The Lawn Care Nut talks Trailers, Equipment and Set up

I am with Alan Hayne the lawn care nut on YouTube you guys got we just got done recording a podcast for the landscape business pro four barriers to Growing your lawn care business absolutely love what Allan was saying he talks about how to take your lawn care your Mo and blow business to the next level in True Green in the Chicago area he was the Midwest director he's got the lawn care nut over 30,000 subscribers and I absolutely love what Allan was saying he talks about how to take your lawn care your Mo and blow business to the next level in stages kind of like the blueprint Alan tell me a little bit more about what your idea is with this yeah so I always said it's really easy for me to sit back and tell a guy that's running 60 or 80 customers Mowing and blowing every single week and triming it's easy for me to say hey man you should add on fertilizing and and weed control it's easy for me to say but there quite a bit of beers to entry there so the key is and this is what I love that we faired it out in the podcast is there there are small steps you can take to add on extra Revenue that kind of get you into the spray Business Without causing a lot of really changing what you're currently doing and so you have to overcome those barriers so one of them we talked about was adding on irration for example right you can add on the reason that's important is because number one there's no chemical cost involved you don't have to worry about keeping chemicals dry you don't have to get licensed for it it's only one more piece of equipment on your truck so it's not a lot more extra room on your truck trailer and customers know what it is and when you say that you offer it they already kind of understand that they need it so that's a great way to kind of start getting into the lawn treatment business is by adding that small piece on so ation or dethatching either one is a labor intensive service that allows you to schedule and optimize your customer base so you've already got a customer that's doing the weekly Mo and blow and you want to make a little bit more income from that person you can start to off offer these Services as add-ons to what you're already doing and we used the in the podcast we broke all the prices down for 3500t Laine you're saying on average every area is going to be different but on average air ration for 3500t lawn comes in about where so anywhere between $60 and $80 it just depends on the area and how much kind of competition you have know the air ration is something you don't need to be licensed for what's the next barrier to entry what would be the next service that you could provide for lawn maintenance and here alen yes so then we were talking about so another one you can add on which goes right along with ation is overseeding and the reason I love seeding our business is it's like a golden word it's almost like if you go to get your car fixed and the guy goes you know what we're going to give you a free tank of gas with your car fixed today it's like awesome thanks like you gave the guy a pot of gold well in our business giving away grass seed or not giving away using grass seed it's like one of those golden things people understand what it is again no chem there's some chemical cost there by the way it's product cost or cogs but there there is no chemical licensing for that so it goes right along with ation you can use that as another upsell add in the over seating or we had talked about you could use that as a unique selling proposition that hey all of my customers get free over seating when they buy airra so now it becomes something that's unique to you something that may help you close a deal um but something that your competition doesn't doesn't offer and again not a lot more room on your truck couple 50 lb bags a day and a and a small spreader so 2 lb per thousand that's Midwest what I would typically recommend 2000 for overseed General overseed so if you have a 3500t lot what are you going to be charging that customer for just straight over seating as an additional service Alan so if you're going to add that on to the ation I would add an additional 1.5 so if you're charging 60 to 80 for the Iration then you would charge 90 to what 120 seat what about what about is a standalone service if I'm getting my seed at say $2 a pound and I'm going to put down 7 lb on that 3500 foot long then uh $2 a pound * 7 that's $14 cost so I have a little bit of labor for that is 3 minutes right so just call it $15 in cost so what do you want to do double it 30 bucks it's pretty good for uh it literally you can spread seed on a 3500 foot lawn in three and A4 minutes and it's just an easy upsell that everybody can do you don't need any licensing so we covered two points what's the third upsell that that a lawn maintenance company can start to look at to Vel their business further yes so I think the next one that's that's logical that again it's not going to require you to change the configuration of your truck much would be what I call cracken crevice or right away um CRA and crevice is really the right way it's just Roundup shots right you're not going to use Roundup you're going to use another glyphosate product a professional product but you can or you can use Roundup Pro but whatever you can get but crack and crevice so now we're going to spray weeds in the cracks of the driveway in the sidewalks we're going to spray uh weeds carefully in beds these are things that people definitely need it's a nuisance to them and it's solves a problem for them and then I also think it's a great add-on for commercial properties um again it there's some licensing there now but it's really only one or two products that you need to become familiar with and it's literally probably a hand a three gallon hand can maybe a backpack sprayer and maybe a 25 or 50 gallon nurse tank on your truck and you're set and you're good to go you premix in the morning so not a lot of chemical storage either with that so that would be a nice add-on after that and what are we going to charge for 3 3500 a foot yard alen yeah so in that case I think we need to go by hourly really uh because there you can't really measure linear feet too well cuz you never know what's going to be growing so you just pick whatever your hourly rate is it's $75 an hour and you and say a couple times a year it takes you 10 minutes to walk the property and spray then you can kind of price it accordingly that way nice so then next I would say get into full-blown fertilizing and wheat controlling you know that's where the barrier entry is probably the largest but if you've done some of these other ones already now you're already licensed um and and you might have to get some more specialty licensing but you're already licensed you got the general pest test out of the way so that barrier is already out you already feel comfortable with spray equipment you've already learned a lot during your um licensing period And I I want to say this I always recommend if you're going to get licensed at your state chemist or at the a department or whoever Department of bag whoever does it to take their course they all offer a course and you should take it even if you can pass the test take the course you'll learn a lot from it so you gain confidence now so actually getting in and carrying fertilizer and figuring out your program that's going to work for you and understanding nitrogen rates and things like that it won't be as big of a barrier to entry I think the biggest thing at that point would be again reconfiguring your truck setup because now you're you're into some pretty major equipment depending on your average law size so you're going to be able to get all this information we covered in the the podcast we just did together it's going to be coming out soon if it's not already out depending on when you're watching this video but I also want to recommend you guys and gals out there go over to Allen's channel the lawn care nut he has over 30,000 subscribers for a reason this guy has a very narrow Niche and he's focused in on it he's optimized his channel just to help homeowners he's helped he also helped contractors with points uh and so it's a great Channel that's how I discovered him the lawn care nut on YouTube go check out his channel