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you’re listening to the simple growth
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podcast
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the show that helps business owners get
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their life back
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here’s your host mike callahan welcome
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back to the essay weekly talk show here
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mike callahan
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with my co-host cody the millennial
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marketer as he has been dubbed today
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uh special guest today frank bork out of
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ottawa canada frank and i go back uh
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somewhat recently but really impressed
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what frank is bringing to the
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landscaping and hardscaping industries
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across north america not only canada but
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the us
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uh quite a big reach um frank’s working
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with a little over 300
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landscape and hearts keeping companies
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on a yearly basis and his reach through
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in-person
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speaking engagements and well now with
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covets and virtual events uh
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working and helping out a little over 30
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000
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lawn care landscaping and hardscaping
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companies a year so frank
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if people haven’t met you heard about
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you seeing you live at gie
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um hardscape expo uh would you mind
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giving us a little background on your
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industry um
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background on how you cut your teeth in
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the industry as well as uh now how
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you’ve made this transition helping
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other business owners and just adding
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value to their day-to-day business
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operations
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yeah absolutely well thanks first mike
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for uh having me here
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today it’s such a great pleasure to be
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on your show
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and uh yeah my story goes back about 22
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years ago when
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i wanted to start my own thing my own
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business
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i had worked for a company for about
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five years at that point five six years
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and um i had graduated from university
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i had started a good job with the
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federal government
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but i just wasn’t built to work in an
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office right i’m just not that kind of
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guy so
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um not at that time anyways so uh i
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wanted to start my own business so i
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kept doing landscaping built it up to
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over about 110 employees at
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the peak time and then the economy
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crashed in 2008 2009
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and we had to re-evaluate every single
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systems and process in our business but
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in the process of doing this in order to
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survive
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we also uh realized that there’s
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so many great things that can happen out
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of
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an event like that a challenging event
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because you’re looking to
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improve quickly and so when we did this
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it forced us to just become better more
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efficient and when we did this we
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actually started having fun with the
02:21
business
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and we actually went in three years we
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were making
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more profit with about just 20 percent
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of those
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employees so we just had better tools
02:31
better systems
02:33
and uh just having more fun so what led
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me to become
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a coach and consultant is over the years
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once we did that
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people started asking okay how did you
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do it can you help me do the same thing
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in my business
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then the landscape associations and
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hardscape associations
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asked me to to speak and provide some of
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these examples and
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so i just getting more and more into it
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finally sold my business in 2015
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and sold the second business in 2017 to
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officially
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just focus on the coaching and
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consulting
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well congratulations on both those
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acquisitions i know that’s uh it can be
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a little crazy my own experience with
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that but i can definitely say that
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hard times definitely lend us to improve
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and take a look inward and actually
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create those efficiencies and very
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similar story right around the same time
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uh in my lawn care landscape company
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that we had to make similar changes
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uh when that economy hit um so it was
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pretty interesting strategically
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we were forced to change and obviously
03:29
if you make it through those tough times
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and those trenches things obviously come
03:32
out a lot better at the end
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um i think we if you’re interested
03:36
basically what we’re looking at is
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it’s about mid-year right now in most
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lawn care and landscape companies
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whether you’re in canada the us
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uh north south it’s pretty much midpoint
03:44
of the season right now so
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uh frank you’ve been obviously kind
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enough to talk about mid-year strategic
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review and things we should be looking
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at in our business in a mid-year
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strategic review
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uh first thing that pops into my mind
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when we do a strategic review is reality
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probably right from the top down
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is our leadership in our business so
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curious uh if you can kind of give us
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some insight on leadership and the
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mid-year strategic review
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yeah absolutely i think mike this is one
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of the most important things that
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sometimes when we run a business we’re
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busy being busy and as the business
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owner or the leader
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or one of the leaders we often get
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distracted because at the beginning of
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the year we have all these great
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intentions
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but it’s so easy to get distracted so
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the point of a mid-year review
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and as a coach or consultant my role is
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to keep
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my clients focused and um
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kind of on par doing the right things at
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the right time so the media review what
04:36
we do
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is we really take a look at the seven
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core
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pillars of a business so
04:44
starting with the leadership that’s my
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first one so leadership
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your role as a leader you have to ask
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yourself
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uh the question the following well these
04:52
following questions is
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are you um are you identifying
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basically providing uh the necessary
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tools to your team
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are you empowering your leaders are you
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protecting the culture of your company
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are you um creating a positive culture
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in your company
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so these are all some of the questions
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that you can ask yourself
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as the leader the person on top um
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just because looking from the outside
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sometimes you start realizing
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geez i kind of slipped i’ve been focused
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more on the numbers maybe for the
05:26
business but i haven’t really focused on
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providing
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adequate care or attention or even
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support
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to my leaders because really as the
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leader that’s the main main role it is
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to identify equip and empower your
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people
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so that would be like the main the big
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first
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question to ask yourself as leader are
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you doing these things
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interesting so basically if i’m hearing
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you right frank is it’s more of setting
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the
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strategic vision and mission of the
05:54
business and
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making sure that that’s resonating
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through the culture on a daily and
05:58
monthly and weekly basis and
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um some of that day-to-day minutia will
06:02
get us away from that so
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strategically in that media review
06:05
you’re kind of looking at is the
06:07
leadership
06:07
setting that vision mission and things
06:10
we’re looking at and that culture in
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there
06:11
um which kind of leads me into the next
06:13
question is uh once we’ve tackled that
06:15
leadership there are we looking into
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things such as operations
06:19
that would probably be the next logical
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step from our pre-conversation
06:22
absolutely when we take a look at
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operations because i’m huge on
06:27
operations efficiency improving
06:29
operation systems
06:31
but really you’re looking at your
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productivity and your efficiency
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so the amount of work you can get done
06:38
with the people you have and then i
06:40
guess the how you’re equipped and also
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how fast can you do that work so going
06:45
back to your kpis
06:47
are you tracking some of these numbers
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such as
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um the estimated versus actual
06:54
time spent on site so maybe your
06:58
your meaning to your pricing job a
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certain way you have to go back after
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the job’s completed and taking a look at
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okay did we meet our goal on this job
07:07
are we making money
07:08
or are we losing money right i think
07:10
it’s crucial
07:11
and i’m really surprised by the amount
07:15
of i mean people are well intended
07:19
they they want to succeed but this is so
07:22
simple and now it’s almost
07:24
uh it’s just because it takes a little
07:26
bit of time that people don’t do it
07:27
but by just going back and taking a look
07:30
at the estimated versus actual hours on
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jobs
07:32
and also a good kpi to keep track is the
07:35
revenue per man hour
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so i do this let’s say on a monthly
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basis but you could do it quarterly
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ideally it would be at least quarterly
07:43
but monthly is kind of cool because
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if you take a look at let’s say the
07:46
total amount of
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revenue in that month you divided by the
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the amount the total amount of
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hours uh built out then
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it comes it brings you a number so let’s
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say you’ve produced
07:59
a hundred thousand dollars worth of work
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in a month
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and you build out a thousand hours
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that’s a hundred dollars
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per uh per man um basically the the
08:10
revenue per man hour is hundred 100
08:12
but let’s say the next month you do the
08:14
same math and you’re at 150
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well you notice something went
08:18
differently you’re obviously doing
08:20
something that’s
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improving the amount of revenue you can
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make in the same amount of time
08:25
so it gives you a measure so on average
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let’s say you start noticing that your
08:30
company you do that for different
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divisions
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you start realizing that a certain
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division let’s say your construction
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division can do 150
08:38
your lawn care division is doing 100
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maybe 100 but maybe that’s good for that
08:44
division if you start keeping track
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of different divisions and your revenue
08:49
per man hour you’re starting to notice
08:51
when things go down or things go up
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and it’s an easy measure that you can
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bring back to your your staff and say
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hey listen we’re doing great we’re
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staying on par
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or we’re improving or maybe we dropped a
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little bit last month what happened you
09:03
can take a look at
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all these factors right so these are
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easy things that you can track for your
09:08
helping out with productivity
09:10
and efficiency tracking and i love you
09:13
brought that up
09:13
as a certified advisor and working with
09:16
several hundred clients myself one of
09:17
the things that shocked me especially
09:18
when i first got into this was
09:20
a lot of companies have the mindset well
09:22
it’ll just come out in the wash like
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we’ve done the estimate we’ve done the
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work
09:25
we’ve gone past that especially if it’s
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like a design build job or a one-time
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job
09:29
they never go back to actually look at
09:31
that well most don’t
09:32
um in the fact the kpi the key
09:35
performance indicators frank those are
09:36
big big things that mid-season that
09:38
companies
09:38
at least in my opinion agree with you
09:40
need to be looking at and have some
09:42
transparencies like
09:43
like you see that um you’re having and
09:46
reporting back to your team for
09:47
accountability is huge
09:48
um so one of the things that we see at
09:51
least in landscape maintenance for sure
09:53
i’ve seen it in my company several times
09:55
is when we were tracking these kpis we
09:58
found that our non-billable time far is
10:00
mobilization or i like to call it the
10:02
the wendy’s frosty effect when the guys
10:03
are driving halfway across town to get
10:05
the frosty
10:06
uh while they’re supposed to be at the
10:07
job um or extended lunch hours
10:09
is there any um i guess suggestions or
10:13
things you recommend as an expert
10:14
is uh are are we just tracking the time
10:18
on the job sites or is there certain
10:19
things we need to be looking at for that
10:20
non-billable mobilization or picking up
10:22
materials
10:23
how does that play into the actual kpi
10:25
of that monthly or quarterly
10:27
um i love that you mentioned that
10:29
because i call
10:31
uh i call basically getting rid of waste
10:34
or like
10:34
extra weight that you’re carrying every
10:37
company i mean there’s no
10:38
com there’s not a perfect company out
10:40
there that doesn’t waste any time
10:42
but like you said there’s stuff that’s
10:43
not billable that your employees have to
10:45
understand we can’t build this out
10:47
so the more of it that we have in our
10:49
business the worse it is for the
10:51
business
10:52
and i always give out this example to
10:55
oftentimes
10:55
crew foremans because it’s a big eye
10:58
opener for them
10:59
when they’re looking at let’s say when i
11:01
asked them how much do you think
11:03
it cost the company when we waste an
11:05
hour for your crew so let’s say we take
11:07
an hour of
11:08
uh a crew of three guys they say usually
11:11
this is the math in their in their mind
11:13
they do
11:14
well maybe this guy makes 15 an hour
11:16
this guy makes 20 and this guy makes 20.
11:18
so probably
11:19
the company loses 60 bucks in that hour
11:21
and i tell them no
11:22
like the very minimum usually let’s say
11:25
the billable rate for every
11:27
fifty dollars an hour that’s just an
11:28
average because construction could be
11:29
way more
11:30
and it’s just an average but let’s say
11:32
we just take 50 as a low average
11:34
um so 50 per hour for three guys you
11:37
waste one hour per week
11:39
or per day sometimes um
11:42
100 so 50 per hour per guy is 150
11:45
and you’re you’re you’ve still lost that
11:47
hour so you’re not
11:48
making up those that time you can’t make
11:50
it up and in order to make up for that
11:53
money you have to work at least another
11:54
hour so you’re up to like three hundred
11:56
dollars
11:57
just for that it’s basically missed it’s
12:00
it’s
12:00
revenue that you’re not getting back
12:02
right it’s an opportunity
12:03
it’s a missed opportunity and the more
12:06
missed opportunity you have well that
12:08
really affects not only the efficiency
12:10
of the business but it affects the
12:11
potential revenue that the business can
12:13
make
12:14
and how much every crew can make so
12:17
when i run that down and i i tell them
12:19
basically one hour a week
12:22
is almost five six minutes per day so if
12:25
if everyone’s wasting five to six
12:26
minutes per day
12:28
that’s three hundred dollars a uh let’s
12:29
say um a week
12:31
it’s twelve hundred dollars a month it’s
12:33
over fifteen thousand dollars a year
12:35
that’s just for five minutes a day
12:37
wasted so imagine when you’re wasting an
12:38
hour imagine when you’re wasting
12:40
two hours a day how much money that
12:42
represents the potential revenue that
12:44
the company could make
12:46
and in exchange you can pay your
12:48
employees more you can buy better tools
12:50
when that
12:51
money comes back into the company so
12:53
that’s the kind of stuff we want to
12:54
start tracking
12:55
so waste like waste could be we’ve
12:58
noticed that companies that fuel up
13:00
in the in the um in the morning
13:04
are less efficient than companies that
13:06
fuel up
13:07
in the afternoon because in the
13:08
afternoon they want to go home
13:10
right oh yeah afternoon they’re like man
13:13
let’s go home let’s get this done
13:15
so we’ve noticed that companies actually
13:18
could pay a good
13:19
chunk of their fuel just by feeling up
13:22
in the morning because of the
13:23
inefficiency that that creates for the
13:24
whole group because usually you see a
13:26
crew stopping at the gas station
13:28
they get a sandwich they get the coffee
13:30
uh something that would take five
13:32
minutes takes about 25 minutes
13:34
you got three people in the truck so
13:37
just taking a look at your business
13:39
where
13:40
time is spent doing stuff that you can’t
13:42
bail out to the client
13:43
super important huge great advice um
13:46
and as we’re talking about having these
13:48
conversations with these guys and girls
13:49
on these teams
13:50
um kind of brings up the thought of hr
13:52
and i’m assuming mid-season we want to
13:54
take a look at our hr and our hr
13:56
process yeah hr is
14:00
it’s basic i call it uh
14:03
the care of the company hr is there to
14:05
make sure that the employees that you
14:07
have the right amount of employees
14:09
you are taking care of employees and i
14:11
also like when hr
14:13
uh assesses not only you know do we have
14:16
enough employees are they happy but also
14:19
okay where do we stand where’s the need
14:22
like
14:22
we’re able to project a bit more in the
14:24
future and take a look at where are we
14:26
going as a company
14:27
um are we going in the right direction
14:29
do we have the right people for the
14:31
services that we
14:32
offer um do we profile
14:35
our candidates the right way if you’re
14:38
hiring everyone based on
14:40
whether they look good or not good at
14:41
the interview you’re probably missing
14:43
out but if you have
14:44
key factors that you’re measuring in
14:47
terms
14:47
of okay for this leadership role i need
14:50
someone who’s got
14:51
a good character and we use different
14:53
tools for this uh for this
14:55
uh like disc and predictive index
14:58
and all these things just tools that
15:00
take five to ten minutes but gives you
15:02
so much information on the person and
15:04
how they
15:04
are hardwired as a person whether you
15:07
like doing what they don’t like doing
15:08
so just using simple tools like that and
15:11
systems
15:12
in the process of hiring but also hr
15:15
what we take a look at when we want at
15:17
the mid-year
15:18
is to say okay is your system automated
15:22
are you always hiring are you always
15:24
looking are you always
15:26
marketing like you market to your
15:27
clients or
15:29
are you just when you you’re missing one
15:32
person
15:32
you go out and try to find that person
15:34
right and how hard is that peak season
15:37
you start losing
15:38
keep key people sometimes at the peak
15:41
time
15:41
and then you start looking for people
15:43
everyone’s looking for people
15:45
so your chances become very very slim of
15:47
finding the right fit
15:49
right so mid-year we take a look at okay
15:52
who do you have who do you not have and
15:54
what do you have as
15:55
needs as a company for um leadership
15:59
uh labor and where are you going this
16:02
year
16:02
how can you improve that awesome cody
16:05
any thoughts or questions up to this
16:06
point uh
16:07
i know obviously you’re over there
16:08
looking good so obviously you’d probably
16:09
fly right past that disassessment with
16:11
the uh
16:12
the new look of the millennial marketer
16:13
over there but any thoughts for
16:14
frankfurt is up to this point comments
16:16
questions
16:17
um before we really dive into the rest
16:18
of the meat and potatoes of this
16:20
conversation
16:21
so tell us a little bit about i know
16:23
that it’s going to like
16:24
vary because it’s going to be the
16:26
culture of each company and what
16:28
position
16:29
you’re hiring for but do you feel
16:31
comfortable kind of like
16:32
explaining the disc profile a little bit
16:35
yeah i mean you
16:36
have different types of personalities
16:38
and
16:39
based on some people are dominant some
16:42
people are
16:43
you know there’s the important part
16:46
is just realizing because actually my
16:49
background is psychology i studied
16:50
psychology in university and
16:52
um i thought i was going to be doing
16:54
group therapy for the rest of my life
16:56
and the first year going in and i’m like
16:57
oh no i can’t do this
16:59
actually i got my first job as a group
17:00
therapist for inmates right
17:02
and that’s no i dedicated myself to the
17:05
landscape industry because it just
17:06
wasn’t for me but
17:08
uh but what i’ve learned about people is
17:10
that everyone’s wired a different way
17:12
but you can kind of profile people in
17:15
certain categories
17:16
there’s not like a perfect one but
17:18
sometimes people have
17:19
dominant traits uh stuff that’s that’s
17:22
just basically
17:23
the first year the first few years of
17:25
their lives they’re kind of defined by
17:28
by certain things but basically some
17:30
people are um
17:33
i mean some people are very social some
17:36
are more introverted
17:37
some people uh like to lead people some
17:40
people
17:40
kind of stay back they don’t want to get
17:42
be given any responsibilities they
17:44
they feel too much pressure they don’t
17:46
feel comfortable with that
17:48
some people strive with this and just
17:51
knowing a bit
17:52
more of the traits from people you’re
17:54
able to actually motivate them
17:56
so if you know someone is motivated by
17:59
[Music]
18:01
leading teams then you can start
18:02
progressively putting them in position
18:04
that
18:04
gives them that drive if you know that
18:07
someone
18:07
is more reserved and more intellectual
18:10
and they’re more like
18:11
on the logical side if you’re a very
18:14
creative person you’re all over the
18:16
place you know that when you’re talking
18:17
to this person you have to make it
18:19
logical for them you have to make it
18:21
go back to the basics with this person
18:22
you explain all the reasons
18:25
and then they respond a lot better to
18:27
you so having these tools
18:29
help you to manage people better help
18:31
you motivate people
18:33
and help them keep stay engaged with
18:36
your company and your employees because
18:38
you’re talking to them leading them in a
18:40
way that they like to be led
18:42
and talk to so uh really these tools are
18:45
there to help you
18:46
better manage your people right awesome
18:49
and one thing uh frankie mentioned
18:51
is constantly recruiting that’s
18:52
something that comes up constantly here
18:53
on the essay weekly talk show
18:55
uh kind of done by jonathan patosnick of
18:57
the lawn care millionaire youtube series
18:58
is building or stacking the virtual
19:00
bench so constantly going out
19:02
and hiring and getting that basically
19:04
that glorified qualified labor pool so
19:06
if you start looking for that individual
19:08
when you need them obviously it’s too
19:09
late so i’m glad you brought that up
19:10
because that’s something especially
19:12
july and august especially lawn care
19:14
season like we’re getting burned out
19:15
we’re tired
19:16
uh we’re not doing the things we always
19:18
continually do to be successful and i
19:19
feel like labor
19:20
is one of them especially right now in
19:22
the states with the basically we’ll call
19:24
it the 600
19:25
a week unemployment bonus uh the labor
19:27
market right now is
19:28
it’s a real tough place because a lot of
19:30
people don’t want to come back to work
19:32
uh we’ll see here in the next few days
19:33
if that 600 a month gets extended or not
19:36
but
19:36
if you’re watching this now in the
19:37
states especially this could be
19:39
interesting because
19:40
there hopefully could be a potential
19:42
influx of employees in that market maybe
19:44
get pretty competitive so
19:46
if you’re taking frank’s advice this may
19:47
be a good time to start getting those
19:48
help wanted ads out and start really
19:50
stacking that
19:51
virtual bench as jonathan calls it um
19:54
next thing is is we’ve kind of taken
19:55
that leadership the operations
19:57
hr so the kind of the next thing that
19:59
comes to mind is
20:00
maybe marketing that’s something we look
20:01
at usually traditionally in the early
20:03
months of a
20:04
lawn care landscape company we go out
20:06
and it’s always very seasonal so we’re
20:08
pushing out all the dollars
20:09
out and we’re trying to get all those
20:11
jobs up front
20:13
at this point i’m gonna have some
20:15
assumption here frank that maybe
20:16
we maybe will have a six-month year
20:18
review but kind of like i said
20:20
with the labor most companies at least
20:23
especially my competitors in my local
20:24
market when we were in the uh lawn and
20:26
landscape the snowmobile industry
20:27
this is when companies traditionally
20:29
take their foot off the gas pedal and
20:30
they think all is good
20:32
but really the last three or four months
20:34
of the season is where you start putting
20:36
bottom line profits because you’ve
20:37
recovered all that overhead
20:38
and it’s really going to the bottom line
20:40
so uh does marketing come into part of
20:43
that mid-year strategic review and how
20:44
is that approached
20:46
well one of the things that i’ve noticed
20:47
uh with my clients
20:49
so i did a poll with uh just over 300
20:53
companies and i asked them how they were
20:55
doing this is during covid
20:57
and because this is a great time to
21:00
learn
21:00
because we’re getting a lot of
21:02
information right from
21:03
what can go wrong will go wrong often
21:05
times when there’s a crisis right
21:07
so in this case we we asked our
21:11
fellow landscape professionals to say
21:14
okay what are you struggling with and
21:16
we had two total opposites people i
21:20
found that people who had their systems
21:22
automated so they had marketing
21:23
schedules they had planned their
21:25
marketing for the year
21:26
they had that kind of autopilot so they
21:28
were sending regularly emails to
21:30
as reminders to their clients they were
21:32
staying in touch with their clients
21:34
they were trying to encourage their
21:37
clients to
21:38
um write reviews on them
21:41
to to provide referrals uh testimonials
21:45
those companies who are proactive uh did
21:48
not run out of work
21:49
or they they were their clients felt
21:51
very compelled to stay with these
21:53
companies because they stayed in touch
21:55
right so even in a crisis they know
21:58
my landscaper is there he is in business
22:02
he’s
22:02
he’s consistent i can rely on him and i
22:05
don’t have to worry that he won’t be
22:06
there
22:07
in two weeks one month or six months
22:09
right
22:10
so very very a big i mean
22:13
to me it was a big aha moment not only
22:15
for me but to everyone else i
22:18
i know that automation works with
22:20
marketing i know that we should be
22:22
marketing all year round and not just
22:23
when we run out of jobs
22:25
but oftentimes how many times mike uh
22:28
did do we get comfortable when we’re
22:30
busy to stop marketing right we’re like
22:33
oh we’re good um you know i get
22:36
i heard many contractors in the past say
22:39
uh
22:40
i get all my all my work my referrals i
22:42
don’t even need to market
22:44
and i’m like right that’s it i’m good
22:47
i’m good but then a crisis hits like
22:49
this one and all of a sudden you start
22:51
panicking because like
22:52
i don’t know any other techniques but
22:54
when you have stuff on
22:56
automation and you understand that
22:58
marketing is
23:00
not only good for finding jobs but it’s
23:02
your brand if people identify
23:05
your brand to one of the best or one of
23:08
the
23:09
most out there and they recognize your
23:11
brand it’s going to be good all over in
23:13
good times
23:15
and not so good times so this is i was a
23:17
great lesson for many of uh
23:19
my clients and uh just a big i mean
23:22
it was it was huge for us to to see that
23:25
as
23:25
as much as we did in the last few months
23:28
yeah and i guess
23:29
oh go ahead cody if it takes eight to
23:32
ten touches
23:33
to close the the average sale and you’re
23:36
waiting until
23:37
like work starts to dry up you’re
23:39
introducing this window
23:42
of i’ve gotta get these eight to ten
23:44
touches to start getting more work
23:46
and then it has to get scheduled like
23:47
you’re creating a gap of no money
23:50
yeah you’re so right i mean some people
23:53
they start panicking with those eight to
23:55
ten touches and they do it
23:57
they even do too much of it um at the
23:59
wrong time right
24:01
so if you are not top of mind
24:04
year round i think it’s really just
24:06
you’re missing out on an opportunity
24:08
and i guess the big thing mike
24:11
and is i mean you do that in your
24:13
company you help companies
24:15
uh put that on autopilot right just
24:17
basically
24:18
um doing the right things at the right
24:21
time but consistently i think that’s so
24:23
huge i think
24:24
at the beginning of the year oftentimes
24:26
we focus more on
24:28
um on intensity we’re very intense we’re
24:31
like oh we’re going out there we’re
24:32
gonna pump we’re gonna do a lot
24:33
a lot of work uh get as much done as we
24:36
can
24:36
but really the one who’s consistent
24:39
usually wins
24:41
because the one who’s so intense about
24:43
it just
24:44
in certain times usually misses out on
24:47
other times or he gets tired
24:49
and then focuses on the wrong actions at
24:52
the wrong time
24:52
yeah and i could agree with you more and
24:54
i think one of the keys to success is
24:56
finding at least four probably five
24:58
uh key points in the season so obviously
25:00
the spring time is very
25:02
it’s focused everybody’s doing that but
25:04
uh right now to keep it
25:06
you keep it relatable in the time of the
25:07
season uh depending where you’re at in
25:09
the u.s or canada we’ll be coming up on
25:11
our fall our fall season so aeration and
25:13
overseeing is a big one
25:14
holiday lights what are those seasonal
25:16
upsells that we can time
25:18
and frankie right you don’t want to hit
25:19
it head on you want to slowly go through
25:21
some nurturing some education
25:23
frame yourself as the expert and then
25:25
when those first weeds pop or it’s time
25:27
to go thicken that lawn up and aerate it
25:28
you’re top of frame of mind so you’re
25:30
there
25:30
so when they’re going to look for it
25:32
you’re ready to there and they’re like
25:33
oh look there’s an email
25:34
i click this button i can request a free
25:36
estimate or maybe there’s property
25:37
specific pricing
25:38
where they just click and sign up uh but
25:40
that i think is it
25:41
is the the key one of the guys in our
25:43
ecosystem that does it really well frank
25:44
i don’t know if you ever heard of uh
25:46
garrett matthews of matthews uh lawn and
25:48
past he’s out of a shreveport louisiana
25:50
uh but as of now i believe he’s up to
25:52
four years and he hasn’t missed a single
25:55
day of organic
25:56
content if people are watching what
25:58
organic content is literally he goes on
26:00
facebook
26:00
it’s not a paid ad and he literally gets
26:02
on there and
26:03
and talks about a seasonal issue
26:05
educates the consumer
26:07
how to tackle it themselves as a
26:09
professional would
26:10
and when they see that he is top of
26:11
frame of mind so when they have
26:13
pest control or fire ants or whatever
26:14
that is um
26:16
they’re picking up and calling matthew’s
26:17
landscape because he is there and he is
26:20
the expert
26:20
in that local town and city so it’s
26:22
really um it just speaks exactly what
26:25
you’re talking about frank and now like
26:26
now we’ve got kind of this marketing
26:29
machine dialed in
26:30
um i know a lot of times when companies
26:32
finally get their marketing plan for the
26:33
12 months dialed out
26:35
they go holy cow you know maybe we
26:38
really don’t have enough money to scale
26:39
for an extra 2 300 clients this year
26:41
because now we’ve been able to back it
26:42
down for each marketing source and
26:44
how many pieces of marketing material we
26:46
need to get out or maybe they’re like
26:47
wow i can actually i’ve got more extra
26:49
money in the budget to actually double
26:51
down on the market we saw a lot of
26:52
people
26:53
uh that are winning right now and i’m
26:54
curious if you’re seeing this too frank
26:56
the people that doubled down
26:57
on their advertising when that ad spent
26:59
across google and facebook shrunk
27:01
during the the covet crisis people were
27:03
getting double or triple the effect for
27:05
the same
27:06
amount of money or even less so it was
27:08
pretty impressive but
27:10
kind of getting around that after
27:11
marketing um i’m assuming mid-year
27:13
review has got to be somewhere around
27:15
your financials
27:16
yeah absolutely that’s when corbyn hit
27:20
everyone was asking should i cut into my
27:22
budget for marketing
27:24
and i basically as soon as i was asked
27:27
this question is
27:28
unless you’re running out of money like
27:30
right now
27:32
if you have money you want people to
27:34
hire you when they can
27:36
and so make sure you you put some money
27:39
aside but what i’ve noticed and there
27:40
was a poll a few years ago
27:42
to try to get an estimate on how many
27:45
companies
27:46
don’t run with a budget or how many run
27:48
with a budget
27:49
and it was found that over 90 of
27:52
companies
27:52
out there in landscaping do not have a
27:55
budget
27:56
so a budget that identifies you know the
28:00
not only the let’s say your your labor
28:03
and your materials and
28:05
and your cost of um doing business but
28:07
you like your overhead
28:09
people for companies that don’t know
28:12
their overhead
28:13
they they can really never figure out
28:15
how much profit they make because
28:17
in their minds they’re thinking gross
28:19
profit oh after i pay my labor my
28:20
materials
28:21
um these things well then i’m left with
28:24
this amount of money and it’s mine
28:26
or the companies but really when you
28:28
take out the overhead which is all the
28:30
cost that you can’t bail out to the
28:32
client right like the office
28:33
and um let’s say the marketing you can’t
28:36
literally put that on your quote for the
28:38
client say oh my shop
28:39
you know my shop pools my secretary you
28:41
can’t put these things on that quote
28:43
so all these things that you can’t put
28:44
there it’s actually a cost of the
28:46
business becomes overhead
28:48
so when you take the overhead overhead
28:50
out of the gross profit you’re left with
28:52
a net profit
28:53
and so when people tell me i’m my
28:55
company’s almost 40 percent
28:57
in profits i know that they’re
28:59
forgetting the big detail which is huge
29:03
and we find that information by doing a
29:06
budget by
29:07
looking at all the uh projections of
29:10
what the company is going to get for
29:11
revenue
29:12
and all the costs to the company we
29:15
break it down
29:16
and we also take a look at the equipment
29:18
all these details
29:20
but they’re simple tools out there free
29:22
tools to help companies do this when
29:23
they have their budget
29:25
they can really see where the money is
29:27
going and mid-year
29:28
they can really reassess okay are we
29:31
spending more like how are we doing with
29:33
expenses
29:34
how are we doing with just overall
29:38
sales how are we doing with the budget
29:40
are we staying on track are we spending
29:42
more than we should be
29:44
and so we take a look at that and when
29:46
we when when we
29:47
kobet hit in march we did almost three
29:50
budgets for every company because we
29:51
were doing the
29:53
the um the the best case scenario
29:56
the mid-range scenario and the worst
29:58
case scenario in case that the year
30:00
wouldn’t go as planned
30:01
but at least these companies they would
30:02
know okay what can we do
30:04
if if things really start getting um
30:07
challenging as a company we know where
30:09
to cut
30:10
in our budget we know what to do we’re
30:12
not in a panic
30:13
right so this was very empowering for
30:17
clients contractors business owners
30:20
looking at their business in a different
30:21
way
30:22
and so i think when it comes to
30:23
financials it’s going back to that
30:24
budget making sure you have a budget
30:26
taking a look if you’re on track with
30:27
the goals that you have for your
30:28
your business and i love you mention
30:30
that that was one thing that was pretty
30:32
instrumental in my business as well as
30:33
having a baseline in the middle of the
30:35
road and a stretch
30:36
uh even before the pandemic but that is
30:39
it’s eye opening and
30:40
if things pivot like maybe gas prices
30:42
one year almost doubled
30:44
like well that that’s not you know
30:46
that’s not traditionally in your budget
30:48
but then that affects things so how can
30:49
you pivot and actually
30:51
you know cut other areas because you
30:52
can’t control the cost of gasoline so
30:55
um really interesting that you have
30:56
those another thing that is always my
30:58
favorite as well
30:59
i’m making a lot of money because i’ve
31:01
got money in the bank
31:03
oh the perceived not the meth ideology
31:05
like hey if i got money in the bank
31:06
we’ve got to be making money because
31:08
there’s money in the bank um and i’ve
31:10
told the story before uh cody’s probably
31:12
surely heard it but um right after me
31:14
it’s scary um so i recommend the book
31:16
profit first by mike mikalowitz uh mike
31:18
has been on here several times
31:20
um but you know after my divorce i got
31:22
back into becoming a nightclub dj and i
31:23
knew if i had at least
31:25
a hundred thousand dollars of liquid
31:27
working capital in the operating expense
31:29
account for my business
31:30
traditionally that was about appropriate
31:33
but our
31:33
receivables had been so good the girls
31:35
in the office and figure out how to get
31:37
those bills in
31:38
quicker that by the time we hit november
31:39
december i wasn’t running my
31:41
um weekly numbers like i always had in
31:44
the past because it was
31:45
basically a rough spot in my life after
31:46
divorce and um
31:48
you know basically that time november
31:50
december we were upset on seventy
31:51
thousand dollars frank and
31:53
i was like what happened we had a
31:55
hundred thousand dollars in the bank we
31:56
should have been good
31:57
um so i think that’s a you know if
31:59
you’re watching this it we all get into
32:00
those scenarios at some point
32:02
um and i think frank’s actually just it
32:04
really is he’s just nailing it so
32:06
um if you’re taking some notes from this
32:08
essay weekly a lot a lot of takeaways up
32:09
to this point but
32:11
man the financials if you’re not running
32:12
those numbers and you’re not especially
32:14
during the uncertain times of covet
32:15
having that base middle line and stretch
32:17
um and be able to pivot and have those
32:19
numbers for different scenarios as it
32:21
goes because
32:21
who knows covet could kick back in full
32:23
swing again in the fall we could be
32:25
you know working on our baseline numbers
32:27
but at least you got those numbers you
32:28
know how to pivot that way
32:30
so um as we’re diving in as we’re
32:32
bringing it home here frank
32:33
uh sales a lot of times you talk about
32:35
you’d like to look at sales mid
32:37
mid season in a strategic review what
32:39
about sales you actually look at in that
32:41
mid-season strategic review
32:43
yeah so sales is an interesting um
32:46
part of the business in terms of maybe
32:49
at the beginning
32:50
of the year we see all these sales
32:54
coming up we’re excited we’re pumped and
32:56
then we start doing the work we forget
32:58
the important things like
32:59
taking a look at the pipeline what do we
33:01
have coming up
33:03
um and for some companies it’s it’s not
33:05
a problem they stay busy year round
33:07
but in uncertain times like this it’s
33:10
really crucial to take a look at the
33:11
funnel
33:12
what do you have in the pipeline what’s
33:14
coming up which clients could you kind
33:17
of
33:18
uh what deals could you close that’s not
33:20
that are not closed how many sales do
33:22
you actually have
33:23
are you on target taking a look at those
33:25
kpis
33:26
are we um doing as much work as we’re
33:29
selling for that month are we still
33:31
selling as much every month
33:33
as we have projected what’s coming up so
33:36
these are all the things that you really
33:37
have to take
33:39
a deep look into especially mid-year
33:41
because you don’t want to finish
33:43
you want to finish strong no matter what
33:45
you want to finish trying and you want
33:46
to take advantage of the right time so
33:48
in many places
33:50
like canada or the i guess nor
33:53
eastern part of for sure or even just
33:55
the northern part of the us
33:57
you’re stuck with winter or fall and so
34:00
it gets cold you can’t do all the work
34:02
you can’t you can’t slow down in that
34:04
but it usually slows you down the
34:06
weather slows you down so you have to
34:08
try to make the best
34:09
of these months like august and
34:12
september october november that stretch
34:15
is really important so
34:16
sales going back to the sales and also
34:19
taking a look
34:20
at your sales making sure that you’re
34:22
selling the jobs that you’re most
34:23
profitable
34:24
on so sometimes i hear this dishonored
34:26
say oh man i have so many jobs i’m
34:29
i’m overwhelmed i’m not even even doing
34:31
the quoting anymore
34:32
and i tell them whoa whoa whoa back up
34:34
like if you know you’re making more
34:36
money
34:36
let’s say on i’m just you know using an
34:39
example let’s say construction let’s say
34:41
your crew on construction is super
34:43
efficient
34:44
you make a lot of profit and you know
34:47
you don’t make
34:48
any profit on let’s say um
34:52
custom work because some construction
34:54
companies that i
34:55
i notice they’re really good let’s say
34:56
at pavers and retaining walls they make
34:58
their most money when they’re doing
34:59
those
35:00
and all of a sudden they see this custom
35:01
job and they’re like getting really
35:03
excited
35:04
i’m like is that the job you want at the
35:05
end of the year the job that you don’t
35:07
even know if you’re gonna make money on
35:08
because those custom jobs when you don’t
35:10
track things properly
35:12
they can be very i mean they can be
35:14
detrimental to your business
35:16
you can lose all your profit of the year
35:18
on one job
35:19
because you don’t really know how you
35:21
should be pricing that job because
35:22
everything is new everything’s custom
35:24
unless you’re pricing per hour
35:25
right labor materials it’s hard to
35:30
uh to work on those jobs so finding out
35:32
what kind of sales
35:33
you’re the most efficient at doing what
35:35
kind of work and trying to sell that
35:37
work trying to close more of those jobs
35:39
at the end of the
35:39
year where you know you’re more you’re
35:41
more profitable
35:43
with those jobs interesting it almost
35:45
seems like they’re building foundational
35:46
the way you’re building is out so we’re
35:47
probably going back to our kpis
35:49
we need good data in so we’ve got good
35:51
data out we can run those production
35:52
reports
35:53
and profit loss dollar per man hour for
35:55
revenue to make sure that hey
35:57
this is our profit center so maybe it’s
35:59
just lawn mowing and fertilization maybe
36:01
it’s design build
36:02
uh custom work some people make it work
36:05
but i mean you
36:06
didn’t mention it but then you’ve got
36:07
change orders or work order changes
36:09
which can be a whole another disaster if
36:11
you don’t know how to to price those
36:12
specifically and you’re not dealing with
36:14
those so
36:14
i love the fact that you’re kind of
36:15
saying let’s let’s structure those sales
36:17
especially the second half of the year
36:19
to take the risk out of it and double
36:20
down on those profits um
36:22
kind of a final question around sales
36:23
offering is there is a
36:25
is there a weekly cadence a quarterly
36:27
cadence that we
36:28
should be using in our our service
36:30
business to
36:32
um home down on those sales so like the
36:34
actual budget is there certain
36:36
rhythm or cadence that you recommend to
36:38
track those
36:39
well i like business owners to always
36:41
have a pulse on the business
36:43
so like having some kind of a metric um
36:46
i always tell them you know if you don’t
36:48
you if you’re not tracking it if you’re
36:49
not measuring it you can’t manage it
36:51
right so just having some kind of a
36:53
measure that on a weekly basis you can
36:55
go back to and say
36:56
okay we’re on par for this week you know
36:58
we’ve gotten this much work done
37:00
we’re selling this much work yeah things
37:02
are but at the very minimum if you want
37:04
to say
37:05
keep it very basic because sometimes the
37:07
comment i get is
37:08
oh it’s getting too complicated there’s
37:09
too many things to try all right okay
37:11
let’s scale it down make sure you at
37:13
least do it on a monthly basis
37:16
right because you want to attract okay
37:18
my month of july does it look like july
37:20
last year is it better is it worse
37:22
again i could have a pulse on um
37:25
if things were getting better or things
37:27
should improve and so
37:29
you can easily take a look if you’re
37:31
keeping track of it on a monthly basis
37:33
it’s nice because year after year you
37:35
can go back and say well this might we
37:37
did so much money or we sold so much so
37:39
many jobs
37:40
and so i like monthly i like we i i like
37:43
that the
37:44
business owner can provide feedback on a
37:46
weekly basis to the team
37:47
because that’s important for the sales
37:49
team if you have a bigger team
37:50
to keep them motivated and say hey
37:52
listen we did great last week
37:54
let’s go out and do this this week like
37:55
you can use that as a motivator
37:57
but at the very very least if you’re a
38:00
very small
38:01
company i mean the very minimum is on a
38:04
quarterly basis
38:05
just to make sure that you’re you’re
38:07
still on track
38:08
and very important because i see some
38:10
people just wait till the end of the
38:11
year to take a look at their numbers and
38:13
it’s not enough awesome i love the
38:15
historical benchmark so year after year
38:17
you’ve got a
38:18
budget uh historical benchmark and maybe
38:20
you can use it as a percentage based on
38:22
projected growth and things that you’re
38:23
doing there’s that that’s great great
38:24
advice
38:25
um so obviously i know you’ve got a very
38:26
compressed schedule i really appreciate
38:28
you joining us here
38:29
but to bring it home one of the things
38:31
we talked before we actually went live
38:32
was technology and communication
38:34
um and that was kind of the last piece
38:37
that you recommend mid-year to look at
38:39
that strategic review so would you mind
38:40
kind of giving us an insight of
38:42
the technology communication look that
38:45
you look at
38:46
internally in businesses about mid-year
38:48
well what i’ve noticed
38:50
and this is what happened to me back in
38:52
2008 2009
38:53
when the economy crashed i had to go
38:56
from 110 employees or about 20.
38:59
and i hired coaches i hired mentors i
39:03
basically put my money on people that
39:05
knew more than me at that time
39:06
and i said okay how can i survive in
39:09
this industry
39:11
uh with obviously less people
39:14
and i feel like i had less resources and
39:17
when
39:18
one of my mentors said listen the good
39:20
news is
39:21
there’s technology out there and with
39:23
technology you will have the biggest
39:26
leverage um and this is what you have to
39:29
do as a business owner is always try to
39:31
see what you can leverage
39:33
that will make your job easier better
39:35
and faster
39:36
so when i started using technology and i
39:38
started using
39:39
apps and i started using uh my website
39:43
and i started using
39:44
automation something that where people
39:46
can book jobs without me having to serve
39:49
them
39:49
every single part of the process
39:52
uh when i i need to track information
39:55
from my team
39:56
and my team can just put this
39:58
information and
39:59
they don’t have to call me to give me
40:01
that information they can just put in
40:02
the system the assistant tracks it
40:04
when i can let the client know that
40:06
we’re coming
40:07
because uh not very many companies do
40:11
that but for the companies that do
40:13
take that extra time and but they have a
40:15
process in place they have a system in
40:17
place they even have a piece of
40:18
technology that does it for them
40:20
and if i have a piece of technology that
40:22
keeps track with my clients
40:24
makes them feel important by saying hey
40:27
we thought of you uh
40:29
you know just keeping in touch with my
40:30
clients we’ve noticed that we were
40:32
keeping more clients because we were
40:34
staying in touch with them
40:35
they were buying more from us it’s much
40:37
easier
40:38
to get more jobs of existing clients
40:40
than having to find new clients
40:42
so when you have a system that takes
40:45
care of that for you
40:46
that’s on autopilot like i would say
40:49
well then
40:50
this is what makes your business uh
40:52
easier to operate
40:53
more fun to operate and you get more
40:56
data
40:56
all these measurements and kpis we’re
40:58
talking about you get that
41:01
a lot easier when it’s technology taking
41:04
care of it for you
41:05
so for people that are not um familiar
41:09
with what type of technology
41:10
are out there i mean obviously service
41:13
autopilot
41:14
is a great great great resource you
41:16
might you
41:17
uh focus on helping clients automate
41:20
their processes
41:21
and i do as well so part of my job is
41:25
finding the best systems the best
41:26
process and to help contractors
41:30
get more profit and more efficiency in
41:32
their business so
41:33
technology good communication
41:36
communication is improved with better
41:38
technology
41:39
so this is why i put them into the same
41:41
basket
41:42
love it awesome awesome i really
41:44
appreciate you spending some time with
41:45
us and just shedding some light on
41:47
what we should be doing mid-year in our
41:48
service business whether it’s lawn care
41:50
or even home cleaning this really is
41:51
applicable to just about any service
41:52
business if you’re watching so
41:54
don’t think this is applicable to just
41:55
lawn care hardscaping
41:57
uh working with some of the top
41:58
consultants in the cleaning industry as
42:00
well such as debbie sardone and these
42:01
are
42:02
um not identical very similar to what
42:04
we’re seeing in the other industries so
42:06
if you’re watching this in your a
42:07
different industry um you know i think
42:09
frank’s got some great takeaways that
42:10
can be used in your mid-year
42:12
strategic review that really should be
42:14
happening right now
42:16
so frank once again cody um any closing
42:19
thoughts here as we wrap it up
42:20
i just want to thank frank for your time
42:22
it is good to get
42:24
perspective from somebody uh one of our
42:26
neighbors to the north
42:27
so thank you so much for for hopping on
42:29
with us
42:30
well thanks guys i really appreciate it
42:32
and and mike i i love that you mentioned
42:34
that
42:34
this is good for any business in the
42:36
home service industry right
42:38
anyone any contractor taking care of
42:41
jobs related to the home service
42:44
industry so
42:45
yeah and i know that uh you and brandon
42:46
vaughn there had uh one heck of an event
42:48
the home service summit uh that was live
42:50
congratulations guys just broke a
42:51
guinness book record
42:53
of uh was it 50 000 viewers um so really
42:56
really phenomenal
42:57
um what you and brandon had done there
42:59
and just giving
43:00
valuable information to the service
43:02
industry as a whole um so
43:04
obviously frank just isn’t speaking from
43:05
a point of landscaping hardscaping but
43:07
very applicable to any service business
43:09
so uh just want to thank you again
43:11
frank if people want to reach out to you
43:12
as far as your business coaching
43:13
consulting or public speaking uh
43:15
probably virtual now but hopefully uh in
43:17
person i i find you somewhere in person
43:19
on a stage together
43:20
um in the near future uh what’s the best
43:22
way for somebody to reach out to you if
43:23
they wanted to
43:24
contact you yeah for sure so my website
43:27
is
43:28
frankbork.com so borg is spelled
43:31
b-o-u-r-q-u-e
43:32
and uh they can sign up even for a free
43:36
20 minutes consultation if they just
43:37
want to
43:38
get back on track if they want to work
43:40
on this strategic plan we’ve talked
43:42
about today
43:43
you know feel free to uh book something
43:44
on my schedule and uh we’ll get in touch
43:47
awesome hopefully we to see you in
43:48
person soon as things kind of uh
43:50
lighten up here um and if not we’ll
43:53
definitely see on a virtual stage sooner
43:54
than later for sure so
43:56
uh thanks again frank cody essay weekly
43:58
talk show next friday
43:59
brian stearman of lawn care marketing
44:01
mechanic is going to be live with us
44:03
a week after that we are going to have
44:04
martha woodward
44:06
and hopefully the week after that lisa
44:08
moreno of the essay marketing team gonna
44:10
be dropping some knowledge bombs on us
44:12
so
44:12
stay tuned we’ve got three four weeks of
44:14
action-packed knowledge to go out and
44:16
dominate your local competition while
44:18
out learning them here on the sa weekly
44:19
talk show
44:20
1 p.m eastern 12 p.m central we’ll see
44:23
you again next friday essay weekly talk
44:25
show
44:25
mike callahan cody the millennial
44:27
marketer and uh our special guest frank
44:29
fork thanks a lot guys
44:30
thanks so much guys thank you if you
44:34
like this show
44:34
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44:36
resources at www.startsimplegrowth.com
44:40
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44:42
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44:44
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44:46
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