How do I get started in Lawn Care? pt#2

you're going into a saturated market with lawn care treat with trimming I want you to find my last question I have I'm a very firm believer and staying local I like to stay local how can I build a strategic alliance with my competitors I don't want my competitors to be my my rivals say if I need help from them I would like to be able to call along and then give me their honest opinion about though so you're gonna find some guys that are responsive to that and you're gonna find some guys that are put off by that in the industry we're going into you're gonna find guys that will help you find your niche and really what you need to do is you're going into a saturated market with lawn care tree with trimming that sort of thing and so what I want you to do is when you I want you to enter that market knowing that there isn't gonna be a big profit margin knowing that you got to start getting your own accounts and things like that but I want you to find needs within that market so I want you to find the needs within that market so that you can expand your services into more lucrative into more profitable areas that still are considered landscaping here I'm going to use an example right now in Minnesota my lawn maintenance division is looking at installing artificial turf in fact I have a call scheduled just today with one of the manufacturers of artificial turf is it's a market that is not being utilized in the Twin Cities there isn't a high demand for it around here's no because we have plenty we can grow grass in the sidewalk literally week we could grow grass in the cracks of a sidewalk but we can't grow grass underneath pine trees and we have tons of pine trees we can't grow grass underneath oak trees and we have lots of oak trees we can't lots of little areas where we can't grow grass Lance and those are people that are still the question coming up hey I want to grow grass how do I do it well then I have a solution artificial turf we can install that so I'm looking at doing that and what I'm asking you to do is keep the door open to other possibilities other opportunities and when you go out and meet with a few of the business owners that are open to you or starting your business and they may take you under the wing a little bit they may help you out you also they may also offer you advice on areas that you can go off into and they may not be trying to push you into something they may see an opening they're just not interested in do it they may know that so I want you to take that opportunity is never lost someone always finds it lanced and I want that to be you so yes reach out to every business owner let them know what you're doing how you're getting started you may find a local mentor you may find ok man the squeaky wheel gets three no the squeaky wheel gets grease Lance the squeaky wheel gets grease you're gonna find guys they're gonna be like oh nothing to do with you and other guys gonna be like that's really cool I really admire what you're doing let's talk yeah we have I live in between Virginia Tech and Radford University so there is really large lawn care companies and a lot of them they focus more on the HOA the apartment complexes and the student housing complexes and everything like that and there is a lot of the population around here is with elders elderly people where do they Lance where do the elderly people go do they go to the bingo hall do you have a bingo hall okay I'm being literal find out where they hang out there's got to be a community center there's got to be activities there's got to be different churches where they go that's your customer base you just said it yourself that's gonna be your customer base you go where they are and you spread your cards you become like a politician you learn to network you learn to get over you're shy awkward Ness because we're all shiny awkward I don't care who you are I still AM I go to meetings Lance and I feel like oh my god I got grit my teeth and I gotta do this because it's part of the job and you start shaking hands you let people know who you are and you have a warm friendly smile and you learn to be purr in a ball and you're gonna learn you're gonna get business that way it's huge man people are gonna love Lance Shepherd literally that's what you want that's how you get your business started and they're gonna tell their friends and they're gonna tell their friends and you're gonna have a niche because those big-box stores are hanging out at the HOAs and the associations they may not even want to service the individual lawns that's where you can pick them up you know I'm thinking maybe if I got in was someone good with one of the larger lawn care companies that just asked them hey if you guys come across there's any one context you about just a solo yard if you guys don't pick it up would you call me recommend me first you got to give them a reason to do that Lance you got to give to get you got to give to get sometimes it's just a matter of taking them out to the lunch sometimes it's a little bit more but I give tons of job leads out to contractors tons thousands of dollars a year thousands and thousands of dollars a year affect the end of end of the fall I think I gave out a ten or fifteen thousand dollar landscaping job to one of my competitors but any time I'm short-handed he he says hey you know what I got a guy do you need help ploughing yeah I need help plowing he lines guys up for me he's giving because he knows he's gonna get in return what can you give to those companies Lance when you start giving some of them are gonna be responsive some are so if you see if you're giving and it's a one-sided street forget it go on to the next guy right don't keep giving to somebody if you don't ever get anything in return you got to learn and they should learn because you don't want to do that kind of person anyway but I'll tell you straight up you get a chance to go out to lunch with some of the smaller business owners in the area for sure I go out to lunch with tree trimming companies concrete companies I go out to lunch with the managers of bigger companies so a great example is interstate snow plane they I don't know managed I think they have 800 commercial accounts in the Twin Cities the manager was a subcontract through him Lance snow plowing I stopped him seen him like hey you want to go out to lunch it's like kind of like uh yeah he was actually really pleasantly surprised that one of his subs said I want to take you out to eat lunch just let's just go shoot excuse my language Lance let's go up chitchat that was it I didn't want nothing more nothing more don't you know when you go out to these lunch dates or whatever you do this don't talk about business don't talk about it don't look they know what kind of work you're in don't go out and be a salesperson go go uncle I want to mow your lawn I want to get Enfamil just go I'll go hey how's your day going how's life how's life treating you talk about anything else talk about anything else let them steer the conversation towards your business it's gonna be beautiful you're gonna love it you're gonna love it in fact after you get a few do that a few times try not to talk about business at all with one of the people you go out to um okay just see a lawyer you can avoid the conversation and see what happens I guarantee he's gonna get more business laughs I'm doing right now doing a quarter million dollars worth of landscaping for an HOA because I took the president of that HOA out to lunch and talked about politics and then talk about business they didn't want anything to do with business didn't bring business up I didn't even have business on my mind we just went out a couple years ago and talked about politics and that was it and he's like hey you do landscape him like yeah why do you need help with something he's like my HOA needs help with this this this and this I've got I've been in contracts doing contracts with him for five plus years now oh yes and something and it was lunch it was lunch in a pub called lucky 13 simple I reached out to him and I said you want to go out to lunch let's get to know each other better easy as that man I'm excited of that I really didn't want to do this probably for a good year now and I'm still I tend to over research stuff and I'm still been researching and actually this summer will be probably the first numbers I'm gonna get my seat with I'll probably go to Jim Pittsburghers and I'm just see where I've just fever takes me feel free to contact me got her Lance a guy named GOG and calls me up every now and then and I said I helped him he didn't have any any comments was doing absolutely no snow playing now he's going into commercial work after just after six months now he's jumped his business up from $40,000 he's going to be doing over $100,000 this next year feel free man it's the little little things that I can cut the corners off to help you get to the next step because I've already done it it's not that tough when you've already done it a few times reach out to me I'll help you out I'm sure you appreciate it you're welcome man good luck well thank you and thank you for the opportunity Lance go get em buddy all right you have a good day you do [Music]