Starting (and Fastlaning) a lawn care service business

[Johnny boy]

I'm currently working on a side-business which requires a large amount of time upfront without any payoff for the foreseeable future. I'm thinking of copying your business model for Cleaning/maid Service in my town of 350,000 people in Sask, Canada. Have you considered offering cleaning services throughout the winter months?

Two different businesses

Not in the foreseeable future no

 

[BlackSuperman]

Johnny, I’ve been following this for a while and it’s incredible where you started and where you’re at now. Truly inspiring!

 

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[Brrr]

Nice one, I found a really similar thing with my production guy, he's made the business twice as efficient on production and so I am happy to pay him the 40 hour week even if it was 35 in reality. Just as long as the work doesn't get sloppy.

We have a lot of variance in work demand and lots of teenagers working a few days a week and I've just started using some software called RotaCloud. On top of the usual rota, it lets you create "open shifts" that anyone can "claim" after they get the notification. It's made it really, really nice to manage people's hours and everyone is happy to pick up extra work here and there. I think the girls can also swap shifts with each other on the app and it tracks the hours they've worked at the end of the month.

Might not work for you, but I would recommend something like this if you know people that want to do work every now and then but where it is not practical to employ them fully.

 

[Johnny boy]

Keep killin' it, dude!

I'm curious (and apologize if you've already answered this) but how do you break down your profit? For instance, how much do you reinvest back into the business vs. how much do you pay yourself with? Are things like advertising and your own salary built into business expenses or how do you structure that?

Just wondering because I'm all about all the math you do so I wonder how you calculate that out.

Employees cost about 10k a month, and other stuff is marginal. Gas, supplies like fertilizer, insurance, etc. it’s a tiny fraction. Labor it the biggest expense. Advertising is small too.

I pay rent, put aside a couple grand for other expenses, and take the rest out and try to save a bit. The savings will be for expansion.

I put as much as I can back into the business. I still pay 3000 a month for rent and have a decent lifestyle, but I’m not out here buying boats and shit. Every vehicle I buy is the next truck for the next crew. I probably spend like 6k a month on personal stuff.

 

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[Johnny boy]

What do you charge?

Price range for current customers
Lowest: $90 a month
Highest: $375 a month
Average: $150 a month
160 customers at the moment

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

with that formula a 2000 square foot yard would cost like 200 a month for weekly service (I made the formula to determine a weekly price). For a weekly customer I'd probably charge right around there, since weekly shouldn't be exactly twice as much. A lawn that you service every other week and do things like trim hedges and fertilize doesn't take twice as much time if you visit twice as much. More like 80% more since you aren't doing the extra services like triming hedges each visit. So it should only be 80% more or so than the biweekly service. Plus you're adding more revenue, less traffic to your customer service, lowering ad spend per new customer by having a higher monthly payment from a single customer so we don't mind giving them a small discount for weekly services.

I could use that formula but I don't. I think about time spent at the job, how close they are to other properties (increases the time per job since we factor in driving time as well, give steep discounts when neighbors sign up), and other factors go into pricing the jobs.

If it's a quick yard (like 10 minutes ish), it should be anywhere from 80-130 a month plus tax for 12 months for biweekly services. If its a 15-25 minute yard it should be 150-200. If it's 35 minutes or so it should be like 220-275 a month.

so a 10 minute yard +small backyard looks like these.

View attachment 40696

View attachment 40697

Nice development house tiny yard, charge them 115 a month or something and include services like mowing, edging, blowing, weed control, hedge trimming, fertilizing, raking leaves. Comes out to about 20 visits a year (biweekly service march through october, 1/mo visits in winter months if requested) $115x12=$1380/20=$69(nice) dollars per visit.

Can you mow 10 of these lawns in a day? abso-f*cking-lutely. Before noon even. Maybe when the leaves fall in october you'll have to work a bit longer, oh well.

This is for biweekly work (every other week not twice a week), so you can fit 100 customers on a 2-week period doing 10 a day during the weekday.

That's $11,500 a month. We do slightly larger places on average since half are like this and half are a little bit bigger, so the average customer pays a little more, so each crew brings in $12,000 a month. So yes, the math checks out in the real world.

If you have 100 customers, you can section off your service area into 5 different sections. For example: northern properties on monday. Northeastern/eastern properties on tuesday, southwestern/southern properties wednesday, etc. Then, all your properties are close together. You put the names on a calendar like this. Note: this is before we had a full schedule for the second crew back when we were signing up people in the spring time.

View attachment 40698

As for planning routes, its up to the crew. They just get a list on their dispatching software and they choose the route. It takes only a minute to click and see where all the properties are. Since the properties are usually all close to each other the drive time between them is like 5-10 minutes on average. Makes for a quick day. We have a couple streets where there are 4-5 houses that are all our customers. They'll knock out 4-5 in a single hour.

So $12000 a crew minimum, paying them $20 an hour ($6400 a month). After other expenses (not much, just gas, fertilizer and fixing your cheap equipment) you should be taking home at least $5000 a month per crew.

And my guys work like 5 hours a day and I pay them for 8. So that's insane and everyone loves their jobs here. But if you actually worked them 8 hours I'm sure you could have 13 customers a day and $15000 a month in revenue. I think when we get a little bigger and start to spend some energy on optimization we could squeeze out a lot more from our employees and get to 7-8k in profit per crew at scale.

I don't know if this works anywhere else in the country, all I know is that it works extremely well here and we're going to keep adding employees and crews for the next couple years until we are at 10 crews or 1.8m in revenue or so. Then we are going to open up another location north of us along the puget sound I5 corridor.

This is amazing man. The sky truly is the limit. Most people think of lawn care as a summer job done by one person but you’re proving them wrong!

There are plenty of examples of service businesses grown into massive companies and it looks like you’re well on your way.

 

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[Private Witt]

You'r right on the Prius part. it will be tough to make it work.

I used to take alot of Ubers when lived in Seattle and always cringed when a Prius pulled up, which was like 70% of the time. The lack of space really irked me. How the heck can you run a lawn care business out of one, pics please.

 

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[door123]

I used to take alot of Ubers when lived in Seattle and always cringed when a Prius pulled up, which was like 70% of the time. The lack of space really irked me. How the heck can you run a lawn care business out of one, pics please.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WsPH_Y7VCs

 

[Johnny boy]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WsPH_Y7VCs

 

[Veloman]

the only benefit is getting press for virtue signaling in a liberal city

Hey, if you enjoy the noise, vibration, stench, extra weight (slower manuevering a push mower) and maintainence, then that's your choice.

 

[Zoobs]

@Johnny boy I have just skimmed a few of the most recent pages of this thread. Huge respect to you for what you have achieved.

What impresses me most is your attitude and approach to running your business. You keep things simple, don't listen to outside 'noise' and you get sh1t done.

Inspiring.

 

[Johnny boy]

Good stuff. Will you start hiring estimators? Or with your business model do you think you'll still be able to get to that revenue level with only your self doing the bids. If I remember right you only bid once which is pretty game changing.

Also margin insanely good. Nice.

Car dealership model. Sales reps to build rapport and close deals and gather information. They’ll be digitally connected to a single manager at a desk who picks the price. Car salesmen dont pick the prices of the cars they sell, it would be a shit show, so we’ll do it like that. One trained pricing estimator who can do 100+ quotes a day from a desk and many many salespeople meeting with customers and providing value that way.

Automation+humans is the best combo. Not purely one or the other.

At first I may just be operating as the pricing guy, with some hired customer service reps doing the salesperson scheduling when we are at different locations and I’m not able to be everywhere at once.

And yes, one bid and they’re signed up for at least a year and maybe more. I’ve got 5 of them today. Possibly could add like 7,000 in revenue from just todays normal quotes. And that’s yearly so it continues well into the future.

 

[Johnny boy]

The biz growth is impressive along with you taking the time to document the progress over four years. Great job.

I love the use of technology for automating processes for scalability. That's pretty much non-existent for local service bases businesses. It's one of the smartest things you've done. However, the biggest thing I've learned here is applying the subscription model to a seasonal business to spread income evenly throughout the year.

Yes, subscription services are everywhere nowadays. I just can't think of another example where people pay a monthly subscription without a deliverable every month. Even when you're not using the service, things like gym memberships and Audible are still available. Or you get a reminder email or text.

Your business sounds like you can pretty much close up shop for 5-6 months and the customers are still fine. I have a hard time understanding / believing that the typical customer is OK with paying a monthly fee when they don't see any services being performed. Paying a reduced rate (e.g. implied monthly discount) even when the billing is automatic shouldn't be that effective. No one is going to expect lawn mowing in January. One of my clients does seasonal pest control, so I'm going to ask whether they offer annual billing instead of only charging for actual services performed.

From the growth, it seems like renewals are pretty strong which means customers are happy with the arrangement.

Is there really that little pushback like "Why am I paying you November through April?

Yeah it shuts them up fast when I say “okay so your yearly total is 150x12=1800 so if we have you pay during the 8 months only, that’s 225 a month plus tax, or would you want one upfront payment?”

 

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[Johnny boy]

Hey man, your story is still amazing.
I just try to figure out to start a facility manager service. I don’t know, if only lawn mowing is working here in Germany.

Have you just tried to park your car next to Mc Donalds in the evening for advertising?

How do you get your workers? It’s impossible to get one here.

We get tons of people applying on indeed. We pay around $20 an hour for low skilled 20 year old dudes and it works fine

No I don’t think we’ve tried that advertising strategy yet lol

Each market is different and the model needs to be tailored for that location.

 

[Johnny boy]

I’m not kidding — I told my wife three days ago that I am considering just starting a lawn care business because local companies all suck.

That’s why I came back to this thread.

It’s so tempting…..and I’m in between businesses right now, too. I’ve been looking around to buy something that’s already up and running. Maybe I should cold call these company owners and offer to buy them out and take over. Hmmmm

I mean, my damn website headline would be:

The lawn company that actually answers the f’n phone!

Cripes!

"Good enough lawn care - we actually answer the phone"

Hilarious, the novelty would actually pull people in.

Where do you live?

 

[Two Dog]

These ideas are coming to be because I’ve been calling all the local law care companies and landscapers to get a complete lawn rehab done, but they either

1. Won’t answer, or
2. Won’t return my voicemails, or
3. Returned my voicemail, said they could do it, and then ghosted me

None of these seem to issues for JB's business. Everyone gets a quote with the current system.

Similar to optimizing the bidding process with online mapping. You're solving problems that either don't exist or don't matter at this time. I realize it sounds like it would help - and it would - but not nearly as helpful as focusing solely on generating more inbound leads to pour into the existing sales machine. It's just too early in the business cycle to care much about efficiencies.

Any business under $5M in annual revenues that's profitable should focus solely on increasing revenue, not increasing margins. The math is simple. The story left off with $300K in sales and 50% net operating profits. Doubling sales to $600K means $300K in net profits. $1M means $500K in net profits. It doesn't matter whether those numbers are 10-15% lower due to crappy workflows since you're still *WAY* ahead of implementing tweaks on the $300K business.

Relentless focus on growth (revenue, leads, likes, customer acquisition, whatever the metric) is one bit of wisdom that tech funded startups get right. I have an engineering personality. I love optimizing workflows. It makes me feel good. My business has sold route optimization software for years that generates huge savings, but it's really only worthwhile for companies above a certain scale.

 

[Two Dog]

It gets confusing but the simple way to look at it is "this place takes 5 minutes to drive to an 20 minutes to do, so 25... the price would be 25 times 3.61 so $90 a month for biweekly services would be fair". Easy rule of thumb.

The problem with this approach is it relies on adding new business near the existing territory. It heavily penalizes new accounts outside of the existing service zone. A better methodology (although probably a bitch to accomplish using spreadsheets) is averaging out the total drive time across all the orders scheduled for one crew on each route. That would incorporate both the stem time to reach the service territory along with the time needed to drive between each scheduled stop. It's the most accurate way of pro-rating "down" time (i.e. non-billable) across revenue generating accounts for the day.

Driving the vehicle is easier than actually doing the work, so two hours driving isn't equivalent to two hours of cutting lawns. Unfortunately, the hourly cost for the crew doesn't go down. The process for establishing new territories becomes (a) drive 30 - 60 minutes for the 1st new account and (b) upsell additional accounts in the new territory. You'll eat two hours of drive time while the new customers are being onboarded, but it will average out quickly enough.

Most companies eventually switch to commission or base + commission for exactly that reason. That allows you to mix & match the routes across the ten day cycle to balance hours and driver wages without limiting growth. Often, they'll task a senior crew member to door knock with introductions or hang door flyers promoting the service while the jobs are being completed. Regional direct mail postcards are also dirt cheap. It's probably my favorite approach for growing this type of business.

 

[Johnny boy]

The people doing all of this to us have names and addresses

 

[Johnny boy]

@ZCP We are going to put together a franchise sales program so you'll be getting a nice sized cut for any new franchisees you send our way and help us signup. You were the one who kicked me in my a$$ and got me to do this anyways, you deserve to make money from it.

 

[Johnny boy]

Sick - hello massive scale potential. You could also try Hormozi's Gym Launch strategy of just teaching people who run lawn care companies them better (it made him a lot of money.

Rooting for you.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1518376491641409536

View: https://twitter.com/callicrates_/status/1518376491641409536




Depending on your exercise routine you might feel real tired from doing this. If you have a weightlifting routine that is high volume or real heavy, you're gonna fee gassed.

I've read 11 calories per lb of body fat when you're trying to cut weight.

Godspeed regardless though, especially if you prove me wrong.

people running lawn care companies have no money because they are stupid. It's a catch 22. They cannot afford to pay me any substantial amount, so it's better to just roll up in the neighborhood and make $800 of profit each year from every single customer and sign up 5 a day in every single location and keep doubling every year until we take over the country. One little city with a thousand customers = 800k profit. No brainer.

I have too much body fat, my body uses it as energy when there's no food. That's the point of the fat in a survival sense anyways. So all I have to do is let my body survive on it's own fat until I am a desirable weight. I ideally would eat 0 calories a day. 20 lbs is 3500x20 calories. (70,000). If I burn 2500 calories a day then it would take a month. If I eat 1500 calories it now takes 70 days. Eating anything at all is just me being weaker than I should be. When you accept that, dieting becomes easy.

proof is in the results so I can only say that the less I'm eating, the less hungry I get.

 

[teambret]

Great thread JB. Thanks for all the detail. I just read the entire thread. Lots of great stuff in here that has me thinking about my next venture.

 

[Rperrett2]

Couldn't sleep last night so finally read the entire thread, very impressive work, you definitely hustle. I have a few questions if you don't mind...

How are you handling truck maintenance? (Send them to a shop, maintain/fix them yourself, etc) If you're looking for deals on used trucks do you have issues with them? I know how rough guys can be on equipment.

Also, when you got your SBA loan what did you use the money for? Did it help you scale how you thought and did you use the money the right way or would you have done something different looking back?

Once again, very happy for you and great job. It's a motivating story to read and cool to see people on the forum getting it done out there.

 

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[Johnny boy]

“No lead left behind.” Love it.

Will be integrated with answering service like voicenation or ruby so 100% of sales calls get answered live and the ones our reps can answer will still answer 80% of them.

 

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[Johnny boy]

phone system is live 24/hr answering, forwards to our rep when she's available, otherwise answering service takes it, filters existing customers through to our support line, if our rep doesn't answer the answering service takes down their info and it auto logs them into hubspot as a new phone lead. We can send and receive texts with photos through the phone system, all contacts are synced so we know who's calling or texting. Can send everything to a done folder when it's done so we can keep the inbox clear.

 

[Redwolf]

Will be integrated with answering service like voicenation or ruby so 100% of sales calls get answered live and the ones our reps can answer will still answer 80% of them.

I've used AnswerPhone in the past before removing the ability for customers to call me. They were just taking a message and pass it on to me via email. But they can do scripts, asking for whatever info from a customer, etc. And price was good.

I don't remember the url
AnswerPhone | Answering Service | Live Operator Answering Service | Business Answering Service
or
Answering Services by Answerphone of America
I believe the 2nd one.

 

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[Two Dog]

Picked the USPS routes to deliver to and sent out ~10,000 mailers

I like the enthusiasm. Let's say you rang the bell out of the gate and got 1%- 3% response rate. That's perfectly reasonably when the message is dialed into the right audience and reaches them at the right time.

Can you respond to 100 - 300 inbound leads in a timely manner? Timely being pick up the phone to 48 hours max.

I'd consider that before the next mailing goes out. Direct mail benefits immensely from repeated offers along with split testing. If I was going to send 10K postcards, it would look more like 4 different cards x 2,500 postcards of each style. Each batch of 2,500 cards would be split into four batches of 600 cards sent to the same address every week. Alternatively, send one of each style card weekly to the same address. The cards can use a different URL or forwarded phone # to get a feel for what's working.

All that said, I wouldn't send out 10,000 cards in the first place without the back end to support it. ;-(

 

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[Rperrett2]

Run new ads the first day it snows heavy and get 500 people messaging you on facebook.

@Johnny boy spot on with this! If you have the bandwidth you will clean up with this strategy. I used to run sales for a large commercial snow company and I can't tell you how many people would call, even commercial customers, on the first snow storm who were unprepared and urgently looking to hire someone.

 

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[Two Dog]

Oof, rough start yesterday.

Something got mucked up with my saved credit cards in Chrome. Most of the services I purchased got flagged for potential fraud that now requires manual approval to get running properly. And since everything nowadays uses a verification process that points to something else not completely setup - verify a phone number from a text message, verify a bank account from an email link, verify an entity from a phone number - today is now pretty much about getting things sorted.

Everything will get fixed, but it's a long ways from watching a five minute You Tube tutorial. ;-)

 

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[Johnny boy]

Hi, JB. The goals are spot on, but I'm wondering about the implementation.

Aren't there any number of established platforms that would allow you to automate without building them?

Yes we use QuickBooks, hubspot, housecall pro, RingCentral, Mapline, JotForm, google sheets and calendar, and api’s to connect things.

I hate jobber, workiz, or any other “all in one” system. Anyone that does wish to use those systems I hope they succeed but it’s not for us.

I’ll make a video showing the guts of how it works and I think people will be impressed and understand how we’ll handle 50 locations and offer an excellent customer experience with everything running out of one central office.

 

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[Johnny boy]

Great stuff. You've always been really good about taking immediate action on things. That goes a long way.

It's great to hear about the progress you've been making and interesting how differently we approach the same problems. I love the idea of passive investors (easy deal to sell), but it doesn't seem possible to open a new location without having anyone in place there already. Staffing, equipment, space, all of that.

That can't all be done remotely, right?

Manager.

staffing: HQ filters resumes and video interviews, potential new hires meet with manager for in person interview.
equipment: manager picks up and maintains local equipment. It's cheap stuff we don't mind throwing away if necessary.
space: we find a lot to rent, rent it, done. That's remote.
training: train the manager and he can train the workers. It's not brain science or rocket surgery. "Here's how to use a weed whacker. Make sure to read the notes at each job". I'm sure we can fly one out to do an in person training day.

Day to day: the workers show up, park, get in the trucks and go work and read the notes. They call the manager for random issues "hey the weed whacker won't start" or "Bob's gate is locked". Admin stuff is passed along to head office and the rep would call bob real quick, if no answer they snap a photo of the locked gate and leave. For the weed whacker not working the manager would have them use a backup or go swing by home depot to get a new one. Old one is either worked on or thrown away. It's not a big deal. We can leave broken equipment on customers' lawns who owe us money.

We can open a few locations nearby and share managers in case of emergencies. Its a super cozy part time job because I've been doing it for years.

Greatest benefit of having the partners has been pressure. "You better be ready for 4 crews this next spring, will your sales process be able to handle it?" It forces me to improve. It's been great.

 

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