Lawn Care Business: 90 HOUR Weeks… WITHOUT Pay!

I had a line of credit that was like almost completely tapped out already the profits just plummeted and I was just here to work and get a paycheck it's rare that everything just goes right and they spun out going 60 MPH on the highway smashed into here went into the disc so there was just frustrations and you know we would end up yelling at each other we hired less people we let a few of them go I really didn't know what to do you know with $2,000 in the bank account and not being able to pay myself a paycheck know it's like why is this even worth it so this lawn care business tried to grow to seven employees last spring it miserably failed super unprofitable lots of stress and now they only have one employee besides the owners so what are we doing we're coming into a turnaround to figure out why the business failed and what we can do to make sure it can grow in the future this is it this is the man the myth and the legend All together knock knock hey how's it going dude good how are you good to see you how you do Kyle Kyle what was your name Jesse Jesse good to meet you man you too Casey Casey good to meet you nice to meet you is just just the two of you guys working on right now like today sweet good stuff man a nice shop you got yeah we just kind of said I'll do it for a year and we'll reevaluate within a year and see what happens and yeah you know it kind of slowly grew I think two or three years I did it by myself then Jesse came on for two my name is Jesse Cobbs um I am Kyle's brother I train the mo crew and just head over the lawn care side of the business so Jesse's been with you for a while yeah Jesse's been with me for for about four wow four years okay following year was when we tried to take the big step and I came out of the field and managed and we got another mowing truck and had at 1.7 guys really yeah how' that go not not super I mean it was yeah it didn't go super well the profits just plummeted right we weren't fully ready to be like Revenue wise we weren't ready to be where we were Kyle's business has grown very quickly one of the risks of doing that is that the business grows faster than the leader ability to change their skills and their experience and sometimes hiring a whole bunch of people can put a lot of stress on the business simply because the owner hasn't developed the skills necessary to effectively manage all those people there was like literally like $11,000 in the bank account to go into spring where it's like I'm hiring guys training guys fixing equipment starting all this work without getting paid there was no money in the account I had a line of credit that was like almost completely tapped out already I was like I don't know how I'm going to make payroll I don't know how I'm going to pay for gas for materials like we went almost like 3 months without a paycheck and and you know with two kids at home we had a little bit of money saved up but we had just bought a house and so you know we were on our own we had lots of bills to pay and it was really hard you know and it was like you know is this even worth it like you know I can't even pay the bills for my own stuff it's like why am I doing this business where I can just go get a stable job that I know the paycheck's going to come in and so then this year we like really did not focus on growth we really just kind of like T tried to tighten things up which you did successfully like it's profitable we got our profits back on track and so we're ready to grow next year Kyle was able to make the business profitable this year reset and get it back on track after a very unprofitable year last year when he tried to scale up the business however working 70 80 hours per week out in the field is not sustainable and it's not going to lead to the type of life he wants in terms of at home or in the business I'm feeling like we're finally growing this company to a place where I can be the man at home home that I want to be as well as the man in the business Kyle's biggest problem right now is that during the slow periods of the year when the seasonality of this industry catches up with him he can't keep his crew busy they end up leaving and all of that hard work trying to train them up goes out the window we have to figure out a way to keep the leads more consistent even when the slower season [Music] comes what level of projects do you do right now we've so we've done like fences and decks and like retaining walls but like part of the problem is I have to be so Hands-On with that which is you know in the summertime isn't as bad cuz there's not as much leads and customer service to manage but we just didn't end up getting any this year so most of your projects now most like softscaping planting okay okay okay cool cuz like a lot of that usually can be pushed off a little bit of ways and like the the guys who do hardscaping only are typically months booked out and so what you can typically do is like during April May June is s like spring rush for mowing yeah then it's like okay we're just going to book every single project starting in July and then yes that means that at the beginning of Spring we could potentially booked out two and a half three months but then it becomes a month month and a half not so bad people are willing to wait yeah and then what you do is like then you can focus on mowing when like the leads are coming in heavy you're able to grow and expand but then fill the schedule for summer using all those project leads it's also a great way to close the deal because like hey man we're booked out like 2 months you better get on the schu cuz we're booked all the way out to Summer like oh yeah okay great yeah things so we have to wait but let's just do it you [Music] know the biggest way we solve the summer issue is through one click estim emails cuz then what you can do is you can just be like I'm going to pitch one service every month of Summer and I just know I can fill the schedule you probably have what like at least a couple thousand people in your database I'd imagine yeah yeah like you send out one click estimate you're going to get 10 15 20 leads yeah and they're all free and they're all warm cuz you worked for them before I think that'd be huge for the summer part and then what you can do is use that same the email links for winter Services when you're going like when you send out the email saying hey winter Services coming up now you're that button is actually to opt them out of winter services so they don't have to email you they're not calling you it's like hey if you don't want this and he just want us to come back next spring click on this button they click on the button it's like okay great let's take them off of winter services and we'll just let them carry on mowing next spring again yeah I I'd really really recommend that yeah yeah because like summer is brutal because like you higher up during spring and then you like all of a sudden get us a l of work and you either let guys go or become extremely inefficient yeah you got to fill in the seasonality of like winter and summer with these two other like demand curves of spring and fall yeah and so the only way to do that is to use one click estimate emails to like get more leads during those times and then winter services for winter to try to keep the recurring revenue and then you just then you just train your new new new customers like hey this is a part of what we do it's just like we mow and then we switch to bi-weekly during the winter it seems like employee retention is a big problem for Kyle and the business and unless you offer Seasonal Services like Leaf cleanup or holiday lighting or even snow plowing during the winter a lot of people in the green industry of lawn care and Landscaping do have to lay off employees throughout those slower seasons and then what happens is when you're on the property you get other jobs cuz like you do the winter service it only covers the amount of time that you would typically mow so if you're there for 30 minutes like half a budget hour you're still going to be there for half a budget hour you're go through the checklist of you know 10 different things and number one could be like mow if needed so if the GU show up it's like oh this one still needs mowing the first week of December they just go ahead and mow it that's part of the winter service okay and then you just then you just train your new new customers like hey this is like part of what we do it's just like we mow and then we switch to bi-weekly during the winter right and then they then sometimes the part that has to be a little educated well is like why why don't you get all the stuff done on the checklist it's like hey we just get done what we can in budgeted hours so we're going to start at number one and the crew is just train like hey when you get out of the job and you click Start it's like keep an eye on that time because that is what we're going off of and when it hits zero like you're out and just make a note of where you got on the checklist you can have a whole list and be like I'm getting all this for 50 bucks yeah that's a great deal however Kyle's problem is the fact that when he lays them off they never come back and it's very difficult to really grow during the spring rush if every single winter your entire crew doesn't come back to work and you you say like no one really ever comes back in Spring after hiring them in Fall yeah we had we had one guy come back last year other than Jesse obviously right Jess's come back every year the reason I say is cuz like there if you have PP and they're able to make four five $6 dollars more per hour than they would if they work at Amon or someplace other you know during the winter they do come back yeah right and so like as soon as once we did P repeat and then we said hey guys you know some Winter's coming up starting December 1st you're going to be laid off you have a guaranteed spot to come back here Fe February 15th but then they have like a guaranteed start time and then they know they can make more money and when we did that we almost have everyone come back the big thing that you don't want to do is like Hey guys you're we're laying you off well like then they're going to go make plans they're going to go get long-term jobs they're going to potentially Move versus being like hey you're making 25 26 bucks an hour on P forp you're going to go make 18 or 19 at Amazon during the winter uh you can come back though this day and they have it more scheduled I definitely think that implementing P forp pay for performance Kyle's going to be able to have a much better chance of bringing back employees when the spring picks back up however I think that's not the only fix because I'm starting to feel like there might be some issues with leadership that's causing these retention problems during this past spring did you just feel like sort of like scattered throughout the day cuz you had to be in the field and doing all the admin stuff and train all the guys or was it like everything went pretty smoothly just like during the summer everyone's left I was by myself so I didn't train anybody and Jesse is I full confidence that he can bring a guy on and train him Jesse is the leading Revenue producer on the team however he's also responsible for training all of the new hires and I consistently see this coming up and that is the fact that because of all these new team members being added suddenly it slowed down the revenue of the business because Jesse who was producing all the revenue all of a sudden was busy trying to handle all these new team members they've got to have a better onboarding process and training process if they're expecting to hire five six or seven more employees next spring one of the big things is just getting stuff in my brain onto paper so that we can make it a system because really every like I'm still learning the things that I do that I don't even notice it was just a guy that he really would never go do a job by himself if somebody was sick you know and so I was bringing in random guys to go with him and kind of just catering to everything that he needed so that the projects would get done we actually just recently let this guy go um but I was training him and like I I was genuinely voicing to him I was like there is a lot of stuff that's in my head that I need to get to your head but I don't I don't know how to word it we were sending out three guys to do a job that take one person a full day and they still taking a full day that kind of stuff what Kyle and Jesse need is a checklist of exactly what they expect a new hire to accomplish over the first 2 weeks of employment and then on the back we got a trainer checklist that can actually assess the productivity and efficiency of each one of those skills and if you don't hit the checklist if you don't make it in the first 2 weeks you're out of here I Know What You Did you pushed pause to see what was on this postcard don't worry about it go to longare media.com / cobs and when you check out use the coupon code cobs to get this completely free you can download this and edit it for yourself I feel like the leadership and communication issues between Kyle and Jesse are really damaging the business lack of training can cause mistakes inefficiencies and if it's left long enough it can actually create accidents in the business and put people's lives and their health at risk it was Casey he was on the highway they had just done a cleanup at a property where there was like a ton of random field rocks in the property and they just want them all hauled out and so I did not tell him wait a second is Kyle or Jesse doing the training how to properly balance the weight of the dump trailer where you need 60% on this side of the axle and 40% on the back he had all the weight on the back and it blew the rear tire on the trailer and they spun out going 60 MPH on the highway smashed into the the toolbox there smashed into here and they went into the ditch and luckily by the grace of God you know no one was hurt they did not touch any other vehicles they themselves just kind of slid into the ditch and were okay so it was it was a horrifying wakeup call I was pretty scatterbrained as far as I just always felt like am I missing things are there emails and calls that I missed and texts and just you know all the things going on inside my brain he was just doing everything like he was was doing admin sales Ops everything and I was just here to work and get a paycheck you know for a while it felt like he was just another employee there were times where I would get message from customer I would relay it to him and he would be getting so many texts so many emails my text just flew by the wayside and then the next week would come and I would get to that same customer and they would be like hey you didn't do this and they would be shooting the messenger because like I didn't have the capability to change it and it just simply flew under the radar there were a lot of times where I would I would just be on on the front lines and be getting the complaints from the customer just because our communication wasn't connecting through we were working together in the business and then we kind of separated it's like he's in the business I'm on the business and then there was like a little bit of budding of heads because he's working super long hours and so am I and we're tired and you know things are coming up and I'm making mistakes that are costing him extra time throughout the day or vice versa and then it's like but now soon he'll come up and we'll be working on the business together and and I really look forward to that when we were both working really hard there were there were some real challenges you know like the business was demanding a lot of me plus my kids were demanding a lot of me and you know so there was just frustrations and you know we would end up yelling at each other just because you know our we were just getting our frustrations out what are my expectations for Kyle if my expectations are like I need him to always answer me but not I'm not knowing all of the other things that he's doing my expectations for him are so unfair if I'm just leaving the bar for him up here to not reach like he's if he's unable to reach that then that's just unfair for him and like expectations are so much because when they're not reached that's when you get frustrated look going into business with family can be tough you know them well you trust them so a lot of times they're an easy business partner to get started with however if you can't communicate effectively it's going to cause some serious issues and Kyle and Jesse's lack of communication and sort of tripping over each other in the different roles of the business is going to absolutely hurt the business and and it's also possibly going to hurt the people that are working for them I hate to bring guys on just to let them go in the summer and it's hard to bring people on in the spring and train them in the spring when there's so many other things to do yeah like we actually tried a couple weeks ago we had a guy I brought him in for about a month hoping you know like I told him I was like I don't have a lot of hours for you but my hope is to train you now while we have plenty of time to get you ready to go in the spring and it didn't end up working out we had to let him go the guy that we just recently let go um like it it was a really hard decision to let him go because he like he moved to Cincinnati from Indianapolis because like four years ago his mom died eight months ago his brother died and his dad's a truck driver so his dad's like all over the country never really home and so and he's he's like 43 and had kids that moved away and doesn't have his significant other anymore and so just genuinely didn't have anyone and so he moved to Cincinnati and found us and we hired him and like I was working with him every day and he after every single day was like I love you like a brother man like you genuinely mean a lot to me it was it was growing on me because he was an he was an awesome guy would always work hard loved his job cared about it and like genuinely loved me because he was just like I like I love you you and Kyle are my brothers now and this job is all that I have and he he went away came back and texted me sent a picture of like his eye was swollen his knee was swollen and I think he got like into a fight or something it just seemed like so much of his personal life was weighing on him and like he we would be in the truck and there would be days where he's crying and like today's just a hard day man I'm just thinking about my brother it just affected him so much that he wasn't he wasn't able to learn things that I was trying to teach him and like after the fourth fifth sixth time that I would try and nail it into him it still wouldn't be there and honestly probably just from thinking about so much probably just hasn't healed and hasn't had time to heal time to be by himself and process it rather than just moving on moving away from it cobs Lawn Care soon to be flourish Lawn Care can absolutely turn the business around in order to avoid the mistakes they made last year when they tried to grow and everything came falling down and they were completely unprofitable with no money in the bank to avoid that they need to do just a few things one they need to make sure that they train their new team members and get them efficient quickly number two they've got to do a better job of marketing to their existing clients during the winter months and during the summer when things slow down to ensure that they keep enough leads coming in to keep their crew busy so they don't all leave and number three they've got to Institute pay for performance so that when the crew does leave during the winter months they want to come back because they're getting paid for5 $6 more per hour that's the key to the success and I look forward to seeing what flourish long care will do in the future I can tell you one thing it's going to flourish

Channel: Mike Andes

Views: 48,770

Keywords: mike andes, business, lawn care millionaire, lawn care business, landscaping business, business turnaround, the profit, saving a failing business, winter services, start a lawncare business, training employees, pay for performance, p4p, copilot, best crm software, augusta, make money mowing, cobbs care, cincinnati, getting more leads, retaining employees, firing employee, home service business, free stuff, training strategy, mowing lawns, business drama, business fail

Id: ut_553BjpY8

Length: 19min 25sec (1165 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 22 2023