How to Price MOWING and WHY NOT to!

Alex we're gonna call this video how to price lawn care and why you don't want to okay without wasting any more time let's just teach these guys exactly how to price lawn care how do you price it well if it was just mowing I think it comes down to like you're looking at anywhere from like 150 to 190 an acre and what the difference is going to be is how much trimming you got how much blowing you got and how many people you're gonna need on that the price again 150 to 190 per acre you minus out your hard surfaces yep you might as well your house you might have saw your garage you might have thought everything that isn't green grass just a Turf just the turf yep okay another way to price this out is one to two dollars per minute of bowling so what do you think of that idea boom we were talking earlier about it I was kind of thinking that seems a little low okay but if it's a one-man operation I think that's pretty close to where you could be at you know if it's just one guy one guy that's that's if the solo guy he doesn't know how to do lawn care he wants to get in he wants to try to figure this thing out those are two easy ways to do it so if you're gonna price it out you want to use Alex's way you've got to take you got to get the you got to figure out how many square you know how many how many acres are on a property subtract out all the hard surfaces and then that will help you get to that that necklace how do you account for travel time um you know I kind of just count that in his overhead and if you're going to try to get your stick in certain neighborhoods so your drive times are maybe five to ten minutes at the most back roads okay you know trying to keep it in a niche so you're just driving five ten minutes each way you know I kind of just look at that as overhead it's kind of hard to charge let's show these guys what we do so we if you guys are not familiar with who we are we're dirt monkey we started out doing uh Excavating demolition hardscaping running commercials projects so we used to build all commercial retaining walls around five Crews then we would dig like the Menard superstore we would demolish gas stations and grocery stores and then we decided about what seven years ago to jump into Lawn Care yep right well let's show them our lawn care set up so this was our lawn care trailer and we're we got a 72 we got a 60 with a bagger a dethatcher we've got a Toro 4 000. I think that's a 52 inch I didn't know we had that one I thought I sold that one he sold that's the commercial grade one and you sold the homeowner and two gravelies nope these are the husky no but I sold two grades yes you did sell the gray so the so let's get into why a guy went here up here's my two cents in in it it is the least paid of all of the professions out there that we do because you are legitimately competing with Chuck in his truck you're competing with the 14 year old Billy on the corner that's got he's Mom and Dad's lawn tractor and he's going to go out and he's going to hustle and he's gonna make it and people are gonna hire Billy they're going to be a lot more forgiving of Billy because Billy's only 14 and they don't like Dylan at a 14 year old kid right I mean that's the town I grew up in this is how we got started was just hustling and doing it just in our 200 population at 290 people yeah now you take a guy like me and I come in here and Billy I'm competing against them because it's a valid he's got his business and I got my business but I've got to do it to the next level I can't do it to the same you got overhead and Billy doesn't have any overhead where he can come in and be a fraction of your price and when it comes to mowing grass that's something where customers don't appreciate like I mean they appreciate high quality work but at the end of the day they just want their lawn cut you know where we might come in and we might be a little bit more expensive but we're going to do we're going to stripe your grass so we're going to make it look a lot better we're going to make sure that we never shave down any of the edging where he might just come in and this is and zip through real fast okay but it's a service it's it's a service that isn't needed it's a low skill service yeah so when Alex and I go in and we do a hardscaping job and we install a paver patio and we stall uh we saw a Dry Creek bed and we put in underground piping and we do all of this it's because the homeowner can't do it the homeowner can do this and if the homeowner looks and he sees grass in the street and you forgot to blow that grass out of the street he's going I just spent 50 bucks why did this Yahoo not get the grass out of the street they know what it takes to cut grass and therefore they have a vision in their head of how that should happen whether it's right wrong or in between it's a preconceived notion and you're going to be tend to have more critical customers our customers are super forgiving because they have no clue our hardscaping and Demolition and Excavating customers they don't know what we're doing yeah they might say hey I wanted to change while I might come in and go I don't think that's going to work like that you know and then you explain to them why it's not going to work like that and the alternatives on what would work with our profession what our experience that we know what to do where they might say oh I want this this this and that well hey that's that's not possible in in this situation and you've had customers that have some Nuance of what to do and when we do a hardscaping those are the guys that like to micromanage you all right yeah they're all right yeah okay so if they'll micromanage you there then everybody that has a lawn is now a micromanager oh did he get did he get around that corner did he lift up the drain pipe did he do this yeah So within that same industry what I'm saying to these guys is if they're getting into Lawn Care don't just go into lawn care that's your baby step in yeah you've got to use that customer that Lawn Care customer to take it to the next level to do dethatching to do aeration to do mulching to do different services that maybe they aren't such an expert con yeah and I always was told that Lawn Care pays the bills and your Landscaping is to bread and butter for the bank and you know when you go to a house and you're working in their yard they might have a retaining wall that's falling over so that's maybe your first step into moving into that because you already have that customer base with them where they might be like yeah you're already working in my yard I like you do a great job with so let's give this a shot now let's go back to some of these numbers though at a dollar to two dollars a minute let's just say it's one dollar a minute because if you're in a rural area it's gonna be a dollar a minute if you're an urban area and the houses are 350 to 1.3 million they've got more money they want to hire they have a higher level of expectation they're probably willing to pay two dollars a minute right if we go back to that that idea of your actual time on the a lot but let's go to the one dollar a minute so you're not lucky to live there 60 bucks an hour are you going to make a live enough 60 bucks an hour not with your overhead of the cost of the mowers and insurance and and a Truck and a trailer and everything else and your weed whippers and your blowers that nowadays stuff isn't made to last yeah I mean they make it they say it's made to last but we all know things have gone way downhill than 10 years ago where your weed whip would last five six years now you're lucky to get two years out of a weed whip when you're using it every single day multiple hours a day what I'm asking you guys to do is if you're getting into Lawn Care don't go into lawn care just to be in lawn care there's only two people I know that really can do lawn care they have done Lawn Care successfully on YouTube one of them is Jonathan potashnik the lawn care millionaire but his and I interviewed him he's a he's a genius this dude is freaking brilliant but he even said that Lawn Care makes so much money but it's all of the other services so go into lawn care with the intention of getting into the other services and you might as well start those right away and the other one is Mike Andes now I don't never talk to Mike Andes but I've looked at his business and Mike and he's knows his numbers but he's making his money off from doing a franchise so he's actually not just cutting grass the typical guys that go out and just cut grass and even if you see him on YouTube and you think they're crushing it they're probably not crushing it and cutting grass making Tall Grass short they're probably crushing it in other things that they've been able to do off from YouTube not off from actually cutting the grass so be careful where you get your information because it can be completely misleading okay I'm gonna jump in here because another one to listen to is Corey Ballard when that dude speaks listen because he's done it he's built a lawn care Empire and the wanna caution you guys just because you see someone on YouTube and they're giving you advice doesn't mean it's the right advice otherwise why wouldn't they be taking their own advice and building their own lawn care Empire if they haven't built that Lawn Care Empire then you need to take what they're saying with a grain of salt it's really critical to understand that it's easy to give out free advice but if they haven't actually done it why would you want to listen I've gone so far as the discredit myself people have asked me to help them build their business and I've publicly said I can build a business up to a two million dollar company because that's all I've ever done now in principle in theory you should be able to build a five or a 10 million dollar business are from those same principles but if you haven't done it then you don't know what you don't know that's a critical element so take your advice from people that have built the business physical business that you want to have if it's a lawn care business find the people that have Lawn Care Empires if it's something else then watch what they do and do that exactly do not reinvent the wheel I'm sorry for jumping on a soap box here but I think this is critically important to help you guys dial in your company it's that important right and I'm just saying this to you guys how do you price Lawn Care a dollar to two dollars a minute acreage 150 to 190 an acre 190 Acres that's to make Tall Grass short but also with the intention of utilizing your customers for more services and all and dive straight in as fast as you can into those other services especially pesticide and fertilizer applications herbicide applications because it requires licensing there's another layer of separation from you in the pack because anytime Dick and Harry that can buy a mower and has a pickup truck is your competition truck in his truck yup Billy on the corner both of your competition so isolate yourself from them by becoming a specialist in what you do is there anything else that you want to say about that I think when you're saying Dive Right In it's so easy to Dive Right In where spring and fall cleanups where you can make a ton of money on a spring and fall cleanup you're buying a mower the bagger attachment is just a fraction more to Thatcher it's just a fraction more so maybe it's like I'm going to spend 15 but you can spend 18 and now you can provide an additional service are you going to pay are you going to charge an additional fee for that service oh yeah and what is that going to be that's that depends on the property how many trees are on the property I mean it can really vary so much where it's difficult to give an upfront like average price because it varies on every single property you might roll up and you're just begging to grasp and aerating it so that that grass has room to kind of move what they do is you get all these bumps when you get the frosting and hitting when you aerate it if it when it thaws and heaves and thaws in the spring it's going to make your yard stay how do you guys beat it though that's what I want to teach these guys is what what are they going to do to get their numbers dialed in you know for it's it's tough for the spring and fall camps I would shoot if he had two guys out there a guy on a blower guy and a bagger I would shoot for about 125 bucks an hour you know so if you're at the property for two hours it's 250 bucks plus your dump fees because you're going to be hauling stuff out okay you know do you need two trucks and two trailers or can you use a dump trailer and haul your mower equipment around as well and just get away with one truck here here's the difference what I was talking to back this conversation up a little bit earlier about specializing we can get 60 to 120 you know one to two dollars a minute for this piece of equipment yep when you see that little sucker right here these little pallets these I get 90 to 120 an hour for that little son of a duck yep for that little son of a duck for that little one simply because it's more specialized so become a specialty expert what equipment would you start with if it was me yeah I would start with 160 inch and then like a smaller stand on 48 inch mower okay and now we uh weed whip and a blower weed whip and a blower and I would start with a 52 inch and either a push mower or a gate clear this a little son of a duck like this yeah 36 inch little 36 that'll get through the gates and then that but it's gonna suck on Hills yeah not not a good Hill machine don't don't you go on a hill with that thing I I would not worry about a giant leaf blower like this this is a twelve thousand dollar piece of equipment but for spring and fall cleanups it depends on if you have Woods to blow it in yeah yeah but I wouldn't worry about buying this out of the gate this is a catastrophe to buy out of the gate it's a beautiful piece of equipment we freaking love it yeah we're great for our properties we got large massive accounts we've got a lot of acreage so that's why we need to have more specialized equipment so any last other words that you can think of if you're getting big into the spring and fall cleanups a sucker they are a game changer like a billy goat talk billy goat sucker yeah I mean your journey and then you're coming to the curb you're dumping your bags right at the curb and you're sucking it up rather than either some Baggers don't have the dump from the seat like this they haven't been so you're taking the bins off you're dumping in the trailer there is a resource for these guys and I think it's called planet or something like that and what it does is it goes through and it lists all of the different Industries and what their average hourly rates are and Mo and blow guys that's what they call these guys that just do mow and blow it's like it is legitimately the lowest bottom of the rung when a company can profit per hour and I think it was 26 dollars an hour Pond guys do you remember this do you remember at Greg whitstock's uh Aquascape Academy we learned this together the pond guys were coming in at 253 dollars an hour and there is nothing about a pond that is complicated you dig a hole in the ground you might as well back a truck up and dump the freaking Boulders in make it look pretty fill it with water you're never going to see it again and those guys averaged Greg's company averaged 253 dollars an hour in profit year after year after year these aren't fabricated theories this is what they actually did yeah yeah that's why I was blown away by the pond numbers when we were there running out my gosh get specialized get specialized right away so that's why I say how to bid lawn care and why you don't want to do it right I think we covered it no we didn't we missed one of the most important elements and that is efficiency your travel time and your routing will absolutely make you or break you well let's talk to Alex about that all right just when we think we're done we're not done both Alex and I realized you need a software system integrated into your company to control it we do use job or what do you think of them I like jabber a lot especially when you're going to be keeping your route nice and dialed in they got you can put all of your addresses in there and it will tell you what is the most productive way to take to all those jobs which one is first which one is last and which ones are in between so it's a great way for managing how you're going to be driving around to all these lawn cares to be more productive yeah that's that's where it becomes we go back to where you say about being hyper efficient you've got to do that you have to plus also with jobber now something I've noticed I've kind of sat back behind the scenes just to see what these how these guys use it I notice you and Tim and Blaine are all like communicating through jobber through jobber yeah especially when we get all new leads coming in rather than that lead just floating around it gets updated into jabber and then that way we can if Blaine calls them I don't just see that lead going oh it's an open lead Blaine comments on there this is my lead you know that he made contact so that way it's not he's not having three people from the same company give him a call one of the most important things you guys can do is contact your customers fast do not wait the early bird gets the worm it's a huge thing do not wait a day or two days and that's where using a program system like Jabra especially once you grow because if you're giving into this to grow you're going to need to be able to keep track of all of that and this is what we use and it works and it's worth it because you also don't doesn't cost an arm and a leg to get into no it doesn't cost an arm and a leg to get into and it helps with all your invoicing it automatically knows when to send an invoice out at the end of the month so you're not scrounging around making sure if you mow an account three times a month you put that in there that you motor three times they automatically send the invoice over you're not going through all your paperwork and going oh God which days did I mow this on which day did I do that on everything's right in there if you mode it four times if you motive five times it automatically sends the invoice out after 30 days and then it lets them know after another 30 days if they haven't paid it yet so it's a really good way to keep up on your invoicing and getting your money paid to you as soon as possible that's not me saying it that's from a guy that uses it day in and day out that's how Alex Tim and Blaine do it so you guys know it's the real deal we use it we love it I'm not gonna steer you wrong on this thing make sure you tell them the dirt Mike he sent you and they're gonna hook you up with something special I don't know if it's a discount or if it's something else but they promised me that they would do something special for you guys and if this video has helped you guys out in some way shape or form what you can do for me is hit the share button the thumbs up goes a long way but more importantly share your experiences because you guys that are making Tall Grass short for a while have your War Stories and you've learned your lessons and I want to hear them because a rising tide raises All Ships and when we all get better we all win Tim and I had this real long conversation like really should we be giving away our pricing should we give it away be giving away our secrets and I said well Tim wait a minute if the people watching this instead of low balling and low bidding understand to start to raise their price and value themselves aren't we just improving our own Bottom Dollar because we're not competing with Chuck and his truck who's undercutting us now chucking his truck and Billy on the corner know…