148. This Lawn Care Business Went From 0 to 1,000 Customers in Year 1 — How!?

0:00Today's guest proves that the grass is greener when you take a leap and start a business. In fact, it may be way greater. Today, we're joined by the leader of Lawn Squad, who took his startup from zero to$10 million and attracted the attention of national franchisors. In just one year, he went from zero customers to a thousand customers. By year four, he grew his customer base and the company was bringing in$1 million. This is Ryan Atkinson and you're listening to the UpFit Podcast, where we uncover how great businesses are built and the secrets of replicating their success. Today's episode is going to be awesome.

0:35Robert Palmer is in the studio today, breaking down the building blocks of his mega successful lawn care business. He's gonna talk about what it takes to start a lawn care business, why you should, some of the technicalities of it and how to scale it. So Robert, thank you so much for being here. So, so excited to have you on. I know the fans are super excited to have you on as well. No, I appreciate the opportunity. It's time I get a chance to talk about my passion, lawn care, coaching and teaching. It's a good day for me and just happy to be on. Yeah, so well, I'm excited for you to coach us and teach us on this episode.

1:01Let's talk about getting started before Lawn Squad though, because one year you went from zero customers to a thousand. Everyone listening is like, oh my gosh, that's incredible. But let's lay the groundwork. What were you doing before Lawn Squad and what took you to scale? That's a great question because lawn care wasn't in my background at that point. I hadn't grown up doing it. I actually was going to college, history major, even better, European history major. Thought I was going to go to law school, just finishing up Latin classes, home for the summer. And handedly, I got an opportunity at Lesko, which was a national supplier to the Wanda Landscape Industry started basically about 20 minutes right here from my existing office and happened to see the owner of that company at a little breakfast joint.

1:37He talked about my future. He said I should come and apply for a job at Lesko, which at the time was probably doing about 40,$50 million a year selling fertilizer, seed, chemicals, equipment. And because they were based right here, I got an opportunity to take a job with them. And honestly, being able to work at the national headquarters, I had access to all of the PhDs, all the product engineers. And over the course of a year, I got what was equivalent to a master's degree program in agronomics and training from some of the best people in the industry, some of the most innovative people in the industry, people that created low-release fertilizers, all the different seed cultivars that you see out there today.

2:11So I really was working for Lesko as a salesman, covering just a small territory in Northeast Ohio, working with contractors, lawn care operators, landskeepers, selling them supplies. And as a commissioned salesperson, I wanted to sell them more fertilizer, more seed, more equipment, and really started attending some of the state and national lawn care and land skin conferences throughout the country. And really, over the course of doing that for two years, I realized I wanted to kind of do this for myself, that I didn't want to rely on other folks to grow their businesses for me to make commissions and make more money.

2:42I wanted to jump on in and kind of put my money where my mouth was and start my own business. Interesting. You wanted to start your own business. Let's start there because everyone, I think they're in similar shoes as you, especially our listeners. They're probably like, I'm doing pretty good, but I want to start my own business. So for you, how did you specifically identify the lawn care space of where you're going to get your first business off the ground? Yeah, it's a great question. I grew up the son of a father who worked at a steel mill, but had a side business as well. And so I got an opportunity from kind of an early age to watch him balance doing two different things, keeping his full-time job while starting a side business.

3:14And being a young son, you're always giving your dad advice and feedback. And he's always telling me, well, try it on your own, son. I'll take your advice, but let's see if money where your mouth is. I love that. Yeah. It was a big jump because my wife had just finished her master's degree. She was a school teacher. And we always had a goal of her raising, at least for the first couple of years of our newborn's life to stay at home and be a stay-at-home mom. So at the same time I'm making this decision to maybe leave a salaried position that I like and enjoy and her leaving a secure teaching job with good benefits, we said, if there's a time to take the risk, it's now where we don't have a whole lot of risk and liability.

3:48We can make tomato soup and cheesesteak sandwiches or peanut butter and jelly for a while if need be. And so I made that decision in January of 2001. I gave a two-month notice to Lesko and I jumped right on in and started WeedPro, which was the company that I founded and started and ran for 23 years. And I have never looked back since. A lot of people ask me, what pushed you over the top? And I just realized it's now or never. We're going to have to jump in. There's risk no matter when you do it. But if you believe in what you're doing and you feel like you've got good people surround you to give you feedback and advice, the risk is minimal because it's all decision-making.

4:20Okay. So I'm sure the formula has changed from when you got started about how you would direct someone to, let's put on that teaching and coaching hat that you have here. I'm sure the formula is different now on how you get your first customer starting something like WeedPro, something like Lawn Squad, something like that. What would you advise someone that wants to do something similar to WeedPro and actually give context first on WeedPro, what you did for WeedPro and how would you advise someone with a similar business to get their first customer? Yeah, you know, it's funny because my kids are not in the business.

4:48They're actually out doing other things and that's intentional. I wanted them to go off on their own, find their own path. But it's the same lessons that I'm teaching them that I went through back in 2001. And it all starts with that premise. It's not what you know, it's who you know. It's a matter of that ground game marketing, that guerrilla marketing. It's about getting out in your community, right? Shaking hands, attending meetings. From day one, when we started WeedPro, I really started with a single philosophy, large enough to serve, small enough to care. I knew I had to present myself as somebody of scale enough to be trusted to maintain their accounts, whether they were residential accounts or commercial accounts.

5:22They had to know, does he have a truck? Does he have enough employees? Does he have payroll? Does he have insurance? So we really presented ourselves as a much larger entity, even from the beginning. And we did that through branding, business cards, attending meetings. I'm in the lawn care space, but when I attended those meetings often, I dressed business casual. I didn't show up in my car hearts. I showed up with a nice pair of slacks, a shirt, sometimes a tie. Attended the chamber of commerce meetings, the business network meetings. And we really got ourselves out in the community because while we knew we were going to spend money on marketing and have have to put money towards that, which I want to get into because that's another risk that I took in the early days.

5:56I put money behind it. As important or probably more important was the ground game that we did. It was the getting out there, getting to the fairs, getting to the festivals, attending those meetings, presenting ourselves as a company that was large enough to serve and yet small enough to care. Try to combine the two here. I'm born and raised right here. I'm part of your community. Your grass is my grass kind of mentality, but yet show that we had the backing and the support to actually deliver upon what we were saying. So my advice has always been to all the younger entrepreneurs is always be genuine and authentic, certainly.

6:28But think of yourself where you want to be, presenting yourself that way, and then work towards that every single day so that you've got a good reputation, a good image. Robert, what I love about that advice is someone gave me advice one time when I was podcasting about two years ago. And my original setup was sitting on a tabletop with the camera looking up at me and behind me. And I know I'm home in Iowa, so my setup is much different, but I probably have a good setup. But what they basically said is like, if you want to seem bigger than what you are, like you need to like put in like equipment and stuff to like make you seem very bigger because people are going to see and be like, oh, that guy's like pretty big time.

6:57I can actually trust him similar to like what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, we're in a home services business. You know, I don't care that it's lawn care. It could be plumbing, HVAC. People are allowing you to come on their property. They want to trust you. They want to have a sense of confidence that he's not just saying he can do it, but he actually can do that. And you know, it's a tough sell when you're just starting out. You have to win that business. And some of that is, you know, you say what you do and you do what you say. And it's a simple concept, but it's often what people really miss out in those early days.

7:22And I think it's that kind of mentality, that philosophy that really kind of propelled us. It fed us. It gave us the energy to be more than what we were, but yet still live by the words that we spoke. Interesting. I love that. A lot of advice in the tech world is, especially early on, is like do things that don't scale. And it sounds like you guys were kind of doing that, Like going to like the festivals, going to the fairs and actually having your feet on the ground and doing these face-to-face interactions. You can't scale this really well, but early on, like those are the things that like really matter to get your first customer.

7:51It really was. I mean, and then we knew that, and I mean, we'll get into it. I mean, I put$50 ,000 behind marketing in year one before I had a single customer and we knew that was coming. But we also knew that, you know, getting on the ground to also gave us the ability to months before the marketing kicked in to really practice to get out in front of people and show our authenticity. And, you know, I can tell you that no matter what startup business you run, I don't care if it's tech. I don't care if it's agriculture. I don't care if it's manufacturing. You have to make a connection with the buyers.

8:19You have to know what they're looking for. You have to hear how you can solve their problems because that's how you show value. Anybody can do the things we do. That's not really where the value's at. The value's at in hearing what the issues are and solving that pain point. And so I think that was the real advantage to the ground game in the early days. And honestly, to this day, you're 24 in. We're still doing ground game as much, if not more than we did even in 2001, because we feel like it keeps us connected. I love that. I know people's ears probably perked up when you said that you spent 50K on marketing before your first customer.

8:50That's insane, I think, which I'm so excited about now. What's that 50K? What's that breakdown of like, we're your first customer. Can you kind of tell us those logistics? Remember, this is 2001. This is pre-Google pay-per-click, right? This is pre-most of the social media. It was pre-boosting, right? It was pre-SEO blog content. So this was, hey, we're going to try to design the best programs we can. Now, obviously, the low-hanging fruit were yard signs and door hangers. Again, those were really kind of just continuations of ground game, but a little bit of money behind that. But we started immediately talking to list companies throughout the country on how to figure out what is the best list to mail to.

9:26Came up with the creative and we mailed out, I want to say it was about 44 ,000 direct mail pieces. And we ended up also setting aside a little bit of money for telemarketing, which was still a big part of the lawn care industry. Now, I would tell you, I haven't done telemarketing again since year one. Hopefully we can get into that on my philosophy of marketing and interrupting customers. But we set aside some money in marketing. And I can tell you, I shot that telemarketing program quite early because I would have shoeboxes full of leads coming in that I just couldn't get out and run quick enough.

9:55And we soon found out early in that process that those leads coming from telemarketing, they weren't that good. But the leads coming out of direct mail were exceptional. And while there may have been fewer in content, we started to figure out that that was the way the consumers, they wanted to ask us for service. They didn't want somebody interrupting them all the time and trying to get in there and put their best sales pitch on to try to sell. But yeah, that$50 ,000 spend might have been the best use of capital that I've ever had, even to this day, because it really propelled us into a brand.

10:25The branding, marketing started, the lead generation began. We started to figure out KPIs and direct mail. And even less is going all the way back to trying to get a half percent response rate in those days and hopefully selling 50 % of them. We still use those numbers as motivation when we're designing direct mail programs to this day. So it took a little bit of risk, but it was well worth it. And you have to spend money to make money, right? I love that. You have to spend money to make money. I want to echo that as well. So that 50K, I mean, this is your first business. You're leaving a really nice job.

10:57Your wife's just spending her master's degree. You guys will eat peanut butter sandwiches if you want to. But that 50K, how are you funding this first 50K? I was wondering if you might ask. I have to ask that. How did you fund that first 50K? Well, the first part of that negotiation was a dinner with my wife because I was wanting to tell her that I needed access to fast cash. And we had only been in our house about two years and we had some pretty good equity in it. And so that conversation went on to say, hey, I'm going to get a line of credit from the bank backed by the mortgage on our house.

11:27And she said, you want to get$50 ,000 to spend in marketing and you have no idea if it's going to work? I'm like, well, I know it's going to work. I just don't know how well or how bad it's going to work. And she agreed to it. Again, think about her. She just finished her master's degree. She was really climbing up the pay scale, working for a very good affluent district here in Northeast Ohio, staying home with our daughter, which was what we wanted. And I think the fact that she knew she was staying at home and she was living her dream by being a state-owned mom at that point in time. She just supported it.

11:56So I literally went to the bank and put our house on the line and got a$50 ,000 line of credit. And I can tell you to this day, we generated about$190 ,000 of revenue off of that$50 ,000 expense. So nearly a four to one return, even in year one. So I think it was money well spent. And don't get me wrong. We did a lot of work to try to figure out the best list, figure out the best creative, what that offer would be because we wanted it to be successful. So we had to put just as much energy and effort into figuring out what's the best way to deploy this money. And I think it worked. Rob, I want to pause for a moment and just kind of like plug your guys' company in.

12:27And guys, if you are interested in joining Rob's team and owning a Lawn Squad franchise, check out the link in the description or head over to franchise.upflip.com slash lawn-squad to learn more. This is a super affordable franchise opportunity with top-notch training and support from Rob's team. Do not miss out on this opportunity, everyone. Check out the links in the show notes below. So Robert, when you say you bet the house and it paid off, when people say that that's actually true to your story then. I did. I bet the hell. And I didn't come for money. So there was no backup plan. It was, we're doing this.

12:57We're all in. And what was the team size when you're doing like these creatives for that first 50 ,000? Is it just you on the team? I mean, a four to one is insane, but yeah, what was the team breakdown at this point? I had one employee. He was with me from day one and he started on two months before I even incorporated the business, helping me doing some market research. And he was with me all the way during that entire onboarding time and into those first 12 years in business. And it was just he and I, and we were making a lot of phone calls, networking with folks that had done direct mail. And what really paid off for me was attending all those.

13:26As I said earlier in the podcast was I attend a lot of state and national conventions. And so what I was able to do is rely upon a lot of the folks that I met who were in this business. And they were willing to give a young startup who they weren't threatened by advice and feedback. And I got a chance to meet some of the direct mail suppliers, some of the direct mail list companies at these conferences. And so we didn't have a huge Rolodex, but we probably had a good five or six different vendors that we were talking to and getting feedback and advice from. And some guys that have been doing this a long, long time in the business.

13:54And thank God we got some good advice from them. Absolutely. And you're giving us some great advice on this podcast, especially for that first grassroots marketing efforts here. So we got 190K return on this investment. And so we talked about it. You went from like zero to a thousand customers in one year. Can you give us a breakdown of like how much came from that, from marketing, from in-person events? Just because I want people to know like, oh, like where should I be thinking about putting my efforts for an actual like Hawaii? Yeah. I would love to hear that. Yeah, no, absolutely. We ended up getting around just over 400 customers from that direct mail campaign right off the bat.

14:25And really the other 600 customers, we got to about 983 customers to be technical after the end of year one. The rest of them came from honestly networking, those business network meetings. And really a big portion of it came from, I started calling on a lot of the local landscapers who were in my marketplace who were great at mowing lawns and great at installing plant material, great at putting in patios, but they weren't really doing the fertilization because that required a specific state license. And so we met with a lot of those folks and we literally said, hey, we'll be your fertilization division.

14:53They're your customers. We'll go to their laws, we'll treat them and we'll leave them a$0 invoice just so they know we were there, but we'll bill you directly. So we became a subcontractor and it ended up being a huge cashflow opportunity business for us because I was able to get free sales. My price point had to be a little less than I would typically charge a customer because I was billing it to the landscaper and he needed to add a little bit of margin on there. But it ended up being a huge cashflow benefit to us because I'm getting 20, 30, 40 customers a week being sent to me from local landscapers who are now subcontracting us to do the fertilization.

15:24So I was getting large tranches of new customers coming in week over week with no dollars in market. And to this day, I do almost$2 million a year as a subcontractor for other landscapers. It's a great network and I'm filling their need because they either can't keep a technician on staff or they can't get them licensed or keep their license updated. And we strictly focus on that. We don't compete in any way as far as mowing or landscaping. There's no cross-contamination here. So it ends up being a very organic way to cross-market with other landscapers in the marketplace. Super interesting. I love that subcontracting piece because you just said you'd earn$2 million a year on subcontract work, and that all came through networking.

16:02I just want to hammer helm that one. No doubt about it. It is the key. It's not what you know, it's who you know. So eventually you got to know what you need to know, but it's got to start with getting that word out there, shaking hands and building trust. A question that does come to mind, because we've talked a lot about direct mail. Does direct mail still work specifically for this industry? Are you guys seeing ROIs? Yeah, I mean, I would say year in, year out, there's fluctuations in performance, but it absolutely is still a super important component. There are so many advantages to direct mail that you don't even think about.

16:30One of the things that we came to the realization about 10 years ago was even in years where wasn't performing well. It is performing well because those direct mailers for us go out basically several weeks before the beginning of the season and allows us to get customers at the very beginning of the season. And so what you'll find is while we're doing great in pay-per-click throughout the year, but we get a customer in June, we're only going to get half the revenue for that year. Direct mail goes out early. So typically every sale from a direct mail customer gives us a full year of revenue to capture.

16:57So at the end of the day, if we could pick up customers, I mean, we're looking at average customer values of$800,$900 a year, keeping those customers for 10 years. So you're looking at$8 ,000,$9 ,000 in customer lifetime value. If you end up paying a little bit more for a customer coming through direct mail, maybe in as high as$200, it's still a great investment to spend$200 to earn revenue of$8 ,000 to$9 ,000 over the course of that customer's lifetime value. So sometimes when people do tell them, we have these conversations about direct mail is, I think you need to always put it in context of lifetime value.

17:26I'd be willing to spend$300 for a customer if I know I'm going to get$9 ,000 out of it. Certainly the trick to marketing is continue to find that balance of your$50 acquisition cost to your$75 acquisition cost all the way up to$200. And you find that right mix of the overall customer value may be at$100. Some was$200 and some were$50. You want to have a good mix of different marketing campaigns so that you can supplement your program. Nice. I absolutely love that. And I feel like having a good mix of marketing programs helps a lot here. I want to keep moving on this conversation about how you guys really scaled up.

17:56So year one, you guys got a thousand customers. What did year two, year three, year four look like? I just want to lay the ground over how you have really scaled this. Obviously, starting out with zero customers on day one. I'm going to work backwards. Four and a half years later, we're crossing the$1 million mark. And I'm excited. And I'm looking back and I'm saying, how did we do this? Right? And it's crazy to think that I looked at the total value of that$4.5 million and half of it throughout that time frame was direct mail. And half of it was really the boots on the ground, the networking.

18:23So ironically, over the next five years, it became more about direct marketing and less about the networking to some extent because we started putting more and more and more money into marketing having proven that concept. What I can tell you, through five years hitting a million dollars, half the business came through marketing, half came from ground game marketing. And as we're moving into our next phase of business here at Lone Squad and we're into that franchise world, it's the number one component that I talk to each onboarding franchise about and or friends that are starting businesses in other businesses is stay committed to who you are.

18:54Stay committed to your personality. You are your business and your business has to have personality. And we could scale personality with boots on the ground. It's hard to scale personality through direct mail or pay-per-click, but you absolutely can scale personality with ground game. And that's why I hope people buy from us. We want to be the most engaging. we're not the most customized lawn care company, but we are the most personalized lawn care company. We teach that to every tech and every franchise that comes out board is let's be the best at communicating. This whole conversation has like actually got me thinking about like what we need to be doing at space for our visuals more.

19:22And I feel like it comes back down to like, cause I'm really bad at going to networking events, but I feel like getting actually, you know, boots on the ground. Like you're saying that ground game is a really good way to actually show your personality and it makes it way better. And like, it really like brings your personality to life instead of just doing like Zoom meeting and trying to sell someone over a Zoom meeting. Cause I'll back up on one thing I know. At every survey we've done for 23 years, a customer never cancels a tech by name, meaning we'll get a survey and it says, hey, the lawn didn't look good this year, but I don't blame you because Tom did a good job.

19:49They mentioned Tom. That's why they didn't cancel us. Now, some of those surveys, hey, we fired you guys because you did a terrible job. They don't mention a name. I think when you build that relationship, when you build, and even when you're trying to scale to thousands and thousands of customers, you got to find a way to scale that personalization and going to those business network meetings is just a great way to hone in on that skill. And you did so many things like right throughout like scaling this whole thing to the point where you eventually got contacted by Authority Brands, a home service franchisor.