Common Questions For A $1.5 Million Mowing Business Owner!

We built a $1.5 million business, and today I'm asking Will Kelly questions that he has no idea that I prepared, and his answers might surprise you. So let's get into it.

All right everybody, this is Will's Wisdom with my beautiful, lovely wife Larissa Kelly, who used to run the location for like 2 years. She worked in the business for 6 years, and we just retired her at 35 years old. So we're going to share with you Will's Wisdom. Larissa, do you have anything for the audience?

Hey guys, uh, no, not necessarily. I know you've been telling me that you want me to do a video with you and I haven't known what to do, so we came up with some questions that hopefully you guys like and get some good information or knowledge out of it.

If you guys like this kind of content, Larissa put this together, she's the creative one. Let me know in the comments below.

And if you don't like it, it wasn't me. Just kidding. So I want to ask all kinds of questions. We got some longer ones and then we got some rapid-fire ones, but basically I'm gonna do one big one first. So if you would wake up tomorrow, Military Lawn Quest doesn't exist, and you have $1,000, a pickup truck, no customers, no employees, and nobody knows who you are, get back to $500,000, what do you do?

Do I have equipment?

You have $1,000, a pickup truck, no customers, no employees, and nobody knows who you are.

All right, um, I'm gonna take— do I still have the knowledge that I have now? All right, this is great. All right, so I'd probably take half of that right off the bat and put that straight into door hangers because I know they work in the market. I am a very conservative person, so I would leave the other $500 in the bank account. Just because I would go door knocking on my surrounding neighbors. Like, I'd probably knock on like 50 or 100 doors to try to get at least like 1 or 2 or 3 customers here. Got a pickup truck, so I'd probably need a ramp. Um, I'd probably have to buy a $100 mower off Facebook Marketplace, weed eater, edger. But I wouldn't buy any of that stuff until I had a paying customer. So I would go and get the door hangers first, get $500, Probably, uh, $500 on Vistaprint could probably get you like, I don't know, 10,000 door hangers or something. And I would go put every single one of them out in the next 7 days or like 2 weeks. And then once I got my first paying customer, then I'd go take the other $500 and buy the mowing, edging, and blowing equipment.

Okay, so in the beginning we didn't order anything off of Vistaprint, we printed it at home.

Yeah.

So why would you say that it would be Why do you print it off at Vistaprint instead of at home?

I just know that, like, it's better and easier. Um, I mean, if somebody's out there that has that capability, that's totally cool, but when you print off a piece of paper in a flyer, whether it's color or not, like, I don't know, the door hanger is just like more professional. So I would go the door hanger route, try to make it look professional with a mower on there, and then And just try to kind of push that service.

Okay, so you always talk about starting with a $100 mower. So if you had to completely start over with $1,000, what exactly would you spend it on if you already have those items? So you have the truck, you have the equipment.

Marketing. It would go all towards marketing. It's, it's, it's to grow the business. Yeah, 100%. $1,000 would go towards door hangers. It depends on the season, right? So like if we're midsummer right now, I'd Probably lean into door hangers. If we're in the spring rush, I might do like take $250 of that and put a little bit towards like Facebook ads or something like that. But if the truck isn't decalled, I would definitely start there. A full wrap on our trucks is $3,200, but if I could get it, I think I remember back in the day it was only like $700 or $800 to get the decals on the side. But I would, I would probably like, that's not gonna give you the best return immediately. Door hangers will.

Mm-hmm.

Like door hangers will get you 5 or 10 customers like in the next 2 weeks if you just do 10,000. And so then those 10 clients that you get, collect the money and then go spend more money on the truck and the stickers and stuff is what I would do.

So what is something that beginners spend money on that they absolutely don't need?

Equipment.

Elaborate, 'cause you do need equipment to get the work done. So what kind of equipment?

Expensive equipment. They go out and they buy a $450 steel backpack when they don't need that. They literally could use like a hand blower for $50 or $100, but— and then they could have taken the other $300 and bought more door hangers and put more door hangers out to get more customers to buy the better equipment down the road. But most people buy the expensive truck and mower trailer equipment up front, and then they don't— like, you should be putting that money towards marketing.

Yeah, I agree. I feel like we see that all the time. People get like the nice new Heavy-duty truck with a trailer and a brand new stand-on. And then it's like, oh, how many customers do you have? And they're like, oh, I'm just starting. They only have a couple, but they spent so much money already and are starting heavily in debt.

Yeah, for sure.

So when does someone stop having a side hustle and actually have a lawn care business? Because there came a point— was the same thing for us.

Yeah, I can't really speak on everybody else, but I can speak on what we did. Okay, so in the beginning we didn't have an LLC, we didn't have a business bank account, we didn't have any of that stuff.

Mm-hmm.

We would take— we were taking cash, Venmo, Zelle, whatever, check. And it wasn't until we had about 25 recurring mowing customers, and a lot of them were biweekly at the time anyway, but we were like, hey, like, there's something here. We're making a little bit more money than like this just being a side hustle. Also, in the state of Texas, If you're making more than $6,000 in a year, the laws might have changed, but when back in the day, if you're making more than $6,000 in one year, you technically don't— or $6,000 or less, you don't have to pay taxes on it, right? But once you start making more than that, it's— you now become like an official business that you have to pay taxes on.

And at the time, 25 customers, let's call it 20 visits a year, started getting close to that when you add up all the So I actually remember you telling me and having that conversation of looking at these checks and being like, man, we probably need to start filing this. I still remember that conversation and going over and finding a local tax accountant and filing for a business.

Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool.

So you taught people how to price their first ones, but when you know you're actually charging too much, When do you know you're actually charging too low?

When do you know you're actually charging too low? I mean, the simple answer is when you open up your bank account and you don't have a lot of money in there, but you've been busting your butt the last few weeks to make money. When do you know you're actually charging too low? I would say when you— when every customer is accepting your estimate. Like, if you're giving a price—

So what percentage would you say?

I mean, if it's above 70%, like out of 10 clients that you give a quote to, if 7 of them are saying yes, like you probably need to raise your prices. Like you, you could be making more money doing less work. And even if you brought that down to like 50%, where it's like every other is accepting.

I remember a word of advice that we got from another lawn care business owner when we first started and we were buying a printer from him, right? We didn't even know he was a lawn care business owner. We were buying a printer off of Facebook Marketplace. Well, I drive out to go get it, find out that they also own a lawn care business, and let him know, hey, we're actually starting one, or we're actually buying this printer to print off flyers. He— the very first thing he says is, don't undercut, like, your price. Don't undersell yourself. Don't do a $20 lawn cut. And I was like, oh. We're not doing a $20 lawn cut, we're doing a $19 lawn cut. That's what you had already had made up and the flyers like were ready, they just needed to be printed. And, but that was his one piece of advice. We get it now and we kind of tell people the same thing, like don't undersell yourself, you're worth something.

That was Clay's Clippers. So Clay's Clippers down here in Texas, if you're watching it, appreciate the advice.

It stuck with us. We've already had it already ready. Yeah. So would you rather lose a customer or keep mowing a yard that you know you're undercharging for?

Would I rather lose a customer? Like, is this the same customer that's underpriced?

Yes.

I would rather lose— if, if we're on a yard and we're losing money, I would rather just say, hey, we can't continue to do this. Or I would just say, look, this is the new price. Instead of it being $30, it's $50. So we understand if you say no, but that's what it's gonna cost.

And we have raised our prices before. Yeah. And that was actually one of my biggest fears, was like, how many customers are we gonna lose in the process, right? But we— I don't think we even lost 10 out of a couple hundred that we had. Yeah, I think we were like 350.

Yeah. By the way, I have a really good video on raising prices. It's really good for anybody that wants to raise prices. the right way and not like lose a lot of customers.

All right, what is the biggest pricing mistake that you made when getting started?

Um, there was one year where we like, like I didn't really know what I was, what we were doing, which I still don't half the time, but I just figured it out and we just learned from what we do. I'm always a very conservative person, so I always try to increase the price significantly, and then I'd rather like have more customers say no and then like work backwards than undercharge. And do work cheaply and make no money. Like, I, I— that sounds like I'd rather not have a business than do that. Like, I don't want to work for free. So there was one year where we— I just— we just overpriced it so much. I mean, the close rate went down to like 15 or 20%. It was like— and it really stunted our growth, that spring rush.

But definitely shot ourselves in the foot on that one.

Yeah, yeah. But we learned from it.

So if you realized tomorrow that 50 of your customers were underpriced, what would you do?

Well, because I know how much money is in each bank account right now, specifically right now, I probably wouldn't— I'd have to see how much underpriced they are. Like, if they're just slightly kind of underpriced, we'd probably just roll, roll with it through the fall and winter. Um, if they're significantly where we realize that we're literally losing money, Yeah, I'd rather just raise the price. And then even if you lose half of them—

Especially if they were ones that have been with us like since the very beginning, obviously we wouldn't have been priced right. And those, those ones we have already gone back and corrected the price. And a lot of them, a lot of them did stay because they knew our rep at that point.

Yeah.

So if you were to move to a city where nobody knew you and you had to get your first 25 customers, what would you do?

So the very first thing I would do is I would jump on ChatGPT and I would figure out the demographics. So I would want to find which zip code makes the most money. I mean, that really is what it is because, and I'll explain it this way. There could be 2 different zip codes. You're providing the exact same service, which is mowing. We'll just call it mowing. In one zip code, you get $25. And in another zip code for that same lot size and that same Same approach, you could get $55. Just different demographics, different income levels, different— and it's— but it's the same service, same size yard.

I kind of want to challenge your thought on that.

Okay.

Because we started here in Aubrey, Texas.

Correct.

And if you compare Aubrey, Texas to Prosper or Frisco or Celina, which are other towns that we service with our other location, I believe that our Aubrey location grew faster than our Celina location is. And Celina, we have the knowledge going into it.

Yeah, there, there's, there's a lot of variations and reasons why it didn't grow as fast in there, and I don't think it's one reason. I don't think it's one specific thing. I think it's like a multitude of like 7 or 10 things that are all like happening.

The reason I brought it up though is because Celina, Prosper, Frisco, they do have a higher income than the Aubrey area. I wanted to just bring that up to a point. It's like, that, that is one thing you can look at it, but there are other things.

Yeah, but you— so the question was, what was the first thing that I would do? That, that would be the first thing that I would do. Now, am I gonna go 4 towns over and drive an hour to get— no, probably not. But if I have a zip code over here and zip code over here and they're both 10-minute drive, like, I'm probably going to start on whatever one is better, right? But at the same time, there's value on literally just like dropping a pin on where you live and like just starting there. Like there is value in that. It's the least amount of drive time. You don't have to use as much fuel. You don't even need a truck.

Your neighbors are really supportive, or at least ours were.

Yeah.

Not just our neighbors directly, but we've had the most customers on our street than any street that we just service in any community. And then our, our community itself. We have the most customers in our community than other communities that have more houses.

So how many clients do you have in this one neighborhood?

Last time I had checked, it was probably 70, 75.

That's pretty good.

Now, I will say there's another neighborhood just north of us that's being built that's going to be double our size, and I think they're getting close to that. We are getting a lot of customers in that neighborhood as well. But yeah, we have a very supportive community.

Yeah. It's like a 2-mile radius.

Thank you if you're watching and you're in our community. What's the biggest waste of money you've ever spent trying to get customers?

I have 2.

I have one in mind.

What is yours?

Mine would be doing the flyers. We do a lot of flyers, but at the wrong time. So like, we've tried it in the fall to try and promote more of like fall services, leaf cleanups, and we didn't get anywhere near as great of a response.

Okay, that's good. I support that. And that's why, by the way, we don't do any fall marketing at all. We've learned it doesn't work, or it does and you just got to pay 4 times the cost that it would if you just did it in the spring. So logically speaking, why would I spend a dollar in the fall— or I'm sorry, the spring— when I can get a customer, let's just say, for a dollar, which isn't true, but I gotta pay 4 times the amount of that dollar in the fall to get a customer. So logically, I'm just gonna pour everything out in the spring, the right time. There's, there's 2 actually. The most recent one last year, we did a $100,000 door hanger campaign. Okay.

The most you've ever done?

Yeah. So we hired basically a whole full team of like 8 people across all 3 locations, and we had them go out and do door hangers. Most of this was a system failure from a leadership standpoint for me. 'Cause we didn't have the correct parameters in place to track people putting door hangers out in their trails. And so we, there was one location in specific that our customer acquisition cost was like literally $1,200 per customer, which is like horrific. Like you'll, you will, we're just, I'm literally driving down the street and like throwing $100 bills out. That's basically what it's doing. At that point. Which, by the way, our normal customer acquisition cost is like $200 to $250. So we learned a lot through that. We're gonna run it back, I think, this next spring and see. But we're gonna do a much better job at like staying on top of the managing of the team, tracking where they're going, having the GMs like go back through their routes almost daily and like just make sure that like these guys are actually putting the door hangers out. 'Cause I know they work. There was another time that we sent out EDDM at the wrong time. And they just— it just flopped. Like, we spent probably $8,000, and I think we had— we acquired like maybe 10 customers, which again is like an 800 to 900 customer. It's like not good, which means we would need to keep a customer for like 4 years just to like basically break even, which is rare. And even then, it's like, it's 4 years later until you actually get started to make money.

Yeah.

Like, this doesn't make sense.

Wrap your trucks.

That's number one.

Wrap your trucks.

I think for speed, it's door hangers. Like, if you're like just getting started and you're like, I need 10 customers today to pay the bills, it's door hangers. After 6 months, 12 months, you've got 20, 30 clients, like the next step is like getting your trucks wrapped or vinyls on because that won't get you 10 customers next week, But it will start to build those touchpoints where they see the truck and they see the truck and then it'll over time, over 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, it will pay for itself. It just all doesn't come at once like the door hanger approach.

That's good stuff.

Yeah.

Alright, so would you rather have 100 customers but all spread out or 60 customers but packed into like one neighborhood or a local area?

60 customers in one neighborhood.

Easy.

All day. Easy.

Yeah, the reason for that is because even if you have 100 customers, you think, yes, you're gonna make more money, but you're not because you're gonna be spending so much time driving. We've heard from so many other lawn— or not lawn care companies, but people that worked at other lawn care companies, and they're like, man, your guys' route density is really tight. And it's like, yeah, and then you don't have to go drive 30, 45 minutes to your next property. With 2 or 3 people in a truck because, you know, other companies like to cram like 3 guys in a truck. We don't do that.

Yeah, so we call it window time, right? Like anytime they're behind the window driving to the next yard. If you have 3 guys and it's a 10-minute drive, that's 30 minutes of labor. 10 plus 10 plus 10 for a 10-minute drive. That's 30 minutes of just downtime and unproductive time. Drive time, it like kills profit. So yes, I would 100% rather have less customers, more dense than— because I mean, I've seen these companies drive 10, 15 miles, which is like too much. I mean, depending on the demographic, but like here with all the houses, you can build a million-dollar business in a 5-mile radius easy. Thank you guys so much for watching. If you like this type of series, make sure you let me know in the comments below. Hit the like button, subscribe to the channel if you want to build a more successful lawn and landscape business.