I Told A Home Service Owner To "Get Out of Snow Business!"

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Hello, home service millionaires.
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It's Mike Andes.
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I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care and Homeworks.
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And today I'm talking to a group of entrepreneurs.
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And there's some really good questions.
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The first one being a three to $4 million lawn care landscaping business that also does snow, but only makes up a small portion of the revenue.
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So I'm going to be walking them through why getting rid of snow services might actually make sense for their business and being able to focus on their strengths instead of deploying all their energy, all their concern, and increased liability on the part of the business they hate, which is snow.
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Let's go ahead and jump into this Q&A session with new members from HomeWorks.
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I'm Lindsay.
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Husband and I own Southern Touch Lawn and Landscapes in Bowling Green, Kentucky.
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We do three to four million.
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Like we did over three, not quite at four, but growing constantly.
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We've been in business for 15 years now.
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My question is not necessarily like a growth question.
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Mine is more of an operational question.
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I think our weakest link in our business is snow removal.
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In Kentucky this last year, we had a crazy winter, lots of ice.
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Was wondering if in your book or any of your resources, you had suggestions on demising that area of business.
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The snow specifically?
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Yeah.
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It's just a lot different than like, you know, we do everything on like routine maintenance.
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We do, we utilize the level billing.
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Everything is on a yearly contract.
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We have residential, commercial, all of that.
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But it seems like every time we have, you know, a big, huge snow event, excuse my language, it's always a show.
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of getting people where they need to be.
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And me as our office manager, I'm kind of in charge of developing those systems for us.
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And it is the one thing that is most frustrating for me, for our customers, and was wondering if anybody had any good resources and if you guys could offer any advice on that.
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Yeah.
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Like ultimately, especially your scale, the biggest question is what percentage of three to 4 million is snow?
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I would say 2%, honestly, because in Kentucky, you just never know what you're going to get.
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It's not something, you know, I know in Northern places, like it's, it's built into the contract and you get
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snow regardless of whether you're doing the service or not.
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In Kentucky, I mean, we could get dustings some year or some years, you know, we could have enough snow for 20 inches through the season.
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So it's kind of one of those...
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pay-as-you-go kind of situations.
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But when it happens, it's always crazy, you know?
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And there's like, how do you keep enough salt on hand?
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How do you know how to predict that?
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How do you have, you know, enough plows on the ground?
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You know, like this year we operated 20 plows on the ground.
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We have over...
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100 customers, you know, they all have different trigger points.
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Some are commercial, some are medical, you know, we got to be there within 30 minutes, you know, and it's just, it's a lot to manage when, you know.
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It's not something that we do regularly.
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And so I think, you know, just having more knowledge about how other people operate and how they dispatch and how they structure the service would be super beneficial for us.
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Lindsay, here's how you solve it.
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You cut it.
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Really?
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It's just a small percentage of your revenue.
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And it's taking up so much of your mental space compared to just focusing on the thing you're really good at.
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Like we can focus all day long on 2% of this revenue.
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Let's say it's a big year and you make 5%.
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If you took all that mental bandwidth, and by the way, your insurance is probably double because you have this service.
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You're not making money on it.
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It looks profitable on paper.
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And that's the logic you're telling yourself.
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But the mental space that's taking up
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the amount of training it takes for all these three members that you have to bulk hire them and then train them all up brand new because they haven't done it before, as well as the fact that your insurance is likely double because of it.
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So cut it.
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Ultimately, if you're trying to create a business, when we create systems in a business, it's standardized and simplified.
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Snow is the exact opposite of that unless you live in a market where it snows 20, 30 times a year.
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Specifically in Louisville, we have an owner there.
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We know this market pretty decent.
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You could have...
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30 inches of snow and you can have nothing.
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Nothing, yeah.
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And that's the worst business to be in.
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It's seasonal down to the day and the week.
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Like, I don't want that business.
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And if you would have said 30% of revenue, I would have started giving you several resources and here's how to make it more efficient.
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Here's some dispatch stuff.
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2% of revenue?
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If you just took all your mental space that you've been thinking about it and causing a pain in the butt and just thought about all the things you guys do really good at, obviously at three or four million, and you just put more time and energy towards that and serving those customers well, you'd grow more and you'd make a whole lot more money and you'd have less stress.
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Okay.
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You ain't got to tell me twice.
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I'm all the time.
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I was like, oh, I never want to do this again.
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Don't do it.
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Don't do it.
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At 2% of revenue, Lindsay, like the only thing I would say is I would only keep snow if it's hinging 30% of your revenue because customers are requiring you to do the snow contract.
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Right.
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Like big commercial factories, those kinds of things where you're getting, you know, $100,000 contracts a year, it would be beneficial to keep that.
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And I would asterisk that by saying I would look at how much direct revenue I get, how much impacted revenue I get.
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And it likely still makes sense because it's going to affect, I'm going to guess 10 to 15 percent of revenue that you just still sub it out.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And that's what we do for our plows.
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Like our plow operators are subs, and we sub that out.
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But still from a... You have plows.
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You have the plows, right?
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No.
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Well, we do have a couple on hand, but no, they provide the plow.
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So it is like essentially just like operations, like me dispatching this to them and...
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you know, making sure that my salt crew, because my crews are our salt and our shovel.
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So our people within the business are the ones who do the salt and the shovel service, but then we contract the plows out.
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So being able to- Oh, it sounds horrible.
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Yeah, it was a freaking nightmare.
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Lizzie, it's 2% of revenue.
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It's 2% of revenue.
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It was a nightmare.
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Like, look, you know how much bandwidth you unlock when you take stuff off your plate when you have a $4 million business?
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You would increase revenue by 20% of the core part of the business if you didn't have to think about 2% of the revenue.
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This is the easiest one in the world.
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And by the way, you resent when it snows every single time.
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Yes.
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Hate it.
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Yeah.
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Hate it.
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Yeah.
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Hate it.
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Hate it.
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When you can have a snowfall and like, we're not working for the next few days.
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I'm going to go focus on marketing, my website, training my team, training systems.
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And then you can go by a million in revenue.
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Focus on the right thing.
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Do you need the recording of this for your husband?
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So you can get on board?
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Yeah.
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I really do.
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I'll send it to you.
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Yeah, I'll be like, hey, watch this clip.
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Yeah, exactly, right?
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No, like when we had snow, we had the border patrol, which was like the most lucrative contract in our market because they have zero tolerance policy.
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They have a whole bunch of stations all along the Washington-Canadian border where we're at, and they would pay us no matter what, like 3x what we would usually charge.
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They didn't care.
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And it was great money.
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And I was tired of working 24-7, and I realized that no one else is going to do that, meaning I will have to do this forever.
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And so when we franchised, I just realized, oh, we're going to have to cut the surface.
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And then I could actually hand it off to someone, pay them $80,000 to $100,000 a year, and they run the whole business.
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But I would never be able to do that if I had this non-standardized, non-simplified part of the business, which was snow.
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I like it.
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I like this option.
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Thank you.
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Cool.
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You got it.
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All right, Chad, you're up.
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Yeah, Chad, Alan Green Team Contracting.
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We're in a small town, rural Nova Scotia in Canada.
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Did just under $600,000 in revenue last year.
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Our goal for this year is between $1 to $1.2 million.
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We're big into hardscaping, maintenance, and snow removal is a huge part of our business too.
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Where our struggle is right now, where my struggle is, is I'm at that weird point in my business where I've heard you mention many times where I'm the one wearing all the hats in the business.
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I'm not quite at the size yet where I can hire that full-time office staff.
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to kind of get me out of the office and, uh, focusing more on, you know, quoting estimating sales.
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Uh, even though I do still do all that stuff, but I'm, I'm just constantly running around in circles, trying to juggle everything.
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Um,
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we got your software last year and I still, you know, we kind of got it, I'd say probably a little too late in the season where I didn't have the time to sit down and go through all the training and quite figure out how to implement it all.
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And, and then this year we got whacked with like their craziest winter ever with snow removal was probably the worst winter we've had in 10 years.
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And so I still haven't really had the time to go through a lot of the training.
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And, uh,
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I guess, yeah, my biggest thing right now is like, what do you recommend?
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What do you suggest for someone in my position in terms of like trying to get your software nailed down and get all the systems and processes implemented and, you know, get myself out of the office and focusing on more high productive things?
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So it sounds like you know what to do because I talk about hiring admin at your size.
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Why aren't you doing that?
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Yeah.
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Well, I'm in the process right now of trying to find the right person.
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I just felt last year we just didn't quite have enough money in the bank to hire that person.
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But now I am looking for that person.
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And I guess I'm trying to determine, too, do I hire someone, A, that already has experience doing business?
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you know, industry type admin work, or do I hire someone who's like really got no experience, but is really eager.
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I got this one girl.
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She's really eager and willing to learn and like excited and good, good personality.
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And she's willing to start at, you know, a lower wage and, and she's very trainable.
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So it's like, I'm not quite sure which app to take there.
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Yeah, I would reframe this from I can't afford it to by having this as an investment for you to double the business.
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You don't get to 1.2 without – and you're still doing all the admin work.
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It's impossible.
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I know.
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I know.
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I would ask yourself, is this, you know, is it four or $5 an hour, for example, going to be the decision deciding factor as to whether or not we double the business?
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Because like, that's what we're talking about.
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The grand scheme is we double the business.
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And so from a cash perspective, if you can't quote afford it, it is more a matter of pricing because as we grow, we should be able to make enough margin to make sure that.
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Someone's admin cost of let's call it 40 or 50 grand a year is covered.
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And so the easiest way to make sense of it, Chad, is by you not doing the admin task, you could literally just go out and do the work.
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And so you pay someone like her, let's just call it 25, 30 bucks an hour, and you go make 80 to 100 bucks an hour.
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Yeah.
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And so, so I think in the, in the immediacy, you will grow the business and you will make more money if you hired someone to do tasks that you're currently doing that you can get replaced for 20 or $30 an hour and you go make 80 to a hundred bucks an hour.
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Yeah.
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It really makes sense.
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And so, so what do you think?
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Like, should I be trying to find someone who has some experience or should, should I be focused or like spend a bit more time and do some training with someone with less experience?
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If you have low amounts of systems in the business, it is nice to have someone with experience.
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It simply comes down to what kind of time are you going to invest into training this person.
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It will be less if they have industry experience.
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It will be a lot more expensive potentially, $4 or $5 more an hour.
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I would also say you could literally sit down with ChattyBoot.com.
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And you could record a lot of the things that you want to talk about and just say, hey, create job descriptions, create daily checklists, create weekly checklists.
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And a lot of that could be, you know, AI is brilliant for this sort of thing.
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And then when it comes to all the things in the office, you're going to use Loom or screen recording and just record every single function of what you do in admin.
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So there's like a 20, 30 different videos that you create inside of a folder that they can just search and watch and follow along with you as you're doing the billing or doing the dispatching or doing the invoicing, etc.
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But like the reason software is important, and that would be like this is the kicker.
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By having the software, you can actually do that.
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If you don't have the software, it's going to be a stitch work of all this other stuff that they got to learn and become so much more difficult to get them onboarded.
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And most people will never onboard an admin because it takes them so long to get ramped up and useful.
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And so they just never – they never actually get an admin person.
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Makes sense.
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Makes sense.
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Okay.
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And just in terms of like, what's the fastest route here in terms of learning the software?
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Like, is it me going through it?
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Is it me hiring someone and putting them through the boot camp and the training?
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Have you already hit Spring Rush or you got another couple of weeks?
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We're like, it's just firing up right now.
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Yeah.
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Like, could this younger gal start right away?
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She could start within a couple weeks.
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She'd have to give two weeks notice to her current employer.
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Yeah.
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Like, I would just say, part of her job description is the first, within the first couple weeks, you got to get everything moved into homeworks.
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And I would, for you, still know how it operates in the next couple weeks while she's giving her two weeks.
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I would be watching all the Academy videos.
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So you just know what she's talking about.
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So she doesn't become the bottleneck for everything in terms of information.
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And then ideally you create the videos specific to your method.
216
00:13:57.980 --> 00:14:02.522
So like in HomeWorks Academy, they have dispatching, invoicing, estimates, whatever.
217
00:14:02.782 --> 00:14:08.585
But you're going to have your way of wanting them to do it, specifically around things like email, like how to do an email, like how to –
218
00:14:09.025 --> 00:14:10.666
filter through the email in the morning.
219
00:14:10.866 --> 00:14:11.826
Here's your daily checklist.
220
00:14:11.886 --> 00:14:13.666
Here's how to do every single one of these things.
221
00:14:15.087 --> 00:14:17.908
I would just make sure you have like a solid plan for your admin.
222
00:14:17.928 --> 00:14:20.188
A lot of times people are just like, all right, sit down here.
223
00:14:20.709 --> 00:14:21.989
If that phone rings, you pick it up.
224
00:14:22.569 --> 00:14:24.230
And if the emails fill up, you go answer them.
225
00:14:24.590 --> 00:14:26.210
Versus being like, here's your checklist.
226
00:14:26.230 --> 00:14:27.811
Start at the top when you walk in the door.
227
00:14:28.431 --> 00:14:32.175
And then here's the reactive tasks that are going to be coming throughout the day, like answering the phone.
228
00:14:32.475 --> 00:14:33.516
I'm going to be calling you.
229
00:14:33.556 --> 00:14:34.517
A customer is going to be mad.
230
00:14:34.937 --> 00:14:35.678
Address these things.
231
00:14:35.838 --> 00:14:37.780
These are the most important things.
232
00:14:37.800 --> 00:14:39.561
These are the things you've got to get done throughout the day.
233
00:14:41.083 --> 00:14:41.843
I would start there.
234
00:14:42.424 --> 00:14:45.807
The more systems you can have for her, the better when she comes in two weeks.
235
00:14:46.167 --> 00:14:48.129
So ideally, you know the software.
236
00:14:48.490 --> 00:14:50.732
If you want to make it part of her job to move you in.
237
00:14:51.292 --> 00:14:52.836
and like get it all set up, that's fine.
238
00:14:53.157 --> 00:14:58.670
But I would at least have an idea of how to use it because otherwise it just becomes a weak point for the business if she ever left.
239
00:14:59.151 --> 00:14:59.532
Sounds good.
240
00:15:00.099 --> 00:15:02.641
Yeah, and from a cash perspective, it's tight.
241
00:15:03.021 --> 00:15:09.886
Then what you can do is you hit capacity to the point where you're like, hey, I can't get any more jobs or customers without getting more trucks or hiring more people.
242
00:15:10.286 --> 00:15:15.009
Once you hit capacity, you raise prices, and the delta, the difference that you make in profit is paying her wages.
243
00:15:15.469 --> 00:15:18.952
So from a cash perspective, you need to convince yourself that you can afford it.
244
00:15:19.452 --> 00:15:25.176
Go into profit mode, and literally as you go into spring rush, you can make up for any customers that leave within a matter of three or four weeks.
245
00:15:25.856 --> 00:15:32.202
And so I would just sometimes use profit mode as an excuse to go spend more money on the thing that unlocks a double in the business.
246
00:15:32.562 --> 00:15:33.263
Sure.
247
00:15:33.303 --> 00:15:38.887
My accounts receivable would tell me that we have the cash available for it, but the bank account would tell me a different story.
248
00:15:39.127 --> 00:15:41.229
It's like a chicken and egg game, right?
249
00:15:41.269 --> 00:15:44.352
Because by having the admin, your accounts receivable should be lower.
250
00:15:44.372 --> 00:15:45.433
You have more cash in the bank.
251
00:15:45.881 --> 00:15:46.262
It's true.
252
00:15:46.502 --> 00:15:46.682
Yeah.
253
00:15:47.103 --> 00:15:54.356
So one thing you can do if you have a really bad cash receivable and you're getting an admin person is tie their incentives for the first 30 days to how much they collect.
254
00:15:54.957 --> 00:15:57.001
So let's just say, for example, you have $60,000 owed.
255
00:15:57.021 --> 00:15:58.343
Well, how much is it, Chad?
256
00:15:58.982 --> 00:15:59.222
80.
257
00:15:59.863 --> 00:16:00.143
Woo.
258
00:16:00.403 --> 00:16:00.663
Okay.
259
00:16:00.943 --> 00:16:06.467
So like, hey, we know anything above 1% of revenue from the last year is unacceptable.
260
00:16:06.527 --> 00:16:09.529
So like $6,000, anything above that, not good.
261
00:16:09.909 --> 00:16:13.891
I'm willing to give you a percentage of everything you collect in your first 30 days.
262
00:16:14.632 --> 00:16:20.956
And if you have to give her a thousand bucks in the first month, but she collects 70 grand for you, you won't be crying, right?
263
00:16:21.036 --> 00:16:21.396
That's right.
264
00:16:21.556 --> 00:16:21.736
Yep.
265
00:16:22.297 --> 00:16:22.437
Yep.
266
00:16:23.113 --> 00:16:23.453
Okay.
267
00:16:23.713 --> 00:16:24.254
Sounds good, man.
268
00:16:24.274 --> 00:16:24.574
Thank you.
269
00:16:24.754 --> 00:16:25.495
Yeah, you got it.
270
00:16:25.515 --> 00:16:27.396
Just bake it into your 30, 60, and 90 day.
271
00:16:27.436 --> 00:16:28.937
The 30 day could be like receivables.
272
00:16:29.297 --> 00:16:32.019
60 day could be integrated directly into the software.
273
00:16:32.680 --> 00:16:38.164
Day 90 could be like, hey, these are the five extra additional tasks I need to take off my plate by like the end of the third month.
274
00:16:38.624 --> 00:16:38.824
Cool.
275
00:16:39.084 --> 00:16:39.465
Sounds good.
276
00:16:40.725 --> 00:16:40.966
All right.
277
00:16:40.986 --> 00:16:48.371
We have to stop the video here because like Chad, if you have a whole bunch of overdue invoices that customers aren't paying you for,
278
00:16:49.644 --> 00:16:59.588
We are in a bank, and if you're not charging interest, you're basically giving a interest-free loan to your customers if there's an overdue invoice that they're not paying and you're not going after it.
279
00:17:00.048 --> 00:17:03.710
And so I highly recommend setting up automations to ensure this never happens.
280
00:17:04.130 --> 00:17:09.612
Now, inside of HomeWorks, we actually have it where we can require a card on file for them to even accept an estimate.
281
00:17:09.992 --> 00:17:17.754
It also built builds in automatically the deposit thresholds to make sure I'm collecting payment for the deposit before they even accept an estimate.
282
00:17:18.134 --> 00:17:23.695
But most importantly, having that card and file, I can have the option inside of homeworks to charge extra fees.
283
00:17:23.835 --> 00:17:27.756
If they're overdue, I can charge them the fees for their credit card processing.
284
00:17:28.136 --> 00:17:32.257
And most importantly, I can send texts and email reminders to make sure this never happens.
285
00:17:32.657 --> 00:17:36.838
So go check it out home dot works, and you can start for free up to 50 customers.
286
00:17:37.638 --> 00:18:01.573
but you can't have 80 grand sitting in accounts receivable crazy back to the video here's you're up brother we do uh mostly small projects trying to get more recurring last year we did 725k and this year i don't i you know i'd be happy with anything between that and a million just like trying to get the profit margin this is going to be like a profit year
287
00:18:03.168 --> 00:18:24.915
and what's stopping me I don't really know like so our mowing season starts next week I've done 12,000 EDDM flyers we're halfway through 5,000 door hangers I got Google ads and Facebook ads I'm just kind of going all in on this one and trying to see where it lands because we'd like to get you know 40 to 50
288
00:18:25.967 --> 00:18:30.624
Mowing clients, we have added 10 so far, which brings us to about 20.
289
00:18:30.705 --> 00:18:30.885
And...
290
00:18:32.872 --> 00:18:36.533
Yeah, I mean, my prices are kind of like, they're not the highest in town.
291
00:18:36.893 --> 00:18:38.933
So, but they're not low.
292
00:18:39.073 --> 00:18:44.214
And I think that might be why I'm getting not too many conversions from the advertising right now.
293
00:18:44.254 --> 00:18:46.054
Lots of leads, but a lot of them ghost.
294
00:18:46.254 --> 00:18:53.916
And the other thing I'm thinking is maybe because it's early in the season, like maybe some of the better clients will come later when they actually need the service versus now.
295
00:18:54.516 --> 00:18:58.197
And yeah, I raised my rates to 120 per budgeted hour.
296
00:18:58.297 --> 00:18:59.357
We just started doing P4P.
297
00:19:00.137 --> 00:19:05.502
So they'll be getting like 40 per budgeted hour, which here is kind of necessary to get good talent.
298
00:19:05.962 --> 00:19:11.287
And yeah, the one thing I could say is we got really good operations and I don't really need to be there.
299
00:19:11.367 --> 00:19:17.912
So I'm just focused on sales and I got a part-time office staff now who I'm training.
300
00:19:18.233 --> 00:19:18.493
Cool.
301
00:19:18.653 --> 00:19:19.274
What can I help with?
302
00:19:19.354 --> 00:19:22.216
Is it mostly just like how do you maximize the spring rush?
303
00:19:22.617 --> 00:19:22.977
I don't know.
304
00:19:23.497 --> 00:19:23.738
Yeah.
305
00:19:23.778 --> 00:19:27.541
What do you, you know, other than advertising and speed to lead and stuff, um,
306
00:19:27.881 --> 00:19:28.021
Yeah.
307
00:19:28.041 --> 00:19:33.585
Like when we, when we think about sales operation admin, the fact that now you have admin cover, you have great operations.
308
00:19:33.806 --> 00:19:38.029
You being in the sales role should be able to get the business to 1.5 million, 1.2 easily.
309
00:19:38.129 --> 00:19:39.170
And so, okay.
310
00:19:39.650 --> 00:19:46.255
So I, I like the instinct of like, Hey, we're going to kind of go balls to the wall with advertising and growth because you that's, you have time.
311
00:19:46.656 --> 00:19:46.896
Right.
312
00:19:47.276 --> 00:19:51.019
And so I would say, I would really look at your sales process and,
313
00:19:51.219 --> 00:19:53.180
In terms of speed to lead, how can we improve that?
314
00:19:53.200 --> 00:19:54.240
Because now you have the time.
315
00:19:54.260 --> 00:19:57.041
I know it makes it challenging with the way you have the island set up there.
316
00:19:57.581 --> 00:20:03.163
Secondly, I'd be really, really lasered on your automations and your estimate follow-ups with phone calls.
317
00:20:03.644 --> 00:20:06.485
Are you calling customers the next day after an estimate's been sent?
318
00:20:06.505 --> 00:20:06.605
Yeah.
319
00:20:06.985 --> 00:20:07.145
Yeah.
320
00:20:07.717 --> 00:20:08.318
Yeah.
321
00:20:08.678 --> 00:20:08.878
Yeah.
322
00:20:09.278 --> 00:20:09.418
Yeah.
323
00:20:09.438 --> 00:20:13.582
Like, so, and when you do that, what's like, what percentage of people are picking up?
324
00:20:13.702 --> 00:20:15.123
What's the reception of the phone calls?
325
00:20:15.623 --> 00:20:16.484
What's that look like right now?
326
00:20:17.125 --> 00:20:17.365
Yeah.
327
00:20:17.965 --> 00:20:21.388
I'd say there's a decent amount of ghosting and stuff going on.
328
00:20:21.928 --> 00:20:25.291
But it's to be expected when we've raised our rates significantly.
329
00:20:26.372 --> 00:20:30.115
But I just try to just be really helpful and have the best customer service.
330
00:20:30.435 --> 00:20:31.476
So I guess that's not going to,
331
00:20:32.158 --> 00:20:33.540
go with everybody, right?
332
00:20:33.920 --> 00:20:36.483
And yeah, we definitely been getting more leads here.
333
00:20:36.603 --> 00:20:39.086
So it's kind of like you said, we could do 1.2 million.
334
00:20:39.486 --> 00:20:48.016
I'm just trying to see where things land because lots of leads right now, but depending how many actually convert would mean getting a truck and hiring two employees, you know?
335
00:20:48.036 --> 00:20:48.196
True.
336
00:20:48.536 --> 00:20:48.737
True.
337
00:20:49.137 --> 00:20:49.517
Yes.
338
00:20:49.797 --> 00:20:53.979
And in profit mode, you could very well do, you know, 900,000 a million and be very profitable.
339
00:20:53.999 --> 00:20:56.180
So like, I'm not saying, I don't think you need to get to 1.2.
340
00:20:56.300 --> 00:20:59.941
I'm just saying you have the capacity now that you have an admin person, right?
341
00:20:59.961 --> 00:21:02.382
Whereas in the past, you didn't have that and you were juggling everything.
342
00:21:02.642 --> 00:21:07.424
I would try to reframe this notion that because you raise prices, people are ghosting you.
343
00:21:07.904 --> 00:21:15.249
Um, cause you are, you are making the assumption that higher prices mean that people ghost you higher prices mean you have a lower close ratio.
344
00:21:15.489 --> 00:21:15.809
Yes.
345
00:21:16.210 --> 00:21:18.071
But that will compound dramatically.
346
00:21:18.471 --> 00:21:25.216
If your mindset is they aren't contacting me or they are ghosting me because of my high prices, that is a huge assumption.
347
00:21:25.776 --> 00:21:27.077
And we do not know that.
348
00:21:27.477 --> 00:21:30.039
And so I would be, I would first sell yourself.
349
00:21:30.319 --> 00:21:32.661
Like I, here's, here's the, the DL.
350
00:21:33.041 --> 00:21:34.142
You don't believe you're worth one 20.
351
00:21:34.882 --> 00:21:39.344
You did it because you know that's the right thing for the business, but like you still cringe a little bit at your pricing.
352
00:21:39.584 --> 00:21:41.585
Yeah, that's true.
353
00:21:42.085 --> 00:21:52.250
And the reason I know that is because you will accept ghosted customers as it was a price objection whenever you feel like price is too high.
354
00:21:52.650 --> 00:21:52.850
Yeah.
355
00:21:53.310 --> 00:22:02.319
And so I need you to sell yourself first on the value of your service because there's no way in the world you're picking up the phone or pushing the second, third, fifth, eighth time.
356
00:22:02.339 --> 00:22:07.404
I just saw an estimate down the other day, closed on the 12th follow-up, a $5,000 job.
357
00:22:07.684 --> 00:22:11.989
12th follow-up, four phone calls and eight texts and emails, and they accepted the job.
358
00:22:12.369 --> 00:22:13.050
Wow, yeah.
359
00:22:13.650 --> 00:22:19.694
And so, but the reason is because that owner truly believes they're the best option for that customer.
360
00:22:19.754 --> 00:22:23.017
And they pushed, they kept calling, they kept texting, they kept emailing.
361
00:22:23.057 --> 00:22:31.142
And so whatever you got to do to convince yourself of that, whether that be looking at chucking the trucks around you, looking at your website versus everyone else and realizing like, oh, it's a very big difference.
362
00:22:31.383 --> 00:22:33.364
Look at your reviews versus everyone else's reviews.
363
00:22:33.644 --> 00:22:36.326
realizing that what you sell is not just saving them time.
364
00:22:36.587 --> 00:22:43.592
It is peace of mind, is insurance of their asset, is all these other things around status in their neighborhood, pride of ownership.
365
00:22:43.853 --> 00:22:44.613
That's what you're selling.
366
00:22:44.933 --> 00:22:47.656
And so to you, Pierce, to you, it's expensive.
367
00:22:48.036 --> 00:22:54.301
And that's evidenced by the fact that you don't have the conviction to pick up the phone, push, ask again, text them again.
368
00:22:54.501 --> 00:22:58.124
And I'm going to go out on a limb and say, you might call them once, but you're not calling them the next day.
369
00:22:58.485 --> 00:23:01.127
And I also venture to believe that when you give them a call,
370
00:23:01.327 --> 00:23:02.369
And I only say this because I love you.
371
00:23:02.389 --> 00:23:03.091
I just want to see you win.
372
00:23:03.572 --> 00:23:06.077
I would venture to say when you're calling them, you're saying, hey, did you get the quote?
373
00:23:06.097 --> 00:23:06.798
Do you have questions?
374
00:23:07.299 --> 00:23:07.519
Yeah.
375
00:23:08.158 --> 00:23:08.819
Yeah.
376
00:23:08.859 --> 00:23:10.781
I want you being, hey, this is Pierce.
377
00:23:11.021 --> 00:23:12.682
I got a spot available next Thursday.
378
00:23:13.643 --> 00:23:14.524
Sorry, I hit your voicemail.
379
00:23:14.564 --> 00:23:16.366
I know it's really important you get this on the schedule.
380
00:23:16.386 --> 00:23:18.728
So I'm going to go ahead and reserve next Thursday for you.
381
00:23:19.189 --> 00:23:21.090
I'll give you a call back tomorrow to confirm that.
382
00:23:21.471 --> 00:23:23.353
If you get them on the phone, like, I've got to think about it.
383
00:23:23.373 --> 00:23:24.353
I've got to talk about my spouse.
384
00:23:24.514 --> 00:23:24.874
Great.
385
00:23:25.294 --> 00:23:26.496
I will still reserve the spot.
386
00:23:26.896 --> 00:23:28.057
I know it's valuable to you.
387
00:23:28.297 --> 00:23:29.318
I'll call you back tomorrow.
388
00:23:29.578 --> 00:23:30.700
You stay in control.
389
00:23:31.120 --> 00:23:32.902
You don't ever say, hey, if you have questions, call me back.
390
00:23:33.342 --> 00:23:34.203
You don't say, did you get it?
391
00:23:34.383 --> 00:23:35.004
Yeah, we got it.
392
00:23:35.204 --> 00:23:36.806
And we'll call you back when we want to.
393
00:23:37.206 --> 00:23:38.167
Now you're out of the driver's seat.
394
00:23:38.347 --> 00:23:42.232
So inside the book, I have like a list of 20 things of like follow-up phone calls.
395
00:23:42.572 --> 00:23:48.458
And they're all designed to if they say no, I still can call them back tomorrow and offer something else.
396
00:23:48.839 --> 00:23:49.119
Okay.
397
00:23:49.480 --> 00:23:49.960
Sounds good.
398
00:23:50.340 --> 00:23:52.443
Yeah, I did try to order that book, but it never shipped.
399
00:23:52.463 --> 00:23:53.404
I'm going to try again, though.
400
00:23:53.724 --> 00:23:53.884
What?
401
00:23:53.904 --> 00:23:55.366
The copy and paste millionaire book?
402
00:23:55.386 --> 00:23:55.486
Yeah.
403
00:23:55.968 --> 00:23:56.949
Yeah, it never shipped.
404
00:23:57.589 --> 00:23:57.830
Amazon?
405
00:23:57.850 --> 00:23:58.230
I don't know.
406
00:23:58.630 --> 00:23:58.871
Yeah.
407
00:23:59.251 --> 00:24:02.053
Man, you got to figure stuff out for the Canada Post, man.
408
00:24:02.214 --> 00:24:03.074
What's up with that?
409
00:24:03.094 --> 00:24:03.355
I know.
410
00:24:04.536 --> 00:24:05.617
Yeah, I'll try it again.
411
00:24:05.877 --> 00:24:06.377
Yeah.
412
00:24:06.898 --> 00:24:16.346
You can also, if you go on to Mike AI, just like mikeandies.com slash AI, if you go there, you could just ask, like, hey, give me the 12.
413
00:24:16.406 --> 00:24:17.567
Here, we should just do it right now.
414
00:24:17.967 --> 00:24:18.428
This will be fun.
415
00:24:18.867 --> 00:24:24.612
Give me 10 ways to do a follow-up phone call.
416
00:24:25.112 --> 00:24:28.795
Not weak like did you get the quote.
417
00:24:29.295 --> 00:24:30.416
All right, let's see what it says here.
418
00:24:30.816 --> 00:24:33.499
You've got a last spot available on the route.
419
00:24:33.759 --> 00:24:35.800
Propose a specific date that opened up.
420
00:24:36.181 --> 00:24:38.002
Tell them that the crew loves that service.
421
00:24:38.302 --> 00:24:40.244
The schedule's filling up and you want to prioritize them.
422
00:24:40.784 --> 00:24:41.905
Oh, it's reading it to me.
423
00:24:42.025 --> 00:24:42.346
Mercy.
424
00:24:43.807 --> 00:24:44.407
Did you hear that?
425
00:24:44.567 --> 00:24:44.928
Can you hear it?
426
00:24:45.568 --> 00:24:46.109
No.
427
00:24:46.449 --> 00:24:47.049
Oh, you couldn't hear that?
428
00:24:47.650 --> 00:24:50.312
If you click this button up here, you can hear me talk.
429
00:24:50.372 --> 00:24:51.413
It's like, say the words.
430
00:24:51.473 --> 00:24:51.913
It's crazy.
431
00:24:52.393 --> 00:24:53.254
Oh, it's in your voice?
432
00:24:53.654 --> 00:24:54.475
Yeah, it's in my voice.
433
00:24:54.635 --> 00:24:55.155
It's crazy.
434
00:24:55.175 --> 00:24:57.918
I trained the agent on my voice.
435
00:24:57.938 --> 00:25:00.039
So anyways, go check that out.
436
00:25:00.139 --> 00:25:01.240
It'll give you a bunch of different ways.
437
00:25:01.300 --> 00:25:07.885
And then what a lot of times we will do is the team will just take the estimate, paste it in here, and then ask which one to use.
438
00:25:08.165 --> 00:25:09.266
And so you could just literally be like, hey.
439
00:25:09.286 --> 00:25:09.927
That's a good.
440
00:25:09.947 --> 00:25:10.087
Yeah.
441
00:25:10.427 --> 00:25:11.268
Yeah, that's a good call.
442
00:25:11.288 --> 00:25:11.448
Yeah.
443
00:25:11.488 --> 00:25:12.089
Thank you for that.
444
00:25:12.229 --> 00:25:13.751
And yeah, I was thinking the same thing.
445
00:25:13.771 --> 00:25:16.835
Like, I just need to be the sales master now, like the master of sales.
446
00:25:17.416 --> 00:25:22.642
And so I want to record my calls and find some kind of AI that will give me feedback.
447
00:25:24.788 --> 00:25:32.473
If you record it on your phone, by the way, on the recordings app, like the voice notes, it creates a transcript.
448
00:25:32.533 --> 00:25:33.034
Copy that.
449
00:25:33.094 --> 00:25:36.416
Put it in the mic AI and say, hey, this is a transcript from my last phone call.
450
00:25:36.756 --> 00:25:37.977
Analyze it and tell me what I could have done better.
451
00:25:38.398 --> 00:25:38.638
All right.
452
00:25:38.658 --> 00:25:39.158
I'll try it out.
453
00:25:39.538 --> 00:25:39.819
Thank you.
454
00:25:39.839 --> 00:25:40.699
Jamie, you got it.
455
00:25:40.819 --> 00:25:41.680
Jamie, you're up next.
456
00:25:42.240 --> 00:25:45.584
Hi, so I've got a company in the UK, Gray's Law and Management Services.
457
00:25:46.124 --> 00:25:47.786
I've been running since 2020.
458
00:25:48.606 --> 00:25:50.028
I'm 18 myself at the moment.
459
00:25:50.448 --> 00:25:54.012
I found it really difficult over the past three years to find good employees.
460
00:25:54.913 --> 00:25:58.736
I managed last year to get a really good employee from March till July,
461
00:26:00.197 --> 00:26:05.001
But he then stormed out on a job and he was trying to sort of go behind my back and take work from me.
462
00:26:06.022 --> 00:26:09.324
So that was sort of stopped straight away as soon as we found out.
463
00:26:09.704 --> 00:26:13.847
And I tried again this month to employ someone else beginning of my own season.
464
00:26:14.728 --> 00:26:28.058
But it's really difficult to get someone that is able to do the work, because it's so demanding, but getting someone to do the work how I want it done, so that the quality stays the same, the customers are still happy with everything, but still having that time management.
465
00:26:28.936 --> 00:26:35.658
The last gentleman I had was a really good hard worker, but he was really struggling to keep on top of the schedule.
466
00:26:35.839 --> 00:26:39.180
We've got 25 to 30 lawns that need to get done every day.
467
00:26:39.200 --> 00:26:42.861
On average, we're at a property for between 10 to 15 minutes.
468
00:26:43.061 --> 00:26:47.563
We're not at a property for long because a lot of our properties are very small over here.
469
00:26:48.563 --> 00:26:51.864
We might have 10 or 12 in a very small, tight area.
470
00:26:52.244 --> 00:26:53.785
Our route density is really good.
471
00:26:54.685 --> 00:27:04.592
But it's just trying to get the employees now to basically take that work off of me so I can then focus on more of the project-based, the lawn care-based work, and then to carry on growing business.
472
00:27:05.112 --> 00:27:08.014
In terms of customer basis, we've got quite a good customer basis.
473
00:27:08.034 --> 00:27:10.356
We're about 130 lawns a week.
474
00:27:10.816 --> 00:27:12.837
And then our second week is a little bit slower.
475
00:27:13.738 --> 00:27:15.319
But that's purely because of...
476
00:27:15.859 --> 00:27:21.204
sort of everything that's going on in the UK at the moment, the price is going up and people are a little bit more conscious of that.
477
00:27:21.644 --> 00:27:24.667
So, yeah, but at the moment, everything's sort of going good in terms of cash flow.
478
00:27:24.847 --> 00:27:26.368
Last year, we did 90,000.
479
00:27:26.788 --> 00:27:28.690
This year, we're predicted to be at a quarter of a million.
480
00:27:29.575 --> 00:27:33.376
as long as we can get the employees to be able to continue growing, basically.
481
00:27:33.996 --> 00:27:35.936
But it's just trying to get that.
482
00:27:36.296 --> 00:27:39.897
Yeah, so we do not yet have a system for training.
483
00:27:40.197 --> 00:27:50.819
And so when you look at how you do work and then how your employees do work, if there's a difference, we need to break it down to what are the measurable actions that are the difference?
484
00:27:51.100 --> 00:27:53.060
Not like work ethic, quality.
485
00:27:53.120 --> 00:27:55.160
These are bundled terms that no one can work with.
486
00:27:55.400 --> 00:27:57.961
And so what I would do, Jamie, is like, hey, I'll ask you the question.
487
00:27:58.201 --> 00:28:02.345
What is the difference between one of the employees you've had that just are not great versus what you do?
488
00:28:02.385 --> 00:28:03.506
Like, what is the difference?
489
00:28:03.526 --> 00:28:05.168
Like, faster and more efficient?
490
00:28:05.188 --> 00:28:06.429
Like, what are the actual things?
491
00:28:06.489 --> 00:28:11.153
Efficiency, language with customers, and just overall sort of behavior.
492
00:28:12.335 --> 00:28:13.155
Professional kind of thing?
493
00:28:13.175 --> 00:28:13.295
Yeah.
494
00:28:14.036 --> 00:28:14.296
Yeah.
495
00:28:14.477 --> 00:28:19.361
So professionalism, these words are bundled, but you can break them down.
496
00:28:19.661 --> 00:28:21.743
So what does it mean to be professional to a customer?
497
00:28:21.923 --> 00:28:29.669
Well, if a customer is within 50 feet of you, oh, sorry, 10 meters, for example, you stop your equipment and you say hello.
498
00:28:30.070 --> 00:28:30.630
That's one thing.
499
00:28:31.130 --> 00:28:31.431
Second,
500
00:28:31.971 --> 00:28:33.572
You never swear at a customer.
501
00:28:33.632 --> 00:28:37.536
These are the actionable things I can have as a checklist.
502
00:28:38.016 --> 00:28:40.218
And again, this is what AI is great for.
503
00:28:40.518 --> 00:28:47.383
You can just say exactly what I'm saying here, which is like, hey, I have a problem with telling people the measurable things that they need to do in the job.
504
00:28:47.924 --> 00:28:51.627
And I wonder why they're not as efficient, don't work as good, they have low quality, and they're not professional.
505
00:28:51.967 --> 00:28:56.591
Can you give me actionable things that someone can do that are not bundled terms?
506
00:28:56.751 --> 00:28:58.332
Like, this is what AI is great at.
507
00:28:58.392 --> 00:28:59.113
It's the best thing ever.
508
00:28:59.253 --> 00:28:59.994
You create a checklist.
509
00:29:00.274 --> 00:29:01.716
So then that way, you know how to train.
510
00:29:02.037 --> 00:29:05.241
So when you're doing training, it's like, oh, okay, did you do these things?
511
00:29:05.461 --> 00:29:08.986
Oh, that customer came within 10 meters of you and you did not turn off your blower.
512
00:29:09.487 --> 00:29:10.428
That's against violence.
513
00:29:10.748 --> 00:29:16.776
That's harder to, it is harder to then say someone is professional versus they do these actions.
514
00:29:17.317 --> 00:29:17.517
Yeah.
515
00:29:18.018 --> 00:29:19.739
So when it comes to efficiency, same thing.
516
00:29:19.759 --> 00:29:23.541
It's like, OK, what is the difference between inefficient employee and an efficient employee?
517
00:29:23.761 --> 00:29:25.763
Well, this one shows up with a lunch.
518
00:29:25.783 --> 00:29:28.204
They don't stop 10 times for smoke break.
519
00:29:28.404 --> 00:29:30.005
They fuel up at the end of the day.
520
00:29:30.386 --> 00:29:32.307
Those are the type of things I would try to do.
521
00:29:32.367 --> 00:29:35.449
So it's actionable things they can do versus the bundled term.
522
00:29:35.809 --> 00:29:37.691
Yeah, so we've already started doing all that.
523
00:29:37.711 --> 00:29:40.493
So they get 15 minute lunch break in the morning.
524
00:29:40.813 --> 00:29:45.437
And what we do with that inside of CoPilot is of Homeworks.
525
00:29:45.477 --> 00:29:49.881
Now we basically say that these are the nearest places with toilets.
526
00:29:49.901 --> 00:29:51.623
So you can go to toilet if you need to on that break.
527
00:29:52.764 --> 00:29:56.127
We don't want you driving 10 miles down the road just because you'd prefer going to that place.
528
00:29:56.467 --> 00:29:59.110
This is sort of, we sort of line it through their schedule.
529
00:29:59.570 --> 00:30:06.376
So you'll go 10 lawns, right, on the way to the next property, you stop here, you have your 15 minute break, then you carry on your schedule.
530
00:30:06.756 --> 00:30:13.503
That way they're not stopping in between jobs and we can then know exactly where they're stopping, where they're going throughout the day.
531
00:30:14.563 --> 00:30:28.931
What we've also found is with this year is in CoPilot, the visit notes we've put down what equipment they need to use because we run three different types of mowers to get through really narrow gates because we don't have big gates everywhere else.
532
00:30:28.951 --> 00:30:33.214
So some mowers, we can put a Toro time mass which is like a 30-inch mower.
533
00:30:33.554 --> 00:30:40.698
That's what we primarily use, but a lot of the lawns sometimes on some routes, you have to use a little battery mower just because it doesn't fit through anywhere.
534
00:30:41.458 --> 00:30:47.244
So we found that instead of an employee trying to walk over to the job going, I've got the wrong equipment, I need to put that back.
535
00:30:47.604 --> 00:30:48.265
So it's in the notes.
536
00:30:48.425 --> 00:30:49.166
This is what you've got to do.
537
00:30:49.346 --> 00:30:50.327
This is where you've got to park.
538
00:30:50.467 --> 00:30:52.048
This is the lawn you've got to do.
539
00:30:52.409 --> 00:30:54.010
We've got all photos of everything in there.
540
00:30:54.571 --> 00:30:56.593
But it's trying to get them to...
541
00:30:57.213 --> 00:31:14.212
be as quick and being sort of fast on your feet sort of thing you get out the truck you get the job done you get straight back in you get on to your next job whereas what I've been finding is they've gone off I'll doodle out get the equipment out I'll then do the job I might stuff on my phone for five minutes it's trying to stop all of that
542
00:31:14.613 --> 00:31:16.495
So this is an incentive issue, right?
543
00:31:16.635 --> 00:31:20.880
It sounds like you've actually done a great job of training, but there's no reason as to why they should move faster.
544
00:31:21.300 --> 00:31:21.461
Yeah.
545
00:31:21.841 --> 00:31:28.048
And so this is where pay for performance is so important because everything you have mentioned is right for you to make more money.
546
00:31:28.628 --> 00:31:31.011
They make more money the longer the job takes.
547
00:31:31.071 --> 00:31:32.332
You want the job to go faster.
548
00:31:32.573 --> 00:31:35.936
And so alignment of your incentives with theirs is the objective here.
549
00:31:36.637 --> 00:31:47.800
It sounds to me like you've done everything possible to tell them where it's best to park, tell them where it's best to go to the bathroom breaks, get lunch, which mowers to use, which are great.
550
00:31:48.180 --> 00:31:48.961
Why do they care?
551
00:31:49.141 --> 00:31:49.901
What's in it for them?
552
00:31:50.341 --> 00:31:50.501
Yeah.
553
00:31:50.941 --> 00:31:57.483
And so if you can take all this training, like, so like if you have a training problem, that's usually where there is like a lack of skill.
554
00:31:57.863 --> 00:31:58.984
Sounds like that doesn't exist.
555
00:31:59.224 --> 00:32:00.464
And they have the information required.
556
00:32:00.845 --> 00:32:07.428
They don't have the incentive because everything you've mentioned allows the job to be more efficient, which makes you more money, but does them no good.
557
00:32:07.448 --> 00:32:09.609
In fact, they make less money the faster the job takes.
558
00:32:09.950 --> 00:32:10.170
Yeah.
559
00:32:10.570 --> 00:32:16.093
And so it's figuring out how to align incentives, whether it be profit sharing, pay for performance.
560
00:32:16.253 --> 00:32:17.093
I like pay for performance.
561
00:32:17.113 --> 00:32:17.994
That's close to them.
562
00:32:18.034 --> 00:32:22.536
Like every day, they know how much they're making per hour and they're making how much they're making on P4P.
563
00:32:23.017 --> 00:32:25.498
And they know that the faster I work, the more efficient I make more money.
564
00:32:25.889 --> 00:32:26.770
Yeah.
565
00:32:26.790 --> 00:32:28.691
So I've got the paper performance book, actually.
566
00:32:28.711 --> 00:32:30.512
I need to start going through that.
567
00:32:30.753 --> 00:32:32.994
I've been going through the copy and paste millionaire book at the moment.
568
00:32:34.235 --> 00:32:39.999
So, yeah, I mean, like off season wise, we haven't got a massive issue with that because we don't have to snow so much.
569
00:32:40.019 --> 00:32:41.000
We have more ice.
570
00:32:41.480 --> 00:32:44.743
So I'm going into gritting this coming winter.
571
00:32:45.683 --> 00:32:49.206
I tried it last winter, but it didn't take off so much.
572
00:32:49.426 --> 00:32:50.747
So we're going to do it a little bit differently.
573
00:32:50.767 --> 00:32:54.410
And we're going to offer winter services to our mowing customers.
574
00:32:54.890 --> 00:33:01.995
So they can pay fortnightly still their once a month price and will come to the property for the amount of time that's on the mowing schedule.
575
00:33:02.376 --> 00:33:04.958
So we're still getting that constant sort of income coming in.
576
00:33:05.898 --> 00:33:14.765
So that's an incentive to the employee that it's not seasonal because a lot of the mowing companies in the UK that seasonal work, you sort of start in March, finish in September and that's it.
577
00:33:15.706 --> 00:33:21.090
So we're offering 12 month contracts so that they know they've got a job sort of secure for the whole year.
578
00:33:21.730 --> 00:33:22.771
Which is a huge benefit.
579
00:33:22.971 --> 00:33:24.933
The challenging part doesn't change today's behavior.
580
00:33:25.293 --> 00:33:26.634
This is what we found with profit sharing.
581
00:33:26.674 --> 00:33:28.836
It doesn't actually change their behavior because it's too far away.
582
00:33:29.297 --> 00:33:32.059
Even quarterly, like annual one thing, right?
583
00:33:32.099 --> 00:33:33.621
Like they're happy they're getting seasonal work.
584
00:33:33.701 --> 00:33:35.462
Great, like year round work.
585
00:33:35.582 --> 00:33:38.225
Awesome, especially in the UK when you have actual contracts like that.
586
00:33:38.425 --> 00:33:38.925
I understand.
587
00:33:39.706 --> 00:33:41.528
The challenging part is once they get the job,
588
00:33:41.848 --> 00:33:51.132
you might, that's a recruiting tool, but once they're in the job and you've given them a year's contract, I need them to change behavior of move faster, get the job done faster.
589
00:33:51.512 --> 00:33:54.173
And then that's when I want to align the incentives around pay for performance.
590
00:33:54.193 --> 00:33:58.255
And this is why even quarterly profit sharing won't usually actually change their behavior today.
591
00:33:58.675 --> 00:34:02.776
What will change their behavior today is, hey, you can make 200 bucks a day or you can make 400 bucks a day.
592
00:34:03.017 --> 00:34:03.857
Which one do you want?
593
00:34:04.317 --> 00:34:10.363
To make 400, I've now given you all the tools and the resources and the training and the checklist to make sure you can get your job done more efficiently.
594
00:34:10.583 --> 00:34:15.268
And now, the type of mower they use in the backyard actually means something to them because it means they make more money.
595
00:34:15.628 --> 00:34:15.788
Yeah.
596
00:34:16.189 --> 00:34:20.553
I mean, even down to our air, because we can't, we don't have pickups, we have vans over here a lot more.
597
00:34:20.993 --> 00:34:22.515
So we've got a small van and a trailer.
598
00:34:23.075 --> 00:34:25.718
And we've even gone down to the point of measuring the trailer exactly what we can do.
599
00:34:25.858 --> 00:34:28.620
where the equipment can go to get it out as quick as possible.
600
00:34:29.301 --> 00:34:31.063
And everything's all key locked in.
601
00:34:31.203 --> 00:34:33.665
In all of this, Jamie, just ask yourself this one question.
602
00:34:34.065 --> 00:34:34.986
What's in it for them?
603
00:34:35.366 --> 00:34:37.508
Because if there's nothing in it for them, they will not do it.
604
00:34:37.989 --> 00:34:43.734
You have all the best systems, the best checklists, and the best SOPs in the world, but no one will follow it if it's not in their best interest.
605
00:34:44.014 --> 00:34:44.194
Yeah.
606
00:34:44.555 --> 00:34:51.885
Now, the only issue I can think of at the moment with that is our sort of minimum wage in the area we are is £13 an hour.
607
00:34:52.306 --> 00:34:54.429
That's your living sort of wage.
608
00:34:54.609 --> 00:34:58.595
We haven't been able to put prices up on any of our work this year.
609
00:34:59.589 --> 00:35:04.974
because we put our price up twice last year from £35 an hour to £50 and up to £60.
610
00:35:05.454 --> 00:35:09.157
This year we've had to charge VAT because we hit that £90,000 threshold.
611
00:35:09.578 --> 00:35:12.700
So the VAT now increases any job 20%.
612
00:35:13.041 --> 00:35:18.325
So when we did that from the 1st of March, a lot of customers did leave, but we've gained more than what's left.
613
00:35:19.166 --> 00:35:24.690
But we can't put our price up anymore because then it's like 20% has already gone on top of a £20 lawn.
614
00:35:25.831 --> 00:35:27.592
So 20 pounds has now gone up to 24.
615
00:35:27.632 --> 00:35:28.712
We had our price of any more.
616
00:35:28.732 --> 00:35:30.512
They're looking at 30 pounds for five minutes.
617
00:35:30.812 --> 00:35:31.513
What's your close rate?
618
00:35:31.913 --> 00:35:34.173
At the moment, it's about sort of 80%.
619
00:35:34.573 --> 00:35:35.894
Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie.
620
00:35:36.034 --> 00:35:37.194
I don't care about VAT.
621
00:35:37.334 --> 00:35:38.494
I don't care about taxes.
622
00:35:38.934 --> 00:35:40.015
I don't care about any of this stuff.
623
00:35:40.355 --> 00:35:43.196
If you have an 80% close rate, you have room to move your prices up.
624
00:35:43.616 --> 00:35:43.836
Yeah.
625
00:35:44.196 --> 00:35:51.958
And so I understand that you can't make sense of spending 30 pounds for five minutes, but 80% of your customers can.
626
00:35:52.338 --> 00:35:52.538
Yeah.
627
00:35:53.018 --> 00:35:57.041
So I implore you, take everything I've said and just discount it and raise your prices.
628
00:35:57.081 --> 00:35:57.802
It's the biggest lever.
629
00:35:58.322 --> 00:36:03.105
If you do that, you will then now be able to pass the 25% rule.
630
00:36:03.205 --> 00:36:04.166
Even you can do it now.
631
00:36:04.266 --> 00:36:14.033
At 60 pounds an hour that you're charging and 13 as the base, as a living wage, you can do 15 pounds an hour's base pay, $60, and you pass the 25% rule, and you're fine.
632
00:36:14.053 --> 00:36:14.213
Right.
633
00:36:15.894 --> 00:36:18.457
I would also say you could still raise your prices.
634
00:36:19.117 --> 00:36:22.801
And the reason, Jamie, I ran into this too, like we are able-bodied young guys.
635
00:36:23.061 --> 00:36:24.343
You can do the work.
636
00:36:24.903 --> 00:36:27.966
The people you're selling to have way less time than you and more money.
637
00:36:28.307 --> 00:36:29.067
That's your customer.
638
00:36:29.528 --> 00:36:30.789
So they're going to value it differently.
639
00:36:30.829 --> 00:36:32.751
Five minutes to them is not five minutes to you.
640
00:36:33.191 --> 00:36:37.576
To them, that five-minute job would take half an afternoon and they don't have a lot of time left.
641
00:36:37.816 --> 00:36:38.036
Yeah.
642
00:36:38.176 --> 00:36:44.798
So I mean, our sort of when we're mowing, so that's our sort of hourly rate, which is what I sort of take care of that sort of side of the business.
643
00:36:44.858 --> 00:36:49.880
Our mowing rate is about 80 pounds an hour, which is about sort of $100 an hour.
644
00:36:49.920 --> 00:36:50.040
Yeah.
645
00:36:50.060 --> 00:36:51.360
Around about that point.
646
00:36:51.380 --> 00:36:51.940
For one or two people.
647
00:36:51.980 --> 00:36:53.561
Does that include one or two people?
648
00:36:53.841 --> 00:36:55.502
That's just one person for that route.
649
00:36:55.522 --> 00:36:56.982
We don't have two people in the vehicle.
650
00:36:57.022 --> 00:36:58.783
It doesn't make efficiency at all.
651
00:36:59.063 --> 00:37:04.445
You'll have one person sort of standing around whilst everyone finishes because our lawns are sort of two metres by two metres.
652
00:37:04.745 --> 00:37:04.985
Yeah.
653
00:37:05.186 --> 00:37:07.106
Sort of postage stamps.
654
00:37:07.366 --> 00:37:09.647
But that's hence why we can get in and out of property so quickly.
655
00:37:10.508 --> 00:37:12.028
That's why we can fit so much on the schedule.
656
00:37:12.048 --> 00:37:14.589
And we can do a minimum of £500 a day.
657
00:37:14.769 --> 00:37:18.291
That's sort of our minimum paying wages, still making profit.
658
00:37:18.771 --> 00:37:20.372
But most of the time we're at that £600, £700.
659
00:37:21.552 --> 00:37:22.552
that's including the VAT.
660
00:37:22.572 --> 00:37:24.473
So it's still about 500 pound profit a day.
661
00:37:24.793 --> 00:37:25.153
Let's go.
662
00:37:25.473 --> 00:37:27.814
Jamie, you got to raise prices and you got to do P2P.
663
00:37:28.214 --> 00:37:35.397
You will be able to pay your guys way more because they will be 30% faster if they're just incentivized correctly on their work.
664
00:37:35.757 --> 00:37:35.937
Yeah.
665
00:37:36.737 --> 00:37:37.438
You got to do it.
666
00:37:37.778 --> 00:37:38.279
You will crush it.
667
00:37:38.299 --> 00:37:38.780
You will crush it.
668
00:37:38.920 --> 00:37:39.901
You have great margins.
669
00:37:39.921 --> 00:37:42.424
Like honestly, for UK, you have great margins.
670
00:37:42.504 --> 00:37:43.485
I know UK guys enough.
671
00:37:43.946 --> 00:37:44.907
You're doing really good.
672
00:37:45.347 --> 00:37:46.949
Just, just trust me.
673
00:37:46.969 --> 00:37:49.232
You can raise prices at 80% close rate, guarantee it.
674
00:37:49.813 --> 00:37:50.914
And I don't care about the economy.
675
00:37:50.954 --> 00:37:51.675
I don't care about any of that.
676
00:37:51.835 --> 00:37:51.895
If,
677
00:37:51.995 --> 00:37:54.938
80% of people are saying yes to your quote, you need to raise prices.
678
00:37:55.399 --> 00:38:02.906
And secondly, is with that increased margin, you will be able to have higher base pays in your competition and have pay for performance.
679
00:38:03.547 --> 00:38:10.714
So like figure out pay for performance at all costs, because you will unlock 25 to 30% more efficiency from your crew immediately.
680
00:38:10.994 --> 00:38:11.174
Yeah.
681
00:38:11.555 --> 00:38:12.135
Okay, perfect.
682
00:38:12.155 --> 00:38:12.476
Thank you.
683
00:38:12.936 --> 00:38:13.436
You got it, man.
684
00:38:13.496 --> 00:38:13.956
I'm proud of you.
685
00:38:14.477 --> 00:38:15.317
UK is tough sometimes.
686
00:38:15.497 --> 00:38:15.837
Hey, everyone.
687
00:38:15.877 --> 00:38:26.301
Inside of the book, Copy and Paste Millionaire, I talk about the P4P system being so instrumental to be able to have the business run without you, where your employees are paid based on how hard they're working.
688
00:38:26.802 --> 00:38:36.245
If this is something you're interested in, within a matter of a minute per employee per day, you can pay your employees based on how hard they work and not based on how many hours they worked.
689
00:38:36.906 --> 00:38:37.466
So go check it out.
690
00:38:37.566 --> 00:38:38.666
P4Psoftware.com.
691
00:38:38.686 --> 00:38:40.087
The first 30 days are completely free.
692
00:38:40.507 --> 00:38:42.288
So you can make sure it's working for your business.
693
00:38:42.468 --> 00:38:47.191
Set up a call with Layelle, our support system here, to be able to make sure it's implemented in your business correct.
694
00:38:47.211 --> 00:38:47.851
Sean, you're up.
695
00:38:47.891 --> 00:38:49.012
Go ahead.
696
00:38:49.092 --> 00:38:50.673
Let's start with Angie's list.
697
00:38:51.213 --> 00:38:52.034
I belong to it.
698
00:38:52.134 --> 00:38:54.955
I'm paying a lot, $8.75 a month.
699
00:38:55.456 --> 00:38:57.077
Yeah, yeah, that's...
700
00:38:57.697 --> 00:39:01.299
But I got three quarters of my business and I just started the business last year.
701
00:39:01.819 --> 00:39:08.343
And three quarters of my business has come from that, either directly from Angie's List or referrals.
702
00:39:08.523 --> 00:39:10.944
Actually, more referrals now than Angie's List.
703
00:39:11.664 --> 00:39:20.909
I really am not happy with Angie's List because they have now started doing opportunity leads where they're paying on top of that monthly payment.
704
00:39:21.789 --> 00:39:23.130
I feel like I'm getting ripped off.
705
00:39:23.751 --> 00:39:23.871
Yeah.
706
00:39:24.871 --> 00:39:29.873
Angie's is great because you can pay someone and get leads tomorrow and they're actually usually pretty decent leads.
707
00:39:30.234 --> 00:39:38.277
The challenging part is the worst thing that can happen is you begin to grow because now you start building infrastructure and dependency on their lead flow.
708
00:39:38.437 --> 00:39:44.360
And so the reason the website is always the most important thing is because that cost does not go up per lead.
709
00:39:44.720 --> 00:39:47.782
So when you get 100 leads or 10 leads, you pay the same amount.
710
00:39:48.142 --> 00:39:51.345
I don't want you to be paying the 800 bucks plus per lead.
711
00:39:51.545 --> 00:39:53.667
So as you scale, you like I see this all the time.
712
00:39:53.687 --> 00:39:58.692
People spending $1,500, $2,000, $3,000 a month to a company like Andy's Thumbtack, et cetera.
713
00:39:59.073 --> 00:40:00.754
And it's because they built the infrastructure.
714
00:40:00.774 --> 00:40:01.615
They have an office space.
715
00:40:01.635 --> 00:40:02.676
They have an office person.
716
00:40:02.916 --> 00:40:06.420
They have an estimator and they need to keep enough leads coming in just to keep their crew busy.
717
00:40:06.740 --> 00:40:11.805
Specifically, if you don't have recurring work or you have not built a back end out to upsell the customer.
718
00:40:12.465 --> 00:40:26.537
One time I'm okay with something like Thumbtack or a pay-per-lead service like Angie's is if you have developed a system to be able to upsell a customer and keep them in your ecosystem after they originally come in.
719
00:40:26.917 --> 00:40:29.760
And so there are some of our locations – Well, that's what – Go ahead.
720
00:40:30.060 --> 00:40:30.340
Go ahead.
721
00:40:30.360 --> 00:40:31.800
No, that's what I'm doing.
722
00:40:31.941 --> 00:40:33.661
And it's all recurring work.
723
00:40:33.821 --> 00:40:37.862
It's all snow removal was actually really good with Angie's List.
724
00:40:38.182 --> 00:40:40.163
And I was doing contracts.
725
00:40:41.223 --> 00:40:44.064
I guess where I'm at is I'm just tired of paying the $8.75 a month.
726
00:40:44.084 --> 00:40:59.348
And now that they're making you pay for opportunity leads on top of that, it just seems like, you know, and I don't know if I actually need it anymore with homeworks, web design, and, you know, just a referral program, too, that's really working out.
727
00:40:59.619 --> 00:41:04.782
So the thing is right now, if it has built three quarters of your business, I would not cut it.
728
00:41:04.962 --> 00:41:06.463
What I would do is start replacing it.
729
00:41:06.483 --> 00:41:10.165
And then you will eventually come to the point where like, okay, now it's 50%, 40%, 25.
730
00:41:10.285 --> 00:41:11.526
Okay, cut the thing.
731
00:41:11.886 --> 00:41:18.490
Cause now you know, you have the confidence that when you deploy that thousand dollars towards some other opportunity vehicle, you have a higher output.
732
00:41:18.970 --> 00:41:21.735
And so I'm locked in until August.
733
00:41:21.756 --> 00:41:23.098
So I think that's what I'm going to do.
734
00:41:23.138 --> 00:41:24.701
I'm just going to run it out till August.
735
00:41:25.262 --> 00:41:30.673
By that time, I'll hit capacity, raise prices, like you said, and go from there.
736
00:41:31.277 --> 00:41:39.520
And by then, too, you'll be in the cadence of sending out monthly emails and text blasts to where you know when you're slow, you go out and get 20 estimates.
737
00:41:39.960 --> 00:41:40.100
Right.
738
00:41:40.120 --> 00:41:40.861
You send out a text.
739
00:41:40.881 --> 00:41:43.642
You have a seasonal offer that you have for every single month.
740
00:41:44.082 --> 00:41:48.724
And doing that gives you the confidence to get off this, like, IV drip that is costing a lot.
741
00:41:48.744 --> 00:41:52.285
And trust me, that just gets more and more addictive the bigger the business gets.
742
00:41:52.905 --> 00:42:01.554
So I went to a business last year that did about $1.5 million in revenue, and about $700,000 of it came from Angie's and Thumbtack.
743
00:42:02.194 --> 00:42:09.962
And it was a very painful process to decouple all of that because he was paying $3,000 to $4,000 a month in these lead costs.
744
00:42:10.162 --> 00:42:11.823
And it took a couple of years to fix.
745
00:42:12.084 --> 00:42:16.268
So the worst thing that can happen is you scale where it's still 75% of your leads are coming from that.
746
00:42:16.828 --> 00:42:18.730
I want you to just slowly decouple.
747
00:42:18.770 --> 00:42:20.091
You got to August at least.
748
00:42:20.511 --> 00:42:23.614
My hope is that by then maybe 15 or 20% of the leads are coming from them.
749
00:42:23.974 --> 00:42:27.117
And yes, it's a lost cost for the next few months.
750
00:42:27.517 --> 00:42:32.001
But we basically have this six months to figure out how do I upsell customers?
751
00:42:32.642 --> 00:42:35.284
By then your website should have 30 to 50 reviews.
752
00:42:35.845 --> 00:42:36.946
Leads should be coming in.
753
00:42:37.286 --> 00:42:39.408
And then it's like, okay, the opportunity is now gone.
754
00:42:39.728 --> 00:42:42.430
Yeah, no, I think that's kind of where I'm leaning towards.
755
00:42:42.510 --> 00:42:52.758
I mean, between joining Co-Pilot and, you know, leaving job or getting a better website with lawn care web design and joining Co-Pilot, I just see it kind of moving in that direction.
756
00:42:52.818 --> 00:42:56.481
And a lot of my, you know, a lot of my business is referrals now, too.
757
00:42:56.901 --> 00:43:00.824
So just doing a good job and getting that built up, I think will help.
758
00:43:00.985 --> 00:43:01.345
Thank you.
759
00:43:01.625 --> 00:43:02.025
You got it.
760
00:43:02.145 --> 00:43:02.986
All right, Corbin, you're up.
761
00:43:03.046 --> 00:43:03.586
How's it going?
762
00:43:03.867 --> 00:43:06.708
We started in 2020 as a side hustle.
763
00:43:07.509 --> 00:43:09.570
We started taking it seriously in 2024.
764
00:43:09.810 --> 00:43:14.934
Last year, 2025, we did just over $100,000 in revenue with 20% profit.
765
00:43:14.994 --> 00:43:18.476
My question is going forward, it's me and one other guy in the field.
766
00:43:18.676 --> 00:43:22.739
My wife helps me with some admin, and I have somebody helping me put out door hangers right now.
767
00:43:23.439 --> 00:43:24.680
My question is on hiring.
768
00:43:25.801 --> 00:43:28.603
Who, what position should I look to hire, and at what point?
769
00:43:28.623 --> 00:43:28.903
Okay.
770
00:43:29.043 --> 00:43:31.404
Our goal for this year is to get between $200,000, $250,000.
771
00:43:31.444 --> 00:43:34.284
What's your hourly rate right now, Corbin?
772
00:43:34.604 --> 00:43:37.585
For the two of us, me and the one guy in the field, we're at $92 an hour.
773
00:43:37.845 --> 00:43:41.906
So I need that higher, like significantly, before you start thinking about hiring.
774
00:43:41.926 --> 00:43:50.208
Because at $45, $46 per man per hour, if you go hire anyone in your labor market, assuming even if they're really efficient, over 50%.
775
00:43:51.548 --> 00:43:54.349
of their revenue will be just going to direct labor.
776
00:43:54.669 --> 00:43:55.190
It's too high.
777
00:43:55.570 --> 00:44:00.892
And so like right now in your market, what do you have to pay someone on base pay to get them just to come work for you if you were paying hourly?
778
00:44:01.172 --> 00:44:03.493
I was paying hourly, 20, probably 20 an hour.
779
00:44:03.873 --> 00:44:06.854
Yeah, so at 20 bucks an hour, and then let's assume that they're 75% efficient.
780
00:44:08.295 --> 00:44:12.876
That would mean it's $25 an hour cost to you, plus taxes, it's gonna be 30 bucks an hour.
781
00:44:13.196 --> 00:44:21.318
You're making 45, $46 an hour, meaning 60 to 70% of the money they make will go to their wages.
782
00:44:21.598 --> 00:44:22.798
I need that number under 40.
783
00:44:23.118 --> 00:44:26.419
And so what I would personally do is hit capacity with you and this other guy.
784
00:44:26.859 --> 00:44:28.980
Sounds like you got door hangers, like you're gonna be growing a bunch.
785
00:44:29.420 --> 00:44:32.261
I think you can hit your goal of revenue this year without hiring anybody.
786
00:44:32.501 --> 00:44:37.222
And I would just really try to do this of, I call it the 25% rule.
787
00:44:38.722 --> 00:44:44.226
And that is what you got to pay your employees being less than 25% of what you charge the customer.
788
00:44:44.366 --> 00:44:46.587
So your current rate, that would be like 12 bucks an hour.
789
00:44:47.047 --> 00:44:48.428
We know we can't find someone, right?
790
00:44:48.748 --> 00:44:51.010
And so 25% of $46 is right around that 12, 13 bucks an hour.
791
00:44:51.490 --> 00:44:51.690
So like...
792
00:44:53.791 --> 00:44:56.314
I would rather you hit capacity with you and your current guy.
793
00:44:56.334 --> 00:44:57.936
You might be there now or very close.
794
00:44:58.196 --> 00:45:00.879
Raise prices to existing customers and to new customers.
795
00:45:01.060 --> 00:45:03.823
And that might mean this year you don't actually hire anyone.
796
00:45:04.203 --> 00:45:05.965
You just get to the point where you can actually afford hiring.
797
00:45:05.985 --> 00:45:08.989
Because the last thing I want you to do right now, Corbin, is hire at your current rates.
798
00:45:10.109 --> 00:45:11.870
You will not have 20% margin if you do that.
799
00:45:12.210 --> 00:45:15.391
You will have negative very quickly if you start scaling that model.
800
00:45:15.671 --> 00:45:17.652
And so I would personally be, that would be my target.
801
00:45:17.672 --> 00:45:25.515
Hit the 25% rule, which is 25% or less is what I pay on hourly compared to what I charge the customer.
802
00:45:25.655 --> 00:45:29.716
Which in your case, if you got to pay 20 bucks an hour, means you got to charge $80 an hour.
803
00:45:29.956 --> 00:45:35.858
And I know to you right now, it seems crazy because you're paying, you're charging 92 for two people, but like it is possible.
804
00:45:36.118 --> 00:45:36.699
And to do-
805
00:45:37.759 --> 00:45:37.979
Go ahead.
806
00:45:38.239 --> 00:45:38.679
Yeah, go ahead.
807
00:45:38.799 --> 00:45:41.020
Oh, right now we're pretty fast.
808
00:45:41.040 --> 00:45:43.421
You know, we got like 90% efficiency score.
809
00:45:43.461 --> 00:45:45.061
So that's why it's working with the two of us.
810
00:45:45.341 --> 00:45:48.542
But I can definitely see going forward, we're going to have to bump that up.
811
00:45:49.062 --> 00:45:52.443
You will be the most efficient crew you will ever have in the existence of your business.
812
00:45:52.703 --> 00:45:57.044
And so if that number is also going to go down, we even have bigger problems, right?
813
00:45:58.205 --> 00:46:00.445
What percentage of your current estimates are getting accepted, Corbin?
814
00:46:00.465 --> 00:46:01.285
Like what's your close rate?
815
00:46:02.046 --> 00:46:03.026
We're about 60%.
816
00:46:03.406 --> 00:46:03.706
Okay.
817
00:46:03.846 --> 00:46:06.687
And do you have any automated text and email follow-up right now?
818
00:46:07.065 --> 00:46:10.746
So we just signed up with HomeWorks and I've never done any software before.
819
00:46:10.806 --> 00:46:11.987
So it's a big change to us.
820
00:46:12.547 --> 00:46:12.887
Okay.
821
00:46:13.207 --> 00:46:13.527
Yeah.
822
00:46:13.547 --> 00:46:15.268
So, okay, good, good, good.
823
00:46:15.348 --> 00:46:18.469
So what I want, I would love to see here's, here's like the one, two, and three.
824
00:46:18.729 --> 00:46:20.709
Number one, get automations ASAP.
825
00:46:21.129 --> 00:46:22.950
The power pack is already inside of there.
826
00:46:23.010 --> 00:46:25.631
You can push a couple of buttons and it's good to go with stuff I've made.
827
00:46:26.051 --> 00:46:33.797
I would highly recommend text and email follow-up, especially in the first 10 days, basically daily until the market is accepted or market is declined.
828
00:46:34.157 --> 00:46:35.718
Second thing is follow-up phone calls.
829
00:46:36.158 --> 00:46:39.921
And inside that power pack, the automations will just email and text you when to do them.
830
00:46:40.361 --> 00:46:43.884
I would recommend doing it one at 24 hours, one at three days minimum.
831
00:46:44.144 --> 00:46:48.087
Third is by doing that, your close rate will 100% go from 60% to 80%.
832
00:46:49.828 --> 00:46:54.089
As soon as you pass 70%, I want you to raise prices on existing customers and new customers.
833
00:46:54.109 --> 00:46:55.090
So there's the one, two, three.
834
00:46:55.170 --> 00:46:59.651
If you do that, it might mean you have to do that again later this year when you hit capacity.
835
00:46:59.851 --> 00:47:03.672
But if you did two price increases, you're probably going to get around that $80 an hour marker.
836
00:47:03.992 --> 00:47:08.194
And that gives you the green light to go back into growth mode.
837
00:47:08.654 --> 00:47:10.855
But now you'll do it much more profitably.
838
00:47:11.135 --> 00:47:15.416
Because right now, the reason that you are at 20% margin is because you're out in the field working.
839
00:47:15.716 --> 00:47:18.157
If we take that away, we're not making money.
840
00:47:18.557 --> 00:47:27.901
And so I can't, we can't scale the current model, but you can, if you get your price increase, if you get your close rate high enough to where you've raised prices, and then you're still going to be at 60%.
841
00:47:28.021 --> 00:47:33.724
Like the only thing to think about right now is text automations, email automations, follow up phone calls and raise your close rate.
842
00:47:34.164 --> 00:47:36.125
Doing that will give you the confidence to raise prices.
843
00:47:36.445 --> 00:47:42.068
Raising prices will then make it feasible to scale by making at least $80 per hour per man.
844
00:47:42.408 --> 00:47:42.628
Got it.
845
00:47:43.048 --> 00:47:43.689
Got it.
846
00:47:43.709 --> 00:47:53.238
So second question is, we I tried to convert everybody from biweekly, all the existing clients from biweekly to weekly for scheduling sake and to raise prices on them that way.
847
00:47:54.479 --> 00:47:57.942
And when I did it, I raised prices about 15 percent on everybody.
848
00:47:58.423 --> 00:48:02.467
And then there's about 75 percent for the weekly was the other option.
849
00:48:03.387 --> 00:48:05.088
I had, I think, two clients convert.
850
00:48:05.408 --> 00:48:06.689
What would your suggestion be?
851
00:48:06.709 --> 00:48:07.689
Should I try that again?
852
00:48:08.249 --> 00:48:09.530
Should I make the gap wider?
853
00:48:09.750 --> 00:48:11.491
Should I forget about that for the time being?
854
00:48:11.511 --> 00:48:12.671
What would you suggest?
855
00:48:12.691 --> 00:48:18.194
I think I'd forget about it for now because the biggest lever is getting to capacity and raising prices.
856
00:48:18.494 --> 00:48:21.275
Like, are you right now overwhelmed with work, Corbin?
857
00:48:21.695 --> 00:48:24.617
Or could you take on just operations?
858
00:48:25.037 --> 00:48:28.238
You and the other guy working, could you take on 10 or 15 more customers?
859
00:48:28.738 --> 00:48:29.479
Yeah, we could.
860
00:48:29.499 --> 00:48:29.899
Yeah.
861
00:48:30.077 --> 00:48:30.257
Cool.
862
00:48:30.437 --> 00:48:33.138
So I need you to determine exactly how many customers.
863
00:48:33.678 --> 00:48:35.459
And when you hit that number, you know you're raising prices.
864
00:48:35.719 --> 00:48:36.979
That's capacity, right?
865
00:48:37.220 --> 00:48:41.701
And I could go into budget hours, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say, because you haven't done software, you don't know budget hours on every job.
866
00:48:42.181 --> 00:48:45.222
And so I just need you to know, okay, theoretically, I have 70 customers.
867
00:48:45.382 --> 00:48:47.523
If I get 85, we're at capacity.
868
00:48:47.543 --> 00:48:47.803
Great.
869
00:48:47.883 --> 00:48:48.824
That's when we're raising prices.
870
00:48:49.264 --> 00:48:53.485
And when you do that, I want you to raise prices by more than 15%.
871
00:48:53.545 --> 00:48:55.826
You're very low right now.
872
00:48:56.346 --> 00:48:57.086
Very low.
873
00:48:57.327 --> 00:48:58.187
Which mark are you in, Corbin?
874
00:48:58.207 --> 00:48:58.347
Corbin?
875
00:48:58.707 --> 00:48:59.927
We're in hot springs, Arkansas.
876
00:49:00.347 --> 00:49:00.588
Okay.
877
00:49:00.708 --> 00:49:00.828
Yeah.
878
00:49:00.848 --> 00:49:02.028
Like you can go higher.
879
00:49:03.228 --> 00:49:05.349
So yeah, he started at 60.
880
00:49:05.829 --> 00:49:06.749
He's up to 85.
881
00:49:06.769 --> 00:49:08.330
So like you can definitely go higher.
882
00:49:09.450 --> 00:49:11.331
It'll come down to your confidence of the lead flow.
883
00:49:11.971 --> 00:49:16.472
And that goes back to the estimate follow-up, automations, follow-up phone calls.
884
00:49:16.832 --> 00:49:21.733
I will also say if you want to have more confidence and juice this faster, you make sure your website's dialed in.
885
00:49:22.154 --> 00:49:26.815
So that way you're also getting more leads in addition to having a higher close rate.
886
00:49:26.995 --> 00:49:27.235
You got it.
887
00:49:27.515 --> 00:49:29.537
Yeah, the website's been up a little less than a year.
888
00:49:30.037 --> 00:49:31.938
It's from this company you may know called Long Care Web Design.
889
00:49:31.959 --> 00:49:32.519
They're pretty good.
890
00:49:32.939 --> 00:49:38.864
Yeah, so I would just say your follow-up is probably the area of biggest weakness.
891
00:49:39.024 --> 00:49:41.506
And if you solve that, you'll get so much more work.
892
00:49:42.066 --> 00:49:44.989
And then by getting all that work, you'll hit capacity faster.
893
00:49:45.009 --> 00:49:46.690
By hitting capacity, you'll raise prices.
894
00:49:46.910 --> 00:49:50.253
And by raising prices, you'll have the confidence to actually scale profitable.
895
00:49:50.273 --> 00:49:50.473
Got it.
896
00:49:50.813 --> 00:49:51.253
Sounds good.
897
00:49:51.833 --> 00:49:52.234
Thanks, Mike.
898
00:49:52.254 --> 00:49:52.634
Good man.
899
00:49:53.194 --> 00:49:53.534
Good man.
900
00:49:53.554 --> 00:49:53.974
Thanks brother.
901
00:49:54.135 --> 00:49:54.795
Chris, you're up.
902
00:49:54.995 --> 00:49:56.836
I'm a staining company in Kansas City.
903
00:49:57.696 --> 00:50:00.317
So my first question was about our off season.
904
00:50:01.318 --> 00:50:07.260
So about two, three months out of the year, I'd say probably from November to January.
905
00:50:09.606 --> 00:50:10.728
Pretty slow, pretty dead.
906
00:50:10.768 --> 00:50:12.110
People aren't really thinking about it.
907
00:50:12.430 --> 00:50:25.029
For the past, I guess, two years, this is our fourth year, we've just been doing selling more, like pre-booking, I guess, into the next season, which has kind of kept us just afloat with our overhead.
908
00:50:25.730 --> 00:50:37.765
Like this last year, I mean, we did a lot of pre-selling, but we were asked, like, I'd say a handful of times if we do hardwood floors, which we don't.
909
00:50:37.805 --> 00:50:40.288
We do mainly just decks and fences.
910
00:50:40.308 --> 00:50:40.889
Yeah.
911
00:50:41.249 --> 00:50:45.751
Um, so I've been curious on what that'd be something like you would add.
912
00:50:45.831 --> 00:50:51.233
I obviously know it's like a new service or, and like, you know, new equipment be, you know, included in that.
913
00:50:51.273 --> 00:50:57.955
So that'd be kind of my trade off there, but I don't know if it's like, if you think that's worth adding or not.
914
00:50:58.570 --> 00:51:02.975
Yeah, so have you taken the off-season workshop, Chris?
915
00:51:03.175 --> 00:51:04.056
Yeah, yeah.
916
00:51:04.617 --> 00:51:04.837
Cool.
917
00:51:05.218 --> 00:51:11.605
All right, so you know then that I would rather us, first off, do more and better, like you've kind of been doing already.
918
00:51:12.006 --> 00:51:13.427
Third would be adjacent service.
919
00:51:14.148 --> 00:51:16.451
And then the very last is like starting a brand, right?
920
00:51:16.471 --> 00:51:16.912
The fifth one.
921
00:51:17.312 --> 00:51:21.257
And so I think an adjacent service could very well be hardwood.
922
00:51:21.718 --> 00:51:28.646
The question becomes, do you need to train your guys a lot more or have to buy a whole bunch more equipment in order to be able to offer that service?
923
00:51:29.299 --> 00:51:54.866
not really training as much because we do sanding for decks so it's just similar similar process it's just a different type of sander um so just basically new equipment on my end um yeah i i'm i'm a big fan of this i've seen this happen a couple flooring companies have done this um and i've seen deck builders do it hardwood and what's nice then you say hey look
924
00:51:55.586 --> 00:51:59.607
Any time throughout the year, if someone contacts us, we're only doing flooring for these months.
925
00:52:00.088 --> 00:52:03.209
And whenever someone contacts us, we're only doing it during these months.
926
00:52:03.769 --> 00:52:07.670
And ultimately to solve the off season, many times people will use more and better.
927
00:52:08.030 --> 00:52:11.251
And they'll just be like, hey, we're going to contract things or get like level billing.
928
00:52:11.371 --> 00:52:11.631
Great.
929
00:52:12.252 --> 00:52:13.712
You solve it from a cash perspective.
930
00:52:13.732 --> 00:52:15.353
You don't solve it from an accrual perspective.
931
00:52:15.753 --> 00:52:22.215
And in the perfect world, we solve the off season, not only from a cash perspective, but also we earn revenue throughout those months.
932
00:52:22.735 --> 00:52:22.915
Right.
933
00:52:23.035 --> 00:52:30.380
Because otherwise you're just robbing from Peter to pay Paul by stealing from your spring and your summer profits to make up for your winter.
934
00:52:30.861 --> 00:52:32.942
And so I'd be a huge fan of it.
935
00:52:32.962 --> 00:52:38.667
What I would probably do, Chris, is like if you could get people that have asked for it, do five of them and just see how it goes.
936
00:52:39.868 --> 00:52:45.032
or even better yet, you start marketing those services going into your off season.
937
00:52:45.312 --> 00:52:46.654
So then you have a book of business.
938
00:52:46.674 --> 00:52:50.117
Like you already have 10, 15, 20 jobs on the schedule for that first month.
939
00:52:50.537 --> 00:52:51.458
That would be the big win.
940
00:52:51.798 --> 00:52:55.762
And I would save up this year while you're able to do outdoor services.
941
00:52:56.262 --> 00:53:04.670
I would set aside capital to be able to market during the last month of your busy season so that your first month of your slow season, you fill up.
942
00:53:04.990 --> 00:53:06.873
That would be like the big goal for the year, in my opinion.
943
00:53:07.253 --> 00:53:21.651
And if that means running money on some ads, I would also say texting all of your existing customers late in your season, all the people in your database, and making them an offer that's really, really solid to fill that first month would also be a great option.
944
00:53:21.832 --> 00:53:22.793
Just send them a text blast.
945
00:53:23.242 --> 00:53:23.622
Gotcha.
946
00:53:23.762 --> 00:53:24.042
Okay.
947
00:53:24.902 --> 00:53:39.526
Um, yeah, that was cause like last year we added, uh, pre-staining like, so basically going after fence contractors, um, which is slower start, but it seemed like the same demand curve, um, as our season.
948
00:53:39.566 --> 00:53:46.087
So like, we get really busy obviously during the spring and summer and that kind of, we picked up with that with pre-staining too.
949
00:53:48.588 --> 00:53:53.873
So like, I just felt like getting indoors a little bit would help out with the off season.
950
00:53:54.313 --> 00:53:55.074
Yeah, 100%.
951
00:53:55.334 --> 00:53:58.357
Like, are you going to brand it the same as your current company?
952
00:53:59.318 --> 00:54:00.519
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
953
00:54:00.559 --> 00:54:03.362
Just because, I mean, our brand is staining grain.
954
00:54:03.382 --> 00:54:05.363
So I mean, it's not really changing anything.
955
00:54:06.104 --> 00:54:06.444
That's great.
956
00:54:06.565 --> 00:54:06.725
Yeah.
957
00:54:07.307 --> 00:54:09.689
Yeah, like if I was you, I would get the website done right away.
958
00:54:09.950 --> 00:54:11.091
So that way you start ranking.
959
00:54:11.191 --> 00:54:14.414
So that by the time you need the leads, you're already ranking well on Google.
960
00:54:14.914 --> 00:54:18.117
So I would get the service pages done now, change any pictures you need.
961
00:54:18.378 --> 00:54:23.643
If you want to add some video, I would also say you basically need two versions of your website.
962
00:54:24.183 --> 00:54:25.644
You're not going to actually have two websites.
963
00:54:25.664 --> 00:54:26.665
You're going to have two versions.
964
00:54:26.725 --> 00:54:27.847
Meaning when it hits...
965
00:54:28.467 --> 00:54:31.911
November, December, you're going to say, okay, these are the pictures, I'm swapping them out.
966
00:54:32.091 --> 00:54:33.893
This is the main headline, swapping it out.
967
00:54:34.053 --> 00:54:36.635
Because you know no one's staining their fence in the middle of January.
968
00:54:37.216 --> 00:54:46.005
We should just be focused on pictures, videos, and headlines of the website should talk about the hardwood staining and et cetera.
969
00:54:46.734 --> 00:54:47.715
Okay.
970
00:54:47.895 --> 00:54:50.537
So I just got one more question about like hiring.
971
00:54:50.697 --> 00:55:00.183
My goal for this year was just to be in profit mode, not really to hire anybody or bring on another truck, but we are super busy and I haven't even ran ads yet.
972
00:55:00.623 --> 00:55:05.166
I assume that's just from like referrals and word of mouth and all that stuff.
973
00:55:05.446 --> 00:55:10.229
And then I did a lot of text blast just for reoccurring work.
974
00:55:12.411 --> 00:55:21.958
But so I hired one guy and I mean, it's a little slow to start, but I'm also again, running around trying to juggle estimates and do the work.
975
00:55:23.239 --> 00:55:32.967
So would you still recommend just keep, you know, keeping, keep going with, you know, without hire or buying another truck or.
976
00:55:33.788 --> 00:55:38.211
Or would you still buy another truck, just maybe like $4,000 or $5,000?
977
00:55:38.691 --> 00:55:43.495
And then that way they can go do the work while I do estimates and stuff.
978
00:55:44.156 --> 00:55:45.877
Yeah, it all comes down to your capital position.
979
00:55:45.957 --> 00:55:52.823
If you don't have a lot of money and cash that aside or low enough cash to where you feel uncomfortable, you're going to hit capacity and raise prices.
980
00:55:53.523 --> 00:55:58.007
If you get to capacity and now you just hired one person, you essentially probably raised your capacity by 70%, 80%.
981
00:55:59.268 --> 00:56:05.172
I want you to know what that budget hour or revenue amount is that what is capacity?
982
00:56:05.192 --> 00:56:08.394
Because capacity for you in the past was when you see you being super busy.
983
00:56:09.054 --> 00:56:10.014
Now we need a number.
984
00:56:10.034 --> 00:56:15.798
And this is why we have budget hours on every single visit, every single to do, every single meeting inside HomeWorks.
985
00:56:15.878 --> 00:56:22.402
And you see on the calendar and the dispatch board for every single week because it is the determining factor as to whether or not we hire someone.
986
00:56:22.742 --> 00:56:23.964
Just because we're busy doesn't mean you hire.
987
00:56:24.304 --> 00:56:31.533
We hit capacity and then we have the question of, do I go raise capacity by hiring people or do I go into profit mode and raise prices?
988
00:56:32.013 --> 00:56:40.763
Now, there is a hybrid of this, Chris, which is you hit capacity, you raise prices, and by raising prices, afford the ability to go buy that other truck.
989
00:56:41.264 --> 00:56:44.465
So for example, let's just say you have to finance the thing as $800 a month.
990
00:56:44.565 --> 00:56:45.385
Just throwing a number out there.
991
00:56:45.905 --> 00:56:49.386
$800 a month for this truck, let's just say $1,000 with insurance, storage, whatever.
992
00:56:49.746 --> 00:56:50.446
$1,000 a month.
993
00:56:50.826 --> 00:57:01.869
If you're able to get recurring revenue and by you raising prices, you draw $4,000 at the bottom line, you can actually go into profit mode to afford the ability to increase your capacity, i.e.
994
00:57:01.929 --> 00:57:03.810
buy another truck, hire another person.
995
00:57:04.810 --> 00:57:04.910
Okay.
996
00:57:05.696 --> 00:57:11.343
Yeah, like we raised prices, I guess, recently, but like our close rates pretty high still.
997
00:57:11.663 --> 00:57:16.409
So I assume this year it's at a, you know, 76%.
998
00:57:17.438 --> 00:57:18.619
You raise your prices again.
999
00:57:20.340 --> 00:57:21.480
So you're over 70%.
1000
00:57:21.520 --> 00:57:22.701
We raise prices no matter what.
1001
00:57:23.241 --> 00:57:29.025
Because if you're going into profit mode, I would raise it to the point where it's 30% to 50%.
1002
00:57:30.025 --> 00:57:33.127
If you're between 50% and 70%, I consider your growth mode.
1003
00:57:33.387 --> 00:57:35.689
30% to 50%, I consider that profit mode.
1004
00:57:36.069 --> 00:57:41.272
Above 70%, raise prices immediately because you'll just draw straight money to the bottom line with very little impact.
1005
00:57:41.932 --> 00:58:02.450
okay which i mean that's i guess that's kind of where i've had the problem because last year was different like we raised prices towards the end of the year and we're at 40 ending the year so like it was the same prices so but now we're at 76 with the same pricing so i and i just assume like i just keep raising them
1006
00:58:03.068 --> 00:58:04.109
Yep.
1007
00:58:04.229 --> 00:58:07.393
There is no rules as to how much money you can make on a job.
1008
00:58:07.754 --> 00:58:12.740
The ultimate determining factor as to whether or not you are quote to expenses is whether or not people say no to your estimates.
1009
00:58:13.060 --> 00:58:20.990
And when 77% is saying yes, I don't care what the competitors charge, I don't care what customers say, you're underpriced.
1010
00:58:22.267 --> 00:58:22.888
Okay.
1011
00:58:22.908 --> 00:58:29.575
It's a great place to be because if you have everything you tell and like, oh, we're closing 25% of people, we got to look at our sales process.
1012
00:58:29.595 --> 00:58:31.076
There's way more things we got to fix.
1013
00:58:31.096 --> 00:58:38.183
When you're closing 70 plus percent, the fastest lever in the business is raise your prices by at least 20% and you will probably double your profits overnight.
1014
00:58:38.504 --> 00:58:42.528
And then that doubling of profits allows you to go buy the truck, hire another person, extending capacity.
1015
00:58:42.808 --> 00:58:44.630
And now you scale profitably.
1016
00:58:45.050 --> 00:58:45.250
Right.
1017
00:58:45.871 --> 00:58:46.271
I gotcha.
1018
00:58:46.731 --> 00:58:46.932
Okay.
1019
00:58:47.232 --> 00:58:47.692
Appreciate it.
1020
00:58:47.712 --> 00:58:47.992
Thank you.
1021
00:58:48.493 --> 00:58:48.873
Crushing it.
1022
00:58:48.893 --> 00:58:49.293
Great job.
1023
00:58:49.494 --> 00:58:58.761
If you struggle with having an off-season in your business and your revenue is dropping a lot for three or four months out of the year, like a lot of home service businesses, I created a special workshop.
1024
00:58:58.841 --> 00:58:59.842
It's completely free.
1025
00:59:00.142 --> 00:59:05.146
You can scan the QR code here or just go to mikeandys.com slash workshop.
1026
00:59:05.626 --> 00:59:12.632
And it's three to four hours of content where you'll be able to figure out the five solutions to make sure that the winter or your off-season doesn't tank your business.
1027
00:59:13.072 --> 00:59:13.573
Tim, go ahead.
1028
00:59:14.593 --> 00:59:17.376
I am the owner of Lawn Fox Lawn Care.
1029
00:59:17.396 --> 00:59:21.099
We do about... Last year, we did $80,000 in revenue.
1030
00:59:21.920 --> 00:59:23.862
This year, I'd like to do $300,000.
1031
00:59:24.482 --> 00:59:30.208
So currently, the way that I get customers is local service ads, Nextdoor, and...
1032
00:59:31.528 --> 00:59:32.188
like door hangers.
1033
00:59:32.808 --> 00:59:37.529
And so I want to scale door hangers because I feel like, you know, I have like local services.
1034
00:59:37.569 --> 00:59:41.610
I, by the end of the season, I basically had them set to max because they worked pretty well.
1035
00:59:42.470 --> 00:59:43.811
So I'm trying to figure out door hangers.
1036
00:59:44.051 --> 00:59:47.871
I already got the pack on Lawn Care Media.
1037
00:59:47.891 --> 00:59:49.552
So I'm using those designs this year.
1038
00:59:49.572 --> 00:59:50.452
I'm excited about that.
1039
00:59:50.812 --> 00:59:56.153
But I'm wondering how to figure out what neighborhoods to put them out in.
1040
00:59:56.753 --> 00:59:59.375
How many door hangers are you going to put out, Tim?
1041
00:59:59.415 --> 01:00:01.416
First order I placed was for about 5,000.
1042
01:00:01.876 --> 01:00:08.220
I'm hoping that would get me around 50 recurring customers, which would be, I think, a pretty solid base for recurring this year.
1043
01:00:08.770 --> 01:00:16.355
Yeah, if you get one customer every 100, you're crushing it because you're basically then your customer acquisition costs probably about 40 bucks by the time you have labor and cost of printing.
1044
01:00:16.455 --> 01:00:17.896
If you're able to hit that, that's phenomenal.
1045
01:00:17.936 --> 01:00:21.598
In terms of where to go in terms of neighborhood, you just have to test it, right?
1046
01:00:21.618 --> 01:00:25.441
Like we've seen sometimes with door hangers, it doesn't work in the really fancy areas.
1047
01:00:25.741 --> 01:00:28.663
And like kind of like the middle upper class, it crushes on.
1048
01:00:28.843 --> 01:00:33.548
It also has a lot to do with your, because your biggest cost in door hangers is delivery.
1049
01:00:33.988 --> 01:00:35.650
And so it's the time it takes to deliver.
1050
01:00:35.890 --> 01:00:45.139
And so a lot of times you will actually be okay with a, you know, one out of 150 versus one out of 80 in terms of conversion.
1051
01:00:45.600 --> 01:00:48.503
But now you can do three times as many houses because it's a tight neighborhood.
1052
01:00:48.543 --> 01:00:51.546
So the way that the neighborhoods are laid out is also super important.
1053
01:00:51.706 --> 01:00:52.747
And so I would just test it.
1054
01:00:52.847 --> 01:00:54.528
I'd be like, hey, here's my three different markets.
1055
01:00:54.848 --> 01:01:03.194
I'd probably do it based upon either value of the homes, so wealth, or I would do it based upon density of the homes together.
1056
01:01:03.875 --> 01:01:14.343
And then figuring out like, is this, just be careful to compare one out of 80 versus one out of 50, one out of 150 and be like, oh, the one out of one of 80 is better.
1057
01:01:14.903 --> 01:01:20.127
Unless in that market, we can deliver three times as much per hour because they're all really close homes.
1058
01:01:20.387 --> 01:01:21.528
So I would be really looking at
1059
01:01:21.548 --> 01:01:25.429
the actual customer acquisition cost of what's that cost to deliver?
1060
01:01:25.689 --> 01:01:26.609
What's it cost to print?
1061
01:01:26.929 --> 01:01:29.730
Not just the conversion rate of like one out of a hundred.
1062
01:01:29.910 --> 01:01:30.210
Okay.
1063
01:01:30.230 --> 01:01:31.170
Can I ask one more thing then?
1064
01:01:31.390 --> 01:01:33.571
Yeah, go ahead.
1065
01:01:34.111 --> 01:01:35.391
We're still relatively small.
1066
01:01:35.431 --> 01:01:38.532
So I'm wondering like how big of a service area should I be going after?
1067
01:01:38.552 --> 01:01:41.833
Like I've heard like five miles, but- As small as possible.
1068
01:01:42.353 --> 01:01:43.213
As small as possible.
1069
01:01:43.514 --> 01:01:54.958
Because let's just say you have 5,000 door hangers and you do that, two different door hangers or even the same door hanger over the course of three or four weeks in the same market, 2,500 homes.
1070
01:01:55.358 --> 01:02:00.680
If you can get all your customers, all 50 of them in that area, you will be in those neighborhoods almost every single day of the week.
1071
01:02:00.980 --> 01:02:04.301
And so by boiling the puddle, we have direct response marketing, i.e.
1072
01:02:04.321 --> 01:02:04.821
door hangers.
1073
01:02:05.141 --> 01:02:09.843
But then because we get density, you get brand awareness because now people are seeing your trucks every day.
1074
01:02:10.063 --> 01:02:14.644
And so like when we were in Blaine, like my first location, there's like 6,000 people that lived there.
1075
01:02:15.344 --> 01:02:17.244
And I only went after a thousand homes.
1076
01:02:17.685 --> 01:02:19.905
By doing that, I was able to just like hit them all the time.
1077
01:02:19.965 --> 01:02:23.426
At the time, every door direct mail did better, like door hangers, yard signs.
1078
01:02:23.626 --> 01:02:29.047
But more importantly is once I turned off the ads, I kept getting leads because they saw my trucks every day.
1079
01:02:29.127 --> 01:02:32.968
And when we had two or three trucks, they're like, oh my word, you guys have like 20, 30 trucks.
1080
01:02:33.008 --> 01:02:34.768
I see you every single day in my neighborhood.
1081
01:02:35.328 --> 01:02:40.089
And it's simply due to the fact that we are only servicing about a one mile radius of a thousand homes.
1082
01:02:40.430 --> 01:02:42.190
So it's not really the size, the radius.
1083
01:02:42.250 --> 01:02:46.812
It's more a function of as small as you possibly can get 50 customers.
1084
01:02:46.912 --> 01:02:47.492
I want them there.
1085
01:02:47.792 --> 01:02:54.034
If you could get them on one street, I'd prefer that because then everyone in that, on that street is going to see you every single day.
1086
01:02:54.594 --> 01:02:59.595
And then the brand awareness eventually starts bringing in leads without you spending money on advertising.
1087
01:03:00.076 --> 01:03:04.397
And by going really wide and like, okay, we're going to, we're going to put this across a million people.
1088
01:03:04.957 --> 01:03:09.980
Well, you might get 50 customers, take out route density and the inefficiencies of that for a second.
1089
01:03:10.380 --> 01:03:15.042
You no longer will get the brand awareness that is associated with people seeing you every single day.
1090
01:03:15.062 --> 01:03:17.944
And that's your trucks and your employees, assuming they're wrapped and look professional.
1091
01:03:18.144 --> 01:03:18.504
Thank you.
1092
01:03:18.824 --> 01:03:19.284
You got it.
1093
01:03:19.645 --> 01:03:20.285
Will, you're up.
1094
01:03:20.805 --> 01:03:21.885
Or it was muted there.
1095
01:03:22.086 --> 01:03:25.367
I'm Will Petty, Petty Landscaping out of North Carolina.
1096
01:03:25.907 --> 01:03:29.568
We did 160,000 last year.
1097
01:03:30.229 --> 01:03:33.650
My question would be on the commercial side.
1098
01:03:34.970 --> 01:03:36.931
Almost all of that was commercial.
1099
01:03:38.031 --> 01:03:42.213
The hang-up I'm having this year is getting in the door with wood.
1100
01:03:42.833 --> 01:03:47.936
commercial, you know, because we do things like sheets and Frito-Lay and stuff like that.
1101
01:03:47.956 --> 01:03:50.237
But those were all, they fell in my lap.
1102
01:03:50.397 --> 01:03:53.199
It wasn't, I didn't have to spend a lot to advertise.
1103
01:03:53.259 --> 01:03:55.080
I knew somebody who knew somebody, et cetera.
1104
01:03:55.180 --> 01:04:00.643
But getting into any more of that is such a challenge because it's impossible to get anyone on the phone.
1105
01:04:01.183 --> 01:04:04.085
They'll send you to an email, which will never get read, et cetera.
1106
01:04:04.125 --> 01:04:07.547
So I wonder if you could share some kind of insight on how to get in the
1107
01:04:12.161 --> 01:04:15.765
Yeah, like usually commercial is going to be much like the other ones that fell in your lap.
1108
01:04:15.885 --> 01:04:17.006
It's going to be about who you know.
1109
01:04:17.426 --> 01:04:22.471
And so a lot of times property management, this is why you usually have to have kind of a area developer.
1110
01:04:22.631 --> 01:04:27.276
When a big company goes into a commercial, they don't like they don't necessarily have salespeople.
1111
01:04:27.536 --> 01:04:27.797
They have.
1112
01:04:28.277 --> 01:04:35.179
relationship builders, they have managers that like service the area, account managers, because really what you're doing is just building relationships.
1113
01:04:35.219 --> 01:04:36.499
A lot of times it's property managers.
1114
01:04:36.799 --> 01:04:43.960
And so when we, when we went into commercial back in the day, I literally made cookies for all of the property managers in my local market.
1115
01:04:44.040 --> 01:04:48.601
And I went and hand delivered them, introduced myself and said, Hey, if you ever need a thing, let me know.
1116
01:04:49.002 --> 01:04:54.223
And two or three of them were like, Oh yeah, by the way, we have this big contract coming up for bid and the contractors dropped out of it.
1117
01:04:54.523 --> 01:04:55.403
Would you like to bid on it?
1118
01:04:55.623 --> 01:04:58.407
So you're just trying to create the relationships and that takes a long time.
1119
01:04:59.248 --> 01:05:02.332
But usually property managers hold the keys to all the commercial bids.
1120
01:05:02.732 --> 01:05:03.273
Yeah.
1121
01:05:03.293 --> 01:05:03.954
That makes sense.
1122
01:05:04.254 --> 01:05:05.676
Assignment is making cookies.
1123
01:05:06.037 --> 01:05:06.357
Let's go.
1124
01:05:07.233 --> 01:05:07.553
All right.
1125
01:05:07.873 --> 01:05:08.273
You got it.
1126
01:05:08.754 --> 01:05:13.595
And again, like a lot of it too, it's just like them seeing the repetition of you being in the office.
1127
01:05:13.956 --> 01:05:20.358
So for example, a lot of times when people go in new markets for commercial, it's like, okay, we're going to have five touch points over the course of here.
1128
01:05:20.798 --> 01:05:21.959
And we're going to do a Christmas thing.
1129
01:05:21.979 --> 01:05:23.079
We're going to do a Thanksgiving thing.
1130
01:05:23.099 --> 01:05:24.239
We're going to do a July 4th thing.
1131
01:05:24.460 --> 01:05:28.001
And we're going to just constantly go in their office and just say, hey, hey, it's Mike from Augusta.
1132
01:05:28.221 --> 01:05:28.801
Here you go.
1133
01:05:29.041 --> 01:05:34.663
And like not even asking for the sale, just so that way I'm top of mind when there's something that does go for bid, they ask me.
1134
01:05:34.823 --> 01:05:35.524
Yeah, excellent.
1135
01:05:35.584 --> 01:05:36.184
Thank you very much.
1136
01:05:36.749 --> 01:05:41.771
Yeah, and if you want to go more pushy with it, call leasing agents of areas that are usually new development.
1137
01:05:41.811 --> 01:05:44.473
For example, like commercial strip malls, whatever.
1138
01:05:45.093 --> 01:05:46.493
Just call the leasing agent.
1139
01:05:46.994 --> 01:05:49.435
Pretend like you're interested as you're going to get an office.
1140
01:05:49.975 --> 01:05:51.716
And then you find out who the property manager is.
1141
01:05:52.236 --> 01:05:54.977
Yeah, I've actually done a little bit of that.
1142
01:05:54.997 --> 01:05:56.018
So we'll keep pushing that.
1143
01:05:56.258 --> 01:05:56.598
Good stuff.
1144
01:05:56.798 --> 01:05:58.279
Cassia, go ahead and yourself.
1145
01:05:58.599 --> 01:06:01.680
Could you take us through maybe what your hiring process is?
1146
01:06:01.740 --> 01:06:05.122
It's something that I'm just now going through and I'd love to get your take on that.
1147
01:06:06.130 --> 01:06:07.791
How many are you trying to hire it now, Cassia?
1148
01:06:08.892 --> 01:06:10.473
Looking at hiring two more electricians.
1149
01:06:10.873 --> 01:06:11.134
Got it.
1150
01:06:11.394 --> 01:06:16.317
So with electricians, you have a higher skill level, usually lower volume of candidates.
1151
01:06:16.958 --> 01:06:26.404
And so when you put an application or like a job offer out now on Indeed, say, for example, how many applications do you usually get within, say, a weekend?
1152
01:06:27.365 --> 01:06:28.426
I had about a half a dozen.
1153
01:06:29.026 --> 01:06:29.246
Okay.
1154
01:06:29.586 --> 01:06:30.467
And is that pretty common?
1155
01:06:30.527 --> 01:06:33.089
Or like, have you had more or less in the past when you put up?
1156
01:06:33.649 --> 01:06:34.650
Or is this a first time hiring?
1157
01:06:34.670 --> 01:06:34.790
Yeah.
1158
01:06:34.994 --> 01:06:36.374
This is kind of our first time hiring.
1159
01:06:36.394 --> 01:06:38.895
We've only been in business for like 30 days or so.
1160
01:06:38.915 --> 01:06:42.616
So we're, we're trying to grow and we're trying to do it pretty quickly.
1161
01:06:43.216 --> 01:06:43.416
Cool.
1162
01:06:43.636 --> 01:06:47.097
So it doesn't sound like you're, you have tons of leads coming in.
1163
01:06:47.477 --> 01:06:53.819
When I say leads, I mean, in terms of applicants, if you had more, I would probably say we should put some video filtering in place.
1164
01:06:54.539 --> 01:06:57.800
And typically that becomes more of a problem when you have a lower level skill and
1165
01:06:58.440 --> 01:07:08.264
And so if I was you, I'd be really focused on what differentiates you from the other 10 electric electrician companies are also hiring, whether it be wages, benefits, flexibility.
1166
01:07:08.665 --> 01:07:13.827
That's kind of usually going to be the thing that someone with a lot of skill and options is going to look at.
1167
01:07:14.367 --> 01:07:19.269
So for example, for lawn care landscaping, we will get 60 applicants over a weekend.
1168
01:07:19.770 --> 01:07:24.272
I'm going to be trying to fill that down to four or five using video applications.
1169
01:07:25.092 --> 01:07:27.915
So this is where we're going to say, hey, thank you for replying.
1170
01:07:28.115 --> 01:07:31.158
You can, for everyone else listening, Indeed has automations.
1171
01:07:31.599 --> 01:07:34.922
You can go into Indeed and you say, hey, when someone applies, I want you to send them this.
1172
01:07:35.623 --> 01:07:40.067
That this message can include a link to a video application.
1173
01:07:40.488 --> 01:07:44.211
And where you say, hey, tell me about where you've worked, tell me about your experience, et cetera, et cetera.
1174
01:07:44.552 --> 01:07:45.513
Keep in mind, you might have...
1175
01:07:45.973 --> 01:07:49.897
3% to 10% of people actually do that, actually take that step.
1176
01:07:50.378 --> 01:07:56.485
I will say this, though, with higher skill, we see that number being higher, the percentage, because they're not applying to 20 places.
1177
01:07:57.005 --> 01:08:05.434
They might apply to two or three electrical services in your local market because they're local, and they're not going after 30 general labor and...
1178
01:08:06.095 --> 01:08:07.116
entry-level positions.
1179
01:08:07.276 --> 01:08:16.341
I would say, Cassia, if you are having a problem with getting people to show up to interviews, you're getting overwhelmed with the amount of applicants, then I would put a video layer in.
1180
01:08:16.801 --> 01:08:21.564
For us, we are requiring a video before any in-person interview whatsoever.
1181
01:08:21.584 --> 01:08:30.369
I will say, though, with only six people coming in over a weekend, you probably are going to narrow that down to two or three you want to talk to, and you're just going to have the interview.
1182
01:08:30.749 --> 01:08:36.770
And so then I would be much more looking at the interview process and your onboarding process instead of just talent attraction.
1183
01:08:37.090 --> 01:08:41.631
Because for most, if you're getting so many applicants, it actually becomes how do I weed out the noise?
1184
01:08:42.231 --> 01:08:43.512
That becomes the actual constraint.
1185
01:08:43.692 --> 01:08:49.613
For you, it's likely going to be how do I make sure that my interview process is dialed in so I can offer them a job quickly?
1186
01:08:50.053 --> 01:08:53.854
Because if they're a really good electrician, they're going to go get other offers pretty quickly.
1187
01:08:54.294 --> 01:08:59.255
And so I would be leaning on things like what are the 17 questions I'm going to ask during an interview?
1188
01:09:00.195 --> 01:09:02.656
And then like, I never look at their references on their resume.
1189
01:09:03.016 --> 01:09:06.578
I'm trying to figure out where they worked, who they worked with, and then they think, hey, what's their name?
1190
01:09:06.618 --> 01:09:11.260
Okay, what would, you know, if I call, when I call so-and-so, what will they say about your performance?
1191
01:09:11.740 --> 01:09:17.903
And so I think the interview would probably be the hinge point, the part that I would be trying to improve.
1192
01:09:18.203 --> 01:09:21.184
And if you talk to Chatsby T and just runs there, hey, this is my area.
1193
01:09:21.724 --> 01:09:23.065
I'm just learning how to do this.
1194
01:09:23.225 --> 01:09:24.125
This is for electricians.
1195
01:09:24.445 --> 01:09:28.247
Can you give me a list of 15 questions I should be asking that are compliant
1196
01:09:28.847 --> 01:09:51.884
for this state and it'll give you a really good list of questions to get started in the interview process because most time when you're hiring your first people the reason you make hiring mistakes is because you don't know how to conduct yourself in the interview process and you're just as nervous as they are and so you just get a lot of mixed signals right okay is that helpful is there a follow-up on that cassia uh no i think i'm gonna take your your tip about using
1197
01:09:53.978 --> 01:09:58.263
That's kind of what we're looking at right now is just like how to weed out some of these applicants.
1198
01:09:58.503 --> 01:10:03.368
Yeah, if weeding out is the issue, then I would definitely go the way of video.
1199
01:10:03.969 --> 01:10:14.020
If you have only a few applicants that will show up to an interview, that's when I think the questions, getting that generated for you is gonna be more ideal.
1200
01:10:14.600 --> 01:10:23.803
I would say that if you put an ad up on Indeed and you got 40 applications for electricians, and I will say this too, go ahead and make your area wider.
1201
01:10:23.883 --> 01:10:26.964
I see everyone just doing their Indeed ads in their local area.
1202
01:10:27.384 --> 01:10:36.007
When if you just do your state, a lot of people, especially for higher-skilled positions like an electrician, they'll move an hour or two if they need to to get a good job they really want.
1203
01:10:36.818 --> 01:10:44.481
or they are looking to move to your area, usually cost of living, if you're in a lower cost of living area compared to a big city, they're trying to move there.
1204
01:10:44.742 --> 01:10:47.103
They're just not seeing your Indeed ad because you're targeting your local area.
1205
01:10:47.643 --> 01:10:53.125
So personally, we run wider Indeed ads, like targeting a larger area.
1206
01:10:53.465 --> 01:10:56.867
So I got tons of applications and then I put my video filter in place.
1207
01:10:57.407 --> 01:11:03.149
And to do that, I'm just going to go into Indeed, set up an automation that when they apply, send them this message.
1208
01:11:03.489 --> 01:11:10.172
And in that message, you could have a link to a Google Drive folder or a Google Drive, a Google form.
1209
01:11:10.612 --> 01:11:12.413
And in that Google form, you ask for a video.
1210
01:11:13.614 --> 01:11:16.516
So I've made other videos on like what that should entail exactly.
1211
01:11:16.896 --> 01:11:23.041
But that would be like the cheapest, fastest way to, we use SparkHire, which is like a video software specifically for this.
1212
01:11:23.061 --> 01:11:25.763
And it uses AI to like synthesize the best applicants.
1213
01:11:26.303 --> 01:11:27.604
You don't really have to do that.
1214
01:11:27.764 --> 01:11:30.766
You can usually get a Google Forms to work just fine.
1215
01:11:31.167 --> 01:11:32.047
Okay.
1216
01:11:32.107 --> 01:11:34.689
I guess I do kind of have like one follow-up, if that's okay.
1217
01:11:35.109 --> 01:11:42.695
Do you have any like third-party companies that you guys are using to like vet these employees before they're onboarded or anything like that?
1218
01:11:43.378 --> 01:11:44.118
We don't.
1219
01:11:44.159 --> 01:11:49.942
Again, I would only be looking for that layer of filtration if you had so many applicants.
1220
01:11:49.962 --> 01:11:53.925
If you told me, hey, I've got 100 applications, then you can start putting more filters in.
1221
01:11:54.405 --> 01:12:00.689
I'm concerned with even putting the video application, if you had six on a weekend, you might get one person that submits a video.
1222
01:12:01.229 --> 01:12:12.757
I just meant right before they're onboarded, for background checks or for job verification as a third party as opposed to calling the company, which obviously can do.
1223
01:12:13.315 --> 01:12:14.096
There's a whole bunch of them.
1224
01:12:14.176 --> 01:12:15.176
Check is a really good one.
1225
01:12:15.196 --> 01:12:18.378
It's probably the biggest for background checks.
1226
01:12:19.839 --> 01:12:20.700
Probably the fastest, too.
1227
01:12:20.720 --> 01:12:22.481
They're just kind of the big player right now.
1228
01:12:22.761 --> 01:12:24.102
So Check, I would recommend them.
1229
01:12:24.342 --> 01:12:29.006
There's other ones that are good for specific industries.
1230
01:12:29.306 --> 01:12:34.369
But job verification for me is much more a matter of, like, can I call your previous boss?
1231
01:12:34.469 --> 01:12:37.711
Or, like, maybe not the one you're working for now, but, like, the one that you used to have.
1232
01:12:37.952 --> 01:12:38.132
Like...
1233
01:12:38.892 --> 01:12:41.295
Do you have a certificate for something like electrician?
1234
01:12:41.315 --> 01:12:43.238
Like those are the more tangible things.
1235
01:12:43.719 --> 01:12:46.863
I'm personally looking at more input-based questions on the interview.
1236
01:12:47.283 --> 01:12:51.729
So output would be something like certification, years of experience, where did you work?
1237
01:12:52.110 --> 01:12:56.095
I'm looking for like, hey, who in the electrical space are you following on Instagram?
1238
01:12:56.355 --> 01:13:05.861
you know, what books or recent education did you take about electrician like in our industry, if I have good inputs, I don't really care about the outputs, because the outputs can be faked.
1239
01:13:06.241 --> 01:13:11.185
Anyone can go to school and get a certificate as long as you paid the stinking, you know, technical college, like,
1240
01:13:12.025 --> 01:13:13.727
So same thing with years of experience.
1241
01:13:13.747 --> 01:13:14.928
Years of experience, cool.
1242
01:13:15.309 --> 01:13:17.932
Who knows how bad of a job that company was doing, right?
1243
01:13:18.392 --> 01:13:30.304
And so I'm usually, especially the higher up in the company we go, I'm thinking about input-based questions around what was a recent time you had a project and you figured it out on YouTube.
1244
01:13:30.785 --> 01:13:33.808
Because you don't want to be the bottleneck for any time someone needs to figure something out.
1245
01:13:34.289 --> 01:13:40.636
What was the last book, podcast, or YouTube video you watched about our industry?
1246
01:13:40.976 --> 01:13:50.227
These are the type of things that they're not expecting, and I can tell so much as to whether or not they're going to be improving in their role versus asking me for every single bit of improvement that they need.
1247
01:13:50.616 --> 01:13:51.176
Oh, that's awesome.
1248
01:13:51.236 --> 01:13:51.596
Thank you.
1249
01:13:52.196 --> 01:13:52.857
Yeah, that's perfect.
1250
01:13:53.437 --> 01:13:53.697
Perfect.
1251
01:13:53.857 --> 01:13:54.437
Tom, you're up.
1252
01:13:54.977 --> 01:14:01.639
Well, I was going to make it short and sweet, I guess, but pretty much I'd like to know what do you recommend between postcards or door hangers?
1253
01:14:01.919 --> 01:14:05.080
Yeah, right now, every door direct mail is not on a great spin.
1254
01:14:05.720 --> 01:14:06.200
I'll be honest.
1255
01:14:06.400 --> 01:14:09.441
So like last year, I just pulled the numbers yesterday.
1256
01:14:09.561 --> 01:14:13.682
Augusta spent like $2.3 million on print marketing.
1257
01:14:14.102 --> 01:14:19.144
Almost very little of that was every door direct mail, like postcards, flyers, anything like that.
1258
01:14:19.924 --> 01:14:22.789
Um, is every door, you know, what you're thinking of when you say postcards?
1259
01:14:23.390 --> 01:14:23.670
Yes.
1260
01:14:23.950 --> 01:14:32.243
Uh, we use actually in the past postcard mania and we usually, we did a couple rounds with them, but our return rate wasn't that great.
1261
01:14:32.783 --> 01:14:34.586
Um, yeah, I've done, we're kind of seeing.
1262
01:14:34.646 --> 01:15:03.672
across the board right now is like every door direct mail just hasn't done super well the bottom line is like sending out a text might cost me a couple cents sending a postcard if by the time i print it and then pay for the shit like pay for this the the postage you'll get 30 40 cents so unless they can get me a 10 times better return and response rate it's not really worth it all right well uh that's it thank you you got it hope you have a fantastic weekend into the spring rush let's do this thing appreciate you all tremendously and we'll talk soon take care