Starting (and Fastlaning) a lawn care service business

[Johnny boy]

Sending out a 1m/yr bid tonight

National memorial cemetery 100 acres

Listening to ‘Party in the USA’

LFG boys

 

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[freek]

Amazing thread. Really showed the importance of systems, thinking bigger and working on the business instead of in the business, thank you!

 

[jclean]

@Johnny boy Thanks for this thread ! In the meantime, are there any more gold nuggets you can share with us ?

 

[Bilgefisher]

Spent a bit to much time reading this thread, but was well worth it. Congrats on the hard thoughtful work to get to where you are today. I wish the best for the future.

 

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[Johnny boy]

View attachment 487ced61f8ce49da8e7a206ac33c8d74.mov

 

[jclean]

View attachment 53232

Beautiful place ! A good way to clear your head

 

[Johnny boy]

Beautiful place ! A good way to clear your head

Love living here haha

 

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[Johnny boy]

Need to invent a word for the exact opposite of synergy, where everyone is more efficient and profitable when working alone.

One guy can go knock out 7 jobs.
Two guys working together can definitely not do 14 as easily.
They might be able to mow twice as fast, but they cannot drive around twice as fast.

Disynergy?

Today being april fools, we are going to call some old collections accounts and tell them they don't owe us any more money and we aren't actually going to sue them and then we are going to tell them april fools and give them their demand letters.

 

[Black_Dragon43]

Today being april fools, we are going to call some old collections accounts and tell them they don't owe us any more money and we aren't actually going to sue them and then we are going to tell them april fools and give them their demand letters.

The money you get from those people is the best money ever. Their expression when they see they can't get away with scamming you is priceless. One time I've had a guy break down in tears on the phone. Got all the money back AND delay penalties worth $1,800.

 

[jclean]

One guy can go knock out 7 jobs.
Two guys working together can definitely not do 14 as easily.
They might be able to mow twice as fast, but they cannot drive around twice as fast

This is the exact reason why we bought a van separately for each employee.

We tested this and
the efficiency of an employee working alone vs working with two is up to 40% higher.

 

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[Johnny boy]

This is the exact reason why we bought a van separately for each employee.

We tested this and
the efficiency of an employee working alone vs working with two is up to 40% higher.

EXACTLY

2 guys working together: 10 properties or 5 per person

1 guy alone: 7 per person.

7/5 is 40% higher.

If profits were 30%, and for every $10 we were profiting $3. We would be bringing in $14 and spending $7 still.

So you are now profiting $7 instead of $3. That’s a 133% bump to profits.

If your company sells at a 5x multiple. You just increased the value of your company a huge amount. A company making 200k a year that would sell for 1M, is now making 460k and worth 2.3M.

 

[BlueMonday]

Man. I've read through this thread a few times now. What kind of props can I give that haven't already been said?

One thing that really stood out to me, among all the other diamonds in this thread, is that your ability to cut through the bullshit and solve problems is unmatched. You started this thing at a time when everyone (not on this forum, just the world at large) was convinced that the sky was falling. I don't recall you doing any macroeconomic navel gazing during what was one of the most demoralizing periods of our time. You stayed focused on your lane and killed it despite all of the noise out there. Much respect dude.

 

[Johnny boy]

Man. I've read through this thread a few times now. What kind of props can I give that haven't already been said?

One thing that really stood out to me, among all the other diamonds in this thread, is that your ability to cut through the bullshit and solve problems is unmatched. You started this thing at a time when everyone (not on this forum, just the world at large) was convinced that the sky was falling. I don't recall you doing any macroeconomic navel gazing during what was one of the most demoralizing periods of our time. You stayed focused on your lane and killed it despite all of the noise out there. Much respect dude.

Thanks G

The only thing that changed during Covid was I bought more guns and fake vax cards

 

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[BlueMonday]

Thanks G

The only thing that changed during Covid was I bought more guns and fake vax cards

View attachment 55571

Mah man. Mirin' that trio.

 

[Johnny boy]

OK. First off, the most important thing not to do is weeding. Your employees will hate it, you will hate it (it will take forever to do correctly, more money out of your pocket), and lastly, there's no good way to price it aside from hourly work. It is just a really difficult thing to gauge how much work will be necessary to complete it.

The second things that you want to avoid are those overly crazy people who need their lawn "just so." If you come across someone like this, avoid the headache and just politely decline or something. Also insurance comes into play here, if the property is wealthy be sure not to break anything, it's risky man. Up to you though, some people like working until it looks perfect, if your workers are like that, more power to ya!

Years later and in multiple states with workers, managers, salespeople, office workers, and even to this day these words play in my head. I remember when you first wrote this and I still think about it.

Any weed control is done by weed whacking, raking it up, and spraying. Minimal weeding like being down on hands and knees pulling it. No time for that crap.

80/20.

 

[MattR82]

Need to invent a word for the exact opposite of synergy, where everyone is more efficient and profitable when working alone.

One guy can go knock out 7 jobs.
Two guys working together can definitely not do 14 as easily.
They might be able to mow twice as fast, but they cannot drive around twice as fast.

Disynergy?

Today being april fools, we are going to call some old collections accounts and tell them they don't owe us any more money and we aren't actually going to sue them and then we are going to tell them april fools and give them their demand letters.

Travel is the God damn margin killer.

 

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[Johnny boy]

We have an answering service that answers calls and takes notes if our office can't get to the phone.

We have some FREQUENT FLIERS lol.

Damn boomers.

I downloaded a call log.

Uploaded it to chat GPT: "tell me who calls the most"



*goes to ringcentral

*create custom rule: if phone number = (insert list of numbers), only send to our one office admin, no connecting to answering service

we have 3k calls so far for every single lead, inquiry, outbound call to leads, follow up, customer service. There's over a thousand unique numbers in our system from calls for this year.

These people add up to over 10% of the number of calls. Just 15.

 

[Bounce Back]

We have an answering service that answers calls and takes notes if our office can't get to the phone.

We have some FREQUENT FLIERS lol.

Damn boomers.

I downloaded a call log.

Uploaded it to chat GPT: "tell me who calls the most"

View attachment 55704

*goes to ringcentral

*create custom rule: if phone number = (insert list of numbers), only send to our one office admin, no connecting to answering service

we have 3k calls so far for every single lead, inquiry, outbound call to leads, follow up, customer service. There's over a thousand unique numbers in our system from calls for this year.

These people add up to over 10% of the number of calls. Just 15.

If I am understanding correctly why not just drop / raise prices on those top 15 calling customers - surely the cost of employee time on phone and added stress isn't worth it with lawn margins? But I think I misunderstood if you are giving them special treatment to go straight to the office admin.

 

[Johnny boy]

If I am understanding correctly why not just drop / raise prices on those top 15 calling customers - surely the cost of employee time on phone and added stress isn't worth it with lawn margins? But I think I misunderstood if you are giving them special treatment to go straight to the office admin.

It goes straight to the office guy automatically, but if hes busy, it forwards them to our $/min answering service. Instead these nerds will just get voicemail.

 

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[Bigguns50]

Still following and lovin' this thread @Johnny boy !

I'm starting a new business and the goal is to franchise. This will involve doing business in states other than where I live. You do the same in your business. If you can say, did you register an LLC, then when you branched into other states, apply as a "foreign entity" in the states you expanded into? Or did you incorporate it? Or something else?

 

[Johnny boy]

Still following and lovin' this thread @Johnny boy !

I'm starting a new business and the goal is to franchise. This will involve doing business in states other than where I live. You do the same in your business. If you can say, did you register an LLC, then when you branched into other states, apply as a "foreign entity" in the states you expanded into? Or did you incorporate it? Or something else?

Franchising is a specific, precise, legally defined term with an entire metric F*ck-ton of regulations, requirements, and penalties for any non compliance. And the thing about regulations is they don’t care about your intentions. They have highly paid dorks in offices who’s only job is to give a giant pimp slap to anyone who dares not cross every t and dot every i.

I can be a corporate advisor for your franchising desires but most of the advice will be all the reasons you don’t actually have to and how you can usually accomplish your goals and make more money without it, and have more freedom.

You will still need a law firm to handle things for you. It depends on your state and your goals. I’ve read thousands and thousands of dense rules and laws about this.

 

[Bigguns50]

Franchising is a specific, precise, legally defined term with an entire metric F*ck-ton of regulations, requirements, and penalties for any non compliance. And the thing about regulations is they don’t care about your intentions. They have highly paid dorks in offices who’s only job is to give a giant pimp slap to anyone who dares not cross every t and dot every i.

I can be a corporate advisor for your franchising desires but most of the advice will be all the reasons you don’t actually have to and how you can usually accomplish your goals and make more money without it, and have more freedom.

You will still need a law firm to handle things for you. It depends on your state and your goals. I’ve read thousands and thousands of dense rules and laws about this.

Got it! Thanks for your input. I look at business as a game. I must know how it's played, the rules, the politics, and the competition. From there, I choose to play or not to play.

 

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[Johnny boy]

Got it! Thanks for your input. I look at business as a game. I must know how it's played, the rules, the politics, and the competition. From there, I choose to play or not to play.

Ooohhh you sound like a mob boss. Badass. lol

Still following and lovin' this thread @Johnny boy !

I'm starting a new business and the goal is to franchise. This will involve doing business in states other than where I live. You do the same in your business. If you can say, did you register an LLC, then when you branched into other states, apply as a "foreign entity" in the states you expanded into? Or did you incorporate it? Or something else?

To answer your question specifically,

We have a corporation in Delaware as the franchise corporate entity.

It owns each location. Each location is its own LLC and is registered where it does business.

That way each company is “manager managed” by a private company in Delaware with no public info.

This is for privacy, compartmentalization, control, etc.

This is not necessary.

I just have a thing about doing things my way, which is probably unproductive.

You can just have a single entity, apply as a foreign entity in whichever state you want to operate in.

And then when you want to franchise you discuss the details with a franchise law firm and pay them $30k to help.