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Foreign. You're now listening to the Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast. Straightforward, no nonsense business advice, completely on filtered. Grow your business, grow your life. Now here's your host, Brian Fullerton. 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, today's podcast episode. We are going to keep it short and sweet to even out the one hour and ten minute show that we did on Wednesday and give you guys a 15 minute show here today, which then should be an aggregate or an average or mean or median or whatever the name is to give you guys a 20 or so minute show for today and our show the other day. That means like it's an average of 30 minutes a day on the podcast, right? One of those deals. Just having some fun there. All things being said, really excited about today's podcast episode. I'm going to do a video on this topic later down the road. I have just some things I want to share with you guys to help you out with your man hour rate. Like this is probably a very basic topic and conversation for many of you. It's probably a conversation in a topic that a lot of us are still learning and dialing in and getting more granular on. And then it's maybe a topic that some of you guys have never even heard before. And I know there's a spectrum of folks all the way through and through on all three tiers, all three levels, all three parts of this conversation. What, what I wanted to do is maybe just kind of drop it down a little bit, maybe help some of the guys that are out there just getting their business started. You know, if you guys are new here, it's lawns Lessons life. It's all about helping you grow a more successful lawn and landscaping business so you can go out there and crush it. We're in the process of building a million dollar plus lawn landscaping business over here in Michigan and we're on track and on trend to do that this year. We're very, very excited about that. What I wanted to do is just spend a few minutes for you guys though that are maybe just getting started and, and don't know like how to price, you don't know how to estimate, you don't know where people are coming up with all these numbers. Right. And it just seems very man like everybody else has got it all figured out or, or Brian keeps talking endlessly about this LMN thing, but I'm doing 15 grand a year on the side or 30,040. And I can't afford 299amonth for software. I use Yardbook or Jobber or some other simple CRM or more robust CRM. Like a Jobber, right? Like, great, great platform. But I'm not paying 300 bucks a month for, you know, to accurately know my numbers. Like, I'm just not there yet. Maybe I don't have enough juice worth the squeeze to invest into a platform like that. Dude, that's totally cool. That is totally fine. That's totally appropriate. That's awesome. There's nothing wrong with that. Just so we're all on the same team, we're on the same page. There's no way in any shape or form that I'm going to shame anybody because they're using any other thing, any other time, any other way in anything that we all do. Okay? Like, I use Yardbook for about five or six years before I ever had the chance to really give Element a good shake. I heard it for five or six years from friends and peers. And I didn't know what I didn't know. I was like, no, that's like design build software, bro. Like, that's for big boys. That's for, like guys doing 5 million. I'm, I'm a maintenance guy. I'm a lawn care bro. I'm. I'm sub 300 gram. And like, some of that is true and some of that is accurate because again, like, you know, I don't think everybody should be paying 500 bucks a month or 300 bucks a month for subscription software if you're only doing, you know, 60,000 bucks of revenue. But nonetheless, I heard the same stuff that you guys have heard me complain or whine or rant or promote or share or be excited about, depending on what your attitude is on what I just said for the last year, you know, year and a half, talking about lmn, and that's what it's done for me. But that doesn't mean everybody's there. That doesn't mean everybody's subscribing. It doesn't mean some of you guys that have great businesses doing 2, 3, 4, 500 grand wanna switch on over to LMN just yet. Dude, totally get that. Okay, well, let's keep that conversation intact. Like, we're all friends, we're all on the same sheet of music. But what we do all need to make sure that even though there's variability in how we're coming up with what CRM, we're using and I respect that. There shouldn't be any variability about how we're coming up with our pricing. Okay. We all should be following some type of lock step, formula, system, process, calculator, budget, whatever you want to call it when it comes to knowing your man hour rate. Now I will say this, I'm going to give you the three or four different categories here so you know how to come up with your man hour rate. We're going to couple that with, you know, what it costs to run your labor or equipment or your hourly rate for your business. Second or in the water is how you come up with your measurements. And once you know your rate to charge plus your measurements, you should be able to know how much time it's going to take you to do said site. And that's going to come up with your cost, that's going to come up with your price. Okay? So let's go really, really slow. Okay? There's our labor rate, there's our equipment rate, there's our overhead rate and there's the net profit. We're going to be stacking on. From there. We're taking it over to our measurements, knowing how long it takes us to do certain sites because we know how much work we can do with linear feet, square feet, acreage, right. Based on our production rates. If you don't know, then I'll give you a couple here that you can work with and then you can backfill with some simple math to understand what to charge per customer. Now here's the actual truth and reality about what we're sharing about today. Standing offer, the know your numbers calculator. It's 99 bucks. It's a resource that we made three years ago. Plus@launchpreneuracademy.com I spent 5,000 bucks plus building this thing out with a gal on upwork. It's very robust. It's a budgeting tool. It's a software to help you come up with knowing your overhead, knowing your man hour rate and then knowing what to charge based on how big that site is. It's a fantastic tool. We've sold a bunch of this digital download and again, standing offer. If you can't afford the 99 bucks, email me and I'd be more than happy to gift it. Since the pricing video I did last year, Summer, which was a 45 minute video basically saying if you can't teach somebody how to price in three minutes or less, you don't know what you're talking about. A joke there, by the way. Some irony, the breakdown of what I'm going to share with you guys today and what I showed in that video last time took three minutes. But I wanted to explain the thought process behind it. So that video, like did really well in views. A lot of comments, a lot of dorks that were saying, this guy can't explain it in three minutes or less, you know, and he's got to make a 45 minute video. It's like, dude, watch the whole video and realize maybe you don't know what you don't know and you don't know what you're talking about and you don't know how to run a real business and you've never actually spent some time figuring out how to price in your business. And that's okay. That's okay. Like it took me 15, 16 plus years to finally crack the code. And we're still dialing it in. In fact, I'm probably dialing it in as good or better than any human being that you probably have access to because it is that critical and that important to me that we have great pricing, we're competitive, and we can earn more work because we have an aggressive growth projection and growth curve that we're on now. That being said, the reality is that I can make an offer like that. Please. If you have 100 bucks to your name, which most of you guys do, you've had a great winner. Buy the fricking resource, support what we're doing. You know, it's one of those deals if you genuinely can't. And by the way, if you say you can, you can't afford it. And you can. And you hustle me and you sow bad seed. You get the ramification of that later. God bless you. It's the whole like character and integrity is like doing something when nobody else is watching. Like, you know, even though nobody else will know. So if you're new to life, here's a quick thing. There's givers and takers. Don't ever be a taker and don't be a taker with what I'm doing, okay? Don't be a taker for what I'm doing. Because I'm a small business owner. I'm a small guy just like you. I'm not Microsoft, IBM, or some billion dollar company that won't notice you taking toilet paper home from the mechanical room from Wendy's when you're working your job thinking you're smug. And then, you know, later you get home, your car doesn't start up the next morning. And you owe, you know, $3,000 to fix your car because the engine blew up or the transmission blew up and you go, what? What happened there? Well, you stole a box of toilet paper for 30 bucks. It came back a hundredfold return, good or bad. You ever wonder, like, why you have a tax bill when you start cheating the system? You ever wonder, like, why you get ahead and then you like, get minus five steps back? It's all sown and reaping, dude. So again, just a word to the wise. You can hustle, you can, you can rough shot. I would encourage you to do it.
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Hey there, it's Amy from Granum. Spring is right around the corner, so get your team ready. In the free team that Wins Spring webinar, hosted by Brian Fullerton and Sam Gimble. Learn how to hire, train and prep your crew before the busy season. We'll see you there.
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Across four live sessions, you'll discover how to hire the right people, train them efficiently, and streamline workflows so that your team performs at its best. You'll also learn how to turn four men into strong leaders and strengthen your company culture. This is practical, real world advice that you can implement immediately so your team hits the ground running when spring arrives. You can't miss it. Register now@grantham.com events or use the special link in the podcast description and start your season strong.
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Now, that being said, I'm very generous if you need it. If you absolutely need it, dude, I will 100% gift it to you. We've probably gifted it, I would say humbly, to 40 to 50 people since that video last fall, which is exciting. And I, and I hope many, I hope to gift it to many more. That's me giving. That's me sewing. Man, I would love to gift you that thing. If you can buy it for 100 bucks, buy it. If not, no big deal. But the point of me talking about it is because 99% of people listening in, if you listening in, want the edge against your competitor in town, they are not putting in the work to do what I'm encouraging you to do today. Fact. There is not a single human being in this industry that has talked to more people in the last decade about cutting grass than myself. Besides maybe Marty Grunder or Mike Mark Bradley. Okay, I have pulled back the veil. I have peeled back the layers of the onions. I have. I can tell you, matter of fact, nobody is putting in the work to dial in their pricing. Even the biggest guys. Now, I'm not saying the Yellowstones, but I'm saying the guys doing 5, 10 million, rarely are they even still putting in the work to dial in their pricing. You're like, no, no, no, no, no. Like for sure. Like, no, no, dude, they def. They're not. It's not an opinion. I'm telling you, it's a fact. Because everywhere I go, I talk about this and I ask the pointed questions and it's not calling anybody out. I'm just saying it's a lot easier to probably grow in scale than you might imagine. 80% of its head trash that you're telling yourself a bad story about. What? These guys are all, you know, polished and smooth and got it all figured out. They don't. They have some things figured out, but probably not the pricing side of the business. Okay? Now the biggest guy is doing 10 million plus. They do have a proof of concept. They do know their numbers, and that's why they're big, that's why they're lean, that's why they're making money, and that's why they're excited about growing and scaling. Because once you have a proof of concept, hopefully you master it at a million or less. But if you master that thing at 10 million, you double this thing up, those dollar signs turn into little ruby red eyes like a boo from Aladdin. I got kids. That's how I think now. Right? All right, so let's keep it really, really simple. The reason I say get the calculator or email me and I'll get it to you. If I don't have 50 people emailed to me tomorrow, I have failed you because I'm not good enough or not as good as I think about articulating how important this topic is for you to spend some mental math and some time quiet time for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 hours. I have spent 50 plus hours on this topic in the last four to six, eight weeks since January 1st, dialing in my budget, my pricing, my estimates. So if I, the guru, want to spend 50 hours, literally mentally probably 20 or so, bleeding my eyes out on my element account, thinking how important this one single thing is, how important could it probably be to you, Mr. New Guy, or you, Mr. Sub Half Million Guy? Very important. Okay? So if I don't have 50 of you guys emailing me tomorrow saying, hey, I want to calculate if I don't see 20 of them buy, which I don't care if you buy it or not. You know what I'm saying? It's not like that. But then I have failed you because there's no way every single person listening in, there's just no way everybody has listening in, has dialed in their numbers as accurately as this. And I know that because I see it at the big companies. I see it with my friends, I see it with my peers, folks. And that's okay for a season. It's not okay long term. And I want you guys to know how to do this. Now, here's the deal. If you don't have software and you don't have that calculator, I just don't know any other way you're coming up with it, because there's no way everybody's gonna do what I'm sharing with you for the next five minutes. Mental math, freehand. On every site that you're doing, you do. You need a formula, you need a calculator. You need some kind of digital tool to punch in information, to punch it out to you. Garbage in, garbage out. So when a new customer comes up and says, hey, like, okay, residential lawn, 40, 50, 60, 80 bucks. Not that big of a deal. This lawn next to the same lawn. As long as they're not a corner lot, they're about the same time. No big deal. Okay, 70 bucks. And let's just say for argument's sake, 70 bucks is where you exactly need to be. Quick little inside tip. If you're rounding anything off to a zero or a five, you're probably not accurately pricing your lawn. And again, another conversation for another time. That works sub 300,000. It doesn't work three to a million. It definitely doesn't work a million plus because you're guessing. Can't scale a business and guessing. The reason I talk about the calculator or LMN so heavily is because if you don't have a software to gonculate this information for you, I don't know how you're coming up with it. I had a friend of or a peer, you know, on Instagram. Just show me his screenshot the other day of his account. Wasn't an element, you know, software user. And it was 6, you know, 65 this, 295. Is that 1950s this, you know, 85 that. That's okay. Great program, great dude. He's making progress. Kicking ass, like, awesome dude. But it's a glaring, obvious still guess game with his estimate. And that's okay. That's okay, bro. That is okay. Like, I'm not saying I'm the guru. That's got it all figured out. In fact, three years ago, if I would have heard a show like this, I'd been like, dude, I'm solid. Like, that's for the other guy. So I just say, like, humbly, it's probably all of us that can benefit from this conversation today, but let's do this really quick. If for argument's sake, you want to learn how to freehand do this, because God forbid the Internet went out, God forbid you don't have chat GPT. God forbid you had to actually teach this to your team at a team meeting or teach it to somebody on your team, and then they had to go teach it at the team meeting to teach the team how the business works in terms of gross revenue, gross profit, overhead, then net profit, how the business works so we can increase wages and increase bonuses, right? Like this stuff matters. This is stuff that we teach my team right now. And I'm going to continuously teach my team and anybody around me that has ears to hear and hopefully as I do a YouTube video, eyes to see. Okay, let's go really, really simple. You're gonna have to listen to this to a couple of times. Not because it's complicated, but you're driving a plow truck or you're on a lawnmower and you know you're doing the deal. Okay? Now maybe hearing this late night or at the gym, bro, I'm with you. Let's lock in. Okay. Your man hour rate, it's really simply, this is like the. The rate that you're charging out to have your team go out and do the work. It's very simple. This is like the foundational thing. It's what does it cost for you to go produce the work and make money different from revenue per hour? This is your man hour rate. This is your labor hour rate. And this is now. This is labor hour rate. I don't get confused on terms sometimes. It's often called that. But this is your man hour rate to go out and produce the work. So let's do this really quick. Number one is your labor. Let's just say for a really simple argument's sake, it's $25 an hour you're paying a guy. As you might have saw in the YouTube video last fall, that's not what it costs to run a person. There's labor burden and there's overtime factor and there's taxes, and there's unbillable time and aka downtime. So your $25 an hour guy really, really costs about 30 or let's say $35 per hour to run that guy. So you have to originally now know if you're Doing napkin math, what you're paying the guys in the field or yourself, plus your overhead and labor burden. And that right there blows 99% of people out of the water. Because it's like a four step formula or equation to be able to know 25 times 1.2 divided by 0.8 with an overhead factor of 1.5 for anything over 40 hours, based on the amount of hours you're proposing that person for the year, 1680 hours. Boom. What, what number do you come up with? But that is actually how you get there. But let's just say you had $25 an hour for a guy. You had $5, generally speaking, for your labor burden. Now you're at $30 a labor hour for that guy. All right, number two, you have your equipment. Your equipment is very simple. Let's just say you add up all your mowers, your truck, your trailer, you. And that setup is $50,000. Okay? That $50,000 we're going to divide by the number of hours that we're going to bill out for it for its lifetime. So again, let's say it's running for 1,000 hours a summer times five years, it's 5,000 hours. $50,000 for the rig divided by 5,000 hours, $10 an hour to run that piece of equipment or that mowing setup. You can do that without a calculator. I'm just telling you, that's how you get to the equation. Punch it on the chat and it'll help you break this down even further. So we're at $30 an hour for our labor, we're at $10 an hour for our, our equipment. And then the silent killer that nobody ever thinks about is overhead. This is what actually got me the most. This is why you need a good bookkeeper and cycle cpa. And oh, he talks about cycle cpa. A lot of, you know, Caleb, Brady Hallman talk a lot about cycle cpa because you have to know your cogs, you have to know your overhead. It is, it is a critical third or quarter part of this equation. If you don't know, then this is the part where it's going to eat you alive. Because if you don't recover your overhead, where is that cost that you don't expect coming out of the only place that it can profit? And that's why a lot of you guys are like, well, I projected to do a hundred grand and my actual net profit's like 30. And my cash on hand is like 10 grand, right? Like, feel like I'm making Progress. But I'm cash poor. Like, what's going on here, right? Like, trust me, we've all had those conversations. They don't get any easier as you get bigger. But let's say you have a $200,000 business and you have a 20% overhead. I don't know what you can do for napkin math is take all of your costs and expenses from last year. By now, end of February going into March, you should have from your bookkeeper and your CPA a complete return on your taxes and a complete return on your 20, 25 or whatever year books. Let's say you did 200 grand in revenue, you're on yard book, 200 grand on revenue, and you have $40,000 in overhead for your business. Now you can say we're going to take the $40,000 of overhead and we're going to divide, divide it into the 1680 labor hours or work hours that we're going to put into the business this year. That puts you at about $23.80 per hour that you have to recover the $40,000 of overhead, right? So labor, the cost you're paying your guys plus a little mental math about where they might be. It's very hard to do that unless you have payroll, unless you're asking your payroll person, what's our labor burden, what's our tax rates, what's your unemployment insurance number, you know, tax rate, right? Like this is stuff that you actually have to learn and it takes time. Let's just say you're at 30 bucks. Your equipment, how much is your rig divided by how many hours can you work it over that year times a five year window. Plus you also have to, you know, this is why you can't just mental math, this stuff. You could, I, I can propose, you can napkin math, but you need a calculator or a software because how are you going to cost in there with the rig is 50,000, the replacement cost is 80,000, the interest rate, 6%. And you have a, you know, 500 bucks for your insurance or I'm sorry, for your tags and titles and license and $2,100 a year for your insurance. Like this is a massive formula, right? Think about the lift here. Let's just say it's $10 an hour for the rig. So 30 for the labor, 10 for the rig. And if you took that 40 grand into 200,000. I'm sorry, 40 grand of your 200,000 in revenue, 40 grand is overhead and you divide it into an average year of 1680 hours, that's what we put our guys at 1680 hours. Some of you guys, it's 1800. Some of you guys, it'S 2000. You don't turn off. Some of you guys, it't 1200 hours. I don't know, maybe in five months of the year, you get summertime, like Minnesota. I don't know. You know, it's like, it's like light out. You put the boat in the water and summer's over. You already got to take the boat out, right? But let's say, say you, you run 1680 hours, that means you have to recover per hour of your guys running out the door, $23.80. All right? If you add all that up, you're at $61.80 or $63.80, whatever the number is, to run out the door to have your guys producing work. Okay, I'm sorry, $61.80. And then you want to add 15% profit or 10% profit or 20% profit, you have to add an extra five or seven or $10 per hour on top of that rate to now get to your man hour rate, which is, in this example, $71 an hour, which is fine. That's great. Labor, equipment, overhead, net profit. Labor, equipment, overhead, net profit. Let's say it again. Labor, equipment, overhead, net profit. Again, like, I'm not trying to tell you probably anything you don't know, but very simply, each one of those things had four or five different variables to it. And if somebody says, hey, I've got a one and a half acre commercial site, even let's say you do have the measurements on it because you use attentive or whatever, or you use like, you know, Google Maps. And you're measuring it all out and you're like, okay, it's exactly 60,000 square foot. And you know, a little over an acre. And I know generally speaking, a mower does 60,000 square foot, 60 inch mower to 60,000 square foot in an hour. You know, and maybe, you know, for cut, trim, blown edge is all in there too. And it's exactly one hour. Okay, 60,000 square foot property takes one hour. One hour is into one labor hour. That's 71 per for man hour to go out and produce that work. That's gonna make me 15% net. I make $9 or whatever on that site. True net, bada bing, bada boom, I'm good to go. But what happens, like, who's, who's doing that math? Who, who's freehanding, shorthanding. Every site like that in their business, dude. Like, let's just be totally real, right? Like, that's not happening. That's zero out of a hundred people. That's zero out of a thousand people. That's zero out of probably 10,000 people. Nobody's doing it. Fullerton. How big, how important could this really be? It is everything. It is foundationally everything. And here's the deal. As they say, like, if you want to grow and scale past a half a million dollars, like, the hustler has to die, right? Because you have to build a real business with real systems and real processes. And I'm telling you, like, this is me getting my teeth cut, figuring this all out. Because in the beginning, you can just hustle your way to a better margin, right? You can hustle your way with lower overhead because you work out of your mom's house, the lockers, your basement, a garage, a buddy setup, and you just kind of slush it in in his area. No big deal. It doesn't work when you have to start running a business that has these actual costs and you can't roll it over, hide it, fudge it anymore, right? Like if you're in your parents garage with a thousand square foot in their garage or 500 of their thousand square foot garage is your crap. And the parents, you know, you're 19. The parents like, hey, dude, like, we need to get you out of here, dude. Like, we love you, but your shit's got to go. You're not doing yourself a favor by not charging 200 bucks a month for a 10 by 20 storage locker. Part of your company overhead because your price is cheaper. And you're like, oh, I don't have the same overhead as the big guys. That's not how it works. If anything, you're charging less than you could be, and you could have been making that as profit. And stay lean. I'm with you. Keep it on your parents dime. But then, like, you're like, oh, I can undercut the big guys because I don't have the same kind of overhead. You can short term, but then you get the ruby eyes like Abu and Aladdin, and you want to grow. And then you realize you have the same overhead and the same cost as the next guy as Brian's Law maintenance, as a Sam Gamble, as a Troy Clog, as an east Coast. And as Troy Clogg says, we're all selling the same stuff, time and equipment. And you're selling your equipment's time, right? We're all selling time. So I don't know how people Would freehand this. I don't know how you would Napkin math this. Each one of these things has 3, 4, 5 different categories. How do you adjust your budget? Real time napkin math. Right. And I'm, again, I'm, I'm. I'm probably being a jerk and probably being a little bit of a dead horse, but I, I just want to say, like, if you're running yardbook or jobber, that's awesome. That's what I'm literally saying. Like, dude, I want to help you. Please email me about the know your numbers calculator because I don't want to see any prices from anybody listening to my voice. If you send out an invoice and you click send with anything that ends in a 0 or a 5, the ghost of Brian is haunting you. Okay, Like, I don't know what else to say. Like shame. And I'm not saying like shame like you're. You're a bad person. I'm just saying, dude, you know better now. Know better, do better. Get the calculator. Bleed your eyes out. Ask the questions. Hey, man, I don't understand this. Nobody does the first time. Hey man, I worked some numbers and the numbers that's spinning out are ridiculous. And it's saying I'm like at $84aman hour, I was always charging at 50. Is this right? Hey man, this thing says I can make 20% net at $61aman hour. I always thought I had to be at 85. Exactly, exactly. We're going through the. Let me give you a for instance. How does this translate to the field? Well, the more you're accurate on your numbers, the better you can price. Duh. But if, for instance is all the estimates that I'm renewing based on massaging my element account, cleaning up our overhead, making sure nothing's double counted, staying as lean as possible, like sub 24%, keeping our labor as clean and lean as possible. No overtime. Every hour that we have gets produced with something productive. Right? Like everybody's doing something. We're not top heavy on labor right now. Sometimes we are, sometimes we aren't. We were able to take some of our estimates, renewals that I've been doing all week, bleeding my eyes out on and renewing them from year over year. But we renewed it with this year's pricing, this year's budget, this year's overhead, this year's pricing, and cuts that were 285 at 10%. This year they're at 286 at 20%. Or if it was 285 at 10% and now I'm at 260 or 2 52. At 10%. Well, they're already line item is a budget. They spent 12 grand with Brian's Law Maintenance last year on 27 weekly cuts at 290 bucks. Why, why would I go down? So all we're doing is just obviously making more net profit. That is the exact idea. When you hear Corey Ballard saying the Green Grind, you know, I don't care if you grow top line, but I do expect you to grow. And he says, I expect you to clean up your business and have more net profit. Leroy Mains is like, hey, we did like three plus million bucks and you know, some years we didn't make any money and now we're making a lot more money because we're lean and we're having a 15, 18, 20, 25% net profit. Folks, that is so important. Imagine doing a half a million and making 5%, which is what, 25,000 bucks, I don't know. Or doing a half a million and making 20%, which is $125,000. Same work, same hair pulling, same stress. You actually made some money with your business. I will take the latter business. I'll take the one you're making. 20, 25%. Is everybody going to do this? No. Should everybody do this? Yes. Is it so hard to get ahead in this world or get ahead in this industry? Depends. It's not for people that want to put in the work. It's not for people that want to stop treating it like a hobby and start treating it like a business. It's not for people that don't understand that you can't save your way to wealth. Like you will not save your way to a bigger business by cheaping out on a CRM. There's no coupons for Ferraris. There's no coupons for Porsches. There's no coupons for Audis. There's no coupons for Lamborghinis. You don't save your way wealthy. You have to invest and build something. You are not saving $3,000, $3,600 a year on Element Starter by going with Yardbook. Because you not knowing your numbers is costing you $36,000 a year at a quarter million dollar business. Fact, fact, fact, fact. Now, I'm not trying to be a jerk. I'm not here to convince you to use one software or the other. I'm not here to convince you to do anything other than take your own future into your hands and go Spend five or ten hours doing this. It's actually a lot of fun. You'll really enjoy doing it. You'll really be like gamifying it. That's what I've been doing. I was on my link live last Wednesday night with the guys. It's from 9 to 10, dude. We were on till 11:07 talking about all of this. We were talking about numbers, we're talking about skid steers, we're talking about production rates, we're talking about bidding estimates and sites, how we're subcontracting new services and just getting lean. I'm talking about subbing out my mulch where now I can have a 20 to 40% net by not doing a thing but making a phone call other than bidding and earning the work and having somebody else do it. A completely different approach to my business model the same time last year, which has now begged the question, what do I do with a $50,000 loader that I don't personally need because I don't personally plan to self perform any mulch anymore. By the way, The Bobcat SAL L28 is for sale. I don't have a number on it yet, but that's going to be going up on the marketplace by next week and it doesn't mean that we're not going to utilize the machine. I'm probably going to either downgrade to a 10 gram forklift or just go all the way in for a $75,000 T66. Anyway, another question for another time. Like this is the stuff that it unlocks. It helps you to get rid of these roadblocks, these friction points, these bottlenecks, these I don't know what I'm doing moments, these, man, I didn't make any money last year moments like, hey, like, how can all these other people buy nice trucks or buy nice things or go on nice vacations. Here's a quick inside tip. They're making money. Not everyone is broke, okay? Not everybody is hand to mouth. Not everybody's struggling. Not everybody's like, man, I can't afford a new truck. Here's a tip. Some people put $5,000 down on a truck. Some people are putting $20,000 down on a truck. Some people are paying cash for stuff. Some people are paying cash for their shops as they go. Not everything is line of credit. Not everything is leverage. Not everything is man, we need a new machine and we didn't even save any money from burning up this machine's engine. And we need another Bobcat, another lawnmower, not Everybody's just living on debt. Just, I mean, for real. A lot of folks are. And as Dave Ramsey said, we'll see who is when they're, you know, the tide goes out. We'll see who's skinny dipping. But not everybody's broke. There's a lot of people that are running $2 million businesses at 15% and taking home $300,000 in a $80,000 owner salary. That's a good business. I can't wait to profit share a quarter million bucks with, you know, a team of 20 or 30 guys and everybody gets 5, 7, $8,000 of profit. How much profit do you really need to take home? You pay me a quarter million bucks a year, I can live on that for the rest of my life, right? Like it's not a big deal. What, what I, what do I want to do? Get my guys bonuses bigger? Get my guys flat rate, net salaries better? You do this by locking in. You do this by making the investment. And by the way, once you learn it, you know it. Once you fix your element account, you know it. It's not like a arduous process where you have to do this forever. Now I'm a psychopath and I enjoy getting more lost in the weeds. By the way, go ask Mike Bedell, go ask Mike Bedell how I was with pricing or my books 8 years ago in 2018, non existent. No bookkeeping to speak of, no great accounting, CPA work to speak of. No software really to speak of. I was on square when I met Bedell. Square. I didn't know element. I didn't know of a yard book. I didn't know of a jobber. I didn't know of anything. I was using a notepad or, I'm sorry, a netbook, a Dell or whatever gateway, you know, netbook with a Excel slash numbers type program. None of this, none of this was what I was doing. If you're 18 and doing this and you're like, man, I don't understand it. And you, God, God bless you, you don't understand it until you're 25. You still beat me by five to seven years before I knew what I was doing. Now I know 18 year olds that are emailing me left and right, that are bleeding their eyes out, dialing this in, and it's unlocking work and opportunity that you couldn't even imagine. That is what makes me feel good. So I'm not here to drag a thousand over the finish line. I'm not here to drag 100 over the finish line. I'm here to run with one or two. If you want to put in the investment, I will answer your email. If you want to put in the investment and you want to put in the hard work and you want to fix your business like I have been, then, bro, let's lock arms and let's do this thing. But do not come complain to me when you're like, I don't have any money or I don't have any, you know, cash to put down or I'm bleeding out of my eyeballs because I'm in, in debt and in bondage and, you know, and I'm just struggling. I was there. Not a single person helped me get out of that crapshoot besides myself. I learned from a couple of people, a couple of things along the way for sure, but I still had to stop digging and start backfilling and start figuring out this crap on my own. Okay? It is a personal responsibility. No one's going to solve the pricing portion part of your business problem for you. There's, of course more to learn with sales. There's of course more to learn with operations. There's of course more to learn with HR and people management. There's of course more to learn with finance, finances. But if you don't master revenue and pricing and profit, really, there's nothing else to build your business on because you can't afford the rest. So in terms of like, what are we doing here? It's this. All right, simple math. Labor hours. Your real labor burden is probably another five or seven dollars. Start there, and then from there you have your labor hour rate. It's probably 30 or 32 or 35 bucks. From there, take your total equipment cost divided by how many hours you project to work it in the field. Let's just say 1600 hours. You're going to find that your $50,000 rig divided by 5000 working hours is another $9 or $10 an hour to keep that thing moving. In the simple math equation, you got 100 grand rig going down the road with your Isuzu and two Vertexes and it's 100 grand and some hand tools. All right, then it's 20 bucks an hour, 30 plus 10 is 40. You get your overhead, 40 grand worth of overhead into a business of 200,000 sub 25%. Pretty good. And you're putting that into that same, you know, 16, 80 labor hours or the thousand equipment hours, depending on what numbers you want to divide into if you're design, build or labor. Right. That's going to add another $23 to that number and you want to make another 10% net. In this example you're at whatever it was 61 plus 7 more. You're at $67aman hour. Very simple napkin math. From there you take it to your production rates and how you get your square footage. That's attentive, that's beam. We've promoted them, we talked about them. We're gonna have a webinar here at the end of March. Promo code Brian. 50 saves you half on that membership. By the way, that's the pro plan. It's private that they're not promoting that anymore. They have the enterprise plan. It's like $4,000. I told them nobody's gonna be buying that at my size business. I mean anybody sub 10 million is not doing a thousand plus takeoff acres per year. So they will give you the 299 plan. Ask for the 299 plan. It's half off for 149 bucks. And you pay per takeoff. You pay 10 to 50 bucks a takeoff. I've done 10 takeoffs in the last week. It's an investment into your business. I have those takeoffs for life. From there we get our measurements. From there we have some production rates. Ask chat for you to help you with some production rates. How many linear feet can a guy do? How many of stick edging? How many linear feet for hard edging? How many linear feet can a guy blow per per hour? How many square foot can a mower mow? By the way, it's not the rates that they put in the fricking catalog. Exmark. I can mow 6.2 acres per hour with an ex mark laser Z, you will mow one real life acre per hour unless you have a five acre park. Okay, like jumping on curbs and turning the blades on and off and stopping to pick up trash. Right? Like real world application stuff. This is where you have to become a business owner and spend a year or two putting in this work to build the foundation. Once you know how long it takes you, you know how long your equipment can get that job or how quickly that equipment can get the job done. Let's say it takes you an hour to do a site or two hours to do a site. Two hours times your $71 means you're having a hundred and forty two dollar whatever it is, weekly cut price. That's it. That's just mowing. And there's like five other more formulas to learn as you do cleanups, mulch, fert irrigation, pruning and then some Fullerton. This sounds a little hard. No, no, it's not. And as the old saying goes, it's just hard enough for those that don't deserve it to not get it. And it's just easy enough for those that want to put in the work to get it where it's available. That's it, man. That's all I'm gonna leave with you guys today. I don't want to add anything because I don't want to confuse. It's very, very simple. If you don't have a calculator or a formula or a chart or an Excel spreadsheet or somebody's dang budget or number tool that you can buy online, there's a bunch floating around these days because I made them. And now everybody's selling and hawking something in some fricking Facebook group or some goofy ass Facebook page or Instagram page that have no credibility because I know who owns all those and they have no credibility. Talking about what they're talking about. Fact. It's unreal. But hey, man, digital products, make some money online. Be a social media influencer, be a guru. If you hook your caboose to that stuff, you get what you deserve. God bless you. I don't think there's anybody here listening to that kind of nonsense. But just because it's out there doesn't mean it's accurate. And just because it's free doesn't mean it's good. If you can't afford it, I will legitimately give it to you, I swear to God. Like, we've given away 50 plus of these people. I'm giving away one or two calculators a day right now. And we're also selling one or two a day. So thank you obviously in advance for the support. If you guys do want to reciprocate and check it out. If you ever have questions on this, please ask. Shoot me an email. Hey, Brian, I got this site. What do you think? I'll do my best to take a look at it. I can't do a total bid for you. It's going to take an hour or two to figure that out. Hence why we got the commercial bidding made. Simple training program where I will give you takeoff. It's pay to play, right? But man, if you got questions or DMs or emails or whatever, or Facebook messengers, shoot me a message, dude. I will do my best to help you out. Be patient with me. I got a lot of, a lot of input. It's only One me putting it all back out, you know, if you will. But man, I want to help you guys out and I want to make sure that we're all making some money this year. That's where I will leave you guys today. I love you guys. I'm charged up. I'm having a great day. I'm, I'm excited, man. I'm bullish about life and I know we're all going to make some money and man, this just translates to more choices, more options, more freedom, less hassles, less worries, more family time, more of us paying cash for things. Organic food, trips to Disney vacations, your wife staying at home. You've been able to put some money in the church till you've been able to finally tithe whatever your thing is. We all need more margin and more profit to do those things and that's what I'm here to help you guys do. Love you guys. Have a great day. We'll catch up with you here on Monday. Hey, what's up guys? Brian here and I've got something brand new to help you level up your lawn and landscaping business. If you guys have ever struggled to figure out how to bid commercial work, like really bid it with confidence, then you got to check out our brand new commercial bidding program now available@launchpreneuracademy.com inside you'll get our know your numbers calculator, a full snow takeoff and bid, a lawn takeoff and bid, and even see a live webinar replay where we walk you through through the mindset about how to be successful with commercial bidding and how to crack the code to finally get your proposals accepted. Not only we get access to the webinar, the two takeoffs and how we actually price and bid inside element, of course, the webinar replay, you'll also get access to one takeoff with yours truly. I'm going to help you bid quote and price these sites that you guys have. So if you're in a residential mowing business, kind of a setup, and maybe you get your first commercial bid across your desk and you don't know what to do, we're going to give you one free takeoff, we're going to price it together and, and I'm going to share my notes with you and we're going to email exchange back and forth to make sure that you get that commercial bid. Check it all out today, guys. Stop guessing and stop leaving money on the table and start winning these big jobs. Check it out today at launchpreneuracademy.com under the store section with the commercial bidding program and let's grow that business big together. Bid is good for one takeoff, lawn or snow. Attentive price takeoff capped at $75. More expensive takeoffs will require a supplementary invoice. These takeoffs and estimates are designed for commercial sites 1 to 5 acres in size for lawn mowing or snow removal
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B
thanks for taking time to listen to the Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast with Bryan Fullerton. We hope you enjoyed this production. If so, please consider leaving us a five star review for the show. While the techniques and ideas presented here are designed to help you grow a more successful and profitable business, no one can guarantee these results for you. We want to emphasize that entrepreneurship is not easy and the ideas presented here are just the opinions of Brian Fullerton and his respective guests. No one can guarantee success for you. That being said, we hope the ideas presented here help you and motivate you to go on out there and crush it with your own business.
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A
Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast thanks for listening and
- [44:06]
B
we hope to see you on the next episode.
- [44:09]
C
This has been a Brian Fullerton and Mr. Producer production.