Landscaping equipment & business tips- How to Hack your Customers, Your equipment & Your Crew

back in 20 minutes. All right, you guys. Somebody is snooping around in my woods. You may not be able to see them, but we're going to go out and find out what they're doing. And while we do that, we're going to talk about hacks. Talk about four hacks in particular. Three of which I've used for years. There's people snooping around everywhere out here. Three of which I've used for years. One of them I have it and I literally just heard about it and it's freaking brilliant. One of the hacks is for your crews. Two of the hacks is on equipment. And the last hack is to hack your customers. You know, let's start with my favorite one first, the crew hack. So, what are we waiting for? Let's do that one next. All right, guys. How do you hack your crew? Well, hacking your crew isn't that difficult. I'm guessing you guys have probably had that phone call. Hey boss, what do I do? Interrupting your day. Like you could be in the middle of doing whatever it is you got to do and you get the phone call and you've got to drop everything to help your crew out. Well, there's a hack around that and that's what I call the 20inut rule. What I have done for years is I said, "Look, I'll call you right back in 20 minutes." That's not so long of a time frame that if they can't solve the problem that you've wasted a ton of time, but it's long enough that most guys will start searching for the problem immediately. What they called you for in the first place was that immediate answer. Hey boss, what do I do? They don't want to turn this on. They want to use your brain instead of their own, but they're perfectly capable of answering the problem probably 90% of the time. The 10% of the time when they have a real problem, well, you got to learn to listen in between the lines and you'll figure out which problems you need to address right away and which ones that you could have them figure out on their own. Hi, Storm. Somebody's in your woods, Storm. Let's figure out what the hell is going on over here. [music] What the Did I scare you? [laughter] I love it. I don't I even said to the camera, but I'm gonna scare him. Did you Were you cleaning that out? Yeah, I'm cleaning all the pipes through this. You know, there's one over there, too. We don't That's not on our plans. Scary get another one. Oh. All right. Let's go back into my shop. I don't know how well it's going to look in there, you guys. for this next one. This next hack is all about equipment and it's one that I have done for years. Probably 10 or 15 at least 15 years. I can't tell. All right, it's a get getting free saws. You guys have maybe some of you guys have heard me before, but if you haven't heard me before, I have not boughten a concrete saw in 15 20 years. I have gotten them all for free. And what I did is I bought my first concrete saw and then I went out and I bought my my concrete blade and I paid $350, $400, some stupid re amount of money for it. And when you paid that much money for a concrete blade, you think that thing's going to last you forever. I mean, hell, you paid $300 and some dollars for a blade and now you've either prematurely wore that blade out or worse yet, just throwing the blade around, you chipped a tooth out of it, and that blade is shot. Here's how I get my I've gotten free blades. This is a stack of blades, you guys. This is all a stack of blades. And there's a place called Blades Direct that if you buy 12 blades, I know you guys listen. If you buy 12 blades, you get a free concrete saw. And at first I was like, eh, there's something wrong with this deal. There's so this is too good to be true. But I did it anyway cuz I don't know, you know, I'm I'm stupid. [music] So I did it and I got the blades and I put my first blade on and I got my free concrete saw and I fired it up and it actually started and ran just like a concrete saw would do. And I'm like, okay. I put the blade on, figuring it's going to be a pile of junk. And that blade that cost me half the place price of my other blade lasted me every bit as long as my other blade. [snorts] And I'm like, "Okay, this is awesome." And so I did it again. And I did it again. And I did it like 12 more times. And I still do it to this day. They'll either send you a Huscoarna, and yes, I'm saying that right. It's actually pronounced Huscoarna, or [snorts] a Steel. Here's here's two that they sent me. The Steel 420 and the Steel 420. That's your choice. You don't get really a choice to upgrade to a higher level concrete saw, but it's still free, you guys. The saw is still free. It's an insane deal. I'm actually going to make sure you guys get the right deal. So, I actually contacted these guys and said, "I want a link just for you guys watching this video." So, any of you guys that are going to do this deal, use the link. That way, you're getting the best deal and the best blades possible. The customer hack. The customer hack is how you hack your customers from taking advantage of you. This is huge because nine times out of 10, you get out in a job site and you guys are probably going to be familiar with this. A customer, you're here to do this level of work. And the customer says, "Oh, while you're here, could you just do this?" Or, "While you're here, could you add this on?" Or what my favorite one is, and it's actually technically my least favorite one, is when a customer for a firsttime customer says, "I've got so much work for you. You've never met this person before." Maybe you just given them an estimate, but they've got so much upcoming work, and what they're fishing for at that point is a discount on the very first job. And how you hack your customers from taking advantage of you while you're already on a job site or when you're beginning a job site is to hide behind company policy. I don't care if you are a dude that works out of your kitchen in your underwear. You still can have a company policy. You can be a soloreneur, an operation of one, and still have company policy. And what you'll say is you'll say, "Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Jones. Our company policy doesn't allow us to give a discount on the first job. Our company policy states that we can give a discount after our third project." What you're what you're doing is you're leveraging the fact that people are automatically conditioned to respect company policy. Corporate America has set the precedent. Oh, hey, another hack. This one is one that I haven't used. My buddy Phil Saras, Saras Landscaping, go check him out on YouTube. He actually sent me this one. If you guys don't have a truck like this and you do have a piece of equipment that you have to move, you don't necessarily have to go out and buy a trailer and have a dedicated unit just to haul your skid steer around. So, he runs, I don't know, multi-million dollar landscaping company without a pickup truck to haul equipment around and without a trailer. I've actually seen how he runs this. And I didn't really put two and two together till he actually told me that he hires a tow truck driver. He's developed a relationship with a tow truck driver that has a flatbed trailer or a flatbed on his tow truck, of course, that he can come out and pick the equipment up, put it on the back of his truck and move it from one site to the other site. You guys, I can't tell you how many trailers like this I have. Well, actually, I can. I have got a lot of them. Um, and this makes so much financial sense. I paid $3,400 for this trailer. I got to insure it, put tires on it. I've got to maintain this thing. What Phil does is he pays a tow truck driver anywhere from $70 to $80 a lift. He doesn't have to insure a trailer. He doesn't have to insure a dedicated unit to tow equipment around. And he calculates the expense of having that tow truck into every single job. So he figures about $160 to move a piece of equipment onto and off from a job site. He says it saved him so much money every single season that I tell you right now it almost makes me not want to do it myself. So just because you don't have a trailer, maybe you don't have the right truck, doesn't mean you can't get your heavy equipment around. He runs skid steers. He also runs excavators and he has all of his equipment moved by a tow truck driver with a flatbed trailer that he knows that is ready to go. Calls him up and the guy delivers everything. He even brings it back to his shop and has access to his own yard, has access to Phil's yard. So when it when the equipment has to go back to the yard, the guy brings it out to the yard, drops it off, leaves the keys there for him, and takes off. It's freaking brilliant and it's an awesome way. It's an awesome workaround if you don't have the right equipment at the right time. Those are your four hacks, you guys. Let's go back over them. There's the 20-minute rule hack. That one's for your cruise. The second one is don't ever buy another concrete salt. Don't do it. Just don't. The third one is hide behind what what did I call it again? Corporate policy or company policy. And then the last one is if you don't have a trailer, you don't worry. Establish a relationship with a tow truck company. You guys tell me your hacks in the comments down below. Love to hear your hacks. Hope this video's helped you guys out. God bless you guys. And check these videos out right here. Woo! Go get them, you guys.