← Green Industry Podcast
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- [00:00]
Sponsor/Advertiser
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- [00:34]
Marty (Producer)
Hello and welcome to the Green Industry Podcast. Your go to guide for building a more profitable and thriving lawn care and landscaping business. Your host, Paul Jamison is the author of five best selling books including Cut that Grass and make that Cash and his latest Level up your Money, all available on Amazon and Audible. Now get ready for more expert insights and practical strategies to boost your business and level up your life. Here's Paul Jameson.
- [01:11]
Paul Jamison (Host)
Welcome back to the Green Industry Podcast. I'm your host, Paul Jameson. Let me ask you a question. How much time did you spend this past week tracking down money you've already earned? Meaning you've already done the work, but you actually haven't got paid from the work you've already done. You're running a lawn care business and acting like a bank. By extending credit to your customers, you're setting yourself up for cash flow, stress and massive frustration. You're a business owner, not a lending institution. Today we're going to talk about a concept that will completely revolutionize your cash flow, give you total peace of mind. I know because I have done this. It works. It's changed my life and that is getting paid before you do the work. Let me say that again in case you're just learning English. Getting paid before you do the work. So we're going to break down the prepay model for lawn maintenance. How to collect proper deposits when you're doing larger landscaping projects. Maybe a mulch installation, a pine straw installation, flowers. Sod bigger projects like that. How to do progress payments that will safeguard your cash flow and your business. But my friend, it's time to stop chasing checks and start serving your customers with confidence and with peace when you actually have money in your bank account so you're not in this place where like I gotta go finish this job right now, this afternoon and hope that Susie comes home from Pilates and has a check for me so she can give me the check so I can rush to the bank so I Can put it in the bank so that then the money will be in the bank so that then I can ever been there. All right, here's a secret, all right? Rich people get paid before they do the work. Poor people, these are generally speaking, but listen to me, hear me out here. Rich people get paid before they do the work. And I'm gonna give you some examples of that. A lot of poor people, they'll do the work. They'll do the work. They'll do the work, right? They'll go to work on Monday. They'll go to work on Tuesday. It'll show back up on Wednesday. Thursday, Friday, it's the end of the week. They still haven't gotten paid. They'll show up the next week. Listen, Monday, wake up all over, that alarm's cling off. Monday morning, that alarm clock's going off, beep, beep, beep. I gotta go to work. They still haven't gotten paid from last week's work. Here they are Monday, showing up Tuesday, showing up, working Wednesday, Thursday, finally Friday, finally payday, and they get paid on Friday. And that was two weeks of work. And then at the end of two weeks of work, they got paid. Well, that company that, you know, suckered him into working for two weeks without getting paid. They had that money sitting in their account, probably had. We're earning interest on that money and things of that nature. Now, on the other hand, rich people, they get paid up front. I had to go to urgent care before. Hopefully I never have to go to that place ever again in my life. But I had to go actually more than a couple occasions. And I would go in my urgent need, right? I had one time my. My skin was having a crazy reaction. And that is a whole nother story for another day. Probably don't want to hear that story. But thankfully I survived and everything's fine. One time I had an infection in my finger. Long story short, are you where you work outside every day, you got to be very careful of protecting your skin, wearing gloves, wearing pants, where, you know, just. Anyway, that's another story for another day. But I had situations arise where I needed medical attention. So I go into the urgent care place, and what do they do? They give you the paperwork, right? Fill out all this stuff, and then they call you back up, Mr. Jameson, make you feel all important. And how would you like to take care of today's payment, right? And they got the little card thing there. And you, you, you, you. You tap your card. You swipe your card. Yeah, yeah. Insert your car, whatever you got. And they prepay. You haven't even seen the nurse practice, nurse practitioner yet or the doctor. But what did they do? They got paid ahead of the service. And you go back and then the, you know, the, the nurse practitioner, you gotta, you know, somebody before that comes in and checks on you, and then the nurse practitioner comes in and checks on you, and then you, you know, you're all good to go. Hopefully they fix whatever needs fixing, get you on a plan, you're out the door. But they already got paid. Let me give you another example, all right? Where do you like to eat, Mr. Producer? Well, Domino's. We got to cut that. All right, we'll, we'll use Domino's as an example, all right? You go in, you order your pizza. I, and I haven't been to Domino's since college. They actually had a Domino's in college. And I, I would go there in college. But anyway, you order your pizza, you go in and they don't, you don't walk in. And then they're like, hey, here's your pizza, Mr. Producer. I hope you enjoy it. How about you go home and eat it? Enjoy it. And then we'll keep an eye out. In your email, we're going to send you an invoice for the pizza and then, you know, pay us, you know, pay us in a month from now. No, no, before they hand you the pizza, you gotta pay, you go in there, right? They tell you how much it is. I wouldn't even know. I haven't had pizza in a long time. Man, don't I like pizza. I like it a lot and I haven't. Oh, man, I got to stop thinking about it because I might end up in some pizza shop. But if I do go to probably, we'll see. They're not going to give me the pizza. I go home and eat it and then probably regret it. And then my belly gets all big and then they sent, they email me an invoice and then I pay them a month later. Absolute craziness. I could get, I could keep going if you want me to. Story after story after story. These businesses, the urgent care, right? Wendy's. You go in the Wendy's and you order your food. What do they do first after you place your order? They collect the payment prepay. You pay first. Then you get your baconator and B size fry and your Frosty or your chili if you're on a little more healthier side. Maybe you order chili and a baked potato. You could actually order somewhat healthy at Wendy's if you get the chili and a baked potato. I, I used to travel a lot, and I had to kind of figure out after a few trips of getting fat, why did I gain so much weight on this trip. Well, if you're eating out, there's a lot of sodium in the food and everything. Got it. You got to be careful what you order, but kind of learn my go tos. Like, if I go to a steakhouse, I get me a nice ribeye steak or a New York strip with vegetables and maybe a salad. If I go to Wendy's, I'll get. Get chili and baked potato. But in the Wendy's example, you go in and you order your food and you pay. Then they give you your food. They got it figured out prepay. Could you imagine what would happen with Wendy's or Domino's? If you go in, you order, you get your food, and then they. Then they email you an invoice. Then after a month, you never paid Domino's. Now they're calling you, hey, Mr. Producer, you. You were in here a month ago, and we gave you that large pepperoni pizza. And anyway, just wanted to. Just wanted to remind you the. The $20 for that is.
- [09:49]
Sponsor/Advertiser
Is.
- [09:49]
Paul Jamison (Host)
Is due. It was due actually last week. No. Well, my friend, this is how people run their lawn care business. They go the first of the month, first week of the month, and they mow Mrs. Wilson's yard. Now, they spent the money on the gas to get there. They spent the money on the mower that's going to mow it. They spent the money on the labor that's doing the work. I could go all the way down the list. They spent all this money and then they go and they mow Mrs. Smith's yard. And then these guys come back and they do it the next week, and then the next week, and then the next week, and then at the end of the month. This is crazy. They give Mrs. Wilson an invoice. Hey, we came on the 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th. It's a hundred dollars of service. Here's your invoice for $400. Do net 15. They think they're sly or ain't gonna do no net 30. That would be suckers. They're going to do net 15. So now let's say Ms. Wilson's a nice lady and she. She actually does pay you on time. You had six weeks since that first service on the seventh of the month. A whole month went by. Then. Then your net 15, 6 weeks went by since you did the work. And you're just now getting paid. Craziness. That ain't how you run a business. We're going to talk about the right way to do it after we hear a word from today's show sponsor. Crest Commercial is the only solution for commercial landscapers to convert to electric with the power of gas, no downtime. With their 8 minute charging system and industry disrupting warranties that offer 6 years or 3000 full life cycles on the Cyberpack batteries, there is no reason to not make the switch. To find out more about the free demos and how you can start saving up to $2,000 per year per crew, visit crest.com today to find your local dealer. Have you ever felt like you're drowning in scattered quotes, schedules and chasing payments that never come easy? I've been there with you. I used to be a chuck in the truck, completely, completely disorganized and constantly chasing payments. But then I started using jobber back in 2019 and it was a complete game changer for my business. I'm still using it today. I love it and recommend it to all my coaching clients. Now Jobber is an all in one business app software where you can store customer information, send quotes and invoices, schedule your appointments and even collect payments. Best of all, you know I talk about this a lot on the podcast. You can save a credit card on file for automatic and hassle free payments. No more awkward follow ups or lost money. You ready to simplify your business operations? Check the link in the show notes and use my special Jobber link and try it for free. You won't look back. Alright, so money is the oxygen of our businesses and we need oxygen in our bodies to stay alive. We need cash in our businesses to stay alive. So here's how I recommend doing it. First and foremost, you need to have a professional billing system. It's very, excuse me, unprofessional when the way you get paid is Zelle or PayPal or Venmo or Cash App or whatever. And I, I've done business with people and that's how they, you know, that's how they've gotten paid. And it's somewhat unprofessional. You know, like in the back of my mind I was like can this person really be trusted? And then I do business with other businesses. Recently I had to get some things embroidered and where they, you know, like they stitch a logo on a golf shirt or whatever and I went in and I dropped off the, the stuff and they come back with me with an email saying hey, does this. Does this all look right for your order? I was like, that's correct. And they're like, okay, well, we'll send you the deposit information and then we'll get started. So that's exactly what they did. Emailed me, and I clicked the button and it said pay here. And everything was professional. And lo and behold, I paid there. So I paid them ahead of time. They haven't actually given me my embroidered stuff yet, but they got my money ahead of time. Now, I felt comfortable for two reasons. Reason number one, this company has basically 4.9 out of 5 stars, and they have a bunch of fresh new reviews in the last few months. So when I was looking for an embroidery shop, I shopped around town, and they were about a half hour away. When it's all said and done with this traffic from all these tourists that are down here, well, I could have went with a brand company that's closer to me, but I went with the ones far away because I trusted them, because all these people recently are saying good things about their experience working with that company. So in the back of my mind, I was like, okay, they're trustworthy. And then they didn't say, hey, you know, can you send us a little money on PayPal or can you cash app us, or can you zealous, or can you whatever the other ones are. No, they had a professional billing system, and I went ahead and prepaid them, and I haven't even got my stuff yet. But I anticipate, because this company seems very professional in their policies and their dealings and their reputation and their reviews that they're going to come through and I'm going to get my embroidered stuff here, hopefully here in the next few days. And they. They told me ahead of time, it's going to be 10 business days. They're really busy, which is another good sign. And when I went in there, I mean, the place was busy. It was busting into seams. It was bustling. It was. It was. It was active. You know, they. They were working. You could see the machines going and that they. They had customers. So, long story short, what you need is you need a billing system that's Not Check, Cash, PayPal, Zelle, Venmo, whatever the other ones are. Now, I use Jobber. It's a CRM. And when I send an invoice, it looks professional. I. I actually customize everything with all my logo and accurate information, and it looks legitimate. So I send an invoice. I look like I stand out from the crowd. Now, here's the next step. So that's. That's just like. Having a CRM is not the success. That's like the bare minimum. The success is having your customers prepay with the CRM. So how this works is get a new customer. Okay. Word of mouth. I love word of mouth. Lady calls me. All right. Hey, Grace had told us about you. We actually just moved into the neighborhood, and we need a lot of work done. Okay, I'll be right over. All right. This is a nice thing about route density. Go on over. Hey, nice to meet you. I'm Paul. You know, we take care of Grace. We actually, you know. Yeah, yada. Yeah.
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Sponsor/Advertiser
Yeah.
- [17:30]
Paul Jamison (Host)
All right. Build credibility. And so now the customer wants weekly moon, of course, Mo edge trim blog. You know, that'll be great. That'll be 400amonth. And what we do is we store your card on file. We have a vault. I won't even know your card number. It's a secured vault. You put. Once you store your card on file, then we'll just set it up on autopi. Autopay for the first of the month. So you'll be billed on the first of every month for the work we'll be doing that month. So, for example, on August 1st, you'll be billed for 400. And then we'll obviously come every week, all throughout August, take care of your weekly maintenance. Mo edge trim blow. And we'll do. We'll do that all throughout the year. Now, some of y' all live in places where you don't do yearly maintenance. No big deal. You can just tell the customer whatever your season is, and I know it's different for different climates. Let's say your season's April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November. Let's say we end November. So we just. You just tell the customer, hey, we will store your card on file. It's a secure vault. And our billing, we do on the 1st of every month. So we'll charge your card on file. You April 1, May 1, June 1, July 1, August 1, September 1. And then November 1 will be the last billing cycle for the season. And then if you need any additional work in December, January, February, March, well, we, you know, we can do it for a one, you know, one time deal. And we can. We can work. We can work that out as needed in the off season if, you know, sometimes maybe a customer's tree falls down in the middle. Winter, whatever. So now you are getting paid ahead of time. You're getting paid for the work before one lawnmower, one Blade of grass gets cut by your lawnmower, you've already gotten paid for that month. Now, how do you do this? Two things. Number one, you have to build the reputation that you're trustworthy. See, the. The Lady Grace who referred me to this new customer who just moved in the neighborhood. She was. She's very trustworthy. They're like, oh, yeah, Paul takes care of our yard. It looks fantastic. You know, he's. He, like, there's. There's credibility there. That's why I. I'm yelling at everyone. If you run a business, your online reputation is so important because that builds credibility. It's going to make Mrs. Wilson more comfortable to store her card on file with your company because you're credible. And then number two, you need to have courage. It might not be easy your first time, especially if you're face to face and you're looking another human being in the eye and you say, our billing policy is we.
- [20:31]
Marty (Producer)
We.
- [20:32]
Paul Jamison (Host)
We. We only take cards on file. We will store your card on file. We use a CRM. It's called Jobber. We've actually been using it for seven years. We'll email you a link. You'll fill out the, you know, store your card on file with them. I won't even know what your card number is. It just. You put it in the vault. And then we'll set it up that on the 1st of every month, we'll charge your card. So, for example, let's say you're talking to customer. It's July, you know, on August 1st, we'll charge your card for this amount, whatever your agreed upon price is for the monthly rate. Now, if you're gonna. If you're gonna start and it's the middle of the month, you can just say, we're gonna charge your card today to get started. A prorated amount. Say, you Normally charge them 400amonth, but you got two services left in the month, and it's their first month. You could say, we're gonna prorate this month for 200. We'll charge that today. Get you on our. Get you in our system, get you on our schedule. We'll be out tomorrow for your first maintenance. But we're not, you know, you don't get started until you get paid first. So you can tell them, hey, we. We have time on our schedule. We could actually squeeze you in for your first maintenance tomorrow.
- [21:43]
Marty (Producer)
We.
- [21:43]
Paul Jamison (Host)
We will need to make sure that the, you know, the payment, you know, the prorated payment successfully goes through before then. And I'll email You right now, the, the, the information to get your card on file. Jobber makes that super simple. And then they put their card on file. Bam. Now they're in the system. Charge your card on file. The paraded 200 plan to charge it for the 400. I'm just giving round numbers. Your, your plan might be a different amount, but you're. My point is this. You're getting paid ahead of the work. Is this making sense, Mr. Producer? So what about the irregular drops? What about the sod, the mulch, the pine straw, the flowers, the tree pruning, things of that nature? There's still the same principle, the prepay. Now, I gave a disclaimer at the beginning of the show. There are some rules in different states here in America, United States, where the way you can do draws or collect payment, progress payments. There's some legalities around that. Most states that I'm familiar with. It's, It's. It's not you. You get to set the payment terms and agree with it with the customer. So one way you could do it, let's say you have a $10,000. That's a big, That's a big job. But for, for Math, I like 10 because it's an easy number. So let's do $10,000 job. Let's say they're like, hey, Paul, will you come in? And we want you to, you know, take down those four trees over there and rip out everything in the garden beds. Oh, man, the people who lived here before us, those bushes are so ugly. And what were they thinking? Yada, yada, yada, Just take it all out. Plan us in some new bushes there and some new mulch. And then we need some sod over here. We. We give them the. We give them the quote. Okay, that'll be $10,000. Be happy to do it. All right. When can you get started? Well, we'll need it. We'll just need a deposit. It'll be 5. 50% deposit. That'll be 5,000. And then since I already have the customer's card on file, if you agree to that, we can just charge your card on file for the deposit. And that will get you on our schedule. We're actually really busy, so next week's we're already booked. But the week after that, we can, we can get you scheduled for Monday. We can, we can be. We can plan on Monday. This date we'll get started. We'll just need the 50% deposit to get you on our schedule. And then the day we show up on Monday, you know, in the morning before we get started that day, we'll charge you the other 25, which would be 2,500. That's the day we're going to be taking the trees down, you know, ripping out the bushes and taking that to the dump. And then we'll. We'll get all that knocked out in the morning, and then in the afternoon, we'll start grading for the sod. Should have that all wrapped. We'll get all that wrapped up in one day on the Monday. And then. And then we'll have the sod scheduled to show up on Tuesday morning. And we should get all done by, you know, long it don't rain or anything. We'll. We'll knock that sod out and get those bushes planted and a few flats of flowers by the front door there for you on Tuesday. So we should be, you know, Lord willing, we'll be all wrapped up by Tuesday afternoon. And then when the job's complete, we'll charge the card on file, the final 25%. Does that work? That works. All right. Boom, boom. Okay. And I just charge your card 5000. It looks like everything went through. So we got you on the schedule for Monday.
- [25:13]
Marty (Producer)
And what.
- [25:14]
Paul Jamison (Host)
You know, fill in the name of the date. And so you got to. You. You got to have confidence when you present this to the customer. Most people are like. And it takes practice. The more. The more you can do it and not buckle down in fear. But you. You have what's called poise. You have confidence. You've already established in your office, this is our billing policy. We don't do Zelle. We don't do Venmo. We don't do PayPal. We don't do cash. We don't do check. We don't do, you know, whatever backflip, hula hoop thing they want you to jump through. Hey, do you guys do. No, we are. We collect payment through having your card on file. And what if you get some mean customer and you're standing in their driveway and they're like, well, what if. What if you. What if you. What if you don't show up and I've already prepaid you? Well, sir, we've been in business for eight years. I'm just, you know, whatever your thing is. Well, sir, we. We're. We're an integral company. We've been in business for eight years. We have 15 other properties in this neighborhood, and we're trustworthy. So we'll be here, you know, every week to take care of your yard. That's our billing policy. If you're not comfortable with our billing policy, I'm, I'm sorry. We'll, you know, you'll have to find somebody else and then actually be willing to walk. And then, and this is probably never going to happen, but if it would, then just walk. I mean, if they're like, okay, well, we're going to find somebody who will be dumb enough to go do the work, and then we'll pay them after they've done all the work, and then, and then you can just say, okay, you know, thank you for your time, and move on to your ideal customer who actually get a card on file. They have their card on file with HBO or Netflix or whatever this nonsense they watch, right? They got their big old. Yeah, you mow grass, you peek in the window, you see I got a big old TV in their family room. You think, you think they ain't got Netflix on that thing? They're paying. They got the card on file with Netflix. They got the card on file with the, the provider that's, you know, providing the, the cable. They got Internet in their house. You don't, you don't think the Internet company's got their card on file, and you don't have a back, but you don't have the courage to run your company like a real company. And so the reason I'm so passionate about this is because there's so many lawn care and landscaping business owners that are stressed out about money and blaming the customer who hasn't paid them for work they did last month when it's your fault. You should have never done the work without getting paid first. I get paid ahead of time. You want to work with me? Okay, I'll send you an invoice. You pay the invoice, then we'll get to the work done. And I got a reputation that I actually do what I say I'm going to do and actually get the work done, but I ain't going to do the work. And then you pay me. Been there, done that. Never again. Cash is oxygen in my business, and I need my business to be healthy. And I can actually serve you better when I'm not stressed out about money, when there's money in my bank account. So now when I show up to serve you, I ain't worried about money. I'm worried about serving you. My effort is on serving you and doing the job right. I'm not worried about money. The money's already in my bank. I already got money to pay my, my labors. I Already got money to pay all my bills because I've collected it ahead of time and I've done that enough over the, a long period of time that the money's nice, right? I gotta go to the gym. You guys are making me, you guys
- [29:09]
Sponsor/Advertiser
are,
- [29:11]
Paul Jamison (Host)
I don't know why. It just makes no sense to me. And then it's happening all over the world. You, you drive around town, you see a bunch of landscaping trucks. Them suckers, they're out there working, sweating or in the cold, working, working, working. And then, and then, then they're giving the invoice and then they're chasing the payments. And it's all unnecessary stress because you, you have to understand, rich people get paid first. Get a billing policy. If you guys need Jobber, look in today's show notes. I'll put a link for Jobber. Get jobber set up. Learn how to do it on your phone, on the app. Learn. I, I, I, I prefer to do it on the desktop. I know that, I know the, a lot of you people are younger than me and phone, it's easy for you. I, I just like getting on my computer, clicking invoice, creating the invoice, you know, clicking the, the collect charge card on file. And then it says in the little upper left hand corner, paid. And it feels, I just like seeing it paid. It's awesome. It's, it's fun. But I do, I get paid before I do the work. You can too. All you got to do, get a CRM. Get, get. Learn how to use the vault system where you get their card on file, email it them, they fill it out. You start getting a few of those under your belt and then you start changing your billing policy to prepay. You let the customers know. Then you get new customers coming in and you're like, wow, that was a lot easier than I thought. If you, if you say it with poise and confidence, I gotta go to the gym. We might do a part two on this because I know it can help a lot of people. But if you're doing the work and getting paid after you're doing the work, you don't have to do that. You can get paid before you do the work. And then the work's a lot more fun to do because you already got paid. Thanks for listening to today's program. Hey, real quick favor to ask you if you find value from my podcast. We need some ratings and reviews on Apple Podcast. There's a rating system there where it says tap the rate and there's five empty stars. If you click on the the, the fifth star on the right then it will fill in the five stars and, and, and it will, it will give us a five star rating review. Right now we're at 4.8 out of five. I want to get that sucker up to 4.9. So thank you. Messer Lawn Care for the five star review. Thank you Volt Edge Lawn Solutions, friend of the show. Thank you, John G. In Texas. Thank you. We rise. P.S. tony Cutts. I'm not gonna name that username because I don't think that was appropriate. But we do appreciate the five stars and the funny username there. Renesy, five stars. Thank you Jacob. Five stars. Thank you Lamir Alan Lemire. Let's go. Five stars Mallard. Five stars. Thank you guys for the ratings in and reviews. We appreciate it. And I'm asking you, my friend, you find value from my podcast. If you could drop us a rating and review on Apple podcast, it would mean a lot. Thanks for listening. Hope to catch you on next episode.
- [32:39]
Marty (Producer)
Hey, it's Marty, producer of the Green Industry podcast. This episode is over, but check the episode notes for links to products and services that you heard about during the episode. And thanks for listening.
- [32:51]
Sponsor/Advertiser
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