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If you haven't heard, the LCR summit's back this October in Louisville, Kentucky, October 19th and 20th. And for the month of July, use promo code July and get 50% off your single ticket. That's right. It's called First Movers Advantage. Just click the link or go to my bio or lcr summit.com See you there.
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Here we go.
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So there's something that I've noticed recently the more I've actually paid attention, and it has to do with the 81% rule. I'm going to get into my recap of my latest trip to the Lawn and Landscape Technology Conference. My second year. There's going to be a lot of podcast episodes coming out, not only from me, but from my fellow podcast podcasters that were at Pod Row. You got Cornell Mack with On the Attack with Mac podcast, John Pajak with the Profits with Paycheck podcast, Eric Triplet the Pond Digger with the Deep End podcast with Eric Triplett, and Mike Garvey with side Hustle Squad Podcast. So we were all there. We all got a lot of great content with each other and with many guests that we networked with. Some new, and I mean some, some that we already knew and then some brand new guests that we, that we met while we were at the show. So I'm going to get into a little bit of that in a few minutes, but I just wanted to go through the 81% rule that I discovered. So I. And I've been saying this all over the place. Just I don't think I've said this on the podcast yet. And you are the 81% most likely. All of you listening, everyone that listens to my podcast, you right now listening to my podcast, are part of the 81%. I am part of the 81%. And what the 81% is something that I've researched and discovered. 81% of the law of the landscaping industry, which includes lawn care, does less than $1 million in revenue. More specifically, 81% of the industry are registered as sole proprietors, meaning their owner operators. Typically, unless they have a bunch of W9 employees, right, you don't have actual W2 employees. You essentially have subcontractors that you're using as employees. That's another conversation for a whole other day. But that's not what you're supposed to do. If you have employees that work with you multiple days a week for many hours a week, and they use all of your equipment, ride in your truck, those are your employees. Those are supposed to be W2 employees. So don't work around the system with a bunch of W9 subcontractors. That's what you do when you work with another company to do a part of a project for you. Or, you know, you have someone that maybe you don't offer whatever it is you don't offer, mulch bed installation, bushes being ripped out, new ones being planted or whatever that is, and you subcontract somebody out, meaning it all goes through you and you pay that person whatever they charge you. You know, you ultimately should be invoicing that properly to your customer so that you're getting paid from the customer to pay your subcontractor plus the profits that you're making for yourself. That's a W9 worker, not an actual W2 employee. So I say that because I'm guessing with the 81%, I find that hard to believe that the 81% is all owner operators without a single helper quote, unquote, right. Or employee. They just are either paying cash, so it's not being recorded. There's no payroll taxes. The government has no idea that they're your employee. So you don't have to pay taxes. And you might even have workers comp. Which is very risky. So, you know, so they're technically the. The U.S. census doesn't know you have those employees. So the 81% means there are no employees reported listed. 81% of the industry has no employees listed. So either, like I said, you have no employees because you're owner operator or you're paying cash or you're w9ing well, you should be w2ing, right? You have subcontractors that are your. You have employees that you're treating as subcontractors instead of actually treating them like employees and making them W2. So I just say that because I'm pretty confident that's the case in some regard. But. But my. But what is definitely the case, I think that is probably impossible. Or maybe 1%, 5% maybe for. For room for error out of that 81%, maybe does a million dollars or more with a whole bunch of subcontractors. That could be a thing. But my point is the majority, most of the industry is made up by small businesses. Now, I always knew this, like I've been in this industry anyway. Maybe the. For a couple years in. I read a stat in one of the magazines, whether it was Equip or Lawn and Landscape magazine somewhere. I got an email or something that I read that stat that the majority of the industry was made up by small Businesses, not the really big ones. Not the top 100 list like at the lawn and landscape tech conference. Not, not the big, huge companies that are doing tens and twenty and fifty. Tens of twenty, tens of millions of dollars, I guess is the best way to say that without it being a tongue twister. But I mean, you know, some of those companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars, right? And you've got Brightview and other Davey Tree and Trugreen that are making billions of dollars. Those are the 1%, literally, right? They're, they're, they're super, super small group there. That elite list. The top 100 is, if I did the math, that's a small percentage because there's six, over 600,000 registered landscape companies in the, in our industry. And 81% of that is the small businesses. That's over 500,000 is 81%. So over 500,000 businesses out there in our, in the United States listening to this podcast. Some of them are listening, Obviously not all 500,000 listening to this podcast, but you are most likely in that 81%. If you're making less than a million dollars and you don't have any employees, then you are in that 81%. And the reason why this is so important. And so, but, so I knew that, but I knew that the big companies were few and the smaller companies were many and the majority. But I thought that meant like one or two crews, you know, a couple of trucks and so on. I didn't know it literally meant no employees. Which again begs to ask the question, what are you all doing? How are you able to get all this work done without any employees? I mean, I know there's a lot of owner operators out there and you're, you're making six figures easily by yourself, and that's fine. But you know, to get 3, 4, 500,000 a year in revenue, you can't do that by yourself unless you have like really big ticket projects that you're doing like hardscaping type things. But if you're mowing lawns, that's a heck of a lot of lawns for one person. So that begs to ask the question, what are you doing for sure to get all this work done by yourself? And I would imagine you have employees somehow. But what are you doing with that? How are you recording that? Because the U.S. census has no idea. But also. So anyway, so there's all that. But then I did more specific research recently and got the numbers that I stated. 81% of the industry are sole proprietors, meaning they're not registered as LLCs and they don't have employees. You can be a sole proprietor, obviously, and have employees. You should definitely upgrade to LLC sooner than later when you start to grow. But sole proprietors, 81% sole proprietors, no employees registered anyway on the books. Like no W2 employees. So that means it's even smaller than I thought. Like it's not one to two crews unless they're all subcontractors, which is wild to me to do that. But I'm sure there are some people out there doing it, but I never fathomed that. Definitely not 81%, two to three crews or any cruise. 81% is supposedly solo owner operators. Maybe you have a helper or two, but it's definitely less than a million in revenue. So the reason why I'm saying all of this is because one, that was a new realization for me and that's the majority of our industry, the majority of the people listening to my podcast and watching my content, all of that, it's just very interesting and eye opening to me, but I just don't understand
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why
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that's, that is the case. Like, I, I, I just, I'm kind of mind boggled by it. And there's so much opportunity there, right, for, for us to grow. Not, not all that 81% wants to grow past a million dollars and have multiple crews, but there are many that do and they're stuck. They don't necessarily know. Maybe that's you. Maybe you don't know how to get past a certain point or you're, you're intimidated by it, right? You're anxious about it, you're not sure what the best way. And if you want to do it, if you're built for that, finding employees, training employees, keeping employees, everything that comes with employees, the good and the bad. But without employees, without people helping you do the job of two to three to 10 people, you can't grow. Or you can only grow so much. There's only so many hours in a day and so much energy for you to do by yourself physically. So you might be in that boat where you want to grow for various reasons, you need more money to support your life, or you just want to have a business that you're not constantly doing everything with. And you want to be able to step away at times, whether that's taking like vacations or just spending time doing other things, like in your business or on your business, but not doing all the work yourself in it. So to me that that means that there's A lot of people that potentially a lot of people that are stuck and most of them were not at the Lawn and Landscape Technology conference. I'll tell you that the majority of the, of that conference, the Lawn and Landscape Technology conference was the 19%. Right? You had the top 100 list of companies there. These are I think the lowest revenue. When I looked at the list, I don't have it on, on my, I don't have it with me. But trying to remember because I looked through it pretty good. I think the bottom, the LA number 100 was like 30/something thousand. I think in, I'm in,030/something million in revenue, right. I think the lowest was in the 30s million revenue, not like 20 million. You know, I know some companies that are 10 million, 20 something million and they're not on that list. The top 100 has also grown. Most of the same people are in the top 100. Some do. Like obviously the bottom of the list might fall off and then new people pop up in the bottom. But most, most of the top 100 keep moving up every year. You know, they just increase their revenue every year. So they move up the list and new people appear on the list
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and
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actually the list just gets more refined because I remember, I think it was last year and I looked at the list, it was 20 something million was the last spot of the top 100 and now it's 30 something million. So more and more of these 19 of the 19% of our industry are just making more and more money and getting bigger and bigger. And there's a reason for that one. They want to clearly, I mean not everyone's built to be the CEO of a 30 something million dollar a year business. That might sound great to you, but, or might sound horrifying. And either one, I mean if it sounds horrifying, you're not going to do that. If it sounds great. It's not super easy to do that either. Like there's, there's definitely challenges along the way for that. But my point is whatever you want to do in your business, if you want to grow somehow, some way, even if it's just growing in profitability, maybe you don't want to grow in size. Growth comes at all levels and all kinds. It doesn't mean you have to grow physically in size. Like, oh, I have to grow every year. That means I have to add on more equipment or trucks or more employees. I have to grow my, my total revenue. I have to go from 200,000 to 250,000 or 300,000 a year, whatever it is. Like, oh, you know, I got to get from 75k by myself to 100k. That's growth. Yeah, those are all, that's all growth. But that's intimidating for some folks. And if you didn't do that from one year to the next, that doesn't mean you failed. There's other ways to grow. You could focus on growing internally. Like, I don't necessarily want to increase my revenue, but I want to increase my profitability. Like, maybe I barely had any profit last year and I want to be more profitable or have profit this year, you know, and you gotta figure things out, adjust your expenses. What am I spending too much money on? What do I have to be more efficient with? Maybe I gotta get better with my route density. I'm driving around too much, I'm wasting time. So I can't get as much work done to increase my profit and my revenue. You know, maybe I don't have the most efficient equipment, so it's taking me longer. You know, I can't get as much done or I can't get some of the more profitable services done. Or maybe you have services that you shouldn't be doing that are super unprofitable. They take more time and don't and don't you, you know, they don't make as much money. People don't pay as much as, as you need to be profitable. Eliminate that service and double down on a service that's more profitable. Like, that's growth. It's not necessarily adding to, it's just being more efficient with what you already have. What's, you know, maybe instead of adding more customers, it's what can I add to the customers I already have? Like, hey, I'm going to get my fertilization and, you know, my applicator's license. And now I can add that to my list of services for my existing customers. Like I have, you know, maybe you have 40 customers and now you have your fert license and now you can send an email out to those customers that you only mow their lawn and maybe trim bushes or something like that. And I could say, hey, I know you might have someone already, but in case you want to keep it all under one invoice, I have my applicator's license now. So I can do this, that and the other thing. And these are the applications I can apply. And then maybe you get half those people to sign up or all of them. Wow, now you've just increased your revenue without significantly increasing your workload. You didn't get any new customers. You got new work for the customers you already have. So yeah, that's additional workload. But when you're talking about applications, it's really not that, you know, you're talking about 15 to 20 minute application depending on what equipment you're using. If you're walking around dragging a hose versus riding on a, a machine, you know it's going to take a little bit longer. Dragon hose in most cases depending versus riding a machine, again, depending on the size, size and shape of the, and the obstacle course that you might have for different properties. But regardless, it's not. Doesn't take nearly. It takes half the time, if not less to apply products on, you know, whether it's liquid or granular on a lawn than it does to mow, trim, edge and blow the lawn. So you're really not adding a whole lot more on. But it's super profitable because you got to factor in the material expenses. But it's also a higher barrier of entry. Less people are applying products to people's lawns because there are certifications involved and more planning and tracking and all the things involved with that. So not everyone's doing that. And people just know it's been established in the market that it costs more to get your lawn to get an application, right? Like if, if, if someone's charging you 50 bucks to get the lawn mowed, they're probably going to charge you 70 bucks to 75 bucks for a lawn application, depending on what that application is. Just like a general application, you know, then that would be probably around the average and, and people are okay with that. Most customers expect that they get it. They at least know it's going to be more than cutting the grass because it's been established in the marketplace that it's higher value to spray a lawn, to aerate and seed a lawn than it is to just cut a lawn, to just mow a lawn. Unfortunately, that's just the way it has been and we can push that as best as we can, which is why we talk about this a lot. Me and many of my peers talk about knowing your numbers and raising your prices and having your man hour rate dialed in and raising that at least once a year so that you can keep increasing your profits and increasing. If we all do that, then the market will increase and people will just get used to the fact that, hey, we're not going to just get even Chuck in the truck, you know, might be charging higher and they're like, all right, well this just is what it is like it's 50 bucks to mow this lawn instead of 40. Like, okay, like, but as long as there's a, a bunch of people undercharging for, for, for their, for mowing the lawn because they don't know their worth, they don't think they're personally worth more than that. Or they don't just, just don't know because they don't go to these conferences, they don't listen to the podcasts or watched content that they don't do any kind of self development. So they have no idea that they're even leaving money on the table. So my ultimate point in this episode is where were you at the Lawn and Landscape Technology conference? I know many of you will go to Equip Expo, which has a, which the reason why it's so much bigger. You know, there's, I don't know what the number was for lawn landscape. It was like, you know, maybe a thousand or so attendees, maybe a couple thousand. But you know, it's small in comparison, small in size and attendance in comparison to the Equip Expo. But it's also more specialized. It's the top 100. It's focused on technology, which usually the 19% are focusing on the technology and innovation of the industry so they can continue growth where unfortunately I'm speaking for myself as well. Sometimes I get a little, I get a little sidetracked as well and question. Get a little skeptical, I guess. But the rest of the 81%, we aren't always thinking about innovations and technology. We're like, I don't know about that battery stuff. It's got a long way to go. And instead of thinking on how you can implement what already exists for your business so that it's already part of your systems and part of your culture, so that when it does get to the level that you think is acceptable, you're ready to go. And you can go all out and convert your crews or your equipment all to that, you know, or using this, the software or whatever it is. This AI stuff's creeping me out. Okay, well, figure out how to use it and how it can help your business and get. Give you a lot of your time back and less stress in your life. Less employees that have to physically do a lot of this work that AI can do behind the scenes for you and with, you know, real human employees double checking and working with the AI, which just optimizes those people and you get more out of them with less stress when they're using technology to help them. That's been the whole point of technology since day one, right? Instead of digging holes by hand all the time, now you have equipment that can do it for you and tools that can do it for you. Now you can do more with less energy and less people and so on. Your profits increase and your team culture morale increases. The same thing with technology in general. No more paperwork, no wasted time. The LCR Media podcast is sponsored by Turo, also the creator of the contractor business software Horizon 360. From scheduling and routing optimization to real time job tracking and invoicing, Horizon360 streamlines your entire operation. Right now there's a special offer exclusively for my listeners, a seven month free trial of Horizon 360 Unlimited. Just click the link in the episode description and enter code LCR at checkout to get started.
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Lawn care and Landscaping pros, listen up. If you're tired of guessing your way through pricing, marketing, hiring and sales, this is your wake up call. The LCR Summit hits Downtown Louisville October 19th and 20th at the Galthouse the same week as Equip and it's gonna change the way you run your business forever. This is not another sit and listen event. It's two full days of hands on workshops from leaders who've build what you're trying to build. Neylor Taliaferro shows you how to generate better leads through smarter marketing. Paul Jamison teaches content that converts. John Pajak breaks down your numbers so you'll stop working for cheap. Eric Triplett, the pond Digger, reveals how he built a multimillion dollar business making more money with less work. Plus you'll have a surprise guest speaker. Add in live Q and A panels, powerful networking, and an exclusive VIP dinner with all the speakers. When you purchase at the Platinum level, grab tickets and infocrsummit.com or just tap the link in the podcast description. That's lcrsummit.com Stop guessing. Start growing. Build the business you've always imagined.
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At the LCR summit, the 81% seem to be more skeptical and more resistant to change. And don't go to a technology conference to learn about the latest, greatest innovations in technology for our industry. But the 19% was there, that's for sure. That's probably all. Like the top 100 were all there, at least representative of their business. Maybe not their entire squad, obviously their entire team, but at least some of the key members of each of those companies were there.
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And then.
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And then the attendees were in the 19% as well. I talked to and interviewed many of them. You know, $9 million businesses, $20 million businesses. So they're all there but the 81%. It's like, nah, I don't need to go there. What do I need to learn from that? Or maybe you want to, but you're too busy. I'm too busy. I got too much work to do. I got to work every weekend. Man, it rains so much. And I get it. I've been there, done that. But there's gotta be better answers. And it's not because the 19% that was there just, you know, gave up on life or they just never had rain or because they have 100 employees. So, yeah, it's easy for them. Is it? Is it though? Even if it's easier, quote, unquote easier for them now because they have 100 employees. So they're not doing any of the work of those employees anyway. But they're doing the work as a CEO, which is learning how to grow the business, talking to customers, talking to their leadership team and making sure they're holding up their end of the bargain and they're following up on their teams. And the whole hundred employee, the whole staff, the whole company of 100 is all on the same page. That's the leader. That's the CEO's job, which is not easy. I mean, you could you, if you think it is, put yourself in their shoes and then see how easy, quote, unquote easy it really is because they had to become that person to begin with. And they started with themselves, most likely, or maybe a couple employees before they got to 100. And that was a journey for them to get to those, to that 100 employees. They had to learn a lot, they had to sacrifice a lot. They had to make a lot of, and they had to become a lot. So they have the same issues we all have. They've just dealt with them differently over time. So that's the deal and that's the takeaway. I know a lot of us, everyone will be at Equip Expo, but, you know, you know who there's less of? The 19% are less at Equip and more at the Lawn and Landscape Technology Conference. More of the 81% are at equip and less, if any, are at the Lawn and Landscape Tech Conference. And that's not to say anything about Law and Landscape Tech Conference or Equip Expo, other than us as business owners in the landscape industry, how we think about ourselves. So realize that you are in the 81% if you're making less than a million, if you're owner Operator, for sure, you can't be making a million if you're all by yourself. I don't think that's possible. Again, unless you're using subcontractors, then you're really not technically by yourself. But if you're 100% owner operator, you are in the 81%. If you're doing less than a million and you have a bunch of subcontractors or you're paying people cash, you are also part of that 81% technically. And think to yourself, if you are at a stuck point, if you're a sticking point, you're stuck somewhere at a current level and you want to get past that, it's not going to happen by osmosis. It's not going to just. Well, it could happen. Even if it did happen by osmosis. Osmosis means you have to be around something. Osmosis. I don't know the exact definition. I can't quote the exact definition, but let me look it up. Osmosis. So see, real quick the definition. Here we go. On the fly, guys. Osmosis is passive movement of water molecules through. Okay, that's a whole lot of technical jargon there. Essentially, it means passive transport moves naturally without using cell. All right, well, this probably wasn't the best example, but whatever. I've heard this. I've used this analogy and heard so many other people use it often as well. But essentially it is the transfer of energy without necessarily doing anything minimal. Like I said, naturally without using cell energy. You're just there. So people say if you're in a room of people, then you might. You might learn something through osmosis, right? Like, even if you're not paying attention, whatever. It's kind of more of like a joke, I guess. But the point is you have to actually be in the room. You have to actually be around other people with. You have to be around other energy for osmosis to passively transfer energy or whatever. But my point is, if you're stuck in your own bubble and you're by yourself, literally, you don't even have an employee. And even if you have an employee, they might not be helping you get to the next level. They might not be mentally there otherwise, they might have their own business or you should be giving them a more of a leadership role, but you're by yourself. Maybe your spouse doesn't get it, or you don't have a spouse and you just feel all alone and you're stuck. You need more than just these conversations. You need more than these conversations Meaning on the podcast, more than social media books, you need to get in rooms, you need to get around other like minded people. You need to get around mentors that are where you want to be or have been where you want to be and can help you get through some sticking points and some challenges. Like the LCR Summit for example, that's coming up in October. The 50% off coupon or discount is going to be ending soon for the month of July, so definitely check the links in the episode description for all that. But that's an example, one of many, you know, two days of learning, getting in the room, learning from the people in the room, learning from the people in the front of the room and just having those connections over two days and then you can spend the rest of the week at equip. Once Equip starts because it's the Monday and Tuesday before the week of for equip the same week, right? Monday, Tuesday, LCR Summit, then Wednesday starts Equip and you can spend a whole week really learning a whole lot and trying to get yourself unstuck, attempting to learn something new that maybe you would have never discovered on your own or would have taken you a lot longer. That's the whole point of getting in these rooms. So if you are stuck and you're feeling like you're stuck, if you're stuck or you're feeling like you're stuck, you have to get in these rooms, you have to figure some of this stuff out. You can't just nothing's going to change unless you change essentially some things you might stumble upon over time. But again, if you want it to be faster, you don't want your family to suffer longer. Find some of these shorter paths of resistance by figuring out how you can take a couple of days away from your business, work a little faster, reschedule some jobs to a different week so that you can attend some of these things like Equip Expo, if you're not already planning. Law and Landscape Tech conference is already over. But that would have been a good one to have learned to have attended LCR Summit. Another one coming up to attend. There's just lots of opportunities, but you have to take advantage of that opportunity for the time of that opportunity. Otherwise it passes and you lost the opportunity. But at the Lawn and Landscape Technology Conference, just to quickly recap that, again, it was all about AI. It was all about all the new electric and battery equipment, all the software that's out there that already exists, that has AI now integrated into it, and new software that was created with AI. Not kind of a bolted on AI to what they already have, but software is created with AI to really help you run your business essentially right. Like you have AI software that's versus like just using ChatGPT or something like that, which is helpful. But having an actual platform for your business like a CRM with AI already integrated into it, or a whole new platform that has AI built, it's built with AI and around all of that and then the other stuff, you can do additional things like CRM and so on with these platforms now. And the AI is going to tell you everything that you need to know. It's going to analyze your business for you regularly, give you customized dashboards for each person in the business that should have access to that. And just so much, so many new advances that are happening like every other week, it seems like every month. It's just a lot. And when you don't go to these places and you're just relying on or you just hear me or someone else talk about it here and there, that's just scratching the surface. So going to these conferences are really helpful and of course they have training sessions to really dial that into like how technology helped me take my business to the next level and so on and so forth. All kinds of different real business owners up there telling their stories of how they got unstuck or how they grew or how they got more profitable using technology. Not just AI and not just battery, a combination of all kinds of things. People that have created their own technology that are up on stage sharing it, of course, you know, so that they can sell it. But it also serving like, hey, this will help your business. It helped me in my business and all these other businesses that have used it. It'll help you. And so that's ultimately what that was all about. Without going into all the specifics, you know, wish you were there, that would have been great. There's going to be some of that, of course at Equip Expo, but this conference was focused only on that. So where were you? You're in the 81%. I shared this with manufacturers that were there as well that I have partnerships with and have gotten to know over time. And they focus much on the 19% without realizing that it's only 19%. Now, don't get me wrong, that 19% is billions and billions of dollars in revenue. And they obviously need equipment and software and employees and software and equipment around employees, like recruiting software and training software and all kinds of different things that they need to spend money on to run their business. So yes, don't alienate the 19% but I think let's focus more. I was talking to some of these manufacturers like I think you need to shift your focus more on the 81% and not the 19%. Like I'll give one example and I'll end on this. One example was I was talking to an engine manufacturer and they were asking if we were just having a conversation and they were asking me my feedback on some things and I'm like, who are you targeting? What is the goal of this information? They had a survey that they wanted me to look over and what is the goal of this? Who do you want? Who are you targeting? What's the goal? And they were like, oh well, but we're going to send this out to the top 100 and we're hoping to find some brand loyal top 100 companies that we can go get, go out and visit them and see our products in use, get their testimonials, give them some new products in their hands for them to demo and talk about and maybe make some content or us make content. And I'm like that's great, but here's one I said here's what I will almost guarantee. I'll give a 1% margin of error, but I can almost guarantee 99% of those top 100 people could care less what engine brand is running their machines they care more about. And I know this for a fact from the, I didn't ask all 100 of them, but I know many people in the 19% which is, which is more than a top 100. The 19% is over a million. I know plenty of people that have businesses that are at 9 million, 10 million, 3 million, 20 million all in between there. And the last thing they care about is engine type. They care about engine quality, they care about pricing, they care when they get 20 new mowers at a clip so they can get their fleet discount every couple of years. Because literally there's companies in my area that after their mowers get a certain amount of hours, they sell them all and buy a whole new fleet. So they never have downtime, right? They have good quality engines all the time and equipment all the time. They buy all new string trimmers, they buy all new. It's like the biggest sale in my, in my local equipment dealer, the biggest sale they have every couple of years that they cycle through this and they could care less about the engine, they care about the deck size and the mower type, right? They're looking at okay, we need X amount of walk behinds and these are the deck sizes that we need. We need X amount of grandstand mowers and these deck sizes. If we can't get a 72 inch and a stand on mower then we'll get one or two sit down zero turn mowers because we have some bigger properties. You know, they'll make some compromises but this is what we need. They're talking about deck sizes, you know, I mean and of course they're concerned with quality of cut and you like ease of use I guess. But all the, all mowers in my opinion are good mowers. Just some are better than others and it's more personal preference. Right. They all have different cutting decks and they have their own patents on it so they can't copy. They have to change things a little bit differently. So if there's a cutting a mower you have and it just doesn't cut the same as another mower that you've seen or used, it's probably because they don't, they can't. They have to have their own patent, they have to have their own mower deck and it's just not the same. But there's different things you can do to tweak that, different types of blades to get a better suction, better cut. If you get super high lift blades you can get a better cut on some decks that don't necessarily give the best cut versus some mowers. Like I'm a, obviously you guys all know I'm a Toro fan. The, the turbo force deck has always been a tank, a beast and cuts clean and sharp every time. As long as you keep the deck clean and the blades sharp, it cuts like, like, like, like a champ. Not almost nothing cuts better. I think Exmark people argue is is better than Toro but Toro bought Xmark and owns it. So it's still all under the same thing. But those are some pretty serious decks. It's a lot of other mower brands don't measure up to the same cut quality. My point is that's this, that that stuff does matter. But when you're a big multi million dollar company you're worrying less about mower brands and engine brands and you're more worried about how reliable is this equipment going to be. Like how much can I save on the front end if I get 20 at a clip I'm going to save a lot of money with fleet discount. If this brand even what brand even has the biggest savings. Right? You're thinking about that, you're thinking about cost of maintenance, how much does it cost to maintain this mower, how easily, readily available are the parts. The dealers in the area, what do they service, what brands? Like, that's what these, that's what the 19% is thinking about. So I told this manufacturer. But you know who does care about the engine? Type us. You listening to this podcast, the 81%. Because you want and need the best engine that's going to last as long as possible. You're not thinking about selling your mower in a couple years. You're thinking of how long can I keep this mower alive? You know, how many years can I keep this mower alive so that I can get the most out of it and make as much money as possible? Because you might only have one or two mowers. That's all you can afford. That's all you have room for. That's all you really need. A main mower and a backup. Not, not mentioning like smaller mowers, you know, for, for, you know, for gate, small gates and things of that nature. Just like your main large commercial mowers, you only really need one or two, depending on how much lawns you're cutting. So you want the best engine and the best mower, the best cutting deck, the best stripe quality. Like that's the stuff that we focus on, the 81% because we don't have these huge businesses that we're getting 20 mowers at a clip. That's not something we're doing and we have our own mechanic and all these things. No, we need stuff that we don't have time to work on it. We might not be mechanically inclined to work on it. We can't afford to always have it in and out of the dealer all the time and have loaners or have downtime. We need the best quality mower and engines to last us as long as possible. That's how we think we care about the engine type and the mower type. We're the loyalists, we're the, the, the, you know, the brand loyal business owners. Not the 19%. And like I could see and we, I went on, I went into this in a lot more detail, you know, with this, with this manufacturer. But this, that was the best summary I could give you all listening to this about this conversation. But I could just see like the, you know, their eyes got really big and they're just like, oh my gosh, like they were having like a moment like we've been doing it all wrong. What do we do? And I'm like, oh no. I mean, obviously the 19 still buying the same stuff, they're still buying stuff. But don't focus only on them. Focus more, focus less on them, but still focus on them and more on the 81%. And like, oh my gosh, well, how do we contact 81%? Like, what do we do? Like, I don't know, it was like a whole new thing. I was like, let's jump on a call next week and we'll figure this out together. Let's see what we can do. That's my wheelhouse, is how can I connect brands, manufacturers to the right people, to you, so that you can share your opinion, you, the listener, so you can share your opinions and what you care about with these manufacturers, maybe even partner with them in some ways, demo some stuff, make content, if that's your thing. All the above to find the right, the right equipment for you and give the right feedback to them. And it's a win, win scenario all the way around. So that's essentially my recap and I think I'm going to end it there. Of the Law and Landscape Tech Conference. Be on the lookout for more episodes from me, like I said, as well as the other podcasters that I mentioned. Check all that out. Stay up to date on the podcast and social media. We'll be sharing all of it as it comes out. So lots of great content, lots of great conversations to help you grow your mindset as well as some technical stuff like talking about new products and softwares, technology that can help you with your business as well. So hope you all enjoyed. Thank you for listening. Thank you to Toro Company for sponsoring the LCR Media podcasts. And until the next time, this is Naylor Tally Farrow signing off.
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This has been an lcr media and Mr. Producer production.