← Fullerton Unfiltered
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Foreign. You're now listening to the Fullerton Unfiltered podcast. Straightforward, no nonsense business advice completely on filtered. Grow your business, grow your life.
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Now here's your host, Brian Fullerton.
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Hey, what's going on, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Fullerton Unfiltered podcast. It is your host, Brian Fullerton here hanging with you guys and good morning. Well, you guys might know or notice that we have a late delay on publishing this episode. I'll give you guys the real sauce behind the scenes. It has been a wild last 48 hours in the Fullerton household and not for good reason, unfortunately. My wife has been out sick with an unexpected like, stomach bug virus and migraine all in one for the last 24 hours, which has been pretty weird and pretty rough for some of you guys that are very aware and astute and tuned in. No, she's not pregnant. At least not that we know of. But that being said, it's been, it's been a rough go the last couple of days over here. We actually got back from up north Michigan on Sunday, late afternoon evening, which was just a beautiful five day trip that we took to Charlevoix in Bay harbor area. And it had a great time. It was awesome seeing the boat show that was up there at Bay Harbor. Pretty sure Liz and I locked down like a boat that we want to scoop up in the next like four or five years to do some, you know, boating, especially travel on the Great Lakes. Now I just got to figure out the time and money part of a boat, right? Because that's like the joke. It's like, even if you can afford a boat, you need the time to go boat, right? So I'm like, all right, we got to build a business that in five years allows me, you know, three day weekends, four day weekends, taking a week off, getting 20, 30 boating excursions in per year, right? So that whole deal. But we found a really beautiful boat up there that we, we liked. And of course it's a little bit more expensive than, you know, 150, $200,000 Nautique, right? So it'll be a boat that we could hopefully grow into for the next five to seven years as we hopefully one day decide to do the great loop, which is circumnavigating the east coast all the way down through like Chicago, the Mississippi, out to the Gulf of America. If, if you guys have never looked that up, more people are hearing about it and know about it than ever before, which is really cool, us included. And so one day, hopefully in Like a decade. We can sell off this mid, mid boat if you will to go get the, the great Loop boat which will probably be like a down grade downsize as you, you typically do it with a, you know, a 50 or 60 foot trawler tugboat kind of a deal, you know, versus like a cool sport yacht, you know, that you want to maybe take on the Great Lakes or whatnot. So anyway, that's been like our last like 72 hours. But again like Liz out of nowhere just had this wild stomach virus and bug and then a migraine, you know, yesterday. So I'm like a couple zooms in the morning, had a zoom in the afternoon, coordinating with our guys, running out the door on a Monday, Tuesday, dealing with the normal, you know, just stuff that you got to do with, with business. Had a couple new leads come in, got on with our fractional sales guy, got on with a new commercial client that we actually scooped up, which is really cool. It was actually just a strip of grass along the highway or along the major roadway. But that lot is a two or three acre lot that they're going to be building a building on and which is really cool. So we've been managing this like, you know, little offshoot, $120 just little, little mo. It takes 10 seconds to do. And so it's really just kind of like covering our cost and time just to park the trailer and then ride a three quarter or a third of a mile down the road on the sidewalk, you know, to go and hit the strip because there's no access point to this like field and dude. So basically, long story short, some dude bought it and there's going to be an office building there and we'll hopefully be able to, you know, take over that site for a full lawn and snow over the next, you know, two or three years. Which would be really cool as he expands and builds his office building next year. So like you know, dealing with stuff like that. And then we had our one hour call with Cycle CPA with Becky and Aaron. Fantastic people, brilliant folks. Just like talk about having somebody in your corner, folks. I cannot say enough good things about Cycle and our experience with them. I will just tell you personally, like the numbers, the data, the information that I get and the conversations I'm having are like wildly out of this world. Like it would make Mike Bedell blush from seven or eight, nine years ago when I met him. I mean the, the stuff I'm saying, they're saying what's going on, how we're doing, not Just because things are like, quote unquote, going better and doing better and going well or well. Er, right. It's just like the fact that I can have an intelligent financial conversation with somebody, you know, it's. It's been a. A huge win. Personally, I'll just tell you that, like, I've really tried to learn and grow more in this. Part of our business and part of our life is finances. Like, I didn't. I didn't grow up learning finances. I didn't grow up learning private equity conversation. I didn't learn to learn profit loss. I didn't learn, honestly anything. I mean, I just was like, hey, like, here's credit cards and if you can't afford something, go put on a credit card and then pay $29 a month forever, and you'll never pay it off. But that's just the way it is in America. Like, that's just how I grew up. So. So it was actually a really great conversation. An even better conversation was the fact that things were pretty healthy for the business. Aaron was showing me, like, hey, we normally look for a 0.7 to a 1, a 1 to 1.5x, a 1.5x to 2x on this is like, you're riding it at 3.67. I'm like, sounds good. Unlike your cash and burn rate. He's like, you know, Normally margin is 10 to 15%. You guys are running, you know, 15 to 20% again right now, which is fantastic. You gave me the number, our EBITDA number, right? Big EBITDA, 24%, which is huge. Huge, Huge, huge. So that's number that your business is basically valued off of, like, what you could sell it for. So the number that we're hitting right now is a 24% based on about a $750,000 revenue projection, which is fantastic. So, like, very, you know, very profitable. Making money. The guys are making money. Like, things are going well. We built a real brand, great little small medium business. Very, very proud of all that. Right? Well, all that being said, like, between Liz being under the weather, it's been spent a crazy 48 hours and I was not able to get a podcast show done, which I typically do early mornings, late nights normally when the kids nap or something like that, but that I've not had that opportunity the last two days, so real life. So apologies for the late delay here getting the show. I know a lot of you guys are like, what happened to the show? Where's it at? Like, I, trust me, I have Mike, my political Podcast where I'm a junkie. Not that you guys are probably that, you know, invested in, into the Fullerton unfiltered podcast like give them the tea today. Fullerton today we're talking about credit card fees. Right? But I know when you guys are scrolling and trying to, you know, scroll down and refresh, it's not there. You're probably like what the heck is going on? Right. So I, I just wanted to let you guys know, appreciate your patience and flexibility while we're a little delayed coming out of the gate this morning as myself and Mr. Producer get this done and up to you guys. So let's talk about this really quick first off, hopefully this gets better. Obviously I'm supposed to hit the road later this evening late night and come in late night to Cincinnati. I'm only going to be here for one day doing a, just a quick little hopefully video on just equipment, you know, at SIMA for snow, which is about to be that conversation for snow, you know, over the next eight to 12 weeks which I'm excited about. Feel like we just got out of the snow and here we are going back into it. I'm sure some of you guys can feel the, feel that the conversation at Saima is going to be really cool. We'll be there for the trade show all day and then I have a, a one hour speaking little session that I'm doing for Element and Granum. Talking about Green. Yes. And training which I'm very, very excited about. A lot of you guys have been looking at lmn. A couple of you guys signed up on the spot over the a couple days in Chicago leanscaper and used our code. Thank you for that. We do earn a kickback which is really appreciated. Fantastic platform, great conversations there. Again, we're going to be super excited about sending all of our snow contracts out about July 6th forward. I wanted to have them out about two weeks ago but then I kind of pumped the brakes because we're going to be doing a snow webinar snow and tell again with lmn. I'm going to go to Saima. Right. There's a lot of last minute things that I'm probably going to get brain dumped on, you know, from the industry and hopefully get the network with some great folks and learn a few things and we continuously refine, refine our sales process and our terms of service. Right. As well for our contract. So right now all of our estimates are renewed for current commercial clients. We just haven't sent them out just yet. So we're going to do that July6. Because ain't nobody checking their email in the next 10 days for snow pre July 4th, in my opinion. Now, I'm not saying you can't or if you did, it's like, what are you doing? It's not like that. I just wanted to get us out either June 1st or like July 6th, right, like after 4th of July weekend. So that's what we're going to do. But very excited about going on down and doing a quick little training session for LMN and Granum and repping them and green you. So I, I really do love talking about training onboarding team members and I think last year we had one of the best winters that we've ever had because we had some of the best strategy, thought process and team going into it. We had the team of 12 guys. We had nine of our own, six or seven of our own guys, three subs. Let me, let me go slow on this one. We had about nine or so, 10 or so of our own guys, two guys that we subbed out from another company and then a full plow truck sub, which was awesome. And we had three trucks, one sidewalk crew and another plow sub. And folks, I'm telling you what, like, it was a brutal, brutal winner, but nothing that we really got like over our skis on. Yes, we were all exhausted by, you know, late January, February, no doubt about it. But we had the team. It wasn't like we were like making the team of five work. We, we went all in. And the training that we did going into fall, I just really feel like it was an exciting conversation. So we're going to share a little bit more about that, what's working and what wasn't working as we go into that. So it'll be a cool little opportunity there down in time out. So if you guys are there and you hear this real time, hope to see you there, come say hey. And then Element and Grantham, honestly, like, they're really, really classy people. A lot of you guys have met a lot of their team. Steven Bennett, the sales team that's always working the floor, floor, you know, to sign folks up with lmn. A lot of the executive team is always walking around and joshing with everybody. You know, Mark Sedgley, the CEO, is everywhere. I mean, he's, he's like a very like field heavy kind of guy. And they're just a classy group and there's a whole support team that you'll never see that hosts the webinars, the Conferences, the events. Like the, all the girls, right? I come. All the girls. The girls are amazing. They're. They, they literally are the glue. And they're always so attentive to every detail. They really are. And they're like, hey, we thought, look, after the you're speaking, you could do a little meet and greet at the SAMA booth. And we're, we're looking to invest into buying, you know, some copies of the Plow Plow Kid. If you want to sell us author copies, that's fine. If you want us to just, you know, buy 50 count at retail on Amazon, I'm like, dude, buy them off of Amazon. Like, let's, let's bump that, that sales number up, right? So the algorithm places it higher on, on the Amazon website. But we wrote a book last year called Momo Kid, which is off of a. Our kid's favorite book called Pout Pout Fish, which by the way, is a new movie on Netflix or Prime, if you don't know. My kids literally watched it yesterday. Unfortunately, they were parked in front of the TV way longer than I wanted because I don't know how my wife manages three freaking kids. But I am not. I am not capable. I suck, dude. I'm like, I'm really good at one on one, maybe one on two. When it comes to one on three, about every 15 minutes, somebody's head was bouncing off the hardwood floor and tears were flowing. And my wife comes out, what's going on? And I'm like, somebody's dying. But we're good, you know? So one on one, one on two, I'm pretty effective. One on three, dude, I have no idea. I'm like, hey, where's. Where's your brother? Where's your sister? Right? Because they could be anywhere. So there's a lot of that going on. But we wrote another book in the winter, what called Plow Plow Kid, which is a little, little boy. His name is Crew, which is my second son or my first son's name, my second kid's name Crew. He's the star of a Momo Kid. Well, then we wrote another one called Plow Plow Kid. And it's a super cute little fun read and a lot of you guys have scooped it up. It's like 10 bucks on Amazon, right? I make like 3 cents every. For every copy if you know, if you know how KDP works. But long story short, grand and bought, you know, a bunch of copies. They're going to give them away for free at the booth, which is really really thoughtful, really kind, you know, so anyway, like that's, that's like my last like 72 hours and my next 48 hours. Right. So a lot going on for us as we continue to just wrap up the week of another great week of mowing and keep everybody happy, motivated and where we're all at. Well, here, here's the 12 minutes in what I wanted to get to for just a five or six minute topic here, talking about something that we made a big pivot on about about two weeks ago. And I want to break it down a little bit more for you guys here in a second is talking about credit card fees. Now I know this is a very like hot topic and one that has been not like a divisive topic in a negative way. It's just everybody's got their own opinion on moving forward on this conversation. And one, one camp, long story short is we absorb credit card fees. The other camp is we pass credit card fees along. And I'm gonna break down where I was at just, you know, two weeks ago for the last eight years and where I'm at today and what we're gonna be doing for, you know, the, in indefinite future. Because I made a huge pivot on this. Not like a, an aha moment. Not like it's gonna change or break anything or anyone who's followed any thought process from, from me over this topic the last couple years. We just decided to make a pivot. You know, one of the things I, I wanted to talk about was changing your mind. Like, believe it or not, you're allowed to do it. And it's not even like you need an apology to do it, right? It's, hey, you know what, we're going to try something different and I'm willing to change and pivot almost anything. You know, like I joked about, shared a lot about at lal, Orson Scott card. You know, it's we, we hold on to all the beliefs that we have, all these beliefs and the other ones that we're not willing to change are the beliefs that we truly believe in. Right. Like as I butcher his statement. But that's, that's the whole thing that's always caught me, like we all have these like, opinions and beliefs and we're never willing to change our core beliefs. Right. Like we'll change other beliefs, but not our core, core beliefs. And that's where I think you get in trouble in life, especially as you get older, wiser access to more information. Right. Just more life experience, if that makes sense. I think that's a pretty fair statement for any of us out there. And that's just kind of. Kind of where I'm at. And it does stem from element, it does stem from bookkeeping, it does stem from credit card fees. So let me do this really quick. Let's take a quick commercial break. I'm gonna get a sip of water. I'm still waking up this morning, and I want to talk a little bit more about this thought process about why we are now adding credit card fees. Moving forward here at Brian's Law Maintenance, hang tight.
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All right, gang, well, let's jump back into it here, and I'm going to wrap this up here before the family wakes up. But let me do this really quick. I wanted to talk about the credit card fee conversation because basically, like, things just evolve. And as things evolve, you kind of like, start getting hopefully more granular on different chart of accounts, you know, for your business, different expenses. Like, where's your money going? You know, for example, like, we have all this money coming in called revenue, and what you keep is profit, but what's left is your profit first, guy. But what's left, right, is after everything and everyone else gets paid, well, that's fine. But when everyone else and everything else is getting paid more or getting paid besides you, right? Like, that's an area where you want to start paying attention. So I'm not cheap, I'm not free, frugal. But I, I do try to, as the saying goes, manage my pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves. Right? I don't know if you guys have ever heard that one before. That was a new one for me. More recently, I had noticed, like, over the last, like, year or two, as I'm refining my element, account and budget, what we normally did was absorb these credit card fees. And so let's, let's take it from the top. About eight years ago, we switched from like square point of sale to Yardbook. And. And shortly they're into Yardbook. There was a way and this is like transformational CRM conversation. Okay, guys, like, I know everybody's like, use my Jobber link. Use my element link. Weston's around evangelizing for synced up as he should. Mark Bradley's doing element trainings, like software software, you know, CRM, CRM. Still today, six out of 10 landscaping businesses do not use an ounce of software to manage and grow their business, which is wild. Jobber had like their millionth customer, I think. Or millionth like small business service business, which is awesome. Great for them. Like, love the Jobber folks. Lmn, like has made a pivot, right, and sold. Mark Bradley sold it to single ops. And Single office is putting a tremendous investment in going deep with the green industry, lawn care and landscape and snow guys. Right? And of course the tree guys you've got. And a bunch of other dude. I mean there's. There's every. Every day, every week I get an offer and a solicitation from somebody via DM or email about some point of sale, routing mapping software, invoicing software from lawn or snow. I mean, I. Every single week. And I'm not even kidding. And it's always, hey, man, if we, if we do this together, we can make big money, crazy commissions signing people up or we'll give you an equity stake and let's like, let's like take over the world together. And I'm like, no, I don't care. I'm not here to do that. I don't want to do that. I want people to know how to run a successful business and understand financial education because that's where I struggled with the most. So when I found and also have a passion and mission and reason why we're doing all this and when I saw Mark Bradley, as many of you guys have heard, in fact a lot of you guys came to the leanscaper event and were newbies and first timers, which we all are at one point and came up to me during and a couple people dming me after and saying, dude, I finally get it. Like, I see this guy Mark, like, this guy's incredible. I've never really seen this dude before. And as I've shared my story, going to an LMN event a couple years ago saying, you know, it was an awesome time and my wife going so tell me more about lmn. I was like, to be honest with you, I don't. I don't really remember us talking much about lmn. Like maybe five to seven minutes. Like, here's a budget, here's how you do your invoicing and estimates, and here's your sales and whatever. And it wasn't even like a pitch. It was just like how you get to better payroll, you know, for your team and a bonus structure for your team. But like, you have to figure out, you're knowing your numbers. And I'm like, yeah, like, I'm sure they talked about lm, but dude, I don't really remember. But let me tell you, let me tell you about this Mark Bradley guy, right? One second, quick little pause here.
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Not sure where we were at, but had a phone call and special shipment delivery to the front door for a lawnmower demo. So do apologize about that little breakup here. Breaking it up, but more to come on that. Very excited about that. Unfortunately, it's just a demo, but let's do this real quick. So everybody's been on the whole, you know, kick of like, you know, using software. Use my link, you might use my code and, and that's fine. That's awesome. Like, that's what we all should be doing. Well, we scooped up Yardbook about eight years ago and I think it's a fantastic free software and CRM. And honestly, like, I owe so much to my first six, seven years, you know, the last six or seven years using Yardbook, into the last three years using lmm. And it really helped. I mean, just everything. Like we were using Excel files, paper spreadsheets, then we went to, you know, having a way to import our customers into a CRM, able to build routes. I didn't do a lot of estimate approvals or estimate sending for residential or commercial at that time, but we did do all of our invoicing with that platform. And it's kind of crazy. Like I, in a way, it's almost like, how could somebody not be using software at this point or a CRM? And again, pick your. Pick your brand, pick your commitment, right? You know, one, one quick note, and this is, I, I just have to Say this, like, I, I have had had some really good demos with some of you guys lately that have Jobber growth package. Dude, if you're, and I don't know crap about the Jobber tiers and the add ons and the bolt ons and this AI add on and that website add on, but I was on their website just like a, I don't know, two weeks ago. I'll just tell you, like, if you're paying for Jobber growth, you absolutely should be making the. If you're growing and you want to actually know your numbers, you should migrate over to Element Starter. The difference is like 50 to $100 a month. But what you get is not Even kidding, like 10 times the value, 10 times the add on, like the budget tool, the price list and the way to bake that into pricing your estimates accurately that what you would get with lmn. I didn't know the gap was that difference. I'm like, I thought jobber was 50 to 100 bucks a month, to be honest with you. And I'm, and I'm sure it is, but I can't believe how many of you guys out growing, you know, 300, 500, 751 million, $2 million businesses. One guy was doing $7 million still with jobber and those are one of the guys that signed up on the spot. He's like, dude, I'm, I'm blowing this platform like the walls out. I need something that can carry our business and like the lift. He signed up for Element on the spot. Great guy. And I was like, yeah, I, I, I did not even know that one of you guys were showing me your Jobber account and your screen share and, you know, asking some questions. And I was like, my gosh, like, is that really the difference is like 50 to 100, 150amonth? Like, like, I'm not saying you need Element Pro, which is like 650 bucks a month. I think every single human being that's doing 300 grand and above, half a million above, needs to be on Element Starter. I know a young guy, Ryan, that was doing 160, $170,000. And he just signed up for Element as well because he's on a fast growth curve and he wants to know his numbers. I'm like, dude, element started for 2, 300 bucks a month. 300 bucks a month is, it's wildly more attainable and, and I'm sorry to like get on the little Element rant again, but my gosh, like, what will open up for your business. And the doors will open up for you like mentally, especially on the finance side of your business sales process and your pricing process. It, you know, dude, it is what it is. I, I'm, it has done so much for us that I can't even begin to spend another hour on like, I like you've heard our going from single digit to almost no profit three years ago. Yes, Coming off an expensive season built with the shop and barn build. But even with add backs we were like barely single digit profit margin guys talking like 3 to 7% if I really had to like quantify it. And then second year coming out of it 15 point like 54% true NAP last year right now again another 15 to 20%. And our EBITDA, which is even more important is like 24%. Okay. Like those numbers mean big money. And basically if somebody's negotiating 300 to $500 a month for software when your profit margin can go up 3, 5, 10% because you get a better handle on your budget and your numbers and that turns into tens if not twenties, if not thirties, if not fifties or hundreds of thousands of dollars of profit, right? And then you sell it for a 2x3x4x multiple. Some of you guys that are growing some big businesses and you're getting a 2x off of that profit or a 3x off of that profit, we're talking about 2, $300,000 of enterprise value that you're, that you're generating because you know your numbers better. So don't just think it things as like, well it cost 100 bucks or 200 bucks for jobber growth and 300 bucks or 325 let's say for LMM. No, no, dude, it's the 10 to 30 grand extra you're making in profit per year because you actually know your Numbers times a 2x3x4x on your multiple on the way out if you were ever to sell this thing off. So the enterprise value that you pay, that you generate for having a $3,000 a month or $3,000 a year subscription to Element is really generating you 2 to $300,000 potentially right in enterprise value. Just something I want to throw out there is a lot of you guys are getting that. A lot of guys are scooping that up and getting it. But I didn't get that conversation for a very, very long time. So that's why I'm like, hey, if you're using Yardbook, great. If you're using Java, great. Like I'm not here to Beat anybody over the head with it. I'm just saying, like, I just didn't know what I didn't know. And you know, once you get involved in this different next like, world, you just realize like, oh my God, like I, I was like a big fish in a little pond. Right. Kind of a syndrome. And that's fair. And that's just the, the way that it grow, it works. And as we all continue to grow, hopefully you continue to make these breakthroughs and aha moments on your own. Right. Hopefully it doesn't take you a decade or two like it did for me. Hopefully it takes you months if, and maybe only a year or two. Right. But let's go back to the Yard Book. So Yardbook was fantastic. One thing that they came out with was charge cards on file. And a lot of you guys have heard us in that whole rant and story. So we would do charge cards on file. Originally they had like send, like call and people would like put it on your account. I was working with Mark, different Mark. There's three marks now. Mark with Yardbook, Mark Bradley with now Leanscaper, and then Mark Bradley. I'm sorry, Mark Sedgley who now runs lm. Right. And as a single ops. Well, Mark at Yardbook and I were in cahoots a lot because a lot of folks were flocking the Yard Book just because I was trying to be an ambassador for them. And I actually never made like a kickback or commission on anybody signing up with Yardbook. Believe it or not, we got paid a flat rate fee to mention them on our YouTube videos. I had four deliverables per year for that. Got paid very nominal. Very, very, very nominal. Mark's a great guy. I was never there to negotiate a price. He just offered something. I said, sounds great, and that was it. But I never got paid a single penny for a commission or sign up. Probably should have negotiated my contract better.
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Right?
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But that was, that was like early YouTube brands on maintenance. Well, and so when I say, like, I promote things genuinely because, like, they're helping our business, like, that's, that's the truth. And Yard Book was filled that fantastic gap for us for five, six, seven years until about 2022, 2023. Well, along the way a conversation came up. Excuse me. With all these CRMs about the credit card fee. Like, do you enable this 3% credit card fee, 2.9% plus 25 cents or 30 cents. What. I mean, seems like every software has that. That's just a merchant fee. That's just, that's the Visa, that's the stripes, that's the folks. I don't know, it's above my pay grade. But that's just what the credit card companies charge you to run a card. So it's unavoidable. You, by the way, you pay this at Walmart, you pay this at Home Depot, you pay this on your, you know, $50 gas fill up. This is just how it works. Well, you don't see like your gas receipt bill adding this 3%, right? It's usually baked into it. Now in Michigan we have party stores. I don't know if you guys have party stores everywhere you go. Like little liquor stores, party stores. It's, there's one every half mile here in metro Detroit. I don't, I don't know how or why or what, but we have party stores. And it's always like at the register. And you see a little less of this because it's very frowned upon. But you see 10 minimum or three, you know, $1 fee will be added for credit cards, you know, because they're like a cash basis business. When you're buying your liquor, you're buying your pack of Doritos or a bottle of wine, they want cash money. And that's the way business was done until 10, 20 years ago, right? Nobody paid with a credit card 10, 20 years ago. Well, these fees start to add up. A lot of words to say these fees start to add up, right? And this is what has really noticed it for me as well. When I migrated all of our customers over to charge cards on file, I looked at it as a convenience. For me, that is a convenience exclusively for the customer because we only gave our customers one way to pay, which was by credit card unless they wanted to do a seasonal prepay with a check. But I didn't like that because then it goofed up. Cash flow because I've had a hundred customers then 15 prepay and I got 15 GS up front and I burned that cash up in the spring. Now I'm going to be more cash flow hurting come summer and fall. So I didn't like that. So I would like actually deter people away from that. Well, when you're doing a hundred grand a year in work and you have $3,000 in credit card fees, you're like, ah, it's expensive. And the whole other debate was, oh, credit card fees are, you know, debate, you know, they're expensive. And I'm like, look, I'd rather have 97 of my thousand, 97 of my hundred thousand than 50,000 of my hundred thousand produced because I'm waiting for checks and cashes and Betty and Sue and everybody to sell and Venmo me and if you're still in that world, okay, like that's like the first 100, 200 shows that Brian's on me or fully sound filtered podcast. And I get that like you, there's been these big giant leaps in transform a thousand, you know, year leap forward seasons of Brian's Law Maintenance. That's like the sub 250 episode Brian's on Maintenance. That's, that's other people's podcasts still today exclusively because they haven't changed or grown one ounce and you know, seven or eight years, that's fine. Like there's a, there's a podcast and a thought process of people newbies out there and, and don't take offense if I call you a newbie doing that still. But there's a better way to do it and it's just a very convenient thing at the time to do it that way. Like you're like oh job or this or yard book that. And like I get it, but there's another season and don't. I'm not gonna poo poo on anybody who's in that season because we're all there. And I was there for ways longer than I should have been. But I also don't want any animosity for anybody who's growing and trying to go to the next level. Right. Like I think that you should. I think growing a million, 2 million, $5 million business is super admirable and what we all could do. Does everybody need to do it? Absolutely not. But I think everybody should grow a 2 to 3 million dollars business. 10 or 20%, make 2, 300 grand a year, give you guys opportunities to make 60, 80, a hundred grand. Take home. Like that's a good, that's. Everybody should gun for a two and a half million dollar business in, in my, my opinion that way because it's very attainable. We're doing it. It's not as hard as you think. It's not easy, but it's not as hard as you think. Anybody who tells you otherwise hasn't done it. Okay? And don't listen to that person. So go back to the yard book conversation and the 3% credit card fee. At the time I was like, look, it's three grand. Like, who cares? I'm just glad to have my first 97 out of my a hundred thousand. And that did solve the problem. Like that was the band aid to fix at the time. Now imagine this. We continue to grow. We're doing 100, 200, 300, 400 grand in revenue. And I start to migrate over to LMN and elements like, hey, you got to figure out your budget. And I'm like, sure, like I don't know. And they're like, well, you know, what's your bookkeeper chart of accounts? And I had a bookkeeper for since 2018 and it was great, but they weren't industry specific. We had no measurable KPIs performance metrics basically to measure against other green industry related businesses. My accountant had like, you know, the local bakery, two doctors, an asphalt guy, lawn care person and whatever, right? For my, my bookkeeping and even my taxes and like that's fine, but there's no industry specific person, like they don't know the nuance of. Right. So when I go into my chart of accounts, which is the listing of all of our expenses in our books, our bookkeeping software with QuickBooks, there would be like six or seven categories when there should be like 40, right? It's like marketing, like marketing's a line item. It's like, you know, three, it's like $3,000. Well, it's like is it 3,000 on marketing or 2100 on postcards, 400 on yard signs, 400 on company T shirts? Like what, what is marketing? So we cleaned that up the last two, two, three years with cycle. And I'm telling you, I'm telling you, uh, I couldn't even imagine running my business without them or lmn. Like it's that they are the business with me, dude. Like they know my numbers, cycles, managing my account, accounts payable receivables with our ACH deposits, like I couldn't imagine. I, I couldn't run my business without them. I couldn't have the time and money, the lifestyle that I have today without them. Well, as this conversation continues to go on, we start looking at our budget. And the budget in your price list, right. Are going to determine what you're able to charge and how competitive you can charge in the marketplace. Well, I'm noticing our overhead is high and like it's just not bloated. It's just high and higher than normal, right? By a couple of points. And we start looking around and you know the idea with LMM for the credit card fee conversation, because if you don't Click Enable the 3% fee on Jobber or LMN, I'm sorry, Jobber or yard book, you absorb the fee with LMN, the thought process has always been per 100 grand. You absorb the fee and you bake it into overhead. So while you're not directly charging the customer on the job that 3% on their invoice, your 40 mo is now $42, because you're recovering that $2 fee in the price list on the estimate, and you're recovering it in the price of the mo and baking in the overhead of all your credit card fees from the. From the previous year or that year into general overhead. So, for example, per hundred grand, you have $3,000 of credit card fees, right? Let's just keep it simple. Like, it's typically 3%. And again, no big deal. When you're doing sub 100 grand, 200 grand, you're like, hey, it's a convenience item. Well, dude, now, as you can just imagine, fast forward, here's where we're at. Like, a lot of words. 30 freaking minutes in to say this. I'm doing, you know, 750 grand. We're budgeting a million. And my credit card fee line item is $30,000. And our total credit card fees last year was, you know, significant. I don't know the number. Call it 10 or 15 grand, right? And I'm like, whose money is that? Where is that going to? Like, why. Why are we having. Why am I paying the credit card fees? Right? Like, sure, the conversation is like, it's big based on convenience, but reality is like, it's a convenience for the customer. It's the cost of doing business. I get that. And that was my thought process. But I'm like, look, dude, I'm not absorbing. I just had a mental click. About a couple weeks ago, LMN moved over to Stripe, which so many of you guys love. And Stripe has been fantastic for so many of us. And that with that, they have the option to turn on credit card fees, right? Just like they did with Yardbook, who also use Stripe. And I'm like, yeah. So we got an email notification, Element. Every time you log into it, there's a new update. You gotta click a little box that says, like, you know, you got the notification. Because they're always, always making investments and upgrades literally every week, every day into the platform. So it's like, hey, Element pay is now here with Stripe, which we migrated over about three months ago. Now you can charge credit card fees. I'm like, click that button. Click, hell yeah, I'm gonna click that button. Because, dude, if you're processing a million dollars and here's what Brian's Almanis didn't understand four or five years ago, I could have understood this intuitively, but I just wasn't there. I just wasn't there. And that's okay to say for all of us out there. Like, dude, things change. You're allowed to change your mind. You're allowed to admit I was wrong, Right? You're allowed to say, like, your yeses can turn to no's and your nose can turn to yeses. In fact, we're on the. The Bay harbor yacht show boat show. We're looking at all these boats, and we're walking on the pier with my two kids, and my wife's got the baby in the stroller. And that's always tough, you know, Busy pier, busy docks, kid in a stroller, two other kids, 4 and 3, who have the attention span of a gnat. And my son's like, I want to go on that boat, Daddy. And I'm like, no. And he's like, I want to go on this boat. I'm like, yeah, let's go check that one out. And then he's like, I want to go check on this boat. I'm like, no. And, like, it didn't take about four no's for me to go, why am I saying no? Like, why am I actually saying no? It's something that I've kind of, like, had a little mental litmus and conversation with myself lately is, why do I say yes to certain things? And why do I say no to certain things? Is it past experiences, previous, you know, life? You know, I. I don't know, like, was I some being in another world, another time, when I have a predisposition to say yes or no to things? Like, is it. Is it a gut feeling? Sure. Is it a logical feeling? I don't know. But, like, I looked at my son and go. And looked at my wife, I go, yeah, yeah, actually, yes, we can go on that boat. There's no logical reason for us to not go on that boat. Right. And so it's the same thing with, like, credit card fees. Like, well, you're the credit card fees. Absorb guy. Yep. Today, forward, per this podcast, I'm the know the customer pays the credit card fees guy. And I changed my mind. Shocker. And so the. The conversation was per million. When you put a budget together in LMN, you see a line item for $30,000 in credit card fees. You're like, holy fricking Jesus. It's a lot of money that we could potentially earn back. Keep input Right to the bottom line. And all I'm thinking is if I got five crew leads, that's five grand of bonuses per guy, including five grand for the owner to take some chips off the table. Like, that's, that's our freaking money. And so the, the whole conversation was, we decided to do this. I worked with my va, I said, let's craft a newsletter. We sent a newsletter to all of our residential customers and we said, hey, like, basically due to the rising cost of business, our overhead, and the expensiveness of the merchant fees that we have been absorbing, we're no longer able to do this. We wrote a couple of quick, nice, cute, warm, kind, well worded paragraphs in chat and put that in a newsletter and sent over to our customers. And by the way, shocker, we've had zero pushback. Zero pushback. Nobody cared. Everybody's like, okay, Actually one customer said, hey, I noticed my bill was up like A$40 on my last bill. What's going on? And say, hey, it's the credit card fee if you got the newsletter. Oh, I did see that come through. Okay, thanks for the clarification. Now, I'm not saying it's going to be like that easy for everybody everywhere. You know, I'm sure people barely even check their invoice, you know, whatever kind of a deal it used to be, you know, 5250 for a weekly MO. Now it's going to be 53, 76. And like, hey, what's this $1.50 charge? That's the 3%. I'm sure we'll have a couple more follow up conversations. So I'm not just saying everybody's, you know, in love with the idea. I'm sure there's a little bit of heartburn. But the bigger heartburn for me is we do a million bucks and we're spending $30,000 in credit card fees. And by the way, I'm not here to convince you that this is what you need to do. I'm just telling you this is what we're doing. Because I'm sure there's somebody out there doing five million who still absorbs a hundred fifty thousand dollars of credit card fees or whatever, right? Or for fifty grand in credit card fees, like, that's fine. That's their prerogative. I'm just as I continue to see that line item bake into my chart of accounts, bake into my overhead, right? And every single 10 grand is basically an extra dollar or two difference on a weekly mo price, right? So when people like I charge $84aman hour. I'm at $77aman hour. I'm like, just so you know, most of the big commercial outfits are between 42 and $60aman hour while still making a 10 to 15% net. Having a 70, 80 plus dollar man hour rate sounds good in theory and it sounds like a fantastic Instagram TikTok post for somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about. You will not earn commercial work, let alone all your residential work by pricing yourself out of the market. That's not the goal. Now if you can get your overhead down to $45aman hour and you can still charge $85aman hour, then dude, you are going to make money. You know what I'm saying? But it doesn't work like that in most metro competitive markets. And if I want to be more competitive at brands on maintenance, we have to be more efficient and we have to shave overhead. And a great way to do that is to take a 15 to 30 grand line item or most of it, or reduce it from 25 grand down to five grand. Right, with your line item for your credit card fees. This makes sense. And when I tell folks that this same time last year we were like 74, $75aman hour revenue per hour, not revenue per man hour rate, revenue per hour, about 1, 108, 109 for maintenance for the most part. That's your production rate. Your cost was like 70, 74. Dude, I think we're at like 59 now. 58, 59. We're still earning a 20%. I'm telling you, we're a lean, mean, effing maintenance machine. I'm telling you that is a good thing. That is a great number. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, you need to be at the next five LMN webinars seminars, sign up for LMN and book as many one on one coaching calls with whoever you can get access to who's done it, who has done it, who has a half a million million $5 million business and above. Because if you don't know what I just talked about, which I didn't know three years ago, I'm telling you that's why it's not growing the way you want. You're not making the money that you're looking to make and that's why you're struggling. It has to be a logical fact, reason why. And it's likely your overhead, it's likely your efficiency is Likely your cost, and that's going to yield your profitability. And that was me. We fixed it very quickly. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I've got a wife, kick, kids, build a home, guys, three businesses. Like, dude, if I can figure all this stuff out, and I made a big commitment to learn this stuff last two, three years. And I'm not perfect, Trust me. I got a long ways to go. But we were able to dial this in, to start making it work for us. And it is working. And I'm telling you, like, the money that we're making and the enterprise value that we're adding is making me wealthy. And that's a good thing. That why we're here. Does that make sense? And so there's a lot here. And I'm not trying to, like, you know, in anybody's yard. I'm just telling you, like, for all of you guys that are clinging on to, like, free stuff or the convenience thing or, you know, like, it just doesn't work. As you try to go to the next levels of life, you're like, well, I'm going to get everything for free on YouTube or, I'm not. I'm not willing to pay for mentorship. I'm not willing to go to an event. I'm not willing to pay 2, 300 bucks for a ticket to something or a thousand bucks for a ticket to something. Dude, that'. Fine. And then even worse, you get the guys that are 50 years old. I've never done any of that stuff. We used to use pen and paper. And, like, they make, like $40,000 a year in the landscaping business. And their equipment looks like it, right? Like, and I'm not being mean. I'm just telling you the truth. Like, dude, you need to run to the hills away from those people, right? Like, nobody's. You're not going to get rich saving money. There's no coupons for Ferraris, right? You have to make the investment. I'm just. I'm just telling you, like, you don't have to do it. My suggestion is that you do. I know what we're doing, and boy, is it paying big dividends for Brian's lawmaidens. And the clarity, the. The confidence. Hell, I don't care less about the money. I just want to know, like, in a way that we're right, that we're doing this thing correctly, right? Like, clarity is kindness, right? Those kind of discussions, does that make sense? And so, long story short, we are passing the credit card fees along. We Send out a newsletter is well worded. Everybody's has, you know, for the most part seems to be happy or at least neutral, positive. That's something that we enabled here just about a week or two ago as LMN made it available. We're going to take advantage of all these new tools and resources and conversations and proposals and anything that comes down the pike, I'm going to look at it, evaluate it and we're going to act on it. I'm not one to say like, oh that's cool. Wonder what that's all about? No, like we're going to take everything in discern digest and if we want to apply it. And I'm not one to take, you know, 10 years to make a decision on anything. Well, I know when something's good or, or, you know, I got 80% of the information, I'm gonna act on it. And I know a lot of you guys feel the same way. So that's where we're at today. A lot here. A lot of like, kind of maybe more heavy financial conversation than, than I probably alluded to. Probably could have been a six minute show. Hey, we're doing credit card freeze. Have a good day. But I wanted to give you guys the idea, the thought process and the why behind why we're doing it. Okay? We're able to be more price competitive, right? We're able to bring down our overhead cost, right? We're able to pay that fee forward to our customers like every other industry in the world does, whether you see it or don't see it, because it's baked into their overhead cost or added to the bottom of your receipt, right? So it's normal. And so again, imagine again my whole thought process is there's 5,000 people listening to this thing or whatever and everybody's doing, you know, 100 grand to a million. And we, you know, have a 50 million dollar data set here and everybody can stop absorbing credit card fees and we can start pushing those out to our customers. Right or wrong, sorry, it is what it is. I don't, you know, don't look at me, look at the merchants. Look at Visa. Don't yell at me, look at Visa. I'm just a messenger, right? You wanna, you wanna, you know, burn down the, the credit card company buildings like it's Fight Club. Did you get my vote? I was in bondage to them for a long time with a lot of money, so I have no problem with that. I, I think credit is too easy to get a hold of in my opinion. But don't shoot the messenger, right? But if we can have a million dollars of credit card fees pass along to our customers and you guys all absorb that as profit in the next 12, 18 months, again, that's what helps me sleep better at night with the ideas that I'm sharing with you guys here today. So that's what I'll leave you guys today. Thanks for your patience on getting today's show up. Hopefully this catches up with you guys sometime early this morning or late afternoon and you guys are able to get a little mojo to, you know, get over hump week. And as we're gonna leave you guys today, I love you guys. Appreciate you. LMN everywhere you go. Promo code Brian for LMM. I think it's called like Brian 200 saves you 200 bucks. Onboarding with Cycle. Let them know we sent ya. Fantastic folks, if you ever want to demo with like how Cycle works with us, I guess, you know, I'm always happy to help you out. See their Cyclescape reporting and what our company actually looks like. It's really, really cool. Get like a 27 page report and document like every quarter. And I have the fractional tier, which is like the next tier up. So we get a monthly conversation with these guys. And even when there's nothing to talk about, like yesterday there was a lot to talk about. I came in with like, I. I'm like, I don't even know what I need to ask and do. We had one of the best conversations we've ever had. Promo code Brian everywhere else. Cujo Equipment defender, Isotunes. Brian's 10 saves you 10 everywhere you guys go. And so it keeps lights on here and helps me bring this content to you guys. And that's what I got. All right, over now, folks. We love you. Oh, one last quick thing. Lal tickets around July 15th. We're gonna push it back about two weeks, but July 15th. All right, it's gonna be a quick little date in the calendar. Lal tickets. July 15th is what we're aiming for. And folks, I'm telling you, when I dropped the speaker list, dude, I'm telling you what, it's gonna be good. We had some last minute pivots, that's why we had to push it out. But we locked in two big dogs. Two big dogs. And man, I am freaking fired up. All right, over now, guys. Have a great day. Love you. Appreciate ya. See ya.
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C
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 Filtered Podcast thanks for listening
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C
and we hope to see you on the next episode.
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B
This has been a Brian Fullerton and Mr. Producer Production.