How To Go From $0 To $500K in Mowing Revenue

If you are looking at getting started in a lawn care business, or maybe you already started your lawn business and have quite a few customers. In this video, we're going to be talking about how to go from zero to $500,000 in annual revenue. Now, depending on the services that you offer, this will fluctuate and dictate a little bit of difference. If you're doing really large projects like sod tree trimming or hardscaping patios installations, your revenue is going to be a little different. I'm talking specifically about the person who just got a mower off a Facebook marketplace like I did and is going door to door, putting door hangers out and starting and growing something that they want to eventually one day get out of the field, build an asset for their family, really change the mindset of being a team member, being an employee at a job, and going and starting their own thing. And I want to really share with you, like, the mindset because I've had the privilege, for those of you that don't know, my name is Will Kelly. We hit seven figures in the lawn care industry. We have three locations. We'll do probably about a million and a half, maybe 1.6 this year. I've had the privilege of really working alongside quite a few general managers inside of our organization. I'm going to share with you, like, what separates the, like, ones that, like, crush it and, like, go from, like, 0 to 500,000 in, like, 12 to 24 months, or the ones that, like, take a very long time to get there. I'm going to share with you kind of the difference. First off, a lot of people think that they're really busy. And the truth is, is they are, but they're working on the wrong things. And so at each stage in business, you have to focus on what is most important, because if you don't, you're going to be just like spinning your wheels like a hamster. You're going to be like, oh, my goodness, I'm so busy. But it's like, okay, well, the needle's not moving forward. You're really busy, but you're not getting things done. What grows a business from zero to $500,000? Well, the answer is sales. Sell, sell, sell. That's the only thing that matters from 0 to 500. The equipment doesn't matter. The truck doesn't matter. The shop space doesn't matter. None of that stuff matters except selling and getting more customers. There's a really good book out there called Seller Be Sold by Grant Cardone. Highly Recommend it. If you're trying to fine tune your sales ability. What can we do when we're just getting started to actually drive sales and get you to 500,000? This is the blueprint that I give my GMs, especially when we're starting brand new location or starting our third one this year. Literally one week ago, wasn't making any money. This week we're making money, right? We just launched in February 1st. So there are six main things that we teach our GMs when they are driving sales. Number one is doing drive by estimates. Not necessarily meeting with the customer, taking a lot of time, having to talk to them. These are drive by estimates. The other thing that I need to make very clear and I'm jumping around a little bit, for those of you that know me, that's just what I do. There are two seasons in lawn care, believe it or not. Depending on where you're at in the US or overseas. You have your busy season which you run around like a chicken with your head cut off and you're really busy working 10 to 12 hour days and then you have your off season, seasonal demand goes down. You've got to kind of be think outside the box, think of other ways that you can make money. There's two different roles here, okay? You got your busy season and then you've got your slow season. So in your busy season, we're doing drive bys, we're not meeting with the customers, we're trying to get the estimates to them as fast as possible. We're slammed with work, we're getting all the mows done, running out of the weed control, property cleanups, all that stuff. In the slow season, when you're doing drive by sales, if you're leaving or getting off of your job or business, like if you're done before 2 o', clock, instead of doing drive bys, knock on the door, try to sell the customer while you're there. Okay? Especially if you're like close ratio isn't that good, you know, because like really the only thing that matters is sales is getting more revenue. So why not go the extra mile, take the extra step on a drive by in the slower season when you have enough time and knock on the door, I promise you your close ratio will go up and your sales ability will get better. You'll start to hone in on your skill set once you do more volume and you'll actually be able to drive more sales and be more confident because you're doing face to face sales at that point. Number two Which I see a lot of people fall short on this one. We diligently follow up with every estimate that gets sent out. Calling and working are pending estimates. So you go out in the busy season, you do 10, 20 drive by estimates in a week, maybe 30. And then the slower season maybe only got like five or eight. Either way you're going to have pending estimates in the queue. You send the estimate to the customer, they look at it, they don't accept it or decline it. It just is kind of sitting there, right? They open it up, they look at it, they scratch their head, they maybe ask their spouse, they don't make them decision. You need to help them make a decision. When you call the pending estimates, what we do is we have our team call. Same day customer asks for an estimate, our crew goes out, they do a drive by. If it's a busy season, that day when they get back to the shop, they're calling that pending estimate. Not only are they calling on the property, when they send it to them, they're sending it in a text, they're sending it in an email. And then when they get back to the shop, they are going to call them. It hits them three times in the first day because that is when they are most likely to convert. Most of the time they don't answer, just leave a voicemail. But I see a lot of people don't call or follow up with their pending estimate calls. At a bare minimum, bare minimum, we need to be calling our pending estimates twice each week. If your close ratio is not where it needs to be, we need to increase that. Three, four, shoot. Call them five days a week, I don't care. You spent time, you spent money and you spent fuel and expenses driving out to this customer, customer's property, doing the estimate and then they ghost you like what is this? You need to make sure you at least get an answer. And guess what? It's okay if they say no, who cares? Try to overcome that objection. But we just need an answer. It's okay if it's a no. If they already went with someone else, cool, no worries, I'll decline the estimate. Have a great day. When that customer doesn't deliver properly, call us back. Because we're the five star company around town. Call your pending estimates. I see too many people fail on this. If you're tired of guessing your way through this home service stuff, we built a shortcut inside our private school group. We give you access to every SOP document and every blueprint that we've built that took us years to figure out. All you got to do is go down in the link in the description below. Join the group and you'll gain access to all of this stuff, including myself, to help coach you and grow your business. The third thing is going to be monthly upsells. In the beginning, when you're just getting started, you probably don't have a lot of leads in your database, okay? And that's okay. But we need to collect that information. We need to collect their name, their phone number, their email and how they heard about us in their property address and then add them inside of our CRM. So that way they may not buy from us or buy from you today, but down the road we're going to send them a monthly upsell of the one service that is the biggest pain point for that month. In the spring it might be mowing or weed control. In the summer it might be bush trimming, de weeding. In the fall it might be leaf cleanups. In the winter it may be snow. Right? Like what is the biggest pain point in that month for you to get as many drive by estimates on your schedule as possible. And if you're collecting the data from these customers, eventually after 12 to 24 months, you should have three, four or 500 people inside of your database. As long as you're executing well putting out door hangers, doing what you're supposed to. The next step in the sales process to focus is going to be doing personal property upsells. This is like guys, the low hanging fruit that you can get that is is so easy. I see so many people miss this. So we use a software called Copilot CRM changing to homeworks. They have the ability with a briefcase to click two things and you can send them a personalized upsell that you pre template type up inside of the database that says hey, while our crew is on your property today, we notice your bushes are they need to be trimmed. Let us know if you want a quote for that. It's a service we offer. The reason why this is so effective is because number one, they already know you and trust you because you're doing services for them already. Ideally we make them have a card on file already already when it's a very personalized, hey, I was there today and I noticed that you need the bushes trimmed. It's like wow, this company really cares about us. They're a five star company and they're looking out for my property. Very high conversion on personal property upsells. If you aren't doing it already, highly recommend it, it will get you to 500,000 faster. The next thing is going to be door hangers. Now generally door hangers are a seasonal thing. So you'll go out and put out these door hangers. Especially in the spring rush, we do eight round door hangers. That's two houses to the right, two houses to the left of the person that you're quoting. And then the four across the street totals eight door hangers. What we are doing this year is a hundred thousand door hanger campaign. Right? We're going, we're going 10x it right, right here. For anybody that didn't read that book, highly recommend it. Grant Cardone 10x10x it, whatever you think you're going to do. I'm going to put out a thousand door hangers, put out 10,000, 10 exit. You do that volume and you do it consistently. There's no reason in a matter of months, 12, 24 months that you shouldn't be coming up on 500,000 in revenue. So door hangers is a very, very effective thing. Now what we do, what we're doing is for every mow, for every weed control, for every property cleanup, and for every drive by estimate, every single crew, every single stop is going to put out eight rounds of door hangers. Also we're hiring a team of eight people to come out and hand out door hangers because we believe in it so much. So door hangers is a very effective sales strategy that you can do to get to 500,000. Which again by the way, for anybody that's watching that's been following us, that's our goal for our third location. Okay, we just started. Goal is to get it to 500,000 as quickly and as fast as possible. The only way to do that is sell, sell, sell. What are we doing to prep for that? We're having our team go on Facebook, take a picture of themsel in front of the truck in uniform, introducing themselves. Hey, it's Will. I'm the new GM over here at military lawn cuts. We're launching this location and these are the services that we offer. Give us a shout if you need some services. We are the five star lawn care company around town. Very, very effective. Get inside neighborhood community groups. We train our team, get into 7 to 10 groups, neighborhood Facebook community pages of local residents that you can post in the other thing. If anybody in those groups, because you can search is asking for lawn care, tag the website, say, hey, I highly recommend this company. They do quality work, they're punctual, they show up, we should be doing that and we should be not just doing that in the spring rush. By the way, it takes 11 to 21 touch points for a customer to make a buying decision. If we know that, then we need to do more volume and we don't need to just do it when they're ready to buy. Sometimes we need to do this a few weeks before they're ready to buy. So that way when they're ready to buy, they've already seen our truck, they've already seen the door hanger, they've already seen our sign, they've already seen this on Google. Guess what? That's four touch points. The more touch points you have when the customer is ready to make a buying decision, they're going to think of you first. This is how you get to 500,000. The last piece. I just put a video out recently about getting five star reviews. Go to Google, look at your local area, see how many reviews the competitors have. Double them, double them. Go out and figure out how to double them. If they have a hundred reviews, your goal is to get 2, 200. Every stop, every visit, every customer interaction. Hey, how was the service today? Do you mind leaving this five star review? These are the actionable, tactical things that actually grow a business. I see so many people, they get stuck in this wheel. Oh, they're so busy. They're organizing the shop. They're figuring out what the best mower is or the best truck is. Guys, none of that matters if you don't have sales. Get the sales first, then focus on that stuff. When you get to 500,000, cool. Now you can coast a little bit, take the foot off the gas a little bit because the momentum's already going. You've already got customers and a good customer base. You've figured out how to do good work. You figured out how to hire an employee or two. At that point, you've already got that momentum. Sales should be your number one priority when you are growing a business.