How To Get Consistent Revenue In Lawn Care

It's literally like 100% going to involve like you guys acquiring recurring customers. That is the unlock for you to have consistent revenue coming in to be able to pay somebody as a GM on salary and like have a good paying job, maybe even incentivize him on like sign up for customers. Like I'll give you an extra $25 if a customer signs up. When you're doing door hangers, it's so honestly early. You are in the mode right now, Austin, where the only thing that matters is to sell, sell, sell. So how can I help?

All right, so I'm going to do a quick recap if you don't mind. From our call that we had back in early spring. I think it was February. I know we talked about getting my truck wrapped. I got my truck wrapped, cost me like 1600 for everything, design and all that. So I ended up doing a like a half wrap instead of just name and number because I thought if I'm going to spend the money on it and it's already going to cost me a TH000, why not just get an extra 600 into it and make it look that much better. So my truck is wrapped. I still stay part time the whole season. Still plan on going full time next year. I did fill to capacity pretty quickly. We talked about doing a bunch of door hangers. I ordered 3, 000 of them. I only got about a thousand out. And then because of my website and my Google business page, I was getting enough in from that and then I filled to capacity. I also had somebody who saw my Google reviews he was getting out of. He was a solo operator getting out of the business. Had about 10 or 12 customers left and he pretty much shot them on my way. And I got eight or nine of those 12 that he sent to me. So I filled up pretty quickly. And then with just the the website and the in the Google business page, if I had any churn, I was pretty well staying right around 40. 35 to 40 customers all season long ended at right now 36 customers that are mowing customers. Some moved away towards the end of the season and I just. The end of the season people didn't fill back up. Which I kind of figured that is what it is. I'm up to 28 reviews as of today. So almost at that 30 marker I got a couple more that are supposed to be putting in reviews. I send them links and I'm just that it usually takes a couple days when I send links out. So I'm assuming I'LL get those in a couple days. So pretty confident. I'm feeling pretty good about how this year went. I ended as of right now with just under 26, 000 in revenue. I've got winter services going. I have nine customers that swapped over to that out of the 35. So I feel like that's a decent percentage. But that's one of my questions for later on. I didn't know what that percentage, a good percentage would look like for that. And then I also got into Christmas light installation this year so my goal for that was pretty much to break even including paying myself and labor for the initial buy in cost. I also took a class as well to for making sure I was doing the lines and everything correctly. I didn't want to do anything wrong, mess up customer's house, mess up myself. As of right now, I am right, right at breaking even. I've got another customer that has accepted the offer or just waiting on the down payment. That'll pretty well break me even. And then like I just told you right before the call, I just got a call from another potential customer. They're going to send me their information. I'm going to send them over an estimate as well. Hopefully that'll mean I'll actually make some money off of it instead of just breaking even. As far as the business goes, pretty good this year, man, I'm. I'm loving it. Ready to go, excited for next year to go full time into it. Questions that I have. One is I have a friend of mine. He's been a friend since I was a teenager and, and he is an extreme hustler go getter. Like he is a working fool and at the end of last season he was actually working with me some. He has his own truck that he was fine with using and he would just come pick up my stuff. And because he worked different shifts than I did, we both were doing it together on the side and he didn't end up being able to help me this year because he ended up getting a tick bite and it made him like super sick and like he couldn't even like walk halfway down his hallway without getting winded. It took a month to pretty well recover before they finally even figured out what it was. He's doing a lot better now and I'm wanting try to bring him on next year possibly to be able to double what I can do if not more if he's still willing to do his use his truck. But I'd ideally like to have something because he's Right now delivering for Budweiser. So he's got a pretty decent job, benefits, pay, and I'd like to be able to have some sort of a vision or a plan already to be able to present to him because he had talked to me before about hey, you know, if you want to partner, you know, he was interested in partnering. I don't necessarily want to partner like 50, 50 with him though. I'd like to keep it just me, but I'd like to make him a gm, which would be great for him. So I think. But I know I would need to have some sort of a vision lined out already for that to be able to convince him of leaving what he's got with Budweiser.

Yeah, a lot to unravel there.

Yeah, I know.

So real quick, so what was the annual revenue that you're on pace to do this year?

Sorry, so right now I'm just under 26, I'm at 25, 7. The with winter services, that'll put me at 28. And then if this customer, depending on the size of their, the one that just called me, depending on the size of their house, if they end up going with me, I'll be right at 30.

Okay, cool. So. So I guess so if I understand this correctly, the question is you have a part time helper who is helping you out. You want to potentially partner with him or maybe make him like a general manager where he's kind of getting paid well, where he can kind of step over and really help grow the business with you. Right?

Yeah.

Okay, cool.

Yeah.

Just off the top of my head, I think with you being like so like with this being. This is like your first year, right?

This is. I've been doing it on the side for three years now. So next year will be well, three and a half ish. Next year I'll be going into my, my fourth full year.

Okay, and the what is the goal? Do you want to do this like full time and then like build a bigger business where it's like 500, 700, 800K? Okay. Yeah. So initially off the top of my head. So you've got 30, 40 mowing customers, you're doing 27k. Are these all like the initial thought here from the data that you're giving me is personally I think it's too soon to pull him over as a gm just Right.

No, I do agree with that. Yeah. What I think I want is, is help with a vision to cast to him as he comes over, hey, you're going to be a worker now, but eventually you're going to be here as a GM and kind of cast that forward to him to be able to see the vision. Since I don't want to just partner 5050 with him and he would still want to come over for that position.

Yeah, got it. Okay. Yeah, so, so what that looks like is, is you would want to kind of build out. It's literally like 100% going to involve like you guys acquiring recurring customers.

Right.

That, that is the unlock for you to have consistent revenue coming in to be able to pay somebody as a GM on salary and like have a good paying job. Right. So what that looks like is, um, yeah, I mean you, you would, you would kind of want to build this, build this thing out. So at 30 to 40 customers, were you working part time or were you more like like how many days a week were you building this thing?

So it's part time depending on the day of the week. And when I was going into my main job at, at the bank, sometimes I'd go, I'd mow before I went in. Sometimes I know after, if I had a mid shift, I'd mow before and after. And then Saturday was just usually free. I'd mowed all day long.

Okay, got it, got it, got it. Okay. So yeah, a couple days a week maybe. Are you looking to go full, full time this upcoming spring?

Yeah, my plan is March. I'll be going full time.

Okay, perfect, perfect. So yeah, what that would look like is initially if, if I were you. For us, door hangers work really, really well canvassing neighborhoods and things like that. But I would want to incentivize him based on like how many reoccurring customers he's getting you for the business. Because that is what is going to unlock you to have a full time position as a gm. But like, honestly, like it is so that it's so early on where like, yeah, it like literally the only thing that matters and I would incentivize his pay structure around is getting more recurring mowing customers. Like I would give him like an hourly rate or I mean you could do salary. I don't like salary, but I would probably just do an hourly rate, maybe even incentivize him on like sign up for customers. Like I'll give you an extra $25 if a customer signs up when you're doing door hangers. Okay. And then from there that will help you build that reoccurring clientele to really build a sustainable business that, that's based on recurring work. But yeah, Sorry, that didn't really answer your question as far as that goes. But it's like it, it's so honestly early, like really like you are in the mode right now, Austin, where the only thing that matters is to sell, sell, sell. Right, like that, that is the number one goal is to sell. And so if he, like you said, is a go getter and a hustler, he should fit this role really well. And maybe you can incentivize him like, hey, for every 10 reoccurring mowing customers you get us, I'll get, I'll give you a thousand bucks.

Okay.

That really is what will build, build the business, you know. And so I would incentivize them heavily on getting reoccurring customers.

Okay, my next question, and just leading off of that, when this would be for me and also when I do have a GM as I'm building up and have a couple crew members and I become more of the working GM instead of just a solo operator. First question is, what type of work would I would the working GM typically be doing? Are they doing recurring based work or project based work or a mix of both?

Yeah, it's pretty much a mix of both. We have our GMs doing 25 to 30 budget hours of work each week. So what, what CRM are you currently?

I'm using Copilot right now.

Perfect. Do you have budgeted hours set up for each job?

Yeah, yeah, it's not exact, but it's pretty close.

Okay, cool. So yeah, as long as it's pretty close, you should be good to go and then, and, and you know, because you're out there. Right. Like, you know, okay, one person could do like maybe 10 lawns or whatever your rate is. Right. Obviously budget hours is what is required for us. We need that data to be able to hold the GMs accountable, whether that be you or the next person. But yeah, shoot for 25 to 30 budget hours each week. Whether it's reoccurring or one time project based. Honestly, it doesn't really matter. I tell my GMs to cherry pick whatever one they want. Like if they, if they like doing more landscape jobs, then schedule yourself that. If you're not doing estimates, if you like recurring mowing, then schedule yourself that. But I would also say whichever one is less physical too, the GM should probably be doing because the GM is somebody that is, you know, going to stay there longer whether again that be you or this helper. And so you want to prolong their career and not have them doing the physic hard, hard labor, blue collar physical work of like for us mowing is very physical because we use 21 inch push mowers. And so we try to pull them up to do more landscape jobs or weed control where it's way less physical.

Less steps to build off of that. Then when they are doing estimates or interviews, how do you, if they're doing the recurring work, how do you dish that out to the remaining team members who may already be full on a normal day to day basis.

So you're saying like let's say for example in your business let's just say one person can do 40 lawns right each week. So are you saying like when you get to 80 lawns and you have the GM doing 40 and then the helper doing 40, you guys are both at max capacity. How do you fit in like the interviews and stuff? Is that what you're saying?

Yeah. Without having to either overload the, the worker with picking up the slack since you're doing estimates now and or just working extreme hours because you're doing you know, four or five more estimates and a couple interviews or something.

Yeah. So generally our GMs are working more like 50 hour plus work weeks in the spring rush. Make that very clear. We also tell our crews that, that that is blackout dates. So like in a, only in emergency scenarios is are people able to go on like leave and like take days off because like we need all hands on deck. It is the gold rush, the three months out of the year that like we need everybody. There some ways that you can kind of counterbalance that if you have enough cash in the bank. What we like to do is hire people or like you said like part time helpers for door hangers. What we would do is actually over hire. So like if you have 80 lawns, like in a perfect world, yes, helper's gonna do 40, the GM is gonna do 40. But we don't live in a perfect world. And so what happens is people get sick, people get injured, people go get another job, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It rains, the truck breaks down, any problem you can think of will happen. And so I and we like to have room for margin and error inside of our schedule. So for me, if I had 80 lawns and I knew one person could do 40, I would not just hire, I would not just have two people at that location. Especially if we're going into the spring rush, I would hire probably three. And then that third one's going to be a floater I would put them on door hanger duty. And then when somebody, when, when my part time helper doesn't show up, who does the 40 lawns then, then I'm gonna, I'm gonna take my door hanger guy and plug him into the route and have him go mow. And so that way I know for sure the routes are getting done. And oh, by the way, if everybody shows up, cool, we're gonna go market and get more customers because it's a spring rush and I want reoccurring customers. Right.

Okay.

And that's when the demand is the highest. So that is when you will get the greatest return on door hangers. So that's, that's kind of how we navigate that now is now with the GM if we require them to do 25 to 30 budget hours, I understand when I do my, you know, KPI scorecard with them, if it's spring rush and they're. And you know, because we do two blocks twice, Tuesdays and Thursdays for interviews. So that's four hours. So if, if, if their report comes back that they only did 22 budgeted hours that week, I'm going to cut him some slack because you know, I knew the other four hours he was out hiring as well.

Right.

So there's a little bit of gray area, but majority of the time they should be do doing 25 to 30 budget hours.

Okay.

A week. Okay.

Next question is I started doing the last few months, I started implementing the profit first model. And so my question is, when I'm hiring team members and I'm running open books, if I'm following it, the open the profit first model essentially to the T with all the accounts, does that get confusing for team members to try to like look at and keep up with? Should I simplify that at all or do you see any issue with that?

Is your goal one location or multiple locations?

My plan is to do multiple locations.

Okay. Profit first is good for one location. Okay. And we started that at our first location. But as we grew and scaled, we condensed it to one bank account. And then what we do is we, if you take the last three months of revenue, divide it by three and get the average monthly revenue. Right. So for you it might be 3k a month. Ish. Somewhere around there, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So you would want 3k cash in the bank at all times.

Okay.

For operating funds. Right, Right. But yeah, as far as, I mean it's okay right now with the profit first if you want to keep doing that when it comes to Open Book Management, we don't show our frontline team members how much cash is in the bank and on the profit first. Are you like, do you have. Having all the expenses come out of one account or are you like, do you have multiple debit cards for multiple bank accounts and like using different things that way?

So I'm, I'm having all of the monthly expenses come out of one operating account. And then what I do is on the income account, I just, I distribute it like he says to do to all the other accounts, including the owner's comp. So I'll write one check from the income account at. To my. To Everlast Lawn Care and then use that one check to disperse to the other four accounts where they need to go percentage wise.

Okay, perfect. So in the operating expense or the OpEx account, you have, you know, a credit card or debit card that's linked to that, that all the expenses are going in and out. Okay, yeah, that's perfect. So you're doing it exactly right. When it comes to open book management, really the only thing that we share is the profit and loss statement. Okay. So. And we do that every month. We just, we open up the books, we show them the numbers, answer any questions, kind of educate them a little bit on like how what it costs to run a business, hey, we made 3k this month. We spent 2, 500, so there's only 500 bucks left over. We're going to keep that money in the business to buy the next truck as we grow and expand. Okay. That's kind of the conversation. Or it's like, hey, we made 3k, we spent four. So even though it looks like we're making money, we're negative a K, like 1000. Right. We all need to rally around and push forward. Right. Um, so it kind of, you know, you get the best of both, both of those sides. But yeah, that's, that's how you would do it for Open Book Management.

Okay, so then for growth, I'm wanting to get to 100 customers next spring rush, so I'll need to get at least 65, assuming I don't get any churn between now and then with the 35 that I have I've got still, since I didn't use them last last year, I've still got 2, 000 door hangers left left. After I got to capacity that I didn't end up needing to use. I'm planning on buying some more. I don't know that I need to order 20,000 of them or should I just order 20,000? Because I've kind of done the math. I got about one customer per 500 of the 1,000 that I put out directly from door hangers. And so if I went just door hangers and I didn't include my Google business and my website and I only assumed I was getting customers from there, I would need about 20, 25,000 door hangers. Should I just go ahead and order 20, 25,000 door henders or also kind of calculate, hey, I'm going to be getting some from the, the website as well and maybe Instead of buying 25000 door hangers, take some of that and buy some yard signs or something else and just mix and match Google, LSA and things like that.

How did you get those 35 customers you have currently?

So nine of them came from the guy who got out of, out of doing it himself as solo operator who saw my Google business page and looked at my reviews. And then the other ones came from websites, a few from Facebook and a few from next door. Not too many though. I didn't, I didn't track those. I don't know how many for sure, but it was only less than a handful.

Do you know how many came from door hangers total?

I had two. Yeah. So I had one. I put up roughly a thousand and I got one per 500 essentially. And I think I did it, when I put them out, it was still real early in spring. So if I had, if I didn't fill up as fast as I did, I could have put more and I probably would have gotten more. But I'm. Since I didn't, I don't want to base off of that.

Yeah. So I just ran the numbers on that same ratio. So at 20,000 that would get you 40 customers. Okay. So I think what will help it now, 20,000 is a lot of door hangers. Like you're going to need that, that part time helper you got. You're going to need him pulling his weight on those door hangers too.

Yep.

And that's going to take you probably like a month and a half, maybe two to get all that out and your feet are going to hurt.

Yeah, that's what I did math on. Roughly. Yeah.

But you will get the numbers show 40, 40 more customers. So yeah, I think 20,000 is probably good. And what will also help is now, you know, the timing. We started too soon. Last year in February we put out 800 door hangers and we didn't get a single call. Way too soon.

Yep.

If I would have put those same 800 door hangers out three weeks later. I pro, I guarantee you we would have got probably six or seven calls and we would have booked probably two or three customers from that batch easily. So just make sure the timing is right. Don't, don't try to start it too soon. Once the grass is growing and the demand and need is there, that's when I would go all in. Like have your part time helper if you can eat, like even if you could temporarily just hire somebody part time for like a couple of weeks, like because the timing really matters. I mean you may not have a ton of money in the bank to do that, but getting those 40 customers will, will, you know what, what is your average lawn cut?

$49 on my recurring bi weekly services.

And how many total visits per the, for the year?

I didn't look at that. I would be around 30. That's what I've been, I'm taking out some for like rain days and stuff like that. We've got about 36 to 38 weeks worth of cutting up here depending on the winter when it starts coming in. And I assume we're going to get a lot of rain this year. We had a ton of rain and I missed, I don't know, two to three services a piece on some customers just because of rain where we had to push it back. So I, I, but I look at about 30, 30 cuts for BI weekly. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. 30 weeks worth of cutting. Total 15 visits per customer.

Okay, so 30, 30 total visits per customer or 15 because they're BI weekly.

It's, it's 15 because all but one are BI weekly. So I do 15. And that's, that's short. I know it's short. I probably have a couple more in there. But I try to base my planning a little on the conservative side. That way I know if I, I can force myself to bust my butt a little bit harder to get what needs to be done, I can do that.

Okay, that makes sense. So 40 customers times $49 is $1960. And that's only on one visit for all 40.

Yeah.

So if you have 15 visits, that would get you another roughly 30k additional.

Right.

Just in mowing. That doesn't include any landscape projects. That doesn't include any mulch, bush trimming, like stuff like that. So yeah, I would say I would probably go at a minimum of 20k flyers.

Okay.

And then I would do my absolute best to time it right and get as many out as possible. When it is spring and the grass is beginning to grow, if you start too soon, it won't be as effective. If you wait till it's too late, it also won't be effective. So you have like a four to six week window that you gotta crank these out as much as possible to get to maximize a return. But even with that, like if you can get all 20k out, you should be from the numbers based on last year getting at least 40 customers because this year we're going to do it in the right timeframe window. And so it might, you might get 50 or 60 if you can get.

Which would be great.

Yeah. And that doesn't even include your truck branding. That doesn't even include your, you know, organic SEO traffic. Yeah, I think that's a pretty good plan to get you to 100 customers if you already got 35, you know. Yeah. Okay, look, building this kind of business can feel lonely. That's why we built a private school community that is based off of a ton of other home service business owners that are literally going down the same pathway as you. We are winning together. You get all the tools, resources and direct access to us. Join the movement today. The links in the description below.

Do you think it's worth getting some yard signs to put them on corners in the neighborhoods where I'm going to be at or at first just focus, get the flyers and then maybe afterwards as I get some work going in the spring rush. Get some flyers, some signs in.

Yeah. What I like to do is we've identified that the door hangers work well for you. Right. Like you're, you're getting that like 2% return on that or like, yeah, whatever. Like one, like every 500 customer or 500 flyers, you're going to get one customer.

Right.

So it's working. That, that works well. So I would, I would continue to do that. I would pour probably 80% of my approach towards that because we know it works.

Okay.

And then the other 20% of your marketing spend, I'm okay if you want to get 50 signs and put them out on the corners. As long as you're tracking how the customers heard about you and then just track that, you know, maybe get 50 signs, maybe get a hundred signs. But like if you go out and put out a hundred signs and you don't get like a single call from them, I probably wouldn't continue to do that. We do something similar. So we are actually building a really big campaign around door hangers this upcoming Spring. And then of course, we're definitely going to do local Google local service ads. Of course we're going to run some Facebook ads on the back end. And that's. That's that 20% of the marketing that kind of like it's just other avenues to kind of reach the customer. So, you know, maybe they get the door hanger today and then they see us on Facebook tomorrow. But I wouldn't pour a ton of money on any or those other avenues. But data is key, and so if you can track the data and test those in a smaller batch, then we'll be able to have data to make educated decisions for the. For the upcoming year of how to really maximize your marketing dollars.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, awesome. I've got two other that I think will be quick questions I asked in the school chat and I got a little bit of feedback. But do you have any knowledge of people paying themselves? Like, I store my equipment here at my house, like paying myself a little bit of a storage for that. Like as if I was running it out of a storage unit just to like, hey, I can get a little bit more money as Austin and the business is still paying what it should be paying, as if it was doing storage and it not be like avoiding taxes and doing things inappropriately.

So you're saying like, if you wanted to run it out of your house versus, like a storage unit?

Yeah, because like right now I am. And so I thought until I got big enough and I would actually need to move to a storage, I could just shoot myself, you know, 30, 40 bucks or something a month for storage from the business to Austin. And I knew of a guy that was a customer at our bank.

He.

He owned the. His business was a mechanic shop and he paid himself, but it was to another business who owned the actual plot that the corner, the. The building I think was built on. And so the, the mechanic shop paid the AE L L Realty LLC for his. And that's kind of how he did it. But I didn't know if you had ever seen anybody or had any experience with trying to do that.

I have. Do you need. Do you need more money personally?

Not now. And as long as all goes well next year, no, I won't either. But I just. That's why I was just looking. I was like, well, I'm going to have to do it anyways. And my thought was it would help me be able to as the business already have that expense there and just be more streamlined and be preparing, paying everything I would normally be paying. As I'm growing anyways, just the repetition of it, if that makes sense.

So you can do that to prep it. However, here's the flip side of that. When you do that, you're taking money out of the business that you can use towards marketing and sales to grow it faster.

Okay. Yeah.

And so like for example, if, you know, like for us, like when we first started out of actually this house right here on this other side of this wall, two walls, we started our business and at the time we didn't have an office manager. Right. If I went into it with the mindset like hey, one day I'm going to have an office manager that I'm going to have to Pay, you know, 3K a month towards, I could do that. Which actually we were kind of acting as the office manager but like again now we're pulling money out of the business that I would instead recommend to leave in. So that way we can grow it exponentially very, very quickly and get it to our goal faster, get more customers, spend more money in marketing, grow the top line revenue even more. So that way a year from now when we do have to get a storage unit or in this case three years from now when we need to hire an office manager or cool, we're doing 200, 300k in revenue, there's more than enough to squeeze in, you know, that a storage unit cost or a office, you know, admin cost part time, you know. So yeah, I think that's up to you. If you don't really need the money right now. I personally would try to take that money and put it into marketing at the right time in the spring, get more customers so that way they can pay for the unit in six to 12 months from now.

Okay. Last thing that I've noticed I've kind of had an issue with and I may be able to just google this and kind of figure it, but since I was, I knew I was coming to this, I thought I'll just write it down. I've been having issues with Jotform, I believe it is, I think the issues with them because I've got, I use them for lead capture on my website and I did a test when I initially first set it up and I just put my information in to see if it was going to send over to Copilot, input the information like it, like it should so I could cut down admin time. It did. But now every other lead that comes in directly from the website and fills out that job form, it fills, it transfers into copilot with all of my information that I did the very first time. Like it's memory saved it. Did you ever have that issue?

I don't recall. I don't think so. Are you using Zapier to link it?

Yes.

Yeah, I would go check your Zapier account and then go in there. It. It, it sounds like it's saving the initial test when you originally did it. I would go in. I don't think it's a Jotform issue. I think it's a Zapier issue. I would go in there personally. I would use chat GPT. I would give it that information that you just gave me and have it help troubleshoot that issue. But I think it's a. I think it's a Zapier issue. Okay.

Okay, cool. I think, I mean I've got some other things on it. I don't know how much time we actually have left, but those are my major things that I wanted to work bring up.

Yeah, my actually 3:30 canceled so I can probably go for another maybe 5 or 10 minutes if you have some questions. Okay.

Yeah, I do. I do have a couple other ones. Then for now you've switched over to some. So granular other than a couple that your basement I think do you record does it up here? Probably differently. But do you know is it. Does it typically require the same licensing if you're doing granular versus actually yard spraying?

So technically speaking are you in Texas?

I'm in Oklahoma.

Okay. They're probably pretty similar but generally speaking like as far as the application goes, like especially with like the fertilizer and stuff, you don't really, you actually don't need a license really the only thing you need a license for is herbicide spray.

Okay.

So it's like really the weed control side. And so for us we don't really even put weed control necessarily in our big tank. We do do per like pre emergent in the big tank. But I'm not 100% sure if you actually even need need a license for pre emergent. But I know for sure it's on the herbicide spray. When we're actively spraying weeds and we do all of that through our backpack spray. So technically speaking are you, are you licensed currently?

No, I'm not. And that was something that as I went full time and I filled my schedule with recurring mowing customers, I was considering looking into doing that. And if I needed to get license I thought well if I'm already going to look into, I could buy some of the, the Material to start learning in advance so I don't have to try to cram it in all at once.

Yeah. So like a good gateway that you could do that I've seen people do. This isn't really the best way because you're technically not licensed, but you could offer fertilizer treatments to your customers and fertilize the lawns. The problem with that though is you're kind of fertilizing the weeds too. I mean, you could, you can definitely do that. I would check with the Oklahoma laws of the Department of Agriculture to see if, as you, you know, grow and scale the business, which you recommended that you or said that you wanted to go to multiple locations. One of the biggest deciding factors on why we went with the chemical applications is because down here in Texas there really only needs to be one licensed applicator in the company. And then the people that spray underneath that license applicator are technically like apprentices, but they, they don't need a license. Okay. So all of the training is required by the license applicator to train them properly. And then if there's any spills or any issues or citations or violations, it all goes back to the license holder. But there are some states out there that require if there is anybody doing chemical applications that they all need to be licensed.

Okay.

Or maybe not have like the main license holder, but they need to be like a. Have a sub license which requires them to go to a test and get education, which from a scalable model that might cause a lot of problems if you're trying to scale to multiple locations and you have to get every single person.

Yeah.

Every GM license because we don't have our. You know what I mean? Like. Yeah. So as long as that license holder is accessible and like in the company, you're good. Okay. So I would just double check with that.

Okay. I forgot to ask this one earlier. As far as winter services go, what would be a. A good percentage? Because what I did this year I send out, I don't have. I just do the free version of Copilot. So I actually just manually text my 40 customers, which took some time, but I did it. I got chat GPT to help me get a template set up that would be professional sounding and everything. And I sent out a list of what the winter services would be and I gave, I gave them the option since most of them are bi weekly, of either staying on bi weekly or going to once a month services. Because most of my customers, they're not bad customers, they pay on time. They're, they're good customers to have, but their properties are not like the ideal properties of like, hey, we're going to keep our yard looking all your, you know, good all year round. And I really felt like I'd probably get a lot of kickback showing up and doing that without pre telling people, hey, you know, you have the option. I didn't want to have to do a bunch of refunds. So I had 25% of them doing it that way. That just over 25% that converted to it. Do you think that's a good percentage of conversion or should it be higher?

Honestly, I don't think that really surprises me because with most of them being bi weekly, this is what we found with a lot of our customers in the beginning because we used to just do bi weekly as well. The bi weekly customers are honestly like, I'm just being honest because I've been here for or doing this for like five or six years now. They're not really the best customers. The ones that just want bi weekly all year, they just like, they don't pick up the dog waste, they don't want the bush trimming, they don't want the extra mulch. Like, a lot of them, like you said, don't really care that much about the lawn. They just kind of want it somewhat maintained and kind of like that. So ever since we shifted over to our weekly model where we kind of force people during the summer to be like, hey, we, we mow weekly or not like, I mean, you can tell us if you want to skip, but our schedule is weekly. Okay. And it weeded out a lot of the kind of like cheaper customers that just wanted that, like, you know, the lowest cost. And so now we have way less customers if we're comparing our models. Right. And I'm just getting you to kind of think you, you will need double the amount of emails, calls, texts and onboarding for customers than we will because we put everybody on a weekly schedule.

Right.

You to build, let's say, for example, a 250,000 business, you may need 400 customers because most of them will be bi weekly.

Right.

Where we can get away with a, that same revenue with half the customers.

Right. Okay.

And then what we do is we upsell them on those other things and stuff like that. But I think it might be your approach. What we have found with our customers is about 60 to 70% stay.

Okay.

On winter services. Yeah, 60 to 70% stay. But again, most all of ours are really weekly. And also they have our wheat Control as well. So they're very like high revenue customers that pay us each year. But the way that we roll hours out, we don't really tell them, hey, do you want to do bi weekly or monthly, like winter services in the winter or do you want to like, kind of opt out? We just tell them, like, you are automatically enrolled in winter services. Okay, this is what it includes. It's going to save you money. Instead of you paying 6 to $800 for a spring cleanup in the summer, in the spring we come out and we chip away at it in a, at a very incremental cost. You don't have to accept any new estimate. It's very, it's very streamlined. We just, we, we keep your same bi weekly schedule because we, we're bi weekly in the fall. Okay. So we just stay that in December, junior and February. And we switch to the services your yard actually needs in the winter, which is, you know, pulling weeds, cleaning up leaves, like all the winter checklist stuff, right? Yeah, you know, think outside of the box. We're doing ice melt this year. We're doing covers, we're doing pre emergent in beds, you know, which I think you can still do without being licensed. Like, stuff like that. Like, how do we bring value? You can still pull weeds, trim bushes. And then at the bottom of that initial text, we say, if you would like to opt out and do monthly mowing, just respond back with monthly mowing. And so we're not really giving them an option per se of like this or that. We're like, in the initial thing, we're like telling them, hey, you're automatically enrolled. And then at the very bottom in a small little thing, it says, if you want to opt out, we can do monthly mowing. And so we're still, we're still trying to upsell them to, to a monthly visit. Like, the last thing we want as business owners is to have them completely pause services all winter because that's not how we keep our crews. Like, I don't want to lay off all my people. Like, we have to create value in the winter somehow. But so I think it might be your like, like, like the way that you're maybe wording that rollout of it. I really look into that also. You know, we shoot a video, like a 60, 90 second video of like, hey, it's Will. Let me explain to you why winter services is good. So we really take the time to kind of educate the customer a little bit more. And then, yeah, we, we do have people that opt out Though, but it's about 60 to 70% that we retain.

Okay, then the last actual question that I have on my list is, as I grow to multiple locations, do you think it would be best for the business to instead of having four, five, six locations, that is Eberleigh's Professional Lawn Care, rebrand that into either a whole different name or just even shorten it down to EPLC as the letters. Just looks more professional and sounds more professional than. Because it still sounds like a Chuck in the Truck name. You know, Daniel's Lawn Care, Austin's Lawn Care. It sounds the same. And that would set me apart a little bit more. Or do you think if I already have another location going and I'm gonna do three and four at that point, does it matter since we already know it's successful as is?

That's a good question. Like, I could tell you what I would do, but it may be different. Of what. Of what you're wanting to do. Right. Like, what I would say is to make it as easy. Easy as possible for the customer to know who you are and what you do. Okay. So a great mentor of mine, Mike Andes, I spoke at his conference. He asked me to speak at his conference. And I've been. And I was. And I've been getting mentored by him for, like, three plus years at the time. And I was at. And I asked him a question about something, and he was like. And. And this. This really struck me. He was like, will, he's like, I've known you for three years. He's like, you. You bet you spoke at my conference. He's like, I still don't know what the name of your business is. Like, I really don't. And if you look at this logo right here, it's actually this. This is our original logo right here. Now, does stand out that there's mowing. Right. But, like, nobody knows what the name of it is. The. The real name is Military Lawn Cuts and landscaping. But people used to call us Military Lawns. Military cuts. Military Lawn Care. Like, nobody knew, like, who we. Who we are and, like, what we do. Like, clearly. And so also, this logo, there's a lot going on. I don't know if you've noticed. Like, I'm looking at your logo right now.

Yeah.

But, like, whenever we would go get, like, printed shirts and stuff, like, there would just be way too many colors, like, simplicity scales. Like, there's a reason why Nike is this swish, and it says N I K E. Yeah. And, like, I'm telling you what I like after six years of doing this and building multiple businesses, less words, less pictures, less colors. Simplify it if you could, if you could maximize the SEO around it. So like, like you have Eberly's Lawn Care, I think, is it Eberly's Lawn Care?

It's Everly's Professional Lawn Care. But typically because I've shortened it down, it's easier to even say. When I answer the phone, I say Eberleigh's long Hair. But the actual LLC name and what's on the website and everything is Everly's Professional Lawn Care.

That's okay. So honestly, I, I like the name Eberly's Lawn Care. I, I like that you, you could, you could file a DBA and then just roll with that. You don't even need to change the LLC name. You just file a dba. So now you're doing business as Everly's Lawn Care, but the LLC on paper is Eberly's Professional Lawn Career. But then, yeah, you would just rebrand everything, like I said, with the logo. Again, when I'm looking at your logo, like I see a guy in a green shirt.

Yeah.

But if I, if, if I didn't know, like if you weren't one of inside of the home service scalers as a coaching, I honestly, I, it. Because I can't really see the bottom. I just see.

Yeah, it's, it's definitely a lot smaller than like the badge behind it. And yeah, even on the, even on the truck. On the truck wrap, which is a lot bigger. It's there on the logo though. It's still, it's a little harder to read.

Yeah. Honestly, Eberle's Lawn Care I think, I think is good. Like, I like that it's three words. Eberlease Lawn Care. You can, you can paste it on the side of a truck. Nice and big. Eberly's Lawn Care. And then, yeah, just, you know, obviously the logo. I mean, and we, since then we, we've, we've simplified this so we got rid of the whole circular thing. We got rid of the background. Our logo is literally just now the soldier and the mower. That's it.

Okay.

And then we rebranded the name to just Military Lawn Cuts. Three words. And so, yeah, simplicity scales. But yeah, so I don't think you really need to rebrand the whole thing, but I do think there's like improvement that you fine tuning. Yeah, yeah. And just. And, and that's like with any business, like when from day one, you're, you know, everything's evolving and changing and always getting better and so that's. That's normal. Okay.

Awesome. Yeah, I think that's. That pretty well covers everything I have then. Just excited to go on full time next year, man.

Yeah, dude. And then like, really the only last thing too, so. Yeah, so 27, 000, 35 customers, I think, I think that's good. The next thing, like, like, like, if, if I were to like, leave you with some good advice as I kind of wrap this up.

I think my kids are about to come in, just so you're aware.

Oh, no, no worries. No worries. I'll make this quick. I would, I would try to get to like, capacity of like, what, what you're able to do, raise prices before, like adding trucks and more cash.

Yeah, I think what I'm gonna have to do because I noticed when I. I went from being $40 to $48 this year, I actually raised up prices because I had a really good close ratio, especially once I hit capacity. Once I went to $48 before average BI weekly yard, I went to about 48, 49 close ratio. So I'm probably going to drop that down to an even 4. 45. I think people like those numbers around here. 40, 45, 50. So I can get the capacity faster and then race back up from there again.

Yeah, yeah. Cool, man. Yeah, that, that sounds good. You've got a great plan. 20,000 flyers going in the spring. You're gonna absolutely crush it.

Yeah. Awesome, man. Well, I appreciate all the, all the help and advice, man.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Keep crushing it, man. Good seeing you.

Yeah, good seeing you, man.

Bye. Bye.