Jonathan of Lawn Care Millionaire and Andrew of Lawn Care Marketing Expert speaking in Chicago after a two day visit with Perry Marshall – the expert to the Pay Per Click industry – and the guy that literally wrote the book on Google Adwords.

If you don’t own Perry’s book – Ultimate Guide to Google Ad Words, 2nd Edition: How To Access 100 Million People in 10 Minutes – and you want to grow your lawn care / landscape business using PPC marketing you should buy this book today.

How does a 10 million dollar one sound?  Exciting?

The fact is, less than 1% of all lawn care companies in the U.S. and Canada gross more than $10,000,000.00 per year.

I personally like 10mm as a goal; however, I believe the ultimate achievement in business is to create a company that produces strong profits, grows and manages itself without your constant intervention.  By keeping your personal debt (monthly payments) to a minimum… meaning you have more monthly take home pay each and every month than the amount you pay out in personal expenses… you have created the ultimate freedom.

I believe freedom is the bigger goal.

A big business is a secondary goal.  Only to be fought for after you achieve the first goal.

Imagine a paid for house and cars.  Now imagine a lawn care business that runs itself and spins off more cash every month than you need to live.  You could do anything you want (within reason)… you could go anywhere you want.  This is freedom.  This is the ultimate business accomplishment.

You don’t need a 10 million dollar business or 10 million in the bank.  You simply need a consistent means to produce guaranteed cash in excess of your living expenses. 

When you’ve achieved this you will never have to make hard personal or business decisions that aren’t in your best interest.

Freedom is knowing that you don’t have to work with anyone you don’t want to, or do anything you don’t want to do or take a job you don’t want because without it there won’t be enough money to make the payments.

Too many lawn care business owners find themselves in the unnecessary position of being over loaded with debt.  Lawn service and landscape businesses that cannot service the debt ultimately go out of business leaving the owner with a mountain of debt to work off and pay back over years.

Here is how to avoid the trap:

1)     Don’t sign long term leases for office space and equipment that you can creatively avoid.  Our lawn care company could easily afford to buy and build out a multi-acre facility.  However, doing so would push us further out of the city limits resulting in higher payroll, fuel and truck maintenance costs.  Rather, we’ve found creative solutions for very efficient office, storage and facility setup that keep our costs very low and our financial obligations at a minimum.

2)     Don’t buy fancy trucks when you are starting out.  In fact, I can’t figure out why you would ever need brand new trucks.  They will almost immediately get beat up, scratched and dented.  That’s the business we are in.  Look for low mileage used trucks.  Painting a truck is cheap… a lot cheaper than buying a new one.

3)     That piece of equipment that would be really cool to own but may not be used to its full capacity should be rented on an as need basis.  Wait to purchase it or finance it until you are absolutely certain you have enough work to fully utilize it and when you are sure the payments or large cash outlay will not financially strain your business.

4)     Expanding too quickly by adding new service offerings that require the purchase of new equipment, trucks, employee’s, etc.  Think of each new service offering as a mini business.  Most businesses involve a start-up and learning phase.  Adding a new service to your service mix will work much the same way.  It is unlikely that it will be highly profitable day one.  Can you afford the financial strain it might put on your lawn and landscape company?

5)     As soon as you make some good money resist the urge to buy that new fancy truck or a bigger house.  Lots of personal debt that requires you to earn a certain size pay check every week to make the payments is bad.  When a challenging time arrives in your business if you can’t cut back your pay check you’ve got a problem.  As a result you are forced to make bad decisions within your business to ensure you can continue to take the same size paycheck as before.  Likewise, when great business opportunities come along you will be unable to temporarily reduce your pay check to capitalize on them (finance them).  Far too many business owners use their lines of credit to subsidize their personal living standards.  This is bad.  This is how businesses are slowly destroyed.  The concept of living below your means isn’t popular.  I realize this idea doesn’t sell books but it’s exactly how you get rich.

And, most important… it’s how you create freedom.

6)     Finally – I can’t improve on the wisdom of this Saturday Night Live episode.  http://www.hulu.com/watch/1389/saturday-night-live-dont-buy-stuff

You can use this Square Feet of Coverage by Depth Chart in place of a mulch calculator.

In the example below 2 cu. yds. of mulch installed 2″ deep will cover 324 sq. ft.

Calculation Notes:
1 cubic yard = 27 cubic feet = 9 bags / 3 cu. in size
Yards needed = sq. ft. x depth (in.) divided by 324
Coverage = cubic yards x 324 divided by depth (in.)
2 cu. bag covers 8 sq. ft. (3″ deep) or 12 sq. ft. (2″)
3 cu. bag covers 12 sq. ft. (3″ deep) or 18 sq. ft. (2″)

* Multiply sq. ft. of bed by # in this column

Example:

If your bed is 10′ x 20′, then the area is 10 x 20 = 200 sq. ft.

If the plant / flower spacing is 12″ on center then 200 x 1.15 = 230

You would need 230 plants to fill this area.

- Demonstrates New Life Time Value of a Lawn Care Client Calculator
- The value of a lawn care / landscape client determines how much you can afford to spend to acquire clients
- Helps prove how a couple small business procedure changes can dramatically increase your revenue
- Proves why referrals matter in a major way

Topics: Answering Service, Email Marketing, Marketing Manager
- The importance of answering the phones
- Answering Service Tips
- What information to capture
- What a marketing manager does
- How to use Email Marketing

What It Takes To Grow a Lawn Care Business to 8 Figures Per Year

Question: Is it possible to grow my lawn care & landscape company from 2 million per year in revenue to 10 million per year in revenue. I do not personally know anyone in the industry doing 10 million per year. Is it possible?

Lawn Care Business and Lawn Care Marketing Tips & Advice Covered in this Call:
1) How to find workers and lawn care employees
2) How to get out of the field so you can run and grow your lawn care company
3) Your single most important responsibility as the owners
4) Growing your company – what departments do I have – what roles might you have in your business as you grow
5) A very important tip about the kind of employees you want to hire to answer the phones
6) What is a part time CFO
7) What is your role as the owner
What do you think of using Facebook and Social Media in your lawn care and landscape business
9) What is the best thing to do with Facebook
10) Ideas about why social media is the future
11) Should you use YouTube videos to market your lawn care business
12) How to embed your Youtube videos in your website
13) How to get commercial lawn care customers
14) Should you have a website to market to commercial landscape maintenance customers
15) What is your opinion of the future of the green industry (lawn care)
16) Is the lawn care industry the ideal service industry? Is it the best industry to start a business in
17) Is lawn care licensing requirements good? or bad? for your business
18) Business Tips and Ideas to make your lawn care business better and worth owning

Lawn Care Topics Covered on This Call:
1) Lawn Care Marketing
2) Lawn Care Postcards
3) Best Printer for Lawn Care Marketing
4) The very best type of mailer to use for your lawn care business.
5) What to watch out for when mailing post cards to potential lawn care clients.
6) Types of printers and what to look for.
7) The best kind of mailer when trying to get new lawn care customers.
How to create inexpensive brochures that work.
9) Best way to manage lawn care door hangers.
10) Marketing to commercial clients through the mail.
11) What is the Dream 100 concept?
12) How to handle and keep up with business receipts.
13) Is ShoeboxBoxed work it?
14) A few notes about hiring and training employees for your landscape business.
15) Line of Credit & Factoring — cash flow management.
16) Lawn Care contracts and cashflow.
17) Is discounting your service for prepayments smart?
18) Leasing office space – what to look out for and what to consider.
19) How much financial information should you let employees know?

Do you have any questions regarding tonight’s call?  Also, any good advice you can pass on based on your experience in business?

Please comment below and I will respond.

November 2011 Lawn Care Millionaire Call

Topics:
Lawn Care Equipment
Custom Truck Beds
Lawn Care Pricing
Registering you lawn company as an LLC
The 5 pieces of lawn care software I use at my business. (Gmail, Service Autopilot, Evernote, Drop Box, Mozy, Google Reader)
Books to read about lawn care marketing
and lots more lawn care business advice…

This video discusses pricing out each man hour of time you sell. This applies to lawn mowing, landscape, irrigation, pest control, fertilization and weed control. Any lawn care service you sell is based on selling time. This video covers lawn care pricing and as a result covers estimating lawn care and lawn care bids.

Discussion about the top 5 Lawn Care Marketing Mistakes most commonly made by lawn care business owners when marketing their business online to prospective lawn care & landscape customers.

Topics Discussed:
Lawn care marketing… specifically Online marketing
PPC (pay per click)
SEO (search engine optimization) – specific to the lawn care industry
Local lawn care marketing

The video primarily covers the top 5 mistakes most lawn care business owners make whey they work on the online marketing for their business.