at 21 he's landing $100,000 landscaping job after landscaping job

We're down here at the 10X Growth Conference in Miami. And how did you learn how to do the actual hardscaping and bid and estimate everything? Mainly through Dirt Monkey University. And we're going to get I'm going to ask him very detailed questions in this interview. So, I do a majority of the work and then whatever I can't do, whatever specialized, I will have subcontractors help out. You did about 650 grand last year. Correct. Yeah. You wanted to do a million, but you broke your hand. Hold your hand up. Prior to the bidding and estimating course, I would have been scared getting into this big of job, but because I had this course and and I'm able to break down everything and know that I'm making money in each area, it's taken all the pressure off my shoulders. I know that I'm going to make money regardless and I know that I'm bidding the job right. All right, you guys. Today you're going to meet a guy named Joseph, who's a young entrepreneur. He's just 21 years old and last year he was working entirely by himself and this year he's got six guys on his company and he just landed his first $100,000 job. My buddy Keith Kalfus from The Landscape Employee Trap is going to be interviewing him and finding out exactly what it took to get to that point. So, without wasting any more time, let's go to Miami with Keith and Joseph. All right, thanks so much Stan. We're down here at the 10X Growth Conference in Miami and I'm here with Joseph Manno. This guy's a landscaper who closed a $100,000 job, a landscaping job while we're down here. Did 650,000 last year in his business. This year he's shooting for a million and he's 21. Bro, I got to interview you and ask you about this. We're at Grant Cardone, we're learning a ton of awesome stuff, but you learned specifically inside of DMU, but you just closed a $100,000 job all right, while you're down here. Talk about the details of that and how you got it running up to that point to where now you're doing this and the confidence to take on these type of jobs. How do you know how to bid and estimate them and then how are you actually executing and getting the jobs done? Okay, so that job specifically, I found it was a it was a job at a local school. I got a hold of the bid documents, every document that I needed, I broke it down to the simplest of items, material cost of goods sold, overhead and I broke everything down just as they taught us in in the Dirt Monkey and that really simplified things and made it so I was able to bid such a large job not having the experience of that doing that before. All right, bro. So, you started off solo like everybody. How many guys you got working for you now? Six last year. It's going to be seven this year. So, you got subcontractors working for you? Yeah, as much as two throughout the winter and then over the summer it bumps up to three to four per job depending on how large of a job it is. So, my subcontractor base, they're all very good subs so they know how to do everything themselves. I usually don't have to baby sit them. I give them a set of tasks to get done and they get it done on time almost every time. Prior to this, the variety and the amount of equipment we used, it was all just renting. Now it's to the point that we could start buying now that we know exactly what we're going to be using and how much we're going to be using it. Okay, so what skid loader did you buy? Kubota SSV 75. Yeah, I got two. I got an F350 and F450 Ford 67s. And then where do you park all your equipment? And we're going to get I'm going to ask him very deep detailed questions in this interview cuz I want I want the meat and potatoes, man. I don't want no general BS, I want the meat and potatoes. Yeah, I got like a little shop that I keep all my stuff parked at, all my equipment in there and all that. How much you pay a month for the shop? 600 bucks right now. Okay, and then the shop has an office attached to it? Correct. Okay. hope to be buying that. Right now I'm just renting it, and I hope to be buying it in the near future. Is your business an LLC or S corp or what is LLC. Mhm. You got insurance and all that? Yeah. Yep. And then so the money from these jobs you put it right in your your business account and then you pay all your labor, you got everything thing nice and organized. I saw his Excel spreadsheet so far of how he tracks everything and that's one of many things you're tracking, but it was like very organized. I was very impressed. But how are you tracking all the money? Are you using a CRM? How are you tracking your business? What are you doing? Quickbooks. And then that's automatically with my bank feeds sent right to there. That automatically categorizes and sorts everything for me. And then are you going on Quickbooks late at night and and doing your paperwork? Yeah, from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., maybe even later I'm working. Out in the field where we work four 10s usually, so that's from 6:00 to you know, whenever it gets dark usually. And then anything beyond that I'm in the office. So this $100,000 job that you're just closed, you just have to get the signature when we get back from Miami or what is it? Yeah, I get back, I sign the contract and then we start it in spring. And then what does the job consist of? A lot of work around a school building, wall work, demolition of the existing wall and then reconstructing a new wall. I'm going to be doing a majority of it and then I'm going to have a sub there along with me. Are you actually personally physically moving the blocks or supervising? So I'm supervising, handle a lot of that, yeah. Um I have foremen though, they take care of it, but obviously Mhm. someone needs to see oversee them as well. Then you being 21, the whole mommy daddy giving you something or something being handed to you, what have you had handed to you? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Nothing? My dad bought me a lot when I was younger. Yeah? Yeah. That's cool. That's a perfect fit. What's given you like the consciousness at the age of 21? Cuz when I was 21, I mean all I cared about was I remember. I was cutting grass, trying to impress girls or something. I don't know what I was doing. To be this conscious at 21 where you can actually handle a business and everything and all the responsibility that comes with it without having any type of meltdown. Cuz you like how how is your brain so tuned and so strong to deal with this amount of pressure? In part. I don't know. even see it like that. It sounds like you don't even see it as a lot of pressure, do you? No, I like the pressure does come and it does hit you in waves, but I don't know. I always get through it. You know what I like about him? He seems to have like a very just objectified. He just looks at it from an objective mindset. You're not Do you ever get caught up in in anxiety when you're in the middle of a huge job or something things are blowing up and going the wrong way? Do you ever start getting like on the hook? Oh, yeah. We've had jobs that that I wanted to walk off the job. And actually on that specific job DMU the people of the Facebook group were the ones that convinced me to stay on that job and finish it and uh and not walk off and you know, it ended up sucking, but it was it was for the better. This is going to sound a little counterintuitive, but you don't walk off on a job even if it's not going the way you want it. Because it's a slippery slope, you guys. Once you walk off on a job, it kind of sets the stage for you to walk off on future projects, screw over suppliers, and just create a bad reputation for yourself and for your company. But by manning up and staying on that job, it sets a precedence that you will do it time and time again, and that creates amazing word of mouth, and that goes a long way. But I did get it done. Got it done right away. You've made money, you've lost money, tons of learning lessons. Correct. But my main question to you, and we're going to drive deeper and deeper. I want this to be as, you know, nuts and bolts, too. What I'm sensing is yesterday you said YOLO. Right. Yeah. You only live once. So, you're not afraid to pull the trigger and take on jobs, or you've worked your way up to that point. All right, this is driving Keith insane. I can tell it's driving. He really wants to know exactly detail per detail, exactly what Joseph did to land this job. And I want to help Keith get over this because on a giant job like this, it's like the saying, "How do you eat an elephant?" It's one bite at a time. And what Joseph did was he took this massive project and he broke it down into its basic components. And then he priced out each component. That's how we teach you to Dirt Monkey University. We don't want to turn these massive projects into complicated things. We want to make them very simple so that during every step of the job, you should know exactly how much time you need to finish that job. But you more importantly, you're going to know exactly how much money you're going to make once you've completed that portion of the project. Uh so, I'm at the point now where I'm taking on as much as I can. So, what's like the the biggest job you've taken on or what's taken you the longest amount of time? Last year, the biggest job I had was about a $100,000 brush clearing job. It took about a month, and that was just uh running the skid steer and and a couple other pieces of equipment, some hand machine. And we're going through it and clearing anything under 3 in. So, every single day you're just banging out as much as you could and clearing off the property. Yeah, me personally, I was working way overtime. So, you've done a whole bunch of jobs. You do retaining walls, construction, demolition. Yeah. Yeah, we've we've demoed a few buildings. Um we haven't really gone into that very much. A lot of what we did was retaining walls last year. This year we're going to be starting to get into a little more of the heavy construction end of things, earthwork, uh, forestry work, utilities, that sort of stuff. So, you said with six You did about 650 grand last year? Correct. Yeah. And uh, you wanted to do a million, but you broke your hand. Hold your hand up. I was loading my trailer up with some brush, and I was pushing it as far as I could trying to get the most capacity out of the trailer. Walk-behind skid steer, I guess you could call it, rolled back on me, and uh, I had grapple on there, and one of the safety bars landed and went through my wrist and shattered all the bones, and then one of the bars on the grapple itself actually hit my head and pinned my head to the ground. Is your head okay? Yeah. Yeah, one of my employees was there working along with me, luckily, and uh, he ran up, and he grabbed the the Dingo itself, flipped it off, and uh, he drove me to the hospital. And I had a little brain bleed or whatever, but it fixed itself. I'm glad you're okay. And you Can you move your hand now? Yeah. Full mobility. Full mobility. Wow. You had to get surgery and pins and everything. Yeah, they got physical therapists as well. So, how are you marketing? How are you getting these jobs? The government work that I do is all it's all public bid. So, you go on the public website, and you just start bidding on it? Yeah, there's there's websites there. You can You can email engineers. Um, you can go around to that. All right, you guys, there's a lot of resources to get involved in these big projects if that's something that you want to pursue. The first thing that you can do is literally just go to the offices of general contractors. The bigger the general contractor, the more they typically are hurting for subcontractors. You guys, subcontractors like you, like me, we are in high demand. Contractors just need to to that we're out there. So, you can write up an introductory letter, give it to the general contract, and while you're at their office, a lot of them have a plan room. They have a place where you can go to one room, they've got all these plans laid out, and you can take a roll of plan a set of plans out, take a look at it, and you can bid to them. That's an easy way to get your foot in the door. And what happens is after they've received one bid from you, they put you into their system. So, anytime they have a job coming up, and whether you're bidding hardscaping or paving, retaining walls, or tree work, they're going to call you. I get calls all the time. Hey, will you bid this? Will you bid that? I get emails, calls, I even still get faxes. Some of them still work by faxes, you guys. But, there's a ton of ability to connect with the companies directly that are looking to get those numbers. That's another great resource for you guys. The residential stuff that I do is almost all word of mouth or on sites such as Porch. Now, what about marketing? Are you actively marketing your business? I don't do very much marketing. Okay, so what about leads and the referrals? Are you getting referral work? Oh, yeah. Yeah, all the time. And you said your closing rate is you get almost every job you bid on? Last year, there was one job I did not get, and that possibly might have been because they didn't have the money. I didn't I don't know. Wasn't able to get that one, but every other job I was able to get as long as the demand was there, I sold the job. So, what's your closing rate? Over 90%. Okay, and how many jobs do you do a month? Do you know your average ticket the size of the job. You know, it's all over the place. This job that we just got, it's going to be a month-long project, three three to four weeks. Um the typical retaining wall we have done in less than two weeks. How is your closing rate so high? I want to know what's happening in the transition or the qualifying process. How do these customers trust you to do the work? Through education. when I sit down with a client, I lay out books, I will lay out information, I lay out why their existing retaining wall failed if they have one now. Um you know, and and I educate the client to the point that they trust me and they know that I know what I'm talking about. Educating your customers is easily one of the best ways to get to improve your close ratio because it does a number of things. It actually makes a stronger bond or a connection between you and your customer. When we're talking about hardscaping or anything that takes a certain level of skill, a customer is depending on the contractor to deliver the end product. And the only way they know that they're in good hands is through this gut feeling of confidence. When you educate a customer on what you're going to be doing, how you're going to be doing it, and how long each step of the process go is going to take, you kind of set yourself a way ahead of the next guy that may come in, write some numbers down on a piece of paper, hand it to the customer, and walk away. Although, here's the drawback to educating the customer. It takes a lot longer. You have a lot more of your personal time invested into that customer, but again, that translates into a higher close ratio, and also allows you to charge higher prices on your project because a lot of times the customer does not care about what he's paying as much as the fact that he's in good hands at the end of the day. Are you verbally laying it out, or do you have documentation or Verbally, and then I always bring a binder around with me with about five to six books in it on different material and everything we're we're surrounding retaining walls with and all. stuff from the landscape supplier, or you're bringing a binder of your own that you created? I have some books from the landscape supplier, and then I have some books of my own um documenting different things regarding uh retaining walls. So, you You pictures of the work that you've done. Correct. So you show them this is what we do. Okay. And then I basically have a welcome packet that I leave them there with that overview documents everything that we have done and then everything that surrounds our company. But your insurance policy and all that. Yeah, everything. Smart. So there there you go. That's a huge thing. Who taught you how to do that? All you guys, this next one is going to sound a little bit weird, but on your website, in your documentation, in your initial offering to the customer, your about you page is one of the highest things that gets the longest view time. So on your own personal website, make sure you have a very thorough about you page because that's where customers go to try to get a feel for who they're starting to work with. If you don't have that developed yet, go out and do that next. And also what Joseph is hitting on almost instinctually, is he's bringing enough backup material that makes him look very professional, very organized, and that leaves a good after impression. So when he's gone, the next guy that steps into that role has got to be able to top all of that. He's setting the bar high and that helps to improve his close ratio. How are these customers initially finding out about you when they call you for to do a job? Through referral sites such as Porch or word of mouth? Um you know, one client um brought me three other clients last year alone. Yeah. And you know, as long as I provide quality work, the word seems to get around pretty pretty quick that uh that I'm out there providing that that type of service. Cool. And I want to ask you, how are you finding your subcontractors and then how do you deal with them? Okay, so subcontractors, how many different subcontractors do you have? Two throughout the winter and then throughout the summer I have four to six that that I work with all the Cuz you're doing snow, too. I do a majority of the work and then whatever I can't do, whatever specialized, I will have subcontractors help out. Throughout the winter, I'm doing a job right now. I don't have the trucks or the capacity to handle it all. So, I have my two trucks along with two subcontractors to call in when the the snow really flies. Have you ever had a subcontractor do really amazing to the point where you've uh want them to stay with you? And have you had a subcontractor screw you over and not do what they say they're going to do? Oh, yeah. I've had subcontractors stay with me for the past 3 years. Um contractors that have screwed me over, no. Um I've had general contractors that I've worked with. They've screwed me over, uh screwed me out of money or or something like that. Um other than that, I've had pretty good luck with subcontractors. How could they screw you out of money if you're paying them? Um general contractors have screwed me over. Subcontractors have not. If I was a subcontractor for a general, um I one time they did screw me out of money and I live and I learn from it. Okay. What would be your your profit like your net The job that we're doing now, uh it's a $100,000 job. I'm going to sub out about 40% of it because a lot of the work is more masonry than it is landscaping or hardscaping or excavation. Take 40,000 from that 100,000 and I'm left with 60,000. And then my profit after that is going to be about 20,000, somewhere around there. Cool. About 20%? Yeah. Cool. My cost of goods sold is broke down individually by by my my materials, um my labor, my basically everything that's going to be on the job site, the equipment that I'm going to have on that job. And then the overhead is also included in there, which I have figured out for the entire year. Um and then that's broke down and divided into daily days and added on for each day that I expect to be on that job. And then I also add in my profit, and then the whatever fees or whatever else I might run into on that job itself. So, you're just you're orchestrating all this. You're finding the right people, and you're just doing it. It is going smoothly. Eventually down the road, I would like to to invest in in a secretary or someone that can…