Live from Louisville: The Morning Show with Special Guest Michael Garvey

Recorded live at the 2025 Equip Expo Morning Show in front of a roaring studio crowd, New Jersey State Trooper Mike Garvey reveals exactly how he and partner Larry scaled their fertilizer, weed-control, and mosquito business to nearly 900 recurring customers—while juggling his full time job, fatherhood, and a strategic CRM system that guarantees every invoice gets paid on time. 📚 Level Up Your Money (New Release) 👉 Get Your Paperback Copy! 🎧 Level Up Your Money (Audiobook) 👉 Listen on Audible 🎟️ Equip Expo 👉 Save 50% off Equip Expo Ticket w/ Promo Code PAUL: Register Here 📲 Connect with Paul - Visit Official Website 🛠️ Paul's Recommended Tools & Professionals 📚 The Landscaping Bookkeeper – Know your numbers, stress less: thelandscapingbookkeeper.com 📈 Lawn Care Launch: Click Here (new program for business owners) 🌐 Footbridge Media – Get a pro lawn care website: footbridgemedia.com 💻 Horizon360 – All-in-one contractor business software: gethorizon360.com 📞 CallRail – Track where your leads are coming from: callrail.com 📦 Business-Building Resources by Paul Price Increase Letter Template Contract Templates 📚 Paul's Most Popular Business Books How to Build a Thriving Lawn Care Business: Buy on Amazon Cut That Grass and Make That Cash: Buy on Amazon Level Up Your Money (New Release): Buy Now

• 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.

• 1:09Speaker 00

  Alrighty. That's a tough act to follow, rookie. That was great.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you. I, Stan, you're an amazing man, Stan. Thank you so much.

• 1:20Speaker 00

  Awesome. Yeah, give it up. That was great. Well, good morning, everyone. We have Naylor joining us, Caleb Allman, and our special guest today, he has a lot going on. He has about 900 customers. They do fertilization, weed control, mosquito control. He's got a wife, five-year-old son, one and a half-year-old daughter, and also a full-time job. He is a Sergeant First Class State Trooper in New Jersey. Give it up for Michael Garvey. Oh, and he also hosts the Side Hustle Squad Podcast. Michael Garvey.

• 1:57Speaker 00

  Before we get into how in the world you do it all, and this is wild because we didn't prep with Stan and Naylor, who talked all about having quality people, but that's what we're going to talk about. How you build a team so you can manage all of this is what we're going to get into today. But before we do that, I want to say thank you to Relco for sponsoring this, and they paid for all those donuts and hot coffee. So if you guys haven't got a donut yet, that's all on Relco. So let's give it up for Relco.

• 2:23Speaker 00

  And I want to give a big shout outs to Evan Cox and the Equip Expo for backing Naylor and giving us the main room on the main day, making this happen. So thank you for investing in our community, Equip Expo.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  And last but not least, gratitude is to Naylor Taliaferro. Several years ago, he pitched this idea, and he's like, "We should do this." And they gave us the janitor's closet, pretty much up on the second floor, all the way down the hallway. And you've just kept pioneering this to where now we have this awesome event. So thank you, Naylor, for your efforts.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  Thank you, Paul, but I want to thank all of you because we've packed out the broom closet. They said, "We need a bigger room." So thank you for continuing to fill the room. Thank you. Hopefully, we're giving you value.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And then, we also will ask, if you guys want to ask a question, we'll be throwing this out, and PayJack has one, so you can ask Mike some questions. But before we ask questions, I want you to share your story. How in the world did you go from being a state trooper as you continue to have that job, to growing these 900 customers?

• 3:36Speaker 03

  Well, I want to know who had Stan go first. Because, and who picked the lineup?

• 3:44Speaker 02

  That was me. That was me, Mike.

• 3:46Speaker 03

  You get Stan and Paul gets me.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Hey, hey, everyone has value in their own way. It's a make, don't sell yourself short, come on, come on.

• 3:53Speaker 03

  No, thank you for having me, guys, thanks for coming out. So, I'm a full-time state trooper, seventeen years, New Jersey State Police. So the overtime dried up about eight years ago. And I wanted to, I've always had a, I wanted to get into lawn care or do something with lawn care. So I bought a home and I started rehabbing my own lawn. Well, I made it really, really good and I continued on. So, a mentor of mine told me to meet up with my partner Larry Delasanti, right there. Can you give it up for him? Larry.

• 4:43Speaker 03

  So I talked with Larry and I said, we weren't partners yet. And I said, hey, I want to talk to you, you're in the industry, you're the only one I know. I didn't know about this community, I didn't know about anything. And I said, you're the only person, I know you, and we have a mutual friend. I want to get into lawn care. And he goes, based on your schedule, my schedule's three days on, three days off, not the same day every week.

• 5:15Speaker 03

  So Larry goes, I think you should do fertilization, fertilizing lawns, not every week. So, I said, I want you to do it with me. He goes, well, I already have a business, I already have three hundred cuts a week. I do pavers, retaining walls, I've been doing it since nineteen ninety-eight. And I said, well, I don't know, we're gonna figure it out. So, we started twenty seventeen and we had ten customers. And now, fast forward, this has happened very, very quickly in roughly eight years.

• 5:51Speaker 03

  It's, you know, we bought a shop, we're on a shop build, we, and it's not bragging or anything at all, it's.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  Seeing the progression from ten customers to eight hundred, nine hundred has been incredible, but it's been about surrounding yourself with really good people.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  Let's talk a little bit more about the people you put in place because I can't imagine working three days and you have a very demanding job and then on your other three days you're running your lawn care business. So who did you put in place and what are they doing so that your nine hundred customers are being served at the highest level even when you're doing your thing?

• 6:35Speaker 03

  There's been different people at different times. The way Larry and I broke it down initially, I'm good at the administration, the organization, the office stuff, and he's good at handling estimates and talking with customers and doing all of that. So that's how we broke it down. He's mechanically inclined. He can work on engines. He's been doing this. He knows how to build the business. He's built the business already. He knows the mistakes to avoid. So that's what we did. We broke it down. So then, well, things got quickly,

• 7:17Speaker 03

  got busy very quickly and, you know, he was answering the phone because I'm at work. So that was the first thing we did. We had a coaching call with somebody that said, "Why does he have the phone?" Well, I don't know. We don't have anybody to answer it. He's the only one. Well, he would let it go to voicemail and answer the calls at lunch and then go to, let it go to five o'clock and call the calls back. But if you're missing the phone call, people are moving on to the next person. They want to talk to somebody. So the first person we hired, his mom's retired. We hired Larry's mom. And Larry's mom answers

• 8:01Speaker 03

  our phone from her home. And that was the first hire. Next hire was we needed a technician to, because on our days off...

• 8:13Speaker 03

  On my days off from the state police, we were going out together. He would do the fur, I would blow it off. We would switch every other house. Then we brought a guy on to blow off, that we'd take two machines and have him blow off, so we could go quicker. I'd do the backyard, he'd do the, does the front yard. So then, but learning that, that trained a technician who was with us, how we wanted to do it. Didn't know anything about doing fertilizer, weed control. So that was the technician. So that came, and then I was still doing more of the admin now. I wasn't in the field as much. Well, I got really busy and obviously I've, we're getting more, things started slipping, right?

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Emails missed, uh, things slipped up. I was handling some billing, um, we didn't have cards on file. We didn't have a CRM. And with 300 accounts and no CRM, it got messy. So then we hired a full-time admin, well, part-time admin. Um, a guy I work with, his, and a guy I work with, his wife was a stay-at-home mom, the kids are now back at school, what is she, what did, she wants to work, she wants to do something. He's, he said, "My wife could help you." She works remotely, she doesn't live anywhere near me, she lives on the other side of New

• 9:43Speaker 03

  Jersey, but she handles all of the billing, all of the customer complaints, everything. And she submits her hours to us every two weeks, what she does, but she works the schedule around her schedule, gets the kids on the bus, and then she goes to work. It's a really good, really good system, so that, that was, um, a really good hire for us. So that's how, I want people to do things better than me, right?

• 10:17Speaker 03

  I want my technician to be a better technician than I am. That's what he's gonna do. I want my administration, administrative assistant, to be better at my CRM than me, to know the ins and outs. You have to be humble. Put people in the right places. You want them to be better at, better, you, it, you do want everything to flow through you initially, and that's what Larry found too. Get that phone out of your hands. Have someone answer it. Have somebody get really good at your CRM.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  Have your technician get way better than you. And just be humble and put people in the right places, pull the right levers.

• 11:10Speaker 00

  Very well said, Mike. Now, when I first met you, you're like, "Hey, Paul, how do you do your billing? Cause I, I, I'm owed some money." I said, "Well, how, how much money are you owed?" And you said, "$90,000." And I'm like, "What? $90,000?" So you've had a huge transformation of collecting a check under, you know, Suzie's mat, to now having cards on file and being proactive to make sure you get paid ahead of your work. I want you to explain what you do, cause you, you have a very unique billing system where now, you're ahead of it, and you have money in the bank, and you're not owed $90,000. So how did you transform your billing to where it is today?

• 11:49Speaker 03

  So the way our billing works, we do fertilization, weed control in rock beds. We have a lot, we're by the Jersey Shore, we have a lot of stone, full stone yard. So we do weed control, that, and then we also do weed control in, in the mulch beds of the houses, we have lawns and stuff. We also do mosquito control, and aeration, and overseeding. We don't do anything other than that. Larry's other company handles all of the other stuff, sister company. So the way we do our billing, we have, we do prepay. So every year, around January, we send our quotes out.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  With a price increase typically, you decide. And that gives the opportunity to prepay for the services at a discounted rate of 5%. So you're notifying them of the increase and then you're getting an influx of money at a discounted rate in the beginning of the year, which is great. So then fertilization is done, a card is on file. We do not do any work without a card on file anymore. We need a card on file, so you sign up with us, you put a card on file.

• 13:15Speaker 03

  So when the technician clicks complete for whatever service, we do seven rounds of fertilizer each year, six, I'm sorry, eight rounds of mosquito, weed controls, three rounds. Everything is, when you click complete, you get paid. So it's awesome seeing the notification you've been paid as the guys are out in the field.

• 13:45Speaker 00

  So the job gets done, you're in Louisville, your team's out in New Jersey, the job gets done, and then in your CRM, you get paid the day the job gets done. But you also give them the option in January, hey, if you want to just pay for all eight, you know, seven or eight apps for the year, we'll give you 5% off. And then they give you a lump sum in January.

• 14:05Speaker 03

  Correct, yep, you got it.

• 14:07Speaker 00

  And how many out of your 900 so customers choose to pay you ahead of the year in January?

• 14:12Speaker 03

  I would say 30%.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  Wow, so that's a nice chunk of money coming in in January, so you're not as stressed out.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  It's a night, it's a night, now, be careful, the work hasn't been done yet, but, you know, don't go crazy, oh, but, you know.

• 14:27Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:27Speaker 03

  And another thing with aeration and overseeding, we take 50% deposit. So make sure you don't do the work without having something, because we've been beat before.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Mike, I had a quick question. What, a lot of folks, myself included, when I first started, you get those lump sums and it's easy to spend those lump sums. What do you do with all that money? Because you still have expenses. That money is not for January. That money is for the expenses for that client throughout the whole year. So do you, do you have a system in place of how you allocate that, all that lump money that comes in?

• 15:01Speaker 03

  So I have 20 different, right now I have like 15 different bank accounts. Each pocket, each bank account has a purpose. One, the money comes into one account. Then I disperse it through the other accounts. The profit first model, right? So I'll take, this year I'm going to take that prepaid money and put it in one of those accounts and not touch it. Once we start production, March 1st, then I can start trickling that out and releasing that to where it needs to be because now I'm doing production. So the other accounts I have, sales tax, you know, whatever you want to do, you can,

• 15:46Speaker 03

  you can make, but you, they have, those accounts have caps. So my, I have insurance, I pay quarterly, I know what that needs to go in, that gets capped, you know, payroll, and whatever you want to do, but we're right at 15 accounts like that.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  That's good. All right, Johnny boy, let's get a question. Who's got a question?

• 16:06Speaker 04

  All right, we got our first one coming up right now. I don't want to throw this because I knocked over some coffee earlier, but whoa, up there.

• 16:13Speaker 05

  Hey, what CRM do you use?

• 16:17Speaker 03

  Jobber.

• 16:18Speaker 05

  Jobber, and then what's your business name?

• 16:21Speaker 03

  Coastal Fertilization and Weed Control.

• 16:24Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  Next question.

• 16:27Speaker 04

  Come on, Ranger, hi, so I can see you.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  Next question. I got one quick in the meantime. Yeah. Transferring over to card on file for clients. I'm sure you had some old timers that didn't want to do that. And then also people that just refuse to. You've got to develop a backbone, I'm guessing, saying, this is just how we do it. Take it or leave it. How's that work?

• 16:48Speaker 03

  Pretty much, yeah. I mean, we have a, I can't say we don't have, okay. Maybe we have a really big retirement village, like 5,000 people. So like if I do take a check, it has to be prepaid. Yeah.

• 17:05Speaker 00

  That's awesome.

• 17:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  Good job on that. That's awesome.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  We got tired to open, you know, go into doormats and picking up checks. And it's terrible.

• 17:15Speaker 00

  Next question.

• 17:17Speaker 04

  What type of equipment do you use for your applications?

• 17:21Speaker 03

  So we started with, we started with perma greens. And we started very early, right, Larry? We had somebody tell us, hey, you can push these lawns. You only have 20 accounts. Well, we're on a time crunch because we're working on my days off. And he's got to get back to his main business. So we bought a perma green. We do anywhere from nine baseball fields in the morning. And then we go to a small, tiny house, a third of an acre and do it with the same machine. So that's, that's where we're at with perma green. And we're, we're sticking by them.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  All right. Next question.

• 18:02Speaker 04

  Paul, maybe you could just throw it at somebody.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  There you go. There you go.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  Yes, sir.

• 18:07Speaker 04

  How you doing, sir?

• 18:08Speaker 03

  How are you?

• 18:09Speaker 04

  What was your marketing strategy from when you first started to now? What is difference between the two?

• 18:16Speaker 03

  Good question. So it changed. First, we went to Larry's customers. He has 300 customers and we notified them. So we picked up the low hanging fruit there because Larry used to give away all of that to another company and now he's involved. So that's what we did.

• 18:36Speaker 03

  Marketing is, it's changed from the beginning where we were trying to get everything. We were really spread out. We were going into town we shouldn't have been going to. And we went super focused and really just, you know, word of mouth. We have, our marketing, we have to put a yard sign in every time required by New Jersey DEP. Well, that yard sign's eight and a half by 11 with logos, colors, everything.

• 19:11Speaker 03

  So it's a combination. The trucks are all wrapped. The signs are in. It's a multifaceted thing.

• 19:23Speaker 04

  Do you do commercial and how do you handle payments on that?

• 19:29Speaker 03

  I don't do, we don't do much commercial. We're strictly, pretty much residential. Haven't really tapped into that commercial market, really. We're looking into it, but right now, our bread and butter is all residential.

• 19:44Speaker 06

  Do we have a next question?

• 19:49Speaker 04

  You guys want to answer the question? Come on, big hats, big question.

• 19:53Speaker 06

  They're right behind you, Payjack.

• 19:55Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm curious if you could disclose, working with a business partner, your negotiations with him running another business, him stepping up and really helping out. How did you negotiate that, you know, mic sharing?

• 20:09Speaker 03

  We've never really sat down and negotiated. It's always, it's not really like, hey, you're gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. Hey, you, where, you just went on vacation, I need to do this. I need to, you know, we've never had a fight. We just can't ever about anything like that. It's just, having a partner, it's very unique. It has to be the right partner, right? It has to be the right fit. And we are the right fit for each other, but we never go, oh, well, you took off that day, or you did the, what's that? Payjack, you have a hot mic.

• 20:55Speaker 03

  There's never really been like that. It's, it's, uh, he covers me when I'm working and, and I cover him when, when, when he goes away. Um, it's never really been a negotiation of this or that.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  All right, we got time for probably one more, maybe two. Who we got, Payjack?

• 21:14Speaker 04

  We got Kyle and we got two questions on the deck, so.

• 21:17Speaker 00

  Okay, well, we'll squeeze two more in here.

• 21:19Speaker 03

  Can I have, can I have a one at a time? Please.

• 21:24Speaker 03

  Not that smart.

• 21:25Speaker 04

  When you hired your admin person?

• 21:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  Have them take over the CRM, did you train them or did you have? How, like, paid to have them train or how did you have them learn how to use a CRM the best?

• 21:37Speaker 03

  Well, she's really smart because she did logistics in the, in the army, so that really helped and she's way smarter than me. That's another thing. She's, went to a college I could never have gotten into. Um, she's really, really smart. So she picked it up very quickly. Um, I showed her what I showed, what I, what I could show her and she would, I was pretty, pretty good at it, so I trained her. But then I worked, um, got her, got in contact with my CRM and really, like, she has someone there and that can, that can really help. She can really now train other people, uh, really well.

• 22:12Speaker 00

  So Mr. Producer helped me with this new audiobook, Level Up Your Money. And at the end of each chapter, we actually did like an interview, uh, where Mr. Producer interviewed me about each chapter. So if you guys, when you are driving home, hopefully you'll go the speed limit or if you're flying. Um, if you want to listen to the new audiobook, it's a Mr. Producer production and you can take a listen to it on Audible. I, I really think it will transform your money. So. We actually do have time for one more question, Payjack. And you can keep that up there for a minute, Evan, so they can, uh, scan that QR code if you want to get the audiobook. Last question. My heart's still beating.

• 22:51Speaker 04

  Come on.

• 22:52Speaker 00

  Last question. We got right here.

• 23:00Speaker 00

  So with so much going on in your life, being a state trooper and everything, what are some things you do outside of the job or just in your life to be able to manage so much?

• 23:12Speaker 03

  Like, like, things I do in my free time?

• 23:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  Or like, man, um...

• 23:19Speaker 00

  Where do you think he has free time?

• 23:21Speaker 03

  What's, yeah, well, first off, I do a lot of, like, I schedule my day from 5:30 in the morning to 10:30 at night. And I try to really, really stick to it. I really do. I, um, and that's important to have, schedule family time, spend time with my kids. Um, it, it's a lot. It really is a lot. And I just think you need to do some, you know, something, even if you need to walk away for the afternoon, cut in the morning and then take the afternoon off, right? I'm not saying, but you need to take time to yourself and your family.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  Um, I have a really understanding wife who understands the vision that I'm trying to build for my family and have a legacy. Um, so that really helps, but, um, you know, you gotta schedule and be very intentional on that.

• 24:23Speaker 00

  Great question.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, one, yeah, one.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, go ahead. Well, what app are you using to do that scheduling of your personal time?

• 24:31Speaker 03

  Oh, Jobber.

• 24:33Speaker 00

  You have your own schedule in Jobber for your own personal time?

• 24:37Speaker 03

  Oh, for my, oh, for, oh, oh, oh, I'm sorry. Um, no, I, I manage my, I manage that. I'll have it, in my notes, I have a checklist of things that I want to do and the different categories that I need to do it in. So the state police has a category that I need to get done there, coastal, the podcast, and then I pull those things from the top of the tasks and I plug them into those half-hour blocks.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  Well, I would want to say again, thank you to Naylor for pioneering this wonderful event.

• 25:26Speaker 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.