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You're now listening to the Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast. Straightforward, no nonsense business advice, completely on unfiltered. Grow your business, grow your life.

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Now here's your host, Brian Fullerton.

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Hey, what's going on, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Fullerton Unfiltered podcast. It is your host, Brian Fullerton here hanging with you guys and good morning. Well, today's podcast episode, filming real time for you guys. It's actually bright and early Wednesday morning. I have a big office day today. Had a big office day yesterday. Big office day, last couple of days. To be honest with you guys, we are in the thick of it, just like you guys. We've got a lot of spinning plates, a lot of hats that we're wearing, and there's a lot to do in a short amount of time because spring is going to be right around the corner. And I know some of you guys are probably starting to feel the, a little bit of the stress, a little bit of the anxiety, a little bit of the, the wondering, right? Like, what's going on? Where are we at? Let's get contracts renewed, let's get quotes out the door, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I'm right there with you. And this is very typical, you know, from about now until almost, you know, pencils down mid March, maybe even, you know, mid April and, or late March into mid April. And it's just a very busy next couple of weeks. Well, the long story short, I wanted to talk with you guys for just a few minutes on today's show about contract renewals and quotes. And just a quick tip about listening a little bit better as we go into the bidding estimating and renewal season. I want to just give you guys some encouragement. This will be a shorter show today, but I really do want to implore you that as you guys continue to develop your sales skills, your sales process, you guys are looking to, you know, earn more work. And really just, I mean, this is, you know, let's zoom out. This could apply to almost anything and everything else that you're doing in life. It's the ability to hear better or listen better in general. And I'm not going to go super heavy or super deep on this topic this morning, but what I will just say, like, I have noticed that when I have more disconnect in my life with people, it's typically because I'm not listening or yes, in a way, maybe they're not communicating as well as they could be or as clear as they could be or should be. And so, you know, of course, you can only take responsibility for your side of the equation, but you can still prompt the other side, right? You can still prompt the other side to get better answers or better expectations or, you know, what they're looking for from the other side with good questions from your side, right? So, like, I don't want to just say, well, I didn't know, because they, I didn't know. You know, that's, that's not a good way to approach life. You can say, all right, I'm gonna do the best I can. And then I'll take even more responsibility for the other side to necessarily, you know, answer what questions they have or don't have or don't even know to ask. And I've known that to be true with almost everything that I navigate in life. And by the way, other folks hopefully do this with me, right? Like when I'm looking for a product or service, hopefully people ask good questions. Let me, let me break down a couple simple stories and analogies here. And again, this can apply to your wife, your husband, you know, whatever you got, and then this could apply to your customer. So I do want to go through a couple quick scenarios here, and I think the stories will really relate and kind of drive the point home more than me just saying, hey, be a good listener, because I got a couple relevant stories and examples here that I think would really help out for you guys. All things being said, before we do that, it wouldn't be a full attendant filtered podcast show without talking a little bit more about our show sponsors and announcements. I'll be quick with that. I will just tell you guys, we've got some exciting news with Elliman Granum. They've got the Spring Kickoff tour and they're going to be doing a webinar series as well. The tour is coming down the pike. Just a quick little tease. Gamble and I are going to be hosting this across the country. More details to come in a very, very short order. We'll have a bunch of shop tours that we're going to be doing co hosting with Element Granum. So just a quick little tease on that. Number two, the Spring Kickoff webinar series is next week, Tuesday through Friday, Every day at 2pm Eastern. Free webinar, free registration. It's all about building teams, crews, getting a training program together and getting your, you know, spring chickens, you know, and ducks in a row before you head on out the door. It's going to be all things based on the spring boot camp. Sam Gamble with Atlas Outdoor, who by the way, breaking news if you happen to saw the lawn and landscape management article or blog that went out and also Sam sent it out on his email subscription newsletter, part of the Culture Proof podcast. Sam sold Atlas as a quote unquote strategic partner now with Shill Grounds Management, which is really exciting. So they sold and rolled up into Shill. They're going to still keep the name Atlas and there's still like a platform, you know, business, if you will, in southeastern Michigan over by me. But Sam did sell. He, he did get the big check and he's still going to be there for a couple of years with that transition, of course, and then probably still part of Shill Worldwide, if you will. So big shout out and congratulations to him. But Sam's going to be co hosting this with me and probably the reality is I'm co hosting it with Sam, if you know what I'm saying. So if you guys were on the last year snow and tell webinar that we did with LMN when what was that, guys? Like July or August, maybe even September. Like that was a fantastic week with different guests. There was like I said, four one hour sessions Tuesday to Friday and we had other great guest speakers on there. It was just a really, really great time. Just a ton of note taking, a ton of getting your head in the game. Like really, really fun, practical time. Well, LMN is doing that with a spring team that wins spring boot camp here next week online. We'll leave links in the description. Go register. Totally free. Check it out. Quick little pro tip. Register. Even if you can't make it, more than likely you're get the replays or see the replays, you know, a couple days later once they process those. So if you can't join live because you're doing snow or maybe already doing some spring cleanups or something, right? Maybe down south. That's okay. Like, that's okay. We get it. But take an hour, you know, join with your team. Maybe set up the phone on the dash in the truck and take lunch, get pizzas and watch it together. You know, like, let's train our teams together. Other than that, I just want to sincerely say like, thank you guys for using our code everywhere. I do start to see on a couple different dashboards that I have with some of the brands, like our code gets used and just tracking analytics and sales and revenues. Like, honestly, sincerely, this is like my side hustle, you know, business that like allows my wife to be a stay home mom and for us to Earn a little bit more extra income. Just like another thing, another, you know, wheel turning, if you will. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to all of you guys that have been using our codes, the Brian's 10 code, you know, with equipment, Defender, Cujo yardware, iotsotunes. You know, Ballard, a lot of you guys are buying your spring, you know, load up of mower blades and edger blades and all that kind of stuff from Ballard. Thank you, sincerely, like, it really does mean the world to us. And I can't thank you guys enough for the love and the support cycle. Cpa. I know a lot of you guys have been onboarding with like LMN and Cycle and like the software type of stuff over the last couple of months. Thank you guys for using our code there. If we can ever be of assistance or help you guys with any of those questions, please let me know. I was talking to Brad Sweeting. He had a question about how to add a service item, line item on a service estimate for subcontracting. And I said, let me send you a message. I'll show you my screen and help you out. Last week we did Element and Coffee, you know, on Saturday from 7 to 8am, you know, bi weekly. We've been doing those, and we're going to keep doing those, by the way, through March, which is really exciting. I think it's like on the 7th and the 20th, or 7th and 21st or whatever the Saturdays are to help you guys out with a couple more free, just hangout sessions, right? And the last one, we had about 21 people that started to gain a little bit of traction, which was fun. And all we did was just Q and A on lmn. And again, if you use Jobber or Yardbook or anything like that, dude, that's awesome. Like, super cool too. It's. It's not Element or Die around here, okay? Like, I know we've been a little heavy on the paint for Element in the last two years, but it has been that transformative for my business. But I'll just tell you folks, we grew to like a 3, 400 grand business with yardbook. I know a lot of you guys are doing half a million, million, two million with Jobber. Like, that's totally awesome. Totally fine. Just make sure you're dialing in your numbers, wherever and whatever way you can do it. I do have another show, by the way, on Friday for all of you guys that don't use like an LMM that you build in your budget, your pricing and your price list and can Just, you know, import your measurements, you know, in from attentive to get your production rates and to have it spit out a number, which all that sounds fancy and it is. And it's a little bit of a. It's a lot of a front end lift. But I do want to do a podcast to help some of you guys with knowing your numbers a little bit more, which will probably be Friday's episode. If you're using a software like jobber yard book, or even just pen and paper, or you're just using, you know, your side hustle, you've got 10 lawns and you're just getting this thing going and you're like, dude, like, I don't know what to charge. Like 45 bucks, 55 bucks, 65 bucks. Quick tip. Here's how you know if I'm talking to you. If you have any service listed on your invoice or your estimate, I should say that ends with a 0 or a 5. More than likely, your numbers are probably guesstimating. And that's okay. That's okay. I did that for literally 17 years. I mean, probably about 15 years. And we had our little calculator that helped us out big time for about two years. Started to dial it in. But folks, if you don't know, that's okay. It's literally okay. It's okay for a season, but then you do have to dial it in. All right, so I want to help you guys with that. It's a very, very simple approach. I can teach you how to do it with napkin math. Nobody has ever shown me how to do it with Napkin math until 16 or 17 plus years in the business. I went to a conference or a seminar, Element Masterminds with Mark Bradley. He did it on a whiteboard. I'm like, oh yeah, duh. And of course you can use fancy software to do it. But regardless, you should be running all of your pricing through a formula to help you come up with a man hour rate to recover overhead and to stack profit. It's really, really simple. At least that way you guys know, hey, I'll be at $70aman hour to do the work. This site's going to take one hour based on my measurements with square foot. And now I know that I'm going to be there for a labor hour and a rig hour, and I can, you know, mow that lawn for $95 or whatever it's going to be, right. So I'm going to teach you guys how to do that on Friday. That'll be Our fun episode there. What else we got? Gosh, other than that, I guess I'll see you guys in about three weeks in Cape Coral, Florida for leanscaper. I know it seems like we were just in Arizona two minutes ago and we were. These are a little bit more squished back to back, the spring intensives and they're trying to get them in before we all have the spring rush. But I'll tell you what, the spring intensive that we're going to be going down to in Cape Coral, Florida first off, beautiful area, you know, if you guys are in the Midwest like come on down just to get out of the snow, you know, there's not usually too much snow going on in March. So come on down, come join us and that'll be a fun time over there. But I'm really looking forward to that. We did the, I think it was the revenue intensive right in Arizona and then the operational intensive is the one where I really kind of started building the business the most. The same time last year with Brian saw maintenance and it was absolutely transformational. We did so much building of our SOPs and structuring our business and again that was piggybacked. Last year they had a one week event, basically two and a half days for session one, two and a half days for session two. So we built like our sales pipeline, our operations, you know, conversation. I dialed in so so much with our company and give it a shout, give it a try, go check out the event. Your first time's free. It's a three thousand dollar ticket by the way. You probably heard first one's free. All right, that's how they get you. But go there, check it out if you want to go, let me know. I'll get you access to the events team and they'll get you a free registration code. A couple of you guys actually have taken me up on that in the last couple of weeks which is really fun and if we can ever help you guys get into that environment, let me know. In fact, funny story, Coast Pay and we'll get into today's show. But coastpay, see I'm starting to wake up and warm up a little bit here. Coastpay had a client in North Carolina or a customer to be a prospect, I should say in North Carolina that had a. They're probably about 10 or so million dollar business. And the, the controller actually called me about the fuel cards and she was asking you know, if they were like hey can you do a demo or just share a testimony with this lady I'm like, yeah, sure. Like, whatever I can do to help. And it's actually like, or third one I've done. And this lady, super, super kind lady, you know, North Carolina voice and lady and woman, beautiful girl. She. You could just tell, like, older lady. And she was very sweet. And the y' alls and the. And the. Honey, you're so sweet, like, kind of. Kind of lady. And the down south hospitality. Right. Well, we were talking about coast and fuel cards, and they were thinking about switching from WEX and all this other stuff. And I'm like, just. Yeah, like, I don't have a $10 million company. We've got half dozen rigs, half dozen cards, half dozen guys, you know, and it's been working great. And. And she. She was really sweet and great conversation. And they're navigating if they want to switch to coast pay from a recent conference they went to. With. Who was it? It was like, with Real Green or some kind of Fertilizer Conference Essay 5 or something like that. So it was a fun conversation with that. But, oh, gosh, where was my point going about software and signups? Gosh, I'm trying to think. I don't know where I was going with that one. So it's still early in the morning, so my brain. My brain's still skipping around. But the. I guess the long story short, thank you guys for all the conversation. Gosh, where was I going? Professional broadcasting here. I guess just. Long story short, thank you guys for all the love with the signups and the codes and all that fun stuff. And again, putting a great business together. That thought will come back to me. Fleeting thought. That's awkward. But long story short, I just want to say there's a lot of great stuff going on. Oh, what? That lady, we were talking and she said, well, what? This is how it works. She goes, I caught my thought. She goes. She goes, well, we use our real green software. And she goes, what are you guys using? She goes, you do landscaping? We're fertilization. And I said, oh, we use lmm and I follow this guy, Mark Bradley, and blah, blah, blah, you know, great guy. And she goes, I've heard of him. She goes, I've seen him on LinkedIn. And I go, yeah. I said, that's the guy. So he's my guru. And she goes, okay. I said, have you ever seen his leanscaper stuff? And she goes, I have. She goes, I see the ads. She goes, I didn't know if that was for us. She goes, we'd kind of do things differently here. And I was like, yeah, I don't know what that means. Everybody does something a little different. That's. That's the irony. And that's the best part about running your own business. And I go, you should check it out. I said, like, I'll be there if you guys want to go. Not to give you a pitch because we're talking about fuel cars now. I sound like, you know, the, the guy with the, the trench coat selling insurance, selling, you know, watches and, you know, in the subway station here. And she was really funny. She goes, no, no, no. She goes, I've seen the stuff. She goes, that's so funny that you go. And I've seen the ads. I've seen them on LinkedIn. She goes, I will. She goes, I actually, I'm going to take a. Consider taking a look at it. And if I don't go, I'll send somebody from the team. And I'm like, sounds good. You know, so it's just funny, like, how it's kind of like getting out there. You know, people like, what's a Leanscaper? It's like, it's like cult, you know, they just got to join her, like, drink the Kool Aid on. So it is fun. It is a great time. You will learn a lot. Your brain will fry every time you go. I have like 10 spiral notebooks, you know, from the last year or so hanging around Mark at these kind of events and some of his other seminars that he was doing. And I'll tell you folks, like, there's not a more encouraging environment to, to plug into if you want to learn how to operationalize your business. And that's this the best way I can say it. It's how to operationalize. It's systematize your business and not just like, throw mud up against the wall and sticks. Like there's a blueprint. And Mark has basically been ruling that out for a year and we'll continue for hopefully years to come. Right? And so anyway, it's going to be a great time. Cape Coral, I think it's like March 8th, 9th and 10th or something like that. Or 9, 10th, 11th. Don't. Don't hold me to those dates. Just check out leanscaper.com quick little plug for those guys. And that's where we have it. So there's your four minutes of ads. All right. There's your four minute of ads. So maybe, maybe Mr. Producer doesn't have to add an ad. Maybe we'll just end a and with an ad at the end of the show. So you guys aren't, you know, crashing your trucks here and we drone on for four minutes of ads. That's exciting. But I mean that sincerely. There's a lot of great stuff going on, and I hope you guys get hooked up. I hope you guys get plugged in. There's a lot of great stuff going on that you should hopefully try to take advantage of of it, and if not all of it, some of it. Right. All right, one quick second here. That's me drinking the Red Cherry Alani, which I. I think I had one or two of you guys send me 12 packs or 24 packs of those from. From Amazon. Somehow somebody got my address or dropped it at our PO Box, I can't remember, and sent those when we had our third child, Beckham. And that was very, very greatly appreciated. And they're not cheap, dude. They're like two, three bucks a can. So I. I do recognize that the. The funny part was. Or the funny part is that Beckham is nine months. He's almost walking, like, literally, like, not goo goo gaga crawling. I mean, like, he's, like, stumbling, walking with assistance. And our other kids even do that to, like, a year, maybe 13 months. He's literally goo goo gaga, like, talking, dude. He'll be. He'll be words and talking within, like, another month. I mean, it's. It's insane. Like, he's a little super baby. That's what happens when you got bigger brothers and sisters to, like, model after, which is kind of like a whole analogy of its own. Maybe I can do a whole topic on that. The example of the original is so vital. Right? And that's a whole other story for a whole other time. But let's do this really quick. I want to talk about listening. I got, like, one or two, maybe three good examples here for you guys that I think will be really, really helpful. Let me just grab my notes here, and that's what I do. I just jot down some ideas that I think will be helpful because, like, everything that I do in my life, it's got to be practical. Like, I'm very utilitarian at this point in my life. Like, if it doesn't serve me, it's gone. If it's a relationship that's not, like, adding value to me or I'm adding value to it, it's gone. Equipment that's sitting, you know, guys will DM me, hey, man, you got any extra equipment? Usually it's the guys that are putting in zero effort and they're like, hey, man, can you, can you go fund me? I guess that is some type of effort, like to crowdsource and ask for donations to start your business. I mean, I guess, you know, I'll give you that, but it's like, dude, why don't you just go get a, your, your dad's push mower for, you know, 100 bucks in the, in the barn or the garage or the shed and go get a push broom and start like all of us, like, I see people that have like, GoFundMes for 15,000 bucks. Well, you know, Chad's trying to buy his first lawnmower and first trailer and first Ford Ranger. Well, no, dude, like, go get a push mower and a push broom. Like, that's how we all started. But anyway, I guess I appreciate the ambition of trying to. But your GoFundMe shouldn't be $25,000 to start with all the best equipment that took me, you know, eight years to get to, or some of you guys four years to get to, right? While you were like, living in your parents basement or in your bedrooms while going to school, while side hustling, while doing second jobs like, or first jobs plus a side hustle, like, come on, let me go back to the topic of listening. When I have noticed, like anytime my wife and I are communicating well or better, it's because one of us or both of us are listening and we're in a good flow state. And the opposite of that, when things are jammed up and we're fighting or we're like living like roommates, which happens, dude, it happens in any relationship for days, weeks, months, hopefully not years if that's the case. For real, for real, for real. Seek professional help. There's no pride and ego in letting your marriage die in the vine or turn into a roommate sesh. And for all of you guys that are like married two, three years, like, it's the honeymoon phase. It's easy, it's fun, it's cool. You almost can't do anything wrong and you're just little jackrabbits. All right, that's fun. That's fine. That's great. I love it. Year five to seven, Things change, you know, you, you have kids, you have different responsibilities, different career poles. It doesn't get any easier as you get older, right? As you get into your late 30s. You know, maybe your income goes up, but your expenses go up because you have aging parents, your kid, you have more, more kids, you move, you have a different house, different car. You know, you're trying to have a different socioeconomic level, right? Like, things become potentially just as heavy, just as hard, if not harder, right? And so you're never, like, out of the woods. It's not like you, like, make it to, you know, marriage year 11. And it's just easy. Okay? My wife and I, like, we're very regular, normal, real authentic people. You know, when we're communicating well, our relationship's great. When we're not, we turn into roommates. And you have anxiety and, or not maybe anxiety, but animosity, apathy, frustrations and anger, right? So it's all about communication. Well, let's take it from, like, a very simple customer perspective. When you are talking to a customer, I've noticed, myself included, and this is like, about me. What I've noticed that I do way too often is, and here's just the practical tip of the show. You get a lead or a bid or a submission form, right? And like, hey, we need service. And I've talked about this at length, so I don't have to beat it as a dead horse or beat it a dead horse. But here's the deal. Instead of just immediately saying we can do everything and we're the best and all this other stuff, like so many of us do, and it's hard not to because we get all excited. We're very, excuse me, including myself, we're very excitable people. As soon as that quote comes in, like, calm down. You know what I mean? Calm down and say, what are you looking for? Well, and then somebody that's a little bit more smug or pragmatic or, or a smart butt would say, well, obviously they want maintenance. Well, maybe, but, like, is your goal. Like, you need a guy to cut the grass, you need a grass cutter, you need the lawn maintained or lawn care company. Or do you want the outdoor living area looking nice and to be headache free? Like, those are two wildly different propositions, right? Like, why I want the honey? We're looking for a grass cutter. Okay, cool. You get there. And then she goes, yeah, and the mulch looks terrible. The last guy didn't redo it last year. We were going to do it. We got busy with 4th of July. It looked like crap. The neighbors were over. My husband wished it looked good. The shrubs have been, have, you know, been scraping against the, the siding. Tearing it up now needs power, washing. And oh, by the way, like, it keeps the kids up at night because that's the spare bedroom with the baby. You know, the, the lighting looks terrible. We bought the Home three years ago. The landscape lighting, we knew we were going to replace it. And. And so you're. Whether this is on the phone, in person, via chat, via email, via text, via whatever the heck you guys are using, Zoom Zoom calls, FaceTime calls for bids. All of it. All of it's fine. Those are all tools in the tool belt. But, like, the proposition there is, well, we need a guy to cut the lawn. That could mean different things to different people. And it's one of those things where, like, I guess, you know, for the most part, right, you don't know what you don't know. And I didn't know that for a while myself. I just assumed that everybody, you know, is looking for the same thing. It's not. It's not the case. Right. It's one of those deals where you're thinking, they just want the grass cut. So you go over there and offer a $55 quote. They're thinking, we need to spend $6,000 to get this backyard cleaned up. Right? It's a big difference. And so when you guys are getting these quotes, these bids that you're, you know, having come into, you the obvious, right? But again, just a quick reminder, because this will pay dividends. And I'm going to give you another fun analogy here in a second. Like, you have to take five minutes and slow down and actually ask the customer what they're looking for. I'll give you another couple for instances. We have three new commercial bids going out right now. We've already earned two. The third one I know we're gonna get, it's coming online. In fact, the third one is a bid from last year, where it was the actual bid that I lost that I did not receive. And the guy literally said, dude, you're double what my other guys are. And I went into, well, your other guys suck. That's why you're calling me. We're better. Blah, blah, blah. Like, 75% of that's true. Like, we are better. We do care. We're going to do a better job. I just know that. I just know that in my knower. But if I quantify, like, why it's not like we have to be double the price to be 30% better with trucks, equipment, labor, and branding. Like, those numbers don't correlate, right? Like that. Those don't conflate. So I'm like, okay, interesting. And that was like the. I don't know if that was the second or the fifth or the tenth bid that I had lost the same time last Year. But this is what humbled the Chicago out of me. You know, the you know what out of me. Try to clean up the language. It humbled the crap out of me. And I don't know if it's like that day or that week or I had just came back from the leanscaper operational intensive and revenue intensive, AKA talking about sales and marketing and building an organization. I just came off a grow. And I do know that this is one of the sites that I know humbled the crap out of my sales process. And I was like, we need to fix this stuff like now. Like right now. Like, you can't imagine the laser beam of taking the sun through a magnifying glass to focus into a laser beam that your boy was on. Because I lost a couple sites, my big HOAs like 70 grand in the hole down in revenue. This site was like, dude, what are you. What are you talking about? These numbers? Like, you sound great, but your numbers don't work. I'm like, something is wrong when I'm bidding in my commercial bidding process. Anyway, I'm very excited about getting a new crack at it because we renewed our estimates year over year. We refined our pricing, we massaged our account. A lot is squared up now. Better in element. I understand production rates. The quotes that I'm sending him today are legit. About 30 to 40% cheaper than what I was bidding on same time last year, which is a huge testament to our sales and, you know, bidding process. Some of you guys that you know actually like encouraging other folks. You're fist bumping in the air right now. You're excited for me as I'm excited for you guys when you guys do this stuff. Listen, dude, I'm trying to do the exact same thing you guys are doing and I'm learning. I. I do not have it all figured out. Shocker, right? This isn't a top down podcast, like I'm telling you guys. I'm learning how to do this stuff too. I'm very, very excited about resubmitting this quote. Well, here's the deal. The big thing about these sites is I'm doing my best to listen. And now we're documenting everything. So we have SOPs and you guys have heard this is coming down the pike. When these customers now come together and come to us through a submission form. We have a process. It's not like, oh, cool, exciting, let me get the quote to you in 20 minutes or by tomorrow. It's like, no, I have to. I'm teaching my EAVA executive Assistant, virtual assistant who's in the Philippines to do this. So I have to teach her how to not goof it up. Right. And it's helped me to get more clarity. Right? You understand, when you do, you definitely understand and learn more when you teach. And so now that I'm teaching this to you guys and to my va, like holding her hand doing this, it's helped me to refine this process and to really, like, not goof up by just having a knee jerk reaction to, hey, I need a guy. And we're like, yeah, we can do maintenance. And they're like, no, like, we need a guy for $9,000 in our backyard and on our property, like the residential client. So when a client comes in, have a standard core program, whatever that looks like for you guys, your business is different than my business. You're where you were at, the services you offer, the type of contracts you want to offer. Please don't ask me what I do. I've already talked about it on the podcast. Learn from there. Or number two, ask Chad. GPT. Don't, please. I've been getting actually a lot of emails from folks, hey, what about this and how do you do that? What do you think about that, dude? Like, I don't know you, I don't know your market, I don't know your business, I don't know your cash flow. I'm not offering coaching calls right now. I need to know a lot of data to be able to even propose certain things to you. It's not fair to you, it's not fair to me. I, I, I, I can't be your guru. I always say that. Start building relationship with Chat GPT. Dump everything you can in there first. And then if you're using leanscaper, folks use Lana. And that's like their AI at Chat GPT. But it's not fair for you to say, hey, like, I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking about that. Like, if you want to spitball some ideas about, you know, certain things on a macro level, sure, but, but I can't, I can't build your business for you. That's where you have to decide. I like having regular cash. We're going to do seasonal contracts. I like the complexity and, you know, the doing something different every day of landscaping and design, build. I want to warranty plants, I don't want to warranty plants. I want to stick with Belgard, I want to stick with Unilock, I want to stick with Teco. Like, dude, you have that's you have to put in the thousands of hours to decide and to, to build your own business, your own brand, your own process. Like, you can't just copy me. You can't just copy your other bro. Like, this is actually what the building of a business is. But when these customers come to you, say you have a standard program because you have to have some type of duplication process, a operating system, a way we do things here. This is what we offer. Type program. And either they fit the mold or they don't. That's called an icp Ideal customer profile. Either they fit into what you guys are looking for, to do, to perform, to offer for work or a service, or they don't. And that's okay. And so this customer came in and he was like, hey, we got these. We need service. And I go, sure. And this is actually an in person visit. So I went and visited him, obviously in person. And we were talking. I'm like, hey, so what are you looking for? Like, and people like, what do you bring into an estimate? I go, nothing, my ears. Because anything else that I'm bringing is a distraction. I don't bring my folder, I don't bring anything. I bring my card. Again, here's my card, by the way. That's my cell phone number. Call it. None other than that. Maybe I'll have my phone up open with my notes app so I can forcefully take notes to be an attentive listener. But I'm not here to, you know, talk. I'm not here to like, present. I'm not here to share. I don't bring my iPad. I'm not saying you can't or you shouldn't. Maybe that's part of your process. That's awesome. I don't need that for commercial. We have our website. That's our business card. I've got 20 different sites I can quote around town. Hey, go drive by this one. Go drive by that one. Go by, drive by this. Those are all our sites that we manage. That's our business card drive. You have to hit past these sites on your way to the highway ramp where we live. So you're going to drive by a half dozen of both my sites no matter which way you go. Awesome. Like, we have that blessing. And when you just kind of talk that way, people assume like you're, you're, you're, you're competent. Right? Like, it's just like an aura. It's just like your confidence. Okay. And that takes a long time to, to get there. Longer than it should for me. But that just is just a bravado. And I'm like, yeah, like, Nick, no problem, dude. We can take care of your site. So he's like, here's what, here's what? And I go, so what do you need? He goes, oh, we need the maintenance. I go, okay, cool. And I have a checklist of our seven or eight different services. Mowing? Yes. Fur, no. Irrigation, no. Pruning, no. Mulch. Beds. Give me a quote for it. Weeding. Bi weekly visits. We spray the weeds and the cracks in the. In the beds. Yes. Right. Like, where are you guys at for snow? We don't have a snow guy. We had a guy, then he quit and we just. We just been self performing it. We got a machine, but it's just not. It's not working. Okay, cool. We get that quote to you in August. That fair? Yeah. Last thing you know, Nick, is payment terms. We're net 30. How are you guys with paying your vendors? Do you guys pay well? Do you guys pay on time? How's your controller? How's your AP in AR department? Yeah, they're pretty good. And it's up to me on payment terms. Normally our stuff is net 60, but I can always override and do net 30. Honestly, Nick, we're at 30. If you can meet me halfway on that. At net 30 quote, unquote. That's a joke, by the way. If you can meet me halfway net 30, then I think we can do business together. And let me go back, whip up some numbers and get it back to you. Awesome. Like, now that we have a core process to filter people through and that's what these events do. That's what like these workshops do. And it's not a pitch to get you to get a cheek in the seat. I don't. I don't make any money off the leanscaper events. Just so we're clear. I don't like. I don't. I think we have a code, Brian, if you sign up. Like, I think we're still massaging that one with leanscaper. And I don't even know what I get for that. Like, Mark has literally helped me make hundreds of thousands of dollars in my business because I've been at these conferences. That's why I'm like, mark, Mark, Mark, Mark, Mark. Nobody's getting paid to say nice things, all right? This is where you actually put pen to paper and you define your processes. You get all your stuff out of your brain and put on your paper and you get to work in a table with a workshop. Environment and say, like, hey, like, have other people poke holes in it as your peers. That's exciting. That's fun. And then you get to ask, like, best practices, why? Why do we do what we do? Why are we doing that? I don't even know. Never even thought about that. I don't even know what that term means. I don't even know what that word means. I don't even know what that phrase means. I don't even know what that system means. I've never even heard of that software. Tell me more. Like, that's why you go to events and conferences. LAL leanscaper grow. All right, let's keep going. And I'll button this up because this is getting a little bit longer than I anticipated. But I really want you guys to, like, hear me when I say this, like, analogy. It's not like, oh, I need to hear better in life. What does that mean? My trades talk last year, it was actually really funny. I had a great time. It was what you say versus what I heard, maybe a theme in my life, if you know what I'm saying. Like, I'm not. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer trying to be a better listener. The last, like, 12, 18 months, last couple years, last decade. I still have a long ways to go. So don't think I had this all figured out. When that client asked, like, hey, we need a bid. And I came in there and I said, like, hey, what do you need? I'm in the long cut. Okay, cool. But what about these seven other services? Where we at? Are we performing them? Do you have a sub? Do you have trugreen? Do you have, you know, sprinkler company? Like, who's doing what? So be a good listener. Okay? When you have that quote command, now you have the opportunity to send a proposal. Hey, here's the core contract. Here's the a la carte services. Do you want the a la carte services listed? Any of those baked into the core contract? Do you want these, or do you want them broken out? Like, how do you want me to structure the contract for us? Lately, we've been doing a lot of maintenance, spring and fall cleanup and weeding, because all of our commercial sites want to keep the place looking good. Weeds are a big deal for commercial sites. Then we in LMN can click per visit. And outside of the core contract, that's bid at, you know, 6,000 bucks. We can have the extra auxiliary service build per visit, and it breaks down mulch. 20, 100 bucks. Fertilization $146.71. Build five times, you know, five rounds or whatever. Irrigation. Start a blowout one, you know, 201 for a. A blowout 16723 I think it is for a startup, whatever it is, right? Like, do you want those broken? Alart. Sure. Okay, cool. Now we're listening. Now we're listening. We're presenting the right package and that's. I did a podcast episode a couple years ago called Black Holes. Like through this bidding process, like sometimes your bids just like get ghosted. There is a absolute reason for a breakdown in communication. And when you're perfect and when you are smoking this thing, you can go from submission form to signed contract in 72 hours, no problem. Everything's clear, all expectations are met, all questions are answered, and the confidence is there that you're their guy. Like, that is what a well defined process looks like. And that's a sales funnel process. That is something I did not have last year, something I do have this spring. We're three sites up this spring already because we dialed all this in and put in the frickin work. And I'm not a hero. I'm just telling you, like, this stuff works. The stuff that I'm listening to and the stuff that I'm doing and the stuff that hopefully you guys are doing as well. And I know you guys are because I've seen the growth and I know you guys are kicking butt and taking names. Like, that's where this all comes together.