Episode 18

Ezra McCarthy
Hello and welcome back to the Lawn Care Success Blueprint. Today we got a great episode for you. If you feel like you’re stuck mowing lawns and quitting jobs 24-7 with no end in sight, this episode is for you. It is your wake up call. Today we’re going to be breaking down one of my favorite books, Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell and how it can be applied to your lawn and landscape businesses. Whether you’re still on the truck or trying to get out of the day-to-day chaos, this conversation will help you stop trading for dollars and start building a business that serves you. Today, one of my team members, Wena, is going to be interviewing me about, as I mentioned, one of my favorite books, Buy Back Your Time. Wena, glad you’re here today.

Wena
Hi, Ezra, glad to be here. So let’s jump off of the first question. Why did Buy Back Your Time stand out to you as a must read for service business owners like those in lawn care and landscaping?

Ezra McCarthy
So as business owners, it’s really easy to get stuck in the trap of thinking no one can do this like I can, or thinking that the only way to grow my business is just to work harder and longer hours. But unfortunately, you can get stuck on that treadmill of trying to work harder and harder and harder, instead of—another one of my favorite books we might call into later is Who Not How?—instead of thinking, who can I bring on to help me? We just think.

And that leads you onto the treadmill of working 60, 70 hours trying to trade low value tasks for just more money. And the problem is we get into business for mostly two things. One, for time freedom and two, for financial freedom. And if we’re just trading time for money, time for money, time for money, just trying to work more and more and more ourselves, we’re never going to get that time freedom. And we’re sure not to get that financial freedom because we’re never going to be trading off those low value tasks to help our business grow.

Wena
Now that you mentioned time and money, before reading the book, how did you personally view time versus money in your business? Has that changed over time?

Ezra McCarthy
Yes, especially recently, probably in the past six months, this has really been a mindset shift for me because I really fell into that trap a lot of thinking no one can do this like I can. I just need to work harder. As I’ve read the book—and I actually really am about to go read it again for the second time because it’s so impactful—and actually had some of our team members, yourself, read it because it’s helped me.

And I’ve learned that, OK, a million dollar business—or whatever size of business you’re growing towards—cannot be built on ten dollar tasks.

And so many times it’s easy to think that, to say, okay, I’m going to save this money by doing it myself. But what we don’t realize is if we would have took that time and put it into a higher leverage task, our business could be farther along. We would have more time freedom and financial freedom.

And something that Dan Martell in the book says that’s really good is, he says, you know, poor people take time and spend it for money. And people that have time freedom take money and buy back their time. Because there’s one thing that we can never get more of, and that is time.

And as business owners, especially in spring rush, we’re running here, we’re running there. And if we’re not careful, we’re gonna get a lot of things that fall through the cracks of our business. We’re missing phone calls, we’re not getting back with estimates. And I remember I was reading this study or hearing about it—they said, and this is what I’ve experienced as well—if you’re one of the first people to get back to customers, most people are gonna go with you.

And if we’re trying to be in the field, if we’re trying to answer phone calls, if we’re trying to keep track of our bookkeeping—and I’ve experienced this myself—to where I said, okay, I’ve got to get a bookkeeper. Rather than at the end of the year looking back at a year’s worth of receipts, trying to keep track, and I wasn’t doing a very good job. So realizing, okay, could I do this? Yes. But I’m better off hiring someone, getting a “who” in my business so they can take that off my plate.

So for lawn and landscape business owners, maybe that’s hiring a crew lead to take over managing that. Maybe it’s an operations manager, maybe it’s a bookkeeper, maybe it’s hiring someone in the office. All of these things are great ways when we change it from saying, okay, I need to spend my time for money to saying, how can I buy back my time?

Wena
I remember he mentioned in the book, he said something about focusing on the low hanging fruit and just delegating tasks. So the book talks a lot about building a time-rich business. What does that look like for someone running crews and trucks every day?

Ezra McCarthy
So this is something really good. And I know you mentioned actually a friend of the pod—someone I’ve worked with for about a year—is the one who got me onto this and has really kind of led me down this path. He was using an executive assistant from the Philippines to help him answer his phone for his fertilization and weed control business, because he had actually been—and hopefully we’ll have him on the pod to tell his story here soon—he was getting quite a bit of phone calls a day, sometimes 10 to 20 quotes a day.

And I was asking him, how are you getting all these done? And at that time, he was still working a full-time job. I think it was for Pepsi or Coke. And I was just like, I’m amazed. Like, how are you getting all this done? And he was using a team member to go online, measure the properties, and then email it to him. And so he was buying back all of that time.

So many times, perhaps we’re running a crew, we’re trying to organize the trucks, we’re trying to send people out to all these properties—and so many things get missed. I remember people would call when I had my lawn and landscape business, and they’d say, wow, you’re the first person to answer. And I would get the job just because I was available.

Now, I don’t necessarily think—depending on the size of your business—you should be answering your own phones. But having a team member, having someone answer who’s available or who can call them back really quickly, answering your phones, answering that voicemail—all these things make such a difference for your business. Because that’s going to affect your close rate. That’s going to affect your CAC, customer acquisition cost.

All these things come down to: do we have time left? Because if we’re running from sunup to sundown, not having any time to work on the business, next year we’re probably going to be in the exact same space.

Wena
I totally agree with that. Missing those clients will be a huge, huge business cost. So one of the concepts that Dan Martell talked about in the book is the buyback rate. What’s the buyback rate and how can a lawn care owner use it to decide what to outsource first?

Ezra McCarthy
So this is something really helpful and this is something that I’ve been working with. He takes the amount that you earn per year—the average individual works approximately 2,000 hours per year. But we’ll make it even more simple than that. In our lawn and landscape business, we have something called a man hour rate.

So if you take that man hour rate and divide it by four—for simplicity, we’ll say, hopefully your man hour rate is between $80 and $100. But for simplicity, we’ll say $100—divide that by four, so that’s $25. And think to yourself, if I’m doing anything that I can hire out for under $25 per hour, I need to as soon as possible hand that off. So you’re buying back your time.

Maybe that’s answering phones. You can hire an amazing person in the U.S.—if not, you can hire someone overseas. In the U.S., you can get a quality person for $20–$25 an hour. And overseas, you can get a great person for less than that.

So you’re saying, okay, how can I buy back this time? Maybe it’s phone calls, maybe it’s estimates. Maybe you need someone to help you on the truck to buy back your time so you can condense your route. Maybe you need a crew lead.

All these things where you say, okay, could I buy back my time? If you’re trying to do estimates on the nights and weekends and you’re looking and saying, hey, I’m losing these jobs because I’m not getting back to them quick enough—how could we buy back our time during the week to help us do higher value tasks to free up our time?

Wena
So you’re saying that if you could hire someone for like $10 to answer phones, and if your buyback rate is $25, then that’s handing it off to someone else’s plate, right? So you can literally buy back your time for just $10. Yeah, it’s basic math and a no-brainer. So that’s great. What’s one of the first roles you think, for example, a $100,000 lawn care business should delegate to buy back time?

Ezra McCarthy
No-brainer.

So say you’re at that $100,000 rate and you may think to yourself, oh, I can’t afford to hire someone. The first thing that I would recommend delegating is, one, office work. You should not be doing your own accounting. You should not be doing your own bookkeeping. You should not be answering your own phones—especially while you’re in the field.

Because if you’re halfway through a mow and you get a phone call, you’re either gonna miss it or you’re gonna have to stop for 10 to 30 minutes. And that’s costing you time.

So hiring out that office work—and if you’re doing your own bookkeeping, my guess is you’re probably not doing your bookkeeping. You’re probably waiting until the end of the year. It’s probably a mess. Your books probably aren’t right.

So getting some of these things that are just like little annoyances—that’s going to help you buy back your time and really, really help.

Wena

So how did your business shift when you stopped doing low-value tasks—once you hired someone else to do the low-hanging fruit that the book mentions—and started delegating so that you can focus on what you do best and on more activities that would help the business grow?

Ezra McCarthy
So this is so good. Dan Martell, in the book, talks about something called the replacement ladder. And I’ll just try to describe it to you—though I recommend looking this up and seeing it for yourself because it’s easier to visualize.

There are five or six steps. The first is admin. So you’re in business and everything is just bonkers. You’ve got chaos, it’s unorganized. In a lawn and landscape business, maybe your CRM isn’t set up, your invoicing is messy, your booking is scattered.

So the first thing he recommends hiring out is your admin—your email, invoicing, bookkeeping, phone calls, all those things. He says, first hire out your admin. The feeling here is “stuck.” You’re running around like crazy trying to get everything done, and you just can’t. So step one is admin.

The next layer is delivery. So once your accounting, your admin, your bookkeeping—once those aren’t chaos anymore—you look at delivery. In lawn and landscaping, that might be hiring another team member. Maybe it’s getting a crew lead you don’t have to babysit, someone who can take real responsibility.

Once your delivery is solid, then you look at marketing. Your team is in the field, they’re crushing it, and now you’re saying, okay, we need more work. That’s when you focus on optimizing your campaigns and traffic to bring in better, more qualified leads.

Once marketing is dialed in and you’ve got all these leads coming in, the next step is sales. This is a tough one—especially in our industry—because training a good salesperson isn’t easy. But once sales is figured out, the final step is leadership.

So he calls this the replacement ladder. And I know that might sound a little daunting, but it’s worth going and checking out the visual because it really helps you understand how to buy back your time and stop being the bottleneck.

Dan also talks about a common belief in our industry—that hiring an office person or executive assistant is only for big companies. But he gives the example of the 10-hour task. Whether you hire someone in the U.S. or overseas, it’s vital.

A lot of people have that fear we talked about earlier—no one can do it like I can. But here’s what I’ve found: they probably can do it better. And here’s why. If you’re doing 100 things—running around, putting in patios, mowing lawns, talking to Susie the customer—your brain is in 50 or 60 places at once. Probably not even half where they should be, just because you’re stretched so thin.

But if you hire someone to do just a few things—and that’s all they do—before long, they’ll probably do it better than you. And that’s why buying back your time is so valuable. Most of the fears we have are just because we’ve never done it before. But it’s so helpful once you do.

Wena
So yeah, you mentioned that juggling so many things at the same time, you really have that risk to drop a ball. A lot of things could slip through the cracks. Yeah, I totally agree with what you said.

Although it’s a lot, in the book it’s explained thoroughly with all the graphics. You asked me to read it myself, and it’s an interesting thing how he described it through feelings. I really like that part because the business owner can totally relate to that—feeling stuck, stalled.

And if you’re a business owner, you’ll really see where you’re at and know what you need at that exact moment. So you know who to hire. It’s really progressive.

Ezra McCarthy
I wanted to throw in here one of the stories that Dan had from the book. He talked about how he was working just crazy hours—Dan was into software a lot—and he came home one night and his fiancée, or I think she was his fiancée, had left a ring on the table and a note. And she basically said, I’m done. Or maybe she was there and just left it—I can’t remember exactly—but either way, she said, I’m done.

And he was just like, hey, I’m working these crazy hours for us. And he realized he had spent all that time working and had basically forgotten to take enough time for her. She didn’t feel valued. He points to that as a pivotal point in his life where he realized, hey, something’s got to change. This isn’t working. And that’s when he started Buy Back Your Time.

And we can say to ourselves—especially during spring rush—we’re working like crazy. But do we really need to? Can we buy back our time so we can have that time for family, for the things that are really important in our lives?

Wena
Especially when you have a family and kids, right? So Ezra, how do you approach training someone when you hand off a task so it doesn’t come back to bite you later or mess things up?

Ezra McCarthy
Dan Martell has a really good principle he calls the camcorder method. Now it’s a little bit outdated in name, but it’s super effective. He basically goes through and records himself doing a task. And then when he hands it off to the individual, he shows them and says, okay, this is how we do it.

Now, especially at the beginning, we’re going to have to go back and double-check and confirm—hey, do you understand?—and ask them to demonstrate. But this is really helpful. Just something as simple as answering the phones. I would encourage you to record when you talk to a customer. Record yourself and say, this is the series of questions we ask.

Literally make a script and say, hey, when we answer the phone, this is how we answer it. Then have a sequence of questions you walk through. So maybe you say, “Hey, this is Ezra from Maple Leaf Mowing, how may I help you today?” Then maybe your next question is, “What service are you looking to have done?” Then, “Here are our minimums.”

Just having four or five standard questions and recording yourself, then playing it back, is going to be a great way to document the process. That way, when you hand it off to your team—whether they’re doing quotes or phone calls—it’s consistent.

Say they’re doing quotes for you for lawn care. You say, okay, ask for their address, explain our minimums, go online to measure the property size, email them the quote, and then follow up. If there’s a follow-up sequence, teach that too. So record yourself, give it to the team member, check that they understand, and follow up.

And this really ties into the next concept—the difference between abdicating and delegating. It’s really easy to fall into the trap of just saying “do this” without showing them how. That never turns out well.

Unless we train our team members by saying, “This is how we do the task. This is how we learn. This is how we get better,” then merely giving them something without teaching it is going to come back as a mess.

In a lawn and landscape business, whether you’re doing installs or mowing, you’re going to have to teach and then follow up to make sure it’s done right.

Take something important like getting reviews from your customers. Teach your team members: this is how we do it, this is how we ask, this is how we text them the link, this is how we email it, and this is how we follow up. Give them the script—or at least a guideline—and walk them through the why and how.

Delegating is handing something off with training and expectations. Abdicating is like playing hot potato—you toss off something you don’t want to deal with and just hope it gets done right. That never works.

But if we teach, guide, and support our team, that’s how we truly buy back our time—and help them grow in the process.

Wena
I think it was in chapter seven when he mentioned building playbooks. Is that what you’re talking about?

Ezra McCarthy
Yeah, in the camcorder method, he specifically mentions that as well—basically having a library of how-to’s to help your team learn and then come back to if they have questions.

Wena
Moving on to the next question, what would you say to the guy who’s too busy to even think about hiring help or buying back time? Like, you don’t have enough time to hire or train someone—what would be your tips?

Ezra McCarthy
I would tell them, you don’t have time not to.

Yes, it is work. But so is working 60 to 70 hours a week. And if you keep going that way, you’re just going to get burnt out. Your business isn’t going to grow. You’re going to be frustrated. Your team’s going to be frustrated.

If we can buy back our time—your family, just like in Dan’s story—they’re going to feel that. They’re going to feel when you’re too stretched thin. So we can’t afford not to make this shift.

If you feel like you can’t afford to delegate even simple, low-value tasks, then your pricing is probably not right. Or maybe you’re taking too much from the business. Maybe you need to look and say, okay, where can I cut back on some of these unneeded expenses so I can buy back my time?

Because it is so valuable. And if you’re not valuing your time, that leads into another conversation: your time is valuable. If we’re not treating it like it is, then we’re throwing it away.

So maybe that starts with saying, what is my time worth? Maybe I need to assign a value to that. Look at the time I’m spending running around doing things that don’t really move the business forward—they’re not helping my team, they’re not helping me lead better.

All of these things play into it. So the bottom line is: you really can’t afford not to.

Wena
I know, Ezra, you’re the kind of person who really values your time. So how do you personally use your bought-back time now, since you’ve applied these concepts from the book? What do you focus on instead of mowing, recording, or admin work?

Ezra McCarthy
Something that I am very passionate about—and personally, I use this in my business.

You actually help me with emails, we have team members that help me with other aspects of the business, and we’re bringing on more team members because I think it’s really valuable. Even just like this podcast—I could take time and learn how to edit it. Yes.

And just like I had a customer the other day, we were talking about Google Ads, and he said, could I do this? And I told him—he’s a smart guy—I said, yeah, you can learn. But would your time be better spent?

Rather than taking five to ten hours just to figure it out, and then even more time to monitor and optimize it, would your time be better spent going out in your man-hour rate—at $100-plus—building your business? You’re going to make more that way.

So as business owners, when we start thinking like that—instead of obsessing over saving five, ten, fifty, a hundred dollars here and there—we start realizing we’re spending time that we’ll never get back.

Instead, we should be thinking: how can I leverage other people’s skills to buy back my time so I can grow my business?

Because it really goes back to that phrase: Who, not how.

Wena
If someone listening today only takes one thing from this book or this podcast episode, what do you want it to be—like sort of a key takeaway?

Ezra McCarthy
The key takeaway that I would tell them is: buying back your time is possible. It is necessary.

Whether you’re just getting started at $50K or $100K, or you’re at $500,000—you can’t afford not to buy back your time.

And I’d encourage you, go check out Dan Martell’s book, Buy Back Your Time. It really is a game changer. It’s gonna help you learn to buy back your time. He gives great examples in there. I know it’s changed my life in a positive way.

Actually—man, talking about it again—I need to go reread it. I just read it a couple months ago, but it’s just so helpful. It’s definitely worth applying the principles in your life and business.

Well, that’s it for this episode. If you got help from this episode—thinking differently about time, delegation, and your role in the business—that is the first step to stepping out of the grind and building a business that doesn’t depend on you 24/7.

Remember, you didn’t start your lawn and landscape business just to stay in the grind. You probably started it for two reasons: time and financial freedom. And if you want that, Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell is a great roadmap to get there.

If you got value from this conversation, be sure to share it with another lawn and landscape business owner who needs to hear it. And if you haven’t already, hit that subscribe button so you don’t miss what’s coming next.

Until then—keep growing, keep learning, and most of all, let’s be sure to buy back our time.