Starting (and Fastlaning) a lawn care service business

[Johnny boy]

@Johnny boy How important is a website in this type of service industry? I have found a niche in my local area that lacks good branding, website design, and general media presence. I know I could do much better than all of them.

Business is two things

Acquisition
Obligation

You get the work
Then you fulfill the obligation

A website is just a piece of the acquisition part of your business. It increases the conversion among people who become aware of your business and need the service. It will help you, but someone without a website could theoretically still kick your a$$ if they have other solid marketing practices.

In lawn care, people are desperate just to find someone who speaks English and has most of their teeth. You just need to throw up an ad on Craigslist and you’ll get work. Having a website is nice too. All that’s fine and dandy.

The secret is efficiently handling the “obligation” part of a lawn care business. Organizing the work to get it done efficiently and getting paid for the work on time. Your success will come down to whether or not you can have the right formula that will make you either a profitable company or a failing company. It has little to do with having a nice website. The simple decision to only take credit cards up front has been a hundred times more valuable to my bottom line than the quality of my website has. Think about that.

 

[Johnny boy]

Update: customers stuck to their word and kept paying the whole winter without trying any shady shit like chargebacks on their credit cards. Had only a couple of issues but for the bulk of customers it was a very very smooth winter getting paid from everyone.

Currently in Bangkok. I've been traveling around a bit. I came to Thailand early December, went to India for a couple weeks in January (This is what I was doing... Rickshaw Run India - The Official Guide by The Adventurists), came back to Bangkok and heading to Honolulu tomorrow morning.

When I get back late February, I'll be starting up again with lawn care. I'll post the ads, hire the workers, and hopefully I'll have a 2nd crew out working soon.

I'm building websites to get enough cash for another crew. After the 2nd crew is out working a full schedule, I'll have enough monthly profit to add crews easily without any worry.

It's been a hell of a year. The summer was a fun time enjoying the lake, and I get to spend the winter in 90 degree weather with my girl. I'm excited to see how this season goes. Having lots of fun while still making progress towards my goals. I'm in no rush. It's a marathon.

 

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[Johnny boy]

@Johnny boy what if an aspiring forum member hit you up and wanted to be your initial test case in another market? could you use their desire to build a business to make this plan happen sooner?
why wait? let's go!!

I would be happy to coach someone and give them every detail about how I run my business and give them as much help as they needed but under a different name and I wouldn’t ask for any money from them. I’m not afraid of any competition. Hell, they could do it in the same city as me. There’s plenty to go around.

 

[Johnny boy]

So they sign a 2 year contract that includes charging them the monthly service fee during the cold months? Surprising more people don't complain about it, but that's great!

How do you keep your employees busy during those months? Hanging Christmas lights and stuff? Or you just keep them in payroll while they take some time off?

Without knowing more details about your business, what I like about the idea is that it is simple.

I know a guy that has a drywall repair business. He only takes small 15~30 minute repair jobs, and according to him, he's making a killing.

I compare the simplicity of your and his business with ours and I have a lot more to take care off. Although the profit per job is a lot higher, if we had 160 customers in a year, that would be a lot of work/personnel to be able to keep up with the demand.

It's a 1 year contract, 12 equal payments for billing simplicity

"I'm paying even in the winter months?"

"we can change your plan to only be charged during the growing season, your monthly price will just go up, it doesn't change the yearly price"

"okay"

works every time.

This winter we will have the same revenue so we would be able to have employees go on a 3 month vacation and be okay. However, I'm not going to do that. I'm paying for the time so I'm going to get my money's worth. We will have them hang christmas lights. In the future I think we will shave off some of our workforce in the winter months when we are at a larger scale. When I hired these men I told them the job is not just seasonal so I have to stand by my word and keep them for the winter.

The goal is to have the christmas lights replace the payroll costs for the winter so that the lawn care money is 100% profit. 24k a month in the winter going straight into my pocket would be very nice. I think we can do it as long as I can be disciplined/effective enough to schedule enough work for them. It's more of a headache to schedule one time jobs like light installations which is why we do the recurring work 95% of the year.

Regardless, the entire focus is always long term. Always thinking about what the company will look like at 1M a year, 10M a year, 100M a year, etc. And then reverse engineering that to happen as quick as possible. I get so much time to think only about this, visualize it, imagine the details and the plan over and over.

You're right, it is very simple. It does have its nuances which other companies overlook and then their lack of success is confusing or seems random.

 

[Johnny boy]

Good shit.

Some scattered thoughts:

I had just been doing maintenance (HOAs, commercial, high-end residential) for one of the big, long-standing landscaping companies in the area (WA state) -- after burning out at a startup.

That service schedule looks about right. Though we did fertilizing four times a year (for what reason, I don't f*cking know); sprayed as-needed; "blowed" patios, walkways, and driveways "every week;" edged twice a month; and mowed every week.

Maintenance landscapers hate their jobs. The best workers were always the hispanics with families or had something going back on at home (Mexico, e.g. "I need money for bitches"). And there's a ton of hispanics in WA state. On the other hand, the hardest workers were the ex-tweakers (who were usually chugging energy drinks and smoked a pack of ciggies all day).

Construction landscaping is another avenue to look into. You technically need a landscaping engineer (or whatever it's called) to legally call yourself a "landscaping" company though. I've seen some "talent" poached from the neighboring Idaho region, where minimum wage is shit-all.

Oh yeah, and just about everyone I worked with had problems. That's the deal with the trades -- especially unskilled shit -- you're dealing with people who can't get jobs anywhere else. "Good workers are hard to find," because good workers can get better pay and better conditions elsewhere. Expect turnover to be constant if you're really pushing your guys (10 hour days, go go go mentality, etc.). But afaict you're doing residential work. Atleast that's what I'm guessing from what you're paying. Residential has a rep for being laid back, less pay, but better quality of life -- so turnover might be lower.

HOAs are goldmines, if you can get an in with the president (who usually lives there). Ironically, we did work on an HOA where one of the dudes living there ran a lawn-care company, but wasn't allowed to mow his own lawn (anti-competitive practices helping keep the lawn barons rich).

Scrambled thoughts. Been a bit busy, and I only skimmed through this thread.

The Hispanics and tweakers are the worst employees you could have. I know because I've hired and fired so many of them. 18-25 year old right-wing guys that wear Romeos and are about to go work a construction job in a couple years are the best employees. Fresh out of high school. Good families.

I have had basically ZERO problems with the ones I have now. They are easy to get along with, do good work, appreciate the pay, and more importantly....they aren't pieces of shit.

We have them work like 5 hours a day and pay them nearly 800 a week and we still have a 50% profit margin. They tell me this is the best job they've ever had by a huge margin.

HOA's are garbage. They want you to sign their contracts not the other way around. And F*ck net-30 pay. We get paid with auto-payments each month before we even do the work. We processed about 2000 transactions this year and I spent about 5-10 hours this entire year on anything related to billing/payments.

What you said is the typical stuff echoed by all of the other companies in this industry which is why they all have the same problems and we don't.

"If I'm taking yalls advice I'm probably making yalls mistakes"

 

[Johnny boy]

@USN-Ken selling a course on it or charging for any help with it just doesn’t feel right.

I would just make it and then give it away to whoever wants it.

So much more baller to just help people to be helpful.

Also, more than any course fee, or even franchise fee, I would rather collect data of our model working in other markets.

A ride along for me would be extraordinarily boring except for the spring when I ride around in my 77 280z and give quotes.



If anyone wants help with anything just message me I’ll exchange numbers with you and tell you every detail about what we do and answer questions. We’re out here just trying to solve problems for people, that’s all.

 

[Carlitos]

OP take this from someone (myself) who has never worked for a lawn maintenance company until now.

I recently moved out of NYC and went to visit my parents down in Atlanta I was on vacation really, and ended up finding a job in a matter of days. I saw how much opportunity there is now, high demand of jobs available in many industries, but ton of shortage in good workers.

The lawn company I work for has been struggling in finding good workers, keeping customers happy, some of their current customers continue to cancel with them. This company only gets customers by contracts, and the average monthly cost for basic lawn maintenance is about $250.

The hardest issue in this business is keeping good reliable trustworthy employees. You need to have a system together so that each and one of them can follow it of how you want things done. You also need to have a system of how employees would be held accountable when they fail to do their job.

Your Foremans in my opinion needs to be your best employees and pay them well. Make your Foremans work for it in order to achieve that position. A lot of companies fail to do this, they randomly select their Foremans by either favoritism, or "who was here first in the company."

You need a strong sales team, they need to be constantly out there getting deals closed. Also don't ignore digital marketing.

This is so far what I have at the top of my head. I am actually mindblown how fast you were able to get customers by digital marketing and simple ad posts.

I am also in the process of building a similar company but providing many cleaning services including lawn & landscaping maintenance.

 

[CPisHere]

Employees is definitely the hardest part of a service business. It took me a year to figure it out in my business. My turnover was insane, customer complaints were through the roof - now it's pretty smooth sailing!

First thing was I had get good at hiring. There's no simple answer here, it's just developed over time - spotting flakes, etc but the job ad you use also makes a big difference to who you attract. The second thing I had to do was get good at training/on-boarding, and I found the key was to create a bond right away & re-enforce why this was a great opportunity for them & our company values throughout the first week or two with lots of checking in. Once onboarded, it's easy to maintain that relationship & provide feedback.

 

[Johnny boy]

Assuming 5 days/week, that's about $10k/month of revenue, which is AWESOME for just starting out. You should be grossing at least 50%, so once you get your equipment/truck/etc you are really going to be in a great position to quit your job.

I don’t gross 50% exactly because I pay my employees well, buy machines and pay for insurance and gas. It’s pretty close though.

Also, I do pretty well at selling cars (one of the top guys)

The point of doing this is to make 5k a month while being able to work at my other job to save up a pile of money.

They’ll do the jobs and contact me while I’m at the dealership. Make money while I’m making money.

I just don’t like sitting around at the dealership because nothing happens 80% of the time.

 

[Johnny boy]

The goal is to be around 24k a month by june with 4-5 employees and I'm doing 0% of the actual work. That would put my working hours at around 8 hours a week of doing only sales and around 8-9k a month in profit doing very little, which would let me put away enough money each month to grow very organically.

As of now:

4 employees working full time, 2 crews.
I have worked a couple hours the last few weeks. Employees doing 100% of the work
Revenue is 25.5k a month in contracts (275k a year)
Business expenses are roughly 12k a month.
13k a month profit roughly. Saving money for taxes.
Next year we want to hit 4 crews and 50k a month revenue.

The only thing I would've changed would be going back in time to tell my 18 year old self to focus on building credit. I would really love to waltz into a bank and get a 100k credit line and scale the business but I have to do much of it organically. Very annoying.

The plan is to just add more crews, secure a better business location where we can control the whole property and have an office there for customer service employees to work (should happen next year). Then we can get to around 8-10 crews within a year or two, I'll hire a manager, get another location and repeat the same thing a little more north towards Seattle. Then we'll keep adding locations. The Mcdonalds of lawn care. I always do the math in my head and it keeps me focused. ("1000 customer is 12 crews, 12 crews is 72k a month profit. Just a thousand people would make me 864,000 a year. There's gotta be 1000 people around here that need their lawn mowed")

Lots of people think the answer is to create some software, make it an app, advertise nationally and sub out the work to contractors. There are a few companies that do this and they suck. It's because this type of work needs to be done by trained employees, by a solid company that has good systems and built on a foundation of rock, not sand. We are not an app or a lead gen business, and that's why we will succeed long term. These uber of ____ businesses are stupid and cannot thrive long term.

 

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[Johnny boy]

Thanks for the clarification on the pricing.

I just got my first customer on autopay with contract $100/month 10 min backyard monthly visit. Ordered 6k flyers, Yelp is On, Turning on FB Ads this week. Creating route density is pretty tough in the winter, but doable.

I went 100% electric with all my lawn tools including a Prius instead of a truck for the crew. less fuel costs for the prius, no maintenance for tools , electricity is cheap, more efficient workforce.

A Prius is absolutely retarded.
You need room to haul away branches, debris, etc. You need a truck.
You’re going to have like 30 different batteries for all of your underpowered equipment? Why?

USE YOUR BRAIN
Cost of gas for equipment and trucks each month $500
That’s 4 cheap customers at $125 a month for biweekly services. 15 minute visits. Total time spent between them: 2 hours out of 160 hours a month. That’s 1.25%

Now think, how much faster and more efficient are you with equipment that works, and a truck that’s useful?

Conservative estimate would be 15% faster, but it’s probably more like 30% or higher.

Don’t trip over dollars to pick up pennies.

 

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[ZCP]

5 trucks is 12 to 14 employees.....

14 x 10 x 2 x 52 x 40 / 12 = 48.5 k rev needed per month......

Might want to put together a 12 mo P&L of 'running the company' in excel and test some of these assumptions before getting too far.....

It will help a lot.....

 

[Johnny boy]

OK. First off, the most important thing not to do is weeding. Your employees will hate it, you will hate it (it will take forever to do correctly, more money out of your pocket), and lastly, there's no good way to price it aside from hourly work. It is just a really difficult thing to gauge how much work will be necessary to complete it.

The second things that you want to avoid are those overly crazy people who need their lawn "just so." If you come across someone like this, avoid the headache and just politely decline or something. Also insurance comes into play here, if the property is wealthy be sure not to break anything, it's risky man. Up to you though, some people like working until it looks perfect, if your workers are like that, more power to ya!

In general though, the most lucrative part of the business for us was just mowing. We offer a flat rate price at the beginning of the season specific to each customer's yard. Then we have a pay-as-you-go model, each time we cut, they would pay. The project work (weeding, mulching, etc.) are just not worth the time unless you can find some prices from some more established lawncare companies and see how they are doing it. Mowing is easy, weedwhacking is easy, and you can charge whatever you want. So say you charge $50, your people working the same yard at the same time can cut that yard in 1 hour and you'll be out of there quick and and ready for more lawn. You cannot do that with project work and slamming these huge numbers and project price estimates in their faces is a huge turn off unless you can back up your claims for that price.

Keep in mind, mowing is different from all other aspects of landscaping. Landscaping is to make the place look beautiful as the #1 motivator, mowing's motivator is time. People don't have time to mow so they'll pay you. Keep that in mind. Establish trust in your clients, if they ask something early on and they need it done ASAP, get your people there ASAP. You can slack later but the initial relationship needs that fire, if they think you are looking out for them, they will look out for you. GOOD LUCK WITH THIS!

So true with the weeding. My second job I did was weeding. I spent 4 hours on it and said “F*ck this”. It seemed like a somewhat hard job but at least I charged $200 for it. I’ll have to finish up on Thursday and I’ll be bringing an employee to do it with me.

And I’ve been getting mostly people that just “need a mow”, no crazy people yet thankfully.

I’m getting insurance for up to 1,000,000 in coverage in liability, as well as workers comp and vehicle insurance for the truck/trailer. So rich peoples houses are going to be an option for me.

Thank you for the tips.

 

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[Johnny boy]

Update: still trying to find a truck for employees to drive.

My brain is fried from keeping track of people emailing me to be hired, people emailing to get jobs bid, people emailing me for trucks I’m trying to buy and people emailing me to talk about buying a car from me (as a car salesman). Every day I’m talking to 20 new people.

I’m going to pay a virtual assistant to deal with uploading customer information into our business software so I’m not losing jobs by being forgetful.

Company polos are being made this week.

(Have fun bidding jobs for people from India. They negotiate mowing jobs just like how they buy cars)

 

[Rich Wood]

Things to consider if you plan to grow and become an official, law abiding and sustainable company.
Liability insurance, workers compensation insurance, un-employment fees, paid time off, social security match, and taxes. Will you W-2 or 10-99 your employees. If you control their schedules then they will need to be W-2's.
How will you manage quality and consistency?
You should look at getting payment via credit cards and do recurring charges, so your billing is easy and up-front, you don't want to collect, it is a big hassle.
Also, the real money is in new landscaping, commercial properties (offices, retail, etc). You can make thousands per property, and keep your team busy for hours and days, not bouncing from job to job making 40 bucks or 100 bucks a pop.
Also, be careful asking your employees to travel for free, technically you need to pay them starting the moment they enter your company vehicles.
Also, be careful not to offer salaries to employees who do manual labor, they need to stay at hourly per the law, or you could get in legal troubles later with employees who may require overtime.
Over 40 hours a week requires overtime pay, or over 12 hours a day requires overtime pay.
You'll want to include maintenance costs for your equipment, and also consider storage locations that are secure. Be sure to insure your equipment.
Lastly, you should consider becoming a rep for sprinkler supplies, and fertilizers etc. The mark-up on small items can be very profitable, and sometimes as valuable as lawn maintenance itself.
Best of luck!

 

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[Johnny boy]

Update: Just got a used truck for $3800. 127k miles well maintained 4x4 pickup. The two guys I hired are working out fine so far. I’ll be sending them out alone now that I’ve got a truck for them. I am consistently getting 400-600 a day of revenue when we work.

 

[Johnny boy]

Update:

Changed business model into a single plan that we don’t deviate from now signing people up for next year.

No more “do you do (insert custom bullshit that takes up mental energy and isn’t scalable)?”

One formula for determining price

Contract work only

Contracts are air tight and I had an attorney look it over

Higher profit margins

Each contract = average of 3600 revenue for next year = less annoying bidding jobs and avoiding variance = less headache and costly errors.

Goal before the years end: 90 contracts

Currently working on getting a commercial lease on a warehouse in a nearby town

Goal revenue for next year: $327,000 determined by contracts signed in the next few months.

Moving fast.

 

[Johnny boy]

Btw, I thought of a marketing ploy. Offer clients and their neighbors 5% off for each contiguous neighbor. That way you can do say ten lawns at once. The 5% is off each new price so for $50 full fee it would go
0 neighbors $50
1 $47.50
2 $45.13
3 $42.87
4 $40.83
...
10 $31.51 ea. Basically, you make $315 without having to move the truck

People don’t care about financial incentives like that. They tell their neighbor just because they like you and you speak English. Everyone gets a “discount”.

I used to think those incentive offers would help but I was overthinking it.

 

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[Johnny boy]

Applied for an EIDL (economic injury disaster loan) from the SBA the same day it went live. Now, I got approved for 24k over 30 years at 3%.



The loan was approved and I should be getting funds soon. I already have my second truck and trailer, and I’ll be putting a grand into the equipment for it. Then, I’ll be putting 2 grand into ads which are getting me a huge ROI. I should be able to fill up two crews worth of work and profit around 80,000 net 12 months from when they are at capacity. I’ll be able to take that and easily invest into a 3rd and 4th crew for 2021. At 4 crews I would net 200k+.

 

[Johnny boy]

Love this thread!! OP Are you taking this winter off to travel?

No, I stayed in washington and got a night skiing pass so I could hang christmas lights during the winter months for extra cash and then go skiing in the afternoons. Thailand was nice and I got that out of my system for now.

I got a newer 2018 F150 so this spring I'll be going hard with the signups and we should double in size by june since we have the trucks and trailers needed.

I met up with David (aka gravy) last fall and we went over how to be as profitable as possible doing the christmas lights.

Now that the lights are done and our lawn services don't startup until mid February, I'll practice my skiing and get everything ready for the season to start.

The goal is to be around 24k a month by june with 4-5 employees and I'm doing 0% of the actual work. That would put my working hours at around 8 hours a week of doing only sales and around 8-9k a month in profit doing very little, which would let me put away enough money each month to grow very organically.

Up until this year it's been like this

Choose two:

a. Have other people do 100% of the work and have lots of free time
b. Make enough money for your lifestyle
c. Have enough money to grow the business

This year I'll be able to transition to having all three. I was sacrificing "a" by doing some of the work so I could save some money on employees and now I'll have enough full time crews to have the guys do 100% of the work while I handle sales.

 

[Johnny boy]

I've had thoughts of being pickier with my own business of delivering my products, apartment buildings give me business PTSD when trying to dial the wrong numbers on an order form on the keypad or getting no answer.

Residential is simple, type in the address on my phone and drop off the package and vanish like the wind, but the waiting in apartments is a hassle. Funny little story, I was doing sample runs and arrived at an apartment around 8 or 830pm ish.

Buzzed the apartment building and let them know I have their order, they said try again tomorrow we are just getting ready for bed. Yes thank you for making me come all the way down here to give you a free sample at my own cost for materials, delivery and more importantly my time.

Good job on your success man, how much time do you spend personally on admin stuff? Seems like you are fairly hands off and ''divorced'' from the business in terms of time.

In the mornings I get up, have some bacon and coffee, and make the schedule for the day. Takes about 5-10 minutes. I check emails, enter in new customers into the system, charge their cards, put them on our recurring billing system, etc. that takes about 3 minutes per customer.

Then, I head out and go to work. I drive one of the trucks and train the newest employee and make sure everything looks good. I have the more complex jobs on my schedule. Once I purchase a 3rd vehicle (or fix up my old car) I’ll keep the 2 trucks parked at the lot and the guys will be working alone.

I then give quotes from 4-6pm and come home around 6-7.

So right now I work 10-12hr days. I’m not trying to 4-hour workweek this thing right now. I’m busting my a$$ at the moment.

But pretty soon it’ll transition to where the guys work alone and there’s nothing left to do but make sure employees are happy and the work is getting done.

Theoretically once I have another vehicle to drive as my personal car and the guys work alone, I will work for probably an hour a day and make like 13-17k a month.

With that said, I still have no problem heading in to cover someone who couldn’t make it in that day. Life happens and people aren’t machines.

So no, right now I am not a passive owner but that’s because I need to go buy another truck.

 

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[Johnny boy]

Just purchased a third truck. At least I think so. CarMax says I’m approved and I’ll be signing papers in a couple weeks when the truck gets here.

We hit our monthly revenue goal already and it’s not even June. We are at 25k a month in contracts now and still giving quotes. We are currently replacing the least profitable/complaining customers with more profitable easier jobs. I think 26/mo will be close to our max. So we are now pacing a smooth 300k in yearly revenue.

We have 4 good full time employees now. With that 3rd truck on the way I should be able to step back and let the guys work. And use that truck as my personal vehicle so I don’t need to be driving around anymore.

My typical day will be about 2 hours of admin work once that truck gets here. I’ll be able to spend more time in the gym, and taking care of all the little things I’ve been putting off for too long. It’ll be nice to not have to put on boots everyday. It’ll be me and my girl sitting on our dock drinking mojitos again.

I should be profiting around 14k a month with very little management since the guys are trained up. That’ll put me in a good spot to start putting some extra money away instead of always having 0 savings.

Next year the goal is to get to 4 crews and 50k a month in revenue and get our first real commercial property where we’ll have enough room to grow more and have more control.

 

[Johnny boy]

Great work.

Let me ask you this. For a business that has a pretty low entry barrier, to what do you attribute your explosive success?

I feel like you'll say what separates you from the competition is your no-nonsense, customer-centric approach all the while ensuring that your employees, equipment, prices, and the actual job done is top shelf.

Have I got the gist of it, or am I off-base?

I say NO to a lot of stuff

I am not customer centric. We are not top shelf.

We use $400 mowers. My guys are 19 years old and experience is not necessary.

We do small properties, residential only, very quick jobs, lots of them a day, and we charge a lot of money. The work comes out to an effective rate of a couple hundred bucks per hour. I am a reseller of labor. Buy it at a low price and sell it at a higher price.

I am scalability centric. We are the McDonald’s of lawn care. We will be ubiquitous as them too in the US hopefully.

We have a customer service person, run great ads, have a great site, and a great salesperson. That helps too.

also, I would not call this explosive success. It’s been three years of busting my a$$. I don’t even have a million yet. I am practically a slowlaner

 

[Johnny boy]

Over the last month we have been replacing the least profitable customers and increasing profitability. Staying right around 24-25k a month but all properties are great and customers complain very little. The guys work fast and it's low stress. They get paid well and enjoy their jobs. I think you need to give people a reasonable standard that's 'good enough' and not focus on squeezing every ounce of profitability out of employees. Have good systems and your employees will like working. One thing we do is if they finish all the jobs early, they can head home. They get paid for the full 8 hours though, as long as there isn't a trend of customer complaints. They think I'm the most generous man alive, when in reality they are just becoming more profitable and are attributing it to my kindness. I still spend the same on payroll either way, whether they are hourly and working slowly with no accountability, or they are incentivised and work faster. I could stuff their schedules and leave 0 margin for error and make them hate their jobs, but then the business is at risk of employee turnover, falling behind on the schedule and pissing off many customers.

With that third truck I'm able to just let the guys work. I set up the schedule each morning and make sure everyone's off to a good start and then I say to my girlfriend "hey babe, what should we do today?"

My job is to be ready for problems and respond to them, and be the backup person to cover in case of emergencies.

I'll continue to put the money I make back into the business. Making sure things are well-oiled and running well. I'm not going to let my lifestyle creep into being more expensive for a while. I still have to save to get to 4 crews running next year. Why spend money today when my income could be doubled next year if I continue to be patient?

I've been using my free time to go to the gym, tan, clean up some stuff around the house and have more mental space cleared up to just think about what I should do next with the company. Working ON it, not IN it.

Thinking about hiring someone part time and having them work doing some other random service they could use their own truck for and do it under a different business name, that way if I need a guy as an emergency I could call him up and say "hey, no pressure washing today, we need you mowing lawns". Then we are not at risk of having any guys missing from the crews. Long term I could see that being a strategy as well. Have one crew that isn't meant to be very profitable, just there doing one time jobs that we can pull guys from to be on our full time maintenance crews if we are down a guy or two. Then we can have more flexible schedules and let people call out sick or take vacations without stressing about it, and without having extra people on payroll that are purely an expense.

 

[Johnny boy]

This is the exact reason why we bought a van separately for each employee.

We tested this and
the efficiency of an employee working alone vs working with two is up to 40% higher.

EXACTLY

2 guys working together: 10 properties or 5 per person

1 guy alone: 7 per person.

7/5 is 40% higher.

If profits were 30%, and for every $10 we were profiting $3. We would be bringing in $14 and spending $7 still.

So you are now profiting $7 instead of $3. That’s a 133% bump to profits.

If your company sells at a 5x multiple. You just increased the value of your company a huge amount. A company making 200k a year that would sell for 1M, is now making 460k and worth 2.3M.

 

[minivanman]

Sounds like you have a plan.... better than I had when I started. Funny I see this thread today because I was over in McKinney, Texas about 3 hours ago and saw a Citi Turf van. The owner of Citi Turf is THE man when it comes to lawn care marketing. So I drove on down the road and was going to stop and get me some chocolate milk (still a little kid inside lol) from the gas station. There were 2 lawn guys with trailers there so I walked over to one pickup that had his shirt hanging on his mirror to dry. I asked about Citi Turf and if it was hard to get business because of them and he said not at all. So I walk over to the other guy, ask the same thing and he said the same thing, not at all. I had several thoughts on this but I guess the main thing is that no matter how good you are at marketing and how good you try to make your company, in a service business, there will always be guys that can get just as much work as you.

Since you live very far away let me give you a little info about McKinney, Texas. It is one of the fastest growing places because of all the people moving to this area from all over the US, especially California. Very high priced houses. As for Citi Turf, you need to go to Youtube and type in lawn care millionaire. He also has a program called service auto pilot.... there are a few other programs out there besides his so don't just jump on what he has. There is one that I had thought about being a part of but decided not to but I'll be dang if I can't remember the name of it. His brother also has a Youtube channel. His brothers name is Andrew.

Now I don't know what all kinds of vehicles they have but I've been a van guy for YEARS and have tried to incorporate a van in about every business I've been a part of. So today when I saw his van, it has me to wondering if he tried a van because I had told him the benefits or for some other reason. Either way, I thought it was funny that they have vans to work out of..... no complicated trailer, easy ride for the equipment, easy access with ramps.

 

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[adamhenry]

In case it's helpful - look into web based software called Jobber, for scheduling, invoicing, client communications, etc. Works great for the fireplace company I manage, and I can see it being used for lawncare too.

Sent from my SM-A520W using Tapatalk

 

[Johnny boy]

There was a dude in a facebook group I belong to and he owned a lawn care business.

He split tested yard signs, testing out 'pitches', then he tracked which sign generated the most calls. That became his control. So, he replicated it and then tested different 'offers', tracked results, replicated the winner and then split tested colors.

Anyway, this culminated in him creating the ideal sign based on all of his split tests.

Once he had the winning combination, he made a bunch of signs --replicas of the winning combination -- and placed them around town.

It resulted in 60 new customers in 4 days.

I'm going to try to upload it in this post so you can see the ultimate, kick-a**, winner of several splits tests, amazing, business generating sign....

PS. He said the phrase "dirt cheap" DID NOT attract low-budget callers. In fact, I am pretty sure he quoted his normal prices to caller s....and almost no one realized -- or cared -- that he was charging MORE than his competitors. So, dont be a scaredy cat ...and at least test it out.

PPS. Yes, Dirt cheap is a pun relating to the dirty business of lawn care. That's clever.

PPPS Yes, the black and yellow color scheme speaks to the subconscious mind as being a legit business.....because people will relate it to the yellow pages.

My post says a dollar amount ($30) and says I’m having a “sale” only for (insert where the ad is posted). It’s killing it. I still bid very high but close them with “I’m insured, you don’t want to run the risk of your property being ruined or someone getting hurt, also, we are satisfaction guaranteed”

Works like magic.

 

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[Johnny boy]

I see this thread has escaped the purview of the mods.

Congrats on your traction and automation, at least marked NOTABLE, perhaps GOLD as we consume more.



This is awesome. Should be a base structure for any similar service based business and small company.

However the only problem I see is the ability for the client to talk to someone.

Is there any way however for the customer to talk to a live person? A checkbox? Something?

I might be old school, but I don't think I'd be hiring anyone without speaking to them first.

I see if they haven’t signed up online and call them back. I’m seated at a computer so it’s more professional (I follow my phone script).

I can’t afford a call center or a sales department yet so I’ll have to still talk to customers for the time being.

And they do speak with me if they register online, because the auto responder email they get says “click here to schedule a phone call. We’ll have your custom quote ready to go!” I use a “calend.ly” link for that and it’s great.

The only time I don’t speak with them is when they initially call because it’s usually at a bad time and I don’t want to be taking calls all the time on my cell phone like every other Joe Blows lawn care company out there.

Since nobody is actively “searching” for lawn care in the area, the AdWords ads and Craigslist ads (passive ads) are doing terrible. I have to rely on more aggressive advertising. I’m going to be playing with Facebook ads a bit more. Right now I walk around town every day and hang 100 door hangers for a couple hours rain or shine.

Oh, and thank you I appreciate the compliment. With the little extra time I have in the winter I’ve been advertising as a “web development and marketing agency” that says “look what we did for a local lawn care company” and I sell the service to businesses. Not other lawn care companies of course.

 

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[Johnny boy]

@Johnny boy How things going so far this year? Getting more business?

I came across a Tai Lopez ad on managing air bnb’s for other people and quit my business for that.

Jk.

It’s boomin. Trying to buy some property to build a house on this year.