Transcript
A (0:00)
Before we had AT and T Business Wireless coverage, our delivery GPS wasn't the most reliable. Once our driver had to do a 14 point turn to get back on route. A 14 point turn. An influencer even livestreamed the whole thing. Not good for business. Now with AT&T business Wireless, routes are updating on the fly and deliveries are on time. And the influencer did get us 53 new followers though.
B (0:24)
AT&T business Wireless connecting changes everything.
C (0:33)
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 youp Money, all available on Amazon and Audible. Now get ready for more expert insights and practical strategies strategies to boost your business and level up your life. Here's Paul Jameson.
B (1:09)
Well, the sun is out and the grass is probably waking up depending on where you live in the world. And the phones are starting to ring a ding, ding ring off the hook. Well folks, the spring rush can either make your year or break your spirit. Most guys and gals are busy, but my question is, are you profitable? See, we're going to move. Hopefully this year we're going to move from working hard. And I say that in quotations because everyone's bragging on social media how hard they're working. But my question is who is earning their maximum amounts? Meaning who's, who's maximizing their earnings? Maybe that's a smoother way to say it, Mr. Producer. So is what we're going to talk about on today's program. I am Paul Jameson down here in bright and sunny Florida. And the title of today's episode, I think we're going to go with maximizing your profits during the 2020 spring rush. The goal is not to be busy, although you probably should be very busy during the spring rush. But the goal is to be profitable, to really do a good job earning during this incredible season that we call the spring rush. So we're going to dive right into it. I jotted down some notes of how we can be more profitable if you want a lawn care business this spring. So number one, and I learned this from my friend Naylor Taliaferro a long time ago. But route density truly is king. So if you're wasting time during the spring rush, driving 20 minutes between yards, you're losing money. They call that windshield time. And the the five around strategy is if you get one house in a neighborhood, hopefully it's strategic You've, you've targeted. This is the neighborhood I want to work in. The goal is the five around is to try to get the, the, the, the neighbors around that house. So target the five houses immediately around that house. Right there's a house to the left, there's a house to the right, there's a house across the street. Maybe there's a few houses across the street. Maybe there's a house behind those, those literal next door neighbors literal of your property. Try to target them and try to really break into neighborhoods. I live in Florida now, but when I lived in Atlanta, there's a stump grinder. His name's Scotty. And I didn't know how to stump grind. I mean I knew how to do it, but I didn't want to go through the hassle of going to the Home Depot and renting the stump grinder machine and grinding the stump and all the PPE and just it's, it's a, you know, the, the, you can be grinding a stump and if you don't have like the cardboard or not cardboard but like Scotty would always bring these like big wooden pieces that he, he custom made in but, but basically put it around the stump. So I was grinding the stump. If any pieces like flew out, it would hit these big like wooden board things that he made. So it would never like go and hit a house or someone walking by or anything like that. Well anyway, I don't want to go through all that hassle so I would just hire Scotty to grind my stumps. I remember one job we did. He grinded over a hundred stumps. We, we cleared out a gigantic backyard out shout out Tony Rudolph in Lake Oconee actually Great Waters neighborhood. Well, anyway, Scotty was talking to me. I was, I think I was in my second year or later in my first year of business. But anyways, brand new business. And I was in this fancy country club and doing this really nice yard and, and we actually ripped out their front yard and we gave them all new zoysia sod. Front yard, backyard, Zoysia sod stunning property. Stunning. Zoysia just looks fresh. So Scotty's like, man, you're, you're really fortunate to be in this neighborhood. He's like, if I were you. And he, he was bragging to me about how successful he is. Not, not like arrogantly, but he's like, I've, listen, I've been, I'm semi retired. I basically go fishing every day. I just you know, work a day or two doing stumps. But I've been in this industry a long time, kid. He's like, it's impressive that you're in this neighborhood. He's like, don't screw it up. You know, make sure you do a really, really good job. People expect premium in this neighborhood. But he's like, if I were you, kid, he's like, I'd come through that gate every morning at 8am and I'd make, make it a point that we're not going to leave all day long until it's time to, you know, be finished working for the day. And he explained to me, the people in this neighborhood pay more than the people outside these gates. There's about a thousand homes in this neighborhood and they're all, you know, million dollar plus homes. He's like, if I were you, I would, I would only work in this one neighborhood. That's it. He's like, you would make yourself like your personal salary would be six figures just, just off of you. And so I was like, okay, yes, sir. You know, sign me up. And then that was his advice to me. And this was back in either 2011 or 2012. I'd have to really think about when we had that conversation. But I remember the conversation because it planted to me the idea that I would later find out from Naylor that the actual term is called route density. Route density is king. I didn't know all those terms, but I caught the premise, I caught the principle earlier, early on. So when you're looking at the spring rush, your goal is not to be driving all around town. Your goal is to be set up in a targeted area and getting as much work done as you can in that route dense area. Now, secondly is you want to, you want to have kind of some minimums. Like, I'm not going to pull the mower off the trailer for anything less than $55 or whatever your price is. I know a lot of guys, they have a $60 minimum. There's no way we're going to mow edge, trim your blow for under $60. That's just, that's just it. It's a $60 minimum. Even if you got a small yard, still $60 because of all of the fuel costs, labor costs. I mean, we'll do a whole nother podcast here shortly, covering all the cost associated with the lawn care business. But it's much more than you think and way more than your customers realize. That's why when you have a higher price, if the customer is like, wow, that's a lot. Well, it is but in order for us to do the absolute best work, we need to have the best labors. In order to have best labors, we have to pay them. And in order to have fuel in our mowers and our trucks, our batteries in our crest commercial equipment. Right. We need to be able to buy all of that stuff and afford all of that stuff. So, Anyway, yeah, it's $60 minimum or whatever your minimum is. It's. It's hard for me to say on this podcast because people have different sized yards, but my point is, get in a really dense area and make sure you're not doing stuff for dirt cheap. But, but, but have your minimum. And the next, I guess, profitable decision that you can make is the power of the word no. I want you to practice saying it with me on three. I'm going to give a countdown, three to one. And then when I say one, I want you to say it with me. Unless you're, like, in the line at the grocery store and I'm in your ear, you're listening to the podcast, then you don't have to say it. But here we go. So I'm going to say 3, 2, 1. When I get to 1, say the word no. I want you to practice this. Ready? Three, two, one. No. There you go. You don't have to take every job. This is called vetting your customers. I remember when I started my podcast in 2018, one of my first guests was a friend of mine, Caleb Allman, from good old Fairfield County, Ohio. And Caleb talked about vetting customers because he does big jobs, he does hardscaping jobs. And there's. I mean, it's one thing to have a sour apple bad customer. When you're mowing their yard every week for $60 or $80 or $100. That's another thing to be doing a $20,000 backyard job. And your customer is rude and not ideal. And you midway through the job and you realize, okay, they don't like me. I don't like them. What are we doing here? But maybe you've been there, maybe you haven't. You don't want to be there. But that's the power of identifying what you want. This is my ideal customer. They're in this neighborhood. They want weekly mowing edge and trim and blowing. They want their garden beds refreshed at least once a year with mulch or pine straw. They want us to put some flats of flowers, you know, on the sidewalk at the corner there where you walk up to the front door on each side of the Sidewalk. They want us to do their core aeration every year. And this is our ideal customer. And if they need anything like, you know, new sod or specialty landscaping, of course we can take care of that as well. But that's my ideal customer. So when somebody calls me and they're outside of that and they're like, hey, Paul, we really have this big job. We need you. We need a retaining wall, and we need all this stuff and can you come give us a quote? And I'm like, okay, I'm looking at my ideal customer. Nope, you're not my ideal customer. Hey, that sounds like an awesome job. And I'm sorry, Joe, that's outside of our scope of work. I wish you all the best, but, you know, no, no. Or if you have call rail and you have voice assist set up, you can train voice assist with CallRail to actually know your services. And they can vet the Customer for you 24 7. It's pretty cool. Check it out. Voice assist by CallRail. But anyway, if you don't have in writing and in clarity who your ideal customer is, then you don't know who to say no to. Now, it might be the exact opposite. Maybe your ideal customer is you only focus on retaining walls and stone patio pavers, and you only do hardscaping. And Sweet sue calls you and says, hey, can you come mow our grass? And you don't do offering mowing services, and you say, no, we actually only specialize in hardscaping jobs like retaining walls and stone patio pavers. So anyway, I'm not saying there's a right way and the wrong way. I'm saying you need to know what your business model is, who your ideal customer is. So in the spring rush, when there's all kind of demands, you'll know, okay, that's my ideal customer. I'm going to hop on that. Or no, that's not my ideal customer. With grace and kindness, I'm going to tell them no. So we're going to hear a quick word from today's show sponsors. And coming up, I'm going to share with you probably the absolute most important thing you need to know about Spring rush and how to make sure you are as profitable as possible. This spring rush. I'll be sharing that tip. Coming right up.