Episode 55

Ezra McCarthy

Hello and welcome back to Lawn Care Blueprint. Today we are joined by Tony Rudolph and we’re going to discuss a lot of interesting and fun things today as Tony said everything from A to B. We’re going to dig into scaling sometimes, why bigger isn’t always better, why financial planning, lifestyle freedom and perhaps some lessons from the field. So Tony, sure glad you’re here today.

Tony Rudolph

Well, thank you for having me, but I apologize it’s taking me such a long time to get on the schedule. It’s been a crazy spring and summer as I know it has been for a lot of guys. So I apologize you invited me to come on like a lot a lot of months ago but I made it happen. I did follow through on my word though. I scheduled it and here we are. 

Ezra McCarthy

Yeah. It’s good to have you here. So to start out with Tony, do you mind giving a little overview on kind of where you are perhaps in the business, not necessarily where you live per se, but where you got started and kind of what you got going on.

Tony Rudolph

Yeah, so I’ve been in the business my whole life. My dad is in the business. And so I grew up doing it with him after school and whatnot. And then about 14 or 15, I was homeschooled. And so after I was able to finish my work, as I got 14, 15, and then certainly 16, when I started driving, I was able to be almost full time in his company, driving a truck, driving a truck and trailer on one of his routes with someone else. So I’d done that for a number of years. And then as we became adults, that’s part of my dad’s plan. If me and my brother, if we wanted to, we would have his blessing to kind of start our own company if we wanted to because he didn’t want to scale his multi-layers, multi-20 truck operation. 

He didn’t want to do his business like that. He was like, when you guys get to the point, I’ll help you to start your business. He didn’t hand us any work. He did hand me one customer, which was kind of a problem customer. He was like, here, you have fun with this. And I don’t know if that’s a blessing or not, but it did teach me some lessons, that particular lady. But what I’m saying is it wasn’t a thing where I became 18 and my dad just handed me a whole book of business. It’s not like that. I just built it just like everyone else. Started back then, 2000, 10, 11, made business cards on VistaPrint, started handing them out. Started from zero. Saved up my money. Bought a walk behind on Craigslist, like a lot of people do. Belt drive, walk behind, got my first little utility trailer. And I already had a pickup truck, because even when I started driving, I definitely knew I was going to work for my dad, and I also planned on having my own business too. So I always had a pickup truck right from the jump. My first pickup truck was a 94 F-150. I paid $2,000 for the thing.

I remember what gas station it was sitting in front of that I bought it from. That’s how I started. forward years later. Still, my dad’s company is a little bigger than mine, but I’ve kept mine small and really condensed the areas. And so now I only work in a couple neighborhoods. And it’s really good. I’m not saying it’s easy. Like even today, there’s one new property I need to start and it has been raining all night last night. It’s still raining now. I still got to go out there because that’s one of the ones I have to do today. So I’m not saying it’s all easy, but at the same time, it’s a huge blessing and I’m much more profitable now than I was in years past. Condensed it all down.

I have my home mortgage paid off and everything else is paid off We’re 100 % debt free and we were able to do it all off of this Business income like my wife’s she doesn’t work outside the home because some guys they can be kind of cheating if your wife’s a doctor or something and yeah You’re able to float a lot of stuff off your business. I’m just telling you guys that for perspective started with zero nothing else coming in just building it slow. That’s what we done. That’s why I still continue to do and hope that answers your question.

Ezra McCarthy

Yeah, it does and something I’d love to discuss with you here on the podcast. Our frame of reference is really a lot about growing, but I’d love to ask you, you’ve obviously made a really intentional choice, not just an accident, not you couldn’t get more work, not you’re just, you’re trying to get more work and you can’t, you made an intentional choice not to scale. And I’d love to kind of dive into the mindset. Why did you choose to do it that way? And then what are the benefits? It sounds like you’ve been in this a while, or I’ve heard you talk on other podcasts. You’ve done this a while, but you made a choice to stay there? What are your reasonings? And perhaps there’s someone listening that’s saying, I don’t want to be a $10 million company. I think the main point is intentionality and then kind of bring in what has your journey looked like with scaling and growing?

Tony Rudolph

So how it started, it started zero and as me and my wife got married and stuff, had our first son maybe two, three years after I started the business after we got married and all that. Actually, it may even be closer to four years. But anyway, as we were starting this, I’m still learning a lot in the business, still narrowing down my stuff and all that. And as we started having a lot of kids, I didn’t want to just right off the bat add a bunch of risks in my life as far as going big with my company. And I have had a couple of helpers here or there with varied success, just like a lot of guys do. Some people that were temporary or stuff or guys I knew and that’s okay. Even up to this point, I didn’t want to… I wanted to keep making my business better before I make it bigger. And I don’t even know if I will make it bigger. As I get older, it would be good to maybe have someone that’s full time that’s with me. 

But I don’t rely on this business to form my identity as a man or like I don’t need to have 10 trucks to make my ego feel okay or whatever. I guess I’m mature enough in life to the point where I know that people just see right through that. If I’m not doing it for ego reasons and I am making good money right now. My profit margins obviously are high because I’m able to store everything on my property. I don’t have a storage unit. I don’t have any employees, you know, all this stuff. I don’t know, someone in my family has a doctor appointment or something. Boom. I just go do it. I don’t have to call anyone, you know, all these things. And then, and all of my customers are every single week, 12 months a year. There’s not a lot of guesswork. Oh, am I coming? Am I not? And they kind of know like, hey, if it’s raining, it may not be that day. It may be the next day or the day after that. But sometime within that span of Monday to Saturday, I will be there unless you hear from me otherwise and there are a few of them that get missed when we go to Equip and that kind of thing but the bottom line is I’m not against big companies.

I think they’re great if they’re built properly. They can be an amazing thing. They can impact and think about all the people that you could impact their lives discipleship wise and all that if you have a big company. Whereas if you have a small company, me as a believer, I’m not just because I have a small, simple company that doesn’t exclude me from disciplining people. So that means I have to do that other ways, other things. It’s not built into my business, but I can still do it. I talk to customers and things that can still happen, even me solo, but I just mean the crew members saying that can be a great thing. You can build relationships, you can impact people’s lives, good or bad way. And I’ve grown up, my dad’s company, there’s been times where he had his company much larger, 20, 30 employees.

They do everything, build seawalls and cut trees and everything full installs, poor concrete, all the things. So I’ve seen it. I’ve grown up seeing my dad through the stresses of the business. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it firsthand. I’ve grown up in it. And so I see it front to back. I see the cons of it. I see the pros, but I see the cons. See all the things. At the end of the day, to really answer your question, I just haven’t decided to go bigger with my company. I just kept cutting out neighborhoods for people that are just unpleasable or they don’t, whatever the reason is, they don’t pay on time, whatever, they just get caught off my route. And so that’s just what I’ve done. I just keep narrowing it down.

And if I build a big company, how bad would it be if I build a company with customers that are all over and varying the quality of customers? Because when you’re not solo, those matter even more. Every minute of that drive time costs you even more money when you’re not solo. So that means I really need to figure this system out when I am solo. It has to be. If I’m not able to rack up an additional 50 customers, just like the ones I have in the neighborhoods that I have, then well, maybe I’m not really ready to really grow this thing. Yes, I could pick up ones around the fringe and come when I need you and buy weeklies. So I could do that and fill up hundreds. Okay, let’s say I fill up all those, all the bi-weeklies and all these things, and then pay for extra more trucks, more mowers, payroll tax, workman’s comp, all these things. 

I’m saying at the end of the day, I have to make sure that I come out more profitable than I am now or it may not be worth it. And yes, maybe I wouldn’t be physically pulling all the weeds and mowing all the grass and stuff like I am now, but it will still be just as hard in a different way. And obviously it can be built right. In the future, that means I either have to build up my retirement good enough, my investments and stuff to where it can take care of me. Because let’s be realistic, guys. I can’t, when I’m 80 years old, I can’t turn out these 30 properties. It’s not going to work like that. If we think that, then we’re badly mistaken. So we have to be saving our money, investing, and we have to have a plan for that if we’re going to stay solo. That is something that you can, I think you can build in with a big company if it’s run right, able to, this thing’s able to run without you physically doing all the work. And that’s a great thing. I’m not against a big company. I just haven’t chosen to dive into that up to right now. I’m not saying I’m not against that in the future, but it has to be done right. I have to have a very good system in place. I’m not going to do this thing halfway. I don’t do anything halfway in my life. That’s just not how I work.

If I’m gonna do it, gonna have to do it right. I’m gonna have to do everything. I have to do all the payroll tax. I’m gonna have to pay for everything. Right now I do everything 100 % legally. All my money, I pay taxes on 100 % of my money. Except for if a customer gives me a gift card for Christmas or something. But all income in the business, 100 % of that taxes are paid on that. Does that make sense? So, doing all that, and I have insurance, all this stuff for damage to their house, all the things. But I guess someone could say, hey, he just hasn’t taken the step to do it.

He hasn’t taken the leap. He’s not, he hasn’t really been brave enough to dive into this big company thing. Maybe they’re right. I’m not gonna sit here and say, well, my way is the best. My way is probably not the best. I have a lot to learn. I still have a lot to learn. Even with this foreign business, there’s still a ton of stuff that I don’t know. But there is a lot of good fruit to what I’m doing right now. We have our house paid off, have all the business paid off. I have about 90-ish thousand in my Roths and stuff. We’re trying to grow. Even if I don’t make my company big, what is our plan? And so, I don’t think either way is right or wrong, because technically I could keep it small and as I get older, I don’t need to do quite as much revenue as I do now, or have a helper that rides with me, and I’m still able to go property-private, but I’m not having to do every single thing. That’s not a bad option. That’s a good option

I’m gonna do it the right way and all that, so in a way, I guess you could say out there, guys, maybe I sort of have made my company better, or quote, bigger ⁓ in a small way, because now I have all weekly clients, all in these couple neighborhoods, all 12 months a year, all card or ACH on file. I get zero, I do zero checks, I do zero cash, everything. And hey, if you don’t want to be on the system, then you’re just not one of my customers, and that’s okay. And this is how I would do it in the future too, because I have saved 10 hours a month probably by doing it because you gotta collect the checks, then you gotta record the checks, then you gotta bring the checks to the bank, and then you gotta all the invoice numbers and stuff, which obviously I send them a receipt of every… How I do it is I don’t do it like every single mower or whatever, so the last business day of the month, that’ll be coming up in the next week or whatever. Let’s say, let’s say the 31st is a Saturday or the 1st. 

So that means that Friday night, I go in and bill all the customers. So the work is done, they’re not paying in advance or anything like that, but that last business day of the month, I go in and just charge every account, send them all an email receipt to each one, and I can always get them another receipt if they need it. That’s how I do it. So it’s pretty simple. I had a lot of these customers that I already had and they enjoyed what I’ve done, what I do for them so much that they’re willing to switch over to this payment on file and stuff like that. So I’m not saying I just picked up every customer, hey it has to be weekly, car and file, because some of them grafted in or whatever you call it, grandfathered in. But nowadays, so probably like the last five or ten though, now that I have so much confidence doing that, that’s how all my business runs, I picked up a new, even though we’re late in the season, I picked up a neighbor of one of my customers this week, that’s the one I need to go out there and do a first visit on, picked up this week, it was no problem.

I just told him I explained everything out in the email and explained it to him in person too. Like this is how we do payment. This is how it works. This is the week I take off per year. Boom, boom, boom. Just explain everything. like, yeah, that sounds great. I have a lot of confidence, I guess, in it now. If you guys think of, let’s say you’re out there and you’re listening to this podcast and you have a full-time job. You could say that I sort of have made my business bigger or better in a way, in a small way. Cause you’re not going to get like just these perfect customers when you start out. It just doesn’t work like that. 

You’re getting whatever you can get. And then over the years, okay, at the end of the season, I try to make myself get rid of a small percentage of work no matter what. And so if you do that, you’re able to slowly get it better. So I’m mowed over 10 years into this, what I’m doing right now. And it is, it’s percentage marginally better each year. I’m not saying, oh, like it’s just easy and I just show up for five minutes and I get paid tons of money. No, I’m still putting in the work. But my quality of life is the best right now that it has been the whole time since I’ve owned my business.

Ezra McCarthy

That’s really good, Tony. And I think one thing people need to be careful of, I think we all can fall into the strap of looking around at other businesses and it’s easy to see what we perceive as the positive without realizing the headache on the back end. And so find your goal, whether that be optimizing a great solo business or if you say, hey, I’m trying to scale how to do it right. 

Now you mentioned something that was really helpful in there I think I’d like to hone in on. I think of a lot of service-based businesses. We can get caught in our cycle of, we’ve got Spring Rush, we’re working really hard, we’re just running like crazy. Then in the summer we’re just kind of wiped out and then in the fall we’re kind of slowing down. And we’re just season by season, just thinking about that season rather than saying, long-term. So I know this is something that you’ve talked about, Tony, I think it’d be good to speak on.

And I think you’re a Dave Ramsey fan as well. 

Tony Rudolph

Yes, absolutely.

Ezra McCarthy

Talking of which I’m an ish, I like his most of his philosophies. But that is an inside reference for you. Those of you that know Ramsey.  

Tony Rudolph

Oh, yeah. I know exactly what you’re talking about. Yeah.

Ezra McCarthy

And most of our listeners probably do, but thinking of planning for the future, whether you’re trying to stay smaller and optimizing for profit or trying to grow either way, you should be thinking about, OK, what does tomorrow hold? Would you mind? kind of speaking on how you’ve structured this to help your business grow and financially be secure as much as you can be.

Tony Rudolph

Can you tell me the question again? trying, I mean, I understand what you’re saying, but I want to know the actual question. 

Ezra McCarthy

Sure. Whether someone is a small business or a large business, what do you think is the best way for them to set up their personal and business life for long-term financial stability?

Tony Rudolph

Okay, yeah, this is a, I guess a pretty easy one, but I think number one, whether you like Dave Ramsey or not, you have to know what you’re spending your money on. It doesn’t matter what philosophy you follow. You need to know where this money going that you’re getting from your customers. When you bring this in, because you know all of us, that’s the problem. Yes, you may be making $80 from that lawn or whatever, but by the time you pay the two cycle oil, your insurance, the wear and tear on the truck, trailer lights, your insurance, your food, your gas, all these things, and then run all your household expenses and all that. 

It spreads up in a lot of different ways. You need to know, hey, I want to spend layout. So for those of us, what Dave recommends for those of us that are in a business like ours, we don’t know we’re going to make $8,218 this month. We don’t know that. We have no idea. That’s just a random number I’m throwing out there, but you may make more than that. It may be substantially more than that. Maybe substantially less. So in that principle, what you do is start going down the list. As the money comes in, hey, these are the most important things that I want to pay for. And then as that list goes down, as your money’s coming in and the money starts to run out, well, some of the things you may not be able to spend money on that are far down on that list. And so no matter if we have set the amount that we make or we don’t, which obviously we don’t in small business, every day could be changed. 

When you’re at the point, mine, I mean, it’s pretty similar. It’s pretty consistent because this is what it is. But you know in the spring with all the ground cover stuff, yes, you know make more then and there are always some extras. Especially when you’re new you don’t have no idea. You don’t know who’s gonna walk up to you and ask you about their lawn tomorrow or is gonna call you whatever. So I think we have to budget our money. We have to know where it is. What are we gonna spend money on? What are we not gonna spend money on? And then here’s the other thing. If you want to be a business owner, I think your wife has to be in agreement and on board with you doing it because it’s going to be hard, there’s going to be crazy hours, just the life of a business owner is not for 100% of people. It’s just not. Which is good, because if everyone owned a business, there’d be no one to work at any of the businesses that run. So that is number one. 

It’s just life in general, if your marriage, like if your wife is not on board with you doing this long-care business, I see that as one of the number one things that could be a problem. Because whether it’s the husband or wife doing this, maybe the wife has a business, but your spouse, if they’re not on board with it, they’re not going to be probably on board with how you’re prioritizing each money. What if you want to buy a truck or you want to buy this mower next month, but she doesn’t see a point to that, she doesn’t really like the business,

So you’re not going to be united on your schedule, on your money as it comes in. And so that being united with your spouse, that’s number one. Are you both wanting to go the same direction with making your business better with budgeting your money? Is your wife okay with you doing this? Or do you, if you can’t agree on that, maybe you can’t have a business. Maybe you have to just work for someone or whatever. So that should be number one. Number two, I guess the budgeting comes in. Number three, and these kinds of are, I would say kind of similar things, but it’s going, running a business is kind of defined like this. Even Dave Ramsey has said this before that things are gonna cost twice as much as you think, and they’re gonna take twice as long as you think. Building a business is just like that. Ezra may build you an awesome website. may get a rush of calls and maybe some of them, a couple of them are long-term great clients. A couple of them you need to get rid of. 

The flow of that may come in months later or the next spring before your big flow of it. And so let’s say, okay, you come out of that season, the next season you have some good customers, but you’re still not nearly where you want to be. Then year two, you get a couple more that are really good, that are Jim Diamond’s in the rough or whatever. And so, see what I’m saying? To build a good business takes a long time. This might be, I would say this is a five, 10 year…

If you’re out there and you’re like, I’m going to get my first mower and all that. Be willing to be patient for five to 10 years before it’s like, Hey, this is good. Because it’s going to take that long in my opinion. Obviously listening to this podcast, as you’re building a website, obviously you can gain this knowledge faster and that can expedite your growth. That’s the thing people say in the business space. That is true. There are people year one, boom, they have a million dollar business. It’s possible, but for the most part, your community, they have no idea who you are and they don’t care who you are until you prove to them that you’re worthy. 

So that’s why websites may be part of it and they have to see you in real life in the neighborhoods and maybe you have a door hanger on their door or posting in there on your Facebook group. so just like people say, right, it might be like the seven touch thing before they even consider calling you. Then after you call, after they call you, then you got to deliver. You got to have a reasonable price, but still be profitable for yourself. And you got to have the qualities got to be there. It can’t be too low, but it can’t be so much quality that you’re spending six hours on their lawn for $70. So there’s all these balances that you got to work on to make this work and to fit. so number one, forget what my numbers are because I’m just making this up on the fly. But be united with your spouse. You have to budget your money. And be patient. Be patient because it’s going to take a long time. Be patient and be persistent because it’s not going to be easy. I mean, there are probably days every year where I’m like, man, I don’t know. This is hard. 

Something goes out on the truck. A customer’s complaining about something like… They’re hard days. The biggest companies still have hard days too. Biggest and small companies, all companies have hard days. Even our local Walmart, Chick-fil-A, whatever, they have hard days and bad days and good days. And so you’re gonna… It’s not all gonna be just like you see on Instagram where you’re just mowing beautiful stripes all day and getting paid piles of cash. It’s just… Yes, there are those small glimpses of that, but be willing to do the hard part. I guess it’s just like anything else. It’s gonna be hard after Adam and Eve have to work hard, it’s the curse of the ground. It’s… No matter what we do, no matter what profession, it’s going to be hard, it’s going to take time, and we have to put in the work. And then I would think another thing down as you go down the list is as you go through these years, you start to realize what you’re willing to tolerate, what you’re not willing to tolerate, and you’re able to start to build your confidence. 

And that will take a few years, but now, like if a customer calls me and they come out, yell, whatever, it’s okay. We don’t have to work together. I’m not going to be mean back. I have confidence. Hey, these are the terms. You have to have a card on file or ACH or I just can’t work with you. You have to figure it out, you have to build your confidence. That’s another thing. that they know when I pull up. I’m serious about this. I’m not just trying to make 20 bucks to make it through the weekend. This is a real business. And I’ll explain that to them. Even if they don’t know that already, I’ll explain that when I get there. And I’m not afraid to explain that to them. But again, this takes time to build confidence. 

I have talked to hundreds of customers. So now I’m pretty comfortable with doing it. not rude or anything, but I’m just way more confident than I was when I started. And again, these are, this comes through bruises and blood, sweat and tears of going through things. You just realize, hey, you just kind of know right off the bat, hey, I’m just not going to put up with this and that. And a lot of times you’re able, when you’ve been in the business a few years, you’re able to just kind of, you’re able to sniff that out right away when you go to that customer’s house. And so there’s way less bad apples in my business. Cause I’m now you kind of learn, I learn how to eliminate them very quickly, even before I start because a lot of times they don’t want to do ACH. don’t because they don’t intend on paying you on time anyway, right? So, it’s just how this works. But again, this takes time. 

Yes, start to implement these things. Several of these CRMs can like integrate with payment process or things. I actually use one. It’s called Helcim, H-E-L-C-I-M. And what they do is there’s no, no fees per month, anything like that. What they do is they just charge whatever that card charges each time you use it. So let’s say it’s winter time and you’re not charging any credit cards, which I’m in Georgia, so I am charging stuff year-round, but I’m saying you guys out there, let’s say you live in New Jersey or something. It’s freezing cold. You’re not mowing their lawn in December or whatever. You might be doing snow or something. I get that. But let’s say you go for months where you’re not charging their cards or their bank account. You’re paying nothing. You’re paying zero to this company during that time. They just take their percentage. When you use it, they take their percentage. It’s a great company.

Julio in Canada, there’s several people that use it. And so I just called the company like, Hey, so I’m like, what’s this like, hell something like, what are they talking about? Cause you know, they’re square and stripe and all this stuff. So I just, I’m just going to call up and see if I get a person just, and I just started gathering information. Am I going to dive into this thing? If I’m going to dive into a payment platform, which one do I want to use? Which one do I want to pick? And so I started using this. This has been about over a year. It’s been about maybe 14, 15 months ago where I went, everyone has to be on this thing. I kind of started it out slow. Like those, some of my younger customers that were just wanted to be on this type of system anyway, I started letting them do it. But I’m saying 14, maybe even 18 months ago was like, no, everyone has to be on it. Even that 80 year old customer of mine that doesn’t have a computer. Well, you have to be on the system or I can’t do your lawn. 

And here’s the cool thing, guys. I was scared just like everyone else to implement this. And I spent three months of sitting at people’s kitchen tables. I work for a lot of retired clients and stuff, just like all of us do. Either there’s only two reasons why someone would have a lawn care business. Either one, can’t do it physically, their self. Or number two, they have some other job that pays them way more per hour than what it costs to have us do their lawn, let’s say their doctor or even if they’re insurance or their IT or whatever, it’s more efficient for them to just pay us to take care of their lawn. Or just like this shirt, for example. I’m not going to buy a shirt back, make this shirt, print this on it. I just pay to get the shirt done because it makes sense as a percentage in my money to just pay to get my company shirt built. And so it’s kind of the same way I think about for these customers’ lawns. just, it makes sense for them to just, the amount that it costs for us is not that much, just take care of the lawn.

So, but anyway, a lot of retired customers, it took three months of literally going on and sitting down, explaining how it works, how I’m going to do it. This is what it looks like, showing it to them, all these things. And so that was a ton of extra trouble, but I lost zero customers because when I switched over to this system, I lost zero customers. And so I’m actually mentally, I’m kind of slapping myself. Yeah, I mean, that was kind of a pain to switch over to that, but I should have done that years ago. So there’s things like this, little things like this guys, are things that you’re afraid to do, but that will make your business much better. And they’re actually not as bad as your mind’s gonna tell you that you were. Even if I did lose a percentage of my customers, it would have still been worth it to switch to this system because now I pull up to the customer’s house, nobody’s behind, we have no beef with each other. I don’t have to remind them about the bill or anything.

And if someone’s behind on their bill, when you pull up to their lawn, that just automatically gives you a bad attitude in your head. Because you know, you know that, yep, I gotta mow this lawn, but I know that this customer is behind. And so just implementing a small system like this, the customers love it now. They don’t have to do anything. All they do is just get a receipt at the end of the month. It’s the same, unless we talk about it, it’s the same exact money every single month. It’s really simple. So I think if you can go down this list. These are some things you can implement. I think in 2025, everything is kind of set up like this. My power bill. All these things. 

A lot of people will say, oh, well this, can’t have a nice website and have a Cardam file and do this thing because it won’t work in my area or whatever. And I thought that same exact thing too. But I think in 2025, you have to have your money on time in order to run a business because it’s expensive now. I mean, a roll of trimmer line is $50. So for real, guys, this is expensive to run money. We need our money. We need it the minute that we’re owed it. And if you’re driving, spend $25 in gas to run over and see if a customer left something under their mat. No, no, you’re just… And then that’s not to mention the time that you burn to actually do that. And then spend time putting them in your deposit slips, and then I live in the country. 

So I got to drive 10, 15 minutes to the bank. Then you got to drive it to the bank. And then you got to do that. And you got to be there within their small window of business hours. Because bank, I don’t know if they are where you are, but it’s over at 12 on Wednesday. It just seems like they make the hours as short as possible. You factor all these things in. I think for regular lawn care, it’s the same as that. Let’s say even you only mow it seven, eight months a year, whatever, six months. I don’t care. And it’s the same that whole time. I think either they need to pay you upfront for the whole thing or for multiple months at a time or something, or you need to get on a payment system like this. I think all of us in the industry, if we are checked under the mat thing, I just feel like we’re doing ourselves a big disservice for our own self and we’re putting it on our own back and we’re taking the brunt for that. 

I just got to the point, these are things I’ve had my business since 2011, I just got to the point where like, you know, I’m not doing this anymore. It’s too hard to juggle all their customer service, do all their lawns myself, all the weeds, keep up with every invoice number. You have to keep up with because you have to show them where they’re behind the last two, and then they’ll ask you about that. No, I’m just not going to do any of that. Everyone is paid at the same day, every month, nobody’s behind, send them a receipt. And I think this is a huge deal, because how we get paid our money, it’s a big deal. And so this, it’s a small thing. It literally costs you nothing. If you just, okay, so credit cards are about 3%. If they do ACH, it’s about 1 % on the system I use, roughly. There can be some variations if they have some weird brand of credit card or something, but for the most part, it’s 2 something to 3 something percent. And I just, every lawn now, I just factor that into my price. And here’s the other thing guys that I did to all my existing routes 14 months ago, whatever, that few dollars that it is every month, I figured that out. The old price, when I switched to this system, I adjusted the price to include those few dollars. And I liked it, I told them about it and everything. They know that. So your old price was 300. Your new price is 309. And that covers that 3%. If you $300, about $9, 3%. So that’s exactly what I did. And again, I lost zero customers.

Raise their money, buy that few dollars a month, and all of them are switched over to the system. So I just, I personally think these are must haves in 2025 or 2026 starting your business. And just taking care of your equipment is a big thing. Gaining tools. YouTube when you need to fix something on your mower. Because if you bring it to a shop, you wait two, three weeks, they gotta order the parts, and their guy, their mechanic, he didn’t come in that day because whatever reason, unless you’re gonna buy four mowers and have them ready, because I just feel like if you can… It’s pretty easy to up your game to do basic mechanical things on your equipment, and that just puts huge money back in your pocket. So for me, for the last 15 years, I’ve used zero mower shops, and I mow with mowers every single day, and I’ve used zero mower shops. And I’m not smart, I don’t have any special degrees or anything. 

I just, okay. This is broken. We need to fix it. I’m going to figure out how to fix this. However long it takes, however late I need to stay up tonight figuring out why this is like this, I’m going to figure it out. And that’s the attitude you have to have in business anyway. And so these help with your mowers and things. And this also can save your money and get your mower back on track faster. Same goes in like with your trucks and everything like that. All basic maintenance, in my opinion, if you’re small like me, I think you should just handle that because it’s not very much. You know, you’re only servicing a mower or two. Why would you spend $25 to bring your mower to the dealer and then you’re going to drop it off and then it’s going to wait for two weeks and then they’re going to change their oil. And then it’s going to be double as much as if you just took the filter off and changed oil yourself. And then you have to drive another. 

So you drove to the dealer and then you drove back. And then you wait two weeks. Then you drove to the dealer, drove back again to get the oil changed. And paying them for their time and they mark up the parts a little bit and all this stuff. That’s another thing. In 2025, well it’s part of the same thing. It’s very easy to get OEM parts. Kawasaki has their own channel, even on Amazon, Kawasaki Engines. On any mower you have, go on that mower’s website. Press manuals at the top. They’ll have parts manual and they’ll have operators manual. Don’t operate this on the sides of the slope. Know what I’m. That’s not the manual you need. You need the parts manual where everything exploded out. Once you have those part numbers, you download that PDF, you’re unstoppable. That’s all they do at the dealership. But see, these are all things that help go back into my budget. So business is a lot because I’m juggling that. I’m juggling servicing my mowers. I’m juggling all this. But it’s very good. Maybe that gives you a list of some things to think about, guys, as you make your business better. 

Ezra McCarthy

Yeah, Tony. This has been great. If someone’s interested in hearing more about your business or some of your other information you have, where is the best place for them to find you?

Tony Rudolph

Yes. I so, so appreciate you Ezra for taking your time. Ezra really started this thing. He made the uncomfortable choice. He flew over on an airplane from somewhere out in the middle of nowhere. He lives in another country. Landed and he comes talk to me and hands me this awesome… I won’t forget it because it was different than normal. It was a metal business card. It had a little lizard on it. It’s not a lizard. It’s a frog.

Ezra McCarthy

Hey, watch it, that’s a frog.

Tony Rudolph

Yeah, but I’m just trying to remember like I don’t have it in front of me, but his green was the frog and it was just super cool. So he just made the uncomfortable choice to fly over the pond. He didn’t really fly over the pond, but he flew a long way. This would be almost impossible to drive from there. I mean, not impossible, but the effort that he put in to do this thing and to build his business, build this podcast, he put in the effort upfront. And so guys, this is what it’s going to take for your business. Put in that effort upfront. How can you find me? So you can find me Tony’s Long Care on YouTube. Tony’s Lawn Care on podcasts, actually it’s Tony’s Lawn Care Talk on podcasts, but if you just type in Tony’s Long Care, it’ll come up. 

And I’m just very honest, I share whatever’s going on in my life that day. I don’t podcast for a living. I make about roughly $2,000 a year on YouTube. And on podcasts, I make zero. And Ezra, he’s even reached out to me and wanted to sponsor things on there, which is very kind of him. I may do that in the future, but I’m just being 100% honest with you guys. If I can do it, you can do it. 100%. I’m not special. I don’t have a horticulture degree. I don’t have, there’s nothing special about me. I’m just willing to put in the work, I’m willing to take the time to build it in. I’m not, I have not arrived yet. There’s a small percentage of my business that I’m gonna get rid of this year. I’m not done with making my business better. It still needs work. It still needs work. And I’m gonna do that work. 

Guys, if that’s how you wanna find me, I hope Ezra is coming to the expo this year. I don’t know if he is or not. That smile tells me he may not be. I can tell. I can tell the smile. I can tell just by looking at someone. Talk to a lot of people. But anyway, even if not, check out Green Frog Web Design. Yeah, that’s how you can find me. If any of you guys out there can come to Equip, there’s one time a year where the whole industry, not the entire industry, but the biggest meetup of the whole industry is Equip Expo, October, Louisville, Kentucky. And all you guys in the USA, it’s a tax write-off to come. Your customers like that you’re going to improve your education and your methods and your strategy about how you can take care of their property and all that. You can even send them the link to the expo. That’s what I do. It’s cool. It works. 

So there’s not a lot of downside to it. It’s a cheap trip. You get a hotel 15 minutes north, south, east, west. You can get hotels because it’s during the middle of week. This thing goes on right there, right around the expo. I’ve done both. I’ve stayed out far away. I’ve gone for, I think, 11 years now. So I’ve stayed close, far, and obviously there are pros and cons to all. About half as much if you go 15 minutes south, even for the same hotel. But the downside is you’re going to drive 20 minutes every morning. And there’s, I want to be there on top of the thing. But if you stay right next door to the expo, you hear the airplanes all night. That’s sort of a downside too. 

But guys, come, come to Equip Expo. I’ll be there. You want to talk to me in person. I’m not special, but I will, I do come to the expo and just try to put out effort to attend the biggest family reunion in the business here. That’s it. Promo Code TONY, you get you 50% off by the way.

Ezra McCarthy

sure to use that. Well that’s a wrap for today’s episode. Thank you Tony for taking time to give us your perspective on scaling and building a business that serves you. If you’ve enjoyed this episode be sure to share with another Lawn Care Pro and we’ll catch you on the next one.