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Let me ask you something. If your fertilizer supplier raised prices, fuel goes up again, parts cost more, and you didn't raise your prices, where did that money go? Because it just didn't disappear. It came out of your pocket. It came out of your profits. So how long are you going to let that slide before it eats you alive?

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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. Hosted by John Pajac, 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, 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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Welcome to Profits With Paycheck, the podcast we dive into business strategies and financial insights for the green industry. I'm your host, John Pajak and today we're going to be talking about something that is quietly destroying the profits across the industry. Right now, maybe not even across the industry. This is probably just a bigger, bigger event. In total, it's our entire economy. But the thing is this is absorbing the rising costs instead of adjusting your pricing. Now, a lot of people are complaining about it, how much everything costs, but nobody seems to be talking about what the solution is. And you know, they don't want to talk about it because it's uncomfortable. Now if you don't fix this, you're probably, you might end up working an entire season just to find out there's nothing left at the end. So here's what's happening right now. If you are an American and you are living, breathing, you're a functional person and you have to take care of your household, let alone your business, you could see that prices are going up everywhere. It costs more to heat your home, to cool your home. It costs more to, you know, just eat anywhere. You know, whether you're buying groceries and taking them home to make meals or, you know, if you're one of those people that just tends to go out, you're, you're noticing it's more expensive. And not to mention, if you're going out to eat, you're getting worse. Food. Anyway, just costs are going up everywhere. You know, your fertilizer doesn't say the same price, you know, from compared to last year to this year. It's gone up. Fuel didn't stay the same price. I just talked about that in a recent episode where it went up A$3 in one single day. And even like the little things, you know, parts and maintenance and repairs, they've all gone up. But, you know, a lot of guys, they're still charging the same prices for their services that they were last year or worse. I have a few people that keep dming me and telling me that in order to stay competitive in their, in their area, they're discounting their, their services. And let me be real with you. You know, if you kept the same pricing you did last year, you didn't just, you didn't hold your price. You, you're taking a pay cut. And I mean that as far as, like you, the owner are taking a pay cut, because maybe you're still saying, well, no, no, I still pay myself the same. You know, I'm not one of those guys that just takes the profits and, you know, that's my paycheck. It's like, no, no, no, I'm still paying myself X amount of dollars a week or every two weeks, whatever. I still give myself a paycheck. Like my employees or if you're a solo operator, you're still paying yourself what you need to do to take care of your household at the end. Those profits are still part of your check in a sense. Okay? It's not only your paycheck. And I don't want you to get confused. Your profits aren't your paycheck. But what I'm saying is you're entitled to all those profits if you choose to. Your business relies on profits in order to expand and to grow or to, you know, at this point, just maintain. You have to understand, you know, with the rising costs of everything, you know, which, what was profit yesterday is now today's expense. So we have to be prepared for these things. So the less profit that you make, the worse off it is for you as a person, as the business owner as well as your business. And if you are, it doesn't matter if you're solo and you're one guy in a truck and you're like, oh, it's okay. I'll just have to wait a little bit longer to buy that other thing, that new mower or that new machine or the, you know, getting the wrap on your, your truck. It's not just that. I mean, if you have employees, it might stall you your pay rate to where maybe you're not going to be attracting the more reliable people. You know, nobody wants to get stagnant with their wages. And if you're not profitable, there's no room for you to offer a better working condition for your people. Whether that translates into just hourly pay, the bonuses or benefits that you offer for them, or the room for advancement, it affects all those things. So it's not just, well, I'll just take a little bit less money this year. It affects every facet of your business. And the scariest thing is most people don't even realize this, how, how this is going to affect your business, because the work is still coming in right now. We're still technically early in the season. We're still early in the year. You know, as of this recording, we are just in May, the beginning of May of 2026. And most guys, you know, you're busy, the phone is still ringing, your schedules full or filling up. So things feel like it's going really well. But what's really happening is your margin is getting squeezed tighter and tighter with every job you do. And this is the dangerous part, because it doesn't show up right away. It shows up later. It shows up when you go to pay yourself, and then there's less there. It shows up when something breaks, and now it hurts more than it should when you go to pay that bill. It shows up at the end of the season when you ask yourself, how did I work this hard to not get ahead? And I'll tell you exactly how. You became the one covering the cost increase, not your customers. You, you did that. The purpose of business is people want something. It's a thing, a service, whatever they want, they are willing to pay for it. Okay? Everything should be covered by the customer. And you doing the process, that's where you make the profit. So you price everything adequately so that you could do the job they want done. And then the reward is on top of everything being paid for, you get a little money on. On top of it. That's that really, that's how business is. If you really break it down to the fundamentals, that's all business really is. Somebody is willing to pay you for a thing or a service. And when they do that, you. They cover everything and a little bit of more money, the profit is yours. Okay? There's nothing wrong with that. The thing is, I get why some guys will stay there and not raise their prices because there's fear behind this. They're thinking that, what if I raise my prices and people leave? What if my competitors are cheaper? What if I lose work? You know, there's a lot of fear there. You're, you know, hear those things and you're. You become fearful. What if. What if I lose what I have? And that's. That's the problem, because here's the truth. You're already losing. You're just losing so slowly that you don't notice it instead of losing all at once. You know, one thing I just want to make a similarity to is, you know, a long time ago, in my younger days, I had a big group of friends that we would get together and play no limit Texas hold'. Em back in the early 2000s when it was, like, super popular and, you know, made this big, huge resurgence. It was on TV and all that stuff, right? We get together, do a friendly game and whatnot, and we would have. We'd have enough guys to where, you know, if the main game was, like, people were going out of it, instead of everybody having to wait to. For everybody to be done to play another game, we actually had, like, two tables running. So it's like, if you lost, you know, enough guys lost, it's like, oh, we have this other game at this other table. Well, the thing was, I was generally, like a very conservative player. I would sit there and I would just play hands that I only knew were winners, Right. My buddy, on the other hand, he was kind of a little bit looser. He'd go all in and, you know, either win or lose. Right? And then we also had a couple other players that were in there. They were really good players. They didn't play the cards. They played the guy. You know? Anyway, long story short, my friend that would go all in. More, like a lot. He would. It would be a big grand thing. It's like, oh, I lost. Yeah. Okay, well, I'm just going to go and I'm going to start it this other game. I'm gonna go start another game. I would grind through and just slowly lose all my chips. And then by the time I just had a very small stack, then I had, like, almost no choice but to go all in. And it was miserable because I had. I. It took so long for me to, like, realize I had lost. There was no way that I could win. Even if I was doing. Going all in every hand, it was kind of too late. So I want to relate that to how your business could struggle and you don't really realize it you think, oh, I got a chance of winning here, I got a chance of being profitable at the end of the year. But if you don't play your cards right, you're going to lose. So let me hit pause for a quick second because if what we're talking about today is hitting a little too close to home, then you need to be in the room for this. We're doing Profit Accelerator live. That's happening June 26th and 27th in Richmond, Virginia. And this is not fluff, this is not motivation for the sake of motivation. This is where you sit down and actually dial in your numbers. And we're talking real pricing, real costs, real strategy. It's the kind of clarity that lets you stop guessing and start making confident decisions in your business. If you've ever felt like you're working hard but you're not seeing the profit you should be seeing, this is exactly where you need to be. So I want you to go to profit accelerator live.com to grab your ticket. I'm going to have you have this in the show notes so you can click on the link and go directly there. And I'm going to tell you this, getting in the right in, in the room might be the thing that finally flips the switch for you. And right now, if you get a, we have a special going on. If you want to bring your partner or your, you know, your wife, your partner, your a business partner, you can get two tickets for the price of one. So that's Profit Accelerator live dot com. You'll join me, Naylor Taliaferro and Eric Triplett in Richmond, and we will help you get your profits moving fast. 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. Equip Expo 2026 is coming up October 20th through the 23rd in Louisville, Kentucky. If you're serious about growing your business, then this is where you need to be. We're talking live equipment demos, the latest technology, and thousands of contractors all in one place, sharing what's actually working right now. And here's the deal. Tickets are normally $120, but right now you can get them for $12.50. When you use promo code PAYCHECK, that's 50% off the already discounted early bird price. But this deal expires May 31, and prices go up after that. So don't wait on this. Lock in your ticket. Now get in the room, and I'll see you there. Use promo code payjack. The link is in the show notes. And grab your ticket today. All right, let's get into what you actually need to do about this issue here, because I'm not just here to point out the problem. I need you to understand, and I say this like a broken record, but you need to know your numbers and not your feelings. You cannot price based on what feels right. You need to know, okay, what does it cost you to show up? What does it cost per hour to run your business? What does the product actually cost to apply it? Like, you know, for fertilizer? How much does your program cost to put down per thousand square feet? Because if you don't know these numbers, you're guessing, and guessing is extremely expensive. This is why you, you know, this doesn't mean to panic, okay? This doesn't mean doubling your prices overnight. You're. Because, you know, you have to know. You have to understand what it is. You can't just start shooting into the dark. You know, you say you're out camping in the. In the woods, right? And it's a dark, dark forest, and you're just in a tent, and you hear, you know, creatures and things growling out in the middle of the woods. You can't just go out there and start lighting up the whole forest randomly with. With gunfire, right? You're not, like, you know, you're not going to be doing that. You have to identify what it is. Is it a threat? Is it just some chipmunk? That sounds scary. I don't know, just rustling around in the woods. It sounds crazy huge or something, but it's nothing. It's not going to hurt you, right? You have to. You have to, you know, pack a big flashlight, look around, identify what the sound is. Okay. Is that a threat? Yes. Okay. We need to take appropriate action if it's not. It's just. Oh, that's just a little, you know, Bambi's running around in the woods, making noise, messing with you. Oh, okay. Well, that's not the problem. Okay, so what I'm trying to say is it. It's not about just doubling your prices, doubling. Just don't do panic. Things. Understand where you stand right now and then make calculated decisions. This means like correcting your course. Because if your costs went up 10 to 15% and your prices didn't move, you already know what needs to happen. And even small adjustments matter. You know, a few dollars per application or a properly enforced minimum. Like, let's just say I, I need to start. You know, maybe our minimum was $50 just to show up. Well now after some deeper investigation, we need to raise that minimum to $53. It doesn't sound like a lot. You're like $53. Well, it's $3. That wasn't too much. But you know, it's those tiny things that you need to understand for any of your add ons, you gotta make sure you're charging correctly for these things. And all these little, all these little cents add up to dollars, okay? And that adds up fast. And you need to stop giving away your work for free. And I know this one stings a little because a lot of you are doing extra without charging for it. You know, maybe you're putting down a little bit more product than needed or you're spending extra time on the site. Maybe you're, you know, running something completely unrelated. You're just doing it as a, a courtesy for your clients. Maybe you're taking in their garbage cans from the street to the garage. Doesn't seem like a big thing. But when you do that for everybody that's on that route that day, you know, those, hey, it's just, it's like an extra 45 seconds for me to go do this over the course of a day. That adds up to minutes. Those minutes might add up to an hour. That's an hour less of production time that you're able to do work that actually makes money. You know, I know you're trying to take care of the customer, but you're not taking care of the business. And I understand that these are both. It's like a catch 22. You know, if you, if you start neglecting one thing, then the other thing, it impacts the other. I get it. But honestly, if the business has to come first if you want to keep serving people long term, you know, it's just like, you know, you're going down an airplane, you're supposed to take the oxygen oxygen mask and put it on yourself first before you tend to your wife and kids, because you might do that for them and maybe get halfway through and you're fumbling around to get it on your wife's face and then you pass out. Because you don't have oxygen. And then maybe you didn't do it right. She's knocked out too, right now. Instead of saving your family, now you just jeopardize your family. You, you get where I'm going with this? You have to take care of you and your business so that you could keep people, you could keep serving people long term. And again, I've kind of been beaten on this a lot lately. But, you know, you want to try to increase your revenue without adding extra stops. And this is where it could actually get fun because you don't always need more customers. You need more value per stop. You know, you could bundle services together. You're already there. Maximize the opportunity. And this is one of the fastest ways to recover margin without blowing up your schedule. You know, yeah, maybe you might allocate more, a little bit more time for these little add on things, but at the same time, you know, you're being compensated for the add ons. You know, it's not like a separate trip where you gotta run a whole nother route going to the same customers. You know, that takes a lot of time up. Trust me. So here's what I want you to do right now. Not tomorrow, not next week. I want you to do it right now. Look at one service you offer. Just one. Ask yourself, did my costs go up? Am I charging enough? Am I actually making money doing this? And if the answer makes you feel uncomfortable, well, that's your signal. You need to make an adjustment. Even a small correction today is better than a full season of regret later. And if you're sitting there thinking, I don't even know where to start with my numbers, that's exactly why I created things like budgets, break evens and bottom lines. And you know, I talk about these things at the profit accelerator live event and, you know, for my private coaching group, you know, we. This is what we do in the Genesis group. But you don't have to figure this out alone, but you do have to take action. So at the end of the day, your business is not a charity. You're not here to absorb rising costs for your customers. You're here to run a profitable operation that supports your family, your future and your goals. And the sooner you start acting like that, the sooner your business starts working for you instead of the other way around. So I appreciate you guys for listening. And if this episode hits home, share it with somebody who needs to hear it. And as always, 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 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.