Q & A Construction, Landscaping, Lawn Care- How I got started pt1

okay we have and rumen ASCO on the line today he's got a couple questions and I've got a couple answers let's say today it doesn't matter what you did before that you've gotten to remake that last thing that you leave on be the best thing that you've ever done and that is how you interact with the customer it's not what you did on their job site it's how you made them giving in the landscape no my alum character is for about five years now and I'm just cutting grass and really I would have been watching some of your videos and I just want to know how you got started how did you start and lawn care and the transition over the landscaping okay so this is how'd you do okay great man great question I was gonna have my next questions gonna be I go into tiling with being just like your own your educational landscape and how'd you learn to do after you know let's save that question asked me that question later at Cape if I don't hit it good enough in the first round okay we're not okis on how to get started and I'll talk about how I got started I'm not important what I feel is important is is the people that you the people that are watching out there the way I got started is not going to be the same as what you would expect I did not start in lawn care I did not start cutting grass in fact all of my friends were out with their lawn mowers I was I was I think there was ten eleven twelve years old and they were all in the tonic 290 people they were all running John Deere lawn mowers and I was watching I'm going huh and these were kids they were ambitious driven motivated entrepreneurial mind frame while cutting their grass doing their thing and I never did I couldn't stand cutting grass plain and simple my dad threw my dad threw me on an excavator everybody I remember one of the first jobs I had when my friends were out running their lawn mowers at that age I had to go crush cars without without flipping the excavator over and he lit her he lit literally told me to take the excavator and drive it over the cars until I crushed him flat and I mean he was up there watching me and I did it so well then we had a tilt deck trailer behind an old farm truck and that's how we used to get the excavator around and it wasn't an excavator with a boom arm it was it was called the attracts comater so it had a bucket in the front like a skid loader but tracks like a bulldozer and that's what we started the company with there was a John Deere 450 I think it was a 1977 model yeah and so that's what we started it with but it was just a it was a really tough machine to operate two levers for steering would sit between your legs and then you'd have to just manually adjust the clutches so we'd have to open up the transmission case and I didn't actually literally wire take a hard wire and wire the wrenches on to my wrist so I could get the so I could get my hand into the transfer case into the transmission and if I dropped it it would wreck the transmission you pull the whole transmission of the machine so it was just a really bad setup because you're out there trying to adjust it every 25 hours but I got so good at crushing cars at that age that he would have me drive the tracks comater up on the tilt deck trailer and a tilt deck trailers not a fun especially an over the tired tilt trick tilt that trailer it wasn't up between the tires tilt deck trailer which has a lower center of gravity this was sitting over the tires now so you drive this excavator up in the trailer go BAM slam down and you'd have to stop immediately what you have to do is you have to find tweak the machine so it wouldn't slam down so you'd get it up there and you'd slowly drop it down and between crushing cars and not flipping it over myself between driving it up on a tilt deck trailer without driving over the top without flipping off the side demoing silos digging ponds for the DNR no my dad he'd sit out there and you know what I kind of in the beginning Andrew I kinda thought maybe he was being lazy or kind of skirting his work but as an adult I realized he was watching over me making sure that I had the education the skills the training necessary so that I could actually do something even if I wasn't running my own business if I had the skills to operate a piece of equipment then I would always have a future and he made sure that I knew how to operate that equipment and he would take an a lawn chair and he'd sit out on the job sites while I was working and just sit and drink lemonade and watch me so he bought the first piece of equipment and he pretty much didn't want to run it so it's kind of like I guess what I'm doing right now Andrew I buy cooking all the time yeah I'll hop in it once or twice let I'll go it's yours go have fun with it and I getting for my crews and I let them run it so that does not help you to transition from lawn care into landscaping and that's what I want to do I want to make sure that I'm actually helping you to to make that transition so as a lawn care professional how many guys you have on your crew Andrew okay that's that's great Andrew you don't need any more for going into hardscaping how full are you during the week are you working five days a week already and I've actually got bidding on contracts to work a year-round contract I'm usually I usually around whatever you located in so in Alabama you you say you have contracts to work year-round what is the foot as the winter gonna look like for you what work are you gonna be doing languages you know mo screams you're up stuff like that how many times as hard taping opportunities come up with your existing current customer base you know five logs of date you cut you'd have 25 existing customers correct yeah and how often does this hardscaping come up how many opportunities do you get not and why is that is it is that because they just don't have any hardscaping or is it because you're not advertising for okay you don't need much equipment to start in hardscaping i don't want you to go out and buy equipment anticipating that the works gonna come in and want you to get to work and then buy and then see the pattern and then buy the equipment we've already I have covered this in another video but I want to cover it specifically with you first piece of equipment you buy will probably be a midsize skid loader probably with tires tracks is better if you're gonna get into spec getting into a lot of grading work but if you're gonna be doing any snow removal which you probably aren't but some people are tracks suck in the wintertime some people that are gonna be jumping up and down screaming no they're good they're good no they're not because you can although you can climb on top of snow just go banks really well once you've cleaned a lot and get that tiny slick surface area in your tracks can't bite where your tires will you just have cheats like having skis on the bottom of it I have a videos actually showing where you're spinning and although you're spinning you're not getting anywhere you where the tracks down really fast though that doesn't have anything to do with you but it might have something to do with the people in the video so what I want you to do now to give back to you specifically Andrew and hopefully this relates with some people watching what I want you to do is I want you to take those 25 customers and I want you to start hitting them up for heart skipping I want you to get some signs out there and I want you to beautify their yards and I want people in the neighborhood to know who you are those 25 existing current customers you have are your absolute best salespeople hands down their word-of-mouth their talkie-talkie talk is going to get you more work down the road now I also want you to start focusing on heart skipping once you just make that your mind frame that you're a hardscaping company that does soft services that does maintenance the work is going to come in it's going to come in faster than you can ever do it I promise you that our industry is absolutely gorgeous for work there's no other way to put it when I say that we are not hurting once people know that you are a professional you have a certain skill set they can trust and believe in you because you answer the phone and it's as simple as this the secret is you answer the phone when they call you call them back and says that's it that's the very first thing then when you do a job and you wrap it up you don't argue with them you always got to leave in a very good impression you never want to leave a job on a bad impression you never want to do hard work good work but leave on a bad impression do you do mediocre work that's fine as long as you leave the job on a super-awesome impression with the customer because that's the last most important thing they're gonna remember is the last thing and it doesn't matter what you did before that you've got to remake that last thing that you leave on be the best thing that you've ever done and that is how you interact with the customer it's not what you did on their jobsite it's how you made them feel make them feel like they're a million dollars you have 25 customers that every day you can start practicing with how you interact with them 25 times a week you can go out and try to make people feel awesome what you're gonna find is you're this company's going to grow but also your heart skipping division is going to grow because maybe they don't have hardscaping but I guess what maybe their needs nephew son daughter neighbor down the road people at church people they meet at Walmart have work and they're going to let them know about you because you stick out