versus, like, I'm gonna try to keep everyone kind of busy, pay them a little bit of money just to, like, that's. That's probably what I would do. That being said, like, most of your services for some are simple, right? Like snow plow. Like, you don't do a ton of plowing, right?

We only have one plow truck and then one sidewalk snow vehicle at the.

Moment for our big condos, like, big wide sidewalk account.

And most do you at night. Like a lot of times.

A lot of the time it is.

So they. If you can pay them high enough, they can go get another job. But Then still be on call for you.

Right.

You have to make it very high. But I'd rather pay them a lot per hour than being on the sum flat rate per week thing to keep them around. And all of a sudden if I just put that towards the hourly rate, I could double my hourly rate.

Yeah.

Because you pay people $45 an hour to show up to snowplow, they'd probably do it in the middle of the night.

Right.

I mean they're doing it right now for 25 or 30.

Right.

And that's what you know, our, our.

Landlord also pays his guys and he has a massive operation and it seems like all of his trucks are out every snowstorm.

So.

But I have heard of folks paying.

Closer to 30, 40 for folks they really want to show up every single time. And that, that, that seems like.

And it puts. To take the pressure off of you have to pay them all the time.

Right.

Because I enjoy the rest. But after the fall, after the fall season, man, I mean like it, it's a bane of my existence. Right. From a financial standpoint to not have.

Consistent income over the winter.

But also the fact that I get.

All this time to myself to work on the business and then do stuff that I've been putting off in my personal life.

Yeah.

For these three months is definitely huge. To help me go, you know, 110% into spring every year.

Have you considered doing winter services for your existing recurring mowing customers?

I've thought about it, but I don't know what there is to do. I mean it's cold here and it, it can be snowy. So beyond winter pruning, what is there?

Right?

I've, there's those four different ways that.

You talked about depending on what market and how much snow they get.

We could talk about that, but I.

Have yet to figure out any.

You know, it's true pre service, but.

That'S a whole other bag of, you know.

So for, for mowing, how many mowing customers do you have?

Like a hundred right now.

Okay. And then how many of those take you up on the flat rate snow?

I think like at least 90 did this.

Oh wow.

Yeah, that's really.

I required it and some of them.

Basically said goodbye and found another service last year. Cool.

Yeah. Okay, so that, then that was $1200.

Per customer for 800 to 1200 depending.

On the size of the driveway.

Yeah, that's really good.

Yeah.

The is probably your best off season ever then.

It is absolutely by a long shot.

So what I would consider doing is you Know that let's say $800 to $1,200 per customer is what they're going to pay. And 90% of people do that. That's awesome.

Y.

Can we get that to 15 to $1,800 if we say, hey, if it doesn't snow? Because the. The objection they're going to have is, hey, the past three has hardly snowed.

Right.

Give them the downside protection of that happening. That if it doesn't snow, we still show up every two weeks and we're going to trim. We're going to blow things off if branches have fallen down because of a windstorm. We're going to check your gutters. We're going to make sure we flap out the mats because they got moved around those leaves up in the. In the alley of the gutters. Like add the whole list of service that you can do that if it doesn't snow.

Right.

It'll also reduce the people who will cancel because they're like, I don't want snow. It doesn't snow sometimes. Yeah, right. So I think you could increase the ticket per off season per customer and increase the retention of them throughout the off season if you have a downside protection, which is if it doesn't snow, you still get services. And then what I would say is if. If it doesn't snow, realize that all your competition is charging that flat rate and their customers are unhappy because they're not showing up.

Right.

So what you do is you market against that. You say, hey, are you tired of paying for something for snow and it not snowing?

Right.

We come even if it doesn't snow. But now you can charge a more premium price.

Right.

Gutters is something I've considered. I mean, I'm trying to think of what you just mentioned, like stick in winter damage pruning and shrubs.

That's a go.

Right? Gutters, gutters, leaf cleanup. We edge the walkways and blow things off. We look for any sticks that are fallen. We check the gutters and the downspouts. We'll do a visual inspection and we'll make a.

So you're bringing ladders?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But what we do is we only look. So we will knock it on the second floor. Okay. So it's like. It's like, hey, it's only the first floor. Because anything down washes from that is going to end up in their bottom ones anyways. And so we will also put as the last item in our property inspection is a property inspection with a video, and we'll Send it to the customer. The reason, especially in this market, is you got a bunch of snowbirds.

Yeah.

And so they will, they are, they're willing to pay more. Just know that every two weeks you're going to be there, you're going to make a video and send it to them. And so we have some of our services where we don't. They actually don't have any grass or, or bushes, but they just want us to show up, blow everything off, make it look like they're home, and then send us a video. Send them a video because they're out in Florida.

Right.

For the off season. So if you can increase like right now, let's just say the average of $1,000 and 90%, that'd be like $90,000, I would assume approximately is what you probably in the off season. Right. Maybe a little bit less. Because you said 65.

Yeah.

Great. So. So if we get 65 to 120 now, all of a sudden you can afford to keep a couple employees full time during the off season because you.

Have training them on service, autopilot, you.

Know, and you have enough recurring services because the problem right now is you need them for snow, but that's intermittent.

Right.

We want to increase the winter services. So, you know, every week, okay. We have at least 40 budget hours on the schedule just with the 80, 90, 100 recurring visits we have for winter services.

Right. Mm, interesting.

So what you could do though is even going to the spring as you sell more mowing customers. You put that on the estimate. So in our estimate notes, someone asked for mowing. Great. We're giving them a price in that note for the. I said there's a 12 month service. We continue throughout the off season with winter services. I leave it at that. They accept that estimate for mowing. And then come fall, as it's going into winter, before I get ahead of it, before they start canceling mowing and say, hey, mowing's ending. Let me make it a number. November 1st. After November 1st, we start winter services. This is what we would typically call snow services, but we make sure we come to your property regardless of it, snows or not.

Right.

And now that conversion will increase because now they're not worried about there not being snow.

Right, Right.

You also then can increase the price because you're showing up twice as often throughout the off season.

How often do you do visit?

Every two weeks.

Every two weeks?

Yeah.

Yeah. So I want recurring revenue.

How much do you, what do you need for a minimum visit?

Right. I mean we charge what we would for mowing. Yeah.

Okay.

So I, my goal is to keep the same, same price, we stay there the same amount of time.

Got it.

So I'm not going to come there and do a full out property cleanup for 50 bucks.

Right.

But I'm going to come, I'm going to spend the same amount of budget hours as I would for mowing. So I tell the customer, hey, look, we come to your property. Here's the list of services we do. We start at the top and we work our way down and we get through as much as we can in the same amount of time we would usually have spent on mowing your grass.

Right.

Because they're used to you showing up for 20, 30 minutes.

Yeah.

So you show up, you start at the top of the checklist and you work your way down and then you can just even have it where on the dispatcher note, they just put what number on the checklist they got to. So we have like our set, nine or ten things that they're supposed to do. In winter services, you get like three or four and then the next service they might get a little further. And by the end of winter, usually we've gotten through the whole list a few times.

Right.

Where we're getting to the bottom of the list.

And then you have one less person.

That needs a thorough spring cleanup and then can take 100.

The whole goal is to pull all that demand forward, get it done during my offse season so that when all the spring cleanups come pouring in, I actually have availability because my team, my customers got taken care of.

Right.

And you pitch the customers like, hey, if you have a fall cleanup and a spring cleanup, it's going to cost you $2,000.

Yeah.

Why not sign up for winter services and Snow services for 1500 and we come every two weeks. And your property looks good the entire winter versus just twice a year.

Right.

I'm nervous about growing snow to the extent of like we had 30 overall customers this year. Five, four or five condo accounts, one.

True commercial cannabis dispensary, and then a bunch of driveways. But I mean, there was times when I was out, you know, 16 hours again, and I have hired 15, 20 people for what I think should, you know, six to eight people should be able to get done.

So, you know, but for my current.

Customers, I can see that working, you.

Know, and then, and now with their winter services, you fill in all the gaps around what otherwise would be snow events so you can keep a more consistent crew on board.

Right.

So it's not like, oh, there's snow. All right, who's available? It's more a matter of like, I have my three, four, five guys working full time and now, now there's snow on the ground. Guess what we're not doing. We're not pruning, we're not blowing things off. It's time for snow. So you just merge right into it.

Right, right.

And what we do is like in our snow snow markets, especially if it only snows like four to five, six times a year, it's perfect because, okay, it's the middle of January. We've kind of got the whole property looking good. Now it snows great. We just send our crew because they can't do anything else. They're coming in full time. They're coming to work like normal. I just send them out for snow.

Y.

Right. And they're going to go to all the winter service visits like they normally would. Just do all the, all the driveways and I pull that next bi weekly visit forward. So if it's like, well, it's supposed to be next week, great. Well, there's snow on the ground. I can't have anything. The guys do anything else. They're just going to go plow everyone's driveway and pull that, that, that one visit forward.

Yeah, I mean, there was a good bit of snow on the ground, like enough covering all the sticks and leaves.

And everything for, you know, this season, which is. Would prevent us from doing quite a bit of, you know, what you mentioned.

But yeah, gutters are something, you know, condos have requested that usually have either.

Farmed out or just have the property maintenance company tell we don't clean gutters. That seems like a dead end.

Right. But what you could do is do inspections.

Right.

Because like, is it not worth it usually to have the insurance for getting the scaffolding, the extra. Because that seems like a pretty low barrier to entry. Be able to clean gutters.

But it happens at a time when we don't want to be doing it. Right around fall is when most people.

So what we do for winter services is we inspect your gutters and your downspouts.

It's not worth it to clean them.

We don't clean them. However, what we will do is we will offer an estimate. So it's like, hey, we, we're on the winch services. It's saying inspect gutters and check downspouts for.

To ensure flow.

And so we're going to get on a ladder, we're going to look up there like, oh, it's great, fantastic. And then check it off. If it's, if it's all clogged up and you know, whatever, then we're going to offer a bid to do it. But that's going to require not just like 15 minute service where we're checking.

Right.

That's winter services. This would be a separate service which is to clean out the gutters. Whether you sub that out, give it to someone else or you just get like the value of the winter services is the peace of mind and the insurance that they know that their property is okay. They don't have a flood, they don't have a $30,000 leak. Now that caused a whole bunch of damage on the side of the house.

Right.

That's what they're protecting against.

So some of your locations do clean.

Gutters, other ones farm it out.

Oh yeah. I would say it's not usually that difficult. It also depends like this sort of a gutter, for example, where it's 12ft above the ground, that's difficult to clean out. If the gutter is like say 8ft now you just need a 6 foot ladder. Again, I can just clean out really easily. So you could just do it based upon like, is this feasible?

Right.

And so I just tell my crew like, hey, on checklist item number seven of which services I want you to get up there and if it's clogged, I want to take a picture, I want you to attach to the visit and then you're going to go through the dispatcher notes, you're going to see that like, can we actually do this service?

Right.

And then if so, I'm going to send an estimate. If not, you're going to send the report like it's stated in winter services and tell the customer, here's the three services we recommend doing based upon the fact that you're above 12ft. Like I'll just look at your insurance. So for us we can't get our guys above 12ft.

Right.

So I can't go up on the roof.

Right.

But if it's a six foot ladder, I can do that, no problem.

Got it.

So I'd look at your insurance and see what you're covered for and then just have the delineation on winter services, like which are the ones I actually offer an estimate to, which are the ones I just farm out or give away.

Got it, got it.

Yeah, that's definitely an interesting, interesting take.

I don't think anyone's doing that. The one hedge against no snow years is your price goes down for the following year.

So we don't want that. Right. And then what happens is then the next year you had a bunch of snow, and now you're getting way low on rates.

Right.

So what you just, you lock it in by saying, regardless of it snows or not, we're coming to your property every two weeks. And if there's snow on the ground.

How do I hedge against that if it snows a bunch?

Plus, we're already doing two visits every two weeks.

Because if there's snow on the ground, you can't do that. So what, you pull the. For the visits forward. So for example, it snows now. Last week you blew off the property. Everything looking good.

Keep track of how long that took. And then that counts against however many.

Services I would have gone.

Yeah, exactly. We just pull forward the next winter service. And so also when it usually once. It snows once or twice, there's not a lot to do on the property.

Right.

So that's why, like usually going into winter, after 2, 3, 4 winter services, we've cut the property up.

Right.

Gutters are looking good. Everything's been blown off. A couple of edges are dialed in. Bushes are trimmed off of the house. Everything's deadheaded. Everything looks great. Snow comes perfect. That's what we need to pull the rest of the winter services forward and actually get their property looking good.

Right, Right. Okay.

And then you. We actually just. We do a price comparison. Like, look, the cost of a fall cleanup because we have to do estimate fees, dump fees, we have to come look at the property. And spring cleanup is usually around 1500 to $2000.

Yeah.

Now you can do all the winter services, including if it's snowing or not. We come your property for fifteen hundred dollars. But now your property looks good all year round, Right?

Yeah.

Right.

That's a good sell for sure. Gotcha. I'm trying to think which ones are these?

Let's run down the list. We have an hour until my employees show up and start helping me unbox.

Okay, cool.

So virtual assistant versus, you know, for admin versus sales and training in house. I want to get it to a point where I can help my team grow.

That's been, you know, whether or not they're going to step into a leadership.

Role getting some of this stuff that.

Slaps me across the face every spring, like offloaded onto them so they feel like they're not just part of the work production and actually take some sense of ownership.

You know, I don't know much about.

Virtual assistants and if they, they work or not at all, versus trying to have somebody trained up on that aspect.

But we don't have an outbuilding, we.

Don'T have an office space.

This for one employee I could see working.

What are your thoughts on that? Like getting someone trained up. I want to get a second laptop with the CRM set up same way we use Macs. We're going to have the cloud storage of all the customers properties and notes, videos for everybody. And then, you know, being able to.

Train them, you know, virtually via zoom with screen shares.

I know you've said that comes with its challenges when you're not in the same room. Can't bounce ideas off each other, talk to each other, see each other, what you're doing in real time, what's the best move there?

Like right now, if you look at your profit margin and what you're taking out of the business, if we hired someone like full time here, for example, that would wipe all of that out.

Right.

So we can't afford that. Right. I also am wary about you focusing on training someone else besides your team right now.

Right.

And growing that side, like the operations side.

Yeah.

I would be looking at someone that can work two to four hours a day, that can handle like a whole litany of little tasks for you. Yeah. Invoicing, dispatching, scheduling, all the little stuff that can kind of done throughout any of the day. But you're kind of managing yourself texting, phone calls, voicemail, etc.

Right.

They can just knock out and I pay them significantly more, but for two to four hours a day.

Yeah.

And you probably only need them for five months a year.

Right, Right.

Because in the off season, like you just don't need them that much. Yeah. And so I'd be willing to pay someone either by the minute or a much higher rate per. Per hour. There's people who are already know your CRM.

They're.

They're very well versed in it. You're going to pay more than this.

This is the virtual assistant.

Yes.

Okay.

Yeah. I 100% go virtual. You do not want to have to have an office virtual person here. You will end up getting sucked in your time here. Right. They will burn most of their day. As an office person is, is just in between time. Like a really efficient office worker is working 50 of their time actually doing the work.

Right.

Because there's so much in between stuff happening and then your current size, there's just not enough to do. Like there might be days where there's three calls. Right. And four emails.

Yeah.

And now you're paying someone 200 for the day, like in wages. I'd rather pay someone way more. But they only work two to four hours. They knock out, here's the list of stuff you do, here's the stuff that I'm going to do. And then you're not like, tied to them as an employee perspective where they have questions and they're back and forth. You end up just spending more time doing their job than just doing yourself.

So you've had luck with companies that.

I mean, how does it not get fragmented when someone else from some other.

Market that isn't part of your business picks up the phone and it tries to request an estimate and then says.

When can you come?

And they don't know your schedule like.

You already have to have.

So they should be able to look inside your serum and see your schedule.

Yeah.

Right. And you, when you put an estimate on your schedule, you're going to put it on at a certain time.

Right.

And then they're going to know, okay, he can do four estimates a day or these are the days he's available. It's like this is all like a virtual assistant knows how to like, figure this part out, right? Yes. Is it difficult to manage a virtual person? Yes. But it's also difficult to have a person in house that you're paying full time. You know, they're not doing anything job. They, you're not doing estimates and you're.

Like, oh, what about like my current, you know, foreman or ops manager, taking.

On some of that, you know, to be trained up to become like, step into a general manager role and paying.

Them as a really good wage, but.

Only four hours a week to do this admin training. That's kind of what I promised some of one of them who I just brought on as, you know, foreman, ops manager in training, you know, to do some of this admin stuff.

The alternative is the general manager or ops person could go out in the field and make 80 to $100 an hour.

Right.

So why am I going to have them do a 20 to $30 an hour task, which is admin?

Right.

And so there's no point in hiring. If someone has the skill set to make $100 an hour, why am I making them do a $30 an hour task?

Right.

And so I would, I would highly recommend not moving. Like, I did that at the beginning.

Yeah.

I'll teach them like four hours a day doing admin stuff. It's like that's a 20, $30. They can make 100. They have the skills to make 100. And furthermore, as a general manager, they should have leveraged labor, which means they can manage a crew of five or six or seven people. Now their time is not worth 100, it's worth 150.

Right.

And so having them answer the phone is like crazy. You want to get that outsourced?

Yeah.

And I'm willing to pay significantly more for coming that knows the CRM is inside of there. I mean, they're paying them by the minute or like a couple hours a day to knock out a series of tasks so I can stay focused on. Because the thing that you'll need the admin person for is you don't want to be reactive.

Yeah.

And you're actually really good. Like even today, like, I know you're not constantly getting text messages and phone calls in emails, you're not constantly being diverted. That's going to. You're going to feel that way more and more in spring.

Within two weeks it'll be different.

Yeah. So what you want to do is you want to create. Hey, here's a list of 20 things that I do that someone can do on their own time. Okay. Look at the dispatch notes from the day before. Close out the jobs and invoice them. Charge the cards. You. If they don't have the chart, if the card doesn't go through, send this email the customer. Okay. Go through the voicemail. If there are estimates that need to be set up, set them up on these times. Like you just start to hear those 20 things that I know I can ship off to someone and then they're doing it on a per minute or a very concise period of time where they're actually going to go through tasks.

Right. Right. Wow. Okay. So the virtual is. Does seem really.

Be very careful about putting in what someone is capable of. An ops position into admin.

Yeah.

So you think about like from, you know, you have sales, operations and admin for the business.

Right.

That is the. The order in which the value of their time is someone who can sell millions of dollars worth of landscaping jobs, higher value than someone who can just install the work. That's operations. The operations person. Like they're a whole lot more valuable than someone who can like answer the phone, answer texts.

Yeah.

It's not say anything about bad about those people. They can move up in the organization, they can gain skills. Right. But the value of their time is significantly more leverage the higher you up that. So admin, operations, sales. So I'm never going to take an operations Person that can lead a crew of five, 10 people and all we make an 80 to $100 an hour and put them into a role where I can have someone texting someone.

Right. And I thought, I mean, because so.

Oftentimes people are burnt out after six.

Or seven years in ops, they want a chance to move into admin or sales, but it ends up being too much to juggle for.

And so you say, hey, look, I can do that, but realize that that's a $25 an hour task. I want you to be more money than that.

Yeah.

In order to do that, I need you to manage a team.

Right.

And that's a different, like a totally different skill set.

Yeah.

So if you want to make more money, then you do this route. If you want to make less money and get out of the off, get, get out of the field, I can put you in an admin role. Sure. But you're gonna make less money.

Right, Right. So interesting.

It is a less leveraged skill. Yep.

Right.

And that way the virtual assistants, as.

You grow with them, they learn better and better and they have more and more people dedicated to your account.

Yeah. And if you go get to 800,000amillion, you will want then be able to afford a full time person here and keep them busy all day long.

Yeah.

But until that point, I got to be very careful. At 4 or 5, 600,000, you get a full time person because now you get a full time person here, Internet, computer, your time training them. Like everyone underestimates how much it costs to train the person. It'll take you three months to get this person like understanding how you run this business.

Right.

And then you, that entire time is going to be your during your spring rush.

Right.

By the time you really have them trained up, you won't need them because it's after the spring rush.

Right.

Right. So that's why I'm willing to pay a premium. And it's going to be a painful like ask to someone charging you by the minute or per hour very, very high. Like I get I, I for my gym, I pay someone $6aminute to answer the phone when we miss the phones. Because like I know that I'm only going to need them a few times a day.

Yeah.

I'd rather do that than hire someone at even 20 bucks an hour in the office.

Which virtual assistant company, I mean knows.

Do I have to look around and see who has.

Everyone's going to tell me they have.

Experience with service autopilot. They say that they, they have they know all of our systems already. Yeah.

So what's nice, phone calls from folks.

In India that claim that they do. You know, I'm not sure what route to go.

Yeah. So I would go, I would actually go more premium at the beginning because it's going to be less of your time training them.

Right.

Because the person in India, first off, you're going to explain to every single customer.

Yep.

You're going to have to teach them on like what grass is, literally. Yeah. You're going to treat them about winter services, snow, etc. Well, I would go with more premium at the beginning. As you get more, as the business gets bigger and you have the bandwidth, you'll train. You could do it overseas and go more full time or just bring them in house.

Right.

And everyone thinks going overseas is the immediately cheaper option. But the amount of training that goes in that is so much more.

Right.

Tracking, etc. I actually think what usually will end up happening is you, you scale your admin once you via overseas, once you have someone in house that can keep them accountable all the time. Right. Like tracking them, you track their phone, they track their device, everything. Because otherwise people can go off, off the rails very quickly.

Right.

So if you went say Jill's office or Ruby or call boss, they all do service, autopilot, they would know what you're wanting. You're going to pay a very high premium. We're talking like between two to four dollars a minute. Very high. But it's like, hey, there's a task I'm going to have. If you even pay them $1,000 or $2,000 a month, it's cheaper than having a full time person here. That more importantly sucks your time.

Right.

Everyone takes into account that what they're paying like per minute to say Jill's office versus hiring someone. What they're not accounting for is the fact that they're trained and you have nothing to do with them. And so yes, they're going to be 80, 90% of your efficiency. But you're like, these are the tasks I want you guys to do. Here's the task I do. The people who hate those services are typically the ones that have a very blurry schedule. They don't know what they're assigning, like, what am I doing? What are you doing? Just be very, very clear. These are the tasks you're doing? These are the tasks I'm doing.

Right.

And then I would be really trying to get like everything that is reactive to them.

Right.

Just everything, like checking the dispatch work from the day before they can go through automations and approve the ones that need to go out. A collection, from a collections perspective, answering the phones, sending out text messages, all that stuff should be reactive on them. And it's going to cost you a thousand, $2,000 a month.

Yep. Right?

Everyone's like, oh, it should be like 500. Like no, if you hired someone here, you'd be paying four to five grand a month plus taxes, plus you'd keep them during the off season, then you'd feel bad when you can't get them. And then if you can't get them to come back, you're going to train someone else for three months. Don't deal with that. We need to grow the business.

Yeah.

Admin does not grow a business. It is defense. You just need to get taken care of so you can grow the business to the point when you get 800,000 revenue, you will be able to afford a person full time. Go ahead.

I got some beans on the stove.

Let's go.

Underestimated how long they would take. It's like a 24 hour ordeal.

24 hour beans. Let's go.

Green peas, I guess.

Not gonna lie, the truck looks nice.

As much as it hurts my soul to say it. Is that a Breville? Yeah, that's right. I'm here learning my coffee lingo.

Guys all doing okay?

Oh yeah, we're crashing.

Thanks. So I gotta take this, right?

Hey, you're good.

Good morning. Eco Valley Lawn care, this is Cyrus.

Hello.

You get a lot of those spam calls? Yeah. Not too sure.

Right. See that's, that's the thing that goes to someone else. Right answer. And they pay, charge it for five seconds. So cool.

Okay.

I'm glad I asked that one. Yeah. Because I was really weary about that. Of like, man, I really need positions for my folks to be able to move into to get away out of.

The field, yada yada. And it seems like you would still.

Have to train virtual assistants and I guess it just requires you getting your.

Own schedule and every task list for.

The entire day and week.

Very detailed. Yeah, very detailed. So I would, I would audit your current week. Like you have a couple more weeks till spring rush. Yeah, I would audit this week.

Yeah.

Like what are the tasks I do from an admin perspective? There'll be 20 or 30 of them. Everything from checking for dispatcher notes, checking for pictures, invoicing scheduling estimates. Like whole nine yards. Yeah, just go through every single one of those. Which are the ones that they're going to do, which ones I'm going to do. Right. And then you just as you go into off season, you have more time, you can take more off their plate.

Right.

Okay. This month I'm going to take these three things back because I want to save a little more money.

Interesting.

Okay, so that'd be money well spent standardizing pricing and pre selling spring cleanups. Right. I would love to not have to get on site to do 100 property inspections.

But you know, I think in our.

Industry, when pruning is included, which edges really need re edging, it's a. It's a necessary evil.

Right. I have to do those.

Customers want to see pictures with the little text box.

We're going to edge this bed, not this bed. We're going to prune this shrub in such and such a way.

That's worth my time.

Right.

15 minutes of visit. Do a video walk around right out of the truck, explain everything we're going to do. And then I get a better sense.

Of what can we actually charge them for this service.

We can't say this is going to be 500 bucks to see or Ms. Jones.

But then it ends up being $1,000 worth of work and we're screwed.

Right? Well, ideally I run winter services on them all winter.

Right.

And I don't need to do property inspections because I've been to their property every two weeks doing a property. And so my goal is I go into winter and I'm taking on new customers not servicing my existing.

I can't offer winter services to everyone.

We do mowing or spring and fall cleanup for it would be like when the snow came, we would be. We would never be able to survive. I don't think we have enough equipment. It would require like 40 staff, plus.

Two new trucks, plus another sidewalk snow.

Vehicle to really, you know, be able to clear snow for that many people.

How many people on snow do you have now?

30, including five Kanos.

So about 25 residentials. And that was a comfortable number. I wasn't even here for all the storms.

But we didn't get a massive storm either.

Like if it snows two feet, you.

Know, if we could triple our off season revenue would be a four or two more trucks.

Maybe.

That's what I'm thinking. Like if we can go from 30 to 90.

Yep.

And now all of a sudden our off season revenue goes from 7 to 10 grand a month to 30 or 40,000amonth.

Right.

And we were able to keep four or five guys on full time. So it's not much as much of A scratch scramble.

Right.

I'm willing to get a couple extra trucks.

Yeah, right, right.

People do that.

I mean, it's a fast way to grow for, for especially the guys already in, you know, that have like dump trucks. You can throw big salters on them and get commercial accounts and have the V plows.

Well, even if you don't do the, the plowing thing, you just stick with. Okay. For example, if people are doing winch services and I can triple my revenue. Which services? Don't go after plowing? Just go after, like how do I do their walkways? I do small driveways. So I don't need a massive plow. I don't need a massive truck. I'm just doing the winter services.

Right.

And this is what you could do too, Cyrus is like, as you go into next fall, you'd sell winter services. You'd have a really good understanding. Okay, did 90% of people stick with me because that's what your goal would be. The same way you did. Like 90% of people say, hey, the snow is. Has to be, you know, I thought you said 90% of your customers chose snow.

No, we have a very limited number of customers that we do snow work for. So out of the hundred, only 20 residentials. Because I've done that by design. Because it is, I mean you, you do not want to bite off more than you can chew in snow, right?

Because it's such a.

It comes all at once. You have 12 hours to get it done.

If you don't have the crew and.

The equipment to do it, you're screwed. And the equipment's expensive. Sidewalk snow vehicles, we have like the.

Intro level model, it's ten grand. Next one, the Moss, you know, Toro Snow Raiders, like 26 if you want. A beast of a machine. So it's like I do not want.

To, but the death of winters the past three years, why would I want.

To spend a ton of money on that?

Right?

It's like I don't know if winter's going to be around much longer here. It was my thought, right?

Yeah. That's why I think going after winter services is the move. Right. And so India, even going into the spring, if you change your estimate description for mowing, they hey, this is a year round service. We do winter services at that line. And then you'll get one question every like 50s, no one bats an eye at it. But then you come a month before the fall end of the mowing season, you say, hey, this is what winter services are. This is what it includes. And you go for it.

Right.

And now if 80, 90% of people accept that, now you can, with confidence, go out and get other equipment because now, you know you're going to triple your revenue.

Right, right. Interesting.

Because the goal is that you also make your spring so much more efficient, you're able to actually grow and expand in versus right now. You're doing 20, 30, 40 spring cleanups for existing customers.

Three weeks that everyone wants it done before mowing.

You get it all done prior.

Yeah.

And now when we go into spring, we're actually able to take on the new customers and not book ourselves out two months.

Right. Which is impossible for spring cleanups. Most people just aren't having that. There's bigger companies that will come in two weeks.

Yeah.

That's interesting. Yeah. Right.

Continuing my own accounting or hiring out for that. I've done my own books up till now. It's been, you know, quite a learning process and it's been good. But the discrepancy in, you know, what my net profit is on this versus.

What it shows with my person who handles my taxes based on, you know.

The tax strategy we've set. We have different depreciation schedules.

I heard when you want to build enterprise value, never do, you know, get big enough to sell. People aren't going to want to see someone who handles their own books.

It doesn't take a ton of time, but I don't see how they're going.

To be any more accurate.

When I'm doing all the purchasing, I.

Can add everything into, you know, the, you know, the expenses in right at the time of invoice, save that to the end to my, like, desktop or whatever, and then do pay, you know, I do P L every two weeks to a month, depending on how much revenue we're bringing in throughout the year. And that goes on the, you know, the income.

But I'm still seeing a discrepancy of.

Around $10,000 up or down in reconciliation.

In terms of the bank has 10,000.

More, 10,000 less, even though I think I'm doing everything by the book. So I don't know, you know, what to do, you know, from that perspective to keep it more accurate or buy the book.

Yeah. Like the account is going to reconcile things out better. So, for example, that's probably caused from payments. Right. In terms of like, the difference in what's in the bank account versus what's on the P and L. Right. But like, they'll reconcile that out. Only interest expense should be on the P and L. So, like, that should affect the balance sheet. I'm assuming the balance sheet. You don't touch as much.

Right. I don't look at those.

That's where, that's where the discrepancy is coming from. But again, it's a matter of like, I think your books are actually really good. If you're doing yourself, you're actually doing really, really good. So it's a matter of like, are you okay with someone else doing it at 90% of what you're doing now? But more importantly, you get your time back.

Right.

Because like if it's taking you an hour a week, we have a big problem. Because that hour a week times four is four hours a week of you going out and selling jobs and training people and hiring and selling winter services. That's a higher leverage task than categorizing expense. Right. And so I'm willing to take a hit on something like accuracy or being perfect because I want someone else to do it. So I can do a higher leverage task than bookkeeping.

And I don't even know their pricing, but I bet it's good.

My accountant, you know, they're doing right.

Now just the state and federal taxes.

For me and then the payroll at the end of every month and then my end of year taxes and it's 2100 for the year. They have a little shop in the basement and Hadley, they've been there 70 years. Dude's a like multi net like conglomerate, owns 500 properties, still works from like 7am to 7pm and he's 70 years old.

So it's like, yeah, 1200 is a steal. You pay that just for your tax return.

Right.

So if you're able to get more out of them and you pay fifteen hundred dollars and they take over all your bookkeeping, I'd do it.

Yeah. I think this might be the year to try that.

Yeah. It just simply comes down to every moment you spend on any task has a certain amount.

You have to think about the leverage.

Yes. And you getting out and managing Your crew of 5, 10, 15 people is higher leverage than bookkeeping. Like the current constraint of the business is not the fact that we don't know our numbers. You actually have a really good grasp of them. It's like focus on the thing that the current constraint, which to my opinion is getting so many leads that you need to raise prices.

Right.

So focusing all those door hangers as.

Well as the every door, direct mail, doubling down, doing a lot of the routes that we've already done three years ago, but now they know Our service, they've seen our trucks, we have better branding. Just sending them out to the same customers again already in the neighborhoods, I.

Would go back even further. So like whenever you drive attention to your, to your business.

Yep.

There's a certain conversion. So for example, if you have door hangers or you run Facebook ads, you're on Google Ads or whatever.

I haven't done a good job of keeping track. How do you keep track of that?

Well, before I even keep track of it, I want to make sure that when they come to my website, I, I actually convert them into customers. And so that's where I actually think the biggest, highest leverage point of is right now. Like getting discovered on Google, great. Getting Facebook ads, getting door, great. But once they get to my site, if 1 out of 50 convert, great. But if I can make that 1 out of 10, i5x the number of customers I get. So like that's why I look at your website and say, okay, we should have an estimate request form on the.

Top of the front page. Yeah.

Homepage. There's a lot of aspects of just tightening that site up. Right.

That was the original WIX site and.

I definitely not done a good job of updating with new video, you know, pictures and things.

But you said, I mean, what else could we do for the site besides.

A full redesign, you know, to get it better?

Yeah. Like from a social media perspective, tying into the website is important too. Even from a talent attraction perspective, if I'm an employee and I can't find you on Facebook, I can't find an Instagram, I can't see pictures of your jobs, like that truck would get employees here.

Right, Right.

It's like I want to share that everywhere.

Right.

Then tying that to your website improves the SEO of that as well.

Right.

And so the site, like the fact that you, you can everything in the business, which is phenomenal. What takes you from 400,000, which is what a highly skilled juggler can do.

Right.

Doing everything. What takes you from 400,000 to a million is the person that starts learning the skill of delegation.

Right.

The person that can learn how to delegate bookkeeping, the person who can learn how to delegate answering the phones and dispatching. And the admin side, the person that can learn how to get someone else to do the website. And that does take money. But it's also thing that allows you to focus on the higher leverage stuff, which is sales and training your team. Anything outside those two things, I went off your plate. Right. So they're not as high value at.

This point I'm just going to hire someone to boost the website and get it looking better with some of the videos we already have.

You know like if you want we could build like that longer web design. I just give you like the first six months free. And even if you just take that design and you want to build your own thing, I could care less. But like it's simply a matter of like a site that's going to be actually built for conversion instead of just like a business card.

Right.

Like that, that truck should have pictures and video about it and should be on the very front. Right on the front of that is SM request form. It is then tied to your social media. Then you have like 30, at least 30 Google reviews tied to it. You have a address verified Google listing.

Right.

Those things alone you'll get to the top of Google in this market within a matter of two to three months.

Right.

And that, that is going to double the leads. Yes. You go do door hangers and you'll get leads tomorrow. But in if you can go slow so that you can go fast is we take six months, we nail the website, we get ranking well on Google, we get the Google reviews, we get the listing ranking high and then in six months you're getting two to three times amount of leads and you're not spending any money on ads. Yeah, right. The long term goal is always to rank organically. But we're on the second page of Google, we die, no one sees us.

Right.

But if you triple your traffic just because you start rank well on Google. Yes, we could do door hangers tomorrow and get customers. But in six months I could be getting three times many leads and not doing door hangers.

Right, Right.

Best time to send out price raise mowing. You know for mowing do you wait until it closer to the season start.

Or do you say look, we're thinking about raising your price this year before.

You know, our start is April end of April here.

So with the current truck setup, so we have two trucks and then this one. So three trucks.

Yep.

How many mowing customers could we approximately hit without needing a fourth truck? Right.

One of them.

You know, our, our F250 is our.

Project trailer between two trucks, two mowing trucks. How many mowing customers could we serve with those two trucks before you like I need another mowing truck. Right.

I've estimated probably I think like 150 to 200 accounts.

Got it.

So I said weekly accounts, let's say.

150Just so it's going to get in that stretch zone, that means that we're at 100 now. We have 50 customers before we hit capacity.

Right.

I always say, like, hit capacity, raise prices.

Yeah.

So instead of like trying to balance. That's just. Right. And the reason you're nervous about it because what if I lose a few customers? I want you to get 150 customers. This is why I said it's a lease problem. Get so many customers to where you hit 150. Like, oh, my word, if I don't raise prices and lose some customers, I will have to go buy another truck and I don't have 100 grand to go do that.

Yeah.

So you, you force yourself into raising prices, and when you raise the prices, you don't do it by 5 or 6%. Now you're going to raise by 15 to 30%, right?

Yeah.

So 5% a year. I mean, for, especially for some of the ones that are under bid and.

That I know are going to stick around, like, that's probably in the cards each year and I've had pretty good retention. I don't think people are, you know, falling off for that reason.

So there's probably, it probably doesn't matter.

So much of when I'm, when I'm.

Telling you, based upon your pricing, I would say, yes, we absolutely need a price increase by like 30%. Yeah, I would say like 30 probably.

Right.

And I think if you did that tomorrow, you'd actually be pretty happy with it. Now, you know every single customer name, you won't think that because they're pricing, but I think if you raise prices by 25%, you maybe lose 10 to 15% of your customers. So I do think in the short term that would be a good move. Now, that being said, your goal is not to make it 5, $500,000 business and just they stay here.

Right.

You're trying to grow. That's why I'm saying, like, focusing on the leads is the constraint. You got 250 customers. You would have. If you're like, man, I'm getting like 10 new mowing customers every single week and we're in the middle of spring rush.

Yeah.

You have to lose 20 customers. You go out and you raise prices by 25%.

Sure.

And you double your profit.

Yep, yep.

That's why, like, focusing on the leads is the constraint because that's. You just need 50 more customers. You get 50 more customers, you will raise prices by 30%. You will double your profit margins by raising your prices by 30%. Now guess what? PVP becomes Very appealing.

Yeah, that's nice.

When you raise prices now, the crew makes more money on P2P.

Yep, exactly right.

In terms of trying to get mowing services standardized, do you guys use a separate line item for, for your mowing jobs and dedicate like a certain amount to line trimming? Because I know like folks can go off the wall and do too good of a service. Some folks come from companies that literally double mow, do the diamond design and then string trim every single bed. And it's like most of our customers just want the job done to a decent degree for a fair price. Everybody else that has like top of the line lawns and is doing treatments and all that, has a full service.

Company that might be doing all that in house and willing to do crazy amounts of beautiful lawn work for, for stupid cheap.

Most people, if they're going the ecological.

Route, just, you know, definitely don't believe in pesticides and fertilizers and they just basically still want a fair price done quietly. I've had a hard time standardizing that and figuring out, you know, if there's a two person mow crew.

I know you like to string trim first, but I've done it the opposite.

Right.

Because someone's bound to have to go back for that tool. Yeah.

So how do we standardize that? And that could be, you know, the difference between having someone on site for.

15 minutes over a service. If one person's trimming the entire time and only one person's mowing, I should have two people mowing, trying to stagger them so that one person finishes first a bit before the last, and then.

They string trim and finish at the.

Same time with as little overlap and wasted time as possible.

Yeah, this is more of a training thing.

Right.

Because every size of property different. So for example, this house has a lot of string trimming.

Right?

Right. Because you have a lot of small areas of mowing and grass, et cetera. So like every lawns will be different. It all comes down to training. Like if you finish early, these are the tasks that are need to be done. Yeah, you move the battery packs around, you blow up the trailer, blah, blah, blah. Now I could train that to on blue in the face or just compensate based on it. That's why we need P4P. Like we need the prices higher so they can make more money on P4P. Because when you incentivize someone to move faster, they will come up with the other five things that can be done when they're waiting around.

Right.

Like I could train we trained that till we were blue in the face and then wanted to institute P4P. We never train it now. And they just figure out how to go faster.

Yeah.

Because now they're incentivized to do it.

Right.

That's why like getting them back on P2P is important, but right now our pricing, like we can't. Yeah. We're not making enough per day to give them even. Like you'd have to give them like 50% to get them above base pay consistently where they're making 25, 26 bucks an hour.

Right, right.

Also keeping people longer term, like retaining them, they get more efficient as well.

Yeah.

But like, I believe, like my thought is like we do what we can control, which is again, main leads as possible. We get 150 customers, we have to raise prices by 25 to 30% so we can make room for new customers. We do that and now we can actually afford on P4P to pay them significantly more.

Right.

That is going to be the unlock to them making sure that they're efficient on their jobs. When two people finish at different times, it's all because otherwise if you train super consistently, like you must do the lawn this way to finish at the same time. Every property is so different. It's so varied. Right.

It's all situational.

If you get leaves on the grass all of a sudden, way longer to mow.

Yeah.

And so it's really just a matter of incentivizing the end result instead of trying to fix all. Like here's what you do here. It's like just if you get the job done faster, you make more money.

Yep, got it. Yeah. Okay.

Right.

Most feasible way to learn a new service. Right. I don't have the shiny object syndrome.

Yet, but I mean, I've thought a lot and talked with other landscapers about how much more you can solve the margin issue with projects.

Tree work.

I'm interested in, you know, having room to expand my and continue to learn, you know, other services. Since all I had was three years of experience doing push mowing. Right. It'd be nice to be able to do some small installs, you know, hardscaping projects or some tree work on my own.

I've thought about getting the business to.

A place where it's, you know, self sustained and I go work for somebody else.

But there's also the option of bringing.

On some, you know, skilled labor for a way higher price that really knows what they're doing and then being able to work alongside them and having them.

Essentially teach You, I'm guessing that's the.

Most feasible way to move into a service when you have a hundred thousand to throw out the equipment plus a really skilled operator or person and then have them come work for you and start, you know, whatever it is, a separate brand or email, all your contact, customer contacts. Look, we're now doing X and X, Y and Z. You know, give us a shot, give us a shot and then you can move into that. What? How have you, I mean, seeing other folks move into different, you know, services successfully.

If I don't see us moving into.

Pesticides and fertilizers as much as I'd like to for, you know, the margins and how easy that is to get into and the standard, I mean those companies can grow fast and be, you know, it's just so simple.

The grass is always green the side, right. So those companies are within complain how easy is to get mowing customers.

Right.

And how little they have to spend on marketing to acquire. So like the grass is always green the difference between shiny object and the next shiny service. And then when do we actually add a service? Is, is, is the demand curve of that service different than what your current demand curve is?

Right.

So if you're going to add a service that is also busy during the spring rush and also, also busy during the fall cleanup season, don't have anything to do with it. Y because it's simply going to increase the seasonality of the business. Right. But if I can do it during the winter, if I can, it can fill in the gaps during my summer when we slow down during August and September. Now it's something I can be interested in.

Right.

Which tree work seems a viable option.

To do, to be honest, because the ground's frozen, you can get bit, you know, trucks on the ground and fell trees without damaging the lawn as much.

Granted it slows down and tree companies.

Lay people off, but they're working, you know, well into the winter months and treat services that have lawns, they win the bid. They say, look, would you mind if we come during the winter when we're slower to do this work? Most people say, yeah.

My challenge with adding that now, I'm not opposed to adding the future.

Right.

Is that I think there's so much more low hanging fruit, of course, of getting winter services during off season as well as upselling our existing customers during August and September when things slow down on the services we already offer. Right. And if you're going to do small installs, that seems like a lower lift than figuring out tree Service.

Right.

So if I can do smaller five $10,000 jobs, fill in my August and September, that's slower. I'd rather figure that out using my existing trucks and equipment and maybe a little bit of YouTube University to figure out some smaller installs. Right, right. And I'm willing to do it because I slow down during that period of time.

Sure.

And I use bulk email. I'd send out all of my customers, give them a promotion. I'd call my customers, upsell them. I'd make door hangers for my existing customers. I tell my crew, okay, this week we're putting on door hangers for everyone for this one service as a limited time offer. And we're going to do it to fill in August and September.

Yeah.

Right.

So maybe make one marketing push to do when during our summer slump, which.

You know, like every dollar of revenue made during your off season is worth significantly more than a dollar revenue during your busy season. Right. And so if I can put an extra $20,000 a month during your off season, it's a whole lot more valuable than growing by $20,000 in the middle of, of, you know, May right now.

Right, Yep. That makes a lot of sense because.

Growing in May right now requires another truck because you're maxed out already. You need more employees versus putting that revenue during the off season. I just take my current employees and current trucks already have and just utilize them more.

Yep. Yeah, interesting point.

I mean, it all comes back to wanting the shiny object, but also, I.

Mean, a chipper and, you know, things for this property to be able to develop it for long term value. You know, look at all that land that way, that has business potential as well, but yeah, way down the road.

Right.

So that's the thing. All right. We already touched. Yeah.

All right.

I think we've talked a lot about this.

I have a list of pain points listed by service.

But we can talk about the 4L framework.

What does that stand for again?

Yeah, so we'll go through it here. Here.

That's leads leadership.

Like how I kind of see it is we have liquidity up here, like right now. I know you had mentioned you and your wife kind of wanting to have, you know, start a family thing like that. Right now we have like 20,000 in the bank. What does that need to be for you to like. Okay, from a liquidity perspective, cash flow perspective, I feel comfortable to like move that personal goal forward. What's the goal on that?

Right, yeah, that's a good question.

I'd say, you know, I built up 16 in my personal savings because I've, you know, that's.

It seems like a year's. Anywhere from six months to a year's worth of living expenses is highly.

The reason you've been able to run this business is because you kept your personal expenses in check.

Right.

Just want to say that you've done a really good job. I can tell by the way you keep track of the finances, everything. Like, that's why you've been able to deal with the lower rate. Like, usually when I see 45, 50, effective hourly rate, I'm like this. This company will lose money hand over fist. But you've been so frugal on your personal side, and I can tell how much you're taking out of the business. That's why you've been able to keep growing it.

Right.

And so, like, kudos to you. And my goal is now, like, get so many leads that you can raise the prices. The guys can make more money. You can make more money during the.

Off season and still do it all in the same market.

Yeah. And not suffer on the personal side because you'll need to take more money in the business to have the family. Right. And so, like, okay, so right now we have 16,000 in the bank, like, end of year. What does that need to be to, like, move that forward?

Yeah. I mean, I've lived off 25k for.

Like, every year I can remember since college.

Essentially doing that comfortably. Once we have a kid in the.

Mix, I would say probably closer to 40 or 50 would be.

Let's go with 50. That's still pretty good. That's really good. So, okay, so from a liquidity perspective, we need to have basically an extra 2,000. Let's just call it $3,000 more a month that we can take out of the business.

Y.

Because right now, if we're living off of 25, we need to be able to immediately basically 50k distributions, slash salary coming out of the business annually. That's like goal number one, I genuinely believe. So if we. Let's just say we take 100 customers. No, we're going to hit 150 because that's going to be our capacity. We take 150 customers and we raise all their prices by $50 a month. That's about a 25% increase, probably. That is literally $7,000.

Yeah.

That's why we can nickel and dime and think about batteries and all this other stuff. I don't care. I want to hit 150 customers. I want to raise prices and make an extra 6 to $7,000 of cash flow a month.

Right.

That immediately solves the liquidity problem.

Right.

By the way, that will also down the road when we get to labor, that will also solve the P4P problem. Right now we're not making enough hourly rate to pay them out on P2P.

Well, we.

Well, define well because 19 is the base pay. I start people at 20 when I was on hourly and then we boosted that to 22, 24. And for efficient people who already knew what they were doing, some of them.

On some of the projects were making 26, 28, 30.

So I don't feel like going back.

To an hourly pay right now and doing away with pay for performance this season is going to be the move.

Either during the fall. Did you move the hour just for temporary?

Kind of, yeah. It was like I tried it on P4P for the first, you know, two.

Weeks and it ended up like, okay, this is not working.

The bids were just too low and.

I'd be willing to raise prices by.

100% on folks to avoid that again this year because fall is so busy that I don't care.

Got it, got it. Well, my hope is that by the time we hit fall, PvP has been fixed because the price is right. So like we got liquidity. Basically we need to get to $50,000, 10 take home pay. We know that's going to be done through price increases. Yeah, right. So price increase is going to happen at 150 customers. So then the really the whole game here is how do you get 50 more customers? Yeah, if you got 50 more customers, we hit capacity and we have to raise prices. So then from a leads perspective, we need more leads. Okay, how are we going to do that? First off, web design. And if you want us to do it, I'll do six months, I'll cover it for you just so you can get a really good look at what it's going to look like and you'll make an accurate assessment and you can copy on wix. I could care less. But ultimately, from the web design perspective, we are where the wet the estimate request form is going above the fold on the homepage. We're going to put that truck right front and center. When you look at that site like you have the $75,000, use the thing. Yeah, ideally we have a video. If you can get a drone shot of it or something cool like that, we can use some footage that we get today at the job site, for example. Use it. Yeah, like it'll look so good. It'll completely take you your website to the next level.

Some slow mo, something like if you.

Can take your version from 1 to 50 to 1 out of 25, you doubled your leads.

Right. Right.

So as a request form, a website design. Okay. We need 30 Google reviews. Okay. How are we going to do that? We're going to do automations inside service automations and those automations are going to go twofold. One is going to go to immediately existing customers.

Yep.

And say hey this is our team, we really appreciate your service.

Yeah, that's a great idea.

Get a Google review, money going towards a spring party for them.

Right.

Then we're gonna have two different automations. One is every 30, 30 to 90 days or sorry every 90 to 120 days you're sent to existing recurring customers. It's like was your service satisfactory? Yes or no? Yes. Going to Google review. No, going to a Google form.

Right.

And then when you send an invoice out to one time jobs also automation will be going saying hey, if your service is satisfactory give us a review and your crew get $50 bonus.

I got that all listed out here.

That's great.

Perfect. Then labor. So then labor is a matter of like we gotta have improved retention and like I see it as especially in this market like if people can make consistently $26, $27 an hour that'll be very incentivizing. Yeah. We also wanna reduce churn because it is going to demotivate the highest price performing employees when they constantly seeing people turn through.

Right.

I think that having a unified spot where you're starting throughout the day will be very beneficial. They see you.

Right.

It's very demoralizing to not see you for two or three days.

Right.

You don't know what you're doing. They like, they just, people make stuff up in their head.

Yeah.

You could be slaving away on estimates and they think that you're like probably just vacationing.

Right.

So from a labor perspective our goal is P4P still being high enough like average 25 plus per hour throughout the whole season. We do that because we are able to raise prices because we have enough leads.

Right.

And so labor P4P that's great. Reduce churn. I think that comes in the form of the culture side and having decentralized spot every morning. Have a stand up meeting. They're able to make sure you get the right tools, you get the right equipment. Personally I would probably try to get this to like where I can get them here as soon as possible and then I develop this land, like get the hedge slowly build it in better and better as time goes on. But I try to get them here as quickly.

I mean, I was at the lot every day last week.

I have like a 15 minute team meeting, check ins to see if anybody's going to be dragging ass or not barking down there, you know, so that.

That was despite all that, there was the churn.

And I think it's because of the hourly rate plus, you know, the happenstance. You can't be a great judge of character and you know, from just from the interview and you don't know if people are going to work out and you gotta.

It's hard to hire, you know, slow.

And fire fast, especially if you're, you know.

This environment is also more conducive to the team compared to working out of a box on a competitor's property.

Right.

It just feels janky. Yeah. Right. They're watching other trucks drive by. It's a bigger company.

Yeah.

It's just weird.

Yep.

Let's go take a look.

Yeah. I'm surprised at your perspective on that because I hadn't really. I mean, for me it's like, yeah.

I tell them I can afford to.

Pay you what I pay you because we're parked here and I'm not trying to build this out with a, you know, $100,000 piece of land in an outbuilding. Right. And they understand it.

But you have it.

But now.

But now I kind of have.

You got it, dude. This is a great, like environment, honestly. Yeah, I think it's really good.

Right. But it's my second living room. Do I want it to become like business hq? No. Would we want to put up a second building? More likely. If it's going to be people and out of here with dirty boots every morning probably.

You know.

Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe the mud room.

I mean even that shop space in there, like if you brought the box over here, for example, for equipment, move some of that into there, made that a space. Like it's just, it just. This is.

Feels like a shot better vibe. Yeah.

Versus I'm showing up and I feel like the little guy in the block because we have two trucks and this company has 20.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. What a different perspective. Yeah. Yeah, you're probably right.

I think tearing up the lawn and then, you know, solving the issue as.

As, as it goes as we can't afford to here with cash.

You can make it a slow migration right from over there, but I just definitely would not split the two. Yeah. Honestly, from more from A culture perspective than even the economic.

Maybe just. I mean, since we're already going into spring rush and stuff, we're not moving.

For spring rush here.

Start there this year and then think.

About getting this place ready for spring 2026.

Yep.

To be honest.

Yeah. And if you just bring the truck or like you get that one started, it's just gonna be a little bit janky. Having a mowing crew starting here and then other crews mowing and a landscape. Who's starting there. It's just gonna be a little bit tough.

Right, Right.

Unless you have them start here earlier, for example, you're here and then you bounce over the other one.

Right. That's the only way that other way it would work, I was thinking. Yeah.

Okay, cool. All right. So that's labor. We got a reduced turn and we're going to do that by having the stronger culture, ideally one spot, but like having something like where we're moving towards it. Yeah. And then increasing P4P, like to where they are consistently making 25, 26, 27 an hour, even during the fall. That only happens because we raise prices.

Yeah.

And then from a leadership perspective, I think it's a matter of like, we need to essentially outsource everything that is not sales and team. So if we're not training the team, if we're not going out and doing estimates, it's being outsourced. Whether it be bookkeeping, whether the website stuff would be advertising, where it'd be answering the phone.

Door hangers too.

Right.

I'm.

I've got three guys doing that right now.

Yeah. Like the more of those tasks that you can outsource that you can focus on doing estimates and focus on training the team. Like in part, this also the labor part gets solved by you having the time to be out with them.

Right.

Instead of you doing bookkeeping, you're out there like, hey, guys, today we're going to go over bush trimming in more detail sale. Right, Right. And them actually getting trained better.

Yep.

Right. So like a focus on training in sales. That's more of a focus. And then this is going to be done because now you outsource low level tasks.

Right.

And you were just talking with what's the.

The franchisee who's got the four locations that just conglomerate about putting door hangers.

Out, but waiting two weeks for, for something like that.

And you saw a much better conversion ratio.

Should. I mean these say they're mowing Focus, quiet lawn mowing.

But then I have mowing, trimming and mulching.

Would we see a better return on these if we wait to put the thousand out two weeks before mowing, or.

Should we just start now?

If you're trying to, if you're trying to maximize conversion, you wait until there's pain. So like two weeks after the grass is starting to grow, you're trying to maximize the amount of customers you get. You start now and are okay with a lower conversion throughout the next couple weeks.

Right, right.

Because right now if you put. You're only getting people thinking ahead.

Yeah.

Whereas in two weeks they have, they have a pain point.

Yeah.

Their mower is not starting. They need to call and get it fixed. Yeah. It just depends on which you're trying to maximize.

Customer acquisition cost goes a little higher.

A little higher now.

Right. But still probably worth it in my case, if the ultimate goal is 150.

And we're at like, literally, if I was you, like, so much of this gets solved with more leads. That's why I don't know, if you look at the turnaround triple, like I hardly have ever said, because I know if you get enough leads to get hit capacity, you'll raise prices. Yeah. And if you raise prices, you'll get, be able to get better liquidity. You'll be able to pay people more a month on PPP so they won't leave.

Right.

And then you'll be able to afford the outsourcing.

Yep.

Like, it all comes back to raising prices. But I don't think that's fixed now because you're going to be stuck in this weird limbo spot and you want to grow.

Yeah.

So hey, go ahead and grow. Get 50 more customers. That's all that matters. Okay, great. We have three months of spring rush. We need to have one new customer every single day, net. And if you do that, by the end of spring rush, you'll be raising prices. And I would raise price by a.

Minimum of 20% during the Middle of the season.

Right.

Even after mowing starts, we'll hit it.

Because the goal is like we're getting 1, 2, 3 customers a day and then we're going to hit in the middle of May. You're like sick. I need to raise prices. Raise price. Everyone's prices across the board. Right then.

Right.

And you could raise prices now on like the, you know, if there's 10, 15 customers, you know, you need to increase or whatever. Go for it. Especially if, you know, like, but, but again, like a 5% increase just doesn't do a lot. Right. I want to get to the point where you want to lose customers.

Me too.

That's a good point to be as much as I love them all.

Yeah. Cool. Any other questions?

I think that pretty much covers it. I can run through the list one more time but a lot of them seem, you know, more, you know, petty.

And not as, you know, bigger picture. So I think we've touched on most, most everything we really needed to, you know, let me see if I have anything in my pain points that we didn't cover.

Yeah, I mean I feel like we've been doing good work but still the churn of like customers. It's so hard to know who's going.

To want work long term year round for that five to seven, you know, ideal minimum point because you get some folks who seem like a great fit.

And they want four services and then.

All of a sudden they're getting estimates from other companies now because we're on the higher end of the market even though we've done pretty good work for them. But I guess it's just all solved with if you have enough customers, you find the ones that are really going to stick with you long term and service the ones that you can throughout the year based on their, you know, their price threshold and you know, how many services that you, they actually get from you throughout the year.

Yeah, like improving like just going from the second page to first page you double. Yeah, like that is literally a 2x on leads just by getting Google reviews, getting to the first page of Google once they get to the site it converts really well. Right.

But now since we're pulling away from Hadley, that's my one only other option of having a listed address besides here.

Which isn't my main market. And I'm nervous about, I mean I.

Also have this as my like actual mailing address.

I'm thinking about switching that to a P.O. box. Right. And then picking the mail up from there. So that way, I mean to go.

All in on this from a business.

Perspective is still nerve wracking. You know, I mean he has a right to farm because he has the farm or come right over there.

There. That's why I think like having that.

Shop space as a, that's, that's my business space. Like this is just a storage spot, but.

Right.

Technically, legally you can only have one.

Home, home office, employee coming and going. So the minute there's like multiple cars, it becomes, you know.

Yeah, not, not an immediate, you know, risk but 300 bucks a day I.

Think is what the fine is for.

Yeah.

You know, violating the, that's why, if.

You keep that place, I think is a good move.

Yeah.

Right. It's 800 bucks a month on an $800,000 business. You're paying a couple percentage points to ensure that you don't have an existential crisis with that. He has the ability to have Google. Your Google listing verification there.

Right.

His shop space for, like, the material, etc. That's benefit.

Right.

I think it's worth keeping it.

Yeah. Gotcha.

So I'll have to ask Matt if.

He'S willing to list us there as.

Yeah. Because just that alone will be a huge. Yeah. If you just got Google reviews analysting, like, it's a huge, huge impact.

Right. Yeah. Yep. That can make.

There's no one around here does Google Reviews.

Right.

Like, it's crazy. I saw it, like, nuts.

It's wild.

You get 30 reviews and you get your address verified. You'd probably. On the first page just with that.

Yep. Yeah. I should make that the priority for sure. You're right. Very well.

It looks like your crew is here.

Awesome.

Perfect.

We're gonna be starting to get it going here.