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- [00:01]
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What if I told you that before you spend another dollar on advertising, before you buy another piece of equipment and before you hire another employee, that there may be a thousand dollars hiding inside your business? And the crazy part, you probably walked past it and you may have even looked at it today, you may have paid for it recently, but today I want to help you find it. Because sometimes the fastest way to make more money in your business is isn't by working harder, it's by plugging the holes in the bucket.
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Today's episode is brought to you by Yardbook, the all in one CRM for your lawn care business. And as an exclusive partner of this podcast, you can get started today and begin simplifying your business and maximizing your profits. Sign up now@yardbook.com the link is in. The show notes Time now for Profits with Paycheck, an essential podcast for you in the green industry who are looking to unlock the full potential of your business business. Hosted by John Pajak, your certified financial coach, the show features in depth discussions with successful entrepreneurs, thought leaders and industry experts, providing practical advice and proven strategies on financial planning, operations, marketing and sales. Profits with Paycheck has valuable insights and action steps that you can implement today for creating long term success. Now here's John Pajak.
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What's up everybody? And welcome to Profits with Paycheck, the podcast where you dive into business strategies and financial insights for the green industry. And I want to just let you know that, hey, we are going to do something a little different today and this is going to be one of those episodes where I want you to take notes. In fact, I would encourage you to set aside an hour sometimes this week and actually work through this exercise. And I don't want you to do this in the truck between jobs. I don't want you to do it while you're scrolling through your phone and not while you're half listening to this episode. I mean actually sit down with a pen and a piece of paper or your computer and your business records and start looking. Because I could almost guarantee there is money hiding somewhere inside of your company. Now, before anyone gets upset, I'm not saying there is literally a thousand dollar bill sitting under your truck seat. But I am saying that most businesses, especially growing businesses, they develop leaks over time. And just like any little tiny drip in your house, it can become thousands of gallons of wasted water over a course of a year and a little leak in your business can become thousands of dollars lost. So today I want to walk you through some of the biggest places that I see money disappearing. Now, one of the first places I tell any business owner to look is accounts receivable. Now, do you have any customers who owe you money? Do you have invoices that are 30 or 60 or 90 days old? Do you have customers that slip through the cracks because you got busy? Listen, you already did the hard part. You already sold the job. You already performed the service you already got. You already paid out for your guys, for the labor, the. The fuel and the equipment, wear and tear and the materials. You. You. The money's yours, right? The money that you. You said, hey, client, it's gonna be this much. This is gonna be this amount. They said, yeah, that sounds good. I'm gonna get what I want. I'll give you the. The fun tickets. I'll give you some monies. All right, cool. What's the. What's. What's the missing part here? You forgot to collect the money, right? So make a list of every overdue invoice. Like, literally. I mean, we use yardbook. We don't have past due invoices. We charge on card on file and everything. We're very streamlined. But let's just say you have a different business model where you don't charge immediately. Maybe you don't have card on file. Maybe you have terms that you follow. Okay, whatever it is, I'm not trying to convince you one way is better than the other. But what I'm saying is, if you have done the work and you haven't collected your money yet, you better get on it. So, you know, make a list. You know, use whatever CRM you're using. You know, it's QuickBooks or what are the others? You know, yard, lawn care, CRMs, you know, whatever it is, make a list. Give them a call, send a text, send an email. You know, be professional, be polite, but be consistent. And you'll be amazed at how many, you know, how often just a simple little reminder will turn into the payment that you've been waiting for. Now, the second one that I'm going to talk about is. I like to call it the subscription graveyard. And this one hurts because I'm a little guilty of it myself. You know, we sign up for a software because we needed it, or we subscribe to a service because it solves a problem. We start a free trial and we forget to cancel it, and then six months later, we're paying for something we don't even use. So this is where you need to do some research. This is why I'm telling you not to do this in the truck, okay? Sit at home. Even if you're using your phone, I don't care. But, you know, get the laptop all snuggle buggled on your lap and start going through your bank statements and your credit card statements for the last three months. Basically highlight every recurring charge. This is something I do on a pretty frequent basis. And just ask yourself one simple question. If I wasn't already paying for this, would I buy it again today? And if the answer is no, cancel it. You know, it adds up very, very quickly. You look at five subscriptions at $30 a month, that's $150 a month. And then when you let that go for a year, that's eighteen hundred dollars a year, right? I mean, some of you go, oh, that's chump change. It's no problem. It's nobody. Hey, but, you know, if you're trying to really be emphasis, you know, be efficient, if you're, you know, trying to figure out where all your money's going, you know, these things add up quickly. Who only you know, raise your hand if you have five subscriptions. It's pretty easy to get five subscriptions. I know plenty of people that have close to 20 subscriptions. Yeah, maybe they're not all, you know, 20 bucks, 30 bucks, whatever. But, you know, these things add up. It's like, you know, dying by a multitude of paper cuts. You know what I'm saying? Saying it's like tiny, tiny little cuts. Hey, eventually those things will bleed you out. Back when I was getting my lawn care business off the ground, I was juggling routes, invoices, and customer notes with paper and prayers. It was chaos until I found Yardbook. Yardbook gave me the structure. It helped me track chemicals, route efficiently, invoice faster, and most importantly, it helped me grow a profitable business. If you're tired of duct taping your systems Together, go to yardbook.com and sign up for free. And if you're ready to go premium, use promo code PAYJACK to get your first 30 days on me. If you've been thinking about attending Equip Expo this October, don't wait right now. Registration is only $30. And when you use promo code PAYJACK, you're going to get your ticket for just $15. But here's what most people don't realize. Registration jumps to $60 after September 10th. And if you wait until the show starts in October, you're going to pay $120 at the gate. Why spend $120 for something you can lock in today for 15 bu equip expo is the biggest event in the green industry. You're going to get access to three days of exhibits, education, networking, outdoor demos and free parking at the Kentucky Expo center. Head over to equipexpo.com use promo code, pay Jack and I'll see you in Louisville this October.
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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 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 fill up 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.
- [09:01]
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And I'm telling you what, I am really looking forward to going to quip in October this year. If you haven't got if you heard the the lead the ad there, definitely get your tickets soon. I want you to get the cheapest tickets you can, the links in the show notes. But at the same time this also allows you to go look at all the sexy, shiny new stuff, all your your fun little toys. You know, you could try everything out at their outdoor yard, all the mowers and excavating equipment, basically anything you want. You could pretty much try out at Equip. But that kind of leads me to another huge thing that you should be looking at. I want you to walk through your shop, I want you to open up your trailers. I want you to look at the corners of your garage. I want you to notice what what's in the corners. Just collecting dust. Every contractor has this. Okay, it might not be in the main shop, but it might be a shed or something that they forgot about or they very rarely look at. You know, there's going to be stuff that you have, you know, it might be a machine that you saw you're going to fix. You know, it might be an attachment that you bought that you thought you're going to be using every week. It's the extra tools that you bought just in case, you know. But now there's a difference between having the necessary backups and being a storage facility for dead assets. You know, if you have a mower that's worth $2,000 that's sitting in a corner and you haven't touched it in two years, ask yourself a hard question. Is this an asset or is it a decoration? My opinion, just sell it, turn it into cash. I know that's a hard one for a lot of us. You know, we sometimes we look at things and we go, man, I worked so hard to get that, why would I get rid of it now? You know, I've been there, I'm still going through it myself. I have some assets that are, you know, in, in one of the storage units that I really. They're just there because I want them, right? They're not making money anymore. You know, we disbanded our long or our mowing come up. Excuse me, our mowing division, which is a fancy word of saying, hey, I don't mow lawns anymore, but I still have a couple pieces of equipment that are pretty high end that I could still get a few thousand dollars out of because they're very well maintained. And of course, now that they've been sitting for a while, I had them spruced up a little bit and they look almost as good as new. And instead of making money, they're. All they're doing is taking up shop space and I gotta pay for that shop space. And I'm thinking about it, I'm like, man, if I got rid of these two machines and I got rid of this machine and I got rid of this stick equipment, I probably wouldn't need this unit anymore. And for me, that is like about $300 a month. So not only would I gains, you know, make a temporary gain in revenue by selling the equipment that is of no longer use for us, but that also would remove one of the storage units that I think I need right now. And at $300 a month, hey, that's $3,600 a year. Think of what you could do with that. That's, that's some actual real cash that you could not be forking over every month. Now let me, let me kind of transition into one of my favorite topics and it's pricing. And this is where I've seen a lot of business owners uncover tens of thousands of dollars. A lot of companies will have what we call legacy customers. You know, and these are the customers that have been with you for five, 10, maybe 15 years. And they're wonderful people, but somewhere along the way, you stopped adjusting your prices for them. Meanwhile, your labor costs are going up, your insurance went up, your materials went up, your fuel, your equipment, everything went up except what you are charging now. Loyalty should never require you to subsidize your customer's lawn. Now you can appreciate someone's loyalty and still charge a profitable price. You know, so what I'd like for you to do is just pull your customer list, sort it by revenue, look for the accounts that make you cringe when you see what they're paying, because those are the ones you need to reevaluate. It's kind of a hard thing to do at times, but, you know, if you're, you know, either breaking even or you're not even covering the cost to service that client and you're subsidizing, you're borrowing from someone else to. You're relying on someone else's job to cover the difference, that's not a good way to run business. So, you know, again, it's a tough one, but it's really kind of necessary. And another one of the opportunities that I see that that's missed at this point is I see everyone is spending so much time chasing new customers that they. They literally forget about the people who already trust them. You know, if you. If you fertilize lawns, can you offer aeration and overseeding? Can you offer flea and tick control? Can you do perimeter pest treatments? You know, tree and shrub care? If you mow lawns, can you offer mulch? If you do shrub trimming, can you do seasonal cleanups? You know, think of it. You know, I mean, insert whatever service you want. Okay, I'm just rattling some things off here. But you've already paid. The most expensive part of marketing is onboarding a new client. You've earned the customer's trust. So don't let that relationship just sit idle. You know, reach out to them, ask them if they need things. You know, sometimes, you know, I like, I don't do gutter cleaning, but, hey, maybe they. They're like, yeah, you know, we really need to find somebody that could clean our gutters that we trust. Oh, guess what? That's on our service list. There's so many existing customers that they don't understand what your offer is. They don't understand what your business can offer. And whose fault is that? Is that the customer? Not really. It's. It's you because you're not being loud enough. I mean, trust me, I've had problems like that before in the past where I would have a whole laundry list of things that we did. And then I'd get mad because I would see, like, you know, back in the days when we had the mowing, how you get mad when I'd see a flag of one of my competitors in their lawn for fertilization, weed control. And I'm like, hey, what's going on with that? I, you know, didn't you know that we do fur, too? We. We fertilize and we get rid of all those weeds and all that. No, I didn't know that. If I would have known that, I would have went with you. Well, I'm stuck in a contract now. I'm, you know, you know, Ms. Smith or, you know, Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones. Yeah. Mr. Jones was really upset that he paid. They made him pay a full year in advance. And I said, no, we could just roll that into your monthly bill. And he was like, man, I wish I would have known that I had to sign a contract for a whole year to get the discounted price, but I had to pay it all up front. I'm like, oh, well, you know, but you see, this doesn't fall on your customer. This falls on you. You got to let them know what you offer. You know, it's like, hey, you know, we do this for you. Did you know that? We also can offer you this, you know, or even. You don't have to try to upsell them on everything. You could just be like, you know, I noticed that your lawn's looking kind of. Yeah, I noticed some really hard spots here. Maybe we need to core, aerate it. I think that there was a benefit to your lawn. It would get rid of a lot of issues that you're having. Oh, that's great. You could offer that. Yeah. Hey, see, now you take that person that might be, you know, $800 a year, and you might turn them into a 1500 dollars a year client, you know, just because you had a small conversation with them. So anyway, here's the challenge I have for you. You know, sometime in the next week, just block out one hour, okay? Out of the entire week. I'm talking Monday through Sunday. Don't do it on Sunday. You want to rest on Sunday, Monday through Saturday, Okay? Pick one hour out of the, out of all that time. Not in a working hour of your business, like when you're out in the field, okay, you could do it, say you're, you're. It's one of those hours where you're working on your business, okay? You're not entrenched, you're not in the trenches, okay? But one of those hours are you working on your business. Grab your laptop, get your bank statements together, get your customer list and open and all the open invoices that you have and ask yourself, where is money leaking out of my company? You know, when. Where am I paying for something I don't need? What equipment could become cash? You know, look at your customer list and figure out which ones are no longer profitable or ones that are just like, yeah, they've been skating by for a while, but things are aggressively changing and I think we need to let them know that we need to bump up their price by 5%. You know, I ask yourself, like, what services am I failing to offer to people who already know? And trust me, you don't need a new logo, you don't need another piece of equipment, and you don't need some magic marketing strategy, okay? Sometimes the quickest path to more profit is just simply taking better care of the money you already have. And I promise you, if you do this exercise correctly and you do it honestly, there's a very good chance you're going to find your first thousand dollars easily. So I want to thank so much for tuning in to another episode of Profits of Paycheck. And remember, you know, profits are not an accident. They're planned. So till next time, God bless. Keep pushing through and we'll catch you on the next one. Thank you once again for listening. If you've enjoyed the show, please leave a review and share it with fellow business owners. Your support means the world to me and helps keep the show going strong. I want to give a special shout out to our friends at Yardbook. Their continued support has been instrumental in bringing this podcast to you week after week. If you haven't checked them out yet, visit yardbook.com and see how they can give you the tools to streamline and manage your lawn care business. Also, don't forget to explore the resources and upcoming events that I've collected just for you in the show Notes. These are curated to help you stay ahead in your your business with the latest tips, tools and networking opportunities. Whether it's a new tool, an insightful article, or an event you don't want to miss, I've got you covered. Until next time. Keep pushing through and God bless. Sam.