← Fullerton Unfiltered
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Ever feel like measuring properties and building quotes eats up way more time than it should? Brian Fullerton has been there. As your business grows, those hours spent measuring and estimating can quietly turn into a real bottleneck. That's why Brian has partnered with Attentive AI to show you how he's actually using their technology inside his business. This isn't a demo and it's not a sales pitch. It's a real behind the scenes look at how he moves faster with estimates and proposals. Because the right tools don't replace your experience, they give you back your and help you scale without the friction. Join us Saturday, March 28th at 8am Eastern. The link to register is in the show description.
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You're now listening to the Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast. Straightforward, no nonsense business advice. Completely unfiltered. 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. Well first off, feels good to be back on the podcast. Apologies for not making it on Wednesday show. I heard Jeremiah Jennings carried the the team, carried the banner and carried the flag and did a podcast for you guys on Wednesday talking about employee hiring, building out some great systems and processes and just talking to you guys a little bit more about where he's at both with his business, their life and everything that they got going on. Always appreciate Jeremiah's ability to carry the show. Last week, Wednesday we actually flew back from Florida and we're down there for 10 days having a great time. First couple of days we were down there getting ready to go to the leanscaper operations intensive and we actually flew down on Sunday. We rented an Airbnb for the week, did a little family vacation, went to leanscaper for two days which was incredible. More on that later. And then we spent the next couple of days in Cape Coral just at the Airbnb that had a pool at the house and then we went up to Orlando and we did a day at Disney and a day at Epcot. We're not balling out of control where I could stay there for three days or a week, we're not that good. But we did able to spend some time and were able to spend some time up there and it was a lot of fun. A lot of fun. And long story short, it's been a very fun 10 days. Very productive 10 days believe it or not. And I'm trying to get better at this in life. I'm not at the point where I could just turn everything off and totally unplug and totally just, you know, sing Kumbaya and watch, you know, the, the sunsets and ghost kite surfing and not have a care in the world. Hardly the case. We've got a lot of moving plates, a lot of businesses, a lot of things that were still maturing that still require a lot of my hand in, including content scheduling, quotes and bids that are going out the door and keeping the lawn care company moving and grooving as we go into what we hope to be the biggest bull run and rush for us in any recent memory. We were doing some quotes late nights. You know, we get back from Disney and no joke about 11 o' clock at night, your boys over here zipping off some quotes and estimates late night. My VA is like right there. She's basically like chomping at the bit. She wants to do them all. And she was, she was importing CRM information, sent out, gosh, probably 75 reminders to both residential and commercial sites. Just massaged a bunch of conversations. I gave her a list, she was able to do that. Me, 10 minutes on the front end, gave her an extra hour or two on the back end and she was, she was kicking. But, but starting like April 1st, now that I'm back in town and can finally land the plane, and a few more things this next week, we're going to basically give her full reign to do everything from a, you know, new submission form, qualifying the lead, all communication, build out the conversation back and forth via email, order takeoff, import into the CRM and then take the attentive takeoff and measurements, put it into an element estimate, build it out, and then I'm going to look at that review. It's. And then we'll both send it off together. So she'll be pretty autonomous as it comes to the bidding process for our business, which is really, really exciting. So, you know, again, long story short, a busy 10 days down in Florida and do my best to keep the machine moving even while I was on vacation. But I'll tell you what, man, like during the day, you know, 8:00am to 8:00pm, 9:00pm absolutely. Was able to kind of chill out a little bit, unplug couple phone calls here and there, you know how it goes. A couple emails, couple dms, you guys know that the phone never stops, especially this time of the year. But it was really recharging and really exciting and it was way overdue because we haven't had A family vacation in, you know, well over a year. We came in hot building the house last, you know, two years. And I just wanted to put some money back in the bank accounts for both businesses, you know, in our life. I didn't want to spend any crazy amounts of money. They didn't want to go drop five, ten grand on, you know, going to Florida and Disney. But we did have a good winter. We did have a good last couple of months. So I'm like, hey, now's the time. Let's book it up and let's go hang out a little bit. Since we're already there at Cape Coral, already making the investment to get on down there, then why not spend some time together as a family? What I wanted to do is just talk to you guys for a couple of minutes here. Something that's super relevant, I think, and very practical for so many of you guys listening in is talking about the bidding and estimating process, and I wanted to approach it in a little different way today. Two oars in the water when it comes to our bidding process. One is for sure the pricing, you know, component. The other is the scope of work. And I wanted to talk about scope for just a couple of quick minutes. I've got a lot I want to share in a short amount of time, so I'll try to keep it short and sweet. But it's been a really critical part of the conversation for about 15 or 20 quotes that I've built out over this last week. And I'm in the thick of it just like so many of you guys. And I feel like we're in the thick of it just as much or more as anybody that's doing it. We are really trying to grow in double maintenance this year, and so I want to share some practical things with you guys that might help you out with what's working and in a way, like what's illuminating, what isn't working for us and any quick pivots we've had to make this last week or two. Before we jump into it, I do have to tell you guys, there's a lot going on. You know, there always is. I mean, everything's moving and grooving, graduating. A lot of things are evolving for so many of us. Just last night, Wednesday or two nights ago, on Wednesday night, we had Marty Grund around for Link live. There was 45 or so people that came and hung out with us that evening. What an awesome time. Just an awesome dude. Marty was dropping, you know, some swear words and some funny analogies and dude, he's, he's a real dude. Like once you get past the, the stage, Marty Grunder, he was, he was a really cool dude. He was sharing with us some crazy stories. He had a president come over to his house. Like, the dude's like the man. Like, it was a really fun conversation. If you guys were part of link, you were able to be blessed by that late night. If you didn't catch it live and you're part of Link, you get the replays. Make sure you go back and get them in the virtual office so you guys can download those and listen to them or watch them back late night while you're doing bids and quotes or whatever. That was a really fun time. Coming up next Saturday, we're going to have the attentive webinar in takeoff. And I'm really really. Or webinar about attentives in the takeoffs. And that's going to be on the 28th, so don't miss that. That is going to be, I believe, at 8am if I'm not mistaken. All right, so don't miss that the week of the 28th. So you got about seven or eight days for that free registration link in the bio. I think there's like 30 or 40 of you guys already registered for that, which is really, really cool. I know there's like site recon and Deep Lawn and a bunch of great services out there. Look, honest answer, I don't super get carried away with like which one you use. Just use something to help you bid. Use software in general when you guys are bidding your quotes and estimates, landscaping, design, build or maintenance. Like just use some type of software to help you guys with accurately pricing your information and your numbers. Right? I, I think that's the most critical thing that you can do in your business as you guys continue to, you know, mature into a real company, you know, doing north of a quarter million dollars in work. Until then, use Yardbook and Jobber. Fantastic. But again, type of any type of software that's going to help you to stay organized and systematized. Your bidding and estimating process is a, is a prerequisite for growth, in my opinion. Well, one of the ways that we're doing that is with lmn, of course, which by the way, promo code Brian still saves you guys 10 if you do want to sign up. I actually had a couple people recently, just the gentleman, just literally yesterday, ask if we had an active code. And I said, yeah, like you can always use the code Brian and save you 10. It's not gonna be as aggressive as, like the fall, winter, whatever, whatever you call it. Like, sign up season offers that the mothership offers. We get like, you know, four months free and all this discounted stuff. But if you are just coming on board or you're like, look, I do need to make a switch or I do need to upgrade promo code. Brian will save you 10, like, kind of as an evergreen catch all code. So reach out to me. I'll get you in touch with our sales guy. He does all of our demos. He's an incredible dude. Troy Woodham. A lot of you guys know Troy. Uh, but we're always here for in that regard. Uh, but the other side of the software, you know, streamlining and consistency conversations with attentive. So don't miss the attentive webinar. Uh, I couldn't bang out 20 quotes while on the road. You know, 10 minutes a quote, 15 minutes a quote, if I didn't have something like attentive. Honestly, like, I, I just don't know how I was running my business without this stuff. It was like, fullerton, you've changed. And like, you know, this has changed and that's changed. Dude, everything has changed the last 18 months. And, and I, I, I'm willing to admit it, Like, I'm willing to say, like, man, we just didn't know what we didn't know. I've heard other people talking about certain services or products or companies or businesses, and I'm like, yeah, for sure. But, dude, we got it, like, figured out. Like, I think, I don't think there's any pride or what's the best way to say this? I don't think there's any shame in saying that you're changing and making a pivot and you want to do something different, right? Like, we should all be admitting, I guess, in some way at least. Myself, I'll, I'll just talk about me. We should be able to admit in some way, shape or form. Dude, we don't have it all figured out. Wow. Shocker, you know, and if I did, I probably have, you know, eight or nine figures in my bank account, have an eight or nine figure business, and, you know, have, you know, eight or nine different homes across the eastern seaboard and, you know, whatever. Right? You know what I mean? So shocker, your boy doesn't have it all figured out. Now, I will tell you this. Learning what we've Learned the last 12, 18 months, it's. It's getting a lot gooder and gooder for sure. And I Owe a lot of that to LMN and then also the attentive conversation. So free demo on our webinar on the 28th I think it is at 8am link in the bio. Don't forget to register for that or register and then if you can't make it, just watch the replay later. They'll have a our code. Brian. 50 saves you a half on the membership and then you just pay a la carte if you just go into the front door. The only program they offer now just a little inside baseball is the enterprise plan and it's like 3,000 bucks. We're the only ones that they offer the 300 upfront. Sign up and then you pay per takeoff. And so like I said, I've probably bid in quote 20 plus commercial buildings in the last two weeks. My tenant build this month is going to be you know, 10 to 30 per site. Don't even care. You know, we're making the investment a couple hundred bucks to bid out probably two, I'd say 150 to $200,000 with, excuse me, with a maintenance work that's going to easily double into that much snow work. Right. And so you know, what is it? 400 bucks and maybe, maybe I spent 400 bucks this month a la carte in my takeoffs to bid a quarter million dollars worth of work. I mean, give me a break, okay. Like beyond worth the investment. So anyway, that's going to be on the 28th. Don't miss that. The other big one and I will talk more about this on its own show next week. We're gonna have the pre launch of the SOP bundle and stick with me for just another five or so minutes, guys. I gotcha. We'll talk about scope in just a quick second for bidding and estimating. But the SOP bundle is going to be available for pre buy at the discounted rate. And there'll be a bunch of promo codes. We'll be talking about some on air. Some of you guys will get emailed some, some of you guys in part a link. We'll see the link promo code. We're, we're doing our best that the more, the more that you've invested into LaunchPreneur Academy, the bigger the discount that we're going to give you along the way. If you got the whole ball of wax, you will be exceedingly blessed. If you got the link annual membership, you're going to get a great promo and offer there. It's going to be very. What's the best way to Say it like, proportional to the investment you've already made. We want to take care of the people who've basically taken care of us. Right. Like, and vice versa. So the bundle is going to Pre launch for 1500 bucks. 14.99 is the number we decided on, and then that is the pre buy. Once it goes live about three or four weeks later, mid to late April, you'll get access to all the content. And so what we're doing is we're offering a pre buy. We've never done that before. We've never, like, launched a product that just rolls stuff out. And I'm not like, here to sell courses and be an online guru with any of this crap. I want to take care of the people that have take care of us. I want to bless the folks that want to go all in and they want to continue to graduate and they need more resources to do it. And anybody who wants to take advantage of it, fantastic. If you don't, absolutely no big deal. No hard pitch, no hard sell. I will just tell you this is a crazy opportunity to get it for the 1499, because April 25th or whatever the date is, and I will say it'll be by the end of April. We won't drag that out. But once it does go live, the price is going to change instantly to the $2,500 mark, if not more, because this bundle will have everything that we have right now currently to date for brands on maintenance and lifetime updates and upgrades. For two or three big areas of this bundle, the one is the infield training videos, the other one is the In Office admin training videos and then the documented SOPs for the office. Okay, so there's no like documented SOPs for the field. They'll just be training videos. But then the idea is if you hire a VA, like Ninja VA promo code Brian100, I think it is. Well, we'll have a great guest on here in the near future about that because as you guys are getting VAs and the SOP bundle for your VA, I was like, well, everybody probably needs a VA, so we're going to have Ninja VA on before you know it, which is who we've been using. They've been fantastic. If you need a code, like I said, DM me, reach out. I'll get you in touch with our girl Rebecca. But we just, we want to literally give you guys the tools and resources to grow and scale your business. And I don't care if you're doing 100 grand, 300 grand, or you know, 202 million. Like literally, if you struggle with systematizing, documenting SOPs want to hire like we are going to help you do it because that's what our company is doing. And by the way, every single resource that I do and build and create and use in brands on maintenance will make it into this bundle indefinitely. Mark my words. If I off ramp and sell at 3 million, everything I did and made up until that point will be in that bundle. If we go to 10 million, everything we've done, made and built will be in that bundle. And you can use every single part of it, as little, as much as you want in that bundle until kingdom comes. Okay, so that is really, really exciting. And again, that thing is going to launch. It's going to be a living bundle, a living program. We're going to Launch with like 50 infield training videos, another dozen or so office admin style training videos. A lot of it's going to be focused on newsletters, mailchimp, attentive, lmn, Google Drive. Okay. So like that's the ecosystem that we're using and working with. We'll have some other add ons in the future, but all of that is coming and then again we're going to Launch big time April 25 or so, end of April and then for the rest of summer we're going to put a Google Doc in there. Anything you guys want to see added, built or made, I will be very attentive to that for the first, you know, 60 to 90 days to build out a whole host of everything and anything else that you guys need and want that might be missing, quote unquote. As we continue to build more training videos, both office admin and field videos. Okay, Like I'm here, here to work with you guys. We're going to blow this thing up and then the idea is you can use it all in your Google Drive. You guys can put it in Lana with leanscaper, you can put it into. Oh, what else? Greenus with lmm. Right? Like anything you guys want to do and use and take it with you, it's going to be all these resources available to you in that fashion. I didn't want to just build it out in greenius or just build it out on this one platform because if you guys are using Yardbook or Jobber or synced up and you do want the SOPs, we don't want them to just make them native to one platform. All right? So they're all going to be accessible to you in your launchpreneur Academy account and then you can download them and take them with you everywhere you go. Does that make sense? It's going to be huge. I'm telling you, like, I'm very, very excited about it. We're putting a gigantic amount of work into behind it, not only to give you all the tools and resources, but to organize them in such a way that they're easy to find, easy to use, and you can start using anything and everything on day one. All right, that's my commitment to you. But pre launches are going to be next week, Wednesday or so. Look for it on the podcast, look for it on Instagram, we'll let you know. And then from there we're going to make the content live about 30 days later. All right, let's do this really quick. I'm just going to steamroll right into this. We'll just save some time. Those are my ads and sponsors, if you will today. But what I wanted to talk about was Scope. And this might be a very obvious statement to many of you guys, but some of you guys, it might be, you know, scratching your head, going, well, why am I not earning bids? Or why is somebody else going with another contractor? And we've been talking about it all spring, you know, for the most part. But one thing that I'm finding, and I'm very grateful that I'm having these additional conversations, is what I have been emailing back and forth and calling it massaging or revisiting the quote. And that's really a reference from talking about Scope that we're trying to work on, work through and deliver on. Let me give you a for instance. You got a new submission form that comes through. It's you know, some type of robotics company, locally manufacturing plant. They say, yeah, we'd be, you know, interested in a quote for lawn maintenance. You say, I'm excited. We've already talked about this on another show recently, so I'm not going to belay the point. But you know. Oh yeah, like we're excited too. And you just throw up on them, right? And you're like 27 weekly mo's and you know, 15 different services and the contract's 12 grand. Okay, we've already talked about that. Come in with a low entry base and then backfill with some add on services. Well, that, that is the plan, by the way. That is what's working. What I want to talk about specifically and just draw some more like granular attention to is the ability to keep the conversation alive and make sure that we're going Back and forth, apples and apples and comparing scope. And that is the other half of the equation besides price. You gotta be price competitive. And thankfully, I know through a lot of digging and through a lot of comparing and through a lot of, hey, you mind seeing if I can get the other guy's quote so I can compare apples to apples here? And just schmoozing a little bit. And I've been able to receive quite a few contracts over the years from a lot of different competitors. All of my local competitors, right? I know what software they're using. I know how they're framing their contracts. I know what their weekly price is. I can get down to the, you know, square foot. It's actually really exciting. I just got off, I mean, literally the whole last two days that I've been back from Florida. I've done another seven or so quotes. I did another 10 or 12 while I was on the road. Like, it is go mode because two weeks ago, the guys passed out 250 packets. And holy crap, did that work. I don't if I really give the update on that, but we had about 15 or so new commercial sites reach out, which is a dream come true. And I'm like, dude, doesn't even matter if I get one site. 250 plus. Local businesses now know we exist. All right? Like, that's step one. And they're going to get that spring and fall, spring and fall, spring and fall, in summer, right? Summer, spring, fall, spring, salt, summer, fall, for the rest of their. Their lives. All right? And we were just going to turn over rocks and earn new work. Well, I'm noticing our pricing is getting very, very competitive to what the other guys are offering. Sometimes I'm a little high on 20%, you know, net margin for mowing. I can always shave that down a little bit. As long as I'm willing to give away some margin, maybe build some route density, or if I have to massage or revisit that quote, kind of cut a little bit, give away a little bit of margin in the mowing. Seems to usually do the trick where we kind of get into where we need to be in, and then again we make it up on the rest of the services. And really the idea is get the lawn to get the snow and salt. Okay? So we'll make it up with 50 to 70 gross work and 30, 40 network with snow and salt. Who cares about 10 mowing? All right? We're just keeping the guys busy for another five months. Just kidding, but sort of, you know, we're still here to make money mowing. But you guys know what I'm trying to say. Well, let me just say this. Comparing quotes back and forth on scope, like, what we're here to do is probably going to be, I don't know, man. It's an interesting conversation. I don't know if it's 50, 50 compared to, like, what's more important, price or scope, but either one can torpedo you very quickly on your estimate. And so as you guys are getting these quotes back, as I've shared on multiple podcasts recently, make sure you're comparing apples to apples, what they're currently getting to what you're offering. And don't fly blind and say, hey, Lori, here's the contract. I just wanted to let you know we bid it with our normal commercial program. Hopefully, like, we've already communicated what that is and they've opted in or opted out for whatever we've offered. You can say, here's what we have the 27 weeks of mowing, spring and fall cleanup, 14 rounds of fertilizer, not fertilizer, weed control. And here's the extra services with mulch, irrigation, pruning mulch. If I didn't say that, you know, whatever, right? And they're all priced a la carte. Well, you, it's likely that you're going to take one or two more emails or three or four more emails in another one or two versions of that quote to actually land what they need for scope. Even if you've already asked preliminary qualifying questions and with your preliminary pricing, does that make sense? And so, for example, recent example, just a, a second ago, the lady emailed me back, scanned the other company's contract, whited out everything, which is fine. Obviously they're using lmn, which is fine because they're the local big fish. They're doing 20 million. It's funny, like, all the big guys are using element. Just a little, little plug there for lmn and it's all blocked. You know, whited out all the visit price. I see some of the seasonal pricing on some of them, but I know, like, where we're at. We're at like where they're at. And, but I'll just tell you, like, they offered two fall cleanups, like five rounds of vegetation control. They did not list mulch. We did list mulch. They did 13 bi weekly bed visits, we did 14 for weeding, we did 27 cuts, they did 26. And so like they did four rounds of fur, we did five. And I'm like, that's so Funny. So she emailed me back and said, hey, could you quote apples to apples with the services and the scope that these guys are? And let's just say my number was, you know, 9,000 bucks. And I don't know their number, but let's just say our number was 9,000 bucks. If I take out one round of fert, one bed visit, one weekly mo, let's say it's a 200 weekly mo, and, you know, it's a 300 fert app or 200 fert app, 50 bucks to pull some weeds and, you know, vegetation control, which is always funny to me. You know, we might shave 400 to 600 off of that quote. And again, most of us, most of you guys aren't losing anything because you're, you know, double the price. It's just that somebody else had a quote for 7,100, and you came in at 76. And I've talked about this endlessly, but, man, it is very, very real to me that the other companies are shaving or not being transparent or they're. Or we're overbidding, whatever way you want to call it, right? Like, who cares about. Let's not get technical or legal, legalistic on what's working, what's not working. All I know is I need to make freaking sales right at a profitable number. And so I hope this really helps you guys as you continue to go through your bidding process, not only for spring, but obviously for anything else that we're doing over time and just being very, very granular with what we're bidding on and being a tremendous resource and a transparent resource for who you're working with. Because imagine this property manager, it's like the lesser of two known evils, or one's a known evil, one's an unknown, and they know at least what the other guy is offering. And if it's been a good program and there's not really any reason to, you know, leave, then you have to be a little bit more convincing. And that's fine. That happens all the time. There's a lot of great long care companies out there. But if you can add value and be a resource and be transparent and say, yeah, I don't know why you're paying for two fall cleanups, unless you guys specifically want that. What I like to do is bid it for one, which is what we typically offer, and then I can break it out as a line item a la carte. If you guys decide you want a second fall cleanup and you can opt in at any time, we did quote for five rounds of fertilizer. A little bit more of a stickler on that just because we want to guarantee results with a weed free and a lush green lawn. So we're doing five rounds instead of four. By the way, industry best practices is five. We are able to shave down to 13, you know, bi weekly bed visits. That's no problem there. That'll save us some money and continue to keep us more competitive and on budget for you. What else was there? Let's see. Oh, and mulch. I said they didn't quote for mulch. I'm not sure if they try to upsell you that mid season, which is typical and usually at a premium, but we do include our transparent pricing in the spring and this is our number. That's good all summer. What I do is I take that, throw that in the chat GPT and say chat, make this cleaner, more concise and warmer. Chat spits it back and says what I just said. With a little bit more people skills, a little less abrasive, a little bit more charming, a little bit more warming, right? Like that's you. You can't have AI, you know, exclusively land these sales and build your business. That's, that's not what we're trying to say. I don't think anybody's trying to say that, but everybody's like, well I don't use a tent or I don't use a chat GPT or cloud. Like no problem dude, but this is how you use it correctly is all I'm trying to say, right? So then I throw in the chat. Chat kicks it back, I kick it back over, take out the dashes, add a little bit of my voice and then full send. Now we're still in the ring, right? Like we're still in the running. So it's not just price. Like we're pretty dialed in on price if you're not dialed in on price. Element. Element. Element. If you're not sure I'm total price because you don't have accurate measurements. Attentive. Attentive. Attentive or deep site or site recon or deep learn or site recon. Right? Like I don't know any other way to tell you how to bid this stuff. Like this is what every one of the big guys do in some way shape or form. It's aspiring, you know, site recon or element and you know, attentive, like pick your things. I don't, I don't care. But I'm just telling you, like this is how you do it. From there, another practical example, I'm bidding on another commercial site. And I'll wrap up with this. I'm bidding on another commercial site and the lady gave me the six services or whatever it was that the other company's doing. We matched it. Then she goes, hey, admittedly you're a little more expensive than the last guy. Could you take a look at this? And transparently, I'll give you what we're paying for a mo price. And it was like 100 bucks. And the other things were included, including a 10 yards of mulch. Well, I emailed her back and I said, let me work on it, let me see what I can do. So I go back in, there's no way I can touch the lawn. I put it down to a 10% margin. We're at like 157, by the way. No professional that's using software is going to end in a whole number with a 0 or a 5. Statistically unlikely. It's going to be 101.23. So I already know I'm bidding against somebody who doesn't know what they're doing. It's not an indictment, that's not being mean. That could have been me three years ago. But it is a fact. That guy does not know his number. So he's like, it's a hundred dollar weekly mo. I go, there's no way. It's a pretty medium sized site, $157 weekly mo in like 157, 23 or whatever it was, and 10 yards of mulch. Why? I did my attentive measurements, I did my Google street view to confirm. There ain't no beds other than the big long narrow bed up front of the doors. It's a two, maybe three yard mulch job. Literally, you know, commercial entrance, like a commercial building. I'm like, there's no mulch here. I'm like, well, optics wise, if I said, yeah, we're gonna throw in 10 yards of mulch, part of this quote. Well, no shit. Like you have a hundred dollars at cost at 33 a yard, okay? Like, you know, installed you at 210 bucks. But no wonder, optics wise, it looks like this guy's, you know, hooking them up while he's quoting, you know, a pseudo $1200 line item for mulch that cost him 200. But he's coming in at a hundred dollar weekly mo price instead of 157 where he could be or should be or needs to be, plus or minus, right? Like that's crazy. That's Crazy. I hope you guys eat this stuff up. I know, I'm such a nerd, but like, dude, you have to bug out, you have to crash out, you have to nerd out about this stuff or you will comp, you will, you just will not be competitive. You won't win. It's a dog eat dog world out there with this kind of crap. So what did I do? I said, hey, let's just say her name is Laurie as well. I say, hey Laurie, like, appreciate the conversation. Here's the macro. I don't know how the other guy came up with the weekly mo price. I shave some margin. We did our best to be competitive. I'm at 157. You'll see it reflected in the contract price that's attached and what just got sent to you via portal from Element, our software. By the way, I don't know anybody who sends a mo quote with a whole number, which is leading me to believe that he's guessing on the price. Now again, that's a pretty aggressive price. So congrats to you guys, you know, as a customer. Hey, like that sounds more enticing for sure. But the reality is I'm not sure how he came up with that number because there's no way I can unfortunately touch that. But I do want to be transparent with you, is that when you look at our contract total and she did give me the total number, you know, and I gotta, and I'm gonna believe her. It was like 5,900 bucks. And I came back in at 6,200 with my 10% NMO 157 and I quoted with the two and a half yards or I think I rounded up the three yards for mulch. And I said, hey, just so you know, I'm gonna attach to my attentive site takeoff map yours for free, just so you guys have measurements on your site. Value add transparent, trying to earn trust, right? And I said, here's the site map. You can clearly see you guys don't have the mulch beds up front. I've done a Google street view. I don't see any mulch beds or tree rings. I don't know where else he's getting the 10 yard mulch job from. So if he's pseudo quoting that to you, you know, for 800 bucks, 1200 bucks, whatever it is, I, I think you're overpaying in that regard. Or he's subsidizing his weekly mo price for you. And we believe in transparency and transparent pricing. So I just want to Let you know that you might be overpaying for this. Other than that, we have our five rounds of fur versus the other guy had four Again, better wheat free, lush lawn, blah blah blah. We did five rounds instead of four. So when you. And by the way, the other guy didn't have any bed spring, con parking lot or sidewalk crack spraying to take care of the site to have it be weed free. Mine was like a 7 or 800 line item for bed spraying and, and concrete crack, you know, spraying for weeds. He had none of that. So when you look at it, it's like we're, we're. I'm offering like six out of seven things. He's offering six out of six things. My one light item was more expensive than his, but he was fibbing on mulch. Ours had bed spring, he didn't have any. Who's doing that? I don't know. So it wasn't apples to apples. And so whether the 5,900 bucks that she gave me was accurate or not, let's just say it is. It doesn't matter because I'm not bidding apples to apples. This has nothing really to do exclusively about price. Although I'm having a lot of price conversation here. But a lot of it is scope. Like I'm 700. So my first quote, let's say her budget from the other guy's 5,900 and I came in at 7,110. Obviously I'm not going to get it. And most folks aren't super prudent or due diligent to go through every single line item line by line by line to know what they're getting or not getting. And that's why you have to submit a quote and say, hey, here's our first preliminary quote. Let me know if you need me to revisit or massage anything. I'd love to have this be an open discussion. We're hungry for it. We're local family owned business and we love partnering with businesses in our own small town community. Our team, you know, is really enjoying mowing your site, will enjoy mowing your site and we'd be honored to partner with you this spring. Here's your quote attached. You know, feel free to call me or email me if you have any questions or feedback. Looking forward to partnering together. Throw that in the chat, let it spit it back. Work on chats Grammarly because it doesn't have like the best English sometimes that's why you have the Grammarly plugin free. Shout out to them, Massage that language in the Email, attach the quote, send it from lmn. Again, send it from your email because you never want to assume that they got everything from LMN and boom, it's off to the races. Day or so later, lady gets back to you and says, okay, this is more accurate. I'm gonna go and take it to my higher up, whatever, whoever they say that that is and how it works. And now you have a real shot. Now they really are saying, well, the last guy, xyz, good or bad, the new guy, here's what he's offering, and he looks like he's hungry for it. We're about $200 difference or $300 difference, more or less or about the same. And now you actually have a real shot because you're not only competing on price, you're competing on scope, but you're trying to be a value add and also earn and win them over by making sure that you're being very attentive to their needs. It's not just a drive by. You're trying to make sure that you're being very attentive to their needs. Does that make sense? And so, all that being said, I hope this really helps you guys out. I have, out of the 15 or 20 quotes that I've sent in the last week, more than half, I mean, probably two thirds, which is more than half. I have absolutely went back and had a V2 or V3 version 2 or version 3 on this quote. And I'm really proud of that. No more of this dry drive by quoting, hey, you know I'm the best. Of course they're gonna go with me bullshit. Like, you need to act your actively have an engaging conversation and sell yourself. And if you need to obviously go in person or get on the phone or call them up and say, hey, hey, brother. Don't say hey. Hey, it's. It's Brian. Hey, Chris, it's Brian. What's going on, brother? How you doing? Hey, doing good, Brian. What's going on? Hey, trust, all is well. Hey, I know it's a busy day. I know you got a lot of things on your mind. Not here to bother. Just wanted to check in really quick about that long quote. Did you guys happen to come to a decision on that just yet or is there any feedback that you might have on the quote? Honestly, Brian, haven't had a chance to look at it, but I'm gonna make a decision on it next week. Kris, fantastic. Sounds great. Hey, just want to be a resource for you. If you got any questions, let me know, same program as last year, pretty much the same price. I think we might have went up nominally like a point or two, but that was just because of inflation. Other than that, nothing crazy. Same program as last year. If you do have anything, just give me a shout back. Brian, Sounds great. Fantastic. I'll get it signed for you and get it back to you next week. No big deal. The other conversation, like I said. Hey, Lori, sent the quote over. Just want to make sure that we're talking apples. The apples here. Would you mind jumping on the phone for five minutes? If not, I can explain all via email. Throw everything through chat. Short, concise, sweet, warm and charming. That's your prompt. It spits it back. It takes out the redundancies, cleans and polishes it up. Attach your quote, send it and now you have a real chance. Big conversation for me, the last 12 months was price since fall, winter, especially with snow, it's scope. Like what are we actually offering versus what are they actually offering? And that's where I was getting my tail handed to me as it's become way more illuminating. It's not culture, it's not performance, it's not getting the work done. It's not trucks and wraps and vehicles and website like that's all working. Like we're. We're dialed in. Dude, we were not there a year ago. We are definitely down and now. But now we are finalizing being more dialed in and can. Here's the thing, it's an always evolving conversation, especially if you want to earn the work. I'm happy to shave on margin if I can get into a new commercial tech park and park my crew there for two hours, you know, on a Monday and have 30 other businesses and site managers and office managers drive by and see our rigs. Right? Like maybe I will give up 10% of my mowing price to then earn it back on some ridiculously awesome pricing for snow and salt. Right? Like, like that's a real sales process by the way. That's what we're doing. Just so you guys know any site world in another park. My email says PS we were able to work on the margin a little bit and offer you a slightly reduced mowing price since we already have a couple of Jason sites that we're doing in your area and would love to earn some additional business and route density. Whatever, whatever, whatever. So just so you know, like, not only am I giving you my best pricing, but I'm being transparent that we shave some margin to additionally try to earn the work with you all Right. So it's all going great. It's all working. I just wanted to spend a couple of minutes on this because this is what I've been doing nights and weekends in the last two days since I've been back. We have a very aggressive double our maintenance goal, if you will. Right. For 20, 26. And so I have to be really good at this. I have to lock this in. I have to be laser focused. This is a huge priority. This is why at 11 o' clock at night, after walking 27,000 steps, like four or five miles or six miles a day at Disney and everything in between, I get back at 11:30, tuck the kids in their beat. I'm beat. The wife's out, everybody's out, take a shower and open up the laptop. At 11:30 at night, I'm doing quotes. Why? Because we want to grow, hit a million dollar business. We want to double maintenance. I want to take care of my team, give them big raises, and I want to take care of my family. So not only could they have Disney in this spring, but they can have Disney next spring because Daddy did a great job and was able to grow his business and run a very profitable operation. So there. It doesn't matter if it's 11:30 at night or 5:00am Give me a break. So it's like the easiest stuff to do is to take care of a quote at 11:00 clock at night while you're on a Disney trip. Now, in the future, I'll have a couple more people on our team that can manage this kind of stuff. Obviously, that's the goal. And the more I grow a bigger team and people have dedicated roles, the more I can mentally and physically unplug from the business when it does become more family time. Right? But my kids are sound asleep. They're little. They don't know what Daddy's doing at 11 o' clock at night. Daddy's still functional. Daddy's still healthy. We're rocking and rolling. And Daddy's got to do what it takes to make sure that his family can live the best life that I can provide for them. Right? And that's what it's all about. And so I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Apologize. My voice a little bit raspy, picked up a little bit of a cough on the way back. Had some coughing kids on the freaking airplane and definitely caught what the people sitting behind us had. So sorry for. My voice is a little less enthusiastic. Doing my best to muster it up for you guys. Again, big shout out. Thank you to Jeremiah for covering on Wednesday show. Hope you guys enjoyed that. Don't forget to register for the attentive webinar that's on the 28th element and coffee this Saturday 7am can't wait to see you guys there. And SOP bundle's gonna launch next week, Wednesday. Put a note in your calendar if you guys don't mind. And that'll go on sale probably towards the evening about 6pm and look forward to honestly, like I'm going to put my heart and soul into that thing over the next two years like you've never seen. As we continue to grow and document, we're probably going to Launch with about 50 field videos, 10 or 15 office videos, literally 40 to 50 SOP documents. You guys are really, you're, you're not going to know what you don't know. You're not going to know what hit you. You're going to be like holy. I've never thought about any of this or all of this. I will assure you. I, I can't even under what they under promise over deliver. I, I will not ever over promise or under deliver anything in my life. So I just telling you what, get ready like put on the card, get ready to go and you are going to be exceedingly glad that you did for the rest of your business career have that resource. Remember we launched the whole ball of wax kind of like Camp One tier one for $249 and there was three products. One of them was a productivity hacks video which was still great. It's still a fantastic video. I mean it's like an ever. I mean dude, it is a really, really good video. Way over overlooked. The other one was how to start a lawn care business. It's like six courses and how to start a longer business for like 99 bucks. And the other one was a 99 coaching call. That's 249. I'm not saying it wasn't a great value. Obviously like it was a great value. But now there's 64 resources or something like that on Launchpreneur Academy that are part of the whole ball of wax a la carte. It's like five or six thousand dollars. Somebody added it up. Sure. What a freaking hell of a deal. If you scoop that up four or five years ago, there will be a time probably in the next three or four or five years when the SOP bundle, whatever the hell we call it, is going to be a probably a $10,000 program and it'll still be a hell of a deal. For anybody who's doing, you know, 1.4 million, wants to systematize the snot out of their business, give it to a couple of brass on their team and fix their freaking business. Or they're doing 3 million because that's what it will be designed for. And it'll be ten grand. It'll still be a hell of a deal. And you'll be able to look back smugly and say, hey, I was one of the earlier adopters and got it for, you know, 1500 bucks or thousand bucks if you got a good code that's flown around. Right? One of those deals. So don't sleep on it, don't gloss over it. You'll have 30 days to take advantage of that and then that price is going to pretty much double once we publish it and all the content with it at the end of April. All right, that's what I got for you guys. No hard pitch, no hard sell. Just want to let you guys know what we got working on and things are working, man. We're moving and grooving. We're ready to rock and roll and we're ready to make this spring rush our best one ever. All right, overnight guys. Have a great day. Have a great weekend. Love you, appreciate you. We'll catch you on the rebound. Bye now.
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C
Are you ready to grow your lawn care or landscaping business? At lawntrepreneur Academy, you'll learn real world strategies to start, grow and scale a successful lawn care company from industry leader Brian Fullerton. Inside the academy, you'll find training, resources and a powerful community of lawn care professionals all working toward the same goal, building better businesses. Join link and get access to weekly webinars, live coaching calls, and a private community where you can ask questions, share ideas, and learn from others in the industry. If you're ready to take your business to the next level, visit lawntrepreneuracademy.com and start building the lawn care business you've always dreamed of. An easy to use link is in the podcast description.
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Thanks for taking the 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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B
Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast thanks for listening and
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D
we hope to see you on the next episode.
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C
This has been a Brian Fullerton and Mr. Producer Production.