194. How to Land 50 Customers Fast (Lawn Care Edition)

0:00When Jason started Alabama Lawn Pros, he didn't have a crew, a fancy truck, or a polished website. What he did have was a beat up mower, a stack of door flyers, and the determination to outwork every competitor in town. His first job came from a neighbor down the street. He undercharged, over-delivered, and left a handwritten thank you note on the doorstep. That single job turned into two. Two turned into 10, and today Jason runs one of the most trusted weed control companies in Alabama. Starting a lawn care business isn't about cutting grass. It's about planting the seeds of trust, showing up when others won't, and learning the systems that turn side hustles into six-figure companies.

0:36I'm Ryan Atkinson and you're listening to Helpful Podcast where we uncover the secrets of building and running successful businesses. So Jason, thank you so much for being here. And I appreciate that, Ryan. I think I'm gonna set your intro as my ringtone or something. I mean, if I woke up to that every morning, I'd be ready to dominate every day. Well, I'm ready to have you dominate this podcast and give us some great advice. But before we do that, let's wind back the clock because you were about high school valedictorian. You graduated college with honors, but you went through 15 jobs after school.

1:05I mean, how'd you land on Alabama lawn pros? People might think that I underachieved in some ways, you know, because I was one of those that people would say, oh, you can be anything you want to be. And I don't know where your audience, I'm sure it's from all over, but they may think valedictorian from a public school in Alabama is not necessarily the greatest accomplishment, but compared to my peers, I was up there. So I didn't have a lot of ambition. I went to college just because it was kind of like, well, that's what you're supposed to do if you're a valedictorian. And I guess you're supposed to do that.

1:34So my parents didn't go to college. So I didn't have a lot of direction or a lot of ambition of what I was going to study. I actually went to a fairly small college. There wasn't even a lot of choices of what to study. And I never visited the college. So anyway, after I graduated, just was living super cheap and didn't need a lot of money and didn't have a whole lot of motivation. So that leads you to a lot of dead-end jobs from fast food to, you know, you name it. I pretty much did it. And I think what I was sort of suppressing and took me years to figure out is I was an entrepreneur and just didn't realize it.

2:05And so I thought, what can I do? Well, I guess I can cut grass. I was 27 at the time. So I basically graduated high school and college and did a bunch of dead end jobs. And then at 27, started my lawn care business. And I think what got me hooked was I started making more money by lunchtime than I was making my whole week's paycheck at the other jobs. I say, well, you know, it's hard work, but at least I'm getting compensated for my hard work for once in my life. How much were you making early on? We're going to talk about revenue later, but how much are you making early on? I actually had a job where I was making minimum wage.

2:38I even wrote a short Amazon book one time called the Minimum Wage Valedictorian because I was working for minimum wage. And the guy would literally give me a candy bar in my weekly paycheck. My paycheck would be like 200 something dollars for the week. He would put a Hershey's candy bar in the envelope with the check. I need you to take that candy bar back because I could use the extra dollar that it cost on my check. Then I need the candy bar. So the first year I landed a contract that paid me$1 ,025 per month to mow this little entranceway for a neighborhood. And then the contractor who was building those houses in the neighborhood had about 15 vacant homes in the neighborhood.

3:15And he needed me to mow those vacant homes too. And it was like, there was no fences, no nothing. He didn't want me edging. So I literally just get the mower and just drive from backyard through all the yards. And so, you know, in my mind, I was making four or 500 bucks by lunchtime on a certain day, which was way more than a week's pay at some of the jobs I had. Oh, that's so interesting. Let's jump to that. Was that like one of the first clients you landed? I mean, you're paying a thousand dollars a month, reoccurring revenue, which is great. But who was like the first client you landed if it wasn't that one?

3:46This is always tricky for people that start a business, especially like a service business. But I can remember a particular family that I had known and they were very wealthy and obviously could afford anybody to take care of lawn. But it was early on where they let me know that, hey, we want to support your business. They didn't necessarily think I was going to do a better job than the person they just fired. But it was a deal where like, you know, family and friends, I guess, gave me a chance and would pay me. And I think when you get that, especially in a lawn care business in a prestigious neighborhood, it just gives you a little bit of credibility to start, you know, the neighbors say, well, hey, you know, they trust them with their lawn and maybe I could trust them, too.

4:23So I do remember that being a huge leap for me. And what you know now, I mean, advice for the listeners that are interested in starting like a lawn care company, what advice would you give them now to like really land like their first client? Is it the same tactics you used or what advice do you give to them? I think you have to have a little bit bigger picture than the longer term view. And what I mean by that is, yeah, anybody can go buy a lawnmower and start cutting grass. And in fairness, I don't mow grass anymore. I do weed control and fertilization. So I've sort of diversified myself. But what I mean is getting a nice logo, a website, you know, kind of getting your brand because service businesses by nature, and especially lawn care, maybe it's more than any of them.

5:04They can be a little bit competitive and not as profitable and a little bit difficult to scale. So if you go out there and you say, oh, I'm just going to mow lawns for 50 bucks. It works for a while and it's kind of like, well, that's more than I used to make it my job. I just quit. But it rarely works in the long term. So you have to position yourself to be able to get the higher end clients to be able to make it in the end game. So, yeah, I mean, to answer your question specifically, letting everybody, you know, that you're starting a long business because you might get some friends and family, you know, whether that be posting on Facebook and things of that nature.

5:37And then a website's not like a fast game, but over time that can generate a lot of leads for you. Getting friends to post in their Facebook group for their specific neighborhood. It's like a private group, you know, things like that that can get a little momentum. And then once you get that first, you know, 50 customers or so at that point, referrals start taking over. And most people honestly find they get overwhelmed pretty quickly. Yeah, I think a lot of advice that we hear and listeners definitely write that down. If you are looking to start a company like this, like just ask your family, ask your friends.

6:09Someone's going to know somebody that needs some like sort of lawn care. But the unlock for you, it sounds like was the referral aspect. So what's your referral strategy that you have now? or you consult people to do that you know works well? So I tell people all the time, if I was starting a mowing business right now, I go on these local Facebook groups and I just search for the keyword lawn in my city's little community group, lawn, L-A-W-N, can't understand my accent. And you look and so-and-so is looking for somebody to mow their lawn, you know? And so I don't post on there. I just click and I read all the comments.

6:41And what I found is, you know, 60 companies that have been recommended to mow the lawn or maybe 30 or whatever it is. And I started contacting all those people who don't even have websites all the time. So little mom and pop mowing businesses. This was me doing weed control. So I was contacting those mowing people and saying, Hey, you know, I'm Jason. I'm new to town. I just started Alabama Lawn Pros. And I didn't know if you had somebody you're currently sending your weed control customers to. And a lot of them would say, no, we don't, we send them to the big company down the road, but we'd love to support you.

7:13And in turn, I can support them some way, whether that be spraying their yard for free or, you know, and if I was mowing, I would just do the opposite. I would contact all the mom and pop weed control companies because they're constantly being asked, who do you recommend to mow my grass? And then others ask, who do you recommend for the weed control fertilization for my lawn? Okay. So we talked about marketing. We talked about referrals. Let's talk about like what typically goes into like this sales cycle. Is it an introduction? Here's your quote sign. What does the sales cycle look for you and what do you need to get right?

7:43Yeah, for me, we control and fertilization now, but it's not much different from mowing. I mean, obviously you got to generate the lead first, whether that be a referral or whether that be ranking well on Google. And of course, there's a lot of things going that from SEO to getting reviews online. So once they get the call, okay, that's what I want. In lawn care in particular, I find that it's sort of the early bird gets the worm. So I want to be as fast as I can to respond. I mean, I got somebody sent me an online quote on a Friday afternoon. and I called them back Monday morning, that's too late.

8:14They need somebody responding because when they're calling, they're mad at the person they're firing and they're like, we need to change now. So being quick is one thing. And one thing that helps being quick for lawn care in particular is I can go use my software and I can typically measure the lawn online. And it may be even a neighborhood I'm familiar with, but a lot of the price is done by the square footage of the lawn. So if I can go measure it with my online lot measurement tool, and then I can call them and I can give them a quote right over the phone. And so that simplifies it, makes it faster for me, especially if it's like a 20 minute drive.

8:48I don't want to stop what I'm doing, drive 20 minutes to go look at a yard so I can quote them. And then, you know, I do like when I can to meet them in person. If it's not too much out of the way or I might give them a price, but say, hey, I'd love to still meet you if possible, because I feel like once I get in front of them, it's just going to help seal the deal there. They're going to feel comfortable. And that lets them know, one, I care, but two, that I'm knowledgeable. And I can say, you know, I noticed this in your yard and here's how we're going to deal with that. Something to give me credibility in their eyes.

9:17Anytime you can get actually in front of the client, it's huge because that just builds credibility. It's just different than being over like a computer. You're actually like human to human. I feel like that adds like a whole lot to it there. Most people spend months, sometimes years, just thinking about starting a business. But what if you could do it in just 10 days? That's exactly what the 10-day business launch plan is designed for. It's a step-by-step roadmap that takes you from idea to real operational business in just 10 days. Click the link in the description below and get ready with your business.

9:47I do want to ask about pricing. How do you price this now? What would you recommend to people? There's a couple of different ways. From a mowing standpoint, a lot of times it's kind of a per man hour rate that you would charge. So a lot of it's just based on the time that, you know, whether that be$100 an hour. And of course, you're not going to tell the customer that because a lot of them would fall out if they thought you were charging them$100 an hour. But you have this man hour rate and you got it with experience comes the ability to gauge how long this is going to actually take me to do. And so you're pricing by that.

10:17From weed control, it's a little bit different just because our chemical costs and fertilizer costs are a big percentage of the business, maybe 20 to 25 percent for the calendar year. So square footage plays a bigger factor in that. Obviously, it's going to take some time depending on if it's a big yard versus small yard. But on a big yard, my chemical costs could be significant. So I might cut the cost per thousand square feet down a little bit on a big yard, but I can't go but so low no matter how big it is because those chemicals are a fixed cost, no matter if they're spraying a football field or a tiny little yard.

10:52Love it. So good. And Jason, so you have an amazing YouTube channel called Lawn Care Life. You released a video about seven years ago, has about 300 ,000 views, where you talk about the do's and don'ts of starting a lawn care business. I wanna just ask about a few of those. So let's start with the do's. You mentioned going the extra mile early on. What are some specific things you can do to like exceed expectations and really stand out to customers when someone's just getting started? Yeah, maybe I need to go back and watch the video so I can start doing these again, because I'm thinking, do I go the extra mile now?

11:21I mean, end of the day, more than anything, lawn care, I do think reliability from a mowing standpoint, like do they show up? Do they communicate? Like if it rains four days in a row, okay, we understand you're not going to be here today, but did you text me and let me know you weren't going to be here? So just communication and reliability and from mowing and definitely weed control, it's to me all about results, even more than price. Like they want their yard looking good. And if it's going to cost me an extra hundred bucks a year, that's fine. I need the results. But I remember early on, I would do things like, and I don't do this anymore, but I would get a new customer and I would send them a $5 Dunkin' Donuts gift card with a handwritten note.

11:59I don't do that. If somebody did that to me, I would think, wow, that was so amazing. They took the time to do that. It's not about$5 or about donuts or coffee. It's just the personal aspect to it. So I used to do things like that, but really, again, I can't under emphasize that it's a results-based business and I do take time. This is service business, always tricky. Like we're always in a hurry. Have you ever met a line person that didn't seem like they were in a hurry? They're always in a hurry. But if the customer comes out and it's a 70 year old woman who's a widow or something, and she wants to talk for 10 minutes.

12:33Now, if she wants to talk for 30 minutes, you know, we might have to do something. But, you know, if she needs to talk, then I'll talk to her, you know, and genuinely. So I think it's always a balance of like, I'm a machine that's just churning through yards or is there time to be, you know, a friend? I want them to hurt a little bit once they have to fire me one day. That's so good. Have it hurt a little bit if they fire you someday. That's a really good quote right there. And you also said reliability. That was actually another takeaway from your episode was reliability is key. Can you walk us through a story about a time where it's like something went wrong and you had to handle it and put on that customer hat?

13:06I'd love to hear a story from us. I definitely got stories, mostly where I get fired. And of course, it's always the customer's fault when I get fired. Not really, but I have been fired plenty of times. I don't know about a specific story. As far as reliability goes, I think the problem most people have is they just overbook themselves and they get all excited about having a lawn business. So a lot of lawn care companies, and what I tried to do was even structure like a four-day work week, like working four 10-hour days versus five eight-hour days. If you work four 10-hour days, then you have Friday as a makeup day and then Saturday is my extra makeup day.

13:40So you rarely get behind schedule. I would even look at the forecast the day before. If I had all these yards that were supposed to be mowed on Thursday and it was going to be a real heavy chance to rain on Thursday, I would work extra on Wednesday to try to get ahead of schedule. I'm not always playing catch up, but I don't know if I ever got fired for not showing up. I just felt like I can show up. I'll do that. But that takes some plan, too. You might have to have a backup mower. You may have to have a friend that can borrow his mower if my mower tears up. There's some things you've got to do to keep yourself in the game and reliable.

14:14Yeah, keep yourself in the game. That's a good takeaway there too. But I love the schedule ahead of like, it's really how you wanna program your life, I guess, where it's, you can work four, 12, 14 hour days and take Friday off as a makeup day or just have the day off. I feel like that's done by intentional to like build that schedule and like build a business that like doesn't keep you prison to your own company. Being methodical about that as well, I think is super important as you talked about. So going off of that, let's then dive into the don'ts. You have the do's and then you have the don'ts.

14:41You're big on not competing on price. What's your advice to someone who's just starting out who may feel like, hey, I need to undercharge here. What's your advice to them? Yeah. I mean, the reason it doesn't work for lawn care, one, a lot of people say lawn care is a young man's game. You know, you get older. It's like, I used to get work all these hours. And as you get older, it's like, yeah, I don't really enjoy working all these hours. So a couple of things. As you go low on your price, you typically attract a certain type of customer who's very price oriented. So they don't care. And so if they find somebody a little bit cheaper, then they're going to fight.

15:12So it's not exactly the client you're going after too. Like in my situation, I was like, well, I'm making more money than I did it. My minimum wage job. But when you try to scale the business a little bit and grow, you find that the overhead starts increasing with workman's comp and all the things that come with employees. And you're not able to scale because your margins are terrible. And so at times what happens is a line person hires one or two people and they deal all the headaches and they find that they're actually making less profit than when they just work by themselves and then shrink it back down.

15:43So it's just not scalable and you'll work yourself, you know, to death basically. And so that's one reason I did the weed control thing. A lot of guys will start off mowing and they'll get into weed control or they'll get into landscaping or irrigation. They'll versify them as something that pays a little bit of higher margins, which makes it easier to scale. Nice. Really, really good. Going off of like scaling and taking too much on yourself. How did you know if there was ever a time to like delegate or like a time that you felt burnt out from this? I feel like, you know, lawn care it's you're outside, like you're, you're not inside AC and you're in Alabama.

16:15Like it's not cold in the summer in Alabama. I mean, is there a time for you where you've ever felt burnt out or you had a delegate? Would love to hear that for either business that you're working on. Yeah. I mean, this is my 18th year. So I guess I'm in it now and I don't, I don't know I'll ever do much else, but I did at one point, I did actually take a full-time job. I had my computer, I have a degree in computers. And so I thought, well, I got this degree. I might as well take a job. So I had an opportunity to take a job, a desk job, but I kept the lawn business going and had some people, right?

16:44Well, for multiple reasons, that didn't work. I didn't like the job I was doing and I missed being outside. And then when we not present, it started not going so well for the lawn business. So it didn't work, but I think what I've done, and this is a big part of switching to weed control. I did something that helped me. It's not quite as labor intensive. There's a little bit better margins. It's year round pay versus like nine months out of the year pay, which is a lot of times what you get mowing grass and stuff. I think there's some strategies you can use to where you can get higher margins to where you don't feel like the only answer to make more money is just work more, you know, because that's what get to you.

17:20Like I just work six days a week all the time and that's how I make it. And that certainly does wear you out, especially as you start to get older and your joints don't work quite as good. Yeah. I mean, what are those strategies to unlock a higher margin? I'd love to hear that. Well, I think like I was talking about So for weed control, let me just give you an example, practically speaking. When you mow grass, you know, one person gets out there and mows grass, they might make four or 500 bucks. There's nothing wrong with that. That's a pretty good day. You might make zero in the wintertime and let's move up north, you plow snow or you learn somehow to diversify yourself.

17:52Well, weed control, that may be somewhere in the neighborhood of$1 ,200 to$1 ,500 in one person. So that would take three people mowing lawns typically to equal what one person can generate. Now, it's not all is the thing. Well, why wouldn't everybody do it? Well, you got to have special licensing. There's a lot more knowledge involved. So to me, that was it. And it's not quite as hard on your body. I mean, I'm basically riding a moped around like I consider myself like the security guard at the mall, you know, riding this little moped scooter. And I was like, it's a pretty good job, you know, or spraying water.

18:24You know, I walk around spraying a water hose and people pay me a lot of money to do that. So it's not a bad gig. I love it. Talk about the gig as well. In the same YouTube video, we're not done with this YouTube video, by the way. You talked about the little stuff mattering, like uniforms, clean chucks, branding. You talked about branding before. What's like one small change that you've made that has made a big impact on your business, weed or lawn care? Well, I think getting a website and taking the SEO serious, I get the referrals, but it kind of put the lead machine on autopilot for me. And I have a company that does it for me.

18:59So I get Google leads and I don't have to do anything. So that keeps that going. I think taking my brand in serious, for instance, lawn care companies, especially ones that do chemical applications, use big yard signs, not like big politician yard signs, but they're like die cut shape little signs or little square signs that says today your lawn was treated. well we pay a very good company to make really nice signs they're bright colored hold up in the weather and and mine is actually my logo here you can't see it all on audio but i've got a chameleon eating a dandelion with my logo and so you know it sticks out and when somebody comes home and takes their dog on a walk around the neighborhood and they see 25 of my signs in the yard because i was in that neighborhood that day and i said wow 25 of my neighbors are using alabama And it's not a little square cardboard sign that the first morning when the dew hits, it folds over like a cheap suit, you know.

19:52So it just makes a difference of like quality presentation. And I show up with the same logo on my shirt and I sound halfway intelligent. You know, it's like, yeah, that's the guy I'm going to trust my lawn to. Yeah, I feel like a lot of home service based companies, the ones that are doing really well, like yours, for example, they always hit on like having really good branding because a lot of companies and correct me if I'm wrong here. Like some of these companies just don't have good brand. They don't have websites. So even having a website is a great way to diversify, but also like having the good branding, having the cool outdoor signs is a great way to like stand out from your competition.

20:26As you've talked about. One of the things I love about that too, I mean, we're talking about the lawn care business. So like the marketing in lawn care is so bad, usually that if you just do anything, you're like middle of the road, you know? So it's like, we're not trying to compete against a bunch of, you know, young techie people that have all this stuff nailed. You're talking about people that just get a magnet slapping on the side of their white truck, you know, says we call them Chuck in the truck, you know, so we're competing against Chuck in the truck. And like, you don't have to do a lot to stand out in our industry.

20:56That's what I love the opportunity with like all home service based companies. I think it's such a good opportunity. Let's talk about the last segment here and like data. Data is super important. I'd love to hear like what metrics were you tracking early on, like really help you guys grow? Was it just purely revenue numbers? Were you guys tracking other stuff? Would love to hear that. Yeah, unfortunately, that's probably not an area I'm great at is data. And up in our industry, you hear this all the time and maybe it's other issues, but we talk about know your numbers. I got to the point I was frustrated here.

21:24I was like, I'm so sick of people saying know your numbers until they explain to me like, what numbers am I supposed to know? And how do I actually know? So at some point I have a business coach kind of guy and he sort of broke that down with you and, you know, understanding where your profit margin should be at the end of the year to be considered a healthy business and paying yourself an owner's salary and stuff. So again, I'm not the best speaking to that, but I've got to be able to pay myself a fair wage of what it would cost to replace myself as a business owner. And once I pay all the overhead and everything, did my company still generate a 15 % profit margin at the end of the year?