← Fullerton Unfiltered
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- [00:00]
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Foreign. You're now listening to the Fullerton Unfiltered podcast. Straightforward, no nonsense business advice, completely on 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, hopefully here with a few less coughs. I don't want to jinx it and I don't want to press it, but doing my best to keep this thing moving behind the scenes. Guys, I'll tell you what, it has been a crazy last couple of days. Really excited about today's topic. I wanted to share what I think is a little bit of a groundbreaking approach for us here at Brian's on maintenance and what I think is going to really transform a lot of the the work that we do long term for the company. I want to talk about subbing out mulch and talk about the breakthrough that we've had with a company called Superior Ground Cover and share with you a little bit more of our experience about installing 150 plus yards of mulch in a single day and chipping through about 85 to 90% of our pre sold mulch, you know, within one day, one phone call, not a lot of stress to get it done. And a beautiful product and a beautiful result because of it. This whole conversation has been just an interesting one over the last couple of years. So if you guys are looking to grow landscaping, looking to grow your mulch installs and are kind of scratching your head going like, who is going to do all this work? How do we get all this stuff done? How are we going to be more competitive in the marketplace to earn more work, especially as it relates to and comes to the mulch conversation because, man, there's guys out there that are installing yards of mulch for 60, 70, 80 bucks a yard. You're like, dude, that's ridiculous. It's way low. Like, how can I compete with that? And again, the entire conversation changes a lot more when you get into the commercial side of the work, right? You can get 125, 150, $175, you know, quote unquote, a yard installed per yard of mulch for residential. But you can't play that game with commercial. You're gonna get your lunch ate. Fact. And so a lot of this has been like an ongoing evolution, right the last couple of years. And look like my ears are open, my nose is to the grindstone. I am looking out and seeking out best practices. What are you doing again? How's that work? Tell me more. You know, all those kind of conversations. And again, this is why you go to the leanscaper events, the LMN workshops, the. The Equip expos. The Entrepreneur Academy lives like. This is where you learn the business, right? You don't just learn it from YouTube or listen to a podcast exclusively, although I think you will on today's show because I'm going to give you the sauce. But this is why you ask questions and this is why you. I would propose you stay humble. I would propose you continue to operate your business with an open mind because you might go figure, right, like learn something along the way. I know I am and I have lately, and it could be super transformative for your business. What I wanted to talk about for a couple of minutes is that story. Is that evolution? It's been a fun conversation. It's also been one where I've pulled my hair out trying to figure this whole thing out. But I think we've really made some great progress and some really good breakthroughs that I think are what I'm going to put some periods on, if that makes sense. I'm really excited about what we can now deliver for our customers, what we can now take care of for our clients, and got a great business model and pricing structure and strategy around what we're doing. And I'm going to break all that down here for you guys. Just short and sweet, right as we jump into it, I'll just say this really quick. Thank you guys for a little bit of the, the grace and latitude. Last couple of days I've been out with a, a crazy head cold, crazy cough. I'm sure it'll probably kick up a little bit here as I do a little bit more talking, but excuse me. It's. It's been brutal, man. I'm not gonna lie. Last five or six days, it's been tough. I did a podcast on Monday talking about, like, what breaks first if you're MIA is a really, really good show if you can, you know, make it through the coughs and the hacking that I was doing along the way. I think Mr. Producer did a great job cleaning up a lot of that on the show, Praise the Lord. So it was somewhat bearable to listen to, but it's a really good lit miss, man. Like what breaks first if. If you're out of commission or incapacitated or even just on vacation, you know, for a day or a week or a Month. It's a really good show. Listen to that. Last week had some really good shows as well. Monday, Wednesday talked about the, the hiring conversation and why we're afraid to hire. Maybe make some key hires. I know a lot of you guys found a lot of motivation or inspiration, whatever you want to call it, or a strong discussion in point to picking up and investing into the SOP bundle. I will be plugging that pretty much on every show for the rest of my life because we sold quite a few of those over the last couple of days. I, I do want to just say thank you for you guys trust and support and business on that. I promise you, you are going to be so blessed and so happy that you invest into that thing. Quick side note, no sales on this thing. No promotion, no like hey, last chance to get it. I'm not going to do that. We were going to raise the rate on it. I'm not going to do that. Actually I changed my mind. Go figure. Inmates are in charge of the prison. We can do whatever we want. I'm not going to raise the rate. We're not going to raise the price. There is no cutoff. There's no like buy it now. You know, last chance. I don't like any of that in general. Uh, so we're getting rid of any price increases, any price changes. It's going to be 999 for the near indefinite you know, future now as it gains tons and tons and tons of new content and value. That might be a price change or a price adjustment but just so you guys know, it's $9.99. Uh, there's a code out there for whole ball wax members. Uh, code out there for annual link members. They've made an investment to us. We're going to definitely give those guys a steep discount. But it's a thousand bucks, dude. It's, it's ridiculously cheap. And I'm telling you, the stuff that we have right now ready to hit publish in just about another week. It's going to be transform, formative for so many of you guys that are looking to grow and scale past one crew into multiple crews and add and higher office help. I'm telling you, I'm telling you, telling you it's going to be something that can unlock a lot of doors for you guys and really help you to start growing and scaling and buying back a lot of your time. Okay, so check it out. Launch in our academy.com under store and check out the SOP bundle. We're going to hit publish on that content, I think like April 29th, 30th, whatever it is, Wednesday, Thursday, next week, and monthly updates for all the new stuff that we add to it as we go. So just want to mention that. And then one other quick note. Let's talk a little bit more about the mulch. Conversation today is Equip Expo. Equip Expo is coming down the road. Uh, I get a weekly report, all the codes, uh, people are redeeming with our, uh, promo code Brian, to save you half off on your registration. A lot of you guys took advantage of that over the last two weeks as Chris Kaiser was on the show recently talking about our Equip Expo plan. So thank you guys for using promo code Brian. If you're gonna make the trek on down to Equip Expo, I cannot wait to see you guys there. It's always a good time. And I don't know if I can announce just yet who we got on stage for Energized, but I'm telling you what, we've got one great talent already secured. We're working on two and three for this year's panel. I know you guys are gonna be really excited to hear what these guys have to say. They're blowing up on social media and it's going to be a really fun conversation. But we just secured the bag on one great talent and a couple more to come. So Energize is part of the event. It's, it's free. There's a lot of other great stuff going on that whole week down in Equip Expo. Please make the, the decision to come on down at least one time to Louisville. And if you guys do, make sure you get your registration ticket done and completed with promo code Brian. That saves you half off on that. So quick little plug there for Equip Expo here today. Thank you in advance. I, I know there's a lot of people that have a code. Look, if you want to see us or our content or me hosting things or more, you know, great things coming down the pike, that I get the influence or, you know, have a conversation with some of the brass, you know, the folks that use the code for. And of those are the people that are going to be able to commit to change, you know, for these kind of events and community events, and I'd love to be part of that conversation so we can get you guys the best of the best with what you guys want and have that direct link to the mothership to make changes at Equip Expo, all for the better. Okay. So really do appreciate that. A lot of words to say. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
- [08:15]
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Listen to what lawn care pro Joel Adams said after buying the SOP training bundle. Quote, that's the least painful $999 I've ever spent. It would take my team 200 hours to make lesser content. That's five bucks an hour. I don't work for five bucks an hour. So it was a no brainer. Smart move, Joel. If you're a lawn care business, own drowning in bottlenecks and burning daylight training your team from scratch. Stop reinventing the wheel. The SOP training bundle gives you plug and play systems that bring clarity, remove bottlenecks, and free you up to grow. Just $999. Using the link in the description or by visiting thelantrepreneuracademy.com stop duct taping your business together and be like, Joel, pick up the SOP training bundle today
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really quick. I want to go for just five or six minutes on this mulch conversation. So long story short, let's just take it from the top. Mulch has got to get done. Work's got to get done. Some of you guys find a lot of enjoyment and benefit in like the, the landscaping and the quality of it and the, the artisanness of it and all this other stuff. And I'm like, yeah, I get it. I do have like this oddly satisfying itch to scratch when I see a lawn cut nice over a three acre parcel. It's got some beautiful stripes with the 60 or 72 and it look. Who doesn't like a freshly mulched mulch bed? When you walk by, drive by and you go, man, it just looks, just looks like money. It looks like it pops, you know, snow, you know who you know, parking lots plowed, the ice melter, the salter, the bulk salt is down. You got wet pavement. Yours looks great. Other guy, site's not done yet. Bragging rights for the day of the week, the month, right? Fantastic. For sure. There's an element of that as I get older, as I get bigger in business and we're trying to grow you kind of like, yeah, sure, dude, whatever. Like obviously we want to do a great job and all. That's the ante. But now you start like running into real bottlenecks. You're like, we gotta get how many yards of mulch installed, how many tons of salt down in a night, how many, you know, thousands of feet or acres of plowable surface has to get done in how many hours, how quickly, how much time Right. And so you start looking at things of production, you're like, dude, this work has to get done. And I'm not naive that when you pick up a new commercial site and it's a 10 or 20 yard mulch job, that, that's not some serious muscle. You know, at best, two yards of mulch per hour per guy. Pretty decent, like mulch production rate, calculator, right? So if you had a 20 yard mulch job, 10 labor hours, two guys on site, let's say five hours, you're gonna round up to eight, that's a, that's a probably a pretty decent day. If you do bed prep, bed edging, grab lunch. Yeah, that's, that's a full day. 20, 30, 40 yard mulch jobs, right? Those are real commitments. I don't let anybody fool you. You know, I know in this world of, you know, hundreds of thousands and millions and tens of millions and hundreds of millions of dollars, everybody quotes with landscaping companies like let's not be too naive to the fact or I'm not naive to the fact that a 40 yard freaking mulch job is a lot of mulch to get moved, dude. Like most of our dump trailers move 8 to 10, 12 yards. That's four show shuttle runs to site one. You're fighting with traffic, you need four or five guys. You need to make sure everybody shows up, nobody calls in. And even then if you do a great job, everybody's dead the next day because you just moved 40 fricking yards of mulch. Anybody who disagrees with that is absolutely disconnected from the field. And they're just selling work and they're selling it to, to get it and they're selling it to top line. They're hope, hopefully selling it to get to the bottom line. But I'm not naive to just think like, hey, you know, rally the Hispanics, they'll take care of it, right? Like that's, that's absurd. And so when you have guys that come out with the mulch mates and the mulch mules and the blowing trucks and all this stuff and people go, ah, you know, I don't know, I, you know, we got a self perform or you know, hey, we got wheelbarrows or hey, that's what kids are for. Fresh meat for the grinder. That's what the high schoolers are for, that's what the college kids are for. Like, dude, like that stuff made sense in the 80s, 90s, 2000s. That's fine, I get it. But you don't have to do all that today, okay? You can use technology, use your brain and, and see the, the math mathing right in front of your eyes. Okay? So look, here's the long story short. Our malt schedule has gotten significantly larger over the last three to five years. No doubt about it. We went from 10 yards to 20 yards to 50 yards to 100 yards to 200 yards to 300 yards. And we're doing three, 400 fricking yards of mulch now per season. And, you know, shuttling that, like I said, by 10 and 20 yards at a time, like, cool. But it gets old. It's not that we don't like it. It's not that we don't enjoy doing it. Are we overly passionate about it? I don't know about that. I'd say we're passionate enough to get it done and do a good job. But, like, do my guys wake up and say, I want to, you know, do mulch? No. Do they wake up and say, I want to plow snow and cut grass? Yeah. Like, I think that's where we find the most, you know, satisfying a job complete kind of reward. Reward, right. But mulch, and nobody cares. Just get it done. So the, the evolution of this conversation has been more trucks, more dump trailers, more guys. And we've been doing that, and then it turned into, well, okay, what has been like this always typical week long, two week long, hell part of spring. And let me know if you guys can relate. But there's like hell part of spring where you're doing spring cleanups. You got to get your X number of yards of mulch installed. The grass is really starting to green up. Oh, crap. The grass is starting to grow. We got to get our first mows in. We got to get everything edged, which takes a lot of time. You know, a lot of, a lot of mud, a lot of curbs, a lot of overgrowth. Right. A lot of, a lot of edging. And you have this, like, there's always this bottleneck choke point in the spring rush for a week or two where, dude, it doesn't matter how much time you have. It has to all get done. And ideally, let me, let me ask if you guys have ever tried to like, thread this needle. Ideally, you're trying to get it all done. You know, the mulch installed early to late March into April, you know, by cleanups are done, your mulch gets in and then you start mowing. But if, if you get caught with your pants down and you're still doing cleanups and then into mowing and you didn't get that, you know, five days or one week long week of your heaviest mulch installs done and completed, dude. Now. And this is our life story. You're like playing catch up for every Friday, Saturday and or Sunday for two, four, six, eight weeks. Every weekend in April, every weekend in May, right? And hopefully you're having it all done by Memorial Day. And you know, if you're doing the mo route right and like the guys are getting done at 4 o' clock and like, hey, let's all go do a six yard mulch job at 4:30 in the afternoon and get done by 6. Hey, thanks for already like killing yourself breaking your back all day. By the way, team player, let's go do a 6, 8 yard mulch job. I've got it staged. And you're like hoping there's not a mutiny, right? Anybody relate and, or, or the other side of this is hey, we're starting up a landscaping division. Hey, mo guys. Mo Brian. That's why you're all confused. The MO guys, mo landscape guys do landscaping. That's fine, that's cool. And I'm with you. Until the landscaping kind of dries up around July, August time frame. Usually it's right around 4th of July, graduation parties and definitely by back to school. And now you've got this two or three man landscape team that all the patios are in, all the mulch is done, all the pruning's done and your guys are kind of sitting around in the dog days of summer. It's the hottest part of the year. It's hard to sell work. The mo guys don't need any help. They're getting done now every day at 2 o', clock, 3 o', clock, 4 o', clock. They're completing the same route. A ten hour day. They're just getting done in eight hours because everything's dried out and now you've got extra labor. And your landscape guys are usually good guys. They're very talented guys. Maybe more talented than the, the mo guys, who knows. But you can't really do anything with them until September at best when you start doing irrigation blowouts, which you got to learn all about irrigation. Or then you're like, you know what? We should do Christmas lights. We should get our Christmas lights going. And then you start getting overwhelmed with the landscape side of things and trying to do Christmas lights and pricing out that service and you're like, dude, you just start doing too much. But now you've got your hands in mulching, patios, irrigation Burlaping trees that you've never done before. Hey, who needs some fall color? Who needs fall moms? Let's go. Put him on. We don't know how to install mom. We've never. We've never soaked a mom, you know, in a bucket. What do we charge for moms? What do we charge for this? We don't know. What do we charge for Christmas lights? Go to Christmas light millionaire, you know, guy. And let's go figure out how to do Christmas lights. And hey, we need totes. And then we got to put them up and then. Oh, shit. Like, it's not too bad putting them up in September, October, November. But then I got to go tell my guys to go get on a frozen roof in January when it's 15 degrees out. By the way, we're plowing snow for three days this week and everybody's tired. Now I got to go get them on a ladder, get on a roof to take down some stupid Christmas tree lights. All because we wanted to self perform our own mulch. And we got these big ruby eyes like Abu and Aladdin in the spring. And you got this like, Frankenstein division. Then you're like, you know what? Might as well just go all in. Let's go get the Kabota SVL. Just, you know, J elemental P3 for 90,000. And now I've got a $2,000 month skid steer. Oh, by the way, our hardscape division lost money last year. We have no idea what we're doing. We're doing 900,000. This thing's too big to shoot, it's too small to kill. We don't know what the hell we're doing. And your business is a clusterfuck, right? Like, at the end of the day. And I extrapolate that out because one, that's where I see a lot of people going. Two, I see so many people there, it's too big to kill and it's too small to fail. So I don't know what to do next. Gotta hire a coach. And then I, you know, make a proposal or make a video or decide to downshift a gear because I see the writing on the wall. I see the yellow and red cluster blinking lights on the dash on the airplane dashboard, and it's like, emergency, emergency. Maybe consider this. And I'm like, I don't. I should look, I should pay attention to that. And then I suggest or I say or I. I don't care really, like what you guys do. I got to do my business. I got to do what I got to do. What I tell you guys to do is just what I'm finding works for me. So take it or leave it, right? No big deal. But then I talk to some peers and they say, hey, like, is the goal to, like, have a landscape division or to, like, just make the 20, 25% on the work you're doing? I go, I guess make the money, right? So if the goal is to make the money, do you have any pride or ego on if you self perform or not? Well, no, not really. Like, I don't. Personally, I don't care if I have 5 skid steers or 25 Christmas tree boom box trucks going around. I don't. I don't care about any of that. I'm here to sell revenue and sell profit. And so here's like, the evolution. Mulch was getting big. I was like, hey, I'm a business owner. I'll make the investment into a Bobcat L28. And what used to take us two, three weeks or weekends, and five or six weeks and weekends, right, of doing mulch helped us to chomp that down to two weeks or even a week of doing, you know, 150 to 200, a preliminary big mulch haul right, for spring. So that worked, but now I'm like, dude, we're still killing ourselves to get this all done. And again, coming into this massive giant headache, bottleneck time of the season, spring cleanups, first mows, mulch, prunes, cutbacks, invoicing estimates, all the rest. You guys know how it goes. 90 hour weeks this time of year, right? Well, instead, found a great guy. Evan was superior. He called me about three months ago. He's like, hey, we do mulch bark blowing. You might have heard of us or heard of the concept. We have these big trucks, we blow in the mulch. Great pricing, we can do big jobs, we're fast, we're clean. Everything you're looking for. And he goes, would you be interested in grabbing lunch or grabbing dinner or at least just grabbing a flyer if I stopped by in your area? He's out of the west side of the state by us. And I'm like, yeah, actually, I would love to hear what you're, what you're doing and what you're all about. In fact, I'm interested. In fact, tell me, what do I do next? Is like, what? Well, yeah, I mean, sure. And one thing you guys got to listen to and hear me out. Sometimes you get green lights. Sometimes you find people that are actually ready to buy. I'm Not a very hard person to convince or sell when I know what I want, or you have a great product and it makes sense. I don't take long to decide. That's a good move. I want to do a whole other show on, on making a freaking decision because I feel like 99% of people out there just cannot, for whatever reason, decide on things. Whether you're at Wendy's and you got a value menu of 12 different freaking meals and 18 sides, you're at a. A tile shop for your house and there's 60 freaking hundred selections. If that's a real number. 60 freaking hundred. Or if you're like, hey, this guy's offering to do my mulch at a better price faster, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I don't know, dude. It's going to take me like three years to make a decision. I don't understand that. I can't relate, okay? I can't relate to that. So he calls me and says, here's what we do. And I say, yes, I'm interested. In fact, tell me more and tell me what to do next. Because a year ago, this conversation was primed with me with my friend Pat Murray, who I do coaching with, with forward coaching, little plug for them. Pat's fricking awesome. If you're stuck stock and you're doing 750 to a million and you got a couple GS that you want to invest, like, this is the pay to play stuff. Go sign up with Pat and Ford. I'll get you his info. Tell him I sent you, he'll take care of you. I just had my actual bi weekly phone call with him today. Great conversation, great progress that we're making. A lot of accountability. It's awesome. Well, the same time last year, this is the discussion we had. We're at Grow Marty Grinder's event, Grow. And Pat and I was like, yeah, don't get my L28. And I'm excited. And we're doing mulch. And Pat's like, huh, that's weird. Like, he goes, anything over 20 yards, we just blow it in. And I'm like, well, yeah, you know, but, you know, we can self perform and I can make a lot more money. He's like, for sure. Because. But I'm just looking to make 20. He goes, if I can make 20 and make a phone call, how many phone calls can I make? I'm like, hundreds. He's like, right? He goes, and if you sell hundreds of jobs, what do you do? I'm like, freak. Out. He goes, sure. He goes, your call, your business, whatever. And I'm like, huh? And then, you know, full story, full stop. A year later, Evan calls me, and I'm like, yeah, I'm interested. I've seen the evolution of my business model. Like, I just extrapolated out. Not maybe potentially going the way I think that it would. Not bad, Just very heavy lift versus. And I'm like, again, I'm not here to convince you guys. I'm just telling you. Here's the wonderful, like, magical end of the story here. We did 150, 160 years of mulch yesterday. And all I did it was with a phone call, pen and paper, and some screenshots. We built off, like, $13,000 of mulch in a day. Okay, not too bad. Not here to press. I'm just saying some of you guys could keep that schedule going for a week or two. Some of you guys legit do 3, 4, 5, 800, 1500 yards of mulch. Like, that's who I'm talking to. If you do 20 yards, hey, like, go, like, earn your stripes. You know what I'm saying? Like, wheelbarrow and dump trailer is, like, a great option for you. Well, Evan calls me up. Here's the process. I'm like, bet we. Long story short, I want to do. I do want to address this. The math instantly made sense. He was able to get me, and I've talked about this at length on a couple shows already, so forgive me if I'm being a little redundant, but he was able to get my price down per yard installed about 20 to 25% cheaper than what I could already install it at, and I'm making 20 on that number. So let's go. For example, If I'm at 125 a yard and I'm making 20%, let's say 30, 40 bucks. Not too bad. If he's at, you know, 80, 85. $90 per yard installed. His. His price plus my overhead, and I'm making that same 20%. 25, 30, $35 a yard installed. But all, again, I'm doing is making a phone call to his team. They've got 35 blow trucks across Michigan, Indiana, Ohio. Right? $800,000 per truck. He was telling me loosely, you know, some loose numbers. 60 yards of mulch per truck, 20 yard per hour, whatever number it was just ridiculous numbers. You're like, holy Jesus. If he can get me a better price and I can take that better price. 2. Two factors here, right? Listen up and sell that price to new clients. One, I'm more competitive and be locking in my 20%. Or two, I sell it to my existing clients who I'm already a line item in their budget for that mulch install. And, and now the margin, my delta is going to be even higher because my costs are coming down an additional 20 or 25%. So I can still sell them, let's say the $125 a yard install, but my cost is now 89 or less. Right? So my margin, my, my markup is even higher on work I've already sold. So I'm more competitive with new clients. I'm more profitable with old clients or old clients. I can now readjust their price, bring it down, look like the good guy, and still make my 20, 25% that I was looking for, by the way, because I'm a SAP, because I want retention and because I just think it's good ethics. All of my mulch customers, or all my clients that have mulch previously part of their core annual contract, we adjusted all their mulch prices down by about 20 to 25%. I, that's just what I chose to do. If you want to make that extra 5, $10,000, that's yours to make. Do whatever you want to do. I said, hey, here's the core contract. Last year was 11 grand. This year it's actually 9, 8. You might be wondering, how did we come down $1200? Well, that $3000 mulch job for the 25 yards up front, we're able to sub it out through a lean process. We have a bark blowing partner now, same quality. You're going to love it. Same bed edging, bed prep, you're good to go. But we're not going to pass those savings along to you guys. As we become more lean, we're going to pass that savings on to you. I call it good faith, goodwill, good gesture, good ethics, good karma, good sewing. And hopefully that comes back. 10, 20, 30, 60, 100, full return later down the road. That's what I chose to do. Now, if you want to keep that profit, dude, go, Go for it. I, I could see it, the cookie crumbling. 50, 50. It doesn't make any difference to me. Do whatever makes sense to you. I just chose to pass that things along to my customers. So long story short, give Evan my route list. We did bed prep for the last two days. Last week, Thursday, Friday, and real time Monday. I linked up with them. We got a YouTube video, by the way, that we're dropping. It's a 15 minute long video, you can see the, the truck, you can see the operators, you can see the final product. Awesome mulch. Awesome product. Like, same stuff you're going to get at your local supplier. Double treaded this, triple shredded. That looks fantastic. Great quality mulch. And again, long story short, all the mulch is installed. Our first big round of big push of mulch is all installed in one freaking day. All right? We're talking, they did 150 yards in a day. That would likely take us all week. And I'm telling you, like, that's a full week of a lot of us working our tails off, spreading mulch, doing the deal. The labor savings. Can't even begin to discuss that. The labor savings, less wear and tear on the team, right? The, the cut down in the physical toll. You know, we all know spring rush is taxing. Guys are tired from having leaf blowers on their backs 10 hours a day doing leaf cleanups, right. Think about the, the attitude about how happier the team is. All of my guys are very, very excited to not have to do 150 to 200 yards of mulch while stressing out about cleanups and mowing. In fact, the stress last year up to my nose, which by the way, is not good if you know how things breathe as human beings. Right. Today, the stress down to my ankles. We've got a couple cleanups left. We're about to hit the mo schedule. We've got the great, we got a great team of guys, great attitudes, great call as best it's ever been, knock on wood. Praise the Lord. And we don't have to self perform 150, 160 yards of mulch. Yeah, you could believe that. Culture and attitudes are through the roof. Well, I wrote down cleaner. Everything's more consistent, right. The mulch looks great because we're getting sourced from the Same guy, not 2, 3, 4 different site ones in different places. And you know, oh, we need four extra yards here. The local place is closer, so just a better product overall. I talked about the higher profitability, right? Higher profitability on the bigger jobs, less labor, faster turnarounds. One of the sites that we do is a 35 yard mulch job. That's an all day long job for us for sure. Even with the L28, it's an all day, four or five guys, all hands on deck, you call off, you're fired kind of a deal. Because when you got five guys and 35, 40 yards of mulch, like that's a team effort. Dude, that job didn't even take their team a little over an hour. Like, how crazy is that? All right, so for me personally, here's the last thing I'll just say. I could foresee a future where Brian's Law maintenance is doing 10 million lawn and snow and we're self performing a majority of that, but we're subbing out a million in mulch and a million in irrigation in a million in fern. Right at our 10 or 20% markup that we're looking for, could we get 20, 30, 40% net maybe if we decide to self perform some of this? For sure. And I'm in. And am I turning down potentially some high profit work depending on how big we get for some of these different areas? No doubt about it. But dude, like I remember Bradley and this is where all this conversation comes together. I remember him at a conference saying he was doing 50 million and something out like a million of fer. A million in irrigation and the most talented team on the planet. But their hedgehog principle, their, you know, passion, what they're good at and what they're profitable at was the masonry, the stonework, the landscapes, the softscapes, the planting, the pools, the concrete, the. What's the concrete that you put in Cheeso Pete's not fiberglass, but the kind, the concrete stuff, whatever, it'll come back to me. But like that's what their bread and butter was. It wasn't about like fertilizing and irrigation. So they decided to sub it out, maybe even lighting. Maybe you're like, hey, we do a million in landscaping, but we sub out 150 grand of a urinate in lighting to a local lighting sub and we make 20% on that. There's nothing wrong with that. So my last thing I'll just say is evaluate or reevaluate or at least that's what I'm doing the entire business model. Like, why do we do what we do? And by the way, like, it's all subject to change. I still got my L28. It's paid for, it's not going anywhere. Like the same time next year, if we want to start self performing mulch jobs, we will. We've got a couple small five and three and eight yard residential mulch jobs we'll have done by the end of the month. We can still use the L28 in the dump trailer to go do those. Like we're still going to do that. We're not too good for it, you know what I'm saying? But why do we do what we do? Do we have to do it this way, you know, some of you guys are out there, you got a two million dollar company and you got 400 yards of mulch and you're like, ah, too late in the season to find a local guy to partner with that's got, you know, 200 Google five star reviews. Great company, great reviews. And to call them out to sell about all of our mulch bullshit. Dude, it took me 30 minutes to get my attentive maps. Click. Turn off everything. Click. Only highlight mulch. It highlights it in orange. Anything that was confusing, I made a little doodle on the map. I sent about 15 screenshots to Evan via text with the site's name and the map just so there wasn't any confusion. Which tree rings get done in this site, which tree rings don't get done on that site or a different site? Right. How far back do we mulch on these beds that go forever. But they only want the, their budget's 8 yard so it's only the front horseshoe, not the, you know, last 10 yards on both sides of the building all the way around. Right. So we sent all those maps via attentive, via text message, via email. Dude, it's simple. He passed them to the drivers and they were able to knock all this stuff out in no time. I, I just think it's a fantastic approach. Again, I'm not here to convince you what to do. I'm just sharing what's working. And I'll just tell you, man, I'm, I'm stress free right now. I don't have any stress. No stress, no steeds seeds, no sticky icky icky, whatever you want to call it. I don't get a copyright claim, copyright strike here for music infringement because I'm singing something from Eminem and Dr. Dre. Welcome to the guilty conscience. These voices, these voices. All right, that's where I'm going to leave it here today. I just think this is a fun conversation. I think this was a simple conversation. I think this was a no brainer conversation. I think this is the stuff when something's presented to you and you act on it. You see it come together. It's br. It's beautiful. It's. Everything's working. You go, dude. I like it when a plan comes together. And that was what we just did with the first 150 yards of mulch for the spring rush. And by the way, again, I know some of you guys are the biggest fish on planet earth and you've got 800 yards and you're like, dude, we're going to go sling mulch until the end of May. That's fine. Dude, we're done. It's April. I don't want my guys working Saturdays ever again. In my company, we haven't worked a Saturday in a very long time, and we worked one Saturday last year. I don't want my guys working Friday anymore past the end of April. We used to say Fridays and Saturdays until the end of Memorial Day that it was no Saturdays. But we do need Fridays now. I'm like, guys, this week and next week, with the MO routes done by Thursday, we're already back to four tensions by the end of April. What else do we need to do? If we sell a mulch job, we'll call Evan with superior. If we get a prune job, we'll sell it to our prune job. If we get another fur customer, we'll sell it to my fur customer and we'll make 10 and 20% on everything else that we do while saving the customer a boatload of money and delivering a fantastic product. Are we turning into like this hyper sub, subcontractor broker business model only? No, nothing like that. But it is something to consider. It is something to think about. It doesn't mean you have to just do one thing forever and expect that's the only way it should ever get done. All right, that's where I'll leave you guys. I'm surprised my voice held out as good as it did. Apologize for the couple coughs along the way. If you guys are new here, maybe consider hitting subscribe or follow or like or whatever your podcast player mixer has. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, new shows. Got a thousand almost in the queue, so pretty cool. There's again, if you guys didn't need links or codes or discounts and all that mess links in the description, which is the show notes. There's a little tab there you can click down and see like 500 spam links. Because we got a code for anything and everything at this point. Promo code Brian at leanscaper. Promo code Brian at lmn. Promo code Brian at cyclecpa. Just got off the horn with Cycle cpa. Like, great conversation with my accountant Olivia and my bookkeeper Rebecca. I meet with my CFO Aaron next week. Can't talk good enough. Good about them. SOP bundle at launchpreneuracademy.com store. Promo code Brian. Brian's 10 at Ballard Isotunes. Cujo Equipment Defender. Proven locks. Proven industries for the locks, folks, if you need it. We got like the trench go I gotta. I got a code for you. All right? And all those little shekels and nickels go right back into keeping this thing moving and grooving for you guys. And we can't thank you enough. Okay, we can't thank you enough. That's where I'll leave you guys today. Appreciate you listening in to this episode of Fully Unfiltered Podcast. New episodes Monday, Wednesday, Fridays Like Comment subscribe We love you. Have a great day. We look forward to catching up with you guys here on the next one.
- [36:27]
B
I'm going to make this simple. If you run a landscape or outdoor power equipment business, Equip Exposition needs to be on your calendar October 20th through the 23rd in Louisville. This isn't a trade show where you will walk around collecting pins. This is where you get hands on with equipment, find software that actually fits your operation, level up your crew's training, and invest a few days in your own growth as a business owner. The contractors building real systems are the ones winning right now and Equip is where everything comes together. The super early rate is $25 before May 31st. Go to equipexposition.com today to register. Register now at equipexposition.com or use the link in the podcast description. Save 50% off your registration when you apply the code. Brian at Checkout we can't wait to see you in Louisville.
- [37:19]
C
Thanks for taking the time to listen to the Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast with Brian 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.
- [37:53]
B
Fullerton Unfiltered Podcast thanks for listening and
- [37:56]
C
we hope to see you on the next episode.
- [37:59]
B
This has been a Brian Fullerton and Mr. Producer Production.