DON'T Start Your Mowing Business Like This!

If you're thinking about taking out a loan to start or grow your business, I want you to think about something. What happens when the phone stops ringing but the payments don't stop? Because it's easy to convince yourself that you need a brand new truck, a bigger trailer, or an expensive piece of equipment to grow your business. And when business is booming, those monthly payments Might not seem like a big deal, but what happens when things slow down? What happens when customers stop calling, the economy takes a turn, or you realize that expensive piece of equipment isn't making you nearly as much money as you thought it would? The bank doesn't care that you're having a slow month. They still want their money. And that's why I've always been extremely careful about debt. I started Military Lawn Cuts with a $100 push mower I bought off Facebook Marketplace, and over the years we built that into a 7-figure multi-location lawn care company without taking out any business loans. No loans on our trucks, no loans on our mowers. We've grown the business by reinvesting the money we actually made. Now, do I think everybody needs to do that? No. And do I think taking out a business loan is always a bad decision? Absolutely not. There are circumstances where I think borrowing money could make a lot of sense. There's a difference between borrowing money because you have a proven opportunity and borrowing money because you're hoping that money is going to make your business more successful. And I think a lot of business owners get those 2 things confused. So I want to walk you through When I would consider taking out a loan and when I would absolutely not, and what I would do if I were already buried in debt. Because the goal isn't just to build a big business. Look, I've talked and coached many businesses. There are businesses out there and business owners making $1 million a year, and trust me, they're not making a lot of money. There are solo operators making $100,000 a year annually that are making more money than somebody making 7 figures. The goal is to build a profitable business that doesn't keep you up at night worrying about how you're going to pay your bills. When I first started Military Lawn Cuts, I didn't know what I didn't know. I didn't know how to price jobs properly. I didn't fully understand marketing, customer acquisition, or what services were going to make us the most money. I was learning as I went, as I still am today. And just like anybody else starting a business, I made mistakes, plenty of them along the way. But here's something I've realized looking back: not having debt actually protected me from making bigger mistakes. Because imagine if I had gone out and financed a bunch of trucks and equipment before I really understood how to operate the business. I could have grown faster, but I also could have lost money a whole lot faster. And that's something people don't talk about enough. Everybody talks about how debt gives you leverage. They talk about how you can use somebody else's money to grow your business, and they're not necessarily wrong. Debt absolutely can help you grow, but it also magnifies your mistakes. If you're making good decisions, borrowing money might help you capitalize on those decisions. But if you're making bad decisions, borrowing money gives you the ability to make much more expensive bad decisions. And when you're just getting started, you're probably going to make a lot of mistakes. That's normal. Mistakes, to me, I like to take that word out and replace that with lessons because we're constantly learning. I know I did. That's why I think one of the biggest mistakes or lessons a new business owner can make is trying to look like a successful business before they've actually built one. They want the nice fancy truck, they want the brand new equipment, they want the big shop space, they want everything that comes with running a successful business but they can't and haven't figured out how to consistently bring in customers and make a profit. And that's backwards. You don't need to look successful to become successful. You need to learn how to make money, keep money, and reinvest that money into things that actually help the business grow. And that brings me to one of the biggest traps I see people fall into. Equipment loans. Let's say you're starting a landscape business. You see a piece of equipment that costs, let's say, $40,000, and you start thinking about how much faster you could get jobs done if you owned it. Maybe it's a skid steer or a mini excavator or some piece of tree trimming equipment. You start looking at financing options, and the monthly payment seems totally manageable. So you tell yourself the story that if I buy this machine, I can start offering bigger jobs and make more money. But here's my question: do you already have the work lined up? Because there's a massive difference between buying equipment to fill demand you already have and buying equipment hoping the demand is going to show up after you start to finance it. Let's say you finance that machine and only use it 1 day a week. What happens the other 6 days? That payment doesn't just go away just because the equipment is sitting in the garage. You're still paying for it. You've still got insurance, maintenance, repairs, and all the other costs and expenses that come with ownership. And if you've got a slow month or even a slow quarter, that machine isn't magically going to make your payment for you. Before I finance any piece of equipment, I would want to know exactly how that equipment is going to produce revenue. How many How many days a week am I actually going to be using it? How much additional profit is it going to create? Not hypothetically. We can pre-sell jobs before we get the piece of equipment. If you watch one of my videos on how to start a landscape business with zero money, you can literally just go door knocking and say, hey, I'm doing flower bed jobs, by the way, not have any equipment and say, hey, trimming your bushes, installing the mulch, pulling the weeds, all this will be $300. I need a 50% deposit so you can go buy the equipment. What you're doing is you're pre-selling the jobs. It's the same thing here. If you're going to go out and buy a wood chipper or buy a big excavator, why not pre-sell large jobs and get 2 or 3 of them lined up, 2, 3, 4 of them lined up where, you know, and just push them out a few weeks so that way when you get that piece of equipment, you know, already on the schedule, you have work to put it into practice. How much is the monthly payment? What happens if it breaks down? What happens if the work slows down? If you're only going to use a machine one day a week, it might make a whole lot more sense to simply just rent it. Bake that into your costs. Hey, I need this wood chipper for 3 hours on a Saturday because I got one job this week. Cool. It's probably like $30 an hour, $40 an hour from Home Depot. So just bake that into your cost to go pick it up and the time for you to go pick it up and bring it out to the job site. Yes, renting it might cost you more per day, but you're not committing yourself to years of payment for something that's sitting there most of the time. If you're using that equipment 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, and you've already got consistent demand for it, that's a completely different conversation. At that point, buying it might actually save you money and help you serve more customers. But I would want the numbers to prove that, not just my excitement about owning a new piece of equipment, because there's a big difference between something that makes you feel like you're growing and something that actually makes you more profit. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got from my mentor was this: only take advice from someone who is already where you want to be. And that changed everything for me because I became very selective on who I took guidance and advice from. Now my business partner and I are coaching and mentoring other home service business owners just like you who are wanting to grow and scale their business. So if you're wanting to get to where we are at, click the link in the description below and join us. Let's talk about a situation where I think financing could make more sense— a work truck. Let's say you're starting a service business, you've already got customers, you've got consistent work lined up, and you need a reliable vehicle to get to those jobs and make money. If you don't have enough cash to purchase a truck outright, financing a reasonable, reliable work truck could be a good decision. Notice I said Reasonable. I'm not talking about going out and financing a $90,000 truck because you want to look successful pulling up to a customer's house. I'm talking about getting something reliable that allows you to serve customers, make money, and grow the business. That's reasonable. You could probably find a truck out there for literally a third of that cost— $20,000, $25,000. We bought all of our trucks on Facebook Marketplace, used, 5 years old, between 80 and 100,000 miles and they last us like 7 years and they make us a lot of money. We make a lot of profit. I would still want to run the numbers. Can you comfortably afford the payment? Can the business cover that payment if sales drop? Do you have money set aside for repairs and unexpected expenses like an emergency fund? And is this truck actually necessary for generating revenue? If the answer to those questions is yes, Financing might make sense. That's different from financing something because you want it. And I think that's the distinction people need to understand. There are things your business needs and there are things you want your business to have. Don't confuse the two, because when you start mixing those things up, you can create a whole lot of financial stress for yourself and your family. And what happens is that starts to flow into your personal life. They go hand in hand. When things aren't going well at work, at your job, at your career, in your business, it typically flows over into your family life and vice versa. And I care about you guys, so I don't want you guys to have to go through that. I want to talk about that stress for a second because this is one of the biggest reasons I personally chose to build debt-free. I like sleeping well at night. When I lay down and I put my head on the pillow, I'm not Sitting there stressed out about all these monthly payments, or if we have a down month. Like, I value my peace of mind. I really do. I like knowing that the trucks we have are paid off. I like knowing that the equipment we have is paid for. And if business slows down, I'm not sitting there thinking about how I'm going to make a bunch of loan payments. Now, that doesn't mean we don't have expenses. We've still got payroll, insurance, fuel, maintenance. And all the other costs that come with running a business. Those responsibilities don't disappear. But there's a difference between having those normal operating expenses and adding years of loan payments on top of that. And here's what I think a lot of people overlook. When you borrow money, you're not just borrowing money. You're also committing a portion of your future cash flow, money that you haven't earned yet. And that's what makes debt dangerous. When your business isn't predictable, because you might have a great month today, you might have a great month next month, but that doesn't guarantee the next 12 months are going to look the same. Look at COVID. It's a whole different type of environment. Customers cancel all the time. Equipment breaks down. The economy changes. Unexpected things happen all And when you're already stretched thin financially, one bad season can create a snowball effect in the wrong direction. You start using the money coming in today to pay for decisions you made months or years ago, and before you know it, you're working harder than ever, but you don't feel like you're getting ahead. That's not the kind of business I want to build, which eventually leads to burnout. Here's something I want to make very, very clear. I don't think growing debt-free free is automatically the fastest way to build a business. In fact, I know it's not. If you have access to capital and you know exactly how to deploy it profitably, debt can absolutely help you grow much faster. But I also believe that growing faster isn't always the same thing as growing better, especially when you don't fully understand your numbers yet. If you don't know your profit margins, your overhead, or how much cash your business needs to survive a slow season, I would be extremely careful about borrowing money because adding debt doesn't fix those problems. It just adds another bill. And before I took on debt, I would want to prove that the business works without needing that borrowed money to cover basic expenses. I would want a clear plan for how the money is going to generate a return. I would want cash reserves, and I would want to know that even if things go according to plan, We're not immediately in financial trouble. What if you're listening to this and you're already in debt? You say, Will, I've already made these decisions. What do I do now? Maybe you've got a truck payment, you've got equipment loans, you've got credit card debt, and it feels like no matter how hard you work or how much sales you get, you just can't get ahead. Here's how I would approach that. First, I would stop adding unnecessary debt because there's no point trying to dig yourself out of a hole if you keep making the hole deeper. Then I would sit down and write out every debt I have, every balance, every minimum payment, every interest rate. I want to know exactly what I owe. And then personally, I'm a big believer in something called the debt snowball. Now, there are 2 popular ways people approach paying off debt. One is the debt avalanche. That's where you focus on paying off the debt with the highest interest rate first while making minimum payments on everything else. And mathematically, that method will generally save you the most money in interest. I understand that. But personally, I like the debt snowball and here's why. With the debt snowball, you start with the smallest balance first. You make your minimum payments on everything else, and then you throw whatever extra money you can at that smallest debt. Once it's gone, you take that money you were paying toward that debt And apply it to the next one. Then you keep repeating the process. And what I like about that approach is you're getting wins along the way, which encourages you to keep going. Let's say you've got 5 different debts. You might be able to knock out the smallest one relatively quickly. Now you've only got 4. Then you knock out another one. Now you've only got 3. You're actually seeing progress. And I think That matters psychologically because getting out of debt isn't just a math problem. It's a behavior problem. You've got to stay disciplined. You've got to keep making those payments, and you've got to resist the temptation to go borrow more money. If you're tackling the highest interest debt first and that balance is huge, it might take you 6 or 8 months, sometimes years before you completely pay off that debt. And even though you're making financial progress, psychologically it can feel like you're not getting anywhere. That's why I personally like starting with the smallest balance. Those early wins build momentum, and momentum can help you stick with the process long enough to actually get out of debt. If you're somebody who's extremely disciplined and wants to minimize the total interest you pay, The avalanche method could absolutely be the better choice. But for me, I like the snowball. Another thing people ask about is debt consolidation. Should you take all those different debts and roll them into one payment? And my concern with that is people sometimes think consolidating their debt means they've fixed the problem, but you haven't necessarily fixed the problem. You've just moved the debt around. Now, to be fair, if If you can consolidate your debt into a lower interest rate, reduce your total costs, and avoid extending the payments unnecessarily, there are situations where that could make financial sense. But here's the problem. If your habits don't change, you're going to end up right back where you started. Maybe you've got 3 credit cards with balances on them. You consolidate all 3 into one loan. Now those credit cards have zero balances again. And what happens if you go right back to using them? You've got the consolidation loan and now you're building up credit card debt all over again. That's a disaster waiting to happen. Before I worried about consolidating anything, I would focus on changing the behavior that got me into debt in the first place. Stop borrowing money for things you don't actually need. Stop trying to grow faster than your business can afford and start paying attention to your cash flow. Because ultimately there are 2 sides to getting out of debt. You've got to control what you're spending, and you've got to bring in enough money to pay down what you owe. And if you're running a business, that means you've got to get good at sales. You've got to learn how to find customers. You've got to learn how to price your services profitably, and you've got to learn how to keep enough of the money you're bringing in. Because revenue alone doesn't solve your problems if you're losing money on every job. You need profitable sales. And once you start creating consistent profit, you've got the ability to start knocking out those debts. And building cash reserves. Looking back at how I started Military Lawn Cuts, I could have done things differently. I could have tried to borrow money early on. I could have bought nicer equipment. I could have financed trucks and tried to grow the company a whole lot faster. And maybe that would have worked. But I also know how much I didn't understand about running a business when I started. And I'm grateful that the mistakes I made weren't magnified By a bunch of debt. Because when I started with that $100 mower, I had to figure out how to make money with what I already had. When money started coming in, I reinvested it, then I reinvested it again. And as the business grew, we were able to buy more equipment, get more trucks, and continue expanding without taking loans. That required patience. And there were definitely times when having access to more money could have allowed us to move faster. But it also forced me to become resourceful. It forced me to pay attention to where the money was going, and it forced me to ask whether something was really necessary before spending thousands of dollars on it. I believe those lessons made me a better business owner today. So if you're considering taking out a business loan right now, here's the question I would ask myself: Am I borrowing money to take advantage of something that's already working, or am I borrowing money Because I'm hoping this purchase is going to make everything work. Thank you guys so much for watching. Hope this brought value to you guys. Make sure you are subscribed to the channel if you want to grow a more successful home service business. Thank you guys so much for watching. Hit the like button and we will see you guys in the next video.