Thursday in the Life of a Landscaper

We're going to go over the average day in the life of a landscape contractor. And I guarantee you, it's not going to be what you think. 6:00 a.m., 6:30, I don't know, early in the morning, off season. You think I should be sleeping in or relaxing, up, answering emails, tanking down all my messages for the day. I'm going to bring them with me. I've got a lot of site visits to do today. You're going with me. Okay. The first order of business for the day is a state of the union address for the city of Egan. I guess the mayor is going to be speaking or something. I was invited by the the bank um to go down and attend this function. Um do I honestly do I care what the state of the union is for the city of Egan? No, I don't care. But there's going to be all these business owners there, all these people that do get together. They want to uh I don't know, hobnob. So, let's go check it out. Let's see what it's about. All right. Well, I think I'm here. Breakfast of champions. So, start the day out. Big old cup of coffee. Put a little coconut oil in it. Take a bunch of neutropics, which are basically vitamins for your brain. Just a way to kickstart it. Try to get everything going. You always want to function at your absolute highest. Did it work? Not yet today, unfortunately. I've been up for an hour and a half and I still feel like I don't know, like I'm not awake yet. I hate these days. And then on the way out the door, what happens? My wife says, "You should stay home." She had surgery yesterday. You should You should stay home and get the kids off and let me rest. That brought me to thinking, yes, I should, but I can't. every time if I had somebody tell if I followed through on something that I should do, I would never get anything done at the office. I would have never been able to grow my business. I would have never been able to expand or do or become where I'm get to where I'm at right now. And that leads me to want to bring up a point to you. Don't fall for that trap. Your friends are going to be asking you out. Oh, come on out. Let's go uh let's go party. you're you're going to be uh invited to events or functions and you're going to be torn. You're going to be torn between going or going to work. Remember this, 80% of businesses fail. And the reason is because people make the wrong decisions. What do you think the right decision is? Putting food on the table and a roof over your head or going out and partying? You figure it out. It looks like that's my place. Let's go check it out. Okay, we're here. Cameras are rolling. Everybody's dressed up in suits and ties. And here I am, a landscaper. Yeah, my kind of event, right? We've got people all over. I am so totally underdressed. Is that going to stop me? Be willing on occasion to fail. And that's one of the things that we at Egan haven't learned how to do very well because haven't failed all that. So I think you know at the end of the day there are small specific problems we can point to and say that's an amount of money that's not amount of money. I think it was all right going on 9:00 just got done with the state of the union address for the city of Egan. Was it worthwhile? Passed out a few business cards. That wasn't what it was about. Was about making sure that people could see you attend the event. Not every event is going to be a walk away with a deal in your hand, but the next time you go to event, your face may be recognized. So, you need to attend these things whether you want to or not. Next job site in Menota Heights. All right. One of the fun things about that last event, it was a suit and tie event. Here I am in jeans and boots. But you know what? I'm a landscaper. This is what I do. I feel good about it. And uh you know, you can go there and feel uncomfortable because you're not dressed like everybody else, but sometimes it's better to stand out a little bit. If you have a level of confidence that goes with you, even if you don't look like everybody else, you're going to be accepted. And there's been many events where uh you just you don't feel good about yourself and you have to convince yourself to be confident. And you'll notice a shift. You'll notice a shift not only in yourself but in how people perceive you. That was the case today. Didn't feel good about myself. Underdressed. Didn't feel like I fit fit in. And I said, "You know what? Everybody underneath all their suits and ties and fancy clothes are exactly the same as I am. Big difference." I'm at a customer's house in Mod Heights. Pet peeve. 9:00 appointment. I'm here at 9:05. They're not. You know what's going to happen? This is the first time this has happened to me either. So, what's going to happen is I'm going to help myself around their property. I'm going to take a look around. I'm going to get familiar with it. And inevitably, they're going to call me back, apologize for missing the meeting. It slipped their mind. Something came up. Can you come back out? No. My time is worth money. Okay, here's the site. Customer is not here. I'm going to take a quick shot of it. They want cleanup done. Looks like they've had a lot of work done. landscaping's all finished, but the yard is a mess. So, just do a quick walk through of their property and then if they call me, I'm familiar with it. I don't have to revisit the site. Maybe I can talk them into removing this. Who wants a swimming pool in Minnesota, right? Site visit number two. We built this retaining wall three, four years ago. Used to be a garage here. She wanted boulder retaining walls. She wanted a random pattern with an elevated raised bed in it. We put it in. We're back. Now, we're going to install a driveway. Let's get going. So, we have an alleyway coming up on this job site. And this is where we're going to try to gain access into the yard for parking. Um, we're going to remove this retaining wall here and come straight up to that tree and level it out. That way, Hazel doesn't have to step. See how I'm gonna step up and over this retaining wall? We don't want that. She doesn't want to do that. We don't want to box this out. We want to be able to get out of a car and walk straight to the back door. So, we're going to work out a solution on this one for her. Okay. Just left her house. This is the job that we're going to be doing. We're going to bring in two loads of class 5. We're going to excavate out three loads of unsuitable fill soil. We're going to haul away one retaining wall. Yeah, one timber retaining wall. This is the wall I built here. Um, and then we're going to place, compact, and get her job done. $2,750. Uh, this is estimate number two. I think it's 9:45 in the morning. Now, we're heading off to, uh, one number three. 11:00 or so, we're going to remove this swimming pool. So, we're going to come into this backyard. Things I look for when I remove a swimming pool. The most important things, access, size of the swimming pool. About an average size swimming pool. Obviously in rough shape, no sense in bothering repair it. So, they're going to pull it out. Here's my access path in and out. Good access path. I've seen this project about as long as I've been talking to you. I already have a proposal for it. The reason I can do that is because we do so many of these. It fits into our flat rate price quote. I quoted him a a price over the phone. I'm just going to stick with that price. I quoted him this job site unseen. We do one after another after another. That's specializing in your niche. If you want to say it the way the right way, niche. When you specialize, you get this set down in stone. You know how to do it like it's the back of your hand. You don't have to figure nothing. This job's wrapped up. One minute taking a look at it. I already know what this job's going to cost. Job number three. Let's go on to the next one. All right, we're going to ambush the producer, the landscape business pro. He absolutely hates being on the air. I figure what a better way to get him on video. That's even worse than audio, right? Audio, you just blabb him behind a microphone. Video, you actually got to have your face in front of it. So, here he is. He walks up. I got the camera rolling. There you go. Say hi to everybody. What's up, guys? Hey. So, I want to try to get Cameron to Well, just so introduce you to him. He manages the website for the landscape business pro. He manages the website for dirt monkey.net. He also uh built produced my website for my lawn care division for GT Lawns and uh he's just helping. We're meeting up going over some business together. So, figured we'll get him on the air, get him to say hi and uh maybe he can help me. I'm trying to convince him to come on the podcast with me. Maybe start to do some interviews and get some uh a little bit more of a personality in there. Cam, you up for something like that, bud? We'll see. Swimming pool removal project in Bloomington. I think this is the fourth one I've looked at today. This one not easy cheesy lemon squeezy. We don't have an easy path in. What we f have is a bunch of white oaks. Gaining access to this pool is the most difficult part of this job. not impossible. We've picked our route. We're going to have to remove a few swing sets to come in to this. What we're going to do then is we're going to also remove the entire fence that goes around the structure. We're going to remove all the slides, diving boards, everything else. We're going to come in right down here, gain access to the shallow end of the swimming pool. So, we come in, we're going to leave the concrete that's right here. Excuse me. I'm not good at this. We're going to leave that concrete. Customer flat rate pricing is a huge advantage. I've looked at two swimming pools today. I walked away with a deposit check on one of them and a verbal confirmation on the other one. That's 100% close rate. I contribute a big portion of that success because of that flat rate pricing. Social proof. That's how powerful it is. Okay. So, it's what 2 o'clock today. Now we have to go up and start typing. We'll go up and work in the office. We'll go on to phase two of the day. Okay, it's going on 4:00 in the afternoon. And I just realized something. I don't think I ate lunch today. That's not a big surprise. So, some behind thescenes stuff that's been going on. Uh, I've closed for sure two deals and I think I've nudged out three other contractors on a pretty big project. which is probably about a $50,000 landscaping job. How I nudged them out was by giving options. It was a town home association that has a failing retaining wall, a sidewalk on top of it, and brand new railing they put on it, and nobody could come up with a solution to the problem, but I did. That's how I was able to get in where the other guys are getting out. So, it's not a for sure, but it looks like a good lead. Now I have to go up. I have to do a whole bunch of paperwork, computer stuff. Nothing fun, nothing you want to watch, but it's all necessary. By the way, this is how I dressed this morning when I was meeting the mayors and the senators and all the big wigs that wanted to rub elbows and hobnob with each other. So, yeah, I felt a little bit out of place, but you know what? I was still going to make the absolute best I possibly could out of it. Isn't that the point of this video? But I want to make sure you understand the power of networking and how much it influences your business. I want to go back now just to a few seconds ago when you were watching me talk about being the Walmart of uh pool removal. I want you to be the Walmart of whatever you do. That's why Walmart is successful. And you're probably going to automatically put up your filters and go, "Why would I ever want to be a Walmart?" Okay? Walmart sells more goods than anyone else. And I want you to sell more goods than anyone else. But they make the pricing fair across the board. You don't have to be the cheapest. Don't get me wrong. I don't care what store, what analogy you use, but I want pricing. So, if you grade a yard, set a flat rate price for an 80 by 100 yard. Make that the same for everybody else. But then you can adjust it up or down if they have a bigger or smaller yard. But when you have the ability to say, "Our flat rate price is X for yard removal. Our flat rate price or for yard grading, our flat rate price is X for trimming trees that are 50 to 75 feet. It is this number for trees that are 75 to 100 feet. Do you start to see how customers feel equal? You have now taken away all of their guesstimating whether they're getting a fair price or not. By saying flat rate pricing, you bypass their arguments and you've set yourself up as the expert. The second thing that you have to do to close those deals to make the the biggest use of that time frame is to be um confident, competent, and comfortable around your customers. When you're confident, competent, and comfortable, the customers are going to feel it. They're going to stop questioning. Okay. Well, that was pretty cool how that all worked out. So, with that being said, let's get on to phase whatever. I don't even know what time phase. I don't even know what phase I'm on. Now, I get to start working on this thing. I get to start working on that thing. We got flyers we've got to produce. I've got to go to my Dakota County Chamber of Commerce. Whatever Chamber of Commerce is in your neighborhood, you might want to check out. I have to optimize my site on their site because we've got a big campaign starting out for the spring season. Spring I you don't see snow in my videos, but this is a time of year we're usually plowing. Um we're just blessed with an early spring. So tech technically this is still offseason work. So let's get started. And I hope you're getting a good idea of what you can do in your business because really it's not about me. I want this to be about you. I want this to generate ideas for yourself. [Music]