$1.4M Landscaping Business Hits ROCK BOTTOM

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Where's the money?
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We're really scratching our heads at this point.
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Like, why is it not coming in?
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Knowing that you can rely on that person, building confidence, and over time, it becomes more of a personal relationship.
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But he's just the least professional dude I've ever met.
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Today, we're in Washington, visiting Dylan with Urban Roots Landscaping.
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Right now, he's that very hybrid position.
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I'm working 10 to 15 hours a day.
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What's going on here?
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Now I'm interrupting the GM four times.
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And now the GM's annoyed that he's just jumping there and doing it himself.
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That's not happening.
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You say something like that, like that's what you're getting now.
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Congratulations.
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With a 7.5% profit margin in our main location, that's not something I'm super proud of.
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Now, if Dylan looks familiar, several years ago, we interviewed him when he hit $200,000 in annual revenue.
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You can't keep doing what you're doing from where you're currently at.
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You can't double in size.
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A couple of years ago, we met back up with Dylan when he was doing about $800,000 in annual revenue.
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This last year and a half or so off in terms of the family dynamic.
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I think even if you looked at it like that, it's like, hey, if we just kept doing what we're doing, we're gonna get to a million.
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What kills me is when my daughter comes up to me and says, Daddy, why are you so busy?
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Now, today, doing $1.4 million in revenue.
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Offering to have you guys back is just because it's been so valuable, for sure.
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He hasn't solidified his general managers yet at his first two locations.
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He's going through a divorce.
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I am struggling, probably a little bit depressed.
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So I don't think it's a good time to be starting a third location.
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One of the number one reasons why Augusta Locations closed down is divorce.
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The problem is the trajectory of this business is really bad.
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I guess entrepreneurship for everybody.
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The clear answer is no.
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We got too much going on.
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We got too much to fix.
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This is the Business Turnaround Show.
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My name is Mike Andes.
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I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care and Homework Software.
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I travel the country fixing struggling businesses.
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These are all very small tweaks, very small.
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Somebody just comes in and is like, hey, here's this thing that's gonna solve a bunch of your problems that you had no clue existed.
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It's a relief.
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In order for that to work, it has to be clean.
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Our goal is to give Dylan a strategy to turn around the company in the next six weeks.
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Dylan Moyet, finishing his fifth year in business, currently operating two locations.
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Second location is in year two.
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He's exploring potential for a third location expansion.
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Good morning, guys.
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How's everybody feeling?
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Good, good.
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My name is Dylan Moy.
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I'm the owner of Urban Roots Landscaping.
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Grew this location to about a million in revenue.
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And now it's a big milestone for me to know that I've handed the reins off to Michael.
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We have enough systems in place to where Michael is able to pretty much handle this location on his own.
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Reminder, five o'clock.
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especially when we're running behind on the route like this this week.
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I know a lot of it's equipment related and that kind of thing, but keep working.
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If we can get one more house done and it pushes us a little bit past, that's totally fine.
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When we're behind, we don't wanna be leaving early if we're not completely finished, right?
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The second location last year did $320,000 in its first year.
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Awesome.
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Now our big learning curve is just, how do we start to grow, duplicate what we've done here?
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Not just duplicate it, but improve on it as well.
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But at the same time, work with someone overseas who's in a VA office position for us.
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I'm finding that every stage is challenging in its own way.
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This is the main location, which still did a million dollars in revenue, but...
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7% margin.
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And so that used to be over 20% when I was within like a year and a half or two years ago, that was over 20%.
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And I was kind of starting to do the math and I was like, yeah, I know what we're aiming for profit wise.
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And I was like, we, why did we fall so short to begin with?
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But again, with a seven and a half percent profit margin in our main location, that's not something I'm super proud of.
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That's a, that's a,
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dip, you know, and it just felt like we did all these other things to try to avoid that.
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We tried to make up for that admin bloat and it just, it didn't work.
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Yeah.
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It's tough when he's going through a divorce because you could be building this thing and then it's just going to get ripped to shreds in court.
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And that's like very much a possibility.
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Even the fact that his general manager is concerned about it shows that like it's affecting the business.
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So as you know, I'm going through a separation.
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So Federal Way Shop is operating out of my ex's house right now.
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The goal was to get Federal Way up to eight guys running kind of, but now it's kind of up in the air because we just don't know what's going on with the finances and how things are going to be impacted by Dylan's separation there.
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Yeah.
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That'll also affect my ability to grow the company at either a faster or slower rate.
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Unfortunately, the personal issues always become business issues, and that's I think what we're actually gonna face.
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So I'm definitely putting the brakes on third location.
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I can tell you right up front.
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Brakes hardcore.
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If your first location, when you start a second location, drops from, I think it was like 20% margin down to 7% margin because you're distracted with a second location, don't go start a third one.
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Fix the problems.
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Other notes today.
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When we have equipment issues, A, make sure that we report it.
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But if it's something that we can fix on the spot, please let us know.
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I know we've had that issue with T4.
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Josh, did you still need to get out for trailer training?
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Yeah, is there not a spare on this?
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Change the law, you got them crossed.
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That's right.
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You can't do much of it.
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I mean, you can.
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It's not gonna hit the ground.
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Yeah, it should be fine.
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Connect the spare before you guys leave, just in case.
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And then when you're driving, always keep the windows down just in case.
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You know, you wanna always be able to hear what's going on with the truck and trailer, so.
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But yeah, should be good to go.
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Just make sure you guys hook up that spare to the outside before you head out.
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Did Federal Way take both our spares?
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I think Federal Way took them because they were on the side of the building.
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All right, let me make sure everything's signed out properly.
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I never want to start another location until the first one is stabilized with a GM in place.
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And I think this is the part, the thing that he did is he jumped in this next location before that first GM was solidified.
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Cause when we were there, he was still in the daily operations all the time.
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It was nowhere close to being stabilized without him being there.
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Who is this now?
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Another truck coming back in.
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There's normally not this much activity in the morning.
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They've had to jump this truck like three or four times.
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This is the newest truck we've gotten.
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And when they got it, it wasn't ready for a trailer.
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It wasn't ready for certain things.
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And I've gotten it all ready.
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And then we'll come to find out.
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That piece that I chopped off that's now on the ground someplace was missing a part, so I had to go and replace it.
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Two hours between the lawnmower going out and them actually finishing for the day.
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Yeah, that is a day killer right there.
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Is this your first solo route or...?
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Yeah.
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Okay, cool, cool.
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One of the blowers yesterday, it won't let you control the throttle.
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It stays all the way up once you turn it on.
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Okay, so...
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What I want you to do with stuff like that, just do a quick little video, like a 30 second video, displaying what's wrong, send it to the broken equipment group.
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That way on shop work day, we can just go through and knock that kind of stuff out.
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So yeah, that's all good.
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I think we need to go a little bit over more of the, how the guys need to report to us shop time, because they're going to end up missing out on pay if they can.
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So, I mean, you can't rely on your memory the whole time to be reporting little repairs that they're doing.
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I'm going to guess he doesn't have a lot of debt because that's always how he's been very conserved financially.
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The problem is the trajectory of this business is really bad.
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You've gone from 20% margin down to 7% margin and you're not really growing.
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He's taken his eye off the ball with the second location, thinking about third location, and more importantly, the personal stuff.
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And so I just, I need to get through the personal stuff and maintain the business.
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keep his general manager.
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I also would imagine that first GM dropped out in part because Dylan took his eye off the ball and stopped managing him well because of all the personal drama.
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So the personal drama always becomes business drama, unfortunately.
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and the party has arrived.
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How's it going, man?
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Good to see ya.
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Good to see ya, brother.
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This is the shop.
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You moved that, it used to be this way.
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Yeah, we just had to reorganize a little bit, make some more space.
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Okay, first off, do we know when the divorce is gonna be done?
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So tentatively the end of the year.
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Yeah.
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Because that's kind of the cloud over our head in a way, right?
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Yes, exactly.
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The goal would just be I'm, she's off the business.
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I mean, I do all the operations and she has the house she's in.
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I'm in the rental that I've moved into now.
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So we're hoping for a relatively clean split that way.
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And when we kind of balance everything out between the equity on the houses, it just kind of comes out to where I'd need to slide her more money to her.
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So...
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The dust hasn't settled in terms of division of assets, things like that.
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So we'll see how that plays out in the future.
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As long as we make this clean as possible, that's probably the best thing to optimize for this year.
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Yeah.
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Like as much of it, like 30 location and like GM stuff, it's like we just need to make sure that that doesn't become like a huge problem for the business.
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Yeah.
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And as long as that just can be clean and that's one part.
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And then the whole other aspect of just trying to focus on the business while you're going through all that is like a whole other department.
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I'm just trying to prevent the worst case, which is that comes two years, gets messy, and then there's equity stuff and valuation.
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You don't want to go there.
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So as clean as we can possibly make that, the better.
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But I know it's tough.
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I was struggling, probably a little bit depressed, but at the same time, you just become stronger from it.
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So it's kind of like if we have to slow down growth for a year or two, it is what it is.
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I'll build back up.
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From your perspective right now, why did this location go from 25% profit to seven?
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I don't know, maybe part inflation.
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I know we're a bit bloated with admin overhead, I think, because to be honest, there's kind of like a little bit of writing on the wall with performance with our old GM.
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It sounds though, and this is what I think the pressure, I think on you is, you're probably gonna lose Charlie if he doesn't have more on him.
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Charlie ultimately ended up leaving late August or early September.
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potentially looking to start my own location.
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That's kind of what I was doing before I even came here, just doing my own jobs and everything.
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But I don't know what the future holds for us.
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So hopefully Dylan can grow more of the company and see if there's more opportunity for me to grow here.
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So it's not just completing the jobs, but like taking care of all the equipment, the trucks and everything, because that's kind of where all the money starts to leak out of the bucket, right?
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It's like when you start losing some hand tools and a bunch of little things like that.
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Charlie left and I think the last quarter ended up being a lot more profitable than it should have been because of that.
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So I was kind of like trying to plan ahead.
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I'm like, all right, so how can I get Michael to slide into GM positions?
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So we got someone from the Philippines, the VA, to hopefully take as much off of his plate as possible so he can slide into sales and estimates and everything.
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So, but there's overlap.
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We had AJ, which is a guy from the Philippines, Charlie, myself, and Michael, all as admin.
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It's very tempting to take admin and start delegating it to people on the other side of the country, other side of the world, or to AI, and forgetting that there's other costs associated with admin if you start delegating it too soon.
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I was doing a lot of all the roles.
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GM salary, office manager salary, plus a VA for a quarter of the year, essentially.
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It's a big chunk of money.
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If you don't have systems in place, if you don't have the right software, if you don't have the right training and processes, when you delegate it to a VA in the Philippines, you don't have systems in place, it's going to mean you just rechecking their work every single day.
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And now you end up just checking their work instead of doing the work yourself.
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So be very careful about taking low-cost opportunities to cut down expenses when it comes to admin.
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I would rather actually spend more on my admin and prevent me from having to micromanage them or double-check online.
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all their work.
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Got it.
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So it was like you, office manager, AJ also kind of doing office related things.
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It was more like AJ wasn't really having much of an impact at that point.
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We were just training, getting him in the emails.
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I mean, it was a few months of just like, you know, when you hire someone new, it's, I don't want to say it's a burden, but it's the training burden is there.
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The biggest challenge I think with it is that he had no industry experience.
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When he got here, he had never known anything about seeds, sod, grass, ordering material.
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Just, he's learning a totally new industry.
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When I took over the office, it was like I trained all winter to take over the office.
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AJ very much was like, trained on the job.
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The bigger story there is like, us learning how to train someone overseas, not so much of like AJ's ability to do the job.
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So now what's the structure look like?
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So do we still have the two locations?
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Yep, so the other location is based out of my ex's house right now, so the two-car garage over there.
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So since last time I talked to Mike, we did start the second location, and I was trying to keep expenses low for the second location, and that's why I was running it out of our house over there, just a little two-car garage we have.
219
00:12:46.743 --> 00:12:52.967
So we just finished our first year for Federal Way location, and we're now in our sixth year for this Tacoma location.
220
00:12:53.087 --> 00:12:55.908
We have five guys in the field we're booking for right now.
221
00:12:55.948 --> 00:12:59.929
Last year I think we're between three to four guys, so we're slowly growing over there.
222
00:12:59.989 --> 00:13:04.911
By winter time I definitely want to be out of that spot, closer up north, more towards Federal Way.
223
00:13:05.191 --> 00:13:07.852
And so are you the GM at this one location or both or both?
224
00:13:07.872 --> 00:13:10.012
Yes, so I GM here.
225
00:13:10.232 --> 00:13:16.574
I also do a lot of the office stuff for the second location, so I'm getting my hands in a little bit of everything.
226
00:13:16.794 --> 00:13:18.375
Is there a GM there right now or not?
227
00:13:18.635 --> 00:13:21.497
I'm the GM for the other location, so I'm doing all the sales.
228
00:13:21.577 --> 00:13:24.879
So Michael and I kind of tag-teamed this location a little bit.
229
00:13:25.419 --> 00:13:31.983
I would describe my role as more of what a true GM looks like because I have delegated P4P time cards.
230
00:13:32.003 --> 00:13:33.784
I'm glad to never do those again, hopefully.
231
00:13:34.805 --> 00:13:37.326
So he does the Federal Way and Tacoma time cards.
232
00:13:37.606 --> 00:13:44.050
And that was one of the conversations I wanted to have with you is like, some of the challenges we're having with what to delegate.
233
00:13:44.990 --> 00:13:48.712
P for P seems to be kind of the hardest because Michael can see all the moving parts.
234
00:13:49.232 --> 00:13:50.453
He knows all the crew members.
235
00:13:50.493 --> 00:13:53.974
He knows the nuances of like, they did shop work here and we got to do all that.
236
00:13:54.034 --> 00:13:59.197
So to me, that seems almost like an impossible task to delegate to someone overseas, right?
237
00:13:59.377 --> 00:14:01.719
been reluctant to delegate P4P.
238
00:14:01.739 --> 00:14:04.220
So Michael kind of takes on P4P for both locations.
239
00:14:04.421 --> 00:14:08.864
Michael's probably 30% office, 70% GM.
240
00:14:08.924 --> 00:14:14.748
I would love him to be more like a full GM and then get as much on the AJ's plate or another office person's plate.
241
00:14:14.908 --> 00:14:18.529
Now I know we're talking about like, hey, do we go into a third location?
242
00:14:18.730 --> 00:14:26.112
I kind of imagine that evolving to be, I want my general managers to not have to be super computer savvy and super office savvy.
243
00:14:26.132 --> 00:14:28.833
I want them to be able to sell and run a crew, right?
244
00:14:28.973 --> 00:14:31.675
But right now he's that very hybrid position.
245
00:14:31.815 --> 00:14:33.195
So he's really stretched right now.
246
00:14:33.275 --> 00:14:37.457
I'm doing essentially 95% of the old GM's job plus 30% of my old job.
247
00:14:40.598 --> 00:14:42.859
I'm doing 125% of a job.
248
00:14:43.419 --> 00:14:44.360
What's going on here?
249
00:14:44.500 --> 00:14:52.403
And he's doing a good job with it, but it's just like, not everyone's gonna have the four or whatever years of experience he has under his belt, seeing the systems.
250
00:14:52.443 --> 00:14:55.904
He's kind of like very efficient, more than most GMs could be, I think.
251
00:14:56.124 --> 00:14:58.605
Right now I'm working 10 to 15 hours a day.
252
00:14:58.866 --> 00:15:02.147
I'm in there about 30% of the office work still.
253
00:15:02.307 --> 00:15:03.288
And at first it made sense.
254
00:15:03.448 --> 00:15:06.650
Like, oh yeah, he doesn't know how to do that and I've been doing it for years.
255
00:15:07.411 --> 00:15:07.991
That's fine.
256
00:15:08.291 --> 00:15:12.754
And then we hit spring rush and I was like, this is way harder than I thought it was going to be.
257
00:15:12.794 --> 00:15:13.955
So where do you see the constraint?
258
00:15:13.975 --> 00:15:17.097
Like why is the business where it's at now and what do you want it to change?
259
00:15:17.157 --> 00:15:21.180
We did like 1.3, 1.4 last year between the two locations.
260
00:15:21.601 --> 00:15:26.124
This year, assuming this location stays at a million, that one's probably going to grow to 600,000.
261
00:15:26.604 --> 00:15:28.385
Potentially, maybe, 550.
262
00:15:28.586 --> 00:15:28.806
Right.
263
00:15:29.106 --> 00:15:31.948
And so what's the thing you're kind of trying to solve for right now?
264
00:15:32.148 --> 00:15:39.491
how to overcome our attrition rate on the route, how to get to that capacity that we're looking for and raise prices.
265
00:15:39.591 --> 00:15:42.632
And our close rate's sitting at roughly 35%.
266
00:15:42.692 --> 00:15:46.374
So like, and that was- Is that blended across everything?
267
00:15:46.394 --> 00:15:48.114
Yeah, I think blended across everything.
268
00:15:48.154 --> 00:15:50.735
It's pretty close between the maintenance and the one-time projects.
269
00:15:51.055 --> 00:15:55.897
How much of revenue right now is like one-off projects versus the recurring stuff?
270
00:15:56.217 --> 00:15:57.878
About 50-50 right now.
271
00:15:58.218 --> 00:16:06.179
That's one of the questions I had for you too, because like I know you talk a lot about getting to capacity, raising prices and kind of doing all that.
272
00:16:06.720 --> 00:16:08.040
And that's what we've wanted to do.
273
00:16:08.100 --> 00:16:13.281
And for us, our capacity, we wanted it to be at three maintenance trucks and then one project truck.
274
00:16:13.341 --> 00:16:16.721
To me, that's the sweet spot, like 75% maintenance recurring revenue.
275
00:16:16.841 --> 00:16:19.182
We just like stalled out on our maintenance clients.
276
00:16:19.282 --> 00:16:23.662
It's like we got to two trucks and our attrition rate is just like the churn.
277
00:16:23.682 --> 00:16:24.743
We can't keep up with it.
278
00:16:24.783 --> 00:16:26.103
So just staying at two trucks,
279
00:16:26.703 --> 00:16:27.864
And that was pretty much all last year.
280
00:16:27.884 --> 00:16:29.306
We're kind of tracking for that this year.
281
00:16:29.406 --> 00:16:34.471
So it's like we're reluctant to raise prices on maintenance clients because we haven't reached that three truck capacity.
282
00:16:34.551 --> 00:16:38.575
And it's like we don't want to lose a bunch of clients and then go down to like 1.75 trucks or something.
283
00:16:38.615 --> 00:16:44.200
So that's just my reluctance is to go too much into the profit mode before we build it out.
284
00:16:44.340 --> 00:16:45.021
As I see it.
285
00:16:45.341 --> 00:16:52.468
When I look at the business as a whole, there's the cloud that we need to get it through the year, which is like get through the divorce without tearing the business apart.
286
00:16:52.508 --> 00:16:57.653
The 4L framework shares the four reasons why every home service business stops growing.
287
00:16:57.794 --> 00:17:03.119
Either a lack of liquidity, cash in the bank, a lack of leads, a lack of labor, or a lack of leadership.
288
00:17:03.199 --> 00:17:07.701
Whether that's a check we got to write, if we need to go into some debt, I know you're extremely conservative financially.
289
00:17:07.721 --> 00:17:13.844
So like, I'd trust you 100% on that part if you had to take some debt on, but we just don't wanna mess everything up.
290
00:17:14.325 --> 00:17:17.566
And the hardest part is gonna be just honestly keeping your head in the game for the next 12 months.
291
00:17:18.067 --> 00:17:19.727
That's going to be the hardest part.
292
00:17:20.108 --> 00:17:28.712
And so I think as long as for us to know like, hey, there's gonna be weeks where you don't wanna be here and there's gonna be days you're like super fired up and it's just gonna be that way.
293
00:17:28.952 --> 00:17:32.336
one of the number one reasons why Augusta locations closed down is divorce.
294
00:17:32.877 --> 00:17:34.499
And it's not necessarily when it starts.
295
00:17:34.639 --> 00:17:37.423
It's the year of back and forth and ups and downs.
296
00:17:37.463 --> 00:17:38.724
And eventually it's like, oh, forget this.
297
00:17:38.985 --> 00:17:39.686
I'm out.
298
00:17:39.986 --> 00:17:41.608
And so I just want to prevent that at all costs.
299
00:17:41.828 --> 00:17:46.214
And so I would say if you run up against that wall, back up and just play defense.
300
00:17:46.594 --> 00:17:46.894
Okay.
301
00:17:47.114 --> 00:17:48.535
That is we don't need to keep growing.
302
00:17:48.575 --> 00:17:52.838
We don't need to get a 70% close rate back up for a minute and just get through this year.
303
00:17:52.898 --> 00:17:58.861
Even if we have a flat revenue year, I don't think it's a bad thing to take this year and just make sure that is optimized for instead of like, we're going to grow.
304
00:17:58.882 --> 00:18:02.364
Like, I'm not going to come in here and you're like, all right, second location to 800,000, like throw in the problem.
305
00:18:02.384 --> 00:18:02.964
We're not doing that.
306
00:18:03.284 --> 00:18:10.526
I was reviewing my notes from Mike's book, The Copy and Paste Millionaire, and he's kind of talking about the benchmarks before starting a new location.
307
00:18:10.566 --> 00:18:15.628
And one of them was like, hey, let's make sure your first location or your main location is solid and secure.
308
00:18:15.648 --> 00:18:23.710
And that's part of the reason why we reached out was because we only hit like seven point five percent profits last year for this location, which is kind of like the hub, right?
309
00:18:23.730 --> 00:18:27.051
It's like this should be the copy and paste for all the other locations.
310
00:18:27.111 --> 00:18:30.592
So I don't want to keep copying and pasting if it's not, you know, solid.
311
00:18:30.692 --> 00:18:39.945
Trying to open a third location when we're not as profitable as we want to be here just kind of makes me like, we're jumping the gun a little maybe?
312
00:18:40.025 --> 00:18:42.529
We got too much going on, we got too much to fix.
313
00:18:42.849 --> 00:18:45.172
You can't copy and paste something that isn't working.
314
00:18:45.653 --> 00:19:08.665
the day dylan has his first location doing a million dollars in revenue if we can just optimize it and make it 20 25 profitable that's a great model that he can copy and paste and the principles that dylan has used over the past year to start a second location is everything we talk about in the copy and paste millionaire book if you'd like me to send a copy of the copy and paste millionaire book to you go down in the description and click the link from a profitability perspective we're fine
315
00:19:09.686 --> 00:19:11.247
It's not 911 status.
316
00:19:11.467 --> 00:19:13.329
We're not in the hole cash-wise.
317
00:19:14.050 --> 00:19:18.274
And so we just need to protect what we got this year and then think about expansion next year.
318
00:19:18.314 --> 00:19:20.076
I think there's a lot of ways to optimize things, though.
319
00:19:20.256 --> 00:19:29.405
And so when I look at the admin side, the first thing I'm thinking about is the reason it's hard to go into profit mode is because you only have 50% of revenue that's recurring.
320
00:19:29.485 --> 00:19:30.786
There's not really a problem with liquidity.
321
00:19:31.246 --> 00:19:33.548
And until that divorce is cleaned up, I can't say that for sure.
322
00:19:33.829 --> 00:19:35.290
But right now, there's not a problem.
323
00:19:35.450 --> 00:19:42.416
The biggest problem I see in urban roots landscaping is the fact that their leads are coming for a whole bunch of one-time projects.
324
00:19:42.796 --> 00:19:46.119
And they're booking out their spring rush with a bunch of one-time jobs.
325
00:19:46.439 --> 00:19:53.685
Instead of focusing on recurring revenue, they can build out their maintenance and be able to have a much more sustainable profit margin throughout the rest of the year.
326
00:19:53.905 --> 00:20:08.349
The big goals for me, I guess, as we continue to talk, is like how to redefine the roles between Michael and AJ, get as much onto another office person's plate and off the GM plate, and just build out my maintenance route.
327
00:20:08.389 --> 00:20:16.351
Like for two years now, I've been like, man, if I can get like three maintenance trucks and raise prices, literally recurring revenue is everything.
328
00:20:16.371 --> 00:20:17.111
That's what I'm learning.
329
00:20:17.171 --> 00:20:22.673
It simplifies things, less in-person estimates, less moving parts, less dump trailers,
330
00:20:23.653 --> 00:20:30.340
My life is 100 times better if I can get that third truck, raise prices, and then go to profit mode, but we have just stalled out.
331
00:20:30.380 --> 00:20:42.193
Yeah, like you always have churn, so what's happened is you have grown just organically from new leads coming in, and then you've hit this point of like, now new customers equates churning customers, and you go this plateau.
332
00:20:42.553 --> 00:20:42.753
Yeah.
333
00:20:42.954 --> 00:20:51.683
And so that's when sometimes like being able to gas on ads is helpful because the only way to do it is either increase the number of customers or decrease the amount of customers leaving.
334
00:20:51.864 --> 00:20:59.152
If there's customers leaving because of bad quality, then trickles down to the GM is spending time on admin tasks instead of operations.
335
00:20:59.452 --> 00:21:03.335
When we look at sales, operations, and admin, the lowest leverage task being admin.
336
00:21:03.495 --> 00:21:11.240
Michael's spending so much time doing those things and rechecking the work that his VA is doing on the admin side, he's failing on the operation side.
337
00:21:11.380 --> 00:21:19.765
When a GM starts spending so much time on admin, what actually ends up falling apart is the training, the team, there's churn now, you don't have time for one-on-ones.
338
00:21:19.985 --> 00:21:21.066
Like, have you done one-on-ones with them?
339
00:21:21.106 --> 00:21:22.587
Do you do one-on-ones with them much or not?
340
00:21:22.607 --> 00:21:22.667
No.
341
00:21:23.047 --> 00:21:24.227
We tried to.
342
00:21:25.488 --> 00:21:30.269
We set up calendar events to do initial two, four, and six-week reviews.
343
00:21:31.629 --> 00:21:35.170
And then we found that, oh, we're in spring rush.
344
00:21:35.190 --> 00:21:36.411
I've got six new guys.
345
00:21:37.071 --> 00:21:39.092
I'm just going to have to do reviews as needed.
346
00:21:39.132 --> 00:21:40.632
If you're doing okay, you're not getting one.
347
00:21:40.832 --> 00:21:46.617
One-on-ones, we see about a 20, 30% increase in efficiency just command center because we track every second.
348
00:21:46.637 --> 00:21:47.818
So it's really easy for us to see it.
349
00:21:48.258 --> 00:21:51.200
When they do a one-on-one, we just say there's immediate tick up in efficiency.
350
00:21:51.340 --> 00:21:54.022
And simply because they're brought back into like, why am I here?
351
00:21:54.343 --> 00:21:55.443
What can I do to improve?
352
00:21:55.944 --> 00:21:57.725
Where are areas of weakness?
353
00:21:57.745 --> 00:21:58.626
Where are areas of strength?
354
00:21:59.126 --> 00:22:00.467
I've given feedback to my manager.
355
00:22:00.507 --> 00:22:01.908
My manager's giving feedback to me.
356
00:22:02.129 --> 00:22:03.450
Like, I'm on track.
357
00:22:03.490 --> 00:22:03.850
Let's go.
358
00:22:04.130 --> 00:22:06.092
They in turn start to work more efficiently.
359
00:22:06.112 --> 00:22:07.674
They help the guys that are just getting started.
360
00:22:07.694 --> 00:22:08.535
They're better trainers.
361
00:22:08.575 --> 00:22:14.162
Like it just trickles down, but it stems from a GM doing admin tasks.
362
00:22:14.402 --> 00:22:17.986
Most of his time should be focused with his team in operations, doing the work.
363
00:22:18.066 --> 00:22:20.149
That is making sure they have everything they need for equipment.
364
00:22:20.509 --> 00:22:24.891
training, recruiting, hiring, and most importantly, doing one-on-one meetings.
365
00:22:25.271 --> 00:22:36.455
Those one-on-ones is the fundamental foundation to be able to have high quality control, make sure the team is trained up, and make sure that we don't have callbacks and yellow slips and a whole bunch of negative reviews.
366
00:22:36.675 --> 00:22:38.936
And that all comes back down to operations.
367
00:22:39.296 --> 00:22:41.157
And right now he's getting distracted with admin.
368
00:22:41.477 --> 00:22:51.503
A lot of these are downtrend effects, though, of like the biggest, for example, if you're having these projects being scheduled like this during the spring rush, it causes like now everyone's working overtime.
369
00:22:51.583 --> 00:22:53.484
One person drops out and we're like all scrambling.
370
00:22:53.905 --> 00:23:00.229
If that same thing happens in August when there's not like the grass isn't growing, projects are like you just fly through projects.
371
00:23:00.709 --> 00:23:01.529
They're so efficient.
372
00:23:01.549 --> 00:23:02.830
This is where you make so much money.
373
00:23:02.850 --> 00:23:05.352
And so I think a lot of this just comes down to scheduling.
374
00:23:05.872 --> 00:23:10.018
and being like, we're not scheduling these projects at all during these months.
375
00:23:10.078 --> 00:23:13.883
And it's hard to say, because we statistically do not have enough budget hours for our crew.
376
00:23:14.526 --> 00:23:15.726
Yes, that's my big fear.
377
00:23:15.826 --> 00:23:21.568
I've always known in the back of my head, like I should block some of this time off, but I'm like, we're only three weeks booked out.
378
00:23:21.608 --> 00:23:24.669
If I cut off these projects, we're literally not gonna have work for the guys.
379
00:23:25.230 --> 00:23:28.791
But again, I haven't pumped money into marketing and gotten the right kind of leads.
380
00:23:28.871 --> 00:23:35.153
And even if you didn't put money in marketing, just focus on attention on it, allowing you to get back to the customers faster.
381
00:23:35.173 --> 00:23:38.414
Like drive-bys, instead of being 24 hours, are now done within an hour.
382
00:23:38.434 --> 00:23:41.115
Like this starts to happen when just we're focused on it.
383
00:23:41.907 --> 00:23:43.028
The crew starts to be more efficient.
384
00:23:43.048 --> 00:23:50.551
Your churn goes down because they're not making dumb mistakes because they were trained correctly on just mowing, not doing a paper patio for three weeks that they're demoralized on.
385
00:23:50.971 --> 00:23:52.012
So a lot of it's just trickle down.
386
00:23:52.032 --> 00:23:57.814
I know it's like very small tweaks, but something like having the quotes for mowing off your plate 100%.
387
00:23:58.175 --> 00:24:03.677
If someone freaks out and they want to meet with you in person and it's on your website, you don't want to lose a customer.
388
00:24:03.777 --> 00:24:05.338
AJ can also use this over the phone.
389
00:24:05.598 --> 00:24:10.080
He can just literally measure the property using the dots, give them the price, you never have to touch it.
390
00:24:10.180 --> 00:24:13.324
realistically I don't want to even go on the offensive this year.
391
00:24:13.404 --> 00:24:17.329
I really want to play defense and allow you to be able to get your feet underneath you.
392
00:24:17.769 --> 00:24:26.740
And I think some of these are just like 5% and 10% cuts and little tweaks that would allow especially you to be a great general manager.
393
00:24:26.860 --> 00:24:33.004
Right now, I just want to fine-tune 5%, 10%, 15% efficiencies to make the business more profitable.
394
00:24:33.304 --> 00:24:35.046
I'm not trying to think about third location.
395
00:24:35.366 --> 00:24:37.787
I'm not thinking about how to grow to $2 million this year.
396
00:24:38.008 --> 00:24:39.749
Just make the business more defensible.
397
00:24:39.989 --> 00:24:46.714
And you make a business more defensible by increasing the profit margins and increasing from 7% profit to 20% margin again.
398
00:24:46.814 --> 00:24:50.036
For the P4P part, I know that will be a tough one for AJ to handle.
399
00:24:50.416 --> 00:24:50.556
Yeah.
400
00:24:50.576 --> 00:24:53.999
You just got to keep asking, how can we just not have to do this manually?
401
00:24:54.019 --> 00:24:54.159
Mm-hmm.
402
00:24:54.679 --> 00:24:59.002
whether it be putting things on the schedule, like P4Ps always a visit, they clock in out.
403
00:24:59.022 --> 00:25:03.024
So we have like, if it's zero budget hours, P4P team knows use clock time.
404
00:25:03.725 --> 00:25:05.506
If it's budget hours, use budget hours.
405
00:25:05.886 --> 00:25:12.790
So if it says sharpen blades and it has 0.4 budget hours and 0.6 clock hours, we're using 0.4, that's the budget hours.
406
00:25:13.230 --> 00:25:13.951
That's what's been assigned.
407
00:25:14.231 --> 00:25:16.833
If it says zero budget hours and it says 0.6, we're gonna use 0.6.
408
00:25:17.919 --> 00:25:18.239
Okay.
409
00:25:18.439 --> 00:25:23.283
Because now the general manager has made the decision that just pay them whatever it takes them in terms of time.
410
00:25:23.503 --> 00:25:32.449
I end up kind of writing estimates at 930 because I had some major thing that took up a big chunk of my day and I just hadn't been able to write things.
411
00:25:32.629 --> 00:25:36.772
And then you sit there like, oh, man, I just had to write six estimates.
412
00:25:37.653 --> 00:25:45.040
After I got home from work, knowing that we have a plan to train AJ a little better and take over some of this stuff.
413
00:25:45.340 --> 00:25:45.820
It's a relief.
414
00:25:45.980 --> 00:25:52.346
So I'm sure I could probably I need to go into service autopilot and adjust things.
415
00:25:52.366 --> 00:25:56.870
I think everything is based on budget hours now, but I need to figure out the clocked hours for the shop work.
416
00:25:56.930 --> 00:25:58.612
So the shop work I've kind of.
417
00:25:59.312 --> 00:26:20.105
already put on their list roughly how long it should take them so each individual task does say next to it like how it should like uh dump runs say like 1.5 budget hours per truck yeah we did you know just right there in the list but it's not a separate event so are you doing just make the this ad just a client
418
00:26:20.705 --> 00:26:25.127
Like just put like shop, shop, whatever, put that as the address and then we make this the client.
419
00:26:25.467 --> 00:26:31.349
So should it be like every task adds up to one amount of budgeted hours or should we be breaking that up?
420
00:26:32.070 --> 00:26:33.230
Each task is an event.
421
00:26:34.151 --> 00:26:36.352
If they're always done together, just keep it in one.
422
00:26:36.812 --> 00:26:40.033
But if you're like, hey, sometimes I only have them do this one part, I just do it separate.
423
00:26:40.653 --> 00:26:45.355
So are you saying like shop space being 1.5, but there's like five things inside of that?
424
00:26:45.415 --> 00:26:49.137
Yeah, so it's like, it adds up to, I think, like seven or eight budgeted hours.
425
00:26:49.477 --> 00:26:53.899
You know, sharpen blades is like one hour total because we've got like eight mowers.
426
00:26:54.760 --> 00:26:59.142
They've got things like bring any broken equipment to liquid hardware down the street here.
427
00:26:59.382 --> 00:27:02.243
Dump runs is like per truck time.
428
00:27:02.384 --> 00:27:06.085
So we know because we are driving like 45 minutes.
429
00:27:06.366 --> 00:27:09.347
Yeah, we use budget hours for those just like we would a customer.
430
00:27:09.527 --> 00:27:11.268
So we just make the whole thing.
431
00:27:11.588 --> 00:27:14.570
Yep, that way AJ just runs the report the same way every single day.
432
00:27:14.590 --> 00:27:17.151
What's an example of clocked hours then, would you say for?
433
00:27:17.371 --> 00:27:21.293
hey, it's the winter, can you clean out the shop space here?
434
00:27:21.433 --> 00:27:24.234
Do like this laundry list of things.
435
00:27:24.394 --> 00:27:26.335
So the extra stuff that isn't regular?
436
00:27:26.575 --> 00:27:27.655
Yeah, it's not regular.
437
00:27:28.095 --> 00:27:32.537
Yeah, the regular parts is where you get budget hours and you really, they can get way more efficient.
438
00:27:32.737 --> 00:27:38.061
When I started, Dylan was a guy mowing lawns out of his garage.
439
00:27:38.321 --> 00:27:39.542
Found his ad on Indeed.
440
00:27:39.862 --> 00:27:45.186
I don't know if he would necessarily say this, but I think I interviewed him more than he interviewed me.
441
00:27:45.606 --> 00:27:50.950
I was taking notes, and I was like, all right, I think this guy might actually be able to build something.
442
00:27:51.010 --> 00:27:58.392
When you have that second person, second in command person, if you have the right one that can give you the confidence, it's like full steam ahead, right?
443
00:27:58.432 --> 00:28:01.552
Michael's been extremely hardworking, reliable.
444
00:28:02.012 --> 00:28:08.694
When that dude is sick, like he's dispatching from his couch at home, like I just know I can count on him and that's like kind of the prerequisite right there.
445
00:28:08.854 --> 00:28:13.095
We wanna make sure that there's nothing else to reassign before you guys get out of here.
446
00:28:13.995 --> 00:28:16.775
That way we don't have so much overflow, all right?
447
00:28:16.855 --> 00:28:19.276
If it can be prevented, let's go ahead and prevent it.
448
00:28:19.316 --> 00:28:20.196
Just put it in the longer day.
449
00:28:20.436 --> 00:28:21.797
All right, let's get it out there, guys.
450
00:28:21.837 --> 00:28:22.357
Let's go.
451
00:28:22.577 --> 00:28:23.237
Yeah, let's go.
452
00:28:23.558 --> 00:28:33.843
It's cool to see Michael evolve from in the crew with just one truck, him and I, and then all the way to kind of being the office manager and then general manager and all that stuff.
453
00:28:33.863 --> 00:28:35.704
So that part's rewarding for sure.
454
00:28:36.024 --> 00:28:37.626
And then finally Google Ad Agency.
455
00:28:38.166 --> 00:28:39.467
So like you could look on Upwork.
456
00:28:39.507 --> 00:28:40.809
You don't necessarily need an agency.
457
00:28:40.909 --> 00:28:45.032
So you can go to Upwork, get someone that's 80 bucks an hour, 100 bucks an hour.
458
00:28:45.273 --> 00:28:47.014
They spend a couple hours a week on your account.
459
00:28:47.295 --> 00:28:47.455
Okay.
460
00:28:47.575 --> 00:28:49.657
And then you say, hey, I'm going to pause it for these months.
461
00:28:49.677 --> 00:28:50.357
We're not doing...
462
00:28:51.238 --> 00:29:16.353
ads right now that's fine you don't need to go get an agent for ten thousand dollars yeah you might pay someone 100 or 200 bucks an hour but they only need to work in your account a couple hours a week yeah realistically in google okay i'm gonna put agency slash upwork look if we're talking about spending 20 or 30 thousand dollars a year on ads and maybe four or five thousand dollars a year on management of those ads why would i have a million dollar business owner 1.4 million dollar business owner trying to figure out google ads
463
00:29:16.893 --> 00:29:17.913
Pay someone else to do it.
464
00:29:18.293 --> 00:29:30.136
So many of the times when you've come from nothing, you start scrimping and saving every single penny and that costs you growth in the business because you're constantly trying to save every dollar instead of just giving that dollar to someone else and then making you $10.
465
00:29:30.376 --> 00:29:34.597
I haven't done a lot of research on what's to be expected for that price point.
466
00:29:34.637 --> 00:29:39.018
So when someone's like, yeah, for three months I can create some Facebook ads and it's $10,000, you're like,
467
00:29:39.718 --> 00:29:41.099
That seems high, but is it?
468
00:29:41.139 --> 00:29:42.980
You know, so it's good to hear.
469
00:29:43.020 --> 00:29:45.842
I think it was Upworks, was it, where Mike suggested.
470
00:29:45.862 --> 00:29:48.723
So I'm going to check that out, see if I can find a freelance guy to help me out.
471
00:29:48.983 --> 00:29:58.749
And him getting an agency or a freelancer to unlock Google Ads, where you can get paid acquisition and be able to get the recurring customers he needs is going to be the big unlock for Urban Roots in the future.
472
00:29:58.929 --> 00:30:05.776
I'll definitely try to look to partner with somebody that helps take it over, but also can kind of keep me in the loop so I'm not totally in the dark on things.
473
00:30:06.076 --> 00:30:09.960
So you think we should start in the direction of trying to delegate P4P to AJ then?
474
00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:13.223
Just get those systems in place and slowly kind of train them up on that?
475
00:30:13.243 --> 00:30:20.590
Because that's kind of a time suck, and that requires us getting into good habits about getting the crew into good habits.
476
00:30:20.610 --> 00:30:21.050
Correct.
477
00:30:21.911 --> 00:30:22.312
And, yeah.
478
00:30:22.732 --> 00:30:23.452
That's the harder part.
479
00:30:23.572 --> 00:30:27.333
It's pretty interesting because we've been able to see Dylan when he first got started as a solo operator.
480
00:30:27.433 --> 00:30:31.995
Then as he began to figure out management at $800,000, $900,000 in revenue.
481
00:30:32.095 --> 00:30:34.656
And now at $1.4 million, he's learning this next skill.
482
00:30:35.016 --> 00:30:38.137
And I like to think of it as you do the work as a solo operator.
483
00:30:38.497 --> 00:30:40.518
Then you have to teach other people and be a great manager.
484
00:30:40.678 --> 00:30:42.018
That's the next skill that has to be learned.
485
00:30:42.218 --> 00:30:46.161
If we're struggling with yellow slips in the field, it's really trickle down, right?
486
00:30:46.181 --> 00:30:49.183
So like, I know I'm very fortunate for my hardworking crew.
487
00:30:49.423 --> 00:30:53.485
As much as we try to improve, I always think it starts with me first.
488
00:30:53.766 --> 00:30:56.948
And the part that Dylan is learning right now is the leadership part.
489
00:30:57.228 --> 00:31:11.317
That's the third element of how do I actually lead the organization and lead other managers, people like Michael, to be able to be successful as a teacher, to be able to not have to do the work, not have to teach the work, but lead the team and the entire organization.
490
00:31:11.317 --> 00:31:12.958
I guess entrepreneurship for everybody.
491
00:31:13.118 --> 00:31:14.319
The clear answer is no.
492
00:31:14.539 --> 00:31:16.080
There's a lot of stresses with business.
493
00:31:16.380 --> 00:31:18.161
I'm probably more stressed with a business.
494
00:31:18.582 --> 00:31:24.305
There's a lot of uncertainty there, but I think it's just kind of how you're wired on and what you thrive off of.
495
00:31:24.625 --> 00:31:30.369
For me, I really get excited about growing a team and there's always something new to learn and grow and figure out.
496
00:31:30.569 --> 00:31:40.335
And I do like the idea of some of that pressure is good knowing that how much effort I put in into growing a team and teaching and training people, it starts to pay off over time.
497
00:31:40.455 --> 00:31:42.076
Getting AD to do it is not difficult.
498
00:31:42.676 --> 00:31:45.057
There's a few things I can help you with on how to make that happen.
499
00:31:45.457 --> 00:31:49.059
It's the, in order for that to work, it has to be clean.
500
00:31:49.779 --> 00:31:56.362
So for example, we only send the GM one message with here are the four questions we have about yesterday's route, let us know what's up.
501
00:31:56.802 --> 00:31:58.082
They send us a quick voice note back.
502
00:31:58.162 --> 00:32:06.306
It's not like when I'm doing it throughout the day and now I'm interrupting the GM four times and now the GM's annoyed that he's just jumping there and doing it himself, that's not happening.
503
00:32:07.026 --> 00:32:09.269
He gets the daily report, crew gets daily report.
504
00:32:09.550 --> 00:32:17.021
Seeing how many inefficiencies that there have been to this point actually makes me feel like my job is gonna become so much more manageable.
505
00:32:17.141 --> 00:32:21.527
It's gonna be a huge relief to see all this implemented and get things where they should be.
506
00:32:21.888 --> 00:32:28.212
Another thing too that AJ can do to help with the whole aspect of like right now you are thinking in terms of like oh we need more mowing customers.
507
00:32:28.292 --> 00:32:32.394
I also think we can sell their existing mowing customers more other recurring services.
508
00:32:32.874 --> 00:32:38.277
And if they sign up on instant mowing quote they can have the option to choose upsells and you can customize that.
509
00:32:38.658 --> 00:32:42.220
But more importantly when someone just accepts their mowing quote I want to call them right away.
510
00:32:42.380 --> 00:32:47.923
And so for us we call like a thoughtful upsell which is like for AJ we made it really simple because we also have remote.
511
00:32:47.943 --> 00:32:51.045
So it's like hey if it's a mowing job I want you selling them treatments.
512
00:32:51.705 --> 00:32:56.809
And if they got cleanup, I want you to sell them bush trimming, like on an ongoing basis.
513
00:32:57.129 --> 00:32:59.491
If they got, like, you gotta make it really simple.
514
00:32:59.511 --> 00:33:01.392
Like if they bought this, sell them this.
515
00:33:01.712 --> 00:33:03.894
Right now their close rate is 35%.
516
00:33:04.234 --> 00:33:08.597
Usually if someone's trying to grow their business, I'm trying to shoot for like 60, 70% close rate.
517
00:33:08.738 --> 00:33:11.920
That gives me also the inclination that I can then raise prices down the road.
518
00:33:12.080 --> 00:33:19.631
At 35%, usually you'd say, hey, we're at the top of the market, we can't raise prices without really collapsing the demand for our services.
519
00:33:19.851 --> 00:33:26.782
But before we come to that conclusion and think we can't raise prices and we're at the top of the market and everyone else is really cheap, I wanna look at the sales process.
520
00:33:27.042 --> 00:33:47.352
a lot of us will look at our close rate but what we won't look at is the fact that it's taking a day or two days to get the quote to the customer if we could just answer the phone give them a quote and put their card on file and put them on the schedule we could potentially plug links that are currently in the sales process and be able to get our close rate back up does aj do well at answering new sales calls or is he good at customer service stuff
521
00:33:47.672 --> 00:33:49.153
Everything goes to him first.
522
00:33:49.873 --> 00:33:53.696
Then I typically don't answer if a grasshopper calls come through to me.
523
00:33:54.236 --> 00:33:57.398
I use that more as like, okay, I know he's busy right now.
524
00:33:57.878 --> 00:33:59.079
I know he missed that call.
525
00:33:59.299 --> 00:34:02.361
I might have to like make sure he's been on top of all of these.
526
00:34:02.661 --> 00:34:05.943
But usually if I'm getting on the phone, it's like,
527
00:34:06.683 --> 00:34:13.649
I got a message from AJ that there's some customer service problem that's like just above him right now.
528
00:34:14.069 --> 00:34:19.734
It's not something he has the resources to handle, or it's like clarification about an estimate.
529
00:34:19.914 --> 00:34:21.215
It's usually something like that.
530
00:34:22.456 --> 00:34:29.022
But most of my phone calls that I get through the day are just like little crew problems.
531
00:34:29.262 --> 00:34:33.526
They don't know what to do or where to take something, or they've got like a question about a note.
532
00:34:35.227 --> 00:34:39.210
That's like the most common thing we're getting right now is like, hey, what does this note mean?
533
00:34:39.310 --> 00:34:43.573
Which obviously means they need to be written differently, but that's a lot of it.
534
00:34:43.754 --> 00:34:47.556
Anything related to the estimate itself, we don't have him get into the estimates.
535
00:34:47.616 --> 00:34:49.798
It's like, hey, we wrote it, we're gonna answer.
536
00:34:49.858 --> 00:34:58.305
So like, if you look at our WhatsApp group, so we're trying to figure out little systems and then this is where he'll tag us and say, hey, these are all the accepted estimates.
537
00:34:58.405 --> 00:35:02.127
I need you to audit the schedule that I put together.
538
00:35:02.928 --> 00:35:10.412
It's just a lot of this going throughout the day and just trying to do this, answer crew phone calls, and then write estimates.
539
00:35:10.612 --> 00:35:11.012
Two things.
540
00:35:11.312 --> 00:35:12.893
One, we try to stay inside the CRM.
541
00:35:12.933 --> 00:35:15.715
So, like, it serves up, but he could make those into his dues.
542
00:35:16.535 --> 00:35:19.897
That way you can set up automations around them, and they show up on your dispatch board.
543
00:35:20.117 --> 00:35:22.318
That would probably make things a lot easier, honestly.
544
00:35:22.458 --> 00:35:24.458
I'm, like, digging through that group trying to find them.
545
00:35:24.498 --> 00:35:27.419
And you don't know who, because you guys don't know who, you're just literally looking for your tag.
546
00:35:27.579 --> 00:35:28.580
Yeah, exactly.
547
00:35:28.680 --> 00:35:31.761
And so there's pictures, some of those emails, some of those scheduling, it's all over the place.
548
00:35:31.781 --> 00:35:34.822
So what you could do, make different types of to-dos.
549
00:35:35.202 --> 00:35:37.402
It's like there's a scheduling one, there's an urgent one.
550
00:35:37.422 --> 00:35:41.063
It's like we knew if it was urgent, you scroll that one, you open it up right away.
551
00:35:41.083 --> 00:35:45.465
There are some things, even the technology piece, that we just, like, wait, Service Autopilot does that?
552
00:35:46.145 --> 00:35:49.026
You know, we thought we both knew Service Autopilot really well.
553
00:35:49.226 --> 00:35:56.327
And then we're finding like, oh, there's actually a whole other thing that we don't use ever that we could be making our lives way easier.
554
00:35:56.487 --> 00:36:05.768
If you use a CRM, I don't care if it's homeworks or Service Autopilot or any CRM, make sure you take a couple of days and really fully understand all the features and the capabilities.
555
00:36:05.949 --> 00:36:11.690
Otherwise, you're going to miss out on automations or little systems that could save you a ton of time, just like Dylan has done.
556
00:36:11.710 --> 00:36:13.990
And he's been inside of that software for years.
557
00:36:14.390 --> 00:36:17.454
Well, this is probably the lightest six-week plan ever.
558
00:36:17.995 --> 00:36:18.336
Okay.
559
00:36:18.476 --> 00:36:20.559
But the thing is, I think you're not far off.
560
00:36:20.619 --> 00:36:21.881
You're just these little tweaks.
561
00:36:21.941 --> 00:36:27.789
So first thing is, instant mowing quote, since you already have long crew web design, just reach out to Tori, but you'll want to tweak it.
562
00:36:27.829 --> 00:36:30.633
If you guys play with it for an hour, you'll get it exactly what they want.
563
00:36:30.733 --> 00:36:31.314
That's the first thing.
564
00:36:31.454 --> 00:36:41.262
I think the most excited I am is probably the instant quote on the website and maybe getting connected with someone who will help out with Google ads.
565
00:36:41.782 --> 00:36:46.045
Second thing, our goal in the next six weeks is to get P4P tickets handled by AJ.
566
00:36:46.145 --> 00:36:57.714
And that's gonna probably require, the same what we're talking about, like right now you have information all over the place, like WhatsApp, you have it in SA, you also have like calls between,
567
00:36:58.597 --> 00:37:01.900
team members and you, you have pictures, like it's all over the place.
568
00:37:02.320 --> 00:37:04.202
I always want it all in your CRM.
569
00:37:04.562 --> 00:37:07.645
Not having to do P4P for two locations every day.
570
00:37:07.665 --> 00:37:16.113
Running P4P for 13 guys is a little bit time consuming when those same guys are calling you with questions about their jobs.
571
00:37:16.233 --> 00:37:20.297
And it's just a lot of admin that I'm doing that I'm not gonna have to do anymore.
572
00:37:20.577 --> 00:37:23.620
This one, I know the P4P one's hard, but it's probably going to give you 20% of your day back.
573
00:37:23.940 --> 00:37:24.140
Oh, yeah.
574
00:37:24.461 --> 00:37:29.285
And I think that this kind of leads me into, like, the time blocking part for AJ.
575
00:37:29.685 --> 00:37:29.865
Okay.
576
00:37:30.005 --> 00:37:34.409
AJ should not be, like, so if a phone rings, he needs to be on it.
577
00:37:34.530 --> 00:37:37.612
Like, there's no reason that you should be answering a phone call.
578
00:37:37.632 --> 00:37:38.053
Mm-hmm.
579
00:37:38.233 --> 00:37:39.194
Or if the phone even ringing.
580
00:37:39.474 --> 00:37:41.456
It's like, you drop everything when the phone call rings.
581
00:37:41.776 --> 00:37:44.639
But when the phone's not ringing, step number one, what do you do next?
582
00:37:44.659 --> 00:37:45.159
Mm-hmm.
583
00:37:45.219 --> 00:37:46.739
And if that's done, what do I do next?
584
00:37:47.180 --> 00:37:49.680
And so some prioritization for him would be helpful.
585
00:37:50.080 --> 00:37:53.801
But he needs to know that during certain times of the day is when he contacts you.
586
00:37:53.981 --> 00:37:56.802
Outside of that, it's like, unless it's a 911 test, you don't reach out.
587
00:37:56.982 --> 00:38:03.644
Least excited is probably going to be trying to figure out how to delegate P4P to someone overseas.
588
00:38:03.824 --> 00:38:06.225
But it's a task that I think we could take on.
589
00:38:06.865 --> 00:38:08.346
Not first come, first serve next spring.
590
00:38:08.386 --> 00:38:15.029
This is not necessarily going to be anything you change the next six weeks, but next spring, we're going to look at April and May and say no projects.
591
00:38:15.790 --> 00:38:22.593
Meaning, in March, you're trying to upsell all your database on getting their property cleanups done and saying, hey, we're going to be booked out into June.
592
00:38:23.073 --> 00:38:24.994
Get your March cleanups, spring cleanups done now.
593
00:38:25.254 --> 00:38:30.597
So you pull all that demand forward, but then when a call comes in the middle of April, we're starting to book out in June.
594
00:38:30.677 --> 00:38:39.581
I mean, that first video we ever did, I was literally like with the company for like a few weeks or something before Dylan was like, hey, we're gonna do this video, are you cool with that?
595
00:38:39.641 --> 00:38:42.382
I was like, yeah, sure, let's go for it.
596
00:38:43.003 --> 00:38:45.304
But it's always a good experience.
597
00:38:45.804 --> 00:38:48.505
I think we definitely got the most out of this one.
598
00:38:49.065 --> 00:38:51.947
Can't wait for my days to get a little lighter on the admin.
599
00:38:52.107 --> 00:38:58.930
The objective is that by that time, and when you feel that like, I don't know if we're gonna fill a schedule, we have got, next one, Google Ads,
600
00:38:59.610 --> 00:39:02.671
person up and running when you say, hey, I wanna gas it.
601
00:39:02.791 --> 00:39:04.211
Let's put a couple grand in a month.
602
00:39:04.711 --> 00:39:18.193
And if we can get 50, 60, $70 a lead even, and we can convert most of those, and they're all being dumped in instant mowing quote, and you're not overwhelmed with projects that are taking three weeks that no one wants to do and you're losing money on, that's where you can get that third truck.
603
00:39:18.553 --> 00:39:20.113
And then the last one is to do's and SA.
604
00:39:20.213 --> 00:39:29.215
I know it seems small, but this is a constant theme I keep seeing of like, basically he can annoy any of you, but annoys both of you at the exact same time.
605
00:39:29.395 --> 00:39:29.635
Yeah.
606
00:39:30.376 --> 00:39:33.099
And so you are all three of you are kind of doing like the same job.
607
00:39:33.679 --> 00:39:35.361
So an email comes in that he can't respond to.
608
00:39:35.821 --> 00:39:38.844
Three of you have been brought into the equation which one person can respond back to.
609
00:39:38.864 --> 00:39:41.467
It's almost like the more we can keep each other separate, the better.
610
00:39:41.607 --> 00:39:41.867
Yes.
611
00:39:42.088 --> 00:39:45.091
And that's why I would just stay with two doing to do's in essay.
612
00:39:45.131 --> 00:39:45.511
Yeah.
613
00:39:45.631 --> 00:39:46.973
These are all very small tweaks.
614
00:39:47.373 --> 00:39:47.974
Very small.
615
00:39:47.994 --> 00:39:48.434
Very small.
616
00:39:51.102 --> 00:39:58.224
So, so far we have not completed everything, but we've made progress on most of the to-do items that we came up with.
617
00:39:58.244 --> 00:40:03.706
Mike, so one of the things that we talked about was learning and teaching myself how to run Google ads.
618
00:40:03.986 --> 00:40:08.267
And, you know, what we came up with was maybe hiring it out because it's been a few years now.
619
00:40:08.387 --> 00:40:11.428
I've been telling myself I'm going to teach, teach, teach myself.
620
00:40:11.468 --> 00:40:13.949
So at this point, I've just got to be realistic.
621
00:40:13.989 --> 00:40:14.869
So I'm hiring it out.
622
00:40:15.269 --> 00:40:18.733
I did connect with a gentleman on Upwork like Mike suggested.
623
00:40:18.873 --> 00:40:20.895
We are very close to launching those ads.
624
00:40:21.555 --> 00:40:31.445
Right now, we're also at the same time working with Lawn Care Web Design to go ahead and get some landing pages set up on the back end so we can track those ads a little bit better.
625
00:40:31.505 --> 00:40:33.587
So Barkat, the gentleman from Upwork,
626
00:40:33.947 --> 00:40:37.833
He's been working really diligently and quickly as well to try to get those up and running.
627
00:40:37.853 --> 00:40:38.774
And he said he's really close.
628
00:40:38.794 --> 00:40:40.256
We're just waiting on those landing pages.
629
00:40:40.396 --> 00:40:45.784
And then I know we talked to Mike a little bit about being able to offer more upsell opportunities.
630
00:40:45.844 --> 00:40:47.967
That's something that my office manager, Michael,
631
00:40:48.848 --> 00:40:52.350
And I haven't discussed a ton since the meeting with Mike Andes.
632
00:40:52.390 --> 00:41:03.355
But another thing that we were looking at doing was getting our website all set up with the instant mowing quote dot com tool that he built that Mike Andes built out.
633
00:41:03.715 --> 00:41:06.156
And we have actually gotten that on the website.
634
00:41:06.357 --> 00:41:06.617
I think.
635
00:41:07.435 --> 00:41:09.617
The landing pages just came through today, right?
636
00:41:09.637 --> 00:41:16.323
Those, um, we just got the link so we can send those to, um, to the Google, uh, our Google expert there.
637
00:41:16.583 --> 00:41:21.707
But we actually did get one instant quote that was start to finish.
638
00:41:21.827 --> 00:41:24.389
It was because we hadn't had the Google ads set up yet.
639
00:41:24.790 --> 00:41:26.751
It was an organic type of thing.
640
00:41:26.771 --> 00:41:28.273
Someone landed on our website and.
641
00:41:28.853 --> 00:41:31.096
uh, filled out the form, accepted the estimate.
642
00:41:31.116 --> 00:41:38.386
So that was exciting to see that we didn't need to like take the call, collect their information, send an estimator out.
643
00:41:38.406 --> 00:41:46.697
I mean, it's, I'm really excited about the idea of once we can start driving more traffic to our website, we'll actually start to see the time savings there.
644
00:41:47.437 --> 00:41:56.582
Another task that Mike Andes suggested we do is try to delegate a bit more to AJ, who is our office coordinator.
645
00:41:56.962 --> 00:42:03.386
And Michael and I, we had kind of this mental hang up on can we even delegate the task of P4P?
646
00:42:03.446 --> 00:42:07.488
Because we had the luxury of Michael in the office helping out with a bunch of office work.
647
00:42:07.688 --> 00:42:11.350
And he saw the comings and goings of our crew every day.
648
00:42:11.490 --> 00:42:17.633
So naturally it just made it a little bit easier for him to fill out the time cards for P4P and run that whole system.
649
00:42:17.913 --> 00:42:21.115
And our fear was, man, how can we make this work remotely?
650
00:42:21.175 --> 00:42:22.575
So we just jumped right in.
651
00:42:22.635 --> 00:42:25.577
Mike Andes gave us kind of the confidence that yes, it can be done.
652
00:42:25.697 --> 00:42:32.120
And then just the big thing for us was making sure our crew members were accurately clocking into our CRM.
653
00:42:33.000 --> 00:42:40.043
So that was part of it too, was we were guilty of not really enforcing the clocking in and out for the day, clocking into the jobs.
654
00:42:40.223 --> 00:42:47.706
But I don't know, Michael, would you say we're probably about 95% of the way there with the crew really being better about remembering things?
655
00:42:47.926 --> 00:42:50.869
Oh yeah, the crew's definitely about there.
656
00:42:50.969 --> 00:42:53.231
They're fully aware that AJ has taken over.
657
00:42:53.391 --> 00:42:55.492
Things have definitely gotten a lot better on that front.
658
00:42:55.533 --> 00:42:58.175
And that said, AJ is about 99% there.
659
00:42:58.235 --> 00:43:02.458
I think I'm basically just watching him run it in the morning to make sure he's good to go.
660
00:43:02.719 --> 00:43:07.683
So he's gonna be let loose to just do it and start asking questions here.
661
00:43:07.923 --> 00:43:08.684
Yeah, yeah.
662
00:43:08.764 --> 00:43:16.629
So again, we've really started and I would say we're about 90, 95% of the way there with delegating the P4P to AJ.
663
00:43:16.749 --> 00:43:19.191
We've got the instant quote on our website now.
664
00:43:19.211 --> 00:43:21.692
We're super close to launching our Google ads.
665
00:43:21.892 --> 00:43:23.934
So we're right on the cusp of some exciting stuff.
666
00:43:24.034 --> 00:43:28.617
So now once we start freeing up some of that time, and again, I feel like we're really close to that.
667
00:43:28.857 --> 00:43:33.139
Michael's going to be able to do some of those one-on-one performance reviews with our crew members.
668
00:43:33.199 --> 00:43:38.902
We can start creating training videos and other SOPs around operations that we've been kind of lacking in the past.
669
00:43:39.142 --> 00:43:43.344
We're like 90% of the way through with just about everything on the list.
670
00:43:43.464 --> 00:43:49.387
Nothing's fully complete and exactly how we want it, but we're definitely seeing progress.