He Built a $3M "Monster" with No Systems... Now he's Heading for Trouble

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In this video, I'm talking to 10 home service business owners that are trying to get their business to the next level.
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We talk a lot about budgeted hours and how important that is to make sure your pricing is correct.
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We also talk about having a $3 million business, but still being chaotic and being ran on paper.
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There's a lot of really good nuggets.
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Let's go ahead and roll the tape.
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I'm trying to figure out how to do the taxes and whether I should switch.
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Because in Florida, if you're an LLC,
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you're a sole proprietor.
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And that hurts me with business credit.
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I've watched a lot of your videos about franchising and we're sort of a franchise, but not legally, not legally at all.
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I know I'm heading for trouble if I don't get this fixed because really I sit in this office most days or I go in a truck and pick up whatever equipment or go see customers.
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And I'm trying to make it a properly functioning business, but we've grown so fast in five years that
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I've done everything on the fly, but I also know that we're going the wrong way.
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And if I don't get it fixed, I'm going to fail them, let alone probably get myself in trouble.
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Yeah.
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Just to be clear, Jeremy, are you saying you own the LLC 100%?
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Is that correct?
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I own the LLC 100%.
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And so you are basically giving them 20% of the revenue, essentially.
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Well, my location, I get 100%.
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But then like my Tampa location, it's my tree climber, his cousin, and his sister.
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And they do the trees and the mowing.
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Whatever they make, after it goes to the bank, I take 20% out, pay their bills, and they get the rest.
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And they see it.
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Then Alex, my buddy that runs everything down in St. Pete, same way.
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Do they have their own equipment and trucks, or is it yours?
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Yes.
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Well, it's mine legally, but it's theirs.
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They keep it at their house, all their equipment and everything.
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What's the total revenue across everything, Jeremy?
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Across that?
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Well, Tampa made $1.2, Holiday made $1.3, and St. Pete made $893,000 in total.
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My lawyer said, Jeremy, you're heading for trouble.
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You got to fix this.
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I said, well, I've got Mike Andes coming in, so I'm going to pick his head and see where I need to go.
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Yeah, like on the legal structure side, follow whatever your lawyer think is best.
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I think you kind of got an accountant and a lawyer together because this isn't just liability that's your lawyer.
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It's also how taxes are going to be handled, right?
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And so at that size of $3 million, the difference between $3 million and getting the next level of $5 million or beyond or having someone else run the business is having all of this buttoned down.
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And it's boring and it's horrible and no one enjoys this stuff.
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But making sure you have either A, three different S-corps or an S-corp with LLCs underneath of it, that's what the attorney will help you determine what's going to help you with the best when it comes to liability protection.
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The accountant needs to be brought into the conversation, though, because it's a huge discussion of how are we going to handle this from a tax perspective, right?
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I understand.
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I'm just scared of that stuff.
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I know, I know, I know.
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And that's the thing.
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Like, you are super amazing at sales, getting the work.
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You're really, really solid at operations, doing the work.
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You guys, they're awesome.
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The admin side is where you have a lot of holes.
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And it's okay just to recognize that.
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Moving into software like HomeWorks is going to give another level of professionalism because we'll automate a lot of the admin tasks you're not good at.
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And then, so like over time-
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Yeah, no kidding.
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I'm so tired of this.
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Yeah.
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So I just take one thing at a time.
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Like, for example, Jeremy, I'll be honest.
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If tomorrow we had instant quotes, I'd tell you not to use it.
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Because there are more important things in the business to systematize around admin before you keep doing what you're good at, which is sales.
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Okay.
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And so all of us as entrepreneurs have tendencies to do more of what we're already good at and let other parts of the business just sink because we don't really enjoy that part.
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And it's kind of scary.
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And so you are good at sales and operations.
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Yeah.
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Right.
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But I need you to just focus 100% getting off of the paper on the homeworks so that because here's the thing.
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If you talk to an accountant right now, they're going to look at me like paper, really?
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And they might not even want to work with you because they're like, no, I don't even know what I'm dealing with here.
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That's already happening.
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Yeah.
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So I want you to focus on homeworks, like get everything off of paper.
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Paper should know.
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It's like you can't see any paper in my desk.
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And it's because like.
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It needs to have a system.
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It needs to have a place.
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It needs to be documented.
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And once you've done that, then you unlock the ability to be able to hand over QuickBooks or someone to an accountant, and they actually know what's going on and understand the tax picture.
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And then you can always go back to sales.
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Like next time, this time next year, we have instant quotes.
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You can go gangbusters on it.
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But I wouldn't grow the business a cent past 3 million where you're at now without having these things nailed down because you are opening yourself up to a bunch of liability.
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Yeah, that's what I'm really scared of.
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And I kind of feel, I feel like I shouldn't really take on nobody else that we should get organized and we need a straight direction and more of a system.
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I have, you know, systems for their routes and systems for their trucks and all that stuff.
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But everything in the office is, it's catastrophe.
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I wake up in the morning, I'm not sure what I need to do next.
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If it's not on the board, I'm like, huh?
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Yeah.
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Yeah, and Jeremy, at your side, if I was you to be perfectly honest, I would hire someone who's really good at systems and in the office, right?
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Someone who's worked in the office before, et cetera.
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And you're like, their job description is not run my systems.
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It is create my systems.
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Because they'll come in, they'll laugh at you, and you'll feel bad about first, second round paper.
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But then their job is get us inside the software, have checklists and protocols, use video inside the mobile app.
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These are all things that they will just think in that way already.
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Yeah.
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And that might take you six to 12 months to feel really comfortable with it.
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But once you get that, you can always go back to focusing on sales and operations.
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But at your size, if I was you, I would hire this.
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I would hire the person.
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You hate creating systems around admin and all the office stuff and accounts receivable and payable and automations.
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You hate that.
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Someone else will come in here and that's all they love.
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They just love saving 10 more minutes a day, three more minutes a day, standardizing the inbox.
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They love that.
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I like to find that person.
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Yeah.
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All right.
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I appreciate the advice.
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You got it, man.
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Great job.
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Eric, you're up next.
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All right.
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I got a couple of questions.
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First, letting you know, but I am a full-time firefighter.
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So I have that income coming in.
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So this isn't my primary income right now.
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So that's going to dictate some of the answers I'm sure, but I have, I just bought a mowing truck and I had a guy that mowed for me last year and he did it pretty much on his own.
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And then now I have another guy that's coming on for through an acquisition.
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And so my question is, do I put both guys in the same truck or would it be better to separate them and let them do two different routes?
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Because I have everything for two different routes or two mowers on one truck.
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Yeah, like the thing is your last sentence is important because you have already purchased the capacity for two trucks.
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Like it doesn't matter if you use the second truck or not.
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It's going to sit there.
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You're already paid for it.
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You're paying insurance.
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You're paying for storage.
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So like I always am trying to think of how do I utilize all my trucks and equipment because all of your profit is sitting between where you're at in revenue now and your max capacity.
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So what's good, Eric, is you could technically get two more employees without buying any more trucks and equipment by just simply taking the two trucks that now have one employee each and doubling them up.
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Now, the one truck with the new employee coming on, he was using his own truck.
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with the guy he was mowing for before.
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So I technically only have one truck and then my daily driver.
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But I have one truck and an employee and then another employee that's coming with his own truck.
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I would, I would nix the employee with the own truck thing.
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Okay.
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Again, you're just opening yourself to the liability.
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It works great until it doesn't.
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It is, they get an accident.
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They don't have commercial insurance.
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Right.
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So now they're totally telling your stuff around.
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Guess who's going to be on the hook for that.
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Right.
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So again, like it makes great sense in the short term.
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And if nothing happened and everything in life was perfect, it would go well.
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But I've just seen it happen the opposite too many times.
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And your size of business that could wipe you out or at least prevent you from wanting to keep going with the business.
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So I personally would then put them both in the truck you currently operate and own.
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It's easier to maintain quality control as well as cultural control with them both being in the one and them starting the same place.
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If he has his own truck, he's starting from home.
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You can't maintain quality of uniform or anything.
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He could be intoxicated.
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Who knows what, right?
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So I would just put them both in the same truck for now.
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Okay.
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Should the labor rate be different for commercial properties than it is for residential properties?
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Like right now I'm running at $80 a man hour and I use that for, last year I didn't do that.
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Last year was just my growing year.
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So I just got to the yards or whatever I get them for.
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But now I'm trying to get more standard.
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So I'm using that $80 a man hour for both
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landscaping quotes I'm doing now and lawn care.
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So would that be different for commercial properties?
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I mean, I already have all the insurances and everything anyways, but
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Yeah, like ultimately, the only reason that commercial typically you can get away with a lower rate is because you're not stopping and starting 50 times on a route.
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You're doing one or two properties a day.
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Therefore, their efficiency score should be higher, right?
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Because they should be working most of the day if they drive me one or twice between bigger jobs.
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So in that case, your hourly rate, quote unquote, might be lower.
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But how much they make per day should be about the same because they can be on the job site longer.
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Right.
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And there's less drive time when you take out residential stop and starts.
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And so I just be careful because, again, all the big guys in town have huge amounts of trucks and equipment that can usually be far more efficient than you on those larger properties.
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Yeah.
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And so you lose out to them.
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And if you're beating them on price, you're likely not making any money.
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And I'm not going after the commercial side.
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I just did some snow removal for an apartment complex that takes 30 days to pay.
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So that scared a lot of people off.
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So now I have a relationship with them and I send them a quote.
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And it would be there's two apartment complexes and right next to each other.
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So it would be a full time all day for two guys to mow and stuff.
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But I charged them at $80 an hour.
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Um, and $80 a man hour.
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And I don't know if that's really competitive around here or how to find that out, what the competitive rate is around here.
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Yeah.
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Like on your first few, you're somewhat shooting in the dark.
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The one way you can find out is actually trying to get people's bids, like talking to the property manager, Hey, like I want to make sure we're comparing apples to apples.
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So like, I'll just look at what they're doing and I'll tell you whether or not I can beat the price and what my price is.
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And I'll be honest with you.
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So that's one way to do it.
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You could also, you know, it's tough to get bids from your competition, um,
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if they're bidding on your customers' properties, that's difficult.
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So commercial is a little more difficult.
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I'd say in general when it comes to commercial, if you aren't confident in the pricing, don't do it because you just can lose your shirt on it.
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And now you're likely in a signed contract.
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And so you could be really over your skis.
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So I would say until you're very confident in your pricing, I wouldn't touch it.
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And then secondarily, just people in the commercial.
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Go ahead.
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I quoted it high.
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I mean, not high, but I quoted it where I could pay my guys, pay all the bills.
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Like I figured out what it takes per hour breakdown for truck payments, everything.
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So I still make money on what I submitted.
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I just don't know if it's going to be competitive or not.
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And if it ain't, no big deal.
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Because like I said, I'm not targeting.
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I'm targeting residential.
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I'm not targeting commercial.
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So I'm not too worried about it.
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I just didn't know if there's a way or a trick to find out what the average rate is.
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Yeah, like usually close rate is the ultimate determining factor for your price being competitive, right?
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If you did 20 of these and you closed 18 of them and had 90% close rate, I'd be like, I don't care what your prices are.
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They're too low.
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Right.
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But if you do 20 of them and you get one or two accepted, you could pretty much assume, hey, I'm probably –
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significantly higher than everyone else.
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So I would use that as your gauge.
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In the short term, it's more difficult with commercial because it's just more difficult to call people and get bids for your own house, for example.
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That's easy with residential.
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But I would be, if you can build up rapport with a property manager, whereas, hey...
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I just want to make sure I'm comparing my quote, apples to apples.
225
00:12:21.639 --> 00:12:28.126
Usually you can do that if the property manager or maintenance manager is unsatisfied with their current provider.
226
00:12:28.146 --> 00:12:30.028
And you can be like, hey, let's say it was both time.
227
00:12:30.348 --> 00:12:34.573
You just give me what they're doing, and I'll tell you whether or not what our prices are.
228
00:12:34.973 --> 00:12:36.134
And then if people say no...
229
00:12:36.795 --> 00:12:44.437
If you build up a really good rapport with them, if you say, hey, I'm just really curious, I would love to see what you're currently getting charged from my own education's perspective.
230
00:12:44.837 --> 00:12:48.859
Again, that is like you're going to have to take kind of a humble pie situation there because you're basically saying, I don't know what I'm doing.
231
00:12:49.299 --> 00:12:50.579
But at that point, you've lost the job.
232
00:12:50.819 --> 00:12:52.340
So you might be able to.
233
00:12:52.640 --> 00:12:52.920
Right.
234
00:12:53.380 --> 00:13:04.470
Okay, and then the other question is I have signage and stuff, yard signs, door hangers, website, and uniforms.
235
00:13:04.490 --> 00:13:08.213
I don't know if there's anything else that I should be doing for advertising.
236
00:13:08.253 --> 00:13:14.158
I haven't got into any of the Google or Facebook ads because I know those are somewhat wishy-washy.
237
00:13:15.139 --> 00:13:21.563
The way I understand the Google ads, you have to spend quite a bit of money to get a good return.
238
00:13:21.623 --> 00:13:23.625
Is that kind of the right way of thinking?
239
00:13:24.045 --> 00:13:27.447
Yeah, like before I spend a single dollar on ads, I'm always looking at my website.
240
00:13:27.987 --> 00:13:31.590
I'm very biased because we have home service web design, so take that with a grain of salt.
241
00:13:32.010 --> 00:13:35.872
But the ultimate thing is anytime you pay traffic, what you're doing is you're paying for attention.
242
00:13:36.153 --> 00:13:42.557
And if when you get the attention, it's pulling them towards a bad website, the conversion is just going to drop way down.
243
00:13:43.117 --> 00:13:47.719
And so we see consistently people that have conversion on their website, like one out of a hundred, one out of 200.
244
00:13:48.419 --> 00:13:53.761
Once they change their design, same amount of traffic, but now it's one out of 50, one out of 60 as a conversion rate.
245
00:13:54.301 --> 00:13:57.723
And they just tripled their business because the site was no more traffic.
246
00:13:58.183 --> 00:14:00.504
So I would do that first, Eric, before you spend any money.
247
00:14:00.584 --> 00:14:04.165
You're at the size too, where like you're at 200, 250,000, I'm guessing.
248
00:14:04.285 --> 00:14:06.366
Is that kind of where you're projecting this year?
249
00:14:06.426 --> 00:14:09.407
Yeah, I'm looking to be right at 200 to 250 this year.
250
00:14:09.807 --> 00:14:10.047
Right.
251
00:14:10.307 --> 00:14:10.467
Yeah.
252
00:14:10.507 --> 00:14:17.271
And so like when you get at that stage and you start doing paid ads, people jump to paid ads because like tomorrow you can be set up for Google ads.
253
00:14:17.331 --> 00:14:18.412
Tomorrow you can run Facebook ads.
254
00:14:18.452 --> 00:14:19.492
Tomorrow you can do door hangers.
255
00:14:19.692 --> 00:14:24.895
And so people go straight to that versus like, okay, I'm going to take a few months to make sure I have like my branding in place, my website set up.
256
00:14:25.215 --> 00:14:28.097
Cause doing that long run is the best spend of your dollars.
257
00:14:28.597 --> 00:14:32.739
In the short term, you're just not going to get any, any new estimates tomorrow because you set up your website.
258
00:14:33.239 --> 00:14:33.540
Right.
259
00:14:33.680 --> 00:14:34.080
I got you.
260
00:14:34.260 --> 00:14:34.480
Okay.
261
00:14:34.500 --> 00:14:35.861
And I think that's all I got.
262
00:14:35.881 --> 00:14:37.322
The question was.
263
00:14:37.462 --> 00:14:37.862
You got it.
264
00:14:39.016 --> 00:14:39.216
All right.
265
00:14:39.236 --> 00:14:40.478
This was a great question by Eric.
266
00:14:40.578 --> 00:14:41.740
I wanted to share a quick resource.
267
00:14:41.820 --> 00:14:44.844
I built this little tool for all of you to use completely free.
268
00:14:45.344 --> 00:14:48.168
And you can actually see me break down your website.
269
00:14:48.629 --> 00:14:54.437
If you go to homeserviceaudit.com, it's going to show you the things that I talk about all the time, design, design.
270
00:14:54.997 --> 00:14:58.862
speed and conversion of your actual website.
271
00:14:59.022 --> 00:15:00.483
You don't have to put in your email.
272
00:15:00.784 --> 00:15:02.245
You don't have to sign up for anything.
273
00:15:02.285 --> 00:15:03.307
It's completely free.
274
00:15:03.507 --> 00:15:04.908
It's a tool I built for all of you.
275
00:15:05.229 --> 00:15:05.789
Go check it out.
276
00:15:05.869 --> 00:15:07.531
Homeserviceaudit.com.
277
00:15:07.932 --> 00:15:12.497
Put your URL in and get a full analysis of how you can get more leads from your website.
278
00:15:12.617 --> 00:15:13.278
Daniel, go ahead.
279
00:15:13.298 --> 00:15:24.869
So my question is basically for spring cleanups and fall cleanups, I just charge, because when the clients call on the phone, I quote them an hourly rate, $189 per hour for a crew of two to three of us.
280
00:15:25.149 --> 00:15:26.030
Normally it's three of us.
281
00:15:26.050 --> 00:15:29.994
So it's about like $63 a man hour, right?
282
00:15:30.454 --> 00:15:33.497
But with P4P, it's hard to do it with an hourly rate.
283
00:15:33.517 --> 00:15:36.881
So how would you go about doing that for my business?
284
00:15:37.281 --> 00:15:39.842
Yeah, I would do like a quarter, half and full day.
285
00:15:39.862 --> 00:15:42.343
And I would definitely not say two or three people.
286
00:15:42.703 --> 00:15:43.263
I would say two.
287
00:15:44.864 --> 00:15:55.548
And then what includes, so for example, for people that do this, it's like you could have a quarter, a half and a full day and includes one pickup of debris or one trailer of debris.
288
00:15:55.868 --> 00:15:59.810
Anything over, whether it be time or debris is going to get more money.
289
00:16:00.170 --> 00:16:00.850
So, okay.
290
00:16:00.870 --> 00:16:06.253
So if it's a quarter, it would be, I try to book, you know, four jobs like that for the day.
291
00:16:06.493 --> 00:16:06.713
Right.
292
00:16:06.733 --> 00:16:07.493
Okay.
293
00:16:07.533 --> 00:16:07.794
Correct.
294
00:16:08.254 --> 00:16:08.554
Okay.
295
00:16:08.734 --> 00:16:08.994
Okay.
296
00:16:09.034 --> 00:16:09.334
Yeah.
297
00:16:09.414 --> 00:16:12.956
I would tend to do half as your minimum, like half day as your minimum.
298
00:16:13.396 --> 00:16:13.876
Yeah.
299
00:16:13.916 --> 00:16:17.178
Like what right now, what's your minimum for like a property cleanup, for example.
300
00:16:17.878 --> 00:16:42.256
um right now it's 250 minimum i think how often 250 versus like five six hundred how often is it 250 yeah like our average our average cleanup last year was about 450 okay yeah so you could do quarters or you could do like a third day for example like one third which is basically you know three hours for example you could do that um you just basically like that's pretty low price okay so
301
00:16:43.573 --> 00:16:45.174
Yeah, you'd probably need a quarter day.
302
00:16:45.514 --> 00:16:48.296
Just know that if you do a quarter day, they're probably not going to get four jobs done.
303
00:16:48.856 --> 00:16:49.296
They're clear.
304
00:16:49.316 --> 00:16:51.598
Because now you're adding a lot of stops and starts.
305
00:16:51.858 --> 00:16:54.299
So you usually won't get four jobs done in like an eight-hour day.
306
00:16:54.820 --> 00:16:55.100
Mm-hmm.
307
00:16:55.380 --> 00:16:55.700
Okay.
308
00:16:56.381 --> 00:16:56.681
Okay.
309
00:16:56.941 --> 00:16:57.201
Okay.
310
00:16:57.661 --> 00:17:03.525
Yeah, because the thing that we have, like if I do a minimum of a half day as well, that's going to be hard because we do lots of cleanups.
311
00:17:03.545 --> 00:17:07.968
Like last season, we did both 300 cleanups, spring cleanups, and 300 fall cleanups.
312
00:17:08.648 --> 00:17:11.470
So it's a lot of cleanups, right?
313
00:17:11.510 --> 00:17:11.650
So-
314
00:17:11.890 --> 00:17:16.174
Yeah, you get like a $2.99 package, a $4.99 package, and a $7.99 package.
315
00:17:16.694 --> 00:17:21.559
I'm just making up numbers for a quarter, a half, and full day.
316
00:17:22.159 --> 00:17:26.984
And then just be like, hey, all of those include two people and up to a pickup load of debris, for example.
317
00:17:27.484 --> 00:17:28.385
Okay, okay, okay.
318
00:17:28.585 --> 00:17:35.631
And then I would just have a visit form on the FieldForce mobile app for your crew that whenever they're on the property, you attach the visit form.
319
00:17:35.851 --> 00:17:37.713
So it's like, how much debris did you have?
320
00:17:38.253 --> 00:17:39.474
How long did you spend on this job?
321
00:17:39.554 --> 00:17:42.937
You know you have the clock in, clock out times already, so you can validate that.
322
00:17:43.357 --> 00:17:48.902
But you'd still have them put that in there so they just know, like, was this actually a quarter day, a half day, a full day, et cetera?
323
00:17:49.162 --> 00:17:50.103
Malia, you're up next.
324
00:17:50.144 --> 00:17:51.606
Go for it.
325
00:17:51.626 --> 00:17:53.809
So we updated our pricing this year.
326
00:17:53.909 --> 00:17:55.531
We increased it.
327
00:17:55.711 --> 00:18:01.219
And then we screwed ourselves and increased our current customers way too much.
328
00:18:01.419 --> 00:18:02.141
How many did you lose?
329
00:18:02.161 --> 00:18:02.681
23%.
330
00:18:02.741 --> 00:18:02.842
Yeah.
331
00:18:02.922 --> 00:18:03.082
Okay.
332
00:18:04.884 --> 00:18:06.146
And when did you roll that out?
333
00:18:06.386 --> 00:18:12.732
I sent the message out two or three weeks ago, but apparently half of them never got it.
334
00:18:12.992 --> 00:18:21.581
So then I had to resend it like, yeah, like this week when we're- You said the first email from Homeworks was basically saying, hey, okay, got it.
335
00:18:21.721 --> 00:18:21.981
Okay.
336
00:18:22.041 --> 00:18:22.882
Yeah.
337
00:18:22.902 --> 00:18:25.905
So it's been a, it's been a crap show.
338
00:18:26.286 --> 00:18:26.506
Yeah.
339
00:18:27.729 --> 00:18:34.152
So this week they got the, hey, your price is going up to $80 and we're starting tomorrow.
340
00:18:34.912 --> 00:18:37.113
Sorry, you never got the message a few weeks ago.
341
00:18:37.133 --> 00:18:41.475
The good news is you will make just as much money and you will need 23% less work.
342
00:18:41.815 --> 00:18:42.515
That's the good news.
343
00:18:42.915 --> 00:18:43.856
We haven't thought about it like that.
344
00:18:43.876 --> 00:18:44.256
Thank you.
345
00:18:45.178 --> 00:18:49.439
And then I'll also say what that means is you're going to be able to increase the number of customers.
346
00:18:50.419 --> 00:18:53.079
Basically, any customer that replaces them is free profit for you.
347
00:18:53.239 --> 00:18:57.180
So as you go into Spring Rush now, all your new customers will have plenty of capacity.
348
00:18:57.480 --> 00:18:58.540
You'll be able to backfill them.
349
00:18:58.760 --> 00:19:02.201
I can guarantee you in eight weeks from now, you'll be like, that was not a bad thing.
350
00:19:02.341 --> 00:19:08.662
So I know it feels horrible now, but if you run the math, you're going to make just as much money now as you did before.
351
00:19:08.842 --> 00:19:09.142
Okay.
352
00:19:09.362 --> 00:19:09.762
Thank you.
353
00:19:10.102 --> 00:19:13.763
Most of them are good customers too in the area that we want, so...
354
00:19:14.043 --> 00:19:18.564
Question, Malia, when you raise a price like that, and then they've responded being like, no, we're out.
355
00:19:19.004 --> 00:19:19.944
What did that sound like?
356
00:19:19.984 --> 00:19:20.844
Were they all mad?
357
00:19:20.984 --> 00:19:23.085
Or was it just like, hey, we don't need your services.
358
00:19:23.105 --> 00:19:23.905
You're too expensive.
359
00:19:23.965 --> 00:19:24.745
What did it sound like?
360
00:19:25.285 --> 00:19:26.165
Mostly.
361
00:19:26.365 --> 00:19:27.745
I feel like it's like half and half.
362
00:19:28.206 --> 00:19:30.886
We've had a couple that were like, that's ridiculous.
363
00:19:30.966 --> 00:19:31.966
Like we're not paying that.
364
00:19:32.066 --> 00:19:33.226
So I don't know.
365
00:19:33.567 --> 00:19:34.787
But do you guys start mowing next week?
366
00:19:35.227 --> 00:19:36.007
We started this week.
367
00:19:36.427 --> 00:19:36.647
Okay.
368
00:19:36.667 --> 00:19:38.387
23 people or 23%.
369
00:19:38.427 --> 00:19:39.428
How many actual customers is that?
370
00:19:43.617 --> 00:19:45.117
Office of Operator, like 20?
371
00:19:45.497 --> 00:19:47.858
25 out of 108 from last year.
372
00:19:48.198 --> 00:19:48.498
Cool.
373
00:19:48.538 --> 00:19:56.319
So out of those 25 that canceled, five of them, you know, are, let's just call them idiots and you don't want to work for them anyways, because the way they responded back to you, right?
374
00:19:56.659 --> 00:20:09.822
The other 20, I would respond back to them and I would say, hey, we, we had to increase prices because of all the extra costs, but we don't want that to be a reason why we can't move forward and serve you and your property.
375
00:20:10.482 --> 00:20:15.506
And so we're going to honor your old price until you could say May 1st, for example.
376
00:20:17.027 --> 00:20:23.592
And I think you will get people back if you're just because they will see that you are wanting to serve them, but you're not being greedy.
377
00:20:23.912 --> 00:20:30.758
Yeah, we have responded to a few of them like, hey, you know, we don't want pricing to be the reason you're leaving us.
378
00:20:30.838 --> 00:20:38.083
So we can meet in the middle at 70 biweekly because like we've realized we were not charging enough based off of.
379
00:20:38.584 --> 00:20:38.804
Yeah.
380
00:20:39.308 --> 00:20:40.969
math I have been doing.
381
00:20:41.029 --> 00:20:42.510
Yeah, and I want to stick to the math.
382
00:20:43.111 --> 00:20:48.314
Maybe you meet the middle, but I'm more of the opinion like, you know you need to charge this higher price to make the business sustainable.
383
00:20:49.795 --> 00:20:55.519
But you can still win back some people if you want to fill some initial capacity gap that you have.
384
00:20:55.959 --> 00:20:58.641
You can fill it by going back to them and simply saying, hey,
385
00:20:59.101 --> 00:21:04.004
Like we did this because we have all these costs, but we also don't want it to be a reason why we can't serve you.
386
00:21:04.584 --> 00:21:07.846
And we are happy to honor your existing price until this date.
387
00:21:08.006 --> 00:21:11.628
I would just make sure it's in the middle of spring rush when you know they're not going to leave.
388
00:21:12.248 --> 00:21:16.150
And you know that you're going to start beginning to so many customers.
389
00:21:16.310 --> 00:21:18.131
You're kind of going to need some people to be leaving.
390
00:21:18.191 --> 00:21:19.472
Yeah, that is true.
391
00:21:19.672 --> 00:21:23.515
That kind of brings me to my next question.
392
00:21:24.215 --> 00:21:29.339
We never knew like how to, I guess, figure out how much we need to charge per hour.
393
00:21:29.359 --> 00:21:33.422
We always just kind of, I don't know how my husband figured it out, but he, I don't know, he did something.
394
00:21:33.862 --> 00:21:40.167
And I actually went through all of our expenses and our revenue from last year and everything from last year.
395
00:21:40.187 --> 00:21:43.209
And I don't know, I did a bunch of stuff and figured it out.
396
00:21:43.809 --> 00:21:50.255
So with a 25% profit margin, we need to make like 135 an hour for the company.
397
00:21:50.275 --> 00:21:52.777
Two people or for one?
398
00:21:52.797 --> 00:21:53.958
Yes, two people.
399
00:21:53.978 --> 00:21:54.819
Okay, cool.
400
00:21:54.839 --> 00:21:55.079
All right.
401
00:21:55.600 --> 00:21:58.262
That's which is a totally different thing.
402
00:21:58.302 --> 00:21:59.824
And you've talked about before, but- You're fine.
403
00:22:00.424 --> 00:22:06.630
Um, that's with me and my husband paying ourselves, but him not being out there with the crew.
404
00:22:06.930 --> 00:22:09.412
So we have two guys working for 18 an hour.
405
00:22:10.253 --> 00:22:17.400
Um, my thing with that, okay, we raised our prices, but yet we're still not making money.
406
00:22:18.040 --> 00:22:21.101
nearly 135 an hour with mowing.
407
00:22:21.181 --> 00:22:23.101
So like, I don't under, I don't get it.
408
00:22:23.181 --> 00:22:25.122
It's not, it doesn't make sense.
409
00:22:25.602 --> 00:22:34.244
And it's properties where if we charge more or like if the property takes an hour, they're not going to pay $135 an hour.
410
00:22:34.284 --> 00:22:37.605
Like it's not like that big, but it takes an hour.
411
00:22:38.045 --> 00:22:40.745
So, and they can't really do it any faster.
412
00:22:41.126 --> 00:22:42.386
So I just, I don't understand.
413
00:22:43.250 --> 00:22:47.656
Yeah, like it could very well be that in your market, that service is extremely low margin, right?
414
00:22:47.816 --> 00:22:53.403
And so if it's mowing, for example, it might be that other of your competitors are so low priced.
415
00:22:53.484 --> 00:22:58.710
I will also say budget, like your hourly rate is a function of how fast your employees are working.
416
00:22:59.251 --> 00:22:59.471
Right.
417
00:22:59.811 --> 00:23:10.056
And so I would look at your husband as the actual determining factor of how long jobs actually take, because until you pay your employees down the road, pay for performance, they're going to go a lot slower.
418
00:23:10.676 --> 00:23:13.037
And so you can be led to believe that's going to take an hour.
419
00:23:13.097 --> 00:23:17.299
In reality, if they were both actually hustling, it get done in 35 minutes.
420
00:23:17.799 --> 00:23:18.779
That's very possible.
421
00:23:18.839 --> 00:23:20.200
And all of a sudden the math makes sense.
422
00:23:20.834 --> 00:23:21.154
Yeah.
423
00:23:21.775 --> 00:23:29.361
And so for now, Malia, I would just mostly focus on the basics, which is, you know, you need to raise price.
424
00:23:29.722 --> 00:23:30.943
Let's execute on that.
425
00:23:31.483 --> 00:23:37.689
And then as you go throughout this season, now in homework, you're going to see clocked hours versus budget hours on every single job.
426
00:23:38.009 --> 00:23:41.092
Like, are you putting budget hours in for every single mowing visit?
427
00:23:41.782 --> 00:23:42.062
Yes.
428
00:23:42.402 --> 00:23:42.642
Cool.
429
00:23:42.902 --> 00:23:44.563
And are you doing it based upon one person?
430
00:23:45.383 --> 00:23:45.723
Yes.
431
00:23:46.084 --> 00:23:49.085
So like when it says BH, I want you to assume one person is there.
432
00:23:49.105 --> 00:23:53.966
So if it's like, for example, if it is a $65 cut, you should be putting one budgeted hour in there.
433
00:23:54.207 --> 00:23:54.507
Why?
434
00:23:55.147 --> 00:23:56.627
If we're trying to make $135 an hour.
435
00:23:58.260 --> 00:24:00.261
Okay, sorry, 67.5, my bad.
436
00:24:00.581 --> 00:24:04.464
So 135 divided by two, 67.50, right?
437
00:24:05.484 --> 00:24:10.628
So I want you to think more in terms of per budget hour of labor, you need $67.50.
438
00:24:11.228 --> 00:24:18.552
Meaning anytime, so $80, Mo, 80 divided by 67.5, it's gonna be like 1.2 something.
439
00:24:18.993 --> 00:24:20.093
That's what you're gonna put in the visit.
440
00:24:21.114 --> 00:24:23.876
Because when now your crew shows up at that property,
441
00:24:24.396 --> 00:24:26.016
You're like, oh, I don't want it.
442
00:24:26.076 --> 00:24:26.857
It's only $80 mo.
443
00:24:27.337 --> 00:24:29.237
It's 1.2 hours, but just for one person.
444
00:24:29.277 --> 00:24:29.477
Great.
445
00:24:29.918 --> 00:24:36.419
Field force automatically halves it because there's two people assigned and tells them they need to be done in 0.6 hours or 36 minutes or whatever it is.
446
00:24:36.780 --> 00:24:37.260
Okay.
447
00:24:37.560 --> 00:24:38.580
I'm so confused.
448
00:24:38.600 --> 00:24:39.340
I'm not going to lie.
449
00:24:39.840 --> 00:24:40.201
You're fine.
450
00:24:40.521 --> 00:24:44.762
So what I want you to do, Malia, is have you seen landscape business course at all or not?
451
00:24:45.262 --> 00:24:45.442
No.
452
00:24:45.963 --> 00:24:47.484
So landscape business course is free.
453
00:24:47.965 --> 00:24:48.986
Just go sign up.
454
00:24:49.386 --> 00:24:53.110
Go to the budget hours part where explain all about this and run the math.
455
00:24:53.490 --> 00:24:54.552
I have some videos on YouTube.
456
00:24:54.572 --> 00:24:55.993
I just don't know their titles.
457
00:24:56.914 --> 00:25:01.158
But you really – this is a fundamental cornerstone of all of homeworks is understanding budget hours.
458
00:25:01.519 --> 00:25:06.323
And if you can figure this out and then have your price increases, which you know you needed to have –
459
00:25:07.024 --> 00:25:14.348
Once you're done the next two to three months, you will have very clear data in terms of whether or not your jobs are actually hitting budgeted hours, i.e.
460
00:25:14.368 --> 00:25:16.109
$67.50 per man per hour.
461
00:25:16.409 --> 00:25:21.732
So why is it $67.50 per man per hour?
462
00:25:22.092 --> 00:25:23.413
Just 135 divided by two.
463
00:25:24.534 --> 00:25:27.495
You said you're trying to make 135 per hour for two people, right?
464
00:25:27.916 --> 00:25:28.176
Yes.
465
00:25:28.596 --> 00:25:31.258
I'm just cutting that in half and saying it's per one is 67.50.
466
00:25:31.278 --> 00:25:31.438
Right.
467
00:25:32.238 --> 00:25:32.758
Oh, okay.
468
00:25:32.818 --> 00:25:33.499
I see what you're saying.
469
00:25:33.779 --> 00:25:34.099
Okay.
470
00:25:34.539 --> 00:25:34.880
Okay.
471
00:25:34.940 --> 00:25:37.041
So kind of to go back.
472
00:25:37.461 --> 00:25:40.403
So my husband and one of our guys is working this week.
473
00:25:40.703 --> 00:25:45.206
And yesterday they did four properties that are all like right beside each other.
474
00:25:45.226 --> 00:25:48.888
They clocked each property individually.
475
00:25:49.528 --> 00:25:54.511
It took 4.4 hours total to complete all four of those properties with two guys.
476
00:25:55.071 --> 00:25:57.893
And they made $309 for all of that.
477
00:25:57.973 --> 00:26:00.114
So that's 70 an hour.
478
00:26:00.174 --> 00:26:01.175
So is that good or no?
479
00:26:01.713 --> 00:26:02.534
No, that's not good.
480
00:26:02.794 --> 00:26:03.014
Right.
481
00:26:03.155 --> 00:26:03.495
Okay.
482
00:26:03.855 --> 00:26:05.497
So how do we fix that?
483
00:26:05.637 --> 00:26:06.218
Like, I don't.
484
00:26:06.658 --> 00:26:06.818
Yeah.
485
00:26:06.998 --> 00:26:08.860
Like right now, Malia, you're trying to get ahead of yourself.
486
00:26:09.641 --> 00:26:13.265
I know where you're trying to think about is where we need to be in a couple months.
487
00:26:14.025 --> 00:26:16.388
Right now, you just did a big price increase in lost customers.
488
00:26:17.408 --> 00:26:18.989
We know we need to do that price increase.
489
00:26:19.450 --> 00:26:27.655
So let's just focus on recovering those customers, trying to get our feet underneath us, start the spring rush, because you don't even have the data yet to really accurately know.
490
00:26:28.095 --> 00:26:33.959
Just know that you are probably way underpriced, to the point where either A, you can't be profitable doing the work.
491
00:26:34.559 --> 00:26:38.705
And you want to actually focus on other services and upsell them more higher margin services.
492
00:26:39.466 --> 00:26:42.891
Or two, it's because you don't have the equipment to do the work efficiently enough.
493
00:26:43.772 --> 00:26:48.499
So for example, I'm assuming your average size of property is like over a quarter acre.
494
00:26:48.579 --> 00:26:49.020
Is that right?
495
00:26:49.420 --> 00:26:50.261
For those properties, yeah.
496
00:26:50.281 --> 00:26:50.402
Yeah.
497
00:26:50.860 --> 00:26:51.100
Yeah.
498
00:26:51.421 --> 00:26:59.709
And so you could immediately cut the half time by 30% on those jobs and hit your target rate if you had bigger mowers, right?
499
00:26:59.829 --> 00:27:02.011
So again, your hourly rate is a function of efficiency.
500
00:27:02.091 --> 00:27:04.073
It's not a matter of, is my pricing too high or too low?
501
00:27:04.273 --> 00:27:08.237
If I had got a push mower on those jobs, I would have gotten one of them done in the entire day.
502
00:27:08.697 --> 00:27:08.918
Right.
503
00:27:09.398 --> 00:27:09.658
Yeah.
504
00:27:10.139 --> 00:27:10.299
Right.
505
00:27:10.359 --> 00:27:12.860
So I want you to, for now, just focus on the price increase.
506
00:27:12.880 --> 00:27:13.841
We know we needed it.
507
00:27:14.261 --> 00:27:16.083
Let's get two months of data in homeworks.
508
00:27:16.123 --> 00:27:17.924
Make sure your budget hours are accurate in every job.
509
00:27:17.944 --> 00:27:20.846
And when I say that, it's not budget hours at 135.
510
00:27:21.206 --> 00:27:25.029
So when you create the budget hours for every mowing visit, think 6750.
511
00:27:25.049 --> 00:27:28.391
So if it's $80, it's 80 divided by 6750.
512
00:27:28.471 --> 00:27:31.573
If it's a $40 lawn, it's 40 divided by 6750.
513
00:27:31.773 --> 00:27:36.657
That will give you accurate budget hours to then actually know if you're hitting the numbers or not.
514
00:27:37.101 --> 00:27:41.225
Okay, so I need to go back through every single visit that I have on the schedule and adjust the budgeted hours.
515
00:27:41.586 --> 00:27:42.066
You got this.
516
00:27:42.407 --> 00:27:43.227
Plug in Spotify.
517
00:27:43.247 --> 00:27:43.628
Let's go.
518
00:27:43.648 --> 00:27:44.569
Okay, cool.
519
00:27:44.589 --> 00:27:44.869
Thank you.
520
00:27:44.929 --> 00:27:45.209
I'm done.
521
00:27:45.229 --> 00:27:46.210
I'm sorry I took so much time.
522
00:27:46.551 --> 00:27:46.851
You're good.
523
00:27:47.091 --> 00:27:52.897
If you're trying to figure out how to grow your landscaping or lawn care business, go check out landscapebusinesscourse.com.
524
00:27:53.158 --> 00:27:58.763
It's completely free and has dozens of hours worth of training on how to grow a business up to $100,000 in monthly revenue.
525
00:28:00.425 --> 00:28:00.945
Austin, you're up.
526
00:28:00.985 --> 00:28:01.486
Go for it, brother.
527
00:28:01.966 --> 00:28:02.486
Hey, thank you.
528
00:28:02.806 --> 00:28:04.988
So I've been working with Dad for about 14 years.
529
00:28:05.668 --> 00:28:14.593
About three years ago, we kind of did a reset, scaled back down, and we're trying to build up and make sure that we remain profitable while we build up.
530
00:28:15.194 --> 00:28:21.117
Currently, our hourly rate floats somewhere between about $140 an hour all the way up to $200 an hour.
531
00:28:21.577 --> 00:28:25.119
We do full design, install, build, as well as ongoing maintenance.
532
00:28:25.619 --> 00:28:29.942
The only thing we don't do in-house right now is mowing, and we sub that out to somebody we really trust for that.
533
00:28:30.042 --> 00:28:30.622
A couple of things.
534
00:28:30.722 --> 00:28:35.905
One, I feel like I'm always a chicken with my head cut off because we got so many irons in the fire.
535
00:28:37.546 --> 00:28:44.110
Second thing, can you help me establish where maybe we should be at on an hourly charge rate?
536
00:28:44.510 --> 00:28:44.690
Yeah.
537
00:28:44.710 --> 00:28:47.352
So hourly charge rate is always going to come back to your close rate.
538
00:28:47.592 --> 00:28:53.415
If you're closing up, like if you had to guess when it comes to projects, do you close like 50%, 70%?
539
00:28:53.455 --> 00:28:54.136
What do you think you're at?
540
00:28:54.576 --> 00:28:59.879
Dad always says he closes 90% because he does a lot of elimination before he even goes to meet with somebody.
541
00:29:00.199 --> 00:29:01.720
So he doesn't like to waste a lot of his time.
542
00:29:02.340 --> 00:29:08.444
As far as what's actually coming through the door and what we turn away, I couldn't tell you that number based on the current software we've had.
543
00:29:08.644 --> 00:29:13.847
It looks to be that we're closing 90 at the numbers that we're doing, but it's also low volume.
544
00:29:13.887 --> 00:29:15.588
And I'm always wishing I had more work for the guys.
545
00:29:16.128 --> 00:29:16.588
Oh, okay.
546
00:29:16.729 --> 00:29:17.629
Okay.
547
00:29:17.749 --> 00:29:18.009
Okay.
548
00:29:18.049 --> 00:29:19.210
Got it.
549
00:29:19.230 --> 00:29:23.733
The problem is Austin is you're trying to grow and you're also trying to do it profitably, right?
550
00:29:23.773 --> 00:29:23.953
Yeah.
551
00:29:24.334 --> 00:29:27.556
And so like, it's, it's, to me, that's speaking out both sides of my mouth.
552
00:29:27.896 --> 00:29:29.777
Either I'm trying to grow or I'm trying to make more money.
553
00:29:30.118 --> 00:29:34.381
Because if you're trying to grow, we say, okay, I don't like a 90% close rate.
554
00:29:34.401 --> 00:29:37.843
Because here's the thing, even if you're qualifying customers really heavily, right?
555
00:29:37.943 --> 00:29:43.290
price being the reason people cancel, I want to be cutting out at least 25% of my customers.
556
00:29:43.510 --> 00:29:53.162
And so I already know that your prices aren't too high because of 90% of people who see your price, if they're accepting, even though you could say, well, we screen out like 20, 30% of people before they even show up.
557
00:29:53.422 --> 00:29:53.943
Okay, fine.
558
00:29:54.363 --> 00:29:57.026
But like the fact that people who don't see your price
559
00:29:57.667 --> 00:29:58.928
Don't get a vote in this.
560
00:29:58.968 --> 00:30:00.469
Like that's not even part of your close rate.
561
00:30:00.690 --> 00:30:04.353
Close rate is estimate sent versus estimates accepted very specifically.
562
00:30:04.433 --> 00:30:07.616
And so I would say you are underpriced.
563
00:30:08.156 --> 00:30:13.440
The challenge becomes then I can't, if I raise my prices and I don't have a 90% close rate, I can't keep my guys busy.
564
00:30:13.781 --> 00:30:19.626
And this is usually where I would take your margin of raising your prices and getting your close rate down to more like a 70%.
565
00:30:20.066 --> 00:30:24.790
I would take the extra margin that you will make in doing so and put that into paid ads.
566
00:30:25.891 --> 00:30:28.154
Especially when it comes to landscape, hardscape.
567
00:30:28.175 --> 00:30:29.937
Are you only doing that mostly?
568
00:30:30.017 --> 00:30:32.701
Are you doing maintenance, like any sort of landscape maintenance at all or not?
569
00:30:32.841 --> 00:30:33.062
Yeah.
570
00:30:33.362 --> 00:30:35.926
Yeah, we're doing landscape maintenance and fertilizing in-house.
571
00:30:36.226 --> 00:30:39.772
So fertilizing is probably about a quarter of revenue
572
00:30:41.033 --> 00:30:46.918
And we had one guy doing that of our eight team members that we had in the field last year.
573
00:30:46.998 --> 00:30:53.123
Hardscape and landscape install, that floats somewhere around a third of total revenue all the way up to half.
574
00:30:53.863 --> 00:30:58.007
And then we've got probably about, what, 200,000 in mowing.
575
00:30:58.027 --> 00:30:59.328
So that's probably another quarter.
576
00:30:59.448 --> 00:31:02.090
And then landscape maintenance kind of makes up that rest of that gap.
577
00:31:02.510 --> 00:31:10.999
Yeah, so like I think the long-term route of like trying to get away from the whole ups and downs is to build up the maintenance, build up the fertilization, anything recurring.
578
00:31:12.160 --> 00:31:19.167
And then again, like 90% close rate is – if that's what you are at, I 100% know you can raise prices.
579
00:31:19.747 --> 00:31:22.010
And then if you're like, man, I don't know, then we will lose some people.
580
00:31:22.110 --> 00:31:22.350
Great.
581
00:31:22.811 --> 00:31:24.672
Govern how much we're spending on ads.
582
00:31:24.692 --> 00:31:25.934
Like do any paid ads right now?
583
00:31:26.443 --> 00:31:27.824
We do a little bit.
584
00:31:27.884 --> 00:31:30.906
So I actually pay somebody locally here about $1,800 a month.
585
00:31:31.066 --> 00:31:34.388
They run our social media website and are getting us into Google ads.
586
00:31:35.108 --> 00:31:37.390
So they'll come onto our site.
587
00:31:37.430 --> 00:31:44.394
They do video work with us about three times a month and help us run Facebook ads and stuff like that.
588
00:31:44.914 --> 00:31:47.095
A lot of it is not paid Facebook ads.
589
00:31:47.115 --> 00:31:51.218
We've been having trouble getting listed with Google because there's been a discrepancy on our profile.
590
00:31:51.498 --> 00:31:53.579
But I think we just got that taken care of last week.
591
00:31:53.619 --> 00:31:54.660
So we're going to step more into that.
592
00:31:55.133 --> 00:31:58.458
Yeah, like, yeah, it sounds like to me that they're really creating content, right?
593
00:31:58.759 --> 00:32:02.464
In terms of like paid traffic, that's very different.
594
00:32:02.985 --> 00:32:06.731
And it's fortunate it's solvable to fix Google and Facebook account issues.
595
00:32:06.751 --> 00:32:10.737
But like, it sounds to me like, how many reviews do you have on Google right now, Austin?
596
00:32:11.057 --> 00:32:11.737
I think 50.
597
00:32:12.037 --> 00:32:12.477
It's pretty low.
598
00:32:12.497 --> 00:32:12.637
Okay.
599
00:32:12.997 --> 00:32:13.217
Okay.
600
00:32:13.598 --> 00:32:13.698
Yeah.
601
00:32:13.718 --> 00:32:18.899
Like I think validating that adding, like, I don't know if they're adding the content right now to Google or not.
602
00:32:19.339 --> 00:32:20.759
Are they, or just social media?
603
00:32:21.239 --> 00:32:22.120
I don't know the answer to that.
604
00:32:22.640 --> 00:32:22.940
It's fine.
605
00:32:23.080 --> 00:32:27.441
So just basically making sure that your Google listing is optimized and updated frequently.
606
00:32:28.041 --> 00:32:29.401
You respond to reviews, stuff like that.
607
00:32:29.461 --> 00:32:29.741
Great.
608
00:32:31.022 --> 00:32:32.242
What's your website, Austin?
609
00:32:32.262 --> 00:32:33.022
Just out of curiosity.
610
00:32:33.922 --> 00:32:37.323
PMLFW.com.
611
00:32:37.642 --> 00:32:40.424
Cool, like this background video, let's go.
612
00:32:40.444 --> 00:32:42.525
Oh, sorry, I'm not sharing my looks here.
613
00:32:42.585 --> 00:32:44.866
One second, sorry guys.
614
00:32:44.906 --> 00:32:45.286
This one.
615
00:32:45.647 --> 00:32:46.607
Okay, let's see here.
616
00:32:46.627 --> 00:32:47.568
Is that your dad?
617
00:32:48.088 --> 00:32:48.908
Yep, that's Jeremy.
618
00:32:49.229 --> 00:32:49.729
Let's go.
619
00:32:49.749 --> 00:32:51.250
Cool, cool.
620
00:32:51.690 --> 00:32:53.271
Oh no, is this a one-page website?
621
00:32:53.511 --> 00:32:53.931
Please don't.
622
00:32:54.111 --> 00:32:54.892
Oh, it's not, let's go.
623
00:32:55.352 --> 00:32:56.453
Downloadable content.
624
00:32:58.293 --> 00:32:58.533
Okay.
625
00:32:59.154 --> 00:33:03.837
Do they, does that 1800 cover building your work, like maintain the website, Austin?
626
00:33:04.137 --> 00:33:04.337
Yeah.
627
00:33:04.757 --> 00:33:04.977
Okay.
628
00:33:05.478 --> 00:33:12.643
So I don't wanna like dig into it too much, but like, yeah, I would talk to them about trying to make this video where it's not a clickable thing.
629
00:33:12.703 --> 00:33:14.084
It's like just in the background.
630
00:33:14.504 --> 00:33:15.705
Like right now it's a huge embed.
631
00:33:16.445 --> 00:33:24.537
Because then what you could do is pull up complete outdoor services for Fort Wayne Home and Businesses and overlay it on top of this with an actual estimate request form.
632
00:33:24.897 --> 00:33:26.319
So it's like right when you get to the page.
633
00:33:26.880 --> 00:33:30.145
So there's definitely some optimization you could do around the site itself.
634
00:33:31.006 --> 00:33:31.246
Yeah.
635
00:33:31.847 --> 00:33:33.068
Social media looks really solid.
636
00:33:33.288 --> 00:33:34.429
Obviously, super professional.
637
00:33:34.829 --> 00:33:35.930
I love that.
638
00:33:36.010 --> 00:33:40.553
I think a few tweaks to your site could be made, and then you could start running paid traffic.
639
00:33:41.133 --> 00:33:53.062
I would just like – even if you went on to Upwork, for example, and you got someone that does CRO, conversion rate optimization, and asked them, it's what we do all – like it's the first thing we do is simply like, how do we get more traffic to convert?
640
00:33:53.322 --> 00:33:57.505
Because before you go spending money on ads, I want you to make sure it's actually going to convert well, the website.
641
00:33:57.525 --> 00:33:57.625
Yeah.
642
00:33:58.065 --> 00:33:59.946
And it has the SM request form above the fold.
643
00:34:00.066 --> 00:34:03.628
It states your service area and what service you do above the fold, things like that.
644
00:34:04.368 --> 00:34:06.629
It looks really professional, but it's not built for conversion right now.
645
00:34:06.649 --> 00:34:12.532
It's built for design, which is fine when you have lots of word of mouth, lots of referrals, and that's what you guys have lived off of.
646
00:34:12.992 --> 00:34:17.735
I just want it to be when you start paying for traffic that one out of 100 actually convert, not one out of 500.
647
00:34:17.755 --> 00:34:17.855
Okay.
648
00:34:18.715 --> 00:34:23.900
So I do think that you're ready for paid traffic once the site's optimized.
649
00:34:23.980 --> 00:34:30.326
And I would take any extra margin that you're making from these jobs by raising prices and not being at 90% close rate.
650
00:34:30.827 --> 00:34:34.731
Because, again, if 9 out of 10 people, once they see your price, say yes, you're too low a price.
651
00:34:34.971 --> 00:34:35.952
I don't care what your prices are.
652
00:34:36.032 --> 00:34:36.632
They just are.
653
00:34:37.653 --> 00:34:43.835
Um, and so if you then take the extra margin and put it in a paid traffic, the reason this is important, Austin, cause then you control lead flow.
654
00:34:44.055 --> 00:34:46.955
And the reason you've had ups and downs every year is cause you don't have control of leads.
655
00:34:46.975 --> 00:34:51.717
You're waiting for people to refer you or word of mouth or people saying good things or seeing your, seeing your social media.
656
00:34:51.777 --> 00:34:52.217
That's fine.
657
00:34:52.237 --> 00:34:53.877
I just want to have control of it.
658
00:34:53.897 --> 00:34:56.898
So when I get slow, I turn that nozzle on and I fill up my schedule.
659
00:34:57.158 --> 00:34:57.298
Yeah.
660
00:34:57.798 --> 00:35:02.040
And then second thing I would say, how many people in your contact database, Austin, right now?
661
00:35:02.060 --> 00:35:03.561
I couldn't tell you off the top of my head.
662
00:35:03.621 --> 00:35:07.182
I know our standard fertilizer list is about 300 customers.
663
00:35:07.542 --> 00:35:10.324
Our rotating maintenance is somewhere around 100.
664
00:35:10.364 --> 00:35:14.685
And then contacts in your database is probably like 1,000 plus, I would imagine, over the course of all the years.
665
00:35:14.705 --> 00:35:15.606
Yeah, somewhere around that number.
666
00:35:16.106 --> 00:35:21.128
I would definitely be leaning to the mass text and mass email side of homeworks, keeping them all warm.
667
00:35:21.768 --> 00:35:23.769
And the objective is to try to get them on maintenance.
668
00:35:24.109 --> 00:35:26.090
So you're like, well, I did a project for them five years ago.
669
00:35:26.550 --> 00:35:27.070
Okay, great.
670
00:35:27.150 --> 00:35:32.412
I'm going to have my monthly email based upon sprinkler blowouts, time for pruning, stuff.
671
00:35:33.152 --> 00:35:47.020
All the CTAs call to actions that I know I'm going to be able to sprinkle in throughout the year, because that's how you'll generate way more than 10 or 15% in recurring landscape maintenance is just pitching them specific services throughout the year and then getting them on to recurring after that.
672
00:35:48.020 --> 00:35:49.841
Is there a way right now on homeworks?
673
00:35:49.982 --> 00:35:51.242
I just got signed up yesterday.
674
00:35:51.262 --> 00:35:52.623
So I've like not even logged in.
675
00:35:52.643 --> 00:35:56.085
But is there a way to get recurring monthly emails going out right now?
676
00:35:56.507 --> 00:35:58.828
Yeah, so you can mass message them very quickly.
677
00:35:58.848 --> 00:36:01.570
Just go to your customer list, filter down however you want.
678
00:36:01.590 --> 00:36:04.892
So you can change it by city or if they've done a service with you.
679
00:36:04.912 --> 00:36:07.113
If they haven't done a service for you, you can filter it down.
680
00:36:07.133 --> 00:36:09.355
Then just select all, send them an email.
681
00:36:09.835 --> 00:36:10.555
Same thing with text.
682
00:36:10.795 --> 00:36:10.996
Okay.
683
00:36:11.956 --> 00:36:14.957
I would probably do that before I run ads because it doesn't cost you anything.
684
00:36:15.698 --> 00:36:19.619
And you could immediately start kind of like bolstering the recurring revenue.
685
00:36:19.639 --> 00:36:25.342
And if you do that, then you'll have the confidence to do the other part, which is like raise the prices, have a little lower close rate.
686
00:36:25.622 --> 00:36:26.842
Then you take that extra profit.
687
00:36:27.043 --> 00:36:28.423
You can run into Facebook ads.
688
00:36:28.703 --> 00:36:30.744
So yeah, you got it.
689
00:36:31.144 --> 00:36:32.005
Crystal, you're up.
690
00:36:32.085 --> 00:36:32.765
Hi, Mike.
691
00:36:32.825 --> 00:36:33.605
It's nice to meet you.
692
00:36:33.725 --> 00:36:34.866
You as well.
693
00:36:35.166 --> 00:36:37.247
My husband has been following you for a while.
694
00:36:37.727 --> 00:36:39.548
And we actually just signed up a few days ago.
695
00:36:40.306 --> 00:36:45.931
Me and my wife opened a lawn care and a cleaning company, so we're doing both, and it's one business.
696
00:36:46.071 --> 00:36:46.432
Okay.
697
00:36:47.052 --> 00:36:48.333
So she's doing the inside.
698
00:36:48.373 --> 00:36:49.274
We're doing the outside.
699
00:36:49.835 --> 00:36:55.100
And we haven't done any marketing besides Facebook, you know, word of mouth kind of thing.
700
00:36:55.640 --> 00:36:58.903
We've never had systems in place, so everything's getting chaotic.
701
00:36:59.263 --> 00:37:00.604
And we're at that right at $250,000.
702
00:37:00.625 --> 00:37:00.725
Okay.
703
00:37:02.446 --> 00:37:03.308
We're just right there.
704
00:37:03.328 --> 00:37:11.522
And it's, I know we need systems in place and that's why we're going with you guys before we get any bigger, because I can't stand clutter.
705
00:37:11.582 --> 00:37:13.005
I can't stand this organization.
706
00:37:13.025 --> 00:37:13.125
Yeah.
707
00:37:14.614 --> 00:37:18.477
what is your tips for us, us being cleaning and lawn care?
708
00:37:18.497 --> 00:37:20.598
Do you think it's a good thing?
709
00:37:20.979 --> 00:37:25.822
And what advice would you give for us to scale our business?
710
00:37:26.063 --> 00:37:27.664
Yeah, like what are you optimizing for?
711
00:37:27.684 --> 00:37:30.466
Are you optimizing to both do clean?
712
00:37:30.486 --> 00:37:32.227
Like why not just do one or the other?
713
00:37:32.568 --> 00:37:38.472
Well, the reason why when we first started was to kind of keep us busy in the winter.
714
00:37:38.913 --> 00:37:39.553
And it has.
715
00:37:39.673 --> 00:37:41.575
It really has kept us busy in the winter.
716
00:37:42.355 --> 00:37:51.503
Um, but we've only been able to grow to a certain amount because everything's been so chaotic and it's just like, we're, we're plateauing and we're not, we're not able to grow anymore.
717
00:37:51.683 --> 00:37:51.883
Yeah.
718
00:37:51.903 --> 00:38:02.891
Like I think if both of you put your resources towards one or the other, you'd probably be more successful because like there's an unseen cost expense on every profit and loss statement that you can't see.
719
00:38:03.252 --> 00:38:04.252
And that is distraction.
720
00:38:04.533 --> 00:38:09.817
And so you all have doubled the amount of problems you're going to have in the business simply because you chose two different industries.
721
00:38:09.897 --> 00:38:10.097
Yeah.
722
00:38:10.197 --> 00:38:14.040
And so I would love it for you to both be like, hey, which of these two are we going to focus on?
723
00:38:14.460 --> 00:38:17.062
Like, does cleaning keep you busy in the winter now?
724
00:38:17.242 --> 00:38:24.368
Yeah, but I also think you get creative if you both put your heads together in terms of how do we produce services during the winter for the lawn care side.
725
00:38:24.628 --> 00:38:27.750
Or if you went all in on cleaning, you focus on, you would figure this out.
726
00:38:28.311 --> 00:38:35.697
I also think that the chaos comes because you could have one of the businesses going really well, but the other one's going to start falling apart.
727
00:38:36.397 --> 00:38:42.868
And you have, like, everyone can make sense of this whole, like, inside and outside thing because it makes conceptually make sense.
728
00:38:43.029 --> 00:38:47.436
And some of your customers that you do cleaning for also have you doing their mowing.
729
00:38:47.456 --> 00:38:47.937
Right.
730
00:38:48.627 --> 00:38:57.833
Um, and so conceptually you can make sense of that, but it is an unforeseen, like unseen line item of distraction that if you both were like, Hey, we're just both going to go all in.
731
00:38:58.153 --> 00:39:03.216
And a lot of times it makes sense when up to 250,000, cause you all are both out in the field doing the work.
732
00:39:03.557 --> 00:39:09.340
When you start getting employees, you'll keep running up against this 250 thing because it's going to be very hard to now split.
733
00:39:09.721 --> 00:39:13.743
You got to create different training systems for cleaning, different training systems for your lawn care guys.
734
00:39:13.963 --> 00:39:15.304
You got to create different billing structures.
735
00:39:15.324 --> 00:39:18.206
Like everything is doubled in terms of complexity.
736
00:39:18.226 --> 00:39:18.346
Yeah.
737
00:39:18.506 --> 00:39:24.192
And so I believe that if you chose one or the other, either one, and you say, hey, we're both going to go all in on this.
738
00:39:24.533 --> 00:39:31.180
Now what happens is instead of you both staying in operations, one of you likely would do admin and sales and the other one would do operations.
739
00:39:31.600 --> 00:39:37.006
Now all of a sudden you can get seven, eight technicians underneath one of you out in the field and build a million-dollar business.
740
00:39:37.406 --> 00:39:37.547
Right.
741
00:39:38.007 --> 00:39:39.088
That's really good advice.
742
00:39:39.628 --> 00:39:41.268
And she actually just got out of the field.
743
00:39:41.609 --> 00:39:47.031
She's got two girls working in the field, and she's out of the field and going to be learning the system and working this.
744
00:39:47.471 --> 00:39:50.072
So you would just pick one and just run after it.
745
00:39:50.412 --> 00:39:50.712
I would.
746
00:39:51.073 --> 00:39:53.874
And it's always difficult to cut the other one loose, right?
747
00:39:54.434 --> 00:40:00.916
And so, you know, is there a happy medium where, okay, let's take our top best customers of the one industry and just keep doing them?
748
00:40:01.336 --> 00:40:07.018
Or maybe we raise our prices, that cuts out a few of them, and then we keep doing it maybe on the side of the weekend, that's fine.
749
00:40:07.478 --> 00:40:18.822
And maybe the two cleaners are really self-sufficient and like, you can just kind of like, put that one on ice, take your best customers, make sure it's not taking any of your energy, but we're not going to be having two websites and two different QuickBooks accounts and two different bank accounts.
750
00:40:19.302 --> 00:40:25.963
If you just put all the energy towards one, if you just look at sales, operations, and admin, you both are acting as solo operators, and therefore you're getting a 250.
751
00:40:26.243 --> 00:40:37.126
If you just say, hey, we're going to do one thing, now all of a sudden you get one person in admin and sales, the other person in operations, and get six to eight technicians underneath your operations person and immediately get to 800,000 to a million.
752
00:40:37.446 --> 00:40:38.166
It's been really hard.
753
00:40:38.186 --> 00:40:41.047
We have two QuickBooks.
754
00:40:41.207 --> 00:40:48.008
And we're trying to merge everything together and being able to itemize from cleaning to lawn care, and that's when we found HomeWorks.
755
00:40:48.393 --> 00:40:53.506
At one point we had four different accounts because there was two for Brandon and two for me.
756
00:40:53.927 --> 00:40:55.431
And it was very hard for our books.
757
00:40:56.069 --> 00:41:00.633
You know what's funny is if you guys combine it, what will happen is your next bottleneck, you'll feel this is at 500,000.
758
00:41:01.273 --> 00:41:05.036
Because right now you guys are hitting, you're both really good being solo operators.
759
00:41:05.237 --> 00:41:06.498
You're basically combined forces.
760
00:41:06.518 --> 00:41:15.005
You're going to get to 500,000, and then you're going to have trouble finding employees and training systems and hiring, onboarding, retention, one-on-ones.
761
00:41:15.305 --> 00:41:16.386
That'll become the next bottleneck.
762
00:41:16.586 --> 00:41:23.352
But at least you'll be at 500,000, not 250, because the way you're currently doing things, you guys will stay here because you're both really good at operations and doing the work.
763
00:41:24.092 --> 00:41:38.418
I happen to believe if Crystal was in the office doing all the admin, doing over-the-phone sales, took a lot of things off your plate, you'd be able to then focus with your team out in the field much more doing operations and probably be a good manager of them while you're out in the field working with three, four, five, six guys.
764
00:41:38.438 --> 00:41:39.078
Okay.
765
00:41:39.593 --> 00:41:40.033
Perfect.
766
00:41:40.053 --> 00:41:40.674
Sounds good, brother.
767
00:41:40.714 --> 00:41:41.975
Appreciate it.
768
00:41:41.995 --> 00:41:42.356
Got it.
769
00:41:42.376 --> 00:41:43.197
Zane, you're up next.
770
00:41:43.217 --> 00:41:43.617
Go for it.
771
00:41:43.757 --> 00:41:44.878
Last but not least.
772
00:41:44.998 --> 00:41:49.823
So until last year, I was working with partners, but I had two partners.
773
00:41:49.843 --> 00:41:50.844
They weren't carrying their weight.
774
00:41:51.004 --> 00:41:52.786
So then I kind of bought them out.
775
00:41:53.326 --> 00:41:55.889
And this is my first year without them.
776
00:41:56.229 --> 00:41:58.311
So I've been looking to hire some people.
777
00:41:58.812 --> 00:42:00.413
I was thinking of doing like a daily pay.
778
00:42:00.433 --> 00:42:01.875
Do you have any thoughts on that?
779
00:42:02.382 --> 00:42:07.923
Um, the challenge they pay is if they get done really, really early, you feel jilted and they take really, really long.
780
00:42:07.943 --> 00:42:08.643
They feel jilted.
781
00:42:09.043 --> 00:42:12.804
It's almost never like this happy medium because they just want a perfect eight hour day.
782
00:42:13.664 --> 00:42:17.225
And if they finish early, then you're putting more on their schedule and they don't like it.
783
00:42:17.425 --> 00:42:19.385
They feel like you're trying to use abuse the system.
784
00:42:19.425 --> 00:42:23.946
So, um, I prefer hourly over day and I hate hourly.
785
00:42:24.206 --> 00:42:25.386
So it's not saying much for day.
786
00:42:26.226 --> 00:42:29.687
Um, I would rather it be where it's percentage based, like pay for performance.
787
00:42:29.927 --> 00:42:30.547
If you can get there.
788
00:42:30.567 --> 00:42:30.887
Um, yeah.
789
00:42:31.034 --> 00:42:33.996
Okay, can you explain a bit more how to set that up?
790
00:42:34.396 --> 00:42:35.817
Yeah, so I have a whole course on this.
791
00:42:35.837 --> 00:42:38.439
So if you just go to p4psoftware.com, go to the training tab.
792
00:42:38.459 --> 00:42:41.401
I have a whole course on doing how to do pay for performance.
793
00:42:41.782 --> 00:42:44.804
Basically, it's going to be a percentage of the revenue they earn, they get.
794
00:42:45.204 --> 00:42:50.108
So that way they're motivated to actually do get more work done, not just drain away a day or hours, et cetera.
795
00:42:50.628 --> 00:43:16.389
okay and you um like say like a crew is out mowing a lawn and someone's walking by they they ask for a quote and like they land a job do you like give bonuses for that to the we usually do 50 dollars yeah we usually 50 bucks for any new uh kind of uh new clients they get they can bring on okay cool yeah that's about it cool awesome well thank you all for being here have a good weekend take care we'll see you guys