Transcript
Podcast Host (Brian Fullerton) (0:00)
Foreign.
Podcast Intro/Outro Announcer (0:05)
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.
Brian Fullerton (0:21)
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, really excited about today's podcast episode. We are going to be talking about the much anticipated conversation that is the SOP bundle that is going to be launching tonight at 6pm eastern@launchpreneuracademy.com now if you guys are new here or maybe this is your first couple of shows listening in, forgive me, this might be a little bit more of a direct conversation to most of our following. An audience that listens to the show about a new program and resource that is now going to be available on our training website. So forgive me if this is one of your first shows and you're just exploring and checking out who we are and what we do, you know, 900 or so episodes talking about lawns, lessons, life, everything that we do, everything that we are. So today's episode going to be a little bit more direct about a new product and conversation that I want to have that is going to hopefully make your business and your life that much better and more simplified moving forward. And this is something I'm actually really, really excited about sharing with you guys the details of for just, you know, a quick 10 or 15 minutes here, give you guys the, the whole, you know, lay of the lamb and really just explain, you know, the who, what, when, where, why and how of what we're releasing tonight. The whole conversation that I wanted to share about the new SOP training bundle which is going to be available tonight, 6pm Eastern for 1499, is it's basically designed for those folks that are looking to grow past a four or five hundred thousand dollars a year revenue grossing business and they're looking to start to build a team. And they're not only looking to build teams of folks in the field, but they're also looking to empower, you know, a remote virtual assistant or an executive assistant or an office administrator part of their company, whether in person or virtual. And so the idea behind the bundle and the program that we're going to be pre sailing today and the content will go live April 22nd. So this is a pre launch or a pre rollout, early bird gets the worm kind of pricing and package here. And the content will go live April 22nd and it's really. This content is designed for folks that are looking to grow into scale. Now I'm really excited about this because the program is going to have lifetime updates, lifetime upgrades indefinitely as we continue to grow and scale and eclipse every single new addition to what we're using in Brian's Law Maintenance all along the way for as long as I'm still running this company. And that could be two years, it could be five years, it could be 22.5 years, right? I don't really know. All I know is I do have a couple revenue markers and checkpoints that I want to hit a strong EBITDA that I'm aiming for. And, and whether that's a sellout, you know, to the team, that's a sell to my kids, that's a sell to private equity, who knows? But again, there's no announcements on anything like that. This is just stuff that I'm like, hey, I should probably start paying attention to this as my retirement. And you know, what we're actually trying to do here with a bigger business over the next five or 10 years. So the point of the program and the bundle today is that, let me take it back just about four or five years ago for any of you guys that don't know the whole chronological timeline of like where we gotten to today, right now we're on a rolling like 600, $700,000 a year grossing business. We're rapidly approaching the million dollar mark. I think we've got the team, the thought process, the branding, the marketing, the icp, the software, the roadmap to get there this year and into next year. But it didn't really, you know, start that way. As you can imagine, my first 15, 17 years in the business, a lot of just throw mud up against the wall and sees what sticks. We did not have social media, we did not have YouTube, we did not have podcasts. Hell, we didn't have training courses and training resources. You know, I know a lot of like the, the online guru selling community is a lot of like people selling courses on, you know, drop shipping and selling knowledge. You know, like the Tai Lopez and so you get this like bad rap. And I, and I totally agree, I make fun of just as much of that stuff as anybody else does or should. And what I wanted to do though, something different with Entrepreneur Academy was just cut out the fluff, just meat and potatoes. Here's like the exact documents, the exact resources, the exact, you know, services or whatever you want to call it that we're using in brands on maintenance to grow our business. Well, that kind of stemmed from, you know, me starting YouTube in 2016, deciding to get a little bit more serious with my business. I was freshly married, just getting this thing going. Decided to re up with Brian's law maintenance. And from 2016 to like 2019, 2020, we started to stockpile some cash. I was owner, operator, business. It's not hard to net, you know, 60, 70, 80, 100 grand a year out of your business when you're the labor and you're keeping the net profit. Right. To make 50 grand in your business. True net profit with a team of folks is way different than, you know, you making 50 grand take home. Because instead of paying a crew lead, you're the crew lead. Right? And so that extra net profit or that extra gross overhead that would go to a crew leader or foreman, you're just eating it because you're just keeping the house because you are the labor and you are the crew lead. Right. Well, it's a lot different as you continue to grow a business. Well, that's what my wife and I did over the last four or five years, from 2016 to about 20, 20, 2021, and we put some cash in the bank. We were really excited about our growth and our business and our life. And we had a, you know, a Mickey Mouse business and, you know, but things were trending in the right direction. Well, around 2022, 2023, my wife and I wanted to build a home. We decided that she was going to be a stay at home wife. We started having kids. We started to build our social media a little bit more seriously on the side. That was affiliate links and some sponsored, you know, partnerships with a couple different great brands. Nothing significant. Nothing. Holy cow. No six figure checks? No seven figure checks? Dude. Yeah, right. Nothing even close. Like some of my biggest deals barely have a comma in them back then and today even barely have a comma in them. All right, so, but you know, as you can imagine, dozens and dozens of little deals like that and a bunch of extra work on the side and burning the, you know, the candle at both ends. Pre kids, we just literally hustled our way to a better lifestyle. And there's nothing wrong with that. Like a lot of folks are struggling financially or they're in debt. Folks. Like we were about 30 or so debt, grand in debt with cards and credit cards when my wife and I were freshly married. We didn't have a lot of, you know, going on. If you know our story. Like we were just regular. I don't Want to say like, below average? Because we were just like normal people. We just didn't have like a lot of like, future prospects going for us. Right. It was very like humble beginnings. Everything we made, we spent. Everything we spent, we made. And there wasn't a lot of fluff or a lot of extra. Well, we started to get, you know, started getting a little bit of attraction, put a couple bucks in the bank. And along the way, YouTube was kind of starting to grow and we ended up building like, you know, a couple hundred YouTube videos. But then somebody would say like, hey, where, where can I buy like just a training program or you know, your best video on how to aerate or how to plow snow and, and how to, how to cut grass. I'm like, well, huh, that's like an interesting conversation because YouTube's like a 15 minute video. Four minute song and dance on the beginning. Four minute song and dance, like comment, subscribe on the end. Six minutes of beat, you know, of meat and potato, like the, the middle. And I was like, you know, maybe there's something here. So we started long, long, long, let's say fast forward, started a training website called launchpreneuracademy.com it's training, education, resources and courses and our art files for our postcards and our employee handbook and all this stuff. Okay. And now you get a, you know, a module that has, or a course that has seven modules on how to get started with aerations and overseeds, which, by the way, in the next like two weeks, my goal is to make pretty much everything that is our original core courses totally free at launchpeare Academy because we don't sell a ton of them anymore because there's so much content now on YouTube. So I don't really feel the need to put those behind a paywall, like how to start a lawn care business, how to aerate, how to do mulch, how to do spring cleanups, you know. Well, so we're going to look at making those available for free over the next week or two by the end of the month, which I'm really excited about. Again, like, we've done well. I'm not here to just, you know, forever like make a million bucks trying to do this thing I'm not Mark Bradley, where I can just like give pretty much everything away. Not that good. But nonetheless, I do feel inclined to, you know, want to pour back out in the industry. And so we're going to be doing a little bit more of that and, and a bunch more great stuff to come. But along the way we started making these training courses and programs and eventually we created a program called the Whole Ball of Wax was everything that we've had, like to date that was how to build a lawn care business. Well, about 20, 22, 23, 24, my wife and I built a home and we kind of had this like, come to Jesus moment about restarting like the next chapter of our life or starting the next chapter of our life. And uh, we had some really good team members coming on board. Uh, we have a great market, you know, with a lot of residential and commercial work, a lot of great customers, a good brand, a good company, a good business. Nothing great, you know, just then, you know, a year or two ago. But everything was really, really getting gooder and gooder, as some of my friends would say. And I just kind of looked at the horizon and looked at the stars and I said, like, I want to kind of take a crack at growing a bigger business now. Again, my goal is like 5, 10 million over the next 5, 10 years. But I said, you know, if we're going to do this, let's do it right and let's grow a bigger team. Because I'm just going to be honest with you guys. I'm 39 and a half going on 40 in June. Crazy. The big four zero. And I just realized like, I can't hustle my way to the top. I can't hustle my way running my social media business and my landscape company and keep my marriage together and be a present dad with three kids, four and a half and under. Like, the hustler in me has to be laid to rest and I need to start building systems and processes. And I knew this intuitively, but it was more articulated to me back when I started hanging around a guy named Mark Bradley Just about two or three years ago and really about like 12 to 18 months ago. And yes, Mark's like a visionary and he's been, you know, able to build some of the most successful landscape and software companies in our industry. And yes, he's a master salesman, master communicator, master leader. Sincerely, like, he is that good. He's an incredible individual. But what Mark really is to me is the systems and operations kind of guy. And that's what I was hungry for. That's what I was craving. Like it wasn't just belief, it wasn't just desire, it was systems and processes. Well, we started going around the Leanscaper events and community and Mark Bradley's, you know, tribe about a year, year and a half ago. And when we're at some of these intensives or quarterly conferences, Mark made a challenge to the audience, and this was in March last year, that you need to start documenting your business. And there's no other easier way to say it or to do it than to start making a commitment at least an hour a week, to start building SOPs to get your business out of your brain and start putting it on paper. That way it can start getting communicated to people, not only in the field, but but also in the office, about how your company is actually ran. And at the time, if I had to pull the audience and ask you guys, how many documented things do you think we had for Brian's Law Maintenance? But I'm, you know, the simple answer is absolutely zero. And so this same time last year, I took it at face value and I said, like, bet, challenge accepted. What I'm going to do is start documenting every single thing I can in my life and in my business, both personal and professional, and start having a roadmap or a process about how to document what we're doing, how to get out of my own way, and how to start scaling our business and our life. As you guys can imagine, this was no small feat and no small undertaking at the time. Like I had alluded to, we had nothing written down in our business, but we did start to establish some pretty good habits, some pretty good thought process, and some pretty good ways about how we ran our business. Now, a lot of that was what we've just kind of figured out through the school of hard knocks internally over the last decade or two. And a lot of it, of course, is more stuff that we've learned over the last year or two. Hanging around folks like Mark Bradley, like I was just alluding to. Well, fast forward today. I'm really excited about letting you guys know that it has been just about a year that we've been able to document as much as we can along the way over the last 12 or so months. And what we finally have today is a document and video library that I think is going to hopefully transform the lawn and landscaping industry. And I'm really, really excited about this. Okay, let me give you guys the. The idea behind the bundle in general as we're going through this whole process the last year or so. A lot of you guys have been on that same journey as well. Now, whether you've done the actual work to build these programs or SOPs or to document your business or not is semi irrelevant. But we've all been hearing and learning about this along the way together, all of you guys listening in, whether you've been to one leanscaper event or more, whether you've been around any of the LMN webinars, any of the leanscaper webinars, any of the any of the Marty Grunder conferences, any podcast to date from almost any of your best and favorite content creators, we've all been hearing you got to systematize the business. Well, as I continue to do this, and I alluded to a couple of friends just through our link membership and late night conversations and some buddies along the way and a half dozen different group chats that I'm in with a bunch of great guys and many of you guys listening in, I was letting folks know like, hey, we're documenting all this stuff and we just built out this newsletter SOP and this how to qualify new lead sop and we really made our employee handbook, like state of the art, like world class, like as good as something that a bright view could offer. And I, and I really, really do mean that. You know, our, you know, equipment checklist that we have that is super in depth and interactive and it just keeps an equipment inventory, right? And corrective action reports or write ups, job descriptions and so, so much more. Not counting the 50 plus SOP infield training videos that we built over the last couple of months, right? Both for lawn and snow and over the next six to eight weeks, dozens and dozens of more that we're looking to build. Well, as I continue to just tell a couple friends about this, again, passing a couple folks were like, hey, like, can I get access to that? Yeah, sure. Here, check this out. And then another friend would say, hey, can I get access to the. This other sop? Yeah, yeah, dude, for sure. Check it out, let me know what you think. Well, the lights kind of dawned on me that said, hey, like maybe we have something here, right? Like, like I'm just gonna be practical. I'm not like the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I'm like, well, if we're spending a ridiculous, and I mean a ridiculous, a ridiculous amount of time and energy filming these videos, building these documents and they're extremely valuable to anybody that's looking to scale their business. Ding. Obviously the light bulb went off a couple of months ago and I thought to myself, hey, we should probably think about packaging this together as a bundle for folks that want to grow and scale, right? Like, there's no other macro chess move here. It's just like, hey, I'm building something for my business. We're actually using it every single day. Dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of forms. Dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of training videos and again dozens and I'm sure hundreds of more. Not only SOPS videos, both in the field and office VA videos to be as the company grows, right, for another, you know, four or five, $10 million, imagine what else we're going to come up with. Well, my idea was let's package it all together, call it the SOP Bundle because you know, I'm a genius marketer, right? And I just said like let's just get into people's hands. And so here's the long story short of it. 14.99 pre sale offer, making it available today. That goes through April 22, which is when we're going to publish the content in the course. So right now it's just a pre buy. It's just a placeholder. On April 22nd we will change the price to 24.99 so it'll be a thousand dollars more. So there's your incentive to get in now and again. Lifetime updates and lifetime upgrades. Now for a lot of you guys that had always said, man, I wish I would have bought the whole ball of wax like season one of our entire life up until about two minutes ago. And man, I wish I would have got it when it was 249 bucks or 499 bucks or 749 bucks. Then it was 999 bucks, right? And eventually it went from three resources to six to 10 to 22. And then I remember one year I just went like ham. And we dropped so many resources and courses and all the postcard and yard door hanger art files, right? That's when it went from I think like 7:49-12:49 or whatever, some ridiculous jump. Which was awesome. And so many of you guys have said, dude, I can't believe I only paid 499 for this thing. I've literally made tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in new business, not only gross revenue, but net profit in my company because of it. Like what a freaking steal. And I'm like, yeah. And now here's the deal. Even if you bought at 14.99 or had like a holiday code that saved you 3 or 400 bucks and you still got it for 1100 bucks. Still a ridiculous buy. Anybody who's looking to seriously start a lawn landscaping company, I'm not a franchise kind of guy. I don't think you need the franchise. A lawn Landscaping business. It isn't that hard. Do you have to reinvent the wheel? Absolutely not. Do you need to lease somebody else's wheel? Absolutely not. But for a thousand bucks or 1500 bucks with the whole ball of wax, and then you're part of the Link membership for 50 bucks a month, there's not really any question that you can't answer. Part of our whole bowl of wax, you know, 65 resources or the link monthly membership that isn't included in those two conversations. Oh, and if you have to go all in and get a coach or a consultant somewhere else, sure. But like, dude, that's all you need. Okay. It's not that hard of an industry, although there's still a lot to learn. Well, that is a fantastic offer, and that was a fantastic deal. And so we're going to run it back with the same program here today with the SOP bundle. So it's 1499. It'll be $1,000 more when we launch April 22nd, which, by the way, even for 2500 bucks, to get access to everything that we build for the rest of my career in terms of documents, training videos and training resources and SOPs. Ridiculous offer. Okay, just a little inside baseball. I did encourage one or two peers that sold a $25 million company and a $10 million company about five years ago. And the other one about two minutes ago, I said, you should have absolutely scraped every single thing you can out of your office, and you should have been able to take that with you and make it available eventually for sale. I said, for example, with my friend who had a $25 million company, I said, how much did you guys probably spend on building documents, employee handbooks, write up forms, documenting processes, everything along the way? How much do you think you guys actually spent, you know, building all that? He goes easily hundreds of thousands of dollars, Brian. So for the fact that you can get access to what we're doing already for 1500 bucks or even 2,500 bucks and have lifetime updates and upgrades eventually, I do really believe that this program, as we continue to make additions to it, will eventually be 5000 bucks, then 10,000 bucks, etc. Etc. Right? So to get it today for only 1499, I think is a pretty crazy deal. For those of you guys that already know that it's coming out, you guys have known for about three or so months because I've been talking about it, and it is finally here. For those of you guys that haven't heard, now, you know, you can go check it out. @launchpinner academy.com to learn more. Here's what I'll just tell you guys. The amount of time and hours that we have into building this program is no small feat and no small undertaking. I mean literally hundreds of hours. And, and I will sincerely say this, probably about fifty to a hundred thousand dollars in terms of travel time, direct costs with flights and hotel and ticket conference, you know, attendee costs, time away from my actual business, time away from my family. Like this is all well documented stuff that we're doing with this bundle in this program. And to be able to scoop it up for literally pennies and help you to grow your business is probably, at least in our industry, a once in a lifetime opportunity. I will just tell you, as you guys continue to scale and as you guys continue to grow, the reality of hiring, the reality of training becomes extremely real. And if you're just starting to experience that, like, you know, if everything's running through you, it can be extremely exhausting, right? Training new hires, both in the field and in the office is extremely challenging. Quality continues to perhaps suffer as you continue to grow because you don't have the same kind of consistency going into your business, right? Like when you start to scale, that's when things start to break. And as you continue to grow, you have to get more, more dialed in on these topics. And so that's who and that's what this bundle is for. We want to help free you guys up so you can focus on sales, you can focus on growth, and you can focus on leadership and not just be so stuck in the mud trying to teach and train every single person in your company. I will just land the plan with this. We're going to initially start and launch the bundle. It should have about 50 or so in field training SOP videos. You'll be able to not only take those, but the rest of the bundle, but it'll have 50 infield training SOP videos. How to cut grass, how to plow snow, how to use a scout, how to shovel snow, how to cut grass, how to use a mower, trimmer, blower, edger, how to change a blade, how to sharpen a blade, how to change oil, and so, so, so many more. Okay, then there'll also be as we launch with a dozen office admin training SOP videos, a lot of them cater to working a very efficient workflow workflow through lmm. We'll also have some sops on newsletters, how to earn Google reviews, how to use attentive, how to use gusto and Much, much more to come. So we'll already start with a dozen or so SOPs and training videos in the company. SOPs for the office. So if you want to start and hire a virtual assistant here in the next three or four weeks or you know, six, eight weeks into this upcoming season, the idea is you can give them these SOPs and these documents and what took me about five or six months of onboarding to get these people up to speed. It should take you, you know, five to six weeks or less. And that's the idea behind the bundle. All right. Same thing with the infield training videos. Now you can make them part of your orientation. They're generic enough that they would work for any company that's out there while still being professional and accurate enough to make sure that your team is trained and everybody's educated and we're not just throwing them to the wolves that first week that they're new hires. They now have some actual documented videos that they can watch as they continue to onboard and hire with your company. How cool is that, guys? I'll just land the plane by saying this. I don't take your guys's business or your support quote unquote lightly. We are absolutely a over what do they say under promise, over deliver type. And so I want to make sure that your guys hard earned dollars is going to work for you in this bundle. I will tell you like, this is going to be my baby for the next six to 12 months as we continue to put a second year of documentation into Brian's Law Maintenance. Anything that I build and update, you'll get a monthly update newsletter part of your subscription. So you'll be on an email list and know what's new, what's updated, what's modified. You'll also get access to a Google document form where you can submit requests for not only office SOP videos, but infield training SOP videos. If you got a great idea and we don't have that video, you submit it on the Google Doc, we'll get it and I'll build it out for you within the next week and it'll be publicly available to the rest of the group for anybody who's got the membership. How cool is that? So I want you to really know that I'm making a commitment and investment into putting this together just like you guys are. And the idea is for all of you guys that are looking to scale, you know, past a half a million dollars and really streamline your operations and really create a lot of consistency in this future Growth. That is who this is for. And for all of you guys that are looking to train and grow, you know how important quality is, you know how important consistency is. And that's what the idea behind this SOP bundle is for. If you're gonna just stay at a half a million dollar in business and below, probably not necessarily the bundle for you, unless you wanna learn, you know, quote unquote, what the bigger guys are doing, then maybe that might be worth the investment for you. But all things being said, this is for folks that are looking to grow past a quarter million, half a million dollar business and beyond. All right, that's my 25 minute conversation. No giant pitch here. Just want to let you guys know what's available. I am really, sincerely, very excited about it. I know a lot of you guys are absolutely chomping at the bit waiting to get your hands on this. I don't want to make it any kind of like exciting hype, you know, train conversation. I want you guys to make sure you have the right thought process with a program like this to help you grow. Because if you're just going to buy it and sit on it, I'd rather you not buy it. But if you're going to buy it, start picking through it and say, hey, we can use this, we can use that. I can get this to my VA, I can get this to my VA. I can get this, you know, eight training lawn care videos and 20 SOP training videos to my guys. And we can do a team meeting day on a rainy day and watch these 15 videos, have everybody check the box that they were there in attendance and everybody's that much more efficient, safer, more educated. Right? Like that's the idea then. That's who this program is for. And Again, I am 100% all in on this program for the next year or so, just as we continue to make real time updates and upgrades. Because I want to make sure it's the most value packed package that we have. So if you have any thoughts or feedbacks or contributions that you want to make, let me know and we'll make sure to include it in this bundle as we all grow and scale together. All right, that's what I got for you guys in today's show. Thanks for sticking with me on this conversation, sir, for the raspy voice, by the way. Still getting over a little bit of a head cold and flow flu down from Florida, unfortunately. But all in all, hanging in there and excited about making this program available to all you guys. All right, that's what we'll leave you guys today. Super appreciate you listening in and we look forward to catching up with you guys here on the next one.
