Ep 93. Why Charging More Didn't Hurt My Business | Thomas Vanamerongen

Summary

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The Cost of Doing Business – Ep 93: "Why Charging More Didn't Hurt My Business"

Host: Weston Zimmerman
Guest: Thomas Vanamerongen, Niagara Waterscapes
Date: February 2, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the journey of Thomas Vanamerongen, owner of Niagara Waterscapes, as he shifted his pricing strategy and learned the value of accurate job costing and overhead recovery. Weston Zimmerman leads a candid conversation on overcoming “head trash” around charging what your work is worth, utilizing business software tools, and leveraging maintenance and marketing to build a resilient landscape business. It’s an honest look at financial realities, client psychology, and how small companies can thrive by focusing on their numbers and branding.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Business Background & Niche Focus

• Thomas describes his company as a small, owner-operated team: himself, his brother, his wife managing paperwork, and a summer student (01:02).
• Niagara Waterscapes specializes almost exclusively in water features—ponds, waterfalls, and associated natural stone work.
• “We come out because of the water.” — Thomas (01:47)
• Typical project sweet spot: $40k–60k, occasionally higher.

2. Getting Started & SynkedUP Adoption

• Thomas’s transition from working in another CAC-certified aquascape contractor business, to starting on his own in 2022.
• Early exposure to SynkedUP software; switched due to its construction-friendly features over prior maintenance-focused software (03:22).
  • “We weren’t super happy with the previous program… we were doing a lot of construction. That’s why we originally jumped to SynkedUP.” — Thomas (03:32)

3. The Wake-Up Call: True Cost of Doing Business

• Initial pricing strategy: Used Excel, calculated $65/man hour.
• After using SynkedUP’s budgeting tool: “You guys pushed out a number of $90 an hour to me and I was like… oh. Basically. So it was a bit of a wake-up call.” — Thomas (04:20)
• SynkedUP helped illuminate hidden costs:
  • “Recovering your truck, for instance… I have my truck, I bought it. It’s paid for. You don’t think of that.” — Thomas (05:01)
• Thomas adjusted pricing over time: $65 → $90 → $110 per hour.
  • “There was stuff that was hidden to me just because I was brand new.” — Thomas (04:30)

4. Mindset Changes Around Pricing

• Host Weston notes many contractors fear raising rates will lose them business.
  • “The immediate next sentence is: I’ll never be able to get it. I won’t be able to sell any work.” — Weston (05:48)
• Thomas reframed charging as a necessity for business survival:
  • “It’s a mindset thing too… That’s what we cost, and that’s just the reality of it. If I can’t charge that much I can’t run my business.” — Thomas (06:18)
• Dealing with inflation and personal doubts as costs rise rapidly:
  • “That was probably my biggest hurdle… Equating your value of the dollar with the customer’s value of the dollar.” — Thomas (08:04)

5. Marketing, Client Education & Value Propositions

• Importance of showing value: “Our biggest challenge is showing the value of what we bring to our clients. Not necessarily that people don’t see it, but it’s getting our stuff in front of their eyes.” — Thomas (10:29)
• Weston shares Tussie Landscaping’s public water feature displays as an effective marketing tactic:
  • “The clarity of like, here’s what it is, this is what it costs, that was the best thing we ever did to drive demand.” — Weston (11:22)
  • Downsides: up-front display/maintenance costs, but strong long-term ROI.

6. Overcoming “Head Trash” & Sales Challenges

• Dangers of underquoting and the importance of giving broad price ranges:
  • “A lot of times I would lowball myself… and then I would leave the meeting, and a $60–80k project ends up being $100–120k. That’s a really hard conversation to have.” — Thomas (14:00)
  • “It’s easier to go down than it is to go up… Just make the range really wide.” — Weston (14:47–15:01)
• The ballpark pricing conversation as both client education and a way to avoid time-wasting mismatches.

7. Best Advice & Business Realities

• “Nobody knows what they’re doing. You think you look at somebody, you see they’re really successful. But they started where you were at one point. It’s really just about trying stuff and figuring it out.” — Thomas (17:04)
  • Both agree social media amplifies imposter syndrome; in reality, every business stumbles behind the scenes.

8. Maintenance as Recurring Revenue

• If starting over: “I would probably try push more maintenance because it’s recurring revenue.” — Thomas (19:00)
• Maintenance provides steady cash flow, ongoing client relationships, and leads to future projects.
• Weston shares strategies:
  • Sell maintenance as a subscription—divide annual package by 12, offer high-value bonuses like extended warranties.
  • “We were getting paid to market to your customer in a way.” — Weston (19:52–22:15)
  • “Today, that’s 15% of Tussie’s business.” — Weston (23:39)

9. Marketing & Finding What Works

• Thomas experiments with magazine ads, Google, organic/paid social media; finds word-of-mouth and Google Ads most effective (24:22–25:14).
• Weston’s advice: Focus on dominating one channel, especially Google My Business reviews/profile:
  • “The best thing you can do for that is reviews, recency, and activity. Treat it like Instagram. Post on it every day.” — Weston (25:56–26:03)

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Memorable Quotes & Insights

• On Pricing Mindset:

  • “If you want to adjust things, then you’re going to have to take things out of your budget.” — Thomas (06:07)
  • “Let the market tell you no. Don’t say no for them.” — Weston (09:31)

• On Showing Value:

  • “If price was the only thing, Porsche or Ferrari would never sell a car.” — Weston (10:09)

• On Imposter Syndrome:

  • “Everybody’s been there… The guy that’s got his $2 million business over there, he’s not a super genius. He was just like you one day.” — Thomas (17:39)

• On Maintenance Revenue:

  • “There’s something to be said for that recurring revenue. It eases out the cash flow in the winter and just market to those clients.” — Weston (23:40–24:06)

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Notable Segments & Timestamps

• Business structure & starting story: 01:02–02:46
• First encounter with job costing software: 04:00–05:23
• Pricing mindset shift & sales fears: 05:48–06:30
• Client psychology, inflation & value: 08:04–10:31
• Advice on marketing through public water feature displays: 10:46–13:28
• Sales process tips (wide price ranges, client education): 14:47–16:29
• Most difficult business challenge: 13:43–14:47
• Best advice received: 17:04–17:45
• Recurring revenue & maintenance: 19:00–23:39
• Marketing tactics & Google My Business: 24:06–26:11

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Where to Find Niagara Waterscapes

• niagarawaterscapes.com
• Instagram: @niagarawaterscapes
• Facebook & YouTube: Niagara Waterscapes

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Summary by The Cost of Doing Business Podcast | Ep 93: "Why Charging More Didn't Hurt My Business"

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Cost of Doing Business podcasts. Things on Instagram are pretty shiny, but here we're going to get to the reality behind the scenes on the hard journey of growing a business so we can all learn from each other. I'm your host, Weston Zurman, co founder of Synced Up. Been in the green industry my whole life. Let's get into it. Welcome back to another episode of the Cost of Doing Business podcast. I'm here at Landscape Ontario 2026. This is basically the kickoff of our trade show season. At Synced Up. I'm here is Thomas, who's been on Synced up since 2022, signed on. Yeah, basically back before we were I guess proven, you could say. So. Thank you very much.

[B]

No problem.

[A]

And excited to interview you in the podcast here. Get to know more about your business, your story and all that. So yeah, maybe to kick things off, give us a bit of an overview of like your business in terms of like how many people you have, what your average job looks like. Get started that way.

[B]

Yeah. So it's mostly. So I'm an owner, operator. I have my younger brother who works for me and then my wife does a lot of paperwork and then we have a summer student. So we're like two and a half, three people.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Let's say. Yeah. So a lot of our, our spring starts with our spring cleanouts for all our water features and stuff. So that's about two months and then we get right into construction. Construction, we're probably like 40 to 60 thousand dollar price jobs is kind of our sweet spot. It's always nice to get a big one in there.

[A]

Do you do 100 water features or do you do other things as well?

[B]

Say 91. Really? We'll do like a patio or something beside it, but it's going to be natural stone.

[A]

Always a water feature somewhere.

[B]

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We'll do plantings around it.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But it's always we come out because of the water.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And that's what you're branded for, known for all that.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

How did you get started? Like how long ago did you get started? How did you get into the water features?

[B]

Yeah, so I worked for another company and they did a lot of spring cleanouts because they were CAC certified aquascape contractors back in the day. So we did a lot of that kind of stuff. And then a customer had hired us to do a little pondless waterfall. So we were playing around with natural stone and stuff and I kind of fell in love with it through that. And then we also did like Armorstone walls. Natural Armorstone walls. And I just really enjoyed working with Armor Stone. So with my previous company, I kind of headed up starting in the water feature direction. And then in 2022 I decided to go on my own and just start doing solely water features. So. Yeah, and it's been great ever since. So even with that company, we had started using synced up, I think just before I left. Oh, really? Yeah. So I started on my own. I was like, I think we'll just keep this going. And then that's amazing.

[A]

So were you doing sales in that company or what was your involvement with Syncdup?

[B]

So I was just kind of starting out in sales and then so me and my. I was actually buying into that company with a business partner. It didn't quite work out the way we planned, so. But it was. I was in a leadership position in that company. We weren't a big company or anything. But yeah, so I was doing a bit of sales kind of. We talked about a lot of things. And so through that process we used a different company. And I saw you, I followed you through all your, your water feature builds and stuff.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And I knew a little bit of your background, so I was like, I trust this guy. He seems pretty legit. So we looked into that and we weren't super happy with the previous program. It seemed more geared towards maintenance, like lawn maintenance and stuff. And we were doing a lot of construction. So that's why we originally jumped to sync it up. And then it's been. Been great.

[A]

Okay. So yeah, so I was going to ask you, but you kind of had an experience with sync up in another company and in your own. So it's kind of a mixed bag question. But what I was going to ask you is what has been the best thing for you and your business about Synced up. Yeah. What has made it worth it?

[B]

So a little story. When I actually, when I first started my company, for the first six months I didn't have any, any sync or software or anything like that. I had run my budget and everything through Excel Sheet we had run. I thought I got all my overhead in there and everything else. And then I came out with a price of 65 bucks an hour. Man hour. It's like, oh, startup company seems pretty good. And then I had contacted you guys the following winter and we did a demo and then you guys pushed out a number of 90 bucks an hour to me and I was like, oh, basically. So it was a bit of a wake up call and yeah. Since then, it's gone up another 20 bucks an hour. Now we're doing 110 an hour. So it's just like a lot of things that were hidden to me just because I was brand new starting up. I didn't think about it. So in that original intro call, there was a lot of, like, stuff like recovering your truck, for instance. It's like, oh, I have my truck. I bought it. It's paid for.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

You don't think of that when it's

[A]

not going out in a monthly payment or something. You don't think about it.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

So that was. Yeah, that was probably the biggest thing was the budgeting tool was just putting all that stuff in there. And then walking through that with. I think it was Chris at the time and just putting all that stuff in there and realizing that these things are actually coming out of your account or you're going to have to pay for them in the future. So you better be recovering that money.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because. Yeah, I went into water creatures, not because I wanted to do the business part of it. I want to build. So I'm not like a per se.

[A]

A business story of those contractors. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And to like, be able to hire somebody else that's good at it and I don't have to worry about it. I know.

[A]

Peace of mind.

[B]

Peace of mind that when I'm charging at a price or whatever, it's going to be what it's.

[A]

So it sounds like this isn't really a big thing in your mind, but something that I often encounter when this. When contractors have this experience of like, I was charging 65, I did my budget, now I figure out I have to charge 90. The immediate next sentence is like, I'll never charge. I'll never be able to get it. I won't be able to sell any work. How did you react to that? Or how did you process that?

[B]

So it was kind of nice because I did it over the winter, so I had a bit of a time to think about it a little bit, I guess. And before that, I'd probably sold like maybe five jobs. So, like, coming into the new year, for me, it's a bit of a mindset thing too. Maybe not even so much back then, but now it's. It's just kind of a mindset, like, that's what we cost, and that's just the reality of it. And, like, if I can't charge that much, I can't run my business. Right. So, like, it's definitely. If you're going into a sales call and you're thinking, oh, are they going to like my hourly rate or do I charge too much? You're probably not going to sell that job. So if like that's the peace of mind thing too, like that you said, you know, that's what things cost. And like if you want to adjust things then you're going to have to take things out of your budget. Yeah, right.

[A]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

That's the reality of. Yeah.

[A]

If it's too high, well, you're paying too many bills.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Cut some.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Or get more work done or production done without increasing any of your costs.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Because, because really another way of saying that is it's an efficiency problem.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You have too much overhead or bloat for how much work you're actually producing. And it could be an efficiency in the field thing or it could be an efficiency in the fact that you just like to buy stuff. Exactly. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. Like something that's nice is you can actually just go into your budgeting tool and you can see that stuff. Right. It's all laid out.

[A]

It's all.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It makes, it makes you deal with it in black and white. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me ask you a little bit of a different question. What is something that you can think of in your business journey that at the time when you first heard about it, you like resisted it. It was like, oh my goodness, it's not worth it. But in the end when you finally bit the bullet and did it, it was like, oh my. Like I am so glad I did it. I didn't know what I didn't know.

[B]

Yeah, I don't know exactly. Like I think going into business like right now I'm more hesitant to. I feel like before it was like ignorance is bliss. I didn't know a lot of stuff. So it's just like this is what everything costs and here it is. And, and now like I'm more second guessing my, my like buying of new material and stuff and new trailers and whatnot. So I feel like again it goes back to that mindset, like I gotta kind of switch my mindset again where have a bit more confidence into what I'm. What basically what things cost and stuff too. So I guess to answer your question, more would be the amount things have raised or got higher in pricing the last couple of years. And that's made me a bit hesitant on maybe my hourly rate. Just when I'm looking at a price for let's say a 11 by 16 pond before it was $5,000 cheaper to do that, and now it's $5,000 more. And just to wrap my head around that and not have, like to have that brain trash where you're looking at it from, you're equating your value of the dollar with the customer's value of the dollar. That was probably like my biggest hurdle. Just the way things have gone up in the last two or three years, everything's cost more. Yeah. And, yeah. So, yeah, it's.

[A]

It's. Let the market tell you no. Don't say no for them. Yeah. You know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And usually if the market says no, well, there's solutions that are available. Like, we can adjust the scope of work. Yeah, we can. You know, there's many tools at your disposal.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But, yeah, it's. It is a challenge. Like, we kind of get us comfortable with, like, oh, yeah, pawns this, you know, and then when it's more than that, it's like, oh, yeah, I kind of got used to that.

[B]

Spend that on the pond. Yeah.

[A]

Would I do that? No. Well, like. But it is. I'm sure you've heard me say this before, but, like, if, if price was the only thing within, Porsche or Lambo or Ferrari would never sell a car. Yeah, right.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

Why do they sell cars? It's because people value what those are.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so you might, in your world with water features, you might. You're gonna have a market of people that they don't care if that same pond is double what it was five years ago. They're gonna buy it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because they want it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it comes. And then the next person, the neighbor down the street's gonna be like, you're nuts. I'm gonna go buy a new boat or whatever.

[B]

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And that's one of our biggest challenges, is showing the value of what we bring to our clients and stuff too. Like, not necessarily that people don't see it, but it's getting our stuff in front of their eyes. Right. Especially with water features. Like, people need to see them.

[A]

Yeah. They need to see them, feel it.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

So I agree. Tassi Landscaping the way we kind of did that, because we're in a rural market, like, there was no demand really for water features, but what we did was every year we would go to a public place with a lot of traffic from our kind of target clientele.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And we went to the granite countertop place. We went to a farmer's market out of a high end development. Like, we went to a restaurant and we Would build in person, like physical displays, like water feature displays. Put signage on and put pricing. We would install things that came out of kits.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So we could put pricing on.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

And that clarity of like, here's what it is, this is what it costs. There's a brochure, there's a phone number or whatever. Like that was the best thing we ever did to drive demand for water. Be.

[B]

Do you still find that's the case? Yes. Yeah.

[A]

Yep, yep. Now it's evergreen Mar. It's, it's, it's expensive to do. Yeah. Meaning like you're putting out dollars to put a display in the ground. Then you want it to look good so you're maintaining it. So there's a lot of overhead to that. But I mean those, those, you know, thirty thousand dollar displays have turned into many million dollars. Right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we've done. In the past, we've done a little display with actually the previous company. We took it over and the biggest challenge for us was the maintenance.

[A]

Yeah. You have to have somebody.

[B]

Yeah. Because we're always, we're relatively small companies. So it's always like try to get this job done and you're on to the next one. And you're on to the next one. And to have. Yeah. Somebody just go out and take care of that. It's like in the back of your mind, you forget about it or whatever. Right. So it's. Yeah, definitely. I want to get something I want to do yet and we have a spot. We can actually do it. But it's just a matter of.

[A]

Yeah. You know, we did that for years at Tussie. Like, we just took a big chunk of a marketing budget and just like, where, where are we going to put the display this year?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then we had enough guys. So like we would like just put them. Add them to the maintenance list.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

They would hit them right along with the paying customers. You know, at this point there's probably, I don't know, it's been a minute since I counted, but I bet you there's over a dozen. Nice. Not just a little bubbling rock, like nice in person. Physical displays.

[B]

You guys would do the hardscapes and everything.

[A]

Yeah, well, yeah. If they're like. And sometimes what would happen is they would call us in and do a project and then we'd be like, hey, you know, sometimes they would cover the material, sometimes we would cover everything. Sometimes they would pay us and then just let us put a sign up. Yeah, yeah. So it was a case by case.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

But definitely was an effect. Yeah, but, yeah, that is, man. Now. Now the. The. The cost is spent, you know, the investment is made.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they're still generating leads.

[B]

Yeah. You know, as long as you can keep the maintenance up.

[A]

Yeah, that's right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So don't. Don't underestimate that. You know, the maintenance. Another question I like to ask on the podcast is, what was your most difficult challenge that you've overcome in your business?

[B]

That's a good question. They're giving me some prep time with this one. I'd say, like, going back to, like, head trash, like, just equating my dollar with the dollar of the customer. And, like, a good thing for me to do is to hop onto, like, even Tussie's website or like, other websites. Atlantis Water Gardens has pricing on their websites and seeing what they charge. And it's like, oh, okay, like, it makes sense what I'm charging to this client. Like, I can get. I can go to a client and get cited and like, be like, yeah, like, this is great, and whatever else. And then I would a lot of times lowball myself. So I'd leave the meeting and they're like, oh, what's this to cost? Be like, oh, you know, 60 to 80. And it ends up being like, 100. $120,000 project. It's like, that's a really hard conversation to have when you come back and you're 50% more than what you said. So that's still something I'm. I'm working on a little bit, but I've definitely got a lot better at it. Whereas go higher and then you can always dial back.

[A]

Easier to go down than is go up.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Or meeting another thing you can do, which we did this at the Tussie Project Planner. Like, the pricing, the shop is like, just make the range really wide.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So Instead of saying 60 to 80, say 60 to 120.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. You know, and they'll be like, okay, what depends. What do you scope of?

[B]

You know, Exactly. Yeah. So it's a great point.

[A]

So, yeah, you can very easily, if you just go really wide and start the bottom one at the number that you kind of want to be at, or you think they might go for.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then do the top one.

[B]

And, you know, and this is what, five grand?

[A]

If you really blew this up, this would be.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. But that was a very. That was a very effective way for us to do the ballparking conversation. Testing. Right. Was the just really wide Ranges, because. Yeah. It literally can vary that dramatically.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it's just a lot about pricing stuff up front too, and knowing your numbers. But yeah, like just run. Run like an 11 by 16 pond through. Synced up before you go out or whatever and just make sure that's. Yeah, exactly. Same way.

[A]

You need to educate the client. Yeah, educate yourself.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Because at the end of the day, sales really is just about educating the client and let them make the decision about what they want to do.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

And you know, that was one of the. That project planner made such a big difference on the Cassie website for the sales process because I guess a salesperson's English would have been. It got me a budget, but I would propose it was more about. Sure. You got the salesperson a budget to work with, but what it was more about was educating the client as to what things cost.

[B]

Yeah. And you pretty much made the sale already. If they're like.

[A]

Yeah. And it's just a matter of scope.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, okay, what do you. The details.

[B]

Yeah. You know, Exactly. And they know what things cost, then. Yeah. They're not going to come at you with a.

[A]

And it eliminates the whole like, oh, I saw this picture on Instagram. That's what I want. And I have a $20,000 budget. That's a ton of money to me. So surely it's.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

And it's like, oh, that's a quarter million dollar picture. Yeah.

[B]

The style is back.

[A]

It eliminated you wasting time on that and because you educated the client.

[B]

Yeah. So 100%.

[A]

What was the best advice you've ever been given?

[B]

Nobody knows what they're doing. People are just kind of, you know, you think, you look at somebody, you see they're really successful. But they've. They were started where you were at one point. Right. And they built it up and they know what they're doing now, but when they started out, they didn't really know what they're doing. Right. So it's. It's really just about trying stuff and, and figuring out. Right. Like, it's. We're all. We're all human.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, and we're not all like the guy that's got his $2 million business over there, he's not a super genius. He was just like you one day.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And so it's really. Just try it and send it, basically.

[A]

So what I'm hearing is don't cave into the temptation imposter syndrome. Yeah, I guess everybody's been there.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

[A]

Yeah. And especially in the Day and age of social media, it's very easy to believe that everybody's got it all put together and I'm the only one that doesn't. Yeah, right.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

Which isn't exactly true. No, it's not true at all.

[B]

No, exactly. Yeah, yeah. You visit people's job sites and there's a little bit of chaos here and there. Oh yeah, it looks similar to my job site.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. We're not.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I think you're bringing up a really good point because in the day and age of social media, I think that whole imposter syndrome thing or I'm the only one that deals with these challenges, why is everybody else ahead of me is bigger than it's ever been.

[B]

Yeah, for sure.

[A]

On the flip side, on the bright side, it's also lack of information is not. Or information is no longer the bottleneck. Yeah, like, like, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollar businesses are doing budgeting and overhead recovery in the way that only multi million dollar business could do 10, 15 years ago. Right. So that's tremendous. So there's, there's, there's upsides and downsides. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. If you could. So you, you had. It's interesting. Your story is interesting. Starting with another company and then go off new year, which is not an uncommon way to do it. But what I another question like to ask is if you go back to the first day of your business, what is one thing you do differently and why?

[B]

I would probably try push more maintenance because it's reoccurring revenue. So when I went into waterscapes and stuff, it was, it's a creative passion of mine. So I enjoy it, I love doing it and it's something I never want to leave either. But as I grow in business too, trying to do sales for construction, you're dealing with different clients every single year. Right. Every once in a while you get a repeat client, but for the most part you're one and done. Maybe in 10 years or something you're doing another project for them. So to have that reoccurring revenue every year is something that you maybe take for granted at first. But yeah, like once you start building it up, it makes a lot of sense. When you're building your budget at the beginning of year and you know that you're going to have $100,000 in maintenance to start off your year, it's like. Okay. Little bit of peace of mind.

[A]

Exactly. So yeah, yeah, it is, it is, it is. Especially in water features, I would say. It's also A great way to maintain a relationship with the customer. And like I know at Kasi in, in our experience, like you would maintain a customer's water feature that you didn't build for five, six, seven years and then they're like just one day. It's like, you know, maybe one day leaks and doesn't can't be fixed or they just want to see it nice. And so you win jobs. Basically you were getting paid to market to your customer in a way. But you have to make it profitable. It's got to be for maintenance to work. You have to have enough of it. Yes. You know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it is a different business model and you have to go in with eyes wide open. But yeah, it's great point. And another tip I'll give you about the whole maintenance thing is probably the best thing we ever did for selling maintenance at Hussey Landscaping was packaging everything that we did for a maintenance customer and just totaling it up the number, dividing it by 12, putting on subscription payments. Okay, yeah, couple reasons. One, we didn't have to go and chase and re earn that pond clean out water feature maintenance all shut down every year. It was on autopilot. It was a subscription. Right. Second, we kind of got to control like what was included in the maintenance, you know, a little bit like a la carte, you know. And we, the way we sold so many of them was we just hacked it with value. Like so what we did was not only do you get your spring clean out and your fall, your winter, your summertime maintenance and your fall shutdown, but you're also, you're put up, you're first on the list for spring cleanups. You get a, an an unlimited warranty on all your aquascape components in the pond. And the way we did that, we're just like, oh, pump average lifespan 5 years divided the cost, the full retail price divided by, by the 560 months. And we just baked it right into the cost of the contract. Right. But it sound, it's really easy to sell. Oh, I never have to worry about it. I'm never going to get $1,000 bill to replace a pump. Yeah, it was really easy to sell. So two things it did is we sold a premium upcharge service and we didn't have to do all the admin work of re earning that contract all

[B]

over again every year, every single spring year, setting up these contracts and hoping for the best.

[A]

Now there's pros and cons with every system. So the con is you have to stay on top of Your job costing and make sure that because it's on subscription, like next year's gonna be the same price. Same price unless you communicate and change, you know, so you gotta stay on top of that. But that's a whole lot easier.

[B]

Yeah. So the spring cleanouts, you wouldn't do that, Just the package.

[A]

Yeah. Well, even spring cleanouts, I mean, we still clock time in and try because like sometimes you might be like, well, we're pricing you in this bracket of a six hour clean out. But it actually was a ten. Like so we got to change it.

[B]

Yeah. But so far. But like the subscription payments were not. Would you do that as spring cleanouts as well?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We would track the. Well, we. So in the package that we sold them, we estimated the time it would take for the cleanout. Yeah. We estimate the time it takes for the maintenance and then we track that. And if it's, if it's off by too much, like, we'll bump them up a bracket. Because what we did is we basically created the pricing matrix. Like a table. Yeah. And we're like, you know, if you're a 16 by 21, you're in this bracket.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If you're alone by 16, you're in this bracket.

[B]

Yeah. So I did that this past year. It was basically half, half day, quarter day, half day, three quarter day.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

So I could fit other ones then.

[A]

It makes it much easier to sell too, because you're just selling it off of a menu, basically. Or you can even put that on your website.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[A]

So, yeah, so that, that was into the, like, it was a slow burn. But today, I mean, that's 15% of Tesla's business.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that's a lot.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's a rural area.

[B]

You know, it's always impressive.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In the middle of nowhere.

[A]

Yeah. In the middle of nowhere. Podunkville, Pennsylvania. But yeah, it's. There's something to be said for that reoccurring revenue. It eases out the cash flow in the winter and just market to those. To market to those clients. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Marketing is something that I'm still trying to figure out too. It's like where to allocate the advertisement funds. Like we do a bunch of different stuff right now and it's like, am I spending too much? You know, it's always a.

[A]

How many different things are you doing now?

[B]

Doing magazine Google Ads and social media

[A]

and paid social media.

[B]

Social media. I hired somebody to do all my social media stuff. So we take the content. I Send it to her. She.

[A]

So the social media that they're posting, is it organic or paid ads?

[B]

We do a little bit of paid ads for Facebook. So, yeah, I guess that's. I'm throwing that all in my advertising

[A]

budget because I get what you're saying. Yeah. So out of those couple, is there one that performed way better or even marginally better?

[B]

Not necessarily. Like, a lot of our stuff still comes through word of mouth. So the thing I use social media for is I push people there and they can see my work.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then, yeah, like, Google Ads is. I think Google Ads has done pretty good for me. So, yeah, I'd say probably Google Ads has worked the best. Yeah.

[A]

Because what I was. The reason I was asking that is I was fishing for, like, basically what I wanted to say was how the best thing you can do with limited resources is focus on one thing and just dominate it.

[B]

Right.

[A]

As opposed to trying to do six things, kind of partially average, same ideas,

[B]

doing water features in the landscape industry.

[A]

Right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Just dominate in that niche. And another tip I would say probably is a more overlooked one in contractors is like, don't underestimate the power of your Google Maps listing. Like your Google My business listing. Like where your Google reviews are there. Because that Google, if you can optimize that Google listing profile, Google will show that on top of the top website.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And the best thing you can do for that is reviews recency and activity engagement. Meaning treat it like Instagram. Post on it every day.

[B]

Okay. Like even like just posting pictures and stuff.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. And make sure that every little option on there on your profile is filled out.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

You know, and it matches. If you have conflicting information, like one phone number on your website, another phone number in Google Maps, that's bad news, right?

[B]

You know? Yeah, yeah, for sure. I've heard of the Google reviews one recently. Quite a lot.

[A]

Get Google reviews from the person that comes and brings your mail. Like, it's just like literally get Google reviews.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

For sure.

[B]

Want to give me a review?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I'll give you one. Yeah, we'll do. We'll go for dinner and we'll do that while we wait for.

[B]

Sounds good.

[A]

I love it. Well, thanks, man.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Appreciate taking the time to sit down here and do the podcast. Where can people find you find your social media, that kind of thing.

[B]

Yeah. Niagara waterscapes. So Niagara waterscapes.com on Google, I guess. And then Instagram, we're quite active on Instagram and Facebook. And then we have also have a YouTube channel.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Which is Niagara Waterscapes as well.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So. Okay.

[A]

Yeah. Well, thank you for your faith and trust partnering with us and we look forward to. Yeah. Being a partner and continuing to, you know, provide that support and that sounding board and that just as you grow and scale like we're there to make sure it's all being profitable and you know where your money is.

[B]

Thanks for, you know, being there when we need you.

[A]

Yeah, you're welcome. Hey, thanks for listening to the Cost of Doing Business show. If you need help with knowing your numbers or you're looking for a better automated system to run estimating and scheduling and job costing or more in your business, just hit me up. You can book a [e-mail] or DM me on Instagram ynkdup, which is spelled S Y N K E D U p. See you on the next one.