Should You Hire Remote Office Help to Grow Your Lawn Care Business?

So what's wrong with like doing like remote training?

It's very difficult. I haven't done it fully, but I would imagine it's very difficult. And here's why. This is the seat that the person sat next to me when I'm modeling stuff for them. I'm answering the phone and I'm using terminology and they see what I'm doing that you don't get that when they start Remote. It's just invaluable to have that real in person training before getting pushed out. Remote.

Okay, so all, all I need help with was just office stuff. Stuff. I'm hiring someone in January just to get them in early so I don't have to deal with it. During the spring chaos. My questions were pay. I know we're probably not gonna be able to answer all this quickly. Pay, remote versus office. How do I train this person since if I do remote, which I want to do and just get you like your tips, basically, like, what, what should I know, what should I do and what not to do?

Do you have an office that you can have them come into?

No. I mean, I could, I could like have them come to my apartment and go to like this. There's a, a study room we could use.

So do you have a, like an additional bedroom in your apartment, like an office?

No, the leasing center has like, like I said a study area we could use. There's. There's like a coffee shop in Melissa too that has like a conference room that's secluded. But I mean, that's all I got.

Inside of your apartment, like, do you have like a kitchen? I mean, is it or is it just literally just like a bed in a room?

Yeah, I mean, I have a kitchen. I mean, I could person come over and just have them sit down.

Yeah, honestly, that's what we did when we were training our first high office people. We. We literally had them come to our. My personal home. And I, we set up a table right next to my desk and they worked with us for one month before going to their house and we marketed it as, it is a full work remote. However, the training, you do have to come in for four weeks in house. And so it is weird, it is awkward. They're coming to your apartment. But it's what is required to get them up to speed so they can then graduate that stage and go back to their home and work at their house. That's probably what I would do otherwise to answer phone calls and like really get in the nitty and gritty of things. Like In a public space. I don't know, like in that area where your apartment complex has a study room. Like, if there's other people in around, it just might be distracting, honestly.

Well, there is a, like in that, the Lasik Center. There's the study. There's a big study room. It has like, different rooms. There's like one with like a door you could close. It's private.

Are you going to be able to book out that room for 30 days straight to where nobody's going to take it from you?

That's the thing. There's no guarantee that that's the problem.

But then. Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead.

I could like, put a backpack in there. Just like, leave it in there. Just like, hey, I was using that.

I mean, you could start there and then if all the rooms are full, then you just go back to your apartment. But like. Or you could just start with your apartment and get a, get a white table and so what's wrong with like.

Doing like, remote training?

It's very difficult. I haven't done it fully, but I would imagine it's very difficult. And here's why. When you have. So this is the seat that the person sat in next to me. And when I'm modeling stuff for them, I'm answering the phone and I'm communicating and I'm using words and I'm using tech terminology that, that's that invaluable feedback of like, just they're next to me, right seat, left seat, for. For eight straight hours. And they see how hard I'm working and they see what, what I'm doing.

You don't get that when it's when they start remote. And so you either a need to have your KPIs very dialed in from week to week on, like how to track their progress and output in production, which is very hard to do. And even me, I'm still trying to figure out and dial in our systems. It'll just be very. Unless. Unless you get very lucky and get a stud on your first one, which is highly unlikely. I think it might create more problems. If I were you, I'd bring them in house in my apartment for one full month, try to make it as professional as possible. I know it's weird. I know it's awkward. They're coming to your home. But like, that personally for me is what I would do. But if you want to try the remote thing, I mean, just make sure you got a lot of audio they can listen to. But even then, like, okay, cool. Like, they Listen to the audio. But like when you get off the phone and, and I explain why I said that because this customer said this. Like, you know, when you go back and forth on that, it's just invaluable to have that real in person training before getting pushed out remote.

Yeah, I agree.

Because we're gonna, we're gonna do the same next spring. We're gonna hire another office person and we're gonna have them come in for the first 30 days again, just into.

The house or like. Oh, like the.

But if I didn't have the hq, I would definitely bring them to my house.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Man, I was. My mom wants to work for me. I think I told you before, she wants to do that.

She. Let's do it. Why not? Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I actually, this last Saturday, I sat down with her at her house. We just, I literally just showed her what the job is like my daily task as an admin, because I'm still admin, actually manager and admin. So I showed her what I do and she was like, okay, cool. Like she, she's like, I could do this. But the thing is she is a educated person with a degree and she has a job that required that degree. She's a MRI specialist. I don't know what that, what her job title is, but basically, like, you know you're familiar with MRIs, right? Imaging. Yeah. So that's what she does. She just brings patients in, sits them down, she clicks all the buttons, gets their images and that's. She's a tech. She makes like $53 an hour.

So why does she want to come work for you?

So the reason why is because she wants to not have to drive to Plano from Melissa, which is at 6am she has to be there at 6, by the way, and works 12 hours a day. So she doesn't like that. And so then at some point, which her husband, my stepdad, makes 200 a year. 200,000 or 250. He works from home is what he does. And she could actually retire now. Living off his salary. But she wants to be productive and kind of help out still.

Yeah.

And the cool thing, too, is that they could move out to the country now, which is what they want to do. They want to get big property, live away from the city. So they could do that if she works for me.

From what it sounds like her goals are, even though she's taking. She's one number one, completely overqualified, taking a massive pay cut, she also is your. Is your mom and you're her son who she cares about and wants to see succeed in his business. And it allows her to get her goals and move out to the country. Like, dude, it's a win, win, win. So I'll share with you. Pull back the curtain a little bit. With our off current office manager that we had, she was a literally almost identical situation. She was making like 45 an hour or something like that at a bank. And when I got her resume, dude, I was like, she's so overqualified. Like, why would she want. Dude. And at the time I think I was giving her the position was 16 an hour. And every new lead that became a customer from them, she got 25 bucks for every customer that acquired. So she's making 16 an hour, but you got 25. So, okay, maybe 20 bucks. Like, you're literally getting half of what you're making. So when I offered her the position, I said, hey, I just want to let you know, do you. You know this is $16 an hour and you're making this much over here. And hers was the same reason. She was driving all the way out to McKinney, sitting in traffic. She didn't want to do that anymore. She wanted to be at home with her kids and be there for them when they get home from school, pick them up from school, work from home, have a better work life balance. And it was literally a win win. You got a super overqualified person, but they also have goals and needs too. So, you know, it just worked out that way. And it sounds like this is the same situation. I think it could be a win win for you, dude. I would start with your mom. And then, I mean, at the. At the very least, even if it doesn't work great, and you guys realize that maybe this isn't a good thing to do, to mix business and personal, that's fine. You guys learn from it. But at the very least, you learn. You. You'll get further along where you need to be. You'll get at least a rep under your belt of somebody that you were needed to train of what to do and this, that, and the third, the KPIs to look at. I mean, as far as paying, you'd have to look at your P and L. How much profit did you have this year, do you know?

Yeah, so we'll be just at about half a million this year. We're 25% profitable, so 100. 125,000 in profit this year.

That's good. It's very, very good, actually, at a 25% profit of half million.

It's because I'm manager, salesman and admin.

Yeah, you're doing it all. Yeah. I mean, you could, you could go hourly. I, I would, I would start off hourly. That's probably what I would do. To kind of ease your way in. And then typically, and I know it's your mom and she, you, you just gotta make sure that you have to do what's right for the business. And what's right for the business is probably to start them on hourly. Give them what? Give them an incentive on what you want. What you want them to do is make sales anytime, any free time. I'd have them be calling, pending estimates, getting jobs booked. As far as like the actual pay structure goes, I think you would need to kind of also talk to her and say, hey, like, what do you, what do you need to make? Like, you know, like, honestly, I mean, with the new office person that we're going to be starting off, we're probably going to start off at about 20 an hour somewhere around there. And then again, give them 20 or 25 bucks per new customer that they get a sign up for. Because that's what I want. I want them to book customers.

That's what I told her. Starting off at 20, I think 20 is fair. I want them to kind of be bought in too. I don't want to give someone 15 bucks an hour and they don't care. I told her 20 just as a base. But I think my more was like incentives because I'm so used to like performance pain. I love it. It's like, what kind of performance structure can we create? Sam has this thing on his coaching that is basically if, if we're hitting a certain amount per month, he gives them like a monthly bonus. So curious about that.

The reason why that doesn't to me really make sense for. And it might be in different contexts, but just in this context you're talking about an office person. Right? Like in another context that might work. So I'm not dismissing what Sam is mentioning or suggesting but in this particular situation, the reason why I don't think that works very well is because the office person doesn't have a whole lot of say in sales. Right. Like in monthly re, the GM has more leverage than the office person. The GM sends out the upsells. They can do property upsells while they're on the. On the properties. They can call, drive by estimates and pending estimates and try to convert. They can also ring the doorbell while they're there to. While they're doing estimates. What is the office manager? What leverage do they do have to pull to increase revenue for the month? Not much, except be really good on the phone and maybe call pending estimates if you have time. So, like, that. That lever isn't that big. Instead, what I would look at is looking at just tenure. I like, in the, in the short term, for every new customer sign up, I'll give you a bonus. So that way instead of you just making 20 an hour, all spring rush, dude, I will tell you right now on the phone, me and my office manager, we average like five to eight signups per day for two months straight. Yeah. And we're on the phone all day. And so again, if you take that, let's just call it a seven. Like, I'm booking on average seven people a day. Seven times 20. Even at 20 bucks, that's 140.

What are you paying them? 25 per customer?

Yeah, yeah. 20 or 25.

You just do that in the spring. You do that all year?

I do it all year, yeah. Because. Because that's what I want. I want customer signups. And so, but Yeah, I mean, eight times 20, that's 160 bucks. And then even if they book only five customers because they're new and they're not, they don't really know that's five times, like, even at 20 bucks, that's another $100. That's 260 a day. That's pretty good, dude. Like five days a week, that's 13. That's 1300 a week that they're, that they're making. Yeah. Divided by hours.

In the, in the winter, like you got on like 20 a week.

Yeah. That's 3250 for the position. So you can tell them, hey, it's 20. 20 is your base. But if you listen and follow the training, you're on target. Target earnings is 32 and a half dollars. Right in this. In the fall and winter time, though, you're probably gonna have to cut back hours, like at. Especially at 500, 000 even if you get to 7 or 800, 000, dude, like, it's. If your systems are dialed in, you're not gonna need her, like, all season, all year, you.