Starting (and Fastlaning) a lawn care service business

[Redwolf]

Crm: hubspot

Instant quote software: Lawnbot by workwave (LIFESAVER: We give instant quotes using this and our standard pricing based on square footage and drawing out the property on a map means our service rep gives lightning fast quotes that people can get in minutes instead of showing up next day in person and a salesman having to give quotes all the time)

Lead gen: Primarily Facebook ads and AdWords (thanks to @Andy Black for the consulting call)

Forms: JotForm. Tons of great features.

Automations: make.com (you can use zapier but I prefer Make)
Customers fill out form online, they can get instant quote but regardless they show up first in our crm.

Phone system: RingCentral. High call quality and tons of ways to create rules like having pro phone trees that route to correct extension “press one for sales”, and then forwarding to answering service if sales rep is busy.

Voice actor for phone system: fiverr. So cheap.

Answering service: Voicenation. You can set them up with a web form you create so when customers call they take their info and type it in, automatically gets added into crm.

Customer app: built with Adalo and hosted on our site.

Mapping and scheduling software: Mapline. Makes it super easy to maximize efficiency and keeps scheduler from losing their mind. Total lifesaver.

Dispatching software: Housecall pro.

Billing: auto recurring payments with QuickBooks. They pay taxes for us and handle accounting reporting well.

All roads to us end with you in our hubspot contact list. Our rep doesn’t enter in people manually unless she’s on a call with them when they reached out to our sales extension. That way there’s full accountability, everyone is in the “lead” section of crm.

Hubspot setup: contacts view is setup like kanban board. Lifecycle stages: lead, quote, follow up, customer. All leads get called and are given quotes and lifecycle stage set to quote. All quotes are automatically assigned as follow up if they don’t signup for a day after getting quote. When customers sign their signup form they are automatically changed to customer. The automations with make.com allow this to be possible.

When a customer signs, their contract is automatically created with the form as a feature of JotForm, they get a welcome email, they are automatically added as a user for our lawn care app I built and sent login instructions.

JotForm submissions for signup are setup in a way to be an easy to follow on boarding checklist. Service rep adds them into housecall pro, Mapline (picks a visit date that is max efficiency), and QuickBooks. Those things don’t take long and are done in down time, can easily onboard tons of people quickly so it’s worth it to be done manually to make sure nothing gets missed.

Customers make requests, submit complaints, make inquiries and manage their account on the app or calling us, we don’t communicate over text or email back and forth with customers to make sure nothing ever gets missed. Calling satisfies the boomers and the app satisfies everyone else.

Scheduling takes minimal time, click click done, one person can handle the scheduling for hundreds of customers per day in less than an hour easily.

Rep has admin facing app built with Adalo and can send out bulk notices for anything by checking boxes by customer names in a filterable list by location and pressing a button.

JotForm forms embedded in our app and connecting it to Todoist with an automation means any requests get automatically input into Todoist and organized by location so service rep can take the notes and translate them to what the notes for the visit should be that day in the dispatching software. You don’t want customers rude requests or random messages being fed directly into the notes our employees see so that has to be done manually.

The secret to making this work is a handful of API’s and using url parameters, nothing you can’t learn from YouTube.

Entire system is based around the idea that we want a small amount of people in office handling large amounts of customers with providing seamless experience for customer while controlling the data. One rep should be able to handle a 2m/yr amount of customers easily including all sales, onboarding, scheduling, billing, etc.

Run ads, leads end up in hubspot, we send prefilled JotForm quotes and when they signup we follow onboarding checklist, customer uses app, scheduling and notes are done each day easily, money rolls in and we keep it going.

Central office handles all this. Local locations only have a rented outdoor storage space where employees park and get in the trucks and get to work. One person is a manager to handle in person interviews, training employees (easy), point of contact for workers, make sure equipment is all good, and rare in person sales (also easy). Managers can be shared among multiple locations since their job is so easy and it keeps costs down for individual locations.

We pull dispatching data and track visit time, compare it to pricing in an excel sheet and see who is unprofitable or profitable and adjust plans accordingly.

I’m just trying to do the top-level stuff fast as possible since almost all bottlenecks are removed.

We can get as many trucks as we need.
Workers are easy to come by since we pay well and work is easy.
Office can handle huge amount of customers.
It’s profitable.
Ads can be scaled up.

The only bottleneck is just getting things up quickly. Like the 9 companies I had to form. The business licenses. The contractor license required to run local service ad campaigns on google. The tax registration in multiple states. Dealing with AdWords suspensions and other BS. Gotta keep things simple so we can do it fast. Speed is the game, while still building on rock and not sand, because it needs to work at scale. It’s annoying because even though you can hire people for those things, that’s just another thing to do that would add even more work. Have to do some of this myself. Easy to feel overwhelmed but that’s going to happen if you’re trying to do it this way and move quickly.

But the path forward is so clear and looking optimistic. Now it’s just a race to see how soon we can get there.

Amazing breakdown of the tech stack and flow of operations. Absolutely awesome.

Do you quote virtually using satellite imagery/etc, or on site quoting?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Johnny boy]

Amazing breakdown of the tech stack and flow of operations. Absolutely awesome.

Do you quote virtually using satellite imagery/etc, or on site quoting?

90% virtually because we always offer it and most people prefer it.

Boomers like to meet in person so we do that too.

Either option, convenience is key.

 

[Redwolf]

I've been looking at flipping foreclosure houses, and reading the foreclosure judgement, one of the line items was for lawn care for $3,488 and I thought of you... I guess the bank has been paying for it for quite some time. Maybe working with banks is another potential revenue stream? Is it worth the hassle?

 

[Johnny boy]

I've been looking at flipping foreclosure houses, and reading the foreclosure judgement, one of the line items was for lawn care for $3,488 and I thought of you... I guess the bank has been paying for it for quite some time. Maybe working with banks is another potential revenue stream? Is it worth the hassle?

View attachment 48150

Our company is easy to find if you search for lawn care. They would’ve called us for a quote if the demand was high. Never got a call from a bank.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[EthanH]

Opening 4th location.

We rebranded since our name used to include a geographic location, so now that isn't a problem.

All new entities.

Delaware parent corporation owns everything, including HQ office in Washington. Personal name is not public, office addresses for everything. Doing it the right way.

Everything's uniform. Registered agent service for every company, everything's at the same bank, all locations are individual llcs with own bank account, all location unique expenses charged to the corresponding accounts including things like adwords and fb ads. All corporate expenses that are not location unique are charged to HQ properly. No mixing of bank accounts. Organization is key as we scale up.

Documents for all companies go to our main office. We scan, upload and categorize. Lots to keep track of. VIN #'s, EIN's, account #'s and logins for all state revenue departments, employment offices and portals, etc.

App/customer portal is all done for mobile and desktop.

New phone system is getting ready to switch over.

Will be no more emails or 2 way texting. Only phone calls or using our app.

Instant quoting system is live.

Money likes easy. Easy to find, easy to signup, easy to be an employee and get trained, easy to become franchisee, low capital to start, easy to run since we run it from one central office, easy for us to handle leads with easy crm, etc.

Everybody is lazy. Build things for the average person since on average it's going to be most of the people you encounter. The average customer is like 'X'. The average employee is like 'Y'. The average investor/franchisee is like 'Z'. Make it easy for all three parties to make it easy on you. X="doesn't want to mow their lawn, $99 a month is a good deal for a well branded, convenient, non-subcontracted company to come reliably and do the work" Y="Doesn't want to work super hard, probably will make lots of mistakes unless things are crystal clear and obvious, but will stick around and get the work done if you pay them decently and make the work easy as cake and repeatable. Loves routine". Z="Usually has a business that isn't scalable but they make 1-200k and want to diversify, or they want to make the jump from med-high income employment to self employment but want a safer bet than doing stuff themselves".

When we open a new location, the franchisee gets a truck and trailer that they maintain ownership of, we open up the location llc and holding company for them, we set everything up so all accounts are in one place, all tax registration is handled properly, etc. Then we sign it over to them and they get a company set up the right way without it being different with each individual franchisee. Then as owners of that company we sign our franchise agreements. We split ownership of the individual location llc, and our HQ handles the operations. Customer service, sales, setting appointments, managing leads, dispatching, notes, filtering through resumes, etc. And we don't take any revenue, only a proportional split of profits. If a location is not making a profit we don't deserve a dime, the only purpose of opening up is to make a profit. We put our money where our mouth is. Worst case if a location doesn't work they can sell the truck and trailer since they own it, and they lose a few grand that was spent on ads trying to acquire customers. The holding companies are typically s-corps, so they can open 1, 2 or as many locations as they want, all profits they get go through the s-corp so they can have only one moderate salary getting taxed and take the rest as distributions.

Other franchises run by saying "give us $30,000 upfront and we will let you run your own business with our logo and a couple weeks of training and then we take 10% of your revenue for the privilege". I think that's stupid. I'm sure that we will charge an upfront fee in the future but I don't like the "okay now you go run your own business have fun" model. It doesn't create a uniform system, and it often turns the franchisee into a wage slave. Better to use economies of scale for things like support, sales, dispatching, scheduling, etc. and leave only the necessary in-person operations to a manager employed at the location.

When people partner with you and there's not clearly defined roles, they'll bring "their way" of doing everything and if you try to have a company full of 500 people doing things "their way", expect it to be a giant shit show. So that's why we do so much of the setup ourselves. #1. no more shit show. Uniformity. #2. That's actually an attractive feature to others because they have less to worry about. "What do you need me to do?" "Just read up on our intro docs, here's info and disclosures about us and here's what to expect. Go find a suitable truck and trailer and you'll need probably 10k liquid from cash or a loan for initial ads and payroll. We will set everything else up and then sign it all over to you and let me know if you have questions". It's a lot easier than "okay go start a company, figure out where to register with the state and all of the tax agencies yourself, get the ein and bank accounts, figure out your own CRM and make sure to answer the phone calls, it's your job to do everything, just make sure to pay us our check each month due on the 1st".



Between our new automations, instant quote system and our customer portal I think we'll be able to crank up sales/onboarding. We will need to focus our attention to putting out good ads since we are going to be spending like 50k on facebook ads alone this spring.

This thread has been great Johnny.
Did it cause any issues due to the name change and would you recommend a location specific name or a non location-specific name from the start?
Thanks

 

[Johnny boy]

This thread has been great Johnny.
Did it cause any issues due to the name change and would you recommend a location specific name or a non location-specific name from the start?
Thanks

It was annoying but it’s not relevant to worry about it unless you grow it nationally.

 

[Johnny boy]

Dopamine overdose.

Never met these people, never spoke to them, will probably never see their house. Adding 10k in contracts (yearly amount) to our revenue each day, and that’s recurring. All signed up because our nice office lady is making tons of calls, working super long hours making deals happen. She is a blessing.

Automations are kicking a$$. Our app works great. Instant quotes are working great.

Looking forward to when our company mows 1000 lawns a day.

And today I did less work than usual. I hung out with my buddy and we bought a jet ski so he could match mine.

Ads are running, the guys are working, each day we sign more people up and our new base revenue jumps each year. Franchisee sales are coming in. I was worried recession apprehension would stunt our growth. It doesn’t look like it.

LETS GO!

For a couple years I could just smell it, and now it’s knocking on the door. It’s just like the fighters say: you never get tired when you’re winning.

Every once in a while when I have to do the hard work upfront it’s a mini desert of desertion, but I remember that it always ends up being worth it.

I did SO MUCH this winter. Rebranded, started all new entities, new systems, created instant quoting system, created our app myself, did franchising work for the first time, transferred all the customers over, set up lead gen for multiple locations to work seamlessly and stay organized, built tons of automations. Can’t tell you how many 16 hour days I spent in front of a laptop just so we could make this happen.

Just getting started!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[WillHurtDontCare]

you love to see it

great work man - can't wait to read your year end recap

 

[heavy_industry]

Pure gold!

Congratulations @Johnny boy , it's well deserved!

It’s just like the fighters say: you never get tired when you’re winning.

 

[Robdavis]

Adding 10k in contracts (yearly amount) to our revenue each day, and that’s recurring. All signed up because our nice office lady is making tons of calls, working super long hours making deals happen. She is a blessing.

Well done on your success so far.

Is your nice office lady on commission? Or do you just pay her a market rate wage or salary?

I'm just wondering about the principles of how someone should reward "high performing employees". Do you pay bonuses or profits shares or is it just a straight cost per hour or flat rate salary with unpaid overtime?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Johnny boy]

Well done on your success so far.

Is your nice office lady on commission? Or do you just pay her a market rate wage or salary?

I'm just wondering about the principles of how someone should reward "high performing employees". Do you pay bonuses or profits shares or is it just a straight cost per hour or flat rate salary with unpaid overtime?

$22 an hour basically on a salary

 

[jclean]

Very inspiring thread ! What are your revenue goals this year ? I am impressed by all the automations you have put in place. Thank you for al the information given. And i admire your no bs style !

 

[MJ DeMarco]

View attachment 48731

Dopamine overdose.

Never met these people, never spoke to them, will probably never see their house. Adding 10k in contracts (yearly amount) to our revenue each day, and that’s recurring. All signed up because our nice office lady is making tons of calls, working super long hours making deals happen. She is a blessing.

Automations are kicking a$$. Our app works great. Instant quotes are working great.

Looking forward to when our company mows 1000 lawns a day.

And today I did less work than usual. I hung out with my buddy and we bought a jet ski so he could match mine.

Ads are running, the guys are working, each day we sign more people up and our new base revenue jumps each year. Franchisee sales are coming in. I was worried recession apprehension would stunt our growth. It doesn’t look like it.

LETS GO!

For a couple years I could just smell it, and now it’s knocking on the door. It’s just like the fighters say: you never get tired when you’re winning.

Every once in a while when I have to do the hard work upfront it’s a mini desert of desertion, but I remember that it always ends up being worth it.

I did SO MUCH this winter. Rebranded, started all new entities, new systems, created instant quoting system, created our app myself, did franchising work for the first time, transferred all the customers over, set up lead gen for multiple locations to work seamlessly and stay organized, built tons of automations. Can’t tell you how many 16 hour days I spent in front of a laptop just so we could make this happen.

Just getting started!

Freaking legendary post. Love the scale, in what some would instantly think has no scale.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[RudyR]

Freaking legendary post. Love the scale, in what some would instantly think has no scale.

Yes! @Johnny boy this is truly inspirational. Your showing that any service based job any can be scaled with the right SOPs/Business System/Automation.

 

[10Fold]

21 and currently selling cars at the moment.

Hey Johnny,

I am about to start flipping cars for another stream of income. How many cars per year do you sell?
Do you have a dealership license? Any tips and tricks for someone looking to do the same?

 

[stevensarber]

View attachment 48731

Dopamine overdose.

Never met these people, never spoke to them, will probably never see their house. Adding 10k in contracts (yearly amount) to our revenue each day, and that’s recurring. All signed up because our nice office lady is making tons of calls, working super long hours making deals happen. She is a blessing.

Automations are kicking a$$. Our app works great. Instant quotes are working great.

Looking forward to when our company mows 1000 lawns a day.

And today I did less work than usual. I hung out with my buddy and we bought a jet ski so he could match mine.

Ads are running, the guys are working, each day we sign more people up and our new base revenue jumps each year. Franchisee sales are coming in. I was worried recession apprehension would stunt our growth. It doesn’t look like it.

LETS GO!

For a couple years I could just smell it, and now it’s knocking on the door. It’s just like the fighters say: you never get tired when you’re winning.

Every once in a while when I have to do the hard work upfront it’s a mini desert of desertion, but I remember that it always ends up being worth it.

I did SO MUCH this winter. Rebranded, started all new entities, new systems, created instant quoting system, created our app myself, did franchising work for the first time, transferred all the customers over, set up lead gen for multiple locations to work seamlessly and stay organized, built tons of automations. Can’t tell you how many 16 hour days I spent in front of a laptop just so we could make this happen.

Just getting started!

This is awesome!

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Johnny boy]

Hey Johnny,

I am about to start flipping cars for another stream of income. How many cars per year do you sell?
Do you have a dealership license? Any tips and tricks for someone looking to do the same?

bro I worked as a car salesman at a dealership when I was like 21 this was 5 years ago.

 

[Johnny boy]

How to make an even schedule for employees doing field service work:​

Many of our customers I have never met. I have never seen their yards. Some can take the guys well over an hour. Some can take 10 minutes.

So how do you make sure when you send employees out, the work is fairly split? If you just give your workers "X number of jobs", one crew could get done by 11am and the other crew would be working until 6pm and not finish.

Here's how we do it.

First: a breakdown of our pricing.

We shoot for 15k/mo in revenue per crew which means 15k/mo worth of contracts.

Our schedule is on a two week period until it repeats. Week 1, and week 2. Then we are back doing all the week 1 customers again. Customers that get weekly services are on the schedule on both week 1 and week 2, but that's not relevant to the point.

This means we have 10 days of work until it repeats again. M-F, M-F, repeat.

When we estimate jobs, we take the average estimated visit time, add in the drive time, and multiply the total by 4 (for every other week customers). Here's why.

If we need 15k/mo in contracts per crew, split out over 10 days is 1500/mo worth of customers on a single day. That means we would have to do 10 jobs a day if each customer pays 150/mo. We would have 10 days of this until it repeats, which gets us our 15k/mo per crew.

If the guys can work about 6 hours and 15 minutes in a day (we leave some room for any issues, bad weather, overgrown grass on first visits, etc.) then that's 375 minutes of work+driving in a day. If we do that for 10 days, that's 3750. 3750 times our multiplier of 4x equals our magic 15k/mo number.

That's why we charge $4 for every minute of the total visit time including driving.

This is not billed to the customer as $4 a minute, it's just how we estimate. So they receive a simple monthly price as their quote.

When they sign, that total estimated visit time is kept on record. So for every customer, they have an assigned "time value".

We know a crew is not at capacity because their total time value that's on the schedule for any day is under 375, and their entire schedule is under 3750.

This way, our income is directly related to the scheduled work. It's no longer arbitrary. I can calculate that we can add 3.7 customers onto Tuesday week 1 for example. We aren't full when it feels busy, we are full when each crew is at a 3750 time value, which means it HAS to equal 15k/mo naturally.

Our mapping software shows each time value for each customer under their name.

Tomorrow, one crew has 5 jobs. Another crew has 13 jobs. And it's perfectly fair. (customer info erased for privacy)


That's because the first crew has jobs with time values around 70 for most of them, and the other crew is doing jobs with a time value of like 30 for most of them.

I can download our data from our dispatching system and calculate the average visit time of each customer. I can put their allocated time value in another column. I can make the next column calculate a ratio of their real average visit time to their time value, and conditionally format anything over 1:1 to be highlighted, which would show which jobs are less profitable or being done too slowly for the price quoted.

This is how we keep everything fair, organized, and profitable.

 

[Johnny boy]

Charging per visit is dumb.

Look at this. It's a calendar.

Say that you start a lawn care company and you charge a set price for each visit.

"Hello mr.customer your price will be $50 a visit"

"Okay great, let's do it every other week"

"Sound good, we will be there monday".

So you go on the first, then the 15th, and also the 29th.

Are you going to add everything up, send a $150 invoice that you hope gets paid, and do that for every customer who had visits on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of the month? And then send a cheaper invoice for the customers on the 4th and 5th who only got 2 visits?

Are you going to send out 100 of these every single month? Always changing the amounts and who gets sent what?
Or are you just going to be unemployed for the last 3 days of the month?

Why would you do that to yourself?

Take the amount you want to make per visit, multiply it by the amount of visits they will get in a 12-month period, divide the number up by 12, charge that 1 single monthly price for 12 months, collect their billing info, and then put it on recurring automatic payments set to run on the first of every month upfront.

$80 a visit, avg 20 visits per year, $1600 a year, /12= 133/mo. Set it and forget it.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Johnny boy]

Proper incentives to help employee productivity and lessen micromanaging

"Whatever you reward, you get more of. Whatever you punish, you get less of" - me

I can't remember the last time I've ever told an employee they were too slow, or being lazy, or not working enough. Seriously.

Our employees get a set amount of work for the day. They will be paid for an 8 hour workday regardless.

When they're done, they get to go home.

If they screw something up, they have to go back.

The fastest way to go home is to do a good enough job that does not get them called back, and a fast enough job so they can go home.

Think of what you are telling an hourly worker by the way you pay them.

"You will get $18 an hour for every hour you are here, no matter how slow you are. This will continue as long as you are not fired".

This means that in order for them to be fired, you have to monitor them, notice their performance, reprimand them, do it a few more times and then fire them. The cycle continues, always toeing the line between being just good enough to not be fired and slow enough to maximize their income/work done. Any average person would obviously slow down since there is no reward for swiftness. In their mind, only a fool would work fast. It just punishes them because they are doing more work for the same pay. You are always cracking a whip, communicating with the undertone of a threat, and the majority of your communication will be negative. They will hide from you.

Remember, you get more of what you reward and less of what you punish. When employees get to go home when they're done but are still paid full time, you reward swiftness and punish laziness. You get more workers getting shit done, and less people dragging their feet.

Our workers are in pairs of two. If one worker does bad work, they both go back. If one worker is slow, they both don't go home early. So now they are monitoring each other. They become the "mean" boss to each other and give each other the motivation to work. One doesn't want the other to slow him down, nor does he want to be the reason his partner can't go home. I have offloaded 90% of the "managing" of the employees to each other. I am the good boss. I am the nice one that's reasonable. They know that when I call, it's usually a compliment or a nice thing. The call backs don't come from me, they come from the customer.

They think the time they get off is a company gift, but they have unwittingly increased their productivity. They think they have gotten a few free hours from me, when they have just earned it by being productive. They have escaped the futility of working hard just to be "rewarded" with more work. "I see you got all the jobs done, here's 4 more to keep you busy until quittin' time". Now they have a reason to work hard. They create games for themselves. They see how fast they can get it all done while not having to come back. "We got done in 5 hours today, it was great". "Nice job guys you're killing it". A fool would say "Idiot, you could have them make you 30% more!". I guarantee you they would not work at that pace on hourly pay unless you were watching them like a hawk and yelling at them.

Human beings are ruled by incentives, use it in your favor. Proper incentives are as much of an asset as a full time manager.

 

[jclean]

I think you are absolutely right in how you structure a service company. I handle our planning and pricing in a similar way (there is certainly room for improvement with us)

this thread contains a lot of gold nuggets

I have some practical questions:

how do you ensure that the trucks remain clean is this the responsibility of the crews or does someone come externally to clean them?

how do you maintain the vehicles, replace oil, breakdowns, inspections...

 

[Guest-5ty5s4]

This is

Proper incentives to help employee productivity and lessen micromanaging

"Whatever you reward, you get more of. Whatever you punish, you get less of" - me

I can't remember the last time I've ever told an employee they were too slow, or being lazy, or not working enough. Seriously.

Our employees get a set amount of work for the day. They will be paid for an 8 hour workday regardless.

When they're done, they get to go home.

If they screw something up, they have to go back.

The fastest way to go home is to do a good enough job that does not get them called back, and a fast enough job so they can go home.

Think of what you are telling an hourly worker by the way you pay them.

"You will get $18 an hour for every hour you are here, no matter how slow you are. This will continue as long as you are not fired".

This means that in order for them to be fired, you have to monitor them, notice their performance, reprimand them, do it a few more times and then fire them. The cycle continues, always toeing the line between being just good enough to not be fired and slow enough to maximize their income/work done. Any average person would obviously slow down since there is no reward for swiftness. In their mind, only a fool would work fast. It just punishes them because they are doing more work for the same pay. You are always cracking a whip, communicating with the undertone of a threat, and the majority of your communication will be negative. They will hide from you.

Remember, you get more of what you reward and less of what you punish. When employees get to go home when they're done but are still paid full time, you reward swiftness and punish laziness. You get more workers getting shit done, and less people dragging their feet.

Our workers are in pairs of two. If one worker does bad work, they both go back. If one worker is slow, they both don't go home early. So now they are monitoring each other. They become the "mean" boss to each other and give each other the motivation to work. One doesn't want the other to slow him down, nor does he want to be the reason his partner can't go home. I have offloaded 90% of the "managing" of the employees to each other. I am the good boss. I am the nice one that's reasonable. They know that when I call, it's usually a compliment or a nice thing. The call backs don't come from me, they come from the customer.

They think the time they get off is a company gift, but they have unwittingly increased their productivity. They think they have gotten a few free hours from me, when they have just earned it by being productive. They have escaped the futility of working hard just to be "rewarded" with more work. "I see you got all the jobs done, here's 4 more to keep you busy until quittin' time". Now they have a reason to work hard. They create games for themselves. They see how fast they can get it all done while not having to come back. "We got done in 5 hours today, it was great". "Nice job guys you're killing it". A fool would say "Idiot, you could have them make you 30% more!". I guarantee you they would not work at that pace on hourly pay unless you were watching them like a hawk and yelling at them.

Human beings are ruled by incentives, use it in your favor. Proper incentives are as much of an asset as a full time manager.

this is beautiful! Love it! I hate the incentives of hourly work and have had such a huge problem with it from
The very beginning. This makes so much more sense.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Johnny boy]

I think you are absolutely right in how you structure a service company. I handle our planning and pricing in a similar way (there is certainly room for improvement with us)

this thread contains a lot of gold nuggets

I have some practical questions:

how do you ensure that the trucks remain clean is this the responsibility of the crews or does someone come externally to clean them?

how do you maintain the vehicles, replace oil, breakdowns, inspections...

Local part time manager does periodical checks. “Truck 2 needs oil change” “tabs expire soon”

Employees let us know when equipment is acting up. “Hey the mower wheels are falling off”

The trucks are dirty.

I can keep a notion page setup to act as a rudimentary fleet management system but that’s probably for next year

 

[Bones81]

Just read this whole thread from start to finish; I'm actually meeting with the owner of a lawn care and snow removal business here in Salt Lake City on Sunday about potentially buying it. It's doing over a million in sales annually, so I'm curious to see how his processes and policies compare to yours. It's great inspiration to see someone actually take this kind of business and scale it.

 

[Johnny boy]

With rising ad costs I went out to try door to door so we didn’t have to shut off ads in the summer months.

Took no time at all to get a sale.

“Hey just wanted to give a heads up we were taking care of your neighbors lawn down the street, Dave, you know him?

We take care of his lawn and it would only be 99 a month to take care of yours too (small yards in development).

We do all of the mowing, edging, blowing, weed control, trimming shrubs, and fertilizing”

Super good results. Lots of signups.

We can afford to pay like $100-$200 for a signup since they are year long agreements.

So I hired a door to door salesperson who’s got lots of experience.

We will pay them $100 for every signup. I think they’ll be able to get a signup every hour to every two hours.

Maybe it works well, maybe it doesn’t. But I’m not going to sit around and complain that we can only run Facebook ads during the spring.

We will be onboarding agencies to run our ads and hopefully get our cost per signup down for all areas so we can unleash our potential. We can handle so much more than we’re doing right now.

We’ve removed a lot of bottlenecks with getting franchisees. (Can get lots of trucks now)

We’re onboarding an outbound appointment setting service so our ability to call leads is no longer a bottleneck.

Now it’s just a matter of shoving leads through the system and scaling up further.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[PapaGang]

This thread is a work of art.

 

[Johnny boy]

This thread is a work of art.

Thank you, much appreciated.

 

[WillHurtDontCare]

@Johnny boy have you tried posting your company details in local Facebook groups?

In Florida there are a few Facebook groups like I love St Pete / I love Tampa / all other kinds of neighborhood groups where people ask for recommendations on restaurants, bars, and homecare services. Some of them are fine with people shilling their services. Maybe you could give one of your admin assistants some scripts to try that in various Facebook groups.

And congrats on getting the door to door sales to work. $100 / hr would be a solid way to get quality talent.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[Johnny boy]

@Johnny boy have you tried posting your company details in local Facebook groups?

In Florida there are a few Facebook groups like I love St Pete / I love Tampa / all other kinds of neighborhood groups where people ask for recommendations on restaurants, bars, and homecare services. Some of them are fine with people shilling their services. Maybe you could give one of your admin assistants some scripts to try that in various Facebook groups.

And congrats on getting the door to door sales to work. $100 / hr would be a solid way to get quality talent.

First salesperson quit they wanted a guaranteed salary oh well another interview today.

and it's something we can do, it's on the list of 10 other lead gen strategies I need to optimize.

 

[door123]

First salesperson quit they wanted a guaranteed salary oh well another interview today.

and it's something we can do, it's on the list of 10 other lead gen strategies I need to optimize.

Did he not sell a single account?