How to go from LawnCare to Landscaping, Excavating and Demolition jobs

all right I'm in the courtyard of my house where I do a lot of experimenting the question has come up from you guys over and over again pretty consistently how do you go from lawn care to Landscaping to bigger and bigger projects and there's a way to do it and I'm going to explain that to you today I'm going to use my own property as an example and let's say that you're 13 14 or 15 years old and you're just getting started it's the exact same as if you were 30 40 or 50 years old it doesn't matter how old you are for this to work it's the same process it's what I went through it's what you guys are going to have to go through as your company grows now in all of my videos you hear me talking about going from the technician mind frame to the business mind frame now in this case as you're launching your company as you're starting you got to forget about all of that all the stuff I teach you later on down the road those are more advanced principles but when you're first beginning you have to master the trade you have to master the crafts you have to understand each and every part of the project before you can go out and do it for somebody else and there's a way to do it so let's say you're trying to learn how to grow you're trying to figure out how to do some of these things a little bit better before you feel comfortable doing it for somebody else there's a couple things that you can do the first thing is you can go to the suppliers let's say you're going to be putting in a retaining wall like this one right behind me where is it right there and here's a staircase that's built out of the same retaining wall blocks you're going to be doing that but you've never built the retaining wall well you go to a supplier and you say you know what I want to start using your product in this case these are versalock I Love versalock Blocks that's my testimonial but I went to them and they provide versalock provides contractor training now it isn't much now don't get me wrong this isn't a whole lot of training but it's a M day seminar they usually hold it two three times a year all the different suppliers will hold various seminars whether it's for slate stone sidewalks like this or how to install staircases or retaining walls or paper patios whatever all the suppliers want to get their contractors familiar with their their product that isn't going to give you enough training to go out and bid jobs so the next thing you're going to do is one of two things you're going to go to your own personal house I use my personal house as an experiment as as the the grounds where I'll do it here before I do it for you guys and I want to use this example right here and then we're going to talk about what happens if you live in an apartment complex you don't have any property we we'll go over that next so stay stay with me but in this case you see this retaining wall behind me it's about 7 ft tall and it's not supposed to be built the way it is that's a gravity wall now you know and I know that that's a no no gravity walls max out at about 4T tall but I firmly believe that there was a way to to build these things bigger and better without geogrid because you don't always have the option of putting Grid in before I'm going to go out and do it for a customer I'm going to do it at my own house this wall was built over 10 years ago it's holding firm it's over 7 ft and all I did was change the batter on it added extra dra drainage Aggregate and then on top of it I put a deck just to add extra weight just to see if I could blow this sucker out I can't knowing that it's built the right way knowing that I can do that here I can do that for you so whatever you do whether it's at your own house or maybe a family member's house experiment get some experience under your belt and then you can start to do things for other people so let's get it let's take it to the next step let's say you live in an apartment or you don't have your own property and you can experiment what I'm going to tell you is that there are customers out there that are looking for bargain you got to be careful of these people because sometimes they're a little difficult to work with but it's also your doorway into gaining experience and let say that you have a customer that wants a bargain and you strike a deal with them you tell them very frankly very honestly I don't have a lot of experience doing this maybe you have none but you don't have to advertise yourself like that maybe youve watched some YouTube videos and practice here or there long story short you strike up a deal where they Supply the Mater materials youall install it for nothing and you're probably going W how's that running a business it's mastering the technical end of it before so this works in a lot more scenarios than you typically would expect how do you break into the excavation demolition field how do you expand your services well you know you can't work for free forever so you only do it for one or two jobs where you strike up a deal where you supply the labor they Supply the materials you get your feet wet when you're out there when you're doing that job the headphones aren't on Jack the the phone isn't ringing you're concentrating you're timing everything you're calculating how much material you're trying to figure out the fastest and best way to do it because the next time you do that job you're going to want to charge okay so that's how you get your feet wet in new Services now if we're going to if we're going to break into Excavating let's use that as an example and you're wondering well how to I do that well do you have an aunt or an uncle that's thinking about doing an addition onto their home or maybe their yard isn't level or graded or something like that you simply say to them I'll dig your addition I'll grade your yard I'll do whatever you want me to do you rent the equipment this is what I need I'll do all the work a lot of people will go for that they don't feel comfortable doing it themselves but if they feel that they believe in you they'll let you go out and learn at their property it's a great way to start doing it that's how I got into it I started out digging additions scared nervous as a longtail cat in a room full of rocking chairs but I dug an addition then I dug a full basement for a house and then pretty soon I'm knocking down a garage just a just a little tiny garage I'm going okay I learned how to knock down that garage now I'm going to knock down a small house okay I know how to knock down a small house now I'm going to knock down a big house okay I got a big house down now I'm knocking down car washes commercial buildings and structures so you build your way up you can go from lawn maintenance to that now let's go back to what I was talking about experimenting do you think experimenting ever stops look at my yard it's horrible I own a lawn maintenance company this drives me flipping insane but I've got to have weeds growing before I can try out new herbicides I can't go out and try new things on a customer's lawn so there's my la all weeded up driving me nuts I can't wait to start applying chemicals to this thing and experimenting and that's how I do it I still do it to this day if there's something I don't know I'm not going to go out in Jack and Jill's property where they're expecting results guaranteed and charge them for it unless I know that it works in my own yard and I know when I go out to talk to Jack and Jill and I can say hey look guys within 24 hours you should see noticeable results or maybe I got to say 40 48 hours cuz I want to I want to pre-answer any questions I want to preempt them from having issues so I can uh solve those problems so to go from lawnscaping to Landscaping to excavation to demolition requires you to master it on a small scale and each step of the way you may have to work for free you may end up bidding jobs where you don't make any money on that job that doesn't mean the next job you bid it a little higher and more confidently the next job you bid it higher and even more more confidently from there that's how you grow you start small and you keep adding skills into your roster okay once you've mastered all the various things then you stop being a technician then you start focusing on the business end of it which is a completely different set of skills I don't mean to overwhelm you but you do need to be aware of it you do need to at some point then change your mind but we are talking about being a 13 14 15 year old or a 34 40 or 50y old that's never done this before you want to get into this business that's how you do it you start small if you can experiment on your own property like I do awesome if you can't negotiate with somebody that you know strike up a deal do the work form once or twice at cost and then start charging for it and go from there that's it have a good one I hope this one helped love you guys [Music] a [Music]