Zero Turn: How to Turn Your Business AROUND

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes and you're listening to landscape businesscourse.com today. I wanted to make this episode because I have neglected the podcast for the past couple weeks and I'm very sorry about that. Been busy wrapping up. And this is the big announcement to today. That is, we have completed the first episode of Zero Turn. So I'm sure most of you have already seen it, but it is on YouTube and is on Facebook. So just search landscape business course or my name on Facebook or YouTube and it'll come up. Zero turn, episode one. And it is definitely the first of many, I do believe. Definitely the first of two. The first one that we did here and that is now live is a company called Imco. And this company is in Texas. And basically this company is a little bit smaller. And, you know, the owner has about five, six employees currently and is trying to scale it up past half a million dollars. And so that's the first company a little bit smaller, a little bit really good. If you're just starting out your first couple years of business and then coming soon, in just a few more weeks, we're gonna have episode two, which is a larger company, have a big shop, they have like 15 or so employees and trying to scale up their business. And so if you remember, I gave away two of these site visits where I'd go for 48 hours and kind of help them on their business. And so these. This is what Zero Turn is. I went there for two days. Both these locations, help them scale up their business, figure out systems, ways to make it more efficient. But we talked a lot about things like their software, their estimates, how to create a team. And so definitely the first one, the first episode that just got launched, it's more about getting out of the field, how to systematize the office, work as far as estimates and marketing and things like that in order to get out of the field as the owner. Whereas the second one, there's multiple owners, the second episode is going to have. They have multiple owners and they are really working on trying to ramp up sales in order to recoup or and really try to stay ahead of their debt they've accumulated in scaling up the business with three different owners. And so very, very interesting. The first episode is a long one. We made it Long Tail. It's very much for landscape business owners. It's not so much for general entertainment. We could have cut it down to like 45 minutes and made it more entertaining. But what I wanted to do was leave all the nitty gritty information in there. So a lot of the meetings, they aren't necessarily all entertaining. It might be a 15 minute conversation, literally just me, one on one with the business owner. And I figured yes, we could cut that down into two minutes. But I wanted to show all of that information, all that entire conversation for you as business owners to be able to really get all the details. So again, these episodes are entertaining. Especially the second one is a little more larger company things like that. However, the premise and then really the objective behind this video series is to educate you as business owners. So I really did keep a lot of the work. One on one talks, the longer conversations, kept all of that in there. And I really do believe it's gonna help a lot of you grow your business, regardless if you're small and you're trying to make it to that $500,000 marker or if you're larger and you're more established, but you really need past that million dollar marker to scale up your business. So really looking forward to that. The first episode has dropped. Like I said, it's for that smaller type of a business. Check it out. It's about an hour and 50 minutes long, so grab some popcorn and make a night of it. But it's a great episode and I know you'll get a of it really seeing me in action instead of just hearing me on the podcast here. So check out Facebook, check out YouTube. It's called Zero Turn and the name of the company that we dig into is called IAMCO I A M C O I AM CO so definitely subscribe on YouTube or on Facebook. You can check it out there on YouTube. It's just Mike Andy's on Facebook. It's landscape business course. Next thing I want to quickly announce here is there's the reason we call it Zero Turn is because the objective is really to turn businesses around. And so as we do more of these down the road will go into struggling lawn care businesses and turn them around and really make them more profitable and much more efficient. And so that's the objective long term. Well, guess what, what else is coming out in December? So in November we're going to be trying to get episode two done for Zero Turn, the video series. But in December a book is coming out and it's going to be called Zero Turn. It's the name of the book and it is going to really encapsulate a lot of the learning that I have I've gotten over the past several years of landscapebusinesscourse.com and the members and just seeing a lot of the patterns. And trust me, it is so cyclic and cyclic like as far as, like what I see in people growing their lawn care and landscaping businesses. So I wanted to kind of encapsulate a lot of the big major thoughts and put them into a book just for landscapers. This is not like a big. I'm not trying to get a little best seller list with this book. This is for landscape and lawn care business owners, people that want to start, people that wanting to scale up, people that hit a plateau. So that book's gonna be coming and if you watch the video series, the episode one and two in next few weeks before the book drops in December, you're gonna get a lot of, lot of value out of the videos. But then the book is gonna even make more sense because you're gonna start to see the patterns and what's valuable about what I'm trying to do here with Zero Turn, this entire project is so that people begin to see patterns within these lawn care and landscaping businesses and then recognize those same issues or those same patterns within their own business and be able to correct them by themselves without me having to be there. And so that's the objective of all this. And so all of this, the video series is gonna be free. The book, I'm gonna get out as low cost as possible to everyone and really try to spread the message of how to grow and scale up a lawn care business. Because so many of us work so hard. And as I get to know more and more people in this industry, these are some of the greatest people alive. They have great hearts and they work like crazy, crazy hard. And, and yet so few of them are able to make scalable businesses that are sustainable and that grow by themselves and that have great teams and will live on past the owner. And so that's what I'm trying to create is something that really changes this industry into making it something that is a solid business to start, that is a scalable business that is can run on systems and not just on personality, and really be able to create a framework in which you can run, start, scale up that lawn care business. And so that's what the objective of Zero Turn is. The videos, the book coming out, landscape Summit, the conference in January. I really do think that right now, for so many of you that are in the course, have gotten so much of the groundwork and you watch these videos, you're going to start to see a lot of the things we've been teaching the course. You're going to See it manifested especially in episode two. And then you're going to see in the book again more patterns. Patterns, patterns of what are the common pitfalls? What are the common ideologies that are hindering our industry from moving forward? And then you come to the conference. We're going to dig very deep into your business personally. And so the last thing I want to kind of put, you know, say on this episode is clear up some things about the conference. A lot of people have been asking and, you know, I'm not going to have more than 50 people there. Probably. I'll probably cap it at 50 just because I want to make sure it's small enough where I can meet every one of you. I can look over your business, I can ask your, answer your personal questions. We're going to have Q and A, live Q and A every single evening of the conference. And so it'll be a chance for you to ask your questions in a public forum. I'll be able to give answers then. What you'll be able to do is at lunch and at breakfast, you'll be able to talk with the other, you know, other folks, other landscape business owners that are at the conference, and they'll be able to say, hey, I saw you had this question. This is what worked for me. This is what I went through. This is how I got through that hard time in my business. And so that's the kind of community I'm trying to develop. And I'm really looking forward to it at that conference Landscape summit In January, it's January 17th, 18th and 19th. It's in Bellingham, Washington. It's literally right next to the airport, and it's next to Bellingham Airport, which is a smaller kind of regional airport. But it's only you can get a bus directly from Seattle airport and literally get dropped off right at the hotel, which is right next to the airport at Bellingham. So Seattle is only a couple hour drive away. You can get the bus hit straight to the hotel. And so that is. I'm really looking forward to it because we're actually going to have all of the owners and those involved from Zero Turn episode one and two, they're all coming. And so what we're going to do is we're going to be able to, you know, if you've seen the video series episode one and two, you're actually going to see now these individuals four or five months later down the road and see the changes that they've made to their business. Hopefully positive, maybe there'll be some negative and be able to work through those issues and see what the changes they made and what the problems they've encountered even since implementing some of the things that we have talked about on Zero Turn episode one and two. So watch those videos because if you're coming to the conference, you're going to actually see those business owners. We're going to interview them and we are going to see what has changed, what has been good, what has been bad, and what they have learned from the Zero Turn process on the video series. So I really look forward to seeing all of you at the conference. It's going to be, you know, the first event of many. I think it's going to be one of those events where in five years and when there's, you know, hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of participants and people there that were able to call up the original gangsters, the people who came to the very first conference. And I really feel that's what it's going to be. So I really look forward to, you know, having 40, 50 people landscape business owners that are serious about their business. This is not going to be a bunch of frills like this is my first conference ever putting on. I've never done this before. It's not going to be fancy, it's not going to have music, we're not going to have like an after party and DJs and all that sort of stuff. That's why it's like literally $99 to get in. It just not even gonna cover the costs that we're putting up to get this event going. But I'm much more interested in seeing you in person, seeing course members in person, seeing those. I've talked to you via email, try to help you with your business. I'd love to see you there. I really believe that this is gonna be kind of a great moment for you to implement. You know, if you've been in the course, you've seen, you've implemented a lot of things we've talked about on the course, on the podcast, you've seen kind of the general basics. But when you, when we can get in person, we can dig into your financial, into your marketing, you can show me the problems that you're facing and I can look at the financials and see the patterns within your business and see what the pitfalls might be or some of the suggestions that I would kind of point out. And it's not that I'm perfect or that, you know, even my landscaping company is the best. It's that because of you Know the podcast and the course and all that I'm doing. I see so many profit and loss statements, I see so many marketing materials, I see so many websites, then I'm able to see the patterns. And that's what the book and the video series is all about, is being able to kind of encapsulate all of the knowledge and the pattern recognition that I'm seeing in our industry so that you don't have to make the mistakes that so many of the people in this industry are making. And so I really can't wait for the conference. Like, I'm not into like the big, big thing right now. Like, I know that's gonna come down the road. I'm really looking forward to getting some really getting to know face to face. Because so much of this that I do is over webinars, over audio or phone calls or emails and pictures and video, which is great, but I've never been able to really see a lot of you in person. I've seen maybe 2% of the course members via just traveling and locals and things like that in Vancouver and around Washington that I've traveled to, where they've come up and met me and from Seattle and stuff. So I'm really, really looking forward to this. It's going to be great. And I can't promise you that it's gonna be like, like I said, the fanciest, the most smoothly run thing in the world. But I promise you, you will leave this conference completely exhausted, but completely filled with ideas to grow and scale your business and an actionable plan. This is what I'm very big on when it comes to conferences, an actionable plan to carry those ideas out. And you know, there's gonna be so much that comes up from this. I can't wait in five years, like I said to, when there's a big conference, be able to say, okay, who are the first 20, 30, 40 people that came to the very first landscape summit? And it's gonna be an absolute blast. So definitely, if you are able to make it, I would love to see you again. We're not making money on this. We're gonna lose money on this. It's not about the money for me. I just want to really get this started and get this momentum in the right direction and have this in person event. And so if my podcast and my material has helped you in any way, if there's anything you could do for me, I'd love for you to be there so that I can really help you. And that's really what? This whole course, the podcast, you know, these video series. I'm not. You don't have to pay to see these things. They're all free. The book is gonna be as cheap as I possibly can make it to get it out to everybody. And it's not to make the money here. It's gonna be down the road. I don't not too worried about that right now. I want to get the message out and be able to share a lot of the pattern recognition because so many of our, so many people in our industry have built up walls of competition and they aren't going to talk to the person down the street. The other lawn care business owners, they aren't going to share information, they aren't going to share their marketing tactics, they're not going to share how they hire people. And so so many of the lawn care and landscape business owners that I come encounter with are literally starving for information, they're starving for tactics, they're starving for ways of doing things, best practices. And my goal is to really try to break down a lot of those walls so that we begin to begin to communicate and think of ourselves as not competition and really work together on this. And I hope this is a step in the right direction. And I would love to see you at the conference and I just really appreciate all the support. Like the conference is not gonna be massive. Like I said, maybe 40, 50 people max probably gonna be there. But it'll be some, you know, you'll be able to get know people a little more intimately, you'll be able to get to really get to know people well. And I'll be able to meet you and I really look forward to seeing you there. So. But I do wanna say thank you. I don't say this enough on this podcast. Just so much thanks to the whole community, everyone that has bought the course and allowed me to use that money to create the book. I have someone helping me write the book to have, you know, we created this whole video series. Like that takes money. And so those that are buying the course that are in Pro plus, I really support, I really appreciate the support and all that monies that I do get from this goes directly into creating more content and creating the book and the videos and trying to get even my employees more involved to make a better, better content, whether it be audio, whether it be video. And we have some big plans coming into 2019, but it really does is supported by those who buy the course buy Pro plus and I really do appreciate it. I don't say that enough. It is a dream of mine to really help this industry and I do appreciate all of your support. Even if you don't buy stuff, just you're listening and the nice emails that you send me. And thanks for some of the ideas that I share. I appreciate it so much. It's very flattering. And again, I'd love to see you if you can make it to the conference. So that's all I'm going to share today, just more of announcements. Kind of up to date on the conference 0 turn the video series and the book. So thank you so much. Check out landscapebusinesscourse.com if you haven't already. Until next time, everyone be great because nothing else pays.