Episode 3

Ezra McCarthy 

Hello and welcome back to the Lawn Care Success Blueprint. Today we have my friend Andrew Martinez from the Lone Star Lawn Talk podcast. I’ve met a couple times, talked to him many times and we actually just got a website up for him but I just wanted to have him on the podcast to go over some ways that he’s grown his business, some questions here and sure great to have you today Andrew.

Andrew Martinez

Yeah, thanks for having me. Appreciate it Ezra. That’s pretty cool. You got the, you got a podcast set up, man. I didn’t even know that. That’s awesome.

Ezra McCarthy

Yep, we figured it was a great way to help our customers hopefully and help others find them. So I’m going to hop in here today and just got several questions we’re going to riff on. You have a lawn care business right there in Mansfield, Texas. I remember taking you out to dinner, but one thing folks, you got to watch out for Andrew. He’s a sneaky fellow. Here I was, went into the restaurant. You know, I’ve heard of a Dash and Go, but this was a little different. Here I go to the restroom and I come back and Sneaky Andrew paid the bill on me, so you gotta watch out for him.

Andrew Martinez

Well, truthfully you met me you drove like an hour and a half from Greenville to where I was so I mean that’s the least I could do man and It’s it’s it’s great seeds planted man. I mean got a bud and friendship here and and I think the ROI on that’s pretty good I think huh?

It was pretty good man, It’s one of our favorite restaurants. We just talked lawns and then just two weeks after that, I think it was about two weeks or within a month or real shortly, you left out to where you’re at right now, right?

Ezra McCarthy

Yeah, it was right after that, but we’ve kept in contact and today I’m going to kind of break in here some of your business experience. So we’ll just hop right into it, Andrew here. I just want to know what’s one moment in your lawn care journey that completely changed how you operate?

Andrew Martinez

It’s probably been some years back I think bringing on the software system CRM system. Going credit card. It’s kind of like a Multi-prong for me. I did it all in one winter back. I think it was 2012 2013, I had been working on kind of a junkie website. Also kind of been doing it on my own lone guy trying to save the buck and say and do his own website which it was okay. I think I got the point across but I would say I did a website, set up the CRM and I went credit card all in all in one winter I went it’s about 11 2011 12. I think going to 13. I got all of that switched around and that’s what really I guess inwardly, outwardly took my business from kind of chuck in the truck style to kind of a full blown business, I think. I would say that would be it for me.

Ezra McCarthy

How did you find that that changed your business? Did that affect your cash flow, just your confidence? What did that really change?

Andrew Martinez

Gosh, I mean everything. I mean confidence, everything you said. Cashflow, confidence and then I mean it looked better. I felt better. The organization was a lot better. I didn’t have to think about things. I’d already preloaded all of my services and email templates, many of which I still use to this day. I update them along the way through the years, but it was just kind of everything. Just kind of set the business itself. It organized it so much better. Everything from the client lists to how we respond to routing, to the efficiency in routing, and then of course the billing. The billing was able to, we went to all credit card, that was a big thing for us, whether it was monthly or weekly billing, we just always took that. There were some exceptions here and there on larger jobs, but I mean, we didn’t have to wait on that. That was money up front or with a deposit, things like that. It just really affected every area of my business life.

Like I said everything I said already, the routing, how we respond to clients. We had a new P &L system, I was able to track my cost, track my spending, all that kind of stuff. Just really, I mean. I’m kind of the classic, I like pen to paper kind of thing, but there’s just, it’s the new millennia, man. You have to keep updated. You have to keep up with things. And so there’s some things I still use kind of archaically just for different things, but I’d say 95 % of my business since then has been run on all of that. 

So kind of in a nutshell, it affected all aspects, benefited all aspects. It took a lot of the waiting out. It took a lot of the most important thing I think, for business. I say on my show, we like to keep margin not just in our pocketbooks, but also in our calendars. This whole, that winter time switch around did that exactly. It increased the benefits. It depleted a lot of the wrongs and it stopped a lot of the stuff that could potentially happen moving forward, what with billing and ticket items, things like that. And it just refined my business. That was the main, that was the big catalyst for us, man.

Ezra McCarthy 

That’s so good, Andrew. And one thing that I really find is people say a lot, you know, I was afraid that customers would leave, especially with the credit card on file, or I don’t want to inconvenience them. Were you afraid before you change that out? Because that seems to be a really common fear that people are like, if I switched, what if? Did you face any of those things? And how did you kind of deal with that?

Andrew (05:52)

Yeah, I was anxious. It’s been a while now, but I do remember having some anxiety about that switch around.

But I followed Jonathan Potoschnick, at the time he was a lawn care millionaire. He has a five for 50 on his YouTube channel now, but he was one of the few people that was actually addressing these issues. And at that time he was, he had gone through big changes in his company. He had gone through changes and he’s local here in DFW. So I kind of had an unusual benefit in confidence to switch around. Cause I’m like, well, if this guy can do it, you know, I can do it for sure. And he had a far larger, still does a far larger operation than I.

Even plan to or want to right now and he ran his whole company on this whole thing and that’s always gonna be. When you change your business, there’s always gonna be a level of anxiety there But I mean it’s kind of like going from freak one frequency cycle as a minimum to another frequency cycle or adding a service or anytime you change a policy to enforce on your client base or always especially as a small a small business where you kind of hand-to-mouth or or you have just a few trucks out there.

You know, it’s always challenging but in this case I did have anxiety but I was kind of tired of waiting on money I was kind of tired of you know being delayed 60 70 days and and quite frankly sometimes you go out there and keep doing service people will maybe not pay their bill on time or they’ll let it accumulate and then you run the high risk of them Not even paying because they’re looking at this large balance and you’re still going out there.

I was just kind of tired of all that, know, with lawn mowing and, and shrub trimming, bed care, fertilization, weed control. I was just kind of tired. I was looking at my P and L’s on this new system and I saw all my outstanding invoices and, I was like, gosh, cause I had kind of done, I had kind of started that with a handful of clients before to kind of help manage. And then I took that winter time to switch everything over. Cause I just got tired. I got tired of waiting. I got tired of all of that. And I’m like, you know what?

I kind of took the words of people ahead of me that did it. I was saying, you know what, people who drop, you don’t need them anyways. There’s a whole another world out there. I mean, everybody pays with credit card. Everybody pays with a debit card. You go through the fast food lines. You pay your bills with it anymore. And this was back 10, what is that? As you helped me out, 10, 13 years ago? 14 years ago, something like that. Yep. And so, I mean, that…

Ezra McCarthy

Or 15 if you said 2010.

Andrew Martinez

Yeah, I did have anxiety, but I was kind of tired of putting up with my business as it was at that time. And, you know, I was tired of going crazy, you know, doing the same things, expecting something different, right? And go ahead.

Ezra McCarthy

I was just going to say, Andrew, you you’ve had an interesting story when I met you, you told me more about that. We didn’t dive into it today, but I know when you were originally started, you had a partner and I don’t know how, I know you’ve told your story publicly before, but some of the lessons you learned perhaps from allowing some of those contracts to get too far out, like what are some lessons maybe you could tell the audience kind of in that process, what you, what you learned from it and then how that affects how you run your business today.

Andrew Martinez

So three things I’ll approach that with. The kind of jobs that you’re doing that may or may not require a down payment. You gotta do that, money up front, have a contract in hand. Lower ticketed items like lawn mowing or maintenance or even on commercial stuff like that. Not going out to…

not continuing services if there is backed up money, even by, for me now, my standards, one or two services or one or two invoices. I’ll say I do have a handful of clients that I just kind of like, I just whatever, you know, and they pay eventually. I actually lost three of those this fall, so I mean, I’m not worried about that.

Ezra McCarthy

Oh no.

Andrew Martinez

So that’s kind of how I look at it and of course, just credit card on file. That’s our standard. That’s how I would prevent those things moving forward. Again, it’s like, okay, if you’re doing a landscaping job, light install, Christmas lights, larger landscaping. In my opinion, larger landscaping outside of my normal tickets, a thousand plus. If it’s a thousand dollar cleanup, you’re cutting a tree down, if you’re putting in a flower bed, you’re renovating, a big maintenance job and it requires substantial money, man, I would require a 50 % down payment. And you know what? That is going to limit, if you’re bringing in a whole bunch of leads, that will slow your close ratio down. But you know what? It’ll improve your bottom line. It’ll improve your receivables. And then have a contract saying, hey, we’re doing this on X date, this address, and here’s everything being executed, and then record the down payment, and there you go.

That’s on the landscaping larger ticketed sides. That’s what I did and and then on the maintenance side, I just wouldn’t keep going out. I have a bleeding heart and sometimes I do take exception to the elderly or the sick or something. I want to be a blessing, but this isn’t a 501.3c. I can only do that so much. You can only do that so much before you start needing help on your side. And then just putting in the right tool, which in this case was the credit card. it’s like, credit card on file, it doesn’t matter. And my system checks if it’s a good credit card, debit card or not. And I put that down on a larger job. I’ll still do that even if I’m taking another means of payment, just to kind of help avoid the fees. But at least I have that as a backup if they don’t pay or something goes wrong or out of town. Just because some people have the best intentions to pay, but sometimes life gets in the way. 

The family gets sick, somebody gets injured, lose a job or something like that. It is what it is. So I think setting up these guardrails really, really puts up safety nets in order for you to continue flourishing in your own business. Cause at the end of the day you gotta get paid. Have a bleeding heart, still serve, still do the best that you can, but that can only be from case to case. But it’s all about how you set it up and what the expectancy level you put up also. You’re the contractor.

You’re the professional. They’re looking to you to guide you to guide them and more than just the work itself. All the billing, the logistics of how everything goes, know, start to finish process. They kind of want to be walked through because they’re hiring a professional if that makes sense. But that’s what it did for me, man. I mean, really, I could go into it for another hour and a half just on that topic. But, you know, for time’s sake, those three elements right there really really did it for me and I saw a massive change in 12 months. 

I could definitely tell the difference between how my operation looked from one part of spring or season to the other side, you know, as far as startup. And then my account receivables, you I wasn’t super negative. Like one year I was like negative 20, 30 grand and then the next year it was like five grand or 2,500 or something like that.

Ezra McCarthy 

That’s yeah, 20 grand back pay. This is not okay. Now you’ve been around for a while, Andrew. I think you mentioned, when did you first start in the green industry?

Andrew Martinez

2009. I got kicked off in 2009.

Ezra McCarthy

So you’ve been around at around 16 years and can you share with us, what are some of the craziest customer experiences or just on the job things that have happened so far to you?

Andrew Martinez

Oh man, well, I just kind of had the classic, you know client. I just had one just recently. It was really windy. We’ve had some weather down here and I was out doing my kind of early spring late winter mowings and kind of the scalping and things like that. And so the grass down here is Bermuda grass, most of the grass is. And it was really dry. And so I was out mowing this house and of course, you know, discharge just goes flying everywhere. And, you know, before I was able to finish…

Before my work and I was in the middle of blowing, I had a neighbor, a neighbor from my client that I was working on, he just come over and started, stopped me in the middle. I had to turn off my machine, I had to stop what I was doing and I had to kind of come over, he came over and like, you’re blowing your grass into my lawn and I’m like, I’m not, it’s the wind, you know, and then he was like, no, no, you need to come over here and take care of it. I’m like, I’m not done yet, sir, you know, so I run into that more often than anything, I think, and it’s really not my fault it’s the high winds I guess but I did go over there and make him ride I blew it out of his driveway cracks and blew it off of his flower beds things like that. 

That’s kind of more of a more recent one. I mean I’ve been ripped off before. I had a commercial client that owed me 50 grand. You know, me and my partner at the time accumulatively we allowed it to get that way because it was a large account. It’s about a quarter million dollar account.

But over a year and a half they owed us like 50 grand. And it’s like, well, that’s kind of our profit, you know? So that was a crazy one. I haven’t had any like life-threatening ones or any really stupid ones. It’s just people who just kind of feel infringed upon or they’re prideful about their property and they want to come over and yell at me. Maybe they’re having a bad day. Maybe their boss yelled at them. They’re having an argument. I don’t know.

But that’s what they would come over and complain, maybe stuff getting blown into their property or, some limbs fell over on their side or maybe something happened to their property subsequent to what we were doing. I don’t know. I guess that’s kind of the norm, we run into on something like that. I’ve never run into anything real super crazy, crazy, crazy.

I don’t think so anyways. I can’t remember. It’s been a long time, but I’d say throughout the years that’s kind of been the norm. Just people kind of getting mad at grass getting blown over on their side of the property or maybe we’re doing a tree job, you know, a trunk or some limbs fall on one side or something. I have put windows out from people as I’m mowing. I have put windows out. 

Ezra McCarthy

What’s the worst Windows story?

Andrew Martinez

Oh man. I’ve put some out before, but the worst one, it was right before I implemented all of these steps, really didn’t have anything to do with it. But I think it was back in 2011, 2012, um, me and, uh, one of my good friends at the time he was working for me. He was weed eating and I was mowing a set of houses on the street. We were just going do what we were doing. And in the backyard, uh, there was.

I guess there was some overgrowth through the joints of a makeshift like brick patio off of somebody’s house. They didn’t want to invest into like an actual patio. So they got like access bricks and put it up against their house. But so there was like a whole bunch of like thatch and there was a whole bunch of growth on there and the person wanted, wanted it mowed down. And I’ve told them before, Hey, we don’t mow down that kind of stuff because we don’t know what’s underneath there. could be a lot of loose gravel. There could be, you know, broken up pieces of brick or whatever.

We don’t want to hurt people and we don’t want to put any windows out and sure enough man he did that just to do something for the client and Subsequently he put out he put out the sliding glass door And both window panes on the sliding glass door got put out on both sides, I think it was. And so it’s not like there was a double pane where, yeah, you put one side out, but the inside was okay. No, I think you put both of them out. And so it was fighting against time. I think there was rain that weekend. It was Easter weekend.

I’ve never done that before. I was so scared. Didn’t really know what to do. I was freaking out. I ran to the store to pick up, I guess, plywood to kind of put up against the door so nothing happens. I can’t even remember how we secured it. I don’t even remember. I just remember it happening.

Ezra McCarthy

Do you remember how much it cost you?

Andrew Martinez

I think at the end of the day, once I hired contractors, bought the door. They wanted a new kind of door too. So they paid for that side. I think all in all, it’s like $1,400. I think it was. For install.

Ezra McCarthy

What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever run over?

Andrew Martinez

Oh man, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s yours. Is this explicit is this x-rated is this r-rated podcast or is this? 

Ezra McCarthy

Like not that.

Andrew Martinez

A number of things bro all kinds of I’ve ran over paraphernalia. I ran over wildlife. I’ve ran over toys, I’ve ran over things a lot.

Basically it’s just like, you think of maybe something that I ran over. Ask me if I ran over it, I’ll give you an idea if I did or not.

Ezra McCarthy

What about a squirrel?

Andrew Martinez

A rabbit. A rabbit and baby birds and stuff. Yeah

Ezra McCarthy

Oh no. You know, who was I hearing tell about that? They were doing leaf cleanups and they were using one of those suction things or like, and they sucked up a dead squirrel.

Andrew Martinez

Well these weren’t dead, man. 

Ezra McCarthy

Oh no! Okay, wow. That’s pretty rough.

Andrew Martinez

Yeah, yeah these weren’t dead. Two instances, the buddy I was telling you about that was working with me at another time, he was running with a tremor in an overgrown backyard.

And yeah, he hit a little bunny with a trimmer because they were hunkered down and what they thought was safe in this overgrown field or whatever. He hit that with his trimmer and I’ve hit bunnies and I guess like birds that’s fallen out of the nest before with my zero turn it’s yeah, yeah, it gets kind of wild out there man frogs frogs around You know kind of pond areas. Frog gets gets all over you

Ezra McCarthy

Oh no, well, we better get back on topic here, but boy, Andrew, you know, in our market, we talk about a lot about pricing and it is really important. But how do you find offering premium service to your customers while still kind of being competitive? Cause obviously there is a ceiling to what we can charge. We need to charge what we’re worth and you need to have a reasonable price. But like most customers, especially there, I’ve been there in Dallas, you know, cookie cutter yards.

Like if you tried to charge $100 per cut for a small yard, you just can’t. So there is a ceiling. So how do you find you balance the two between offering services, make enough money, and then staying competitive?

Andrew Martinez

You bring up such an industry wide point man for people is the pricing side. I mean you’re absolutely right some people will challenge you and say no there isn’t a ceiling or no you got to kind of just be the the the Porsche you know the Porsche in all markets you know of service and it’s like yeah I get that you know I mean but again you know we’re in lawn mowing and landscaping there is a definite invisible ceiling pricing wise you can go. How I would kind of push back on that just a little bit would be what can you what extra cert what more what value can you add to your client you know because at end of the day anybody can go mow a lawn you know. Now the quality of that mow okay that’s that’s, that could be questioned but we’re selling time you know we’re selling convenience so we’re selling value at the end of the day and it’s like what more value can you contribute to a buying client and some you never will. 

Some people are just a mowing client, just a treatment client and then they’re going to move on to someone else you never hear from again. It’s business. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, you’re just going to have that. But people who find value in your service, let’s just say a prime example for me, some years ago I found value in poop scooping. I got tattered with it one time, got tired of it and I just kind of made a policy but that’s something that actually adds value to your client and it kind of makes you invaluable as a service provider, you know.

It’s kind of things like, that you can you can raise prices minimally season in and season out, but you’re right, man I mean once after a 10-year client eight-year client started out paying 35 bucks for a cut now they’re paying you know almost 60 or 55 or whatever .You’re right. You can’t get a hundred dollar cut in most markets. Eighty dollars cut most markets. But what can you do? Extra that doesn’t take away a lot of time from you, but adds a lot more value to a client for me. 

Christmas lights, poop scooping, glyphosate control in driveway and flower bed cracks. Things like that. Stuff that you can tack on an extra five bucks, 10 bucks, know, ultimately maybe raise that stop another 10 or 15%. But at the end of the day, it’s a service stop. You’re not gonna get two, $300 for a service stop unless you’re there for a substantial amount of time or you’re in my opinion, just a different industry.

We’re addressing lawn care specifically right now and lawn mowing. But that’s kind of what I’ve done for me. I just added extra services that I found that I would think not just I would find value in as being on the client’s property, but also something that they actually can find value in. You’re getting a good great weekly bi-weekly mow, but then we’re addressing your dog poop as well. One less thing you need to worry about, you know, the babies and the kids can roll around in the lawn most of the time without worrying about access or compacted stuff. 

Flower beds, you know, we can address it monthly, weekly, bi-weekly. You know, it’s just one less thing they can worry about and just hate is the overall appeal. If I’m paying this extra 15, 20 percent, I’m not even worried about it because it’s you’re hammering out all these extra things that I’m not even thinking about. Or if someone maybe terminate service because they want to go with a cheaper option, they wind up hiring us back or they’ll they may not because maybe they’re embarrassed 

But I’ve had people hiring me back saying oh I noticed within the first few weeks that yeah I went with this lower cost option here but I noticed right away before the month was even up that things were growing in different areas things were you know the poop was getting excessive and I didn’t when you’re used to it and then you switch and then you don’t have it anymore they forget about it and then all of a sudden it’s like this huge problem you know.

Ezra McCarthy

You make so many jokes with that service, Andrew.

Andrew Martinez

And so it’s that I’ll take it man. I need to put some on my podcast

So that’s kind of, for me and my operation, that’s what I did. And I’m sure there’s other people. And again, that’s market to market. Maybe there’s, you know, particular kinds of trees or certain kinds of shrubs that need more frequent addressing. I know California and Florida are totally different markets. You know, I hear from family and friends that they’re pretty much full service. So it’s like whenever they go to bid lawn and landscaping, it’s never just one thing. They bid everything. It’s like the 12 foot, the 12 foot rule.

Anything 12 anything at the ground level 12 foot high we take care of everything that’s what we’re giving you bids and estimates on. That’s what people expect. Here in your, in your own market in my market, it’s very different. So you got to get kind of creative. So that’s what I’ve done in my own operation. I just added value. I’m adding hey while I’m here and I’ve sold you this time that you can put back in their life. What extra can I do for you that? Yeah, I’m making a little extra money, but you find value in as well. That’s how I’ve addressed it in the last number of years.

Ezra McCarthy

So good, Andrew. Well, I think at this time we had talked about, we’re going to kind of split this up. So if you want to hear the second part of this interview, I’d encourage each of you to go over to Lone Star Lawn Talk and you’ll be hearing some more value bombs that Andrew’s been dropping here. So yeah, we’ll see you over on that one.

Andrew Martinez

Thanks guys.