Mike Andes on why lawn care crews can't outwork bad pricing. His company bid 45% higher than competitors, paid crews $40-45/hour, and still lost jobs. They averaged 23 man-hours per visit despite training. The fix: rethink pricing and operations, not just hustle harder.
Questions this video answers
About 45% higher.
Around $40–$45 per hour.
About $60 (presumably per hour).
Approximately 60%.
About 23 man-hours per visit (over two years).
Everyone we've bid on, we've been 45% higher than them.
And that's at like 40, 45 bucks an hour. And that's. That's the commercial side.
They're residential, too.
Got it.
Okay.
On the project side, when you're doing bids, what are you kind of shooting for there?
About 60.
And then you win quite a few of those, like 60% or so. You think you're winning.
Yeah.
Okay.
When we first started, there was three of us mowing, and I was on the crew. We averaged 23 man hours of visit for two years. That's the big mow. 95 budget hours. Yeah. Most of our sites are big now. It's three people, 12 hours. And I. And I go, well, did the property grow? Like, I mean, did they add more houses? No, they're just inefficient. So I actually went out and said, okay, this week, all you're doing is walking behind me, because I'll show you how to do it. And the next week I go and say, okay, now I'm gonna follow you. They do it right. And I wouldn't go the next week. I'd show up, like, two weeks later, and they're just doing whatever they want. I'm like, what are you doing? No, I just thought it'd be quicker. I'm like, you're two sections behind. It's obviously not. Why are you. And they just go, ha.
Yeah. The difficult part with pay for performance is likely the fact that those jobs are so low bid. I don't even know if, even if you have 50% of revenue, if you'd be able to make their wages, because if you're 40, 45 bucks an hour price, 60 to 70% of your revenue just going to wages on those jobs.
