Frank is joined again in the studio today with Brant from All Seasons Lawn Care.  Frank continues his discussion with Brant on the valuable lessons he has learned in his 20 plus years in the business and when to make changes.   You will pick up some inside tips that you can apply to your lawn care business.  This is part 2 of a 2 podcast series.

Lawn Care Frank: 
We’re here today with Brant with All Seasons Land Care and we’re continuing our podcast episode about his journey in the lawn care business. 

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Welcome to the Lawn Care Frank Podcast! Where we help lawn care professionals, like yourself, start and grow their business. By tackling obstacles such as finding customers, hiring talented people, spreading brand awareness, and much much more. And now your host…Lawn Care Frank. 

Frank: 
Fast forward to year 15, you know, you’ve got, tell us, like how many crews you have in year 15 compared to the 2 guys. And how your business has changed from, you know, then and now. Tell us what really impacted that. Was it the fact that you started niching down or was it something else?

Brant: 
In year 15 we were doing landscape installation as well as maintenance. And we were struggling and we started, began to struggle when we couldn’t find people that could do masonry work or landscape installation. Those people were, because the economy was booming and the construction was out there and they were paying a lot more than you’re, you can get or you can pay somebody so anyways that was taking up most of the man power there. And when you realize you can’t personally, you don’t know how to go out and lay stone, you don’t really know how to do a landscape installation. You’ve relied on people or talent that you’ve hired. That is when I realized that I needed to start making changes and again concentrate on what I knew how to do. At that time we were at 4 crews so you know we had one crew that did all the installation and 3 crews that did mostly maintenance. 

Frank:
And so you made that transformation after year 15 where you started niching down or you know you’re probably no longer doing landscaping, probably, maybe subbing that out and kinda niching down. So fast forward to that whatever year that is, year 16th, 17th or whatever you can tell us. When you fast forward to that, tell us a little bit about how the business is now. 

Brant:
Well now I feel like we’re a lot more successful. More profitable. I’m not always stressing to get landscape installs done. They are very hard to scale. So it’s really hard to know how much man power you’re supposed to have. Or keep at all times for doing an install. Cause one install may be a 2 man job. The next one may be a 10 man job. I know that’s a little bit of an exaggeration but you catch my point. But now it’s like I said we’re much more profitable and things run a lot easier and smoother. We just tell people no or we tell people, we refer things out to other people and we don’t have to worry about it anymore. 

Frank: 
So now you’re back to where you’re not doing landscaping. You’re not doing some of the other things that people would request. So tell me exactly what you do do now. 

Brant:
Now we just focus on mowing, cleaning beds, trimming shrubs, flowers, and mulch. 

Frank:
So that would, in our industry we call that lawn mowing and maintenance. Right? Is that….

Brant:
Basic lawn maintenance.

Frank:
Basic lawn maintenance.

Brant:
Basic lawn maintenance. And it’s easy to teach. It’s, you know, anybody can plant a flower, anybody can put down a bag of mulch. Anybody can mow a yard. Anybody can learn to edge and weed eat. 

Frank:
That’s great. So that’s, so you took, and that’s really smart. You didn’t have those talents when it came to landscaping or doing the masonry work. So what you did, which is really smart, you took those things out of the equation. Because you were kind of , you were tired of relying on other people. As you said earlier, those are kinda skills that are a specialty. Right?. Like you can’t just walk down the street and go hey, you want to do some masonry work for me? Oh sure I’d be glad to do some masonry work for you. So those are some of the key people that are a little more difficult, to get than somebody that is gonna just mow and do maintenance kind of work. 

Brant:
Yes, those are talents that take years to craft. I mean nobody wakes up one day and says you know what I want to learn to be a bricklayer. 

Frank:
Right?

Brant:
I mean nobody comes out of college, nobody comes out of high school and says I want to be a bricklayer. I want to be a masoner. They do come out and say they want to learn how to design and to install. But they don’t come out and say they wanna, I just want to go out and plant bushes all day. You know? Put in edging or grade work or sod work. You know those things take years to learn how to do. And if you understand the culture but you physically don’t know how to do it. You know. It’s challenging. You know? Cause you can’t go out and teach someone how to do it. I can’t go show somebody how to lay brick when I personally don’t know how to do it. 

Frank:
Sure

Brant:
I’ve never done it. I mean I’m sure I could do it. We could figure it out. It would not be very productive. 

Frank: 
Alright.

Brant:
Or profitable. 

Frank:
Or pretty?

Brant:
It would be pretty. It would be pretty. 

Frank:
If you started doing masonry work?

Brant:
Yea. It would just. You know. It would take me a year to probably lay a line of stone, so. Or build a footer. 

Frank:
Yeah. So, yea you would definitely lose some money on that deal. Right?

Brant:
Yeah.

Frank: 
Mrs. Jones, I know we quoted you know $2,500 but it cost us $25,000. 

Brant:
And I’ve learned, and since that, I’ve actually learned that the customers are fine with that. You know they don’t mind finding other people. You’re gonna run into those that are oh no I want one person to do it all. But they usually, after they’ve done that, realize that it’s better to have that stuff done individually. 

Frank:
That’s a good point. So, and to elaborate on that point is, you don’t want to run your business based on that one percent, two percent, or even five percent of people who want someone to do everything. One of the things I’ve always said and somebody you know in my past had said hey you should do everything. You should do everything. And I’m like, you know, that’s not for me. I want to niche down and I want a skill. Because when you do one thing and you can do it well. You can really scale that business. And there’s plenty of businesses out there that are not just multi-million but there are billion dollar businesses out there. Trugreen is one of the examples. They do chemical treatments. Their annual revenue is 1.4 billion dollars after they bought Scotts.  So and they pretty much do one thing. They stick to what they’re good at. 

Brant:
Absolutely. You know in fact a guy who was very successful in the Dallas area said don’t go in business thinking that you have to do business with everybody. You know. So it’s ok to say no I just can’t do that. And if they want to find someone else that’s fine. There’s so many other people out there. So many other customers out there. That want and need just what you provide.

Frank:
Absolutely. 

Brant:
Plumbers don’t do electrical work. Electricians don’t do plumbing. I mean you know, there just, our industry has a lot of skilled entities of it. You know you don’t have to do everything in it. 

Frank:
Absolutely. And there’s so many segments in our industry. So, maybe you’re good at the specific thing. So, kinda just stick to that. And if you want to expand you can expand at some point. But, you want to have experts in each area. And a good example is Walmart. Right? I use Walmart as an example. They do everything. But the difference between Walmart and a specialty store is there are a hundred specialty stores within Walmart. So that’s how you have to look at it. They don’t do everything by it self. They have specialty items and departments within that building. Like the jewelry store, the pet store, the automotive store. So they have the managers and the structure and everything in place so it’s really a hundred stores within one. 

Brant:
And that’s correct. If you want to do those things. Wait till you have a huge customer base. And then you bring that in.Then you hire that skilled person and then start from there. But don’t try to build your business with it. Or I feel like that’s where I failed. I feel like that’s held my business back. For years it’s just because I felt like I should do it all. When I should’ve just concentrated on what I knew how to do. And what I could do well. 

Frank: 
So now the, tell me how many years are you into your business where you’ve not taken on like landscaping and you’ve really focused in on the lawn maintenance side of the business. 

Brant:
So 15 years in, so we’re you know we’ve been around 20 years. So after year 15 we you know started to scale that back and moving and getting away from that completely and now over the last 3 years we’ve been a whole lot more successful and a whole lot more profitable. It’s easier to hire people. You know. It’s easier to train them to do what we need them to do. Anybody can come in off the street without even knowing how to start a lawn mower. You know, within 2 weeks we can have that person you know sufficient and mowing and eventually edging and weed eating. And then they can even try to start their own route. Ideally I’d like to try to have people running their own route within 2-3 months. 

Frank:
You’re in year 20 in your business, correct? 

Brant:
Yes

Frank:
So let’s go back. So like 3 years ago that’s really where you started focusing in on just doing the law maintenance side of the business. So where do you see yourself in like 2 years now that you have an idea of how you can start scaling because you’ve niched down. Do you feel like you’re gonna exponentially start growing or you think it’s going to be a slow pace still?

Brant:
No, I think now that we’ve figured this stuff out we have a little bit of tending to do. Man, I think we’re just going to go leaps and bounds now. I mean I, you say year 2. Year 2 I think we should be at 1,000 customers. 600 customers- 1,000 customers. You know and then I think we need to try to be increasing at 20 percent or more every year. That’s because again it’s a really easy process once you get everything figured out. 

Frank:
And that’s great. So, right now if you don’t mind if I ask? You can give us a ballpark number as customers. You don’t have to reveal your exact, you know, numbers. However, you feel comfortable with that. So, tell us you know you do weekly mowings. And you do some bi-weekly and probably some once a month and one-offs. So overall how many customers would you say you have right now. That’s weekly, bi-weekly, some one-offs that call for shrub work and that kind of thing. 

Brant:
So when you say customers you mean customers or some customers have multiple properties so how many doors am I going too or how many customers do I have?

Frank:
That’s a good point.  So, that’s a really good point. So, you have some customers that might have 7 or 8 properties. So how many properties would you say that you maintain? 

Brant:
We service 300 properties a week. 

Frank:
Wow, ok. And some of those properties, are their additional properties that you do biweekly or is that like the sum of it. 

Brant:
That’s the sum of it. There are some bi-weeklys in there as well as some weekly. And there are some of those, and out of those 300 properties some of them that are huge. Some of them could make up the size of 10 properties in a day. You know so, but we service 300 properties or 300 doors a week. 

Frank:
I gotcha. So, 300 properties per week. 

Brant:
Yes

Frank:
That’s awesome. So, tell me a little bit about, and we’re gonna kind of get granular. Tell me a bit about your feelings about weekly vs bi-weekly and what would you say your ratio is now compared to you know 2 years ago or 3 years ago. Are you getting more bi-weeklys or are you turning away bi-weeklys. Just kinda give me your thoughts on that.

Brant:
At this time we are turning away bi-weeklys. We usually start to taking on bi-weeklys in mid, at the first of August. It really starts going to start to slow down and people are going to start to want to go to every other week anyway. So it’s ok to take those on. But this year I decided that I beginning we don’t take any bi-weeklys March 1. For March 1 until August 1, we just don’t do any bi-weekly yards. We don’t take them on and then we take them on again like I said at the 1st of August and we are going to try to convert them then again at the first of March. 

Frank:
Ok. Do you have a reason why you don’t like bi-weeklys? Is it anything in particular?

Brant:
If they are scheduling nightmare. If they call and they want to skip to the next week. You know if you, you have to be really careful not to let your routes get lopsided. You know, let’s say you have you know you have 10 you know, you’re doing 20 yards in that day. You 10 bi-weekly and you have 10 weekly. Then you have 5 of those bi-weekly calling you want to skip to next week. So now that means next week you’ve got 25. Now you have 15 and 25. And so now, you know now it’s hard to scale that. You know, the guys don’t want to work that much longer. You know so when they do call you really have to tell them no I am sorry. We can skip you this week but we’re gonna have to skip you until your next service date. Then we’re gonna have to charge you $45 per man per hour to clean that back up. Other than that or you just let your routes get lopsided. Or you reschedule it and you schedule it again and again they’re just, they are a scheduling nightmare and they want to come out and mow the stuff. They always want you to mow it really low for them. That’s my favorite. Can you please, hey can you mow it shorter so I can get the most out of the mowing. 

Frank:
So, I don’t have to see you for a month next time. You know I am glad you really pointed that out. Because a lot of people don’t think about that. How your route can get lopsided. Because most people think ok so you know a weekly mowing if they skip yea you pick them up next week. Right? That’s ok. It’s not lopsided. Because you were going to mow them anyway. 

Brant:
Correct

Frank:
But when it’s bi-weekly where you’re mowing a customer every 2 weeks and they say hey skip me. You have either a scheduling nightmare where you skip them one week right? And you have a lopsided schedule or they tell you hey skip me 2 weeks and now you haven’t been to that property for a month. Now you’re going up to that property and you are basically walking up to a jungle. I don’t know who does your maintenance of your equipment but does that effect the equipment too?

Brant:
Yea, oh my gosh yes. It’s extremely hard on equipment. That’s why you have to charge more. Because you’re going to abuse, and you’re going to damage, and you’re going to wear out the blades a lot faster and you’re going to wear out the mowers a lot faster. It’s always hard on equipment when you’re mowing excessive grass. 

Frank:
And of course they want it at the same price. Right, they always do, right?

Brant:
Of course. 

Frank:
Whether they mess up your schedule because it’s lopsided or whether they haven’t mowed for a month they obviously want it for the same price because they think it’s the same thing, right? When in reality not only is it bad for your equipment but it also takes your employees a little bit longer. Because maybe they have to double mow it right? So now if you are charging the same amount. You’re really cutting down on your profit. So I’m glad you pointed that out. I’m glad that you, especially about the lopsidedness of the schedule cause most people don’t know. And I don’t know if you’ve ever run into this or not but when I was doing mowing I would have people ask me can you do it every 10 days. 

Brant:
Yea, that’s my favorite one. 

Frank:
Tell us what’s your experience with that?

Brant:
No. Just no. Well again it falls back to the scheduling nightmare. You know, yea you just can’t do that. It’s 7, 14, or 21. But you know when you go to 14 and 21 you’re going to pay more. 

Frank:
Yea, absolutely. And so to some of our listeners that are just brand new into the lawn care business right? Elaborate on why 10 days just doesn’t work. And it doesn’t click until somebody tells you why 10 days doesn’t work. 

Brant:
Because if you mow them Tuesday this week you know it’ll be what Sunday the following or Friday the you know 2 weeks down the road. You know you can’t schedule it efficiently cause again it goes back to your schedule will be lopsided if you allow people to try to do a 10 day or come out every 12 day. You know it’s you just have to stick to 7 or 14. And I guess in some sense you know but  21 but it has to be in 7 days. It has to be in 7 day increments. You cannot go 10 days. You cannot go 3 days, 5 days. Now you can come out twice a week for them if they like.

Frank: 
Yeah for sure. 

Brant:
But you cannot go 10 days. Yea. It has to be 7 days. 

Frank:
Do you have any customers that want you to come out a couple times a week. 

Brant:
I have in the past but it’s not that often that you run across that. They’re usually a really high end client or they really need their property to look perfect at all times. Maybe they’re a business that you know their appearance, their curb appeal is really important you know to their client base. You know again we have ran into that but it’s not something you see very often. 

Frank:
So tell us a little bit about what you would tell the Brant, knowing what you know right now, right? And if Brant was starting his lawn care business today. 

Brant:
I’ll tell you what I would do. It doesn’t mean it would work for you. But I would have bought better equipment right off the bat. I wouldn’t have tried to cheap out on my equipment. Unless you are working with a budget that only allows you to do that. I would have lived in a shoebox and drove a junk vehicle for as long as possible to try to save as much money as possible to keep reinvesting in my business. I would have not done landscaping. I would have just stayed with maintenance. I wish you know, looking back that has held me back so much over the years. I would have just focused on what I knew how to do. Easier to scale. You know I would have probably gotten an office person a lot sooner than I did. I think that’s a really, if you don’t have an answering service. You may have to start off with an answering service, which I highly recommend that you have someone to answer the phone. Rather it be an answering service but that’s probably one of the most important things to get and budget for is somebody to answer your phones for you. 

Frank:
Great great. So, real quick you said something about you and said that you would buy better equipment. Give us a comparison. What does that mean as far as you wouldn’t have bought used or you would have bought a commercial vs residential. You would have bought a trailer or what would you have done differently. 

Brant:
I would not have bought anything used. Especially starting out. You don’t have time to be working on that crap out there. You know you need to be moving. Your production is key. So, I would have bought equipment that would help me be more efficient and productive and do a better job. No, I would not have bought anything used. I would have bought commercial. You know I would have middle of the road best I could buy or afford at the time commercial equipment. 

Frank:
That’s good. That’s important that our listeners hear that. It’s what you can afford right? So, if you can afford the commercial. Get the commercial. If you can’t afford the commercial then obviously a residential mower will do just fine. The important thing is getting the customers and getting that money coming in. Then you can upgrade at a later time. But to your point you definitely don’t want to have down time right? So, you don’t want to go, if you have the money you don’t want to go get the cheapest mower that has 3 wheels right?

Brant: 
Right.

Frank:
And the fourth wheel is about to fall off. So that’s a really good point. So, in closing, do you have anything else you’d like to share?

Brant: 
We can touch on these bi-weeklys for a sec. If you, bi-weeklys are ok. They’re not terrible but I would definitely would charge, if you charge $30 a yard I would charge $45. I would increase it by 15 percent. Other than that I think that’s about it. 

Frank:
Great, well it was a pleasure having you on our podcast today. And again this is Brant with All Seasons Land Care here in the DFW, TX area. I hope everyone has a great day and we’ll see you next time. 

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