The Highest Paid Niche

you know, get rid of the bullhead head heads out of your of your pond. So, the pump's good. Line's iced up. Yeah. I don't think we're getting into that cuz that's still solid ice. And I remember the average mow and blow guy was making around $25 an hour. Okay. And so I was just looking at going, this is 10 times more, but the level of difficulty isn't there. I mean, if a guy if a mow and blow guy knows how to maintain his own mower, the same skills that it takes to do that are the same skills to maintain a p a pond. It's some pumps, uh, some common sense, and not being afraid to get dirty and enjoying working outside. It's straightforward the most lucrative thing you can do to make money the easiest way inside of the green industry. This is where the return comes in. So, I mean, we're talking about $250 an [Music] hour. All right, guys. What I'm going to show you is probably one of the most lucrative things you can do inside of the green industry. Meaning, you will make the most money per manh hour doing this service. It's not hard. I'm going to show Zack. I'm going to show you. Zack, let's go out and do it. It's basically pond maintenance. And I want to be very, very, very clear on this. You don't have to install ponds to do pond maintenance. Pond maintenance is after a pond has already been established and is up and running. You basically go in, you fish out the weeds, you clean out, you pull the pumps, you service the pumps, and you do everything once or twice a year that the homeowners don't want to do. They don't know about their pond. They love the idea of a pond. The last thing they want to do is dig into the pond. Now, let's get something straight. You could do pond maintenance without doing pond installs. Like, installing a pond like this, I wouldn't recommend to just anybody. I mean, this is a $125,000 pond, and it took me and a crew of guys that knew what they were doing weeks to complete the project. What I'm talking about doing is going in after the ponds are done and just doing the basic barebones maintenance and service. And you're going to make more doing the service on a pond than you would be doing the same service on a mulch bed or on a yard or on a flower garden. The reason is is because there's a lot of trucks in his trucks. There's a lot of guys out there offering services because they just want to get by and people offer the services for what they're familiar with. Well, getting into a pond is nothing more than pulling a pump out, cleaning it, per maintaining it, and putting it back in place. It is not hard. If you are a bluecollar guy and you've ever changed the tire on a truck or you've changed the oil on your own pickup trucks or anything like this, you can do the next level services that we're going to be showing you today. It's not hard to do. One of the things we will not be showing you to do how to do is clean out the pond scum in the bottom. And if you look, I I was I was hoping you all of a sudden splooge like, wow, I knew Zach was hoping that I knew Zach was hoping it. Part of your maintenance is just doing an inspection on it. Like I can see there's some debris and dirt caught in the great system. So, we be cleaning that out before it went back in place. Give it a give the impeller a spin. So, the the thing that actually pumps is called an impeller. down there. Give it a spin to make sure it's flowing freely. Make sure that there's no cracks, defects in it. It's a straightforward visual check. That's one part of the service that you can charge an absolute premium for. I mean, we're talking about $250 an hour. Yeah, I don't think we're getting into that cuz that's still solid ice probably all the way down. All right, guys. I've got Chris Wilson from Aquacape on the phone right now. Chris, how are you? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure to talk to you, buddy. Now, Chris is one of the experts from Aquacape, and he was out here actually helping me do the install. But I don't want to talk about installing ponds. I want to talk about maintaining them. Chris, I told these guys that what I learned at the Aquacape Academy is that the average guy that's doing pond maintenance, not installs, but pond maintenance, is bringing in around $253 per hour. Is that an accurate uh number? Yes, it depends. I gotta cover my ass though on that, right? So, so it's depend like I don't pretend to know everybody's overhead and it depends on equipment and there's things that are factors like distance and things like that. The average maintenance cleanout though of a project will say within 20 miles, 30 miles of where you got to be should average right about that. 250 bucks. Yeah. With that being said, what how do guys market this and what do they actually do when it comes to doing pond maintenance? But I want to make sure is there a checklist or what does Aquacape have to help an average guy go, hey, this is something I want to market. I don't want to just think about this. I want to do this for an actual living. Right? So, yes, we have resources out there to help you guys out. Right? Greg always says, you know, we're a franchise within a franchise. So, put it simply, put it on your website because a lot of contractors out there don't like maintenance, right? They just don't want to get into the muck. Uh, another cool trick, uh, it's not really a trick, but people do it is if you, if you hit up Zillow, you know, the real estate website or any website that's selling a home or people buying a home and you search Koi Pond, Goldfish Pond, water feature, that's another way to get in front of some homeowners that already have a water feature. someone calls you up, they they see it on your your your Facebook page or they see it on your your website uh and it says pond maintenance on your trailer, you know, the easy stuff, and they reach out to you and they say, "Hey, I have a pond that I would love for you to clean it out. How much does it cost?" Well, that is a loaded question that you got to be careful of, right? I can answer that in a very easy, quick, simple terms. A well-maintained aquacape ecosystem pond that is cleaned out generally comes to almost about $4 a square foot, Mr. Mrs. Jones. But before you agree to that, there's a lot of information that I need because I did not build it. So, I'm going to ask you a series of questions over here and on the phone. The first of which is do you have a picture of it and do you have a video of it that is recent because I would like to see what condition this is? I would like to see uh how many trees are around it. The details will help you judge if we're going to take this to the next stop step and do an investigative consultation. So let's say they agree to say okay I'll send you a picture. It hasn't been maintained in a few years. Then that might take me down a different avenue and I'll say, "Okay, was it professionally built or did you build it with your own blood, sweat, and tears?" Which I highly commend there. And they'll tell me one way or the other. If it's a professionally built pond, I'm thinking in my head, "All right, so now I'm generally dealing with a biological filter. I'm generally dealing with a skimmer, a pump that is protected." Uh, if it's a DIY pond, whoa, look out. really do your homework, right? Because unless you're going to charge uh a consultation, which we recommend you do, uh before you drive out there, you want all the nuts and bolts about it before you agree to do it. So, quickly, if they can get you a video and they can get you a picture and you ask if it's built by a professional or a DUI, and finally, when is the last time it was cleaned out professionally? And did you winterize it? Did you put a net over it right around Halloween time? Uh was the net removed? Is there leaves down in the bottom? And how many fish do you have? Just get all the vitals of the pond that you can over the phone. So in your head, you can collectively think, is this something worth chasing or am I going to scare this family away with a $4,000 price tag over the phone? So you you get those you gather the intel, right? and you get the video and let's just pretend. All right, this is a professionally built water feature. Something like a long that we have here. I don't know if you can see that, but that's an 8 by1 11 with a 10ft stream back there. Uh, it doesn't look too bad, but you can't see the bottom of it. This is going to require a visit. I recommend that you charge a minimum of a $50 investigative consultation fee. And you know what? It it it doesn't matter if you charge 50 or 100 or 200. We're really looking for the commitment. I don't want to say it doesn't matter, but we're really looking for the commitment towards this, right? So, Mr. or Mrs. Jones, I would love to be able to come out and look at it. It doesn't necessarily mean that I will be prepared to clean it right then and there, but I got to come back or come around and poke around for some things. The last thing you want to do is take on someone else's headache. So, if it's a professionally built pond, I ask inquisitive questions that are more conversational. I want to ask them, hey, why did your contractor uh, you know, did he retire? Did he fold up shop? Is he no longer maintaining ponds? What happened to the original contractor that built it? Most of the time, they don't maintain it. Most of the time the homeowner has been tackling it themselves. Maybe they're a little bit older, a new homeowner, they don't know how to do it, they can't do it anymore. But regardless, you got to get out to the property and really do an investigative consultation because if I see the bottom is covered in leaves, that could that leaf layer could be covering 12 inches of muck, Stanley. and your 12 inches of muck that you just quoted a cleanup for $750 is taking you all day on something that should take you three hours typically with two people, right? Uh so, but there are resources for you guys to be able to to learn this in depth because this is to me the most lucrative business that you can get involved in uh in the green industry. This is it. It doesn't get more lucrative than this because it is about as specialized as it comes and people are actually familiar with it without it being specialized to the point of being obscure. But let's get into that next point you were talking about, Chris. When I do that cleanout, let's talk about the tools really quick. So, the tools that I'm going to need is a pressure washer. You know, somewhere around 3,000 PSI, 2500 PSI will get it done. Uh, you make sure you want to get a a pressure washer. You get yourself a good pair of muck boots. You get yourself a cheap uh rain suit because it's going to get dirty. You might want to get yourself some goggles, you know, to cover your eyes. Uh, you're going to need some uh you're going to need some pruners maybe to cut back some plants and some liies, things like that. Obviously, you know, you're going to bring your your Milwaukee pack out, right? You're going to bring all your tools and your screwdrivers and your knife just in case you run into things, right? Uh the next thing you're going to need are collapsible tanks. We have uh collapsible tanks that are available and they're big bladders that I can start uh putting water into. I'm going to need a cleanout pump and about 100 ft of hose uh to be able to do this. And I got actually a picture right here or I'll just show you. There's a big bundle of our cleanout hoses right there. Here's our our collapsible tanks. So, each one, right, it fits nice and neat into our trucks. So, the first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to throw my cleanout pump and my hose into the into the pond. And I'm going to start filling up these uh these 500gallon tanks. It's going to take a few minutes to be able to do it. Generally, our pumps are at about 4,000 gallons per hour. Right. And then I'm going to drop that down in the middle of the pond. I'm going to start filling up my tank. As the pond water is starting to drop down, I'm going to go to my filters. I have a mechanical skimmer and I have a biological filter. I'm going to remove the nets. I'm going to remove the biological filter mats. Uh the media, which is like bio balls. If you're coming across an old pond, it might be lava rock uh in there that's heavy. And I'm gonna throw that in an area in the back portion of the yard. Uh, and I'm gonna just pile that because I'm gonna clean it in a little bit after I'm filling up my 500gallon tank, maybe my 10,000 tank, right? I have multiple tanks out there. After I get done filling up these tanks to preserve that healthy uh body of or that healthy water that was dormant all winter long, I'm going to take the end of my hose that's pumping out 4,000 gallons of pond water still and I'm going to use that to clean all of my filter mats and all my media. Okay, so it's 4,000 gallons. It's going to clean it fast, right? So, I'm cleaning it with good bacteriarrich uh uh uh water. I'm also going to preserve any bacteria that is inside uh the filter mats of the biomedia. I get that all stuff clean. I'm going to take the uh the same pond water. I'm going to clean out my skimmer off the end of that 4,000gallon hose. I'm going to clean out my bofall at the end of that 4,000 hose. And I may even clean out my stream with that 4,000 gallons pumping and just start recirculating from the stream down into the pond because it could have just muck and debris and stuff. The next step is I have my tanks filled, my filters are clean. This all is within the first hour maybe. Stanley. Now, as the pond water is draining down, I am picking up any debris that I can and I'm putting it in five gallon buckets that have holes drilled in the bottom of it. So, when I'm putting wet algae in there, when I'm putting sticks and leaves that I grab with my big neoprene gloves that are on my hand, um, I'm grabbing all that stuff. When I lift that bucket and I lift that bucket up, it's not heavy filled with pond water. I can get rid of that debris. Hopefully, they got woods or the forest nearby, right? And they give us permission to do that. Sometimes we'll put it right in the bed of our truck. Another good way you can do is put um put burlap sacks uh out there because you put all that debris on burlap sacks, the water drains out of it or underllayment of some sort and you can haul it away. So, clean up the pond with what you can with debris. Again, this takes 5 10 minutes. And I'm just telling you this from like an 8 by11 to an 11 by6 pond. After all the debris is picked up, I'm going to hook up the garden hose to my pressure washer and I'm going to just start cleaning the pond from the top down. I'm not flipping or turning or twisting any rocks. I am just giving the rocks a facelift. I'm gonna get them to where they look brand new, but I am just giving them a facelift and cleaning it on the face of the stove, right? I understand that this is done in the cold weather, right? This is done in 60° weather. Generally, you can start cleanouts when the pond water is about the same temperature as your hose water coming out. In the high 30s, 40 degrees is when you can start um and your fish are still kind of lethargic and stuff like that. You can you can start um pressure washing, getting all the rocks going. But the reason why I don't worry about everything in the debris or all of the stuff is because algae may grow back during the springtime, but we can control that. Once my pond is all pressure washed, I move up to my stream. I pressure wash that. I grab the pump. Probably it's stored inside a shed or inside a bucket of water, depending on the pump. I make sure that my bofall is clean. I hook up my plumbing line back up. I put my filter media right back into the system. Now, remember, the important thing is I saved all of that aged good water, right? So, I'm going to add that back into the pond. One key element, I digress. One key element I forgot to mention is the fish. What if they got fish in there, right? Well, that's why we're preserving all of that pond water. When I pump out all of my water, I leave about 6 in in the bottom. That's where all the fish kind of call. That's where they all go because of water. And they're it's just deep enough to where I'm not chasing these fish in two feet of water, three feet of water. They all congregate down to one side of the pond. I'm able to easily net them up. If you're using, if you have big koi, make sure you use what is called a koi sock. It's a tube net that you can guide these big large heavy fish in and it traps water within this koi sock. So when you lift it, the fish is almost buoyant. Those smaller koi and goldfish you can get with an openf face large net. They're sitting in your storage tanks, right? So I'm pumping out of the tanks back into my pond all of the aged water. Generally it you fill up about half I will then put my fish back in the pond. I make sure I acclimate them. I float them in buckets. I make sure the temperature is relatively the same. I will slowly mix water, right? It's the same water, but I just make sure if I added any chlorinated tap water, I slowly kind of let them acclimate. They're in the pond water. And then once I start filling up with hose water, I have to decllorinate it. Okay, there's a detox that you cannot forget to do. I detox all of that. I put it into the pond. Uh, this instantly ages it and the homeowner doesn't sit there and pay for you to watch the water kind of rise up and fill to be able to turn it on. We make sure that if the homeowner is not going to be home for a few hours that there's irration moving within the pond. Um, and then we'll leave the garden hose on a trickle and we'll tell them fill it up all the way to the water level, which they should know their home, their homeowners that own ponds. Fill it up all the way, turn it on, and every should be everything should be flowing uh just fine for you. So that again is a very brief introduction to an 8 by11 with a 10-ft spring cleanout that requires two people. Uh requires is a heavy word. Should have two people on it. Should have a pickup truck with the tools that I mentioned. Uh and we have a resource sheet for all of this. Stanley. Um, and everything I just gave you should take about two to three hours depending on experience. Yes. Okay. So, right about that. It's it's how fast it should take you about two hours to do it. Yep. Okay. And you have So, the number 253 is the number that stuck in my head, Chris. This was the industry average that you guys had calculated using your own numbers from your own business. And this was what you calculated you guys were actually making on a per hour basis. Is that correct? I will have to verify that with you. I don't want to say in it's correct. Just tell it is correct because I remember Greg telling me this and I remember the average mow and blow guy was making around $25 an hour. Okay. And so I was just looking at going this is 10 times more but the level of difficulty isn't there. I mean if a guy if a mowand blow guy knows how to maintain his own mower the same skills that it takes to do that are the same skills to maintain a p a pond. It's some pumps uh some common sense and not being afraid to get dirty and enjoying working outside. It's straightforward the most lucrative thing you can do to make money the easiest way inside of the green industry. It's the knowledge curve and the and being afraid of the knowledge curve that keeps most people out. And the knowledge curve, you guys give it away. You guys do it all for these guys. is you have helped thousands of people, individual people, helped thousands of people transform their lives by giving them the knowledge to start a business that has taken them to the next level. I remember being at your guys's facility and a MercedesBenz car guy came up to me and he's like, "I was…