20 Things You MUST Do to Build a Profitable Lawn Care Business

Discover the exact 20-step blueprint and order of operations you need to legally, financially, and practically launch a highly profitable lawn care business from scratch. 🎟️ Equip Expo 👉 Save 50% off Equip Expo Ticket w/ Promo Code PAUL: Register Here https://go.equipexposition.com/promocode-paul 📚 Level Up Your Money (New Release) 👉 Get Your Paperback Copy! https://pauljamison.org/book 🎧 Level Up Your Money (Audiobook) 👉 Listen on Audible https://pauljamison.org/audiobook 📲 Connect with Paul - Visit Official Website https://www.thepauljamison.com/ 🛠️ Paul's Recommended Tools & Professionals Try the CRM Jobber - Click Here https://pauljamison.org/Jobber 📞 CallRail – Track where your leads are coming from: callrail.com https://partners.callrail.com/cc4gs529efdp 📚 The Landscaping Bookkeeper – Know your numbers, stress less: thelandscapingbookkeeper.com https://thelandscapingbookkeeper.com/ The Lawn Care Bootcamp - Click Here https://pauljamison.org/bootcamp 📈 Lawn Care Launch: Click Here https://thelandscapingbookkeeper.com/lawn-care-launch (new program for business owners) 🌐 Footbridge Media – Get a pro lawn care website: footbridgemedia.com https://www.footbridgemedia.com/paul-jamison?ref=pauljamison 📦 Business-Building Resources by Paul Price Increase Letter Template https://www.thepauljamison.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/2150230978 Contract Templates https://www.thepauljamison.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/2150230978 📚 Paul's Most Popular Business Books How to Build a Thriving Lawn Care Business: Buy on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D4K835L4 Cut That Grass and Make That Cash: Buy on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08SP7MQ13

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Motive. Growing a landscaping company means more trucks, more trailers and more equipment and more revenue doesn't always mean more profit. Motive gives you one platform to see where your vehicles and equipment are, cut idle time and fuel waste and protect your crews with AI dash cams. Motive customers report 20% annual savings on maintenance and fuel. See what it could do for your business at gomotive.com. Again, that's gomotive.com.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Hello and welcome to the Green Industry Podcast, your go-to guide for building a more profitable and thriving lawn care and landscaping business. Your host, Paul Jameson, is the author of five bestselling books, including Cut That Grass and Make That Cash and his latest, Level Up Your Money, all available on Amazon and Audible. Now get ready for more expert insights and practical strategies to boost your business and level up your life. Here's Paul Jameson.

• 1:07Speaker 00

  Welcome guys. Today, we're going to be talking about how to build a legitimate lawn care business. I got an order of operations, the top 20 things you want to do to run a business. I'm going to invite our friends over on Instagram to join. Let me go ahead and hit the button over there. Bring our friends from Instagram over. All right, we should be good there. So let's get started. Today on the show, we're going to talk about how to build a legitimate lawn care business. I'm going to share with you the top 20 things to do in an order of operations. So this is the first most important thing you should do, and we're going to go down the list. All 20 of these are of the utmost importance. If you have all 20 of these,

• 1:48Speaker 00

  you are a legit operation and you will be on your way to profitability. So we're going to get started. If you want to do a lawn care business legitimately, the right way, where you're able to sell it for a whole bunch of money one day, and in the meantime, make a bunch of profit as you build your business. These are the 20 steps you must take. Step number one.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  And if somebody could be so kind in the comments to let me know if my audio sounds good. Sometimes I've done these in the past and it picked up my camera audio, not this fancy microphone that sounds all good. So somebody could let me know in the comments. If you can hear me loud and clear, that would be great. All right. Step number one, you want to build a legitimate home service based business. We're going to give examples of a lawn mowing business on today's show. First thing you want to do is establish a legal entity. So I live down here in the state of Florida. We have something called SunBiz. It's a very easy to use website. You go to SunBiz. If you're in Florida, if you're in another state, you're going to need to go to your state's website and just establish a legitimate legal entity business.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  So I got an LLC. I did it in a few minutes. I went into SunBiz. I registered my business. I got all the paperwork and all of that stuff and got official with the state of Florida. Now, I live in Florida. I'm a resident of Florida. You're going to want to get that set up in your local state. So that's the very first thing you do, and I think it was a few hundred bucks. It wasn't anything more than that to get my legal business entity. So after you do that, and Florida is very legitimate. I mean, they give you all your, your information. So you print it all out, a story. And then what you want to do after that, if you're in the United States of America, is go to the IRS website. This is free.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  You want to get what's called an EIN, Employee Identification Number. And do not lose that sucker. They have, like, if you lose it, I don't even think there's a way to retrieve it. It's not like you forgot your password to your Netflix thing and you're like, reset my password. You can't like, they don't give you your EIN. I've heard stories about that. So print it out, store it somewhere safe, have a duplicate of it, like know your EIN, which is your employee identification number. So if you want to start a legitimate lawn care business, here's the 20 steps of what to do. Number one, and you can AI this in your state. Just be like, you know, I live in the state of Florida. Where do I go to get my business registered?

• 4:23Speaker 00

  And it's going to tell you SunBiz and it'll probably give you the website. You click, make sure it's all official, like, you know, the, the website ends and, you know, it's an accurate website for your state. So you get that entity, boom, you got, you got that done. Typically, that's like 100, 200, 300 bucks. Then you go to the IRS for free and you get your business's employee identification number, your EIN number. All right. Those two steps aren't fun, but they're, they're important. Now, this next step is fun for me, and that's going to the bank. Very, this is my third move on my list of 20, but this is the most important, I think, you'll ever do in your business is going and getting that bank account open up

• 5:05Speaker 00

  because you want to have a separate account for your business. I personally have multiple business accounts, but for starters, I would go to your local credit union, local bank that you have a reput-, you know, good, good, credible, they have good credible, you know, reputation or whatnot. And you just say, hey, I just started my lawn mowing business. I'm registered, you know, with my state, Florida. I got my EIN from the IRS. I'm ready and they're gonna have, I want a business account, not a personal account, business. I'm a businessman now. And while you're at it, can you open me up a business savings account?

• 5:49Speaker 00

  So now, all the money you make, cutting that grass, making that cash, gets deposited into the business account. 100% of the revenue you make, you want to put in your business account. So you have true numbers. You know exactly how much one of your business is making. Then from there, you can have a business savings account and you're going to take a portion of the money you're making and transfer that into your savings account. So you'll have money throughout the year to make your estimated quarterly tax payment. So you're staying current with your tax bills. So get a dedicated business account. This is a gigantic mistake that a lot of folks who have lawn care and landscaping businesses make

• 6:31Speaker 00

  is they intermingle their personal money with their business money, and it's all kind of like a jumbo soup. You want that to be very separated. And if you go to sell your lawn care business one day, and you can go back all the way to day one and say, we've had clean financial records from day one, and you can print out all your bank statements and have everything to where they can see exactly what revenue came in and then all of your expenditures. You go and you buy fuel for your mower, you go buy a mower, you go buy power equipment. We're talking about all of this coming up in a moment, but you purchase all of that from that business checking account. So now you have really clean numbers

• 7:12Speaker 00

  of what came into the business and what came out of the business. Let me know in the comments if you can hear me. David from Arkansas. I made an Instagram reel of you core aerating. Not sure if I uploaded it yet. I might, might be uploading it tonight, but I like that core aerating machine you got there from our friend from Arkansas. Thanks for tuning in. He's over there on Facebook. We're also live on TikTok. We are live on YouTube and Instagram, hopefully. All right. So how to set up a legitimate lawn care business? Get legal in your state. Get an EIN number. Open a dedicated business checking account

• 7:54Speaker 00

  and a dedicated business savings account. If you go to the grocery store, right? We have a grocery store down here in Florida called Publix and you buy, you know, diapers for your kid and you buy some groceries. You pay for that out of your personal debit card or personal cash or whatnot. You don't use the business for your personal, you don't use your personal for your business. Keep them separated. Okay. Number four, this is the order of operations of running a legitimate business. Get general liability insurance. All right. I don't have time to tell the story. I was young and dumb. I was a rookie. Lady's like, hey, can you pressure wash my house while you're here? And I said, sure. I never really did pressure washing before. I was like, this can't be that hard.

• 8:39Speaker 00

  I went down to the Home Depot and rented a pressure washer. She's going to pay me a lot of money. Rich lady, one point, well, at the time, her house was $1.25 million. This was all the way back in 2011. Now it's probably like $2 million house. But anyway, I get the pressure washer off. I don't know the difference between the red nozzle, the green nozzle, the yellow nozzle, the white nozzle. What are these nozzles? I put the red nozzle on. I aimed that sucker at her window. There's a cobwebs up in her window. It's all dirty and I spray her window and the window shatters. And I'm like, what in the world is going on? And it was up high on our house too. So now the window breaks.

• 9:21Speaker 00

  Long story short, it was $4,000. $4,000. Now, if that was the only window I broke in my career, I would, I would have been happy. I have many, many, many other stories I could tell of broken windows, shattered windows, all kind of crazy things. When you start working with pressure washers and lawn mowers and string trimmers, stuff's moving at a fast speed and debris goes places. So anyway.

• 9:48Speaker 00

  Get general liability insurance, cover your rear end. You don't want to pay out of pocket for this stuff, especially when you're broke. I mean, that was, that, that, that whole story, I could tell it another day. I have a meeting coming up here at the top of the hour, so I don't have time to tell all my crazy stories. I want to give you the top 20 things you need to do to build a legitimate business. This is a checklist, so maybe you're like my friend David here from Mallard, Mallard's Land LLC. He's been in business for a while, but this is a checklist. Are you doing these 20 things of my order of operations? If you're only doing 18 of the 20, you ain't, you ain't as legit as you could be. You want to be doing all 20 of these things I'm going to share today. I've already shared four of them. Let's go to number five.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  Check with your county, your city about getting local business license and permits. I know different cities, I have a buddy in Chicago. It's way different up there than it is down here in Florida. I'm going to leave that alone. We're going to go to number six. All right. You want to look like you're a premium business, then have a professional logo and a brand identity. So if you think about the National Football League, for example, the teams, they all have like a color scheme, right? I'm a, I'm a, I'm a Cleveland Browns fan. So, and if you're just tuning in, I'm sharing the top 20 things to build a legitimate lawn business. You want to do all 20 of these things. I've already shared first five, which are kind of the not fun legal things and banking things.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  But now we're getting into the nitty gritty of actually building a business. You want to have a professional logo and a brand identity. So think about the NFL, almost every team has like a two color schemed combo. I'm a Cleveland Browns fan, so their colors are orange and brown. All right. I'm also an Ohio State Buckeyes fan. Their colors are gray and a red, which is technically scarlet. If you know, you know, but, but right there, they're gray and red or gray and scarlet. So for your lawn business, I would pick a name and I wouldn't name it after me. Like I wouldn't be Paul's Lawn Care, Pookie's Lawn Care, or Jim's Lawn Care, because I want to sell this business one day

• 11:56Speaker 00

  to a private equity company or a local competitor in the area. And I want to get top dollar for my, my business. So I'm going to name it something like, if you're in Atlanta, like Atlanta Lawn and Landscape or, and again, you can check to make sure that your, your business name isn't taken. But I would, and I would be like, there's a neighborhood that you really want to dominate. Let's say a name, name the neighborhood Sugarloaf. That's a name of a neighborhood, okay? Sugarloaf Lawn and Landscaping or Sugarloaf Lawn and Landscape. So that tells my customers the area I serve and the services I offer. So get your professional logo and brand identity. Pick your color schemes. Okay. I like red and white.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  All right, or I like, um, let's think of another NFL team. I'm not a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, but their colors came to mind, right? It's, it's black and gold, I think. So anyway, pick your color scheme, pick your company name and then, and then get a logo. Every NFL team has a logo, my Cleveland Browns logo, they're so innovative. It's just the orange helmet.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  Mallard says green and yellow. That's a great color scheme, right? Green Bay Packers, green and yellow. And you want your colors to match. I'm kind of colorblind, but they need to like, you know, green and yellow, not, not match, contrast. So like green and yellow is great. Those go together, right? You, you think about the Green Bay Packers, green and yellow is a great color scheme. All right, number seven, these are the top 20 things you want to have. And I am putting them kind of in the order, like I would do this first, this second, this third.

• 13:38Speaker 00

  They're all important, but I would do them in this order if, if you're, don't have deep pockets and you're just like, well, I gotta, you know, start small and build my legitimate company. And then by the end of my list, you're, if you have all 20 of these, you are more than legit. Number seven is to get a, a good website built. There's a company, I'm actually currently for one of my businesses, they're building me a new website. They're called Footbridge Media. They're down in Pensacola, Florida. They're onboarding, Sam is the, the woman I'm working with to onboard for my new website. It's not out yet, but I'll let you know when it is. It's, you can see how world-class their team does. But having a website is so important for AI, for Google, for search engine optimization.

• 14:23Speaker 00

  You want to have a digital home base where you can communicate to the world of, of who you serve and what, um,

• 14:32Speaker 00

  you know, how people can get in touch with you and everything like that. So they'll help you with having a call to, all multiple call to actions on your website, which is basically like your phone number up in the right-hand corner and throughout the website. So if someone goes there, it's really easy for them to contact you. But if you need help with a website, a, a lot of the companies are rip-offs and, and unnecessary. And I tried kind of like the, the ones that are like plug and play before, and I just, it was a little too tough for me. I'm, I'm a pretty simple guy. So Footbridge Media does everything for me, all the heavy lifting for me. I just got to give them my fresh images and pictures and tell them, you know, who I serve and, and all of that. Number eight, incredibly important.

• 15:11Speaker 00

  Now website, um, we'll, we'll have some, if you use Footbridge Media, um, you know, they have a discount for people. Just tell them you're friends with Paul. That's my name, Paul. Maybe you're like, I'm not even your friend. It's my first time ever seeing you. You just popped up on the internet. Hi. Footbridge Media has a special for folks, uh, just tell them Paul sent you and they'll give you a discount on the, on the website. But websites do cost, you know, like 150 bucks, 200 bucks per month. Number eight is Google Business Profile. And this one's free, but you've got to get this thing going. Please, please, please get a Google Business Profile.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  Put fresh pictures of there, of your team, fresh pictures there of your work, fresh pictures of your equipment, your trucks, your trailers, anything you can get on Google Business Profile. What happens, and this may change with AI, but what happens is people will Google lawn care near me. And you want to be at the top of that list. I, I just did this, um, I have, you can't see them, but I got new LED lights for my home. And I think I could put them in, but I don't really want to climb up a tall ladder. I have high ceilings and I don't really want to be messing with electricity.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  So I just, you know, Googled, um, electrician near me. And the first guy that came up, I reached out to, he couldn't make it until a few days later. He had a bunch of five-star reviews though, so I called him first. But he's so popular, he's like, he couldn't make it out. I want, I'm a type of, I'm like a pull the Band-Aid off right now kind of guy. I'm like, I want my lights in now. I just, they just came in today. I want them put in today. So I went through the progressions and I called the company till finally I found this guy named Will, the electrician. 4.7 star reviews. I'm like, all right, it ain't five, but it ain't three. Give him a call. Yeah, I can be out there, you know, later on today. He showed up, put all the lights in throughout my whole home and easy peasy lemon squeezy.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  But I found him by just typing electrician near me. Somebody types in lawn care near me, you want to show up. So you need your Google Business Profile, um, at the top of that list. All right. Number nine, and, and, and Google Business Profile, you can also put like your company's information, like your name, your phone number, all of that stuff, your website, link it to your website. Make sure all of that stuff is accurate. All right, let's get to number nine after I get a sip of my water here.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  Number nine, again, we're going through the top 20 things. If you want to have a legitimate lawn care business, these are the 20 things you should be doing. And hello to everyone on TikTok and YouTube, Instagram, Facebook. We're live, baby. I'm not AI, I'm a real human. My name's Paul. All right, number nine, you want to have a customer relationship management. These are called a CRM. Some of them are 150 bucks a month. Some of them are a little more expensive than that. But what I do with my CRM, the one I use is called Jobber. I got it 2019. I have all my customers in there. So if I get a new customer, I let them know, hey, we do prepay and we're going to get your card on file.

• 18:38Speaker 00

  And sometimes we'll do, we'll charge your card the day we do the work. But either way, whatever plan we set up with that specific customer, depending on how we're serving them, I have them pay with a credit card on file. So it's our company policy. So you want to have a CRM where you can store your customers' credit card on file. And then as you agree to the work, you're going to charge their card on file. So Jobber does more than just billing, but that's the main thing I use it for. But it also has all of my customers' information stored. So when I go to sell my business one day, I can show the private equity company, hey, here's all my customers. Here's our work history from all of these years and things of that nature. So you definitely want a CRM, the one that I've used since 2019 is called Jobber. Number 10.

• 19:24Speaker 00

  Is you want to have an accounting and bookkeeping system. So what I use is QuickBooks Online. So if you're just tuning in, I've already mentioned to have a legitimate business. You want to have your own business account set up where you only run your business income and expenses out of. And what I have is that my business accounts synced to QuickBooks Online, which is also synced to Jobber. It's kind of like the trifecta of the accounting, banking. So everything's uniform and speaking to each other.

• 20:03Speaker 00

  So QuickBooks Online is just when I started my first business in 2011, my buddy Kenny was using like QuickBooks offline. It was like you had to put a CD and a CD-ROM and like it was like crazy. And I told him, I was like, hey, I'm going to get the thing you told me about that QuickBooks thing, but they got this thing now where it's all like cloud based and you can do it on the internet. And then, and he's like, okay, well, I'm doing it the old school way. But so I signed up for it. This is like real innovative back in 2011. And then I wasn't using Jobber at the time then, but I at least synced it up to my bank accounts. Then when I started with Jobber in 2019, I synced Jobber into that. So every transaction my business ever does, it gets tracked in Jobber.

• 20:48Speaker 00

  It gets tracked in my bookkeeping, which is QuickBooks Online, and it gets obviously tracked in my bank. So there's a paper trail of everything. And then I have a bookkeeping company out of Pensacola, Florida. Shout out to Pensacola, Florida today. They're called the landscaping bookkeeper, Megan and Joey Cobra Lee's team. And so then they, their team, shout outs to Vanessa from their team. I think that's who's overseeing my account right now. But anyway, she puts all my, my income and expenses into proper categories so that I can read my profit and loss statement, which I take a look at frequently.

• 21:25Speaker 00

  I can read my statement of cash flows and my, my business reports, such as my balance sheet. All of that stuff is clean for me to be paying attention to what's going on with the numbers in my business. All right, we're going through the top 20 things you want to have to run a legitimate lawn care business. I've gone through the top 10. Woo wee, I'm going to keep going to a number 11. That is, you want a reliable, dedicated work vehicle. Now, one gigantic mistake that a lot of people make, and it's, it's, I gotta be careful here because a lot of my friends do this.

• 22:09Speaker 00

  You don't need a brand new truck to run a home service based business. I have a friend who recently started a business and he went out and he got literally a brand new truck, brand new. And the, the payment on that sucker, it's so much money. And it's just, he's making money. He's, I mean, he's doing a decent job like income wise, but now he's got, the money just goes to Ford. It's a, it's a sharp looking Ford, but you don't need all that.

• 22:47Speaker 00

  You can get a reliable, dedicated work vehicle that is, you know, five, six, seven, eight, nine years old. Ford F-150 hashtag not sponsored. I have a friend who is sponsored by Ford, but anyway, Chevy Silverado hashtag not sponsor. I don't care. Those are both reliable work trucks, but you don't need a brand new one because now the money you make is going to go to the interest and the principal and paying off your, your work truck. So getting used one, but you do need a reliable, preferably dedicated work truck.

• 23:28Speaker 00

  Like if you drive a Toyota Corolla for your, your daily driver to go to the gym and the grocery store and to the golf course or bowling alley or wherever you go for your hobbies. I prefer that you have a personal vehicle and then you have your work truck just to keep them separate. That's the best way to do things. But a $10,000 truck, $15,000 truck, $20,000 truck, maybe a $25,000 truck is all you need. Anything beyond that and you're wasting, you're just pouring money down the toilet or you could just put your truck window down, just throw the money. I mean, it's just wasting money having a $80,000 vehicle.

• 24:13Speaker 00

  All right, let me get off my soapbox here and get back to my top 20 things to do to build a profitable, legitimate lawn care business. Number 11, you need a trailer, a ramp rack. You need something to, you need something to, to, to put your equipment on. So guys debate, should I have an open trailer? Should I have a closed trailer? Should I use, there's a, there's an attachment thing called a ramp rack, which several of my friends have. I don't care which one of those routes you go. There are pros and cons to each of those and there are, there are arguments to make for any of those, but you do need one of those. So you need a reliable vehicle and then you need a, some sort of reliable trailer to

• 24:57Speaker 00

  put your lawnmower on. If you're doing pressure washing, to put your pressure washer on, to put your power equipment on, any hand tools, shovels, rakes, stuff like that. It needs a place to go. So very important that you get a dedicated work vehicle that's only for your business. And then you get a trailer to go with it. And trailers typically cost a couple of grand, you know, two, $3,000 bucks. They go way beyond that. I mean, you could easily get into seven, eight, nine, I mean, 10,000 in a blink of an eye, but really if you're just starting a very simple $2,000, $3,000 open trailer that you connect to your used truck is where I would start.

• 25:40Speaker 00

  If I were to start a brand new lawn care business tomorrow, that's what I would do. I would just go get a, a real basic trailer, open trailer for a couple thousand and then get a used truck, Chevy Silverado, Ford F-150, 10 year old truck. Cause I'm not, I'm in the business of making money, not spending money. I want to make as much money as I can and have as less expenditures as possible. All right, number 13 in the top 20 things, order of operations, you need to build a legitimate business. Number 13 is your lawnmower. So this is where I would buy new, if you can, not the truck, like my friend spends 80, $80,000 on a truck. No, if you are going to buy one piece of equipment, brand new in this whole equation,

• 26:23Speaker 00

  a new lawnmower would be good, preferably in cash. Now, if you can't afford a brand new one, a lot of these dealers, a shout out to my friend Colton up in North Carolina. He's a dealer. I have, I have friends that are dealers all throughout Atlanta, here in Florida. A lot of times they will sell brand new equipment to the gigantic big companies. And then after two years, those big companies, or even after one year, in some cases, those big companies will turn that, those equipments back in. So you could get one of those pieces of equipment, mowers specifically, used for a reasonable price. But if you can't afford a new lawnmower, a commercial lawnmower, that would be the best route to go. Which brand?

• 27:08Speaker 00

  I don't care. There's a lot of good brands out there. X mark, John Deere, Kubota, Toro. The list goes on and on and on. If you're going to go battery powered, and this is getting into my next point, which is point 14. In addition to the lawnmower, you're going to want good commercial handheld equipment. So if you're going to go battery powered, Crest Commercial all day long, they're the best.

• 27:38Speaker 00

  They're just the best for power equipment.

• 27:41Speaker 00

  That's battery powered, Crest Commercial. If you're going to go gas powered, right? Echo, Steel, Husqvarna, Redmax. Redmax is actually Husqvarna's commercial grade, but you want it to be commercial grade. So Redmax or Echo or Steel. But honestly, battery powered equipment right now is so much more popular because there's, it's popularity is growing so much faster because customers want quiet equipment. They don't want to have their baby be taking a nap and they're on a zoom call and here you come. There goes David from Arkansas. Shout, I see, I see, I see David in the comments that Crest is the best.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  And there goes, I heard Echo is coming out with like, I think a 9500 now, their, their, their PB 9000 or whatever that thing was. That, that blower is amazing. All right, it's, it's powerful. It's amazing. PB 9010, thank you, Mr. Producer. PB 9010 is the best, but that thing's loud and it's heavy. But, but Crest Commercial blower, I was just using it the other day and I was, I was making a video. I haven't posted it yet, but I was like, watch this. We can talk while the, the Crest blower is on level four, like the strongest setting. So anyway, I don't care what handheld power equipment you get, just make sure it's commercial.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  So if you're going to go battery powered, get Crest Commercial and get all their batteries and chargers and all that. If you're going to go gas powered, get Echo or Steel or Redmax or whatever brand is in your neck of the woods that's commercial. So don't go down to Lowe's or Home Depot and get the homeowner raggedy, cheap string trimmer. Am I a Crest dealer? No, I'm not a Crest dealer. But I, I do use Crest, recommend Crest, own Crest, like their stuff. And I've tried some of the other battery powered equipment and Crest is superior when it comes to quality. I'll say that kindly. And a lot of the other brands are getting better.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  Like five years ago, some of this stuff was laughable and it's, it's all getting better now, but there's a distinct difference between commercial and residential. And where I, I don't want you to go out and get brand new vehicle and a brand new trailer, unless you're getting like just a cheap $2,000 trailer, but you don't need to go buy a brand new $15,000 trailer. But you do want to get a, buy brand new handheld commercial equipment and a mower, because that's the stuff you're using every day. All right, number, number 15. If you're a legitimate company, get all your supportive gear, gas cans, batteries, hand tools, right? You want, you want pruners for, for bushes and, and rose bushes and things of that nature.

• 30:28Speaker 00

  You want flathead shovels. You want pointy shovels. You want landscape rakes for grading and get, get quality of those things, right? You want wheelbarrows, like there's all of these little accessory items that you want to get the, you want to get the, the good kind.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Think about the last time you called a business and were sent to voicemail. Did you actually leave a message? Or did you hang up and call the next search result? Homeowners today operate the same way. They don't leave voicemails and they rarely give a call back. That's why lawn care pros, just like you, are using Call Rail's Voice Assist. Voice Assist is a 24/7 AI voice assistant designed specifically for landscapers. It answers every call, handles customer questions, and books jobs directly onto your calendar, all without you ever having to step away from the current job. Stop letting silent missed calls train your revenue. Try Voice Assist for free today at voiceassist.com.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Lawn care and landscaping pros, listen up. If you're tired of guessing your way through pricing, marketing, hiring, and sales, this is your wake-up call. The LCR Summit hits downtown Louisville, October 19th and 20th at the Galt House. The same week is equipped, and it's going to change the way you run your business forever. This is not another sit and listen event. It's two full days of hands-on workshops from leaders who've actually built what you're trying to build. Naylor Taliaferro shows you how to generate better leads through smarter marketing. Paul Jamison teaches content that converts. John Payjack breaks down your numbers so you'll stop working for cheap. Eric Triplet, the Pondigger, reveals how he built a multimillion-dollar business, making

• 32:19Speaker 01

  more money with less work. Plus, you'll have a surprise guest speaker. Add in live Q&A panels, powerful networking, and an exclusive VIP dinner with all the speakers when you purchase at the Platinum level. Grab tickets and info at LCRSummit.com, or just tap the link in the podcast description. That's LCRSummit.com. Stop guessing, start growing. Build the business you've always imagined at the LCR Summit.

• 32:49Speaker 00

  Make sure you get all of that stuff. Number 16. All right, are you a professional company? I could not believe my eyes yesterday. Could not believe my eyes. I was at the richest part of the town that I live in, okay? Where the houses are starting at $3 million and they go up to 10, 11, 12 million and beyond, all right? There's a $22 million house yesterday. I was walking by these houses. There's a tree company. I could not believe my eyes. They were not wearing PPE. A tree company! I'm almost tempted to say the name of the tree company, but I could not believe my eyes. If you're working in tree care, lawn care, I don't care, you should be wearing safety glasses. Now, if you're using Crest Commercial, you don't necessarily need ear protection, but

• 33:34Speaker 00

  just for your own ears, as you get older, wear some kind of ear protection if you are using gas-powered equipment because the stuff's so loud. But definitely your eyes, you should have, you know, safety glasses on, steel toe boots. But these guys weren't wearing their helmets. Now, if you're out mowing grass, you don't have to wear a hard hat, all right? You don't have to be out there pushing a 30-inch mower, wearing your hard hat. But if you're cutting down a tree, for crying out loud, I couldn't believe my eyes. Couldn't believe my eyes. Probably a $5 million house, and this company's out there, and the guy was walking, and the one guy was using the grapple thing, grabbing all these heavy pieces of debris, lifting them up to the truck, and the other guy just standing underneath there with no hard hat on. And I was like, oh, my goodness.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  I could have gone viral. I was about to take a video and be like, look at these guys. Anyway, number 16, if you're a legitimate lawn business, pressure washing business, tree service business, pest control business, learn what protective, it's called PPE, personal protect, I don't even know what PPE stands for, personal protective equipment, maybe, but it's safety glasses. It's a hard hat if you're going to be doing anything with tree work. It's ear protection, it's gloves, right? Safety gloves. Then you don't have to wear all of this for every job, but there's certain jobs where you want, if you're a legitimate company, you're going to be protecting your skin, your customer's property, and your team. All right, number 17. Professional uniforms.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  Could you imagine if the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Texas Longhorns, they're playing here soon, I'm an Ohio State fan, could you imagine if they show up down there in Austin, Texas, and they just wear t-shirts and gym shorts and tank tops, and a few guys have their shirts off and they line up to play the game? No. Ohio State's going to be wearing their uniforms, okay? This is point number 17. Get professional uniforms, all right? The Ohio State Buckeyes are going to hopefully be wearing, I like their, when they wear them white tops with them silver pants, looking sharp, right? But the NFL professionals, right? Cleveland Browns, right?

• 35:48Speaker 00

  I don't know if, well, Green Bay Packers, right? They wear their uniform, right? That green and yellow uniform. Your team should have a uniform. I was in the same neighborhood yesterday. Again, here in Florida, we have some neighborhoods where these houses are just incredible. And it's really not the house, honestly, it's the location. Because you're sitting there on a body of water, whether you're on the Gulf side or the Atlantic Ocean side, and it's just, you could have that same house in Arkansas where my friend David is. Like, that same house might be worth, like, let's say it's a million-dollar house in Arkansas, it's like 10 million here in Florida when it's on the Gulf of America. But anyway, I'm in this neighborhood yesterday, and I'm just like, I'm just, my brain is

• 36:32Speaker 00

  like, there's all these businesses I want to start, I just don't have time. But I was thinking, if I started a business and I was just in this neighborhood, I would literally name my lawn business, the name of the neighborhood, lawn and landscape, and I would kick these guys' butt, I mean, I would dominate this neighborhood. The guy had no uniform on. He's mowing a $4 million house on his raggedy mower. I'm not even going to say what vehicle he has, because maybe the algorithm puts this on his thing, and he's like, you're talking about me? And he gets all mad. But he didn't have a uniform on. His presentation, like, his vehicle, it was all unprofessional.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  And if you want to charge top dollar, which, subscribe to my podcast, I'll teach you that on another show, you need to present yourself as professional. Now, my friend who bought the $80,000 truck, that's not what the customer's looking for. You can have a $10,000 truck, and that can look professional. You have a logo on the side of it. You start with, you can get like a little magnet, if you're just starting out, for 70 bucks, or you get it lettered for a couple hundred bucks, or what I recommend, if you have the money, get your vehicle wrapped. But that looks professional, even on a $10,000 truck. You show up and wear polyester or nylon, or I don't know all the names of materials,

• 37:54Speaker 00

  but don't be wearing cotton in a hot summer. Get comfortable uniforms, and if you can't afford to get your logo, you know, what is the fancy word called? Not upholstery. When they stitch it onto your shirt, I was just at the shop the other day that does that, I can't think of the word, when the shop that puts their logo on your shirt for you, then you can just get plain shirts like this, just say, okay, let's say our colors are blue, just buy a bunch of blue golf shirts. Or if your color's blue and you want, like, those athletic shirts that folks wear to the gym, that's like a nylon and polyester mix, just make sure everyone's wearing a uniform.

• 38:34Speaker 00

  I don't care what the uniform is, but that it's recognizable that you're a professional, right? The NFL's professional. Your lawn business should be professional, you should be wearing a uniform. All right, now, this is where a lot of people are like, okay, I'm going through your checklist, Paul, I got all of these, until you get to this one. All right? And don't cheat. Honestly, ask yourself this, this question. Do you have a defined service area? Where I can literally give you an address and you is like, yep, that's in our service area? Oh, nope, that's right across the street from our service area, but it's outside of our service area.

• 39:18Speaker 00

  Professional lawn businesses, I have friends that run lawn businesses north of $10 million, $15 million, $17, $18 million, a bunch of these guys are my friends, okay? Every single last one of them have a service area that is, and it's not like a perfect circle, but it's like an irregular shape, but there's a permanent boundary line of where they serve and where they don't serve. So if you're a legit company, and I gave the example, if I had the time, I'd start a lawn business in that neighborhood where all the rich people live, I would, embroidery, that's the fancy word I was looking for, thank you, the embroidery shop.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  There's embroidery shops in every city in America, pretty much. Just type in embroidery shop near me, find one with the best reviews, and go get some uniforms with your company logo on it and your color scheme, and a lot of times, they'll sell combos, where you can actually buy the golf shirt or the shirt from them, and they'll embroider it. Just make sure it ain't cotton, all right? I made that mistake. I used to have these blue cotton shirts, and my guys hated them because they were so hot. And, you know, then I got the ones that feel good when it's, I don't even know, the combo of like how much polyester, how much like nylon, but spandex. Spandex, polyester, nylon, there's a mix. The shirt I'm wearing right now is that combo, I just don't have time to pull the tag out

• 40:45Speaker 00

  and look, but it's very comfortable. So here's my point about the service area. You want to know exactly where you serve. Shout out to my friend Chris Gentry, he has an app that you can connect your website called My Service Area. So you identify where your service area is, and then if you have a customer who's looking at your website that's outside of your service area, it's going to let them know, so you're not wasting their time or your time. So if you're a professional legitimate lawn business, you define your service area. And again, if I had the time, I'd start a business, and I literally was thinking about it for like 24 hours, I was like, oh, I could start a pressure washing business in that neighborhood, I could start a lawn and landscape business in that neighborhood, I could start a fertilizer business, I could become so rich by just serving that one neighborhood, and there's a lot of houses in that neighborhood. But I would define a service area that we only service that area.

• 41:30Speaker 00

  Anyone outside of that area, I'm sorry, we only service this area, but I would have a very clear boundary. And I would, I was walking around there yesterday, I was like, oh, my gosh, the competition, I mean, there's a few legitimate businesses, for sure, but then there was all these trucks in the trucks, and I was like, this is crazy, and that's what inspired my video for today. I'm like, I'm going to share, and I feel sympathy for these guys, because I wanted to go over and be like, hey, man, can I take you out to lunch and teach you the ropes? Like, you clearly, I don't, anyway, you're clearly leaving money on the table, because that rich person who has that $4 million home...

• 42:04Speaker 00

  They have money and you could access a whole lot more of it if you present yourself as professional because they'll take you serious. But right now they're just throwing you pennies because they're not taking you serious. Anyway, uh, number 19, if you're a legitimate lawn business, you need to do print marketing. This is old school, but you need, you need some form of door hangers, flyers, postcards, uh, door hangers are king. They were, um, in the late 1990s, they were in, you know, back in the 19th century, door hangers worked. They worked 10 years ago and they work today. I'm filming this, uh,

• 42:41Speaker 00

  in 2026. Door hangers work. Um, you get done with your, your property and you can go to the neighbor to the left, put a door hanger on their door. You go to the neighbor to the right, put a door hanger on their door, walk across the street to like a few of those houses, put door hangers on their door. You just constantly are putting door hangers around the yards in your service area that you work at, and that will bring you in so much business. My friends who do the 10, 15, 20 million dollars a year, they all have it a very aggressive door hanger, um, strategy. Now there's way more to marketing than just door hangers, but that's something that legit businesses, um, are so proactive with and

• 43:26Speaker 00

  it's a part of their protocol. Uh, you get done core aerating this property, you have your door hangers that say, you know, core aeration specialist or whatever your, your marketing term is on there. I don't have time to break all of that down because I got a meeting in a few minutes and I gotta get a sip of water and I gotta go to the bathroom. Woo, we were going to wrap this up quick, but you, you learn how to do door hangers and you do them all the time. You get done with a job, the neighbors get door hangers, the people across the street get door hangers because they're going to need to see your business seven, eight, nine, 10 times. And then it's going to kind of be in the back of their mind and they're like, oh, I need, I need to call. Boom. Cause they got the, your, your business on the front of their mind. They've seen your wrapped truck.

• 44:05Speaker 00

  They've seen your door hangers. They see you all the time. Number, uh, 20. You have clear service terms. So legitimate business, my friend who does a 20 million a year business, he knows exactly what services he offers and what are exact services he doesn't offer. So he does do lawn mowing in a very specific service area because lawn mowing is his gateway. He wants to get your, your trust, your name, your email address, your phone number, because he's going to upsell you fertilization and weed control. He's going to upsell you, your tree care. He's going to upsell you. He has a list of

• 44:46Speaker 00

  the, the services they offer, and then he has a list of services they don't offer. So you're like, hey, can you give us a quote for a retaining wall? He'd be like, no, we don't do retaining walls. I'm sorry. Oh, can you give us a stone patio paper? No, we don't do that. But he does have clear service. Um, he, he has clarity on what services you offer, what services you don't. So you need to go through the top 20, 30 services that people could want. Core ariations. Is that something you know how to do? Yes or no? Boom. Yes or no? Doesn't matter to me, but you have clarity because when a customer asks you, you need to be able to say yes or no, and not be second guessing because chucking the trucks out there, the customer comes out and they're like, hey, uh, can you go

• 45:29Speaker 00

  real quick and clean up our gutters? And then dumbbell junior, he's like, oh yeah, sure. And he gets up there and then falls off the ladder and he's now he's in the bush and the lady comes out and he's, oh, he's in the bush. Oh, I call. So you know, okay, yeah, we do offer core ariations. Yes, I am competent on how to do a sod installation. I have the, know how to do it. Yes, we do sod. Now, when you get into fertilization and weed control, gigantic money, but you do need the proper licensing knowledge. There's a lot to go into that. So if you are going to go that route, there's a whole bunch you need to learn. But anyway, my point is that you have a service area and you know what you offer and what you don't offer. I gotta go. I just looked at the clock and I would like to go

• 46:13Speaker 00

  deeper on these, but I can't. I got a meeting. Um, so I hope this has helped. Thanks for watching on Tik Tok. Let me see if I can end the Tik Tok live here. Is there a button to hit end? My first time ever being on Tik Tok. I don't even know how to shut this thing off. Oh man. How do I end my Tik Tok live? Let me if I hit that button. Well, we'll figure that out in a minute. It's going live and I don't know how to stop it. Uh, but I am going to end here on YouTube and Instagram and Facebook. Thanks for hanging out with me guys, and we'll hope to catch you up on the next episode. Peace.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Marty, producer of the Green Industry Podcast. This episode is over, but check the episode notes for links to products and services that you heard about during the episode and thanks for listening.