I Quit This $13,000 Account & Here's Why:

hi this is brad with copper creek cuts a lawn care company in northeast florida today's video is a little bit different going to be talking about why i decided to drop a 13 000 annual contract this video is mainly gonna be me talking so in just a second we are going to start watching me work this is the very last service i did so i would have some some video to look at here that's one thing secondly if this is something that you would rather listen to i'm going to try something new and put an mp3 version of this video in a link below it's probably just going to be a google drive folder where you can download if that's helpful for you please let me know in the comments otherwise i won't know to ever do that again third thing if you've got any kind of comments about oh boy brad you're so lazy you're dummy for doing that you can leave those but just realize that trying to figure out how to put this diplomatically if you are an employee somewhere you may not be looking at it from the owner mentality so first of all i would ask you to watch the entire video if you can't be bothered to do that there will be chapters in the description that will help you skip around so maybe you see your specific question addressed i am not trying to tell you why you should do something similar in your business i'm explaining all the reasons all my personal values that led me to make this decision i'm not looking for you to say that's the way to go brad or you're a dummy brad another thing on top of that is that if all you say is you're lazy i can't engage you in any kind of a rational debate you know i can't say well that's a great point i thought of that here's why i still decide to do that so if you want to say i would never drop that contract because it's so difficult to replace that type of work then i can say well that's not a concern for me but i can understand why it would be for you that's the kind of thing i'm looking for if you want to disagree feel free to disagree however you want i'm just saying if all you say is a sarcastic comment that's probably all you're going to get for me in return now we have to set the scene and to do that we have to go back to the spring of 2019 i was approached by a board member of this hoa and said hey we would like a quote for maintaining the common areas in our hoa homeowners association the guy that we have now is missing some things we're not entirely thrilled we'd like to get a quote to see if we could you know get new service so of course i obliged uh met with one of the gentlemen from the board we drove around the property for probably an hour and a half two hours talking about okay here's all the things i spent probably two and a half or three hours putting together a proposal you know it it was a good looking proposal you'll probably see it here on the screen in my bid we're somewhere around 12 7 12 it was high 12 whatever it was they reviewed the proposal the board did and the gentleman came back and said hey we would love to go with you but right now we're paying a little bit closer to nine is there any way you could match that so as diplomatically as i could i said well you know i i appreciate that that you like me that much that you you would like me to have the contract i would love to have it too um unfortunately i'm in a situation where the price is what the price is another thing to consider is that if you aren't happy with the service that you have now and if the service you have now is missing things um it it doesn't really make sense that you'd pay the same amount for better service when he said okay we'll keep you in mind if anything changes thanks so much i believe i was approached march april and then in june july they reached back out and said okay we're ready to go ahead with you uh with the higher bid amount i said excellent so then they gave their uh current guy 30 days notice and i believe i started august or september of 2019. the contract expired september or august of 2020 just recently i learned there were three folks who were serving on the board and i learned each of their personalities over that year how to answer their questions how to handle them there was another individual who sometimes i won't say we butted heads but so for instance i remember sometime in august of uh it must have been august 2020 i sent some kind of video if i still have it from the chat i'll go ahead and put it up here but it was basically me saying hey guys i know i'm supposed to service the property today but it's been several days since the rain your property holds a ton of water if i put the mower on this i'm going to ruin it if i have it i'll play it now it's florida spring and summer where it's raining all the time so the same thing happened several times during the year and i remember one time where the individual was like hey are you coming today and i said no unfortunately i know it just rained the other day it's going to be too wet to mow and he said something along the lines of oh that's a shame it's a really beautiful day it's a beautiful day to work something like that now i can't read tone it might have been harmless but i took it as he was he was trying to show his displeasure the fact that i wasn't mowing so i stopped what i was doing i drove straight over to the property and i basically did uh the same exact thing as i'd done in august and said i understand you again if i've got the video clip i'll i'll insert it hey mr so i know you were concerned about the fact that it is a nice day but that i'm not going to be mowing so just like i said from that back in august 7th it's not just is it not raining it's what are the grounds conditions so for instance if you take a look at this spot and just for reference this is the same exact spot that i was in last time we've got i don't know if you can hear that but if you can see that well you probably can't on camera but what i look for is when i'm walking a 200 pound man am i are my footprints leaving tracks and if they are i'm not gonna put a thousand pound mower on it because that is absolutely gonna leave tracks and it's gonna damage and run the lawn so i understand that it can be frustrating but for me what i do is i look at the property's uh worst common denominator and if that means i can't mow then that's what it is for the ponds when there's this much water for me that becomes a safety thing i i don't want to be on a wet pond bank and and again this was on the august 7th chat too so you know it's nothing new it's it's the same it's always been for weather related delays but i'm going to go take a look at a couple other spots that are normally bad and see if i can see anything there for you too and so now we're over in the pavilion area and again this is an area too that just that just holds a ton of water and if again it's it's going to be much harder to see in camera than in real life but i mean you can hear how wet that is so again i i get the frustration of it's bright outside why aren't you mowing but the fact is it just it has to be the right weather conditions and the right ground conditions and unfortunately there's a lot of parts in your property where you know in these common areas where even if it is sunny if it's holding water which it does all the time i just can't you know i've got to wait a few days for it to dry out so hopefully that explains things a little bit more if you've ever got questions feel free to call me you know like i said sometimes tone can be hard to come across and chat or text so you know i don't know if you're getting upset or i don't want you everything i'm getting upset anything like that so sometimes you know just meeting face to face if you need i can always run up here anything like that to answer your questions anyways hope that helped hope you have a good day so all that being said you know i learned how to navigate the folks on the board when uh my contract rolled around for renewal that board the entire board was shifting out and a new one was shifting in i submitted in my renewal contract a three percent increase that triggered the need to reshop everything and that coupled with the fact that in a month that board was going to be gone they said we're just going to go month to month the new board will handle it that's fine makes sense this is the number one biggest reason why i decided to drop that contract that gentleman from the first board who initially sought me out the reason he wanted to pay more money for better quality is because he experienced lesser quality that comes from a cheaper bid or a cheaper product if we can say that with him now gone this new board they may have never gone through the things he's done they may have never gone a cheap route and said oh man this we can't go the cheap route this new board comes in they might want to shake things up one of the main ways to do that is to save money on the lawn care guy which is you know the hoa's biggest expense the main reason i got picked was because this guy push no we need better quality over price we've seen what poor quality and low price does it's not okay that force that influence is now gone you've got a new board here is the second bigger issue when you bid a commercial account you bid the entire year that scope of work and then you chop that yearly amount into 12 equal payments march april may june july august september at least where i am seven months out of the year i am busting my butt in just a little bit over half of the year i'm doing 80 of the work now what that means is i am not hitting my hourly uh revenue goals during those seven months four days out of the month i'm at that property i'm slaving in the 80 90 100 degree weather there's nine tenths of a mile of edging there's tons of string trimming there's trimming around ponds there's mowing on heavy slopes around ponds there's getting stuck there's there's a lot of stuff that goes into it on the flip side during the four or five months of steady winter here that i am way exceeding my hourly revenue goals right because i'm only that there's only a one once a month visit in the contract because nothing's growing i go there i pick up trash if there's any sticks i picked them up maybe it needs to be mowed here and there because you know there's some weeds popping up change out all the trash bags and that's it during those months i'm there for like two hours a month that is great money so during the spring and summer i'm not making great money during the winter i'm making amazing money it all balances out because i have an annual contract the issue here is that if my contract ended in september what i was afraid of is that then march april may june july maybe the board would have just kept me on they wouldn't have you know gotten the quote until after several months of that summer work and if i didn't have that full winter to make up for it over the course of the year i would have lost money right i wouldn't have done what i needed to because of that i had a choice of either getting out while the getting was good knowing that my number one fan was not there anymore knowing most likely it's a new board they're going to want to cut costs knowing that september excuse me october november december january february i made the best money i could because there was only monthly visits now we're heading into the spring and summer do i want to stick around month to month and risk messing up my revenue over the course of time that i'm working here because i don't have that annual contract i decided this in february i gave him 30 days to notice i said look end of march unfortunately i'm not going to be able to continue service anymore i'm happy with that decision a couple of brad specific reasons that i did that my family purchased a camper in november of 2020 once a month we've we took it out we take it out for a weekend as a family and we'll do a friday saturday sunday and we really enjoy that what i realized was oh man i'm never going to be able to do this during the spring and summer because fridays are my busy commercial day take those two things i already talked about add in this third thing that at least once a month i would love to not have any fridays full so that i can go camping with my family and we can spend that family time together and that was another big incentive for me to uh to go ahead and unload this here is another this is a very brad specific thing what i have found and none of this is to brag or gloat or talk about what a good position i'm in i have stumbled into a very good thing with this youtube channel where i can go and do one job one job i can make two videos off of that job and those two videos in just a couple of months if they if i do everything right and youtube likes them i can make more on those two videos than i could have on this entire commercial contract i got proof of that right that 30 mo that i did uh last year for this same hoa it was an abandoned house bank owned property those videos together i don't know what the exact number is the last time i checked it was over 11 000 and this one is the most brad specific thing of all but heading into this next year would i rather give up all of my fridays for this commercial contract that i don't know if i'm gonna get that i don't know if the folks even want me anymore to make 13 grand or am i going to get out on the tail end of all those winter months of work free up all of my fridays where i can go out and at my leisure i can pick jobs as i want i can go up to somebody's house and say hey your pressure washing needs to be done your driveway looks filthy i'd love to do it for free if you let me film it so this is the situation that now i'm in because youtube has taken off it's provided a way for me to do less work and make more money anytime i've ever said anything about working less or doing something a more efficient way i have people come out of the woodwork and say that oh i'm just lazy i remember one time i showed some kind of a hedge trimming harness that took all the weight off your shoulders and put it on your body people like oh you're so lazy for wanting to do that just do it like a man like are you just out of your mind why would i not want to work less abuse my body less i want to last as long as i can on this earth and lawn care will grind your body down to a nub that is the long version of how i found myself in february saying hey i got to give you 30 days notice this just doesn't make sense for me anymore all that being said a few of those reasons might be worth you considering for your business either to say i could see how that would work or no that wouldn't work the last couple ones those are entirely specific to me that are based on my values my principles they've got nothing to do with you so i don't expect you to line up with them now we're going to get into the section i'm going to take a drink break but now we're going to get into the section where we're going to cover what i think people are going to say oh you should haves so somebody just writes me off and says oh you're so lazy you just don't want to work again this goes back to if i can do some crazy overgrown yard or some disgusting pressure washing project if i can make two videos off of that and make over ten thousand dollars in a couple of months from the ad revenue on those videos i am going to take that deal every day of the week and if you wouldn't you've got a very different set of values than me that's the only way i can think to say it i honestly feel like a lot of those types of comments come from employees who they don't have that luxury right so if the boss says hey go string trim nine tenths of a mile go edge around that pond for six hours they can't say no and to see me say i'm not gonna do that because i don't want to they take it as lazy the other big group is homeowners so homeowners watch these videos and they say oh that guy he he's lazy he doesn't want the business i don't want to hire him you know that kind of thing which i kind of get but it all boils down to having an employee mindset versus a an employer or business owner mindset the other component that comes into play that a lot of people don't think about is the youtube thing so i'm hoping that uh by opening up a little bit with those numbers you can kind of see how it makes more sense for me to focus my energies on this youtube thing while i can rather than keep a commercial account another thing i think people will say is oh you should hire employees that's not really the answer so first of all i i've said it before i'm mainly a stay-at-home dad i mow lawns a few days a week i would not have enough work to keep employees busy it doesn't make sense for me to go get employees for one day a week work that's one thing employees don't make sense there's not enough work two to legally hire someone the costs that i would incur the headaches of payroll of dealing with employees of finding with someone of you know managing them no it's not worth it for just this thing even if it was i'll refer you back to everything i said it still doesn't make sense for me even with employees to keep this contract it doesn't i have to interrupt myself because you're about to see me almost stick my mower in the pond i have done this every single calendar year 2019 2020 i stuck mowers in the pond i was able to get them out i almost do it here that is a rather lengthy rendition i hope you stuck around for it if you've got any questions again please read the description if there's anything i think of later i'll go ahead and cover it there thanks so much for sticking around with me i appreciate it if you'd like to see some more videos here's some youtube things you might like as always thank you so much for watching i really do appreciate it

Channel: Copper Creek Cuts Lawn Care

Views: 425,398

Rating: 4.8119869 out of 5

Keywords: mowing super tall grass, lawn care, lawn mower, landscaping, landscape, lawn care business, leaf cleanup, lawn care service, start lawn care, mowing grass, mowing tall grass, overgrown grass, front yard makeover, yard makeover, how to cut grass, how to mow the yard, how to edge, how to use a string trimmer, how to use a mower, lawn care setup, spring yard, saint augustine grass, st augustine grass, oddly satisfying, i quit, i quit my job, fired, dropping a client

Id: IiJT_y0ogCg

Length: 18min 36sec (1116 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021