The Secret to Scaling a Lawn Care Business (Nobody Talks About This)

As owners, we go out and we hire people. I think too soon and we go buying trucks and equipment too soon. When really we need to fix the model, we need to fix the efficiencies, we need to fix the route density, we need to fix the processes of that before we start adding a second third truck or second third employee. So before buying any trucks or equipment, what I would do is try to fully maximize your capacity with that one truck that you have right now. I got you your notification about maybe like the biggest pinpoint is kind of maybe like sales also. I think it was like some regulation stuff about like enforcing terms and conditions. So I guess maybe share with me like what, what are the like maybe top two or three things like that I can help you maybe solve.

Sure. So from a. Just generally speaking, like my business is profitable, like on paper it's just not super profitable. And I'm definitely still like super scraping by, I would say for sure, like scraping by in terms of like the jobs that I'm getting. Like I'm accepting like customers I'd rather not have in terms of like dog waste removal and other aspects like that. I mean, I'm comfortable with what I'm making this year, but I'd like to make a lot more because it's my second year and I know my number in terms of like my top line revenue is low for like where I'm at and where I need to be for just having like one truck so far. Specifically the sales process. I just really struggle with a consistent sales process. Like I understand the options that are available, like door hangers, every door, direct mail, Google Ads, yard signs. I just kind of do them sporadically and like randomly. I don't have a set sales system, so I just was wondering if you could give me some advice on like a very basic sales system for like where I'm at with my business and like what you think I should focus on. Because right now I just do like in the spring I did a bunch of Google Ads. Then I'll like randomly put up a bunch of yard signs, like 20 yard signs on like a Sunday. And then I've done, I've done like 2,000 door hangers in the spring and I did get a lot of leads from the door hangers, but I haven't done since. It's just very sporadic up and down. I was wondering if you could like give me some advice from your experience, like how I pinpoint or how I just get a consistent sales process going because people really like the business. I do really good work. I have a lot of review of reviews. It's just like I feel like if I had five times as many leads as I had right now, I could do 200k with like my, myself and like my part time to sometimes full time employee.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay, so, so, okay, so that's a really good question. So how do we optimize the sales process to increase sales basically? And how are we, how are we tracking that too? Right. Like that's, that's a whole other piece of a component. Let's start off with this, with the sales process. Are you tracking how these leads are coming in?

No, not in any meaningful way. No.

Okay, so that's one of the big things that actually when I was doing some research on the website, I'm going to go ahead and share my screen.

Sure.

So one of the biggest things that we, that I would highly recommend to do is right here on this lead form. So you've got the name, address, email, phone. But we really need to know like how they heard about us. And so what I like to do, I had a fill in box like this where. But you could just create like a dropdown arrow and then have like truck, Google, Facebook, door hanger, like, and just list the like 7 to 10 marketing strategies that you do. That way when they come through the website we can track that. And then also are you answering the phones currently or.

Yeah, I do everything. I do everything.

Yeah. Okay, so I would also add that in your question. So like when somebody calls and says, hey Jordan, I need my lawnmode. Cool. Hey, you know, I need your address. And then just out of curiosity, you know, how'd you, how'd you hear about us? That is as important as basically the address itself. Because if we don't know where the leads are coming from, what we're kind of doing is metaphorically speaking, if you kind of picked up a ton of mud and like just flung it at the wall, some of it's going to kind of stick and then some of it's going to fall. And so we really have to understand like where those lead forms are coming from. So I would say that that would be like definitely first thing probably in the next week if you can get that on the website and then also incorporate that in your questions.

Okay, so understand where the leads are coming from and then basically just write, just like write that down on a notepad and like analyze it at the end of every month or something.

Do you use a CRM?

Yeah, I use copilot. I'm Familiar with. I heard about you from, like, the Mike Andy's content and everything like that and your content. So I use Copilot CRM. Um, I'm pretty good with technology and stuff, but I wasn't sure if there was a good way to like, write into CRM how to track the leads. Like the source of the leads.

Uh, yeah. So I'll show you kind of like what ours looks like on the back end. So, like, when you go here to a customer's property.

Yeah.

So like, at this point, you'd probably have them over the phone. And then once you're gathering that information, like their email address and all that stuff, if you come down here to the contact form right here. So how this customer found out about us. So you can come in here and actually preset this.

Oh, that's awesome. I didn't know about that. Okay, I can definitely do that.

Yeah. And then if you need to add one, you can just click add new. And then at the end of the month, you can come in here and go to reports on the side. I think it's this one.

Yeah.

And then go to customer source. And then this will tell you. So, like, as you can see in here, so we have stuff linked to the back end. That's why it's showing Zapier. But Google company truck, door hanger, Facebook. And then you can pull a report on how many customers you got for the month and where they came from.

Okay. I was doing this in the spring, and then I got really busy and I stopped. Not the co pilot, but just like I was asking on the phone, like, how'd you hear my. How did you hear about my business? And I just kind of stopped because it got busy and I was just like, really focused on the phone of like, closing the lead instead of the. Which I know is really marginal, but, like, I was just really focused on, like, organizing the estimate meeting or like getting in the estimate. So I kind of stopped. And I do understand. Yeah, I understand this is an important part of the process. I'm just really bad at this part of the business. So the entire, like, sales and marketing part, I just really struggle with. I. You can see on the balance or the profit and loss for the year. I spent 14,000 on advertising and marketing, which seems. It seems insanely high for only 110,000 revenue.

I wanted to ask you, what did you do last year annually?

73,000.

Okay, 73,000.

I lost a lot of money. I lost probably. I made 73,000. I spent 90,000.

Okay. So I Think one of the reasons why that at that ad spend is so high at 14,000 plus is because we don't know where the leads are coming from. And if we did, we would realize that maybe some of where our money is getting spent, maybe Google Ads, Facebook ads, like door hangers, whichever marketing routes that you're testing, there are some that are much better than others. And so what we would want to do is once we identify that, like, it's triple the cost of what these other avenues are. Like, I would cut that off immediately.

Yeah. I mean, from anecdotal bursts of advertising I did this year, door hangers, I put up like 2000. I think I had a point 8 response rate for the door hangers. The every door direct mail. I mean, I spent probably five grand of that. Fourteen thousand is every door direct mail. And I think that returned about 10,000. So it was like 2. $1 in, $2 out, like, which wasn't great for like 5,000. So what my plan is, we can move on. I'd like to move on to this topic. My plan is to basically just do door hangers. So like, fall cleanup and Christmas, like door hangers starting like next week. And just hit that really hard. And then I'll implement like these tracking process. Like this tracking process. And then I also have Google Ads running, but I'm getting like a 167 cost per lead on the Google Ads, which seems really high.

Okay. Yeah. As far as that goes. So are you. Are you just marketing for like, fall and winter services or like fall cleanups?

Basically fall cleanups right now. And then I'm gonna do Christmas lights as well. Okay. This is like the last week of mowing here.

Okay. And then have you. Have you done any. Have you done Facebook ads or just Google?

I don't know what. I. I'm not allowed to advertise on Facebook. I have no idea why. I haven't tried really hard to get into it. But my personal Facebook account, I've never advertised on Facebook. My personal Facebook account is banned from advertising. I haven't dug deep into like or I did actually. In the spring, I kind of. I tried for like a week to get the Facebook ads to work, but they banned me. I have no idea why.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. As far as 170 plus dollars for a lead, what do you know. Do you know what your close ratio is on copilot?

Yeah, so in the. Yeah, I didn't know my close ratio. So my close ratio for mowing and projects is roughly the same. It's 55%.

Okay, that's right. I did see that. I think it was like 56% for projects and then I think 54% are mowing or vice versa. Okay, so you're closing half of them. So, so really your customer acquisition costs on that would be like 340. Which, which is still. Dude, that's, that's still fairly high. That's still fairly high. So the, the other thing that I want to also disclaim is like based on the season of when you market, it will also dictate the customer acquisition cost and the lead. So like for example in the fall time frame we've, we've tried like leaf cleanup door hangers and we bought like a ton of them and, and went out and like canvassed the neighborhoods with that stuff. And what we found is that we, we pay triple, almost quadruple what it costs to acquire one customer than it does in the springtime or fall season.

Season specific services in the fall.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, now Christmas lights might be a different animal but like all of that is kind of speculation until we get the data. In order for us to run a true and real business, we have to be able to get the data to be able to make the decisions. So I don't want you to just assume like oh fall time frame is going to be triple cost because that's what will set. I'd rather, I'd rather us actually track the data properly in your market, tailored to your business, tailored to your offers, your pricing, all that package together and then we can come up with solutions based on the data. So that way we can make data driven decisions in the business. Right.

Okay.

So the, the very first thing like when we get off this call, like homework, like if there was, if there was like to dos, it would be to number one on the lead form on the website. We have to figure out how they heard about us. That's a, that's like a non negotiable, very simple, very easy. You could probably do that.

I can do that about very, very easily.

Yeah, yeah. And then the second thing is going to be when a customer calls. If you need to set up a sales script on your phone or so right here, this is, this is my calendar for me for my week and it's all color coded on like, on like what I have to do. If, if like this, this is how this important, this is if you need to put the six questions here. Name, phone number, address, email, how they heard about us. Every time the phone rings you ask those same Questions. And, and then again once you do it 21 times, it'll build that habit. But, but that, that is very, very important. So that way every lead that comes in, we know exactly where it's coming from. So that way we can make data driven decisions and figure out. I, I would be, if, if I was a betting man, I would be willing to bet that the EDDM possibly is not the best source. I've just seen it time and time again, only certain markets that, that really, really excels in. But like we don't know and we're just speculating. So honestly it's like obviously just, just like an opinion. Right. So like it really, we need the data to make the decisions. And so that, that, that would be the first thing to, to fix the sales process. Th, those two things for sure.

Okay. Or yeah, just like start an actual stuff. Okay. Yeah. I mean my, my mentality right now is like the actual cost of the door hangers are the cheap, are one of the cheapest options. And if I just need to grind the weekends right now in terms of sacrificing my time to produce leads, I mean that makes sense to me. Rather than like burning the cash that I have like in the bank right now because I have the time of it, like I can do the door hangers on the weekends. I can put them up at like 60 an hour, I think is what I tracked in the spring. So. Okay, so start tracking, start tracking everything and then analyze 100%, 100%.

And, and, and what I would, what I would do, Jordan, is like, you know, figure out a budget. So it sounds like you have money to spend on marketing, right? So maybe, maybe you put you know, a thousand or two thousand dollars on door hangers and then you put a thousand on Google Ads or like, like the number is, is relative. Like you can, you can change it if you want to put $100 on each one. Like you could do that, do that for a week or two. And then let's go back and look at the data. Let's pull how many leads came in. So how many door. Like we need to know how many door hangers went out. That, that's another big thing. When you're doing the door hangers, even if you need to like text yourself or email the company email, this is how many went out. And then. Yeah, because, because, because we need that data of like how many door hangers went out at this time of the season. Because this, because all that data too, you're going to need for next year and you're gonna. And, and you might see if it's anything like our market, dude, you, you'll see for us it's triple the cost of what it. Like if I market in the fall, I'm paying triple the lead cost and customer acquisition cost. So for me in my mind, if I have $10,000 to spend on marketing, I'm gonna push every dollar of that out in the springtime because I know the data and I don't wanna pay triple the cost for it in the fall. For now, while we gather the data, like you don't have to do mass, mass volume. Just do it for like a week or two. We'll grab the data and then we can, we can take a look and see how, how that looks.

Gotcha. Yeah, I can do that. So start tracking and then iterate, track iterate every like one or two weeks, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. One 100% and then. And what you'll find. Jordan too. Another marketing thing that I would look into is local service ads. It's a Google. Local service ads. Yeah, yeah, it's different than Google Ads. Same company, but like different. So you have lsa, which is local service ads, and then you have Google Ads. Right. Which is a different form. But I would strongly recommend looking into the local service ads. You have to basically legitimize your business, show proof of insurance, like probably provide like an ein number and all that stuff. Yeah, you know, you can set a budget a day on that, but you actually only pay when somebody like calls or messages you. And you can track that too.

Yeah, I looked into it. I think the only piece of information. I just don't have a. I just don't have an official Connecticut like contractor's license, which is what you need in Connecticut, which is just like, I think it's like a 250 bucks and some forms. So. Okay, I can write that down. Like prioritize getting that and then doing the local service ads.

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's going to be one of the, one of the big ones. And then let me just see here. Okay. Yeah. Dude, your, your Google my business is awesome. You haven't there which is Good. You've got 42 reviews. Let me see your pictures. Yep, we got pictures up here. We got videos. This is really good. Very good job.

Yeah, the brand, I mean, I feel better about my branding aspect. Like it's all red. I've got like, I understand like from the other content I've consumed. You want to have like pictures of your, of your employees. And yourself in the uniforms and the trucks. Yeah. I don't know if you can tell. I'm just not a very good people person. I really struggle, like, with the sales aspect of people. I used to be an engineer before I started this business. And so that's one thing I'm just kind of realizing. It's like, I have the truck, I have. My employee is really awesome. He works super hard. He just, like, competes with himself to get the jobs done. I don't do, like, pay for performance or anything like that. I just pay him hourly. But he himself, he's just driven. Like, he's a really awesome employee. It's just like, right now I'm just like, if I had more work, I could kill it. Because there's days where we're making the profit of the day is more than $1,000. Like, when we're really killing it. Like, when we do, like, these property cleanups and we're both working, we're killing it. And I'm just like, if I could line these up. And then also, I think I just need to improve my route density in terms of the mowing. I have like 60 mowing customers, but they're pretty spread out. I could kill it with just me and this guy. I just need more leads, essentially, which I'm not doing any of.

So. So you're going to do Christmas lights, you're going to do fall cleanups. Okay, that's good. And you're outside of that, you're just doing basic services, right? Like mowing?

Yeah, I do some weird. Not weird stuff, but stuff that's not simple. Like, some of the biggest projects I did, like, these sod cutting, planting, mulching projects that were between like 4,000 and 6,000, which were huge money makers. I mean, those were like the most profitable days, but they're complicated. Like, I do. I do all the designs, I select the plants. It's all custom. It's very. Not scalable. And I'm thinking about just cutting the lawn renovations, the sod cutting out next year, and just doing mowing property cleanups, fall leaf removal, and then Christmas lights to basically, like string from March to. To January. Like, string all that together and then maybe just take February off in terms of like, an off season. But that's another question I had in terms of sales. You're in Texas, right? So do you have an off season for mowing? Like, I know Florida, they mow less, but they mow year round. And I know you offer winter services, too, so it's like February February here is super dead. I mean, February is like the dead, the most dead part of the year. Do you have any, like, sales strategies for, besides winter services, for getting leads, like during February, March, January for landscaping?

It's a good question. So what we normally do. So we do go to winter services in the. In the winter. So December, January, February, which are slow seasons. February for us is very, very slow, very slow. It's probably similar to yours. So for us, what we do is what we're going to be offering this year is like a scalping service in February where we do a half scalp first on the. On that first, first or second week. And then the second week that we come back, we're going to do another half scalp and get the grass lower. We're also going to be focusing on trimming bushes or, I'm sorry, trees. Like, very, very light tree trimming. And we're going to package that into our winter services. So not only are we doing, you know, leaf cleanups, bush trimming, de weeding, stuff like that, but we're also going to add those extra too, because what we found is we were skipping a lot of our jobs come February time frame on the winter service. Because by that time we've been there, you know, four or five times throughout the winter. We've pretty much cleaned up all the leaves, trimmed the bushes. There's really not much left to do, and the grass isn't really growing too much. So what we're going to be doing is kind of a half scalp at the beginning of the month and then another half half scalp at the end of the month. Get it nice and short, get off all that dormant grass.

Right.

When March 1st hits and the grass starts to grow again, all of our lawns are good. The other things that we're going to be focusing on in February that we're really going to try to kind of pitch this year, number one, are prepays. So we're going to really lean into, like, having our customers prepay for the year and pulling a lot of that cash up front at the beginning of the year. So that way we can take that money and pour it out into marketing in the spring. I think that is a very underutilized approach that many people overlook also. So you said you had 60 mowing customers currently, right?

Yes, roughly 60.

So those 60 I would tailor very, very kind of like white glove service in February and try to pull up as many. Is it, Is it. It's not really snowing a ton in February up there, right?

It depends. I've Only I've lived here for a few years, but we live in. It's like southern Connecticut. It's really close to the water. I mean, I've even observed this. It doesn't snow here very much, but there's like, last year was like, four or five times there was snow removal, and then the year before, there was virtually nothing. Yeah. It's another consideration is that I'm having a baby that's due in January. My first baby, my first child. And so I don't really want to be on call for snow removal because I can't go do the snow if, like, my wife's in the hospital, like, giving birth. So that's why I'm going towards the Christmas lights, because it's a little bit more predictable in terms of, like, the scheduling. Yeah. And it also just doesn't snow very much. So I've also just considered saying February is an off, like a shutdown in the business just. Just for February. So then you can string, like, spring cleanups, March, spring cleanups. Mowing starts April 15th. We mow until October 31st. October 31st through November. The end of November, we do leaf removal, and then we transition to, like, Christmas lights. And then that's the business for the year in terms of stringing, like, March through January and then just February month off. I know it's not ideal, but I thought maybe just like, a cold cutoff, like, that would be good for me in terms of a break, maybe good for, like, the employees if I give them incentive to come back. So that's, like, where my head's going, but that's kind of longer term. I think the focus right now is I just have to sell basically $30,000 of leaf cleanups and Christmas lights between now and the end of the year. And that's really my objective. That helped me out with the sales process, like, the tracking. Some more specific questions I had. I've considered making a referral program because my customers are really happy with the work. Do you have a referral program? And, like, if you do, how does it work? And what do you suggest? I start with from, like, a simple.

Yeah, I think the. So we do have a referral program. It's. It's very simple. We just tell our customers that, hey, if they refer their neighbor, we'll give them a free cut during. During the season. It's nothing crazy, nothing special. Our average cut is about $45. So it's a. I mean, when you put taxes and stuff in there, it's about a $50 value for somebody to referring us. Yeah, nothing, nothing too, too crazy. I mean you could send a mass text or email out to your existing customers and say hey we, we're offering a referral program. Here's how it works. Customer signs up, mentions your name. We'll give you guys a free, your next service. Free or whatever.

Yeah, I could implement that with my customers. So that kind of leads into another thing I want to talk about which is like customer management. Yeah, I really struggle with this. Like I have like systems that are written down when we show up and there's dog poop. Like it's $25 removal fee. I pretty much just instantly fold whenever I get pressed on my customers which is something I'm really trying to work on. Like personally in terms of like I don't always enforce the terms. It really frustrates my employee. Like this dog waste problem is a huge problem. Well, not a huge problem. It feels like a huge problem right now. And I don't know how to handle Like I do know how to handle or yeah, you can tell. I'm like, I don't know what I'm, what to do with this. Like I feel like if I cut all my customers off because it's a lot of, like a lot of them have dogs. I feel like if I cut my customers off and like cancel on them because sometimes it's really bad. Like in terms of the yard, I'm going to lose a lot of business. But at the same time it definitely lowers my employees morale and my gut tells me I just need to sell more and like move away from these types of customers. But I'm also like, I'm not tech. I don't have any automation set up. So I'm not texting them like two days before like hey, we're going to be at your property. Sometimes I'm texting in the morning that we're going to arrive which is like I can't really hold them accountable because I'm not actually letting them know. And with enough like with the right amount of time that we're actually going to be there. So they don't even know we're coming. And sometimes it's like an hour before, which I recognize is a problem. I wanted to ask you, how do I, what are some like, what are like the first automations I should set up inside of Co Pilot to like stop this. Just everything runs through my phone. I'm just texting them all the time. Like it's kind of frustrating and I'm kind of, I'M not over it because I don't want to. I don't. I'm not over any of them. But I'm just, I'm bad at texting them and administrating these types of terms and conditions and like texting them and all this. I'm just, I just lack focus and like, consistency and it's hurting.

Yeah. Yeah, great question. So I think a lot of this, Jordan, stems from just structure and organization.

Okay.

And I think if we fixed that, it would fix a lot of the other excessive communication that we would have to tell the customer.

Yeah.

So do you. Let's, let's start off with the, like, we'll just. From a simplistic term, the mowing services. So you said like, do you just show up like whenever, throughout the week, or do you tell them on a specific day that you'll be there? Like, how do you tell customers what day they're going to be mowed?

So I'm fairly, I'm fairly consistent with the day. I basically have a route. It's like Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays we mow. I tell them every six to eight days for weekly and every 14 to 16 days for bi weekly. But the way it works right now is sometimes the day before, I'm like, oh yeah, I need to text 25 people tomorrow that I'm coming tomorrow. And then I text them at like 5 o' clock at night, sometimes in the morning, at like 7 in the morning before we actually get out of the storage unit. I text all of them then the day of. And I see why they're frustrated because they're like, I don't even know that you're coming. I don't even have time to clean up the dog waste. That's how it works right now. And it's a pretty bad system.

Are you texting the mowing clients that you're showing up?

Yeah.

Okay, so we don't text our mowing customers unless we don't show up. So what we do. So whenever we start a new location, we basically will cut it up into four mode days. If you look at the map, we'll cut it up into four quadrants. So the top left will be Monday, top right will be Tuesday, bottom left, Wednesday, bottom right, Thursday. And like, it's not going to be perfect pies or squares, but just find massive big road boundaries that you can be like, all right, this is the cutoff of that section is going to be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

Geographically on the map, you're talking like.

On your service Area.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, like the little tiny like service areas, quadrants.

Yep. Inside of your full service area.

Okay.

Now once you identify that then you can be more clear and organized and have structure to the customer and say look, you are on our Monday. Or let's say, yeah, Monday's routes, you can either roll with that or you could also say plus or minus a day for weather and other things. So they know, okay, if I'm on a, let's say Tuesday route, I could either be there on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Those are the three days during that week that we can get there. Again, we don't, we don't tell our customers but we do give them the hard date. And I would say 97% of the time we are there on that exact day that we tell them. Okay, like, like if they're on the Tuesday quadrant, we' 97% of the time we're there on Tuesday. And so.

Yeah, yeah, okay, I got you.

And so that consistency. And we just tell them, look like we're not going to tell you that we're showing up. You know, we're going to be there on Tuesday. Or if they're calling for a ton of rain on Wednesday or like let's say for example, maybe they might be calling for a ton of rain on Tuesday. Well, we might actually pull some of Tuesday's route up before the rain to try to get them done. So it gives you a little bit of wiggle room there without having to notify them every single time. You just tell them, hey, Tuesday is your regular MO day. Understand that we could be there plus or minus a day for weather and other unforeseen circumstances. Truck breakdown, team member doesn't show up, whatever. Most of the time we're there on that normal day, 98% of customers will be completely okay with that and you're giving them a hard day. There will be 1 or 2% of customers that say, I need to know exactly when you're coming out, I have a doggy door, blah blah blah. Cool, we'll put it in the notes. We'll have the crews ring the doorbell when they arrive. That way you can let the dog in, right? Or do do that. Hey, real quick. My business partner and I built a private school community for people just like you trying to build their home service based business from the ground up. We managed to build a seven figure lawn business from the ground up and we're sharing all of the SOPs that documents and templates and systems inside of our coaching program. You get access to Us So click the link in the description below. Let's scale this thing together. Yeah, we do not notify our mowing customers. Dude, that that's a lot of time and energy to do that. So I think just structuring organa like your most schedule in a way that, that in that area where they're on Tuesday is this area where they're on Wednesdays.

Yeah, the, the areas thing you're describing. I like I said it's Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. It is kind of split up in these three areas along the main highway. It's like 95. It's like this section and then this section in the middle and the north section. So it is kind of naturally split up that way obviously because the route density, natural conclusion of like route density. But okay, so I just tell them a specific day and then tell them if I'm changing the day instead of every single time. So like if there's weather do you tell the people like we're coming on Tuesday instead of Wednesday or do you just say like it's a three day range?

Our GMs do notify them and that's why I say like 97% of the time we are there on the normal day so they don't have to text them.

Okay. Okay. So just try to be as consistent as possible for the day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. And that, that will save you a lot of headache of having to communicate every time. But yeah, if, if there is a ton of rain coming we will text the route and say hey we're, we're going to actually do you a day before just, just to give them a heads up, let them, let them pick up the dog waste and stuff like that.

Okay. And so from there I'm kind of getting the sense that like there are just rules regarding like like customers cancel on me like 24 hours beforehand. They don't pick up their dog waste. They things like that are just really frustrating for me because I just don't handle it. I just say okay and then I skip and then it sucks. But that's kind of how the way it is right now and I want to, I don't think it's critical but it's just like personally very frustrating for me. And I'm trying to like systemize things so I think less about this and think more about the sales side of things. Do you have like what are your specific systems for the things like dog waste, customer cancellations? And then I have another question after you answer that question.

Okay, yeah, you're Thinking about that very smartly. So the last thing you want to do is have that stuff kind of bog you down because that's kind of like it's a, it is stressful when there's no structure in place. Right. So do you have a policy and fee, like email that goes out to the customers when they sign up, like a new customer?

Yeah, I have terms and conditions on every estimate. That explains like, this is what I was kind of getting at before. It explains like there's a $20 fee for a dog waste and I enforce that. So like I clean it up. But sometimes it's just bad. It's like there's 10 piles and it's disgusting. But I do clean it up and we do mow. But I feel like there should be like a strike system like after two of these. No. And same thing with the cancellations. The cancellations though, I don't enforce at all. It does say on the terms and conditions, like you can't cancel within 24 hours, otherwise it's like a $40 fee, which I basically just made up out of thin air. But I don't enforce the cancellations at all. People cancel all the time.

Okay. So what I would recommend is increasing the dog waste fee because you're basically a pet waste management company at, for $20 an hour or not? Not $20 an hour, $20 a scoop. Because that, that's, that's on average what it costs. Like in our market, it's about $20 for them to clump, come each week and pick up dog poop. So we're not in the pet waste business. We are in the lawn care industry. So we don't want to pick up dog waste. So if we have to pick up dog waste, I would at least double that. Like, I don't want to pick up dog waste. You don't want to pick up dog waste? Yeah, I, I would make the fee 40 or $50. Like that's what it's going to cost if we have to pick it up. So with that said, we recommend reaching out to a local pet based company and getting it done for way cheaper for only 15 or 20 bucks a week. So I would make the fee more strict. Now the first time we show up to a property and there's 30 piles, I personally am not going to charge a customer that fee 50 bucks. I will give them one warning in a text and an email. If there's a ton of piles, I will send them a warning that say, hey, this is a warning. Just a reminder, we have a $50 fee that if there is more, if there's excessive dog waste, it gets in our equipment, it gets in our trucks, it is a contamination issue, and I don't want our team getting sick if it gets inside. And that. And most people are like, that makes sense. Right.

And so wait, are you saying if you show up and there's like, 20. Like, you're saying, like, 30 piles, like, it's really bad, but do you do the work or do you and clean it up, or do you just, like, bounce and then reschedule?

So our policy, we train our crews that we will do the job 100% to satisfaction. Whether there's 10 piles or 100 piles, they. They will do the job 100%, and then they will leave a note on that job that says excessive pet waste, and then we'll see. That will text and email the customer, and we'll give them one warning. If it happens again in the next probably 60 to 90 days, we're charging a fee. So we. We actually don't pick up the dog waste. There are companies out there that do. I kind of pitch it to the guys this year if they wanted to, but none of them wanted to pick up dog waste. So that. That's how. That's how we handle it. We. We give the customer kind of that one warning. Nonetheless, if you are going to pick up the dog waste, that's totally fine. You guys can do that. Because it sounds like you don't want to step in it or walk in it and get all over the equipment.

Yeah. It actually happened today. I was doing a cleanup this morning, and we showed up for the cleanup. It was like a. It was a good cleanup. It was an expensive cleanup. And there were like, I'm not under. There were 30 piles in the thousand square foot lawn. And my employee said, I can't do this. And he went and sat in the truck, and I mean, I could barely. Like, I just gave her a refund, and we left, and it stung. I mean, it was bad.

Yeah.

And there was a big issue.

Yeah. So, like, and. And there. There are times, like, because it's been a. It's been a little bit since I've been out in the field, but I. I know exactly how you feel. I know exactly how you feel. You show up and there's 40, 50 piles there. It's very important that the team members communicate so we can tell that to the customer. Because if the customer doesn't know. Right. Like. Like, they just need to be notified on that. Yeah, I. I Would. I would make. I would definitely increase the fee. Make it sting. Make it sting. If you guys have to do it, you don't want to be picking it up or stepping in it. Neither do your team members. But at the same time, too, there does come a point where if it's that bad, me personally, I care about my team members, and I don't want them stepping in it or smelling in it that much. And so if the customers there. There have been times where our customers just kept getting hit with the fee and the fee and the fee, and they just never picked it up. But, like, my team was still like, like, dude, this is horrible. And we. We would just cut them. As a customer, Like, I would rather lose one customer than lose a really good team member that I can.

That's where I'm at. My team member is awesome. He just hates in my dog poop. So. Okay, yeah, I. I kind of get it. Okay. One other question is about, like, the administration. Another thing that I kind of, like, struggle. I don't struggle. I just like. Well, yeah, I do struggle. It's like customers asking for, like, really tiny stuff. Like, I have customers who personally text me. They ask me, like, plant a single plant or, like, pick up a single pile, and I just kind of forget about it because it's like, via my phone. It's like, in my personal business, cell phone. And I'm bad at, like, administrating and pricing this. So do I just do it for free because it's so small? Do I just not do it because it's so small? Do I delegate this to my employee when he's mowing by himself? Do I have, like, a minimum fee of, like, $50? So people. So it's like, because it takes time to, like, actually put this in the system. And other than just, like, taking the 10 minutes to plant a single plant, I have to, like, put this in the system. I have to remember, I have to. Maybe I need a shovel, like, in the truck versus the mowing service. Like, it does take other time, and it's so small. Like, how do you handle these little requests that people have?

So I would get crystal clear on the services you offer. Okay, Crystal clear. Like, even if the job takes two minutes, there's times where our customers will ask us to pull stakes, tree stakes out. And it's very simple. If you have the tool, we don't do it. If they want us to plant plants, we don't. I don't. Even if it's one plant, we don't do It. Because that's not a service that we offer. If it is a service that we offer, and it's a very small thing, I would say it depends. So, like, for example, let's say we're doing a mulch job, which we offer mulch, and there's just like a really small little tree ring on the side. Sure.

I'll.

We'll put a couple packs of mulch later. Like, what is it going to take, five minutes?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, like that. That stuff. No worries. If I got the material on the truck, I'll just. The goal. Like, what is the goal? To make the customer happy and satisfied. Right. So, hey, if it takes two or three or four extra minutes of my time and maybe a bag or two of mulch, I'm not. I'm not really worried about it, as long as they're a happy customer. But if they want me to, like, plant 10 flowers in the backyard, that's going to take me another 15, 20 minutes. He going to have to, you know, put together an estimate for you, get your approval, and then we'll get you on a schedule on another day. Because it's outside of the scope of work for the. For the visit today. We have so many jobs on our route for today's visits, and that is outside of our scope of work of what you had approved for this job. So what I can do, sir, Ma', am, I can put you down for an estimate. We'll swing by either later today or whatever. I'll get it sent to you, and you could probably send the estimate while you're there, because you're the owner. And that's. That's part of the struggle, Jordan, right now is like, you know how to do everything. And so you have the ability to say yes to these customers and make exceptions, but at the same time, every time you say yes to that, you're saying no to something else that's going to move your business forward.

Yeah, like, it's nice to make whatever. I planted a plan. It took me 10 minutes. It was nice to make 40. I charged her 40 bucks because I was kind of just like, testing, testing her, but, like, testing how much can I charge? And I mean, it's nice to make 40 bucks in 10 minutes on the site, but it's like, I don't. This is not a scalable process that she personally texts me, and I personally plant a single chrysanthemum that I didn't buy, and, like, I didn't have. Like, it just didn't make any sense. In a forward thinking way. So it's just been on my mind and. Okay, so make things crystal clear in terms of the services, like maybe just don't offer planting and then just be really strict about that. And then if it's. Just make it kind of like complimentary. If it's very small, like five minutes or less, and then if it's bigger than that, just say. We can quote this separately.

Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much, yeah. Just get clearly defined on what it is that you will offer. Like next spring, like the, like get a list. These are the only things we're going to offer. These are the things we will not offer. And just be like, no matter how much money you can make on that other side, those are not services that we're going to offer. These are the ones we're going to be very, very good at. So.

Okay, so can I ask you, like, can we just talk about operations for a little bit more?

Sure.

So going into year three, based on like my balance sheet and the yearly profit and loss statement, do you recommend. I thought about putting five grand down and then taking like another 10,000 for like a loan on another truck. Do you think that's a bad idea? Like, should I just maximize what I have right now to try to hit like 200 with one truck and one employee? Do you think you think I should go that route?

Great question. So I was going to actually tell you. So you doing, you did your this year, I think year to date, right? 111,000.

Yeah.

So just so you know, it sounds like your business is almost identical to ours outside of maybe planting and not. Right. And like you do Christmas lights, but we do other things. But like it's generally the same thing. 12,000 per month is what one team member should be able to pull in. Yeah.

So 24 for two people.

Now, if you even want to run it way more conservative, you can, you can go to 10,000. Because an employee is not going to work as fast as you and I. You and I will probably do 12, 13k by ourselves per month, but a team member can do 10. So if you multiply that by 12 months, it's 120,000 for one person. For one person. And you have two for 10 months. Right. For 12.

12 months for one person. 10,000amonth.

Yeah. So you are, you are on pace this year. I mean, you're, you're going to ramp up with the Christmas lights and the fall cleanups and I'm. And, and, and you're going to crush probably Most likely do 30k. If you start to track your leads and figure out which sources are the best. Right. And poured into the ones that are working. But even then, right, like you're, you're at 111 right now, plus 30, that's still going to put you at 141 for the year. 141,000. So theoretically speaking, that's about a business for, for one. Either one really, really, really good owner who's like super efficient.

Yeah.

Or some, or I. And I'm not calling you an average owner, I'm just saying a normal owner that doesn't have all of the efficiencies built in this, in the process yet. Which is fine. I didn't, I didn't have it figured out either when I, when I was starting. But that's what we do as owners is we go out and we hire people. I think too soon and we go buying trucks and equipment too soon when really we need to fix the model, we need to fix the efficiencies, we need to fix the route density, we need to fix the processes of, of that before we start adding a second third truck or second, third employee. So before buying any trucks or equipment, what I would do is try to fully maximize your capacity with that one truck that you have right now. So theoretically speaking, if one team member can do 10,000 per month times 12, that's 120k for one person. If we multiply that by two, because there's two seats in the truck, you should be able to do about 240 to 250k with the assets and the trucks and the, and the moaning equipment that you have right now. Or do you, do you have two trucks or, or.

No, I have one truck. I have a two, a 20 by 10 storage unit where I have a 36 inch stand on a 30 inch push, a leaf vacuum, three backpack blowers. Like the storage unit is chock full. Yeah. So this year I wasn't in terms of the 111,000 I get. I understand exactly what you're saying about like the capacity for two people should be 240,000 this year. It was like I had him play at the beginning of the season. I had to let him go because of performance issues. I worked by myself for like two and a half months and then I hired John who was full time and now he's part time. And I think John's going to come back. Well, he told me he wants to come back next year. He'll be like part time and then ramping up to full time because he's like a say he's basically like a, he's in high school, he's like 18, he's homeschooled. So he has like work availability because he doesn't go to school as much. So that's what I'm like. I'm honestly thinking like do I need to find someone who can actually be full, full time or is part time And I feel like part time is good for right now just based on like what you're telling me and what the, like what the numbers are.

Yeah. For, for even, even going into the winter time and stuff. Like, like I think part time is, is more than enough than what you need right now because you can, you're still doing the work out there, right. Like you're still doing cleanups, projects, stuff like that and that 111,000 which again you'll probably do like 130, 140 this year. But even then that's like one full time and like maybe a part time person, which it sounds like that's like right where you're at. Yeah. As far as like getting that, getting that second truck, I would focus on maximizing the first truck. Truck first. Unless you have like a ton of cash that you could just deploy in the spring. But there's processes and systems that we need to fine tune first before, before scaling. Otherwise it's just going to create more of a headache and more stress for you. I'd rather you dial in that one truck, two team members, very efficient route. Maybe we can even raise prices, pay our team a little bit better, get them on P4P. That those building blocks are essential to go from like 150 to 500, you know, and if, if you go too soon, it does create a lot of headaches and a lot of problems. But I think you're right where you need to be.

Dude.

You, you're, you're crushing it where you're at. You're doing a, a really good job. I would focus on maximizing that truck and the assets for first before, before going to that next one.

Yeah. Yeah, good question. I can definitely do that.

I, I there, there's a couple things I was going to wrap up, but what other like last minute questions do you have that are like pressing debt that I can help you out with?

My only other like real. You helped me a ton with like the administrative and the customer sales and the administrative. The only other like operational question I had is do you think I should simple. Like when the spring comes, should I simplify and just offer Mowing like April, May and June and acquire just as many mowing customers as possible and not even offer like, not even do property cleanups or like the lawn renovate. Like, I'm kind of leaning away towards like the lawn renovations in the. Like I said, the lawn renovations and the sod cutting. I'm thinking just no lawn. No lawn renovations, no sod cutting. I'm even thinking about just no property cleanups in the spring. Just acquire as many million customers as possible. Where is.

Or no where is most of your revenue on copilot. It should show you and you should be able to pull a report where is majority. Like if I. If you.

How many 75% projects.

75 are coming from projects.

Yeah.

And what, what is included in projects? Like when you say projects, is that like so, So I hear you say that you do sod.

Like, do you do like not sod. Not sod. Sorry, not sod installation. Like sod cutting to make, make landscaping beds. Property cleanups, just like cutting overgrowth down and like leaves and stuff like that. You know, like the property's a mess and you trim all the shrubs, you clean everything up. Like the landscaping beds, mulch install. And then I did some lawn renovations this year which are simple. You just kind of mow, install the topsoil, the seed. But they're just more complicated than property cleanups and mowing.

So what if? What if. Okay, I like, I like the projects because I think you can balance it. So I do think your head is in the right space in the spring focusing on recurring mowing customers. I do think you should prioritize that. However, if you're like our market, we do bi weekly in spring and fall, and then we're weekly during the summer. So we have typically a week off where it's kind of like slower. And what we do like to do is like fill those in with project work. So I think you can maybe like balance that now as far as like the actual renovation work of like, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna cut this sod out. We're gonna build a whole new flower bed. Instead of doing that in March, April, May, like whenever your spring rushes, that three month quarter where it's like the gold brush, maybe at that point is where you just click the pause button on lawn renovations and like flower bed creations because those are more specialized or more larger projects, you need a sod cutter. You got to bring filtered in stuff like that. And you still offer those maybe like in the fall time frame, after the spring rush to where during the spring rush, you're maximizing as much as you can on that recurring work that's going to keep you busy all year long and not letting those larger projects kind of get in the way, you know what I mean? To where like you're still doing maybe projects, but it's more just like trimming bushes, pulling weeds.

Yeah.

Like the smaller stuff. Yeah.

The property cleanups are extremely easy in terms of the complexity. The design and build, the landscaping beds and the lawn renovations are four to five times more complicated than the property cleanups.

Exactly. And so having to train team members on that, dude, it's, it's adds so many layers. So with that, it's going to take your time and energy and efforts. And right now you're answering all the phone calls, sending all the emails, probably routing all the dispatching routes and everything. So like, your time's already going to be spent really managing, you know, that next team member or two in that spring rush. So like I would say those complex jobs kind of just push off to the side during that three month period and then once things kind of start to slow down a little bit, you can kind of pick those back up.

Okay. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Yeah. Because yeah, the lawn innovations, you do that in the fall here mainly. Okay, well, thank you. That was some really awesome stuff. I feel a lot more confident now and I'm glad I'm not probably gonna buy a truck and go into a bunch of debt in March. So.

Yeah, last couple things here, I'm gonna, I'm gonna just fire around these at you. Okay. This is stuff that I kind of looked at. So one of the big things I saw in your. I think it was on the balance sheet or the KPIs 33 churn. To me, that's a, that's higher. That's higher than I would feel comfortable. That is a slight yellow flag for me. A concern that I would look into of how do we retain our customers. Also obviously do good work, which it sounds like. I mean, you guys do do good work, but I would want to, that, that would be something like part two that I would want to kind of like dig in and figure out, like, why do we have a 33% churn? That's, that's, that's a little higher than I would feel comfortable. Some other things that I would also mention on the website here. Real quick recommendations. I would recommend changing this background. Do you have this like this year round or did you just put this for the fall?

No, it's seasonal. So I have, like, I change it seasonally depending.

Oh, okay.

This is all. I change these panels and everything seasonally.

Okay, never mind then. Disregard that. I was gonna say something, but you're actually doing it, right?

Cool. Yeah, dude.

No, that, that, that's good. You're. You're absolutely crushing it. Yeah, man. You're.

You're.

You're doing a really good job. You're doing a really good job. I think if you really lean into kind of to recap that sales process and then really getting clear on the operational, adding fees, warnings, getting the most schedule set up in a way that you can give people hard dates during the week, it'll build more consistency, reduce the amount of headaches when you arrive on the properties, and allow the operations to grow much, much more smoothly.

Yeah. Thank you very much.