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- [00:02]
Naylor Taliaferro
Are you mowing lawns, running crews, and still wondering where all the money went? You're not alone. Naylor Taliaferro of LCR Media has been there, and that's exactly why he created Profit Accelerator Live. Join Naylor and expert speakers John Pajak and Eric Triplett for two powerful days of hands on workshops designed specifically for lawn care and landscaping business owners in Richmond, Virginia, June 26th and 27th. This isn't a conference where you'll sit in the back and take notes. You'll leave with an actual business plan in hand, knowing exactly what to charge, how to manage your time, and how to attract better customers. Tickets are just $299, but right now you can bring a partner or a fellow business owner free with our two for one special. Tickets are just $299, but right now you can bring a partner or fellow business owner free with our 2 for 1 special. Only 75 spots are available and they will fil fast. Use the link in the show description or go to profitacceleratorlive.com to secure your spot today. Put more money in the bank and more time in your schedule with Profit Accelerator Live. Here we go.
- [01:35]
Welcome back to the episode the LCR Media podcast where we get to know the pros. I'm your host, LCR Nailer Talia Farrow. And I was listening back to one of my recent replays from one of my inner circle calls while I was away, actually when I was on my 2 week 25th wedding anniversary trip with my wife not too long ago. I have a, you know, we have our inner circle calls every Friday morning where we discuss whatever challenges are going on in everyone's business at the time, you know, of those calls. And if everything's going well, you know, we'll have like different teachings and trainings going on, things that I've learned, things that they've learned, but I wasn't, because I was going to be out. I had a couple of guest hosts essentially run, run those calls for me, their zoom calls. But, so I was listening to, listening and watching the replays back just to see what I missed, you know, and, and, and listen to what they, what they had to say and the questions and you know, just checking in on everything, right? Making sure everything went well. I mean from, from all the different perspectives. Everyone said it went well, but I wanted to actually hear for myself. But so I, I wanted to share, you know, as I was listening to the, to some of the replays, I'm like, man, this is some really Good stuff. So, you know, I know you know, you're not in the, those of you listening, some of you aren't, aren't in the inner circle. So I mean I to share the entire call because some of it is more personal to the people on the call and I'm not going to violate their privacy or anything like that. But some of the experience and knowledge shared from the guest host I find I feel was valuable for everyone. So I just want to share that with you all listening, even though you may not be in the inner circle. But by the way, if you are interested in joining the inner circle, you know, I don't often have these opportunities, but you know, feel free to email me on the email and the podcast that you're listening to. You'll see the email there listed. Or DM me on Instagram is also an easy way to connect with me. And we can, we can talk and see if you're the right fit for the inner circle. But regardless of any of that, I wanted to at least share whatever insight I can from this episode. So you're going to be listening to a little replay snippet of one of our recent inner circle calls with a guest coach.
- [04:01]
John Pajak
That's just because we've calculated what kind of drive time savings we could have. But it's, and I was picking on Brian when we first started was it's important to know, to track those kind of things of, of where, where our target is and then what we're actually doing and then of course trying to raise the prices. I've been in a lot of individual CRMs and I'm new to this too. Right. I didn't pick up on this until about three years ago, but I've heard a lot of people tell me, oh yeah, my target hourly rate is 50 bucks or 75 bucks, 120 bucks, it doesn't matter. Right. But the real kicker is how many people are actually tracking it and are doing something about it, right? So, AKA job costing. So if you've got a mowing property, for example, so Brian, I'm going to pick on you. You need to be tracking how long it takes you to mow with your guy, your helper, every single week, right? So in Richmond, Virginia, we have about 32 weeks of mowing at the end of the year. I know exactly how many minutes we spent on that property, right? And if my target hourly rate is $95 an hour, it's just easy math, right? You guys are smart guys. You probably use ChatGPT, whatever else you can just throw that data in there and tell them and then it's going to tell you one or two things. Are you hitting 95? Yes or no. And if you're not, there's only one option. Whoever told us in this world that we had choices, they're wrong. You don't have a choice when it comes to being profitable. Your only option is you raise that customer's price. Period. And why it's important to know is sometimes those PETA customers, those pain in the butts, well, shoot, they're freaking profitable. And some advice that I've gotten is you never fire a client. You just raise the price significantly. And, but you don't know any of that until you start tracking it. So I'm glad, Brian, that you switched over to being able to. I'll. I will encourage you to make sure you prioritize the consistency of that. I want to know, so I want to know. It's a twofold. I want to know exactly how many minutes I spend on each property. And I say minutes. Man minutes, right? So If I've got two guys and my target hourly rate is $95aman hour, I've got two guys and I have, and it's $95 mo. Well, it should take them 30 minutes. If it takes them 35, they need a price increase. If it takes them 25, hold on to them, right? Because you're making more than $95aman hour. But yes, that is what I'm talking about on the property, off the property. This is where some people can get confused is the driving in between. That $95 an hour has to cover that drive time. If it doesn't, well, then you need to be higher than $100. You need to be higher than 95, right? We call that efficiency. So how we track efficiency is we say budgeted hours, right. Versus paid hours. So if I'm giving, For me, a 40 hour week is a full time job, right? For y', all, it's not, you know, we're entrepreneurs, right? That 50, 60, 70 hour week, that's a full time job for us, right? But for our guys, 40 hours, that's what we're shooting for. It's America. I expect my guys to complete 30 budgeted hours in 40 hour work week. I what that translates to is a 75% efficiency, right? If they don't hit 75% efficiency, they're not performing at the metric I want them to be at. If they hit above 80%, they get a bonus. That's. We don't need to get all that or we can. I'm kind of feeling out where the conversation's going to. But the moral of the story is there's a difference between on the job and off the job. And where we used to get in trouble a lot is we would hit our budget hours on the job. Man, we were really good at mowing that property in 30 minutes, but we were also really good at taking 20 minutes to get to the next property down the street, right? And it was like, dang, we're hitting our numbers. We're really good mowing lawns, but our efficiency stinks. So you can't just track one without the other. You've got to. You've got to make it extreme. It's extremely important that you reconcile your CRM every week, right? So if you ever heard of reconciling QuickBooks or your P and L and things like that. My cert, we use service autopilot. It is reconciled every week. It has to be correct. You have to trust your data. Your data is wrong. It's just. It's no longer valuable. You just wait. You just wasted all that time. You've got to trust. You've got to prioritize that time. It's tough because you're in the trenches right now. You're out there working hard, so on and so forth. But I'm telling you, it's. It's worth. It's worth it. That's how you get from 45 to 60 or 45 to 450 is. Is knowing where you need to invest your time. Who's heard of culture before? It's a big buzzword in the industry, right? You gotta have a good culture. One of my favorite quotes with culture has to do. Culture is what you tolerate, right? If you tolerate your guys not clocking in and out of jobs correctly, that's the culture, right? You might think the culture is, we've got awesome team members, and it's a fun place to work, and we go out, get some drinks every Friday night, and it's an awesome place to call home. But really, your culture is. You guys suck at clocking in out of jobs, right? Yeah. What you tolerate, that's. That's part of culture. It's okay. Don't be wrong. If you. If you took a magnifying glass to my. To my business, you'll. You'll find a lot of those things. But that's where you need. That's your. That's your problem. Identify it. You've already done. You've already Identified it, now fix it. Hey, guys, I want to give you a raise. Next quarterly review I want to give you. I want to. I want to bump up your pay. Unfortunately, you're not meeting job expectations. Your expectations. And so you said, talked about accountability. The first thing you got to do is out make sure they're aware of what their expectations are. Right. If you don't have a very clear KPIs key performance indicators for your team, that. And that goes down to every crew member, then we've got a problem. You need to make sure no one needs to be let in. You need to let them know, hey, I'm expecting you. Give me one of your guys names. Johnny. Jim. Matt. Matt, your job expectation is to hit your budgeted hours on each job, is to make sure your team is safe and we don't have any injuries on your properties. And it's to make sure that you're clocking in and out of your jobs correctly each time. That's your pain point. Right. You need to measure it. So if they do, how many properties can Matt mow in a day? 20. Yeah, right. So 20, easy percentage. One. If he misses one clock in on a job. That's a 95% accuracy. Right? Okay, maybe give him one, but you need to fix it. But if he hits below 90. Sorry, Matt, you're getting written up. What? What do you mean? I didn't. I didn't break anything. I didn't do anything wrong. Am I freezing on you guys? I'm seeing some pausing. Can you hear me a little bit? Yeah, we can hear. I talk too fast. You got to hold them accountable. That is your. Your quality is not your issue. Right. They're doing good, quality work. You're happy with their times, so you need to be focusing. You're happy with like, get them getting their jobs done. You're happy with their customer service. What we're not happy about is clocking out of jobs correctly. So that needs to be what you need to be measuring right now. And then guess what? They'll clock in and out of jobs correctly. We were the same way. We struggled with that for a long time. And then it clicked and now we're at about. I would say if we mow 20 lawns a day, we're missing maybe on average one clock in a week. So it just. Per crew, we have seven long crews. I'm pretty strict about it. And then now. Now we're at the size where we have. We're also going back behind them to make sure it's correct. I. I used to do it. You have to hold them accountable. You can't let that week slide. You go back and you simply look at your your board and see, all right, who didn't clock in and out correctly. You have Horizon360. You got the trackers on the truck so you can go back and fix them right as best you can. So you'll fix it for them while you hand them that write up sheet that says, hey, you did you failed to meet expectations last week. I know that sounds harsh, but culture is what you does that help a little bit?
- [12:47]
Eric Triplett
LCR Media Podcast is proudly sponsored by Toro and they're giving listeners a powerful tool to run a smarter, more profitable business. Horizon 360 helps you schedule jobs, track crews, monitor equipment and understand what work is really paying off. LCR listeners get an exclusive 7 month free trial with promo code LCR. Claim yours today. Click the link in the episode Description the Lawn and Landscape Technology Conference is going to be this July 22nd through the 24th in Scottsdale, Arizona. I for one have never been to Arizona at all and I've heard a lot about Scottsdale, Arizona specifically. So I'm really excited to go check out another part of the country. One of the reasons why I enjoy traveling for different industry and community events, whether they're ones that I host or trade shows that I'm a part of or speak at. Like I was at Vegas recently for the Con Expo. Had a great time networking there and checking out that show as well as that part of the country. You know, there's different parts of Vegas, you know, for better or for worse. And you know where, where Con Expo was, was, was a different perspective and it was, it was pretty nice. So I'm, I'm excited to check out Scottsdale, Arizona. Last year I was at the Lawn Landscape Conference Technology Conference and it was amazing. It was, it was focused on the technology in your business. Of course there's the, the automations like robotic mowers and battery operated equipment, but they also have a lot of training as well to help you grow your business through those automations and technology, but also just being on the forefront of the ideas and the future of the industry. And what are some things that you can put potentially adopt into your own business, regardless of what size it is and how you feel about the future and technology and automations, ultimately that's going to help you streamline your business and work less and make more. So I'm going to be there. John Pak from the Profits with Pak Podcast is going to be there. Air trip with the Pond digger from the Deep End podcast is going to be there. You got Cornell Mack on the attack with Mac podcast going to be there. And you have Mike and Larry with the side Hots side Hustle Squad side Hustle Squad podcast.
- [15:00]
Naylor Taliaferro
There you go.
- [15:02]
Eric Triplett
Also going to be there. And we're going to have a great time at Pod Row yet again at
- [15:06]
Naylor Taliaferro
the Lawn Landscape Technology Conference. So if you're going to be there,
- [15:09]
Eric Triplett
definitely stop by, say, say what's up? Get on a podcast, share your story or just meet up with whoever we have on podcast. Going to be interviewing all kinds of leaders. Like last year we interviewed Mark Bradley from Element and leanscaper and so many other high level entrepreneurs and business owners that stop by Podro so you could even just, you know, stop by and listen, listen to their story first perspective and then shake their hand and talk to them after the fact as well as, you know, getting on a podcast and sharing your story. So a lot of bonuses, a lot of great things to come out to the Lawn Landscape Technology conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, July 22nd, 24th.
- [15:47]
Naylor Taliaferro
Check out the link in the episode
- [15:48]
Eric Triplett
description if you want to register. Hope to see you there. Well, I hope you got value out of that.
- [15:53]
Naylor Taliaferro
Like I said, I thought that was like essentially like golden. You know, I'm like, man, this is, this is really good stuff. And this, that's just a snippet of the conversation and a snapshot of my network. You know, the whole point of my inner circle coaching group is to give access to my network, right? I have shirts say my network is my net worth. You know, I have a huge network that I've grown and acquired over the last decade of being in this industry. And I mean I've had my business for 12 years but you know, shortly after I started following people on social media and starting my own YouTube channel and posting on social media and then hosting events. And that's been kind of like the last decade that I've really been focusing on that, creating content and events to grow community, strengthen your businesses, educate, you know, all that. And my network has grown considerably. You know, from the lawn care millionaire, Jonathan Patosnik to Mark Bradley from lmn, now leanscaper to, you know, everyone all in between, you know, Charles Nelson on this call on John Pajak, Eric Triplett, Paul Jameson, like so many, so many folks that have presented at my events and I've collaborated with on social media, all amazing people, all different levels. Justin White, like so many different sizes and types of businesses. Jonas Olson pest control millionaire. I mean, you know, Libby Delucia, she's house cleaning and softwares and so many other things that she's getting involved in. Just, just so many people that I've met along the way that I've connected with, become friends with and we all help each other out with essentially helping everyone grow in our community. So I just want to, wanted to give people A couple years back I realized I was kind of selling everyone, selling myself and the community. Sure I was underserving our community. I was just stopping at content and live events, which is great. But what about beyond that? Sometimes you come back from a live event, you have all these notes and you just get bombarded with life and you never even really get to implement anything. That notebook just gets put in the drawer or you never pull the notes app up on your phone or it just kind of gets buried in the, in the everyday shuffle and hustle, hustle and shuffle of your life. And you know, you can keep listening to social media with, and podcasts that are watching social media, listening to podcasts and that's going to help kind of keep you somewhat motivated hopefully and learn some things. But you know, you can't ask questions, right? Maybe you can leave comments or DM people, but it's just not the same as being on a call every week, you know, for an hour minimum to really hash out what challenges you have, celebrate wins, really building a unique, smaller private community with businesses from startups to million dollar plus. You know, and everyone is still learning. You know the stuff that I talk about in the, on those calls, the startups are learning this the same thing. Both the startups and the million dollar businesses are learning from the same stuff that I'm sharing because it's universal and sometimes you just don't know what you don't know. Just because you're doing a million dollars in revenue doesn't mean you figured everything out. Doesn't mean you have all the answers. You still might be learning some of the same things like I just said that the startups are learning. So the sooner you learn it the better because it's definitely easier to learn it starting off while, while when you start before you start scaling. But even if you have started scaling and you're struggling, definitely search out that information that you need. But again, you don't know what you don't know. So that's why you're probably listening to these podcasts and watching social media, going to events when you can, because you're trying to figure out, discover what you don't know and learn it as fast as you can so you can improve during your scaling process so that you can have a healthy business and a healthy happy life as well. So, so anyway, that, that, that's the whole reason why I created the inner circle, because I'm like, you know, let's, there's got to be more than, than just social media and live events. Like there's got to be continuous, you know, year long connection and communication and education so that we can keep helping each other grow, you know, peer to peer and mentor to peer, even sometimes peer to mentor. Right. We all have something to learn and I just have so many people in my network to give access to, give everyone access to, you know, whether it be guest hosts like you just heard throughout the year, as well as at my different events and some private events just for the inner circle. I call them VIP experiences, shop tours. So much there. So if you've never heard me talk about it before, it's kind of, you know, I just grazed over it real quick.
- [20:42]
Eric Triplett
So.
- [20:42]
Naylor Taliaferro
But anyway, if you're interested in more information or you think you might be ready to join or you're, you're a good fit to, to be a part of the my inner circle, just send me an email or DM me on Instagram and we can talk and see if you're the right fit. Otherwise, I hope you're getting after it and you're having a good, good beginning of your summer season. Maybe I'll see you at Profit Accelerator Live, which is coming up June 26th and 27th here in Richmond, Virginia. Information about that is in the episode description. There's links, a link there to click on and get that info. But in the meantime, thank you for listening. Thank you to Toro Company for sponsoring the LC Media podcast. And until the next episode, this is Naylor Tyler Pharoah signing off.
- [21:31]
This has been an lcr media and Mr. Producer production.