LIVE Q&A - How to Start & Grow a Mowing Business in 2026

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It is 3:45 Central Time in Texas, and, uh, we have a live Q&A. So appreciate everybody for, uh, tuning in. Hopefully you guys can hear me. It is a hot one down here in Texas. It, uh, believe was 102 degrees today. So we got— we already got some questions coming in. This is an interactive live Q&A. I got a little bit of some teaching points because that's just what I do, is try to bring value to people as we have questions come through. So, um, let's go ahead and just look at some of the ones that we got in here first before we go into a little bit of the teaching points. And then as you guys are watching, um, really the, the theme of this one is going to be really how to start and grow a lawn care business in 2026. So anything around that, feel free to ask questions and we'll go ahead and get them answered. So first off, my biggest supporter, my angel, the, uh, God-given wife that my, uh, that God gave, gave me. First question of the day: thanks for giving back as much as you do. You're very welcome. Thanks for tuning in. Uh, by the way, everybody, Larissa is at the gym and she's still, uh, she's getting her pump in, which is, is good. She's exercising her body and she is still supporting, so I appreciate you tuning in. All right, so Good Works Lawn Care says, hey Will, too hot to be outside, 100 feels like 106 in Lubbock. Yeah, so you're down here in Texas, brother. So yeah, you know how it is. Um, we're battling the heat right now. We got a lot of guys So for those of you that don't know, we have 3 locations, we have about 23 team members, and, uh, yeah, we're down here, down here in Texas. So the way that we're battling the heat is we are— I've told all of the GMs that we basically come 2 PM, we're done. I don't care if there's any more jobs on the schedule, call the team back, they're done. We'll move whatever's not finished to tomorrow. And we start at 6:30 in the morning also. So the guys are— if they're smart about it, they're starting their mower at like 6:50 because the noise ordinance is at 7. But I always give them a little bit of grace and I say, hey, look, if there's somebody that calls, I'm like, we'll stick up for you because it's hot. Plus the sun's up by that time anyway. So that's how we're battling the heat. But, uh, yeah. I know it's hot one out there for sure. 105 feels like 120. That's accurate. I'm sure that's what the, uh, the weather is showing. So, all right, so Larissa said definitely go easier on the hours given to the team members and supply liquid IVs. Yeah, so that's a couple other ways that we kind of battle that. So we do provide liquid IVs, or we'll make an internal concoction of some sort. You can YouTube it, how to make a homemade liquid IV. Uh, it's like magnesium salt and some other ingredients that you can buy in bulk, and then just get a jar and mix it, whether that be for you or your team. Obviously we have teams, but there are some solo guys in here that, you know, can, can do it themselves because liquid IVs are kind of expensive. So, and then yeah, just cut back on the hours for sure. Like that. That is a big one. Don't assume that they're going to do the same workload capacity that they did in the spring and fall. It's just otherwise you're going to burn your guys out and they're not going to stay. So quality of life is important for good culture and for you if you're the one mowing. So, uh, I was reading about that. Does it work? I'm assuming you're talking about the, like, concoction It does. Larissa actually did it, I think it was last year. The guys liked it. Sometimes you got to add a little flavor to it, like lemon or something. But yeah, overall it definitely helps the guys, and they, they would take it like a shot when they got back from their routes. That way they're not like cramping up and stuff. So yeah, it definitely can get pricey. So yeah, I would, I recommend just, just YouTubing it. You can, you can check it out online. All right, so said I went out in about, went out in about a 50 and 80 UPF clothing and hat and socks. Yeah, the brim hats. If you have brim hats, definitely. Believe it or not, guys, this is why you see a lot of the lawn care companies in the South wearing long sleeves, okay? It's, it's part of protecting your body from the sun, when those heat and the sun is hitting your skin, your, your bare skin, the guys get drained faster. And so we've been doing this for 7 years now, okay? So we've gotten pretty good at it and realized like, hey, that's why we, we're, we're actually going to full long sleeves, no short sleeves. And the guys, some of the guys don't like that, but It's— I mean, I'm looking at it from a production standpoint, and it's like, look, the sun really drains you when it's hitting your skin. And so if you can protect it, highly recommend it. Michael says, hi Will. Hi Michael, thanks for, for tuning in today. And Laura says, how would you recommend involving AI in your business in 2026? Okay, so this is a good question from the wifey. So there's a couple different ways that you can do this. There's certain levels of AI. So a lot of people are just using AI like ChatGPT or Claude to ask basic questions, draft emails, things like that. And that's good. And to do research, uh, you could always do, do research on things or competitors and seeing like asking it like, hey, where are the flaws in our business? To see like where the loopholes are that you can kind of utilize AI to get ahead. Um, the more advanced users are feeding it with data that, that know— so that way it understands more about you. So the more you put in, the better the response. And so, for example, I have Claude— I use Claude currently, and I have fed it like literally an essay of who Will Kelly is, what his goals are, what I value, what my core non-negotiable principles are, and like just a lot of the way that I think. Because, uh, that you can't like just pull off the internet. Um, like most of us think differently and strategically, and like as I'm gaining and learning these new skill sets, I understand certain things and certain things. And so if you can feed that into— it's a its instruction manual, it will give you so much more better results, and you won't have to go back and forth as much. So, um, you could do that way. We also have a phone AI answering machine, which we pay like $60 a month, which is kind of just basic. It answers all the overflow. Um, you could, you could set up a chatbot on your website, which we haven't done yet. But yeah, there's a lot of stuff, uh, you can code tools Um, there's a lot of things that you can do. Uh, I think at some point, probably the next 12 to 24 months, we'll just probably hire somebody who's like an expert on that stuff to just bring in-house to be like, all right, look at all these processes, look at all these systems we're doing, and then how do we implement it into our day-to-day operations? Good question. All right, before we go any further, we got two other questions, both from Michael. Um, this is a live Q&A, so we have 6 viewers, congruent ones, watching. But I'm gonna go into my little bit of teaching points here. So as I'm teaching, if you guys have questions, put them in the comments, we will get to them. So I want to share this verse with you guys from the word because this is kind of some of the stuff that I'm teaching my leadership team. So I think regardless of if you are a solo operator wanting to start your business tomorrow, or if you have a team already I think this will resonate with most people. So this is the verse, okay? It's from Proverbs 9:1-5. It says, wisdom has built her house, she has set up her seven pillars, she has prepared her meat and mixed her wine. She has also set her table. She has sent out her servants, her team, and she calls from the highest point in the city and says, let all who are simple come to my house, to those who are seeking wisdom. I'm now— I'm putting this in my own words. Come eat my food and drink the wine I have mixed. So that's the verse of the day, all right? Wisdom has built her house, set up the table. There's 7 pillars up front, okay? Has prepared the meat, prepared the wine, is inviting people. Come, come in. Come learn. Ordinary man, simple, simple people, come and come in and learn, right? So the question is, if you're like me, is how do you get wisdom, right? So like, okay, this person has wisdom, they've built their 7 pillars in their house. And there's another verse in the Bible, and I don't know if it's in Proverbs, but it basically says the wise man built his house on the rock. And the fool built his house on the sand. And when the storms and the floods came, aka the problems in your life, what do you guys think happened to the house that was built on the sand? Got washed away, got destroyed. It's basically a tent, doing our own thing, thinking we're doing our own path, right? I would rather seek guidance, seek wisdom, and build what I'm building, AKA a business, on a solid rock foundation. So when the winds and the rains and the storm and the floods come, it doesn't wash away the structure. It doesn't even— it's unshakable. It says it's unshakable. Right? So the question is, is how do you gain wisdom to not be the fool, right? That's the key, is how do you gain wisdom, okay? You gotta open your eyes and open your ears to hear the words and listen, okay? Listen to the word, it's alive. And so, um, I am recently opening up Proverbs, and in Proverbs it shares with you these 7 pillars and guides you and, and speaks to you on what these pillars are. But I would encourage anybody who wants to not build the rock on a— or rock— build their house or business, whatever you're building, your family, instead of building it on your own thinking that you're gonna lay the foundation properly, you're gonna build it in the right area, I would rather seek guidance and wisdom. And so I've just recently been reading Proverbs. I'm on like page 2 or 3, but man, I'm telling you, it's kind of wild because in there it talks about these 7 pillars. And just to share a couple of them with you to help give you guys value, so like one of the pillars is, um, is family. It's, it's, it's understanding, um, like family components of, of life and, and being there. Another one is finances. Right? So it's like not at a whim, just going through life or in business, right? A lot of what we're talking about is business, building a mowing business. Um, a lot of it is, you know, do, do you know how much money you're spending each month? When's the last time that you budgeted? Are you spending more than you're making? In order to be a good steward of what we've been given and to build a structure with 7 pillars that can withstand the storms and the rains and the floods that will come. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. We have to seek the guidance and the wisdom to understand that we can build on the solid rock foundation. And so that, that's a piece of the component. I, I've realized in my life that the more that I opened my finances and the books and I understood the numbers, I understood how much I was pricing to customers, I was understanding how much profit margin were projecting. Like, when we start— instead of just giving it to the accountant and be like, here, here you go guys, like, take care of it, right? When you understand those things and you take accountability and ownership and be a good steward of what you've been given at your level, you will be given more. If you're not a good steward at the level you're at, you could have 10 clients today, I don't know, 10 mowing customers. If you're not a good steward at having 10 mowing customers today, right now, and understanding the financial components of the business and of your personal finances— again, that's one of the pillars, finance— why would God give you more? Why would you be blessed with more? More when you, when you're not even a good steward of what we have currently. And so I am, I'm proud of you guys that are here, that are tuning in, that are interacting, asking questions, seeking guidance, seeking wisdom, because this is like the first step in your journey, in your career of like building that financial pillar, right? And it comes with gaining new customers, it comes with like putting the action in and growing and like putting door hangers out and like trying to get more customers, right? Like, all of that is part of it. We just got to make sure we're good stewards of not only our finances but also our time. So we've got some questions coming in. The topic on today is how to start and grow a mowing business in 2026. So believe it or not, give you a little background story. I started my lawn care company in May. It was May, May or June, like literally probably within the last 30 days, and this was like 7 years ago. Okay, so anybody that's watching, even if you have zero customers right now, you can do it. Now is the time. Now is the season across most of the United States. The grass is a-growing, my friend. We need to get out there, hustle, put some door hangers out, get the word out, be good stewards of our time, understand our finances, and, uh, you will be given more. You will be blessed with more customers. You will. You got to put the work in though. All right, we got some questions coming in. This one is from Michael. Michael, thanks for tuning in. Um, also, by the way, guys, We're gonna go till, uh, 4:45, so I got, I think, like 35 minutes. 35 minutes. We don't have any questions, we'll wrap up sooner. If you have questions, put them in the comments. Okay, um, all right, let's take a look. So Michael said, my sons and I mow about 15 lawns a week, 7-8 lawns per day, a couple days a week. They are biweekly cuts, takes us about half hour per mow. We are exhausted after those mows. So how do some mow all 5 days a week? So I would ask you, Michael, are you using zero turns or are you using push mowers? Because that's gonna matter. Um, I would be curious to know how large the yards are. Like, are we talking like I mean, it depends on the mowers too, right? Like, if you have a zero-turn, you could probably get— cut, cut a lot more ground, uh, with that. But okay, so the question is, my son says I mow 15 lawns a week, 7-8 lawns per day. Okay, so if each one takes you 30 minutes, I mean, you're probably closer to like our size, I would think, if you're push mowing, because most of ours are 30 minutes per one guy. So The, the honest answer, because we use 21-inch push mowers and all of our guys are walking, is realistically it takes a toll on your body. It just does. If you're above the age of like, I would say at the max 35, if you're above the age of 35, it is very, very difficult to go 5 days a week mowing lawns if you're walking. It just, it just is. And so the faster you can get through that phase of the physical stress— so there's, so there's 3 different stresses basically of the business, um, and the 2 that I'm going to talk about are the physical phase. So that's generally from like $0 to like $300K, $250K, $300K, depending on the services you offer. And then And then that's typically like 2, maybe 2 trucks, a couple of trucks, probably, um, 3 or 4 team members. That's, that, that's the physical phase where it's very, very hard on the body. Because if you're like me, most of the time you don't have great leadership skills in the beginning, because I didn't. And then you'll have a lot of high turnover in the beginning. And then what happens is when these guys call out, like, you got to go and like mow. Or, you know, whatnot. But, um, I would say to combat that, if you are older and you got your sons, I would let the sons do the more physical work because their bodies are just younger, right? Um, so for our business, what we do— so the mowing is the, is the most physical. Uh, weed eating is not that bad because you're really just doing the perimeter of the yards and then like maybe a couple of trees in the middle. Um, but those— that's, that's how we kind of combat it. Like, the older, the slower guy will be the guy on the weed eater or edger, and then the other younger dude will mow. So, um, I would say that's, that, that's part of it. Um, there is a conditioning phase in, in this industry where for the first like 3 weeks your body's gonna hurt, your back's gonna hurt. It's just part of the job. Um, until your body gets conditioned where if you are going to be the guy out there mowing, weeding, edging, blowing all the time, like, yeah, it's, it's, it's hard. I mean, it's, it's just blue, blue-collar hard work. And, um, we— what we have found is most of the guys when we hire that are above 35, they, they can't, they can't, they can't last. They don't. In fact, we just hired someone recently that, uh, was upper, like mid-40s or whatever and it was— it's too hard on him, it's too physical. He put his, you know, 2-week notice in, and, and I, you know, I, I've gone down the road a few times and understand that happens, um, but I also am willing to give people a chance and a shot. Um, so yeah, I don't know if that, that helps, but, um, what Larissa was talking about earlier with the liquid IVs, I would definitely look into that. Um, making sure your body stays hydrated is very, very important. So like literally a couple gallons a day. Like, seriously, I remember when I was out, I would drink like 10 water bottles just on the route, maybe 12. Like, I would drink literally a half case of water just out on the routes. So, um, yeah. All right, we don't have any questions at the moment, so we may be wrapping this up early. Does anybody have any questions? This is a live Q&A for you guys to help you guys grow a more successful Lawn and landscaping business. Any questions coming on in? And you guys are easy today, no questions, huh? So let me just maybe share with you guys what I'm working on currently. Um, I mean, and this— I don't know if this would help anybody at the stage that you guys are in, but, um, what we're doing right now is we're building a, uh, a training academy is what we're calling it. So anytime a new team member joins our team, basically what we're going to do is, uh, we're going to basically put them through a process. So we put them through orientation on day one And then after orientation, we give them basically homework to, uh, watch these modules that we've built. So we went out and filmed video footage of our crews working, okay? You could do this on your cell phone, honestly, and use free video editing software. Once you guys get a couple of team members, like, you'll realize the faster you can get them in, the faster you can get them trained. The better it is. That's why the McDonald's model works so well, is it could take somebody off the street and make them literally profitable in like 24 hours, 48 hours, on how to flip burgers, because they have the systematic way of how to do it every single time the same way. And so if you can build a process that way for your team, like, hey, this is how we mow a lawn, this is where we start this is how to adjust the mowing height, this is what fuel goes into it, this is what trigger speed to use on the weed eater. Like, all of these critical things that you would tell a new guy that has never mowed. Okay, everybody wants a part-timer or a helper. Your time will come that you— you— your goal is to basically duplicate yourself through that worker. That's, that's the leverage here, is, is to duplicate yourself. Right? And a lot of guys, right? Yeah, I don't know, the, the first, the first couple of years is a grind from a physical standpoint, and then it becomes a financial stress when you start hiring people. All right, we got some, we got some questions coming in here. Okay, solo operator, part-timer, 59. Okay, yeah, makes sense. Yeah, okay. I push mow 3K square feet lawn. I stopped doing one-time cuts. I am asking the new clients weekly or biweekly. I will take them. I have about 5 weekly and 4 biweekly. Okay, all right, we can work with this. Okay, so this is good. I would, um, I would, I would just be very— I'm gonna be upfront and cautious and communicate with you be very careful growing too quickly and trying to do everything yourself at that age. When you're push mowing, weed eating, edging, and blowing, you're going to get burned out from a physical standpoint. I'm just telling you right now, I'm not trying to be a Debbie Downer, or I'm not trying to give you negative stuff. I'm telling you what's going to come so you can build a plan to get over that hump. Finding a part-timer or a helper. Once you start to like double that and triple that, where you have like 15, 20 lawns, 25 lawns, starts to make more sense where you get a helper and then have your helper push mow all the time. That way you get off the physical piece of equipment and we can prolong your life in the physicality phase of the business. Otherwise, like, I just talked to a guy a couple weeks ago that was calling me. So this guy, like, was a venture capitalist or something, and like, he does like really big large deals. I don't know why he was getting in the lawn care business, but he did. And he had like 20 clients. And now with the Texas heat getting so hot, he called me and he's like, well, I can't do this anymore. He's like, I, I called you guys Military Lawn Cuts because I know you guys do good work. I've seen you guys around. You guys are credible, established, honest, reliable, and I want my clients to go to a good place. And so can we work out some kind of deal where I give you the clients? And so we were kind of working through that, but the— I asked him, I said, why are you getting out of the lawn care business? You just started this, this season, and you got 20 clients. And he's like, dude, it's so hard and physical on my body. And so just be prepared for that and understand if you need to hire somebody sooner to get that off of your plate, I would do that. Try to get you more in like the sales role where you're like driving sales. Um, I would get a CRM if you don't have one. By the way, actually, hold on, give me one second. I'm gonna share this with you guys. Anybody that's watching So we have 6 live viewers. I'm, I'm going to show you guys a, a, a, a internal thing here. So the software that we use is HomeWorks, and I just got connected with them for a basically a referral program where you guys can get one full free month, which by the way, it's free up to 50 customers anyway. So so you should probably test it out. But once you upgrade, um, if you use this referral code, you will get a full month for free. And, uh, what's nice about that is, um, what's, what's nice about that is you can't get the offer anywhere else. So, um, I'm gonna put it up here on the bottom. It's, it's referral _willkelly. That is the, that is the code. It will get you one full free month to test out the, the software. Uh, we have the enterprise version of Homeworks, but it's a really, uh, good software. All three of our locations use it. And, um, like, as you guys get through the, uh, let me take a look here. So like like you, you said that you have, uh, like 5 weekly clients and 4 biweekly. Like, if you have a CRM, you can send them a text and send them an email and say, hey, we're offering bush trimming this week or this month, right? And then maybe next month you're like, hey, let's try to upsell mulch and be like, hey guys, we're offering 10% off on mulch, uh, installation. And you start to cultivate your leads and your clients more so you can actually start to make more money per client instead of always trying to go and find the new next client, right? Um, so yeah, let me, let me, let me put the referral thing back up on the— on here. So it's all caps, REFERRAL_WILLKELLY. It'll get you a month of free, uh, software. All right, let's jump on into this. Where's my next question at? Um, Okay, here we go. Michael, yep. So, okay, so yeah, I'm 52 and started this with them a few years ago. One helps, one helps at a time. Push mow mostly small cookie cutter homes, also a 42 zero turn on some, but mostly pretty hilly. Okay, so the strategy here, Michael, anytime they're out there, let them mow. Okay, you, you're the weed eater, you're the edger, and then blowing. Like, you should not be the guy, because the thing is, when you're mowing, you have to walk up and down, you have to stripe every lane on the lawn. When you're weed eating, you just go around the perimeter once, so it's way less steps. So first off, I would say, hey, I would just establish a boundary. Hey, sons, I want to continue to do this with you guys as long as possible, and the way that we can do this is by you guys taking more of the physical work.. And so let them be the guy that, that is mowing. Um, and then you'd be the weed eater, edger, blower. And then also like, so recurring revenue is good and a lot of people like look for that of like recurring mowing services, but like also, I mean, bush trimming, bed service, mulch, like those are really nice profitable services that you can make quite a bit of money on. And generally sometimes they're like one time. You could try to turn it into a recurring service, but those services are less physical. Like when you're, when you're pulling weeds out of flower beds, like it's not as physical on the body as it is mowing. So if you can start to kind of push more towards like the landscape approach, that'll typically help you out. All right, do you put door hangers on all lawns or overgrown lawns? I have been getting good results putting them on the neighbors. So we definitely do know neighbors. So what's nice about the neighbors is when you do the door hangers on the neighbors, obviously that's a touch point because you're putting a door hanger on their door, and then they ideally have seen you there a couple of times already this summer with the truck. If you're smart about it, you have vinyl stickers on the sides of the truck. So now that's 2 touch points. Um, it— they say it takes 7 touch points to convert a customer to you and, and for you to become in their brain the, the credible company. Like, oh yeah, I've seen this truck around all the time. It's like, by— if they see you 7 times, that's generally like the connection of like, hey, yeah, let me call these guys, I've seen these a few times, right? Um, generally you don't get a ton of conversion on the first few. Cornelius, hey Will, my business does $12,500 per month in the morning, about $9,000 per month in cleanups, for about $21,000 in revenue. What's the next move in the summer to grow? Okay, I think this is Jordan Cornelius. I actually just shot a video today, it'll drop next week, answering your question. By the way, anybody who doesn't know, inside of all of my YouTube videos If you aren't subscribed, you should subscribe, okay? It's free. Um, but in the description of all my videos, I have a Google form that you can ask me questions 24/7, 7 days a week, and then I will respond to them. I would definitely take advantage of that. Um, okay, so let's look at this. My business does $12,500 per month in mowing. Okay, so recurring revenue is $12,500, and then $9K in like, we're gonna say maybe one-time cleanups. Um, what's the next move in the summer to grow? Okay, he's gonna give us more context here. Just myself and one employee looking for tips to grow recurring revenue and hire during summer months. Okay, I know you're, uh, I know your situation, Jordan, because of the Google form that you filled out. So last time I looked, you said that you had 40 budgeted hours per week. Okay, so understanding a formula of when and when not to hire is like crucial. Okay, so for us, in the spring and fall, our guys do 30 budgeted hours per week. If they're a full-time team member in a 40-hour work week, they should be able to do, once they've been trained, 30 hours of billable time. So if you take 30, divide it by 40, clocked hours, that's 75% efficiency. That means 75% of their day is spent working. The other 25% is spent doing something other than work— driving, loading, gas station, phone call, text, whatever. So in your situation, you would have the ability to have 2 full-time people. Okay, in that situation, because you have 40 budget hours. Now, in the summer down here in Texas, today was like 102, miserably hot. We don't expect the team to do 30 budgeted hours in the summer months. The production is going to go down. It gets hot, it gets humid, the guys are probably more dehydrated, so they're not able to crank out as much production. So you lose some production there. So we may— we say 25 hours in the summer. Is what we require each week. So 25 in this in the summer, 30 in the spring and fall. Now because we're in the summer, that means if you have 40 budget hours on the schedule, you have 2— you have room for 2 full-time team members with a little bit of margin in there, okay? A little bit of margin, um, because you need margin, right? If it rains, truck breaks down, I don't know, if you land a large job Um, you, you want that margin. So what, what I would say, Jordan, to maximize— so, so in order to grow, um, I would— if you have a CRM, I would recommend blasting out either a text or email to all of your leads, all of your clients, saying, hey, we're offering bush and bed service this month. Okay, um, definitely keep doing the door hangers. On the surrounding houses. That should help. And then doing a monthly upsell on like the biggest pain point service. And then once you go out and do that job— so people be like, yeah, hey, I need a quote to trim my bushes. Cool. So you go out there and do the quote, they book, and then when you trim it up, at the end of the job, ring the doorbell, do a walkthrough with them. Obviously, number one, to make sure that you did it right and that they're happy. Helps with quality and not getting 1-star reviews. And then as long as they're good with it and they're like, yeah, this is great, hey, this 5-star work, yep, great, awesome. Number 1, I would probably ask them for a Google review. And then after that I'd say, cool, hey, you spent like $200 today to trim all these bushes in the front and backyard. Um, you see, if you get on our recurring monthly plan, it's only like $79 a month and it saves you from this big hefty fee. And so, uh, we just come out once a month, trim the bushes year-round, and then, um, if, if it doesn't need it, like in the winter, just, you know, let us know, skip or whatever. And that would be a good upsell to the recurring work because that's, that's the goal. You always want to try to push the recurring work. But yeah, that's, that's probably what I would do to grow revenue. Um, the, the thing is, is like most, most people want to try to grow like their mowing business in the mid middle of summer, and it's like, like, you, you can, you can go and get flyers and go door-to-door and like get some clients to sign up, but like, it's not going to be like spring rush. It's just not. Ideally, if you did it right, you already have all of the leads from the spring rush, from your website, from them calling you, filling out your form the form on your website. And if you don't have one, these are all the things I would be working on this offseason to, to capture the lead in the spring when the phones are ringing off the hook and you're jam-packed with work, you can't even get to all the calls. Having a system to capture their name, phone number, email, and address is crucial. Even if they don't sign up in the spring and you're too busy to answer their call or whatever, at least they filled out a form on your website. And then come the summertime, like now when you're ready to grow, you're like, hey, okay, we got through the spring rush, ton of overgrown lawns, everything's kind of like simmering out now. Now we need to accelerate more, right? Um, that's where you tap into that resource and you start to upsell the all the leads that, that called you. Yeah, perfect. So you just said, uh, yeah, leads and homework every month. Every month. Dude, we've sent a bush and bed service upsell out, I think, the last 2 months, maybe 3, at all 3 locations. That's 9 texts. 9. Or, or, um, or— yeah, well, no, we do text. We do text because, because the open rate on text is like 85% compared to email, it's like 31%. So we always send text in an upsell. Super simple. 'Hey, it's Jordan. We are, you know, we got 12 spots left on our estimate route this week. Um, we're quoting bush and bed service for the front yard only. Respond back with yes if you'd like a free quote.' That right there, blast it to all of your leads and tech and customers. Dude, at both of the, like, each, each of our smaller locations, they had probably 30 estimates like just from that one blast. And they do this every month. That's 30 estimates every single month. And we, and we up, and we, and we do the same service. Like, that piece right there is, is probably the actionable step that I would say to, to grow revenue. And you're welcome. Um, yeah, I don't know if you need another person, honestly. I mean, if the one guy that you had— because I know you're asking like, should, should you hire— at 40 budget hours, 2 guys should be able to do 50. And then what you do is when you send those upsells out, you don't have to get them all done next week. You can spread them out, like do half one week and then half the other week, you know. But if you go and hire a part-timer, number one, it's going to slow you down to train. And number two, once those upsell work kind of fall off because most of them are just one time. Like, you're not gonna have any hours more for the, for the part-timer. So as long— now, all of this hinges, Jordan, on you having a rock-solid dude that you can count on to show up 5 days a week. If that guy's not there 5 days a week on time, not late, not calling off— like, if he's calling off and he's late and he's not reliable then yeah, you probably need another helper. But, um, yeah. All right, what else we got here? We got some more questions coming on in. Okay, so I get my wife to help me sometimes. I use Yardbook and have an Excel spreadsheet for backup. Yeah, so I— we used to use Yardbook. Yardbook's actually decent. Um, I think it's free. Most part. Um, once you start doing high-volume Yardbooks, I think they charge kind of more fees. So like maybe down the road you would want to look at other options, but like if you don't have a ton of clients yet, it's probably not a big deal. Um, but yeah, Yardbook is good as long as you have an area where you're capturing the leads, you're, you're scheduling jobs, and like you're not like like doing this on a notepad and pen, um, then yeah, you got, you got a pretty good system. All right, Young Lawn Legends, that's a cool name. We just peaked at 14, ladies and gentlemen. This is a live Q&A. If you have questions, put them in the comments below. We're talking about how to start and grow a mowing business in 2026. All right, right now my minimum price is $35 weekly or $50 biweekly. Should I push more for biweekly or weekly service? If I get more biweekly lawns, it raises my capacity, therefore I can get more clients. All right, this is a really good question, Young Lawn Legends, and I'm glad that you asked it. So let me share with you my story on my theory because I used to think the same way that you did. I'm like, hey, I could do more lawns, I could charge $50 per lawn. Where the problem comes in on that, I'm going to give you the pros and cons. The pros: you're going to make more money. That's nice. You're going to make more money because you're going to be biweekly, you're going to be charging $50. Like, that's all good. Here's the cons. If it rains and you got to push people back, dude, you're not cutting them for 3 weeks and it rained. Like, these lawns are almost all going to be overgrown. Your crews are not going to be happy, or you if you're the one doing it. They're not gonna— you guys aren't gonna be happy. You're gonna be playing catch-up and you're gonna be working Saturdays. That just is what it is. If you, if, if you had a full schedule of all bi-weeklies, here's the other problem. You double the amount of clients you service. That's double the amount of emails, double— assuming they're all biweekly, by the way, assuming they're all like, yeah, biweekly is better because they don't want to pay for the weekly because biweekly is technically cheaper, right? It's less money. So you'll have more people probably select the biweekly. If you've got all biweekly customers, if that— we're just taking it to the extreme— you will have double the amount of emails double the amount of complaints, double the amount of phone calls, because you have double the amount of clients that you have to handle. And people don't tell you this until you're like 3 years into it, and then you got to restructure the business. So what I would do— oh, by the way, if you had all biweekly, these are clients that don't pick up the— not all of them, okay? I'm just, I'm just sharing with you my experience. Most of them don't care about their lawns as much. They probably aren't picking up as much of the dog waste because they don't care about their lawn that much. They're, uh, what else are they doing? Uh, they're, they're probably not picking up the toys in the yard. They just don't care as much. Whereas the weekly care about how their yard looks because they want to cut weekly. They, um, pick up the dog waste. They don't have toys in their backyard, right? Also, these weekly clients, a lot more likely to accept an upsell. They are the ones that want mulch installed in their flower beds. They are the ones that want their bushes trimmed. The bi-weekly, not so much. You might be trimming their bushes twice a year, and that's because they're overgrown. Okay, whereas the weekly want it done 4 times a year. So what I, what I'm getting at is this: you could definitely get way more clients biweekly. Trust me, you can. It's cheaper, it's easier, it's fat, it's probably faster. But with half the amount of clients, half the amount of emails, half the amount of texts, half the amount of calls, you can literally do the same volume of revenue with half the amount of customers if they were all white, all weekly. Now I'm not saying that you have to go all weekly. What I'm saying is, is maybe instead of making it easier for them to go biweekly, why don't you say— so let me think about this. So $35 weekly would be— let me see what that would be. $35 times 4, that'd be $140. That would be $140 per month. $50 a month. And right now, if they went $50 times 2, that's $100. There's a $40 difference. I would, I would decrease that difference. I would decrease it. I would go, I would go maybe $60 weekly or biweekly. I'm sorry, $60 biweekly. So that way it almost kind of makes more sense for them just to get it cut more weekly, right? Like, you want to push more of the weekly revenue. It's more consistent for your crews. It's more consistent, especially if it rains and you need to skip them one week. It's not going to be massively overgrown when you get back there in 2 weeks. Um, yeah, that, that would be my, my recommendation. Um, I do like you giving the options, but maybe just raising the biweekly a little bit more for it to kind of sting, for them to be like, you know what, let's just do weekly. All right, we are rocking and rolling. He, he's a B player, unfortunately. Okay, so this is good. We got ourselves a B player here. So what I would do is, uh, either A, hold the standard high, which means if he shows up late, write him up. Write him up. Will, that's mean. No, it's not. You're— you guys both agreed that this is where you're going to work and this is the time that we start, and you were not here at the start time, you're late. Even if it's 1 minute, at Military Lawn Cuts we don't give a grace period. If they're 1 minute late, they're late, and we write them up. Now, we don't do it necessarily on the first day that they're late, but if they— if they're late in their first like week or two of work we're having a conversation with them, and the next time it happens, we're putting out paper like, hey, just so you know, this is not, not acceptable here. Our number one core value is reliability, and we have to count on you to be here every single day before your shift. Not if you're on time, you're late here. That's the standard that we set. And so, um, by doing that, Jordan, what you'll do is you'll either A, level them up because he'll be like, oh snap, Jordan's legit. Jordan's gonna hold me accountable. Jordan's gonna have a difficult conversation with me when I'm late. So he'll either— and, and you're— and you do it in a kind way, but you're gonna hold the standard. Hey, I'm just letting you know right now, if this is a consistent thing, you will not be here long term, and I'm having that conversation with you face to face sooner than later. Right? And so having that direct conversation— and again, I would, I would, I would want my boss to tell me how it is, like straight up, like instead of kind of sugarcoating things and like firing me or like letting me go like down the road. Like, so just having that conversation sooner than later and just holding him to a standard, uh, whether that be production, uh, reliability things like that. Just very clear when, when he's, when he's slacking, or there's things when his performance is dipping even just a little bit. Back in the day, I used to turn the other way and be like, oh man, don't look, I don't want to have this conversation, it's uncomfortable. That was the weak leader. That was the weak Will Kelly leader. Now, after 7 years of doing this, You give them an inch, they take a mile. I've seen it over and over and over and over and over again. Don't give them an inch. Hey, you're late. What happened today? Oh, I got caught in traffic. Okay, so what are we gonna do to fix that? Do we need to move our alarm up? Yeah. Okay, cool. Let's pull your phone out real quick. Let's, let's do that because I care about you enough to make sure you're here on time every day so that way I don't have to let you go. Because if this continues, I'm just telling you right now, you're not going to be here long term. That's the kind of conversation like— and, and I'm very kind about it. I'm, I'm doing this because I care about you, because I am going to hold the standard. And so, um, all that to say, that long rant, because I kind of wrap this up with a bow on it, um, if you do that Sometimes the B players will level up and they'll become like B+, A-. Sometimes they'll be like, oh man, I gotta, I gotta get better. And you give them the feedback and they adjust and they get better. Sometimes, like, it's like a 50/50. If they don't and you're— and you get to that second write-up or the third write-up, okay, I'm, I'm fine, I'm putting the ads up on the back end. That's just me. I'm gonna find another— I'm gonna find another player. And when I'm doing the hiring, I'm doing the interviewing, I'm asking them these questions of like, can I count on you to be here every single day? Because if not, I'm just telling you right now, I don't want to waste your time, I don't like my time being wasted, and this isn't going to work. I need you here every single day. And you basically just got to kind of set the tone up front really early, and we do that very well in a kind way, uh, in orientation. And what's nice is once you get a couple of B players or C players that you kind of fire or let go over time— it's hard when you're just starting off because you just don't have the reps yet— but once you get the reps, what's, what's, what's cool is you can take the stories from how you let the other guys go and be like, oh yeah, by the way, this guy was— he always was in traffic, he had car problems. I mean, and I get it, life happens, right? Like, I get it. At the end of the day, we're not running a charity here. We're, we're a for-profit company, and I need you here 5 days a week. If, if you're on the schedule, I need you to be here, right? So that's— and then when you set that tone and orientation, it resonates, and you start to build a winning culture and a team that values showing up on time because You know, the— see, like, like, even B+ players, like, they don't want to work at a company where guys are showing off or, uh, calling off a lot and they have to pick up all the slack and stuff like that. Like, people want to work with people that, like, work well, you know what I mean? So, by the way, guys, I ramble a lot, so when you ask me questions, sometimes I'll keep going. Um, we're coming to a close here. I got about maybe like 5 more minutes, 3 more minutes. So any last-minute questions, go ahead and get them in., quickly, and then I will, uh, address them so that way I can help you guys grow your mowing business. If you are 10 minutes early, you are late. Oh snap, okay. Yeah dude, that's legit. Like that, you're running a tight ship over there for sure. Um, I'll be honest, at Military Lawn Cuts, most of our guys like get to work 20-30 minutes before the shift. They just do. It's, it's the type of players that we're hiring and the type of vetting process we do in our, in our hiring. Like, we are very rigorous in our hiring process. Um, I will tell you that on— so on Indeed, we'll put an ad out and we'll have just rough numbers here, but they're pretty, pretty accurate. Out of 100 applicants that apply to come and work at Military Lawn Cuts Um, we will send a pre-screen Jotform application to about half of them. So out of those 50, um, I would say about 25 of them will, um, nah, I would say like, I would say probably like 20 of them, 20 of them will make it through that and then get to the in-person interview. And then out of 20, uh, we'll generally, generally select about 2, maybe 3 out of, out of 20, uh, booked in-person meetings. We'll, we'll select about 2, maybe 3 out of a batch of 20. And so, uh, we are, we are very selective on who we pull inside of the organization, and we do that intentionally because of the winning championship team mentality that we want to build. Also, by the way, on P4P, we got guys making $40 an hour. I'm not bringing in no C player that's going to make $40 an hour. Number one, they're gonna probably drag everybody else down, be late for work. Like, we don't, we don't tolerate any of that stuff. And so, um, yeah, you give an inch, they take a mile. So don't give them an inch, in the nicest way. And I learned that, like, it took me like 4 years to learn that. So hopefully that helps you guys not go through the headache. It's easier to have the hard conversation and just be nice about it, right? It's uncomfortable. Who cares? Like, the more you do it, the better you'll get at it. I bag all my clients. That is more work for me, bending over. Should I not suggest or charge more? Sometimes I sometimes cut more than one-third. Yeah, I would totally charge more if you're bagging. That's an— that's an additional service. I mean, I'm tacking on $10 or $15, right? Number one, you got to use bags, so you have to calculate the material cost on that, which I know is minor, but still, you got to buy more bags. Um, dumping costs, right? Your, your extra labor time of stopping the mower and taking the bag off every single time— like, that's a process. So yeah, depending on the size of the lawn, I would definitely be I mean, regardless, I would, I would definitely charge more. I just picked up a Honda. It has the mulch option. I could use that instead of bagging. Yeah, for sure. So by the way, I don't know if you guys are down here in South Texas, right? Um, we don't bag. I don't want to bag. Uh, it's not really needed. I mean, some clients are a little like, hey, can you guys bag? And we're like, no, we're not gonna bag, and here's why. So we— all of our mowing clients are on our fertilizer program. So when we fertilize the lawn, it actually produces, uh, grass seed. And the last thing we want to do is come through and bag the seeds and pull them off the lawn. So what we tell them is like, hey, our mowers mulch, uh, the clippings, which they do. And so, uh, basically what happens is, is it shreds it down underneath the mower deck and it falls right back down into the lawn. To reproduce and multiply. That seed falls back down into the grass and it multiplies the grass, and it, and it makes the base of the grass thicker. And that, my friends, is the most effective way to choke out weeds, is to have just a super healthy lawn. So we don't bag. If there are grass clippings like left on the lawn, like sometimes it leaves a little trail if you're taking a lot off, just blow it, disperse it. Like, you've got to blow off the grass so it gets dispersed. Otherwise, yeah, if you leave it, it's going to turn yellow and it's going to look bad, and then you're going to get complaints. You're very welcome, Jordan. All right, last one here. How should I pay my first employee? He would be working with me, so does P4P make sense? Great question. No, it doesn't make sense. For one person, I would not recommend the P4P system. Uh, I would, I would recommend this to any of coaching clients that I've had that only have one team member. It does not make sense to pay P4P when you only have one person. When you get the second truck and when you get that second team member where you cannot be with them 24/7, 7 days a week, all week during the, during the work days, that is when you need to switch to P4P. When you, when you can't be watching everybody at every moment. When you only have one truck and he's going to be riding with you all the time, the entire week, you're good, dude. You don't need to worry about P4P because you set the pace, uh, you dictate how the speed on how quickly you're gonna go. You're going to dictate on how hard you guys are going to work and what time you guys are going to get back. Um, so you don't, you don't need P4P on that. But once you get the second truck or a team member that's working in the field without you there, that is when P4P must get implemented. Otherwise you're gonna cause a lot of problems for you guys. All right, ladies and gentlemen, thanks brother, have a blessed evening, you and your wife. Thank you guys so much for watching. I really appreciate it. Um, last couple things, if you guys aren't subscribed, make sure you subscribe to the channel. And, uh, anybody that is looking at switching over to Homeworks, we have a referral code. You get 30 days of free— you basically get a free month. That's— you, you can't get that anywhere else outside of a referral. Even if you go to the company, um, they, they don't give you one month off for free. So we use HomeWorks. It's great. You can text your clients, which Service Autopilot didn't have when we were using it. And I don't know about Yardbook if that has that now these days, but there it is, referral_willkelly, and that'll get you a free month if you guys sign up. But I hope you guys have a prosperous summer. And, uh, yeah, if you guys ever need my help, in all of my YouTube videos I have a Google Form just ask me questions. I'm just trying to help the community. And, uh, yeah, I think that's the most fulfilling thing, is helping somebody out and expecting nothing in return. So thank you guys so much for hanging out. Have a great rest of your Wednesday, and we'll see you guys on the next live Q&A.