Episode 63

Ezra McCarthy

Hello and welcome back to Lawn Care Blueprint. Today we are diving into a unique service offering that can help boost your profits. Maybe we should say brighten up your profits and boost your revenue. And what I’m talking about is Christmas lights. So today I’m joined by none other than Tyler Fred from the infamous familiar Louisville.

His business is Blue Skies Lawn Care and he’s working on adding Christmas lights to his business. And I thought it would be a good perspective to get someone who has started adding this, who has been doing it to kind of see how it’s going and how maybe Christmas lights could be a great off season offering for you. So Tyler, sure glad you’re here today. Yeah. So do you want to tell the listeners a little bit about your business and then more specifically, why did you start getting into Christmas lights as part of your lawn care business?

Tyler Fred

Thank you for having me. It’s a privilege.

So I offer the standard lawn care company. We mow grass, we do some fertilizations, some mulch and stuff. And then this comes from, how to put this, my mom had always taught me she’s one of the best managers and leaders I’ve ever seen. I will not go on down the big diatribe of that, but she was amazing and said, when you hire somebody, your job is not only take, have them make money for you.

Your job is to make sure you’re running a good business so you can take care of them. You’re taking care of their family. It’s no longer just your family. It’s their family that is relying on your decisions and lawn care and where I’m at, it’s seasonal. got basically from mid March to October, depending on the summers and the falls, you might go into November. I was cutting some properties in December. It was weird last year, but that’s not common. And then you got, so if you have somebody working for you, they’re going to drop off and now they have no work and you basically sent them to unemployment. They got to go find another job and you run two risks there. That’s really good for them but also if they find another job they realize “hey this is not as hard” I’m inside all of a sudden you can lose a really good employee so then like all right what can I do we don’t get enough snow here not where I’m at it’s just not enough and I don’t want to be in the snow game.

I remember Christmas lights. I love Christmas lights. I remember them as a kid. My dad would drive me around. I love that. I loved that as a kid. But you can’t find them as much now. And then I got to looking into it and realized, you can actually do this professionally. You make some good money doing it. And if nothing else, I know where my lights are. So when I go drive my kids around to look at Christmas lights, it doesn’t seem like we’re just driving forever and ever and ever just wandering like there’s no lights anywhere. Then two, as an employer, now I can give somebody work pretty much all season because we’ll go basically from March all the way to the end of January when we get the lights taken down. Take a month break from February. There’s a lot of money in Christmas lights so you can pay your guys really, really, really good. You get a vacation in February. I’ll see you back in March. Then depending on how much training we’re doing and stuff, there may not even be that February break. We start mid, hey, take two weeks off. I’ll see you in two weeks. And now we’re back to getting ready for the next season. So now they have a full-time job. That was the real reason I got into it. There’s other reasons now why I do that. But the reason why there’s other reasons that I do it now after I’ve been doing it for a little bit. But that was the primary.

Ezra McCarthy

So this is something that’s really intriguing because I know when I was there in Dallas, Andrew Martina’s friend of the pod, he was getting into it a little bit and he had some people on and it was really intriguing and I started and I heard it was really profitable. So was there a moment when you just kind of like the aha moment when you realized okay this could be actually a profitable service? Because I know sometimes there’s just kind of the shiny object syndrome and kind of like leaves. It sounds really good until you start doing it and unless you’re set up right it’s awful. 

Tyler Fred

It’s terrible.

Ezra McCarthy

Yeah. Are Christmas lights profitable? And then can you put a little bit of numbers to that? And what does actually profitable look like when you say that?

Tyler Fred

Okay, so let me try to make sure I answer everything clearly for you. So I am a big believer in when you start something. If I’m gonna hurt myself because I made a bad decision, it’s gonna be a small cut. I’m very, hey, proof of concept, real small, not aggressive. I’m not gonna push super hard because you push too far and then you realize, I’m over the edge and I’m now in trouble because I put way too much money into it.

Now for Christmas lights, you need ladders and that’s the slow way. If you are comfortable running along a roof, that’s much faster. But for a lot of houses, at least where I’m at, we’re not on video. I would actually show you some of the houses I’m sitting at that I’m going to do this year. I’m sitting out front of their property at the moment. Some of these roofs, I can’t run along them. I know roofers can. Guys, if that’s all they do, I can’t. So I had to buy a lot of safety equipment.

So I spent six to $8,000 in safety equipment. I did go to a training course as well. I don’t think you have to do that. I recommend it because it helps you figure out all the don’t do this because this is going to make your life miserable. It’s anybody can put lights up on some level to do it professionally where a customer actually gets a professional experience. It’s not as simple as, let me just go clip lights on your house. It’s not just that there’s more to it than that. But that was what the course did if they charged somebody. And so I went and so I spent about eight, eight, nine thousand dollars all in that included the material, all the safety equipment and the training and the flights and everything. And I broke even when I’m at my first year. I actually didn’t make any money, but I didn’t lose any money by the time it was all said and done. And then I looked at it cause I already had them all re-signed back up and I realized I don’t have to go to the training course again. I don’t have to do the flights. I don’t have to buy any of the safety equipment again. And I’m not buying any material. And that’s just for these. I realized I was going to, if I didn’t hire anybody, if I didn’t have anybody doing it, the margins are like 50%.

50-60 % yeah if you price it right and you should price it right because you’re up on roofs it is a safety concern it is a very luxury service this is not needed so charge charge charge for it don’t you’re up on roofs and you need to have insurance and if you don’t have insurance for anybody that has them and you’re like, well insurance is expensive for this it’s expensive because you’re up on roofs and you are dealing with electrical stuff so that was my first year yeah it’s like a 50 % margin ’cause like I don’t have to buy the safety equipment again. If I do it’s cause I’m running another truck. It’s not because I have to buy more stuff. I have all of it. 

I don’t know if that quite answers your question. Specifically, you can ask me more direct numbers questions, but yeah, I’m going to be like at a 50% margin after paying myself to do the work. So not gross profit. That’s the true bottom line about 50%.

Ezra McCarthy

Approximately what is your man hour rate that you’re able to do on a lot of these jobs?

Tyler Fred

Okay, my actual man hour rate, we’re talking, alright, now this is… I am comfortable going along the roofs and I know how to use my equipment. Take that for what that is. I’m averaging by the time it’s all said and done anywhere between 2-250 an hour.

Ezra McCarthy

I have not heard of anyone in lawn care. You cannot do that mowing lawn. I’ll tell you that.

And maybe a great landscape job. That’s why I want to get specific because 50%, maybe that just seems like a number to some people. But if we can put some hard and fast, and obviously that’s not profit, what you were saying there.

Tyler Fred

Right, that’s not profit.

Ezra McCarthy

But you can obviously do the math in your head. So, okay, now I’ve heard of a couple different ways to do it. I’ve heard of the business model where you’re renting the Christmas lights. So the customer’s renting and then you store and that’s literally a selling point because it seems like you’re hardly someplace a year or two and you got all this random stuff. So that can be a selling point to a customer. What business model do you use? And then do customers prefer that? Do you get pushback?

Tyler Fred

I do for simplicity of terms, it’s rentals. That’s the way it is. The way I describe it, like if you were a customer and you called, here’s how my process works. I provide an all-inclusive service. I provide everything. I am going to stage your house for the holidays. If you’ve ever seen these companies that stage houses when they’re going to sell them, it’s the same thing. I provide everything. What that allows for you as the customer is if anything goes wrong with the bulbs, I come out and change them. There’s no questions asked and it’s done. It’s taken care of. You literally send me a text.

Now, shamelessly, I drive around houses a lot. So I know if a bulbs’ out normally before the customer ever calls me. It’s taken care of before. I hardly ever actually get calls. I have to do maintenance, but I don’t hardly ever get calls because I’m always checking on them and my guys will check on them. Also, I take them down and I store them for you like they’re mine. So I’m going to have to find a place to you don’t have to do anything with them. 

Some people do like to buy lights. I don’t do that for this reason. If something happens to your lights, are you going to pay me to come back and fix them? If I have a yard sign out or I have any marking of who did the work and your lights go out, they’re not going to assume that they’re your lights and they went bad. They’re going to assume Tyler didn’t know what he was doing.

Ezra McCarthy

Can I pause you there? I just want to clarify what you said because it wasn’t really clear. You’re talking about you selling the lights to the customer instead of a quote unquote rent.

Tyler Fred

Yes, yes, yes. If I was, that’s the other option. I apologize. So if I was to sell them to you, they’re your lights now, then we have to figure out are you going to pay me to store them? And then what happens if I store them for you and then you decide that you don’t want me to do them next year? Well, now you have to. I’m going to have to figure out a way to get your lights out depending on where they are in my storage. That’s a pain because if you were to see my storage, like it’s something up, you’re just in the back. And that’s the way it would be. It would never be the one up front, by the way. It never would be. It’s always going to be the one in the far, far back. 

And also too, I don’t do year to year contracts. That’s me. A lot of companies do. I don’t, but the way I do it. So I actually had a customer this year. Last year we did all white. This year, they want to do multicolor. I just changed the bulbs. It’s all I do. Because everything’s already cut and everything. all set to fit. So I just got to change the bulbs out. They don’t have to buy new bulbs. They don’t have to. It’s all included in the price. I don’t know if I answered all that. So, no, it’s really helpful. I ramble a bit.

Ezra McCarthy

Now these lights that you’re using are these those these are not correct me if I’m wrong the cheap lights you go to Lowe’s and get these little dinky can you explain where they are and then if this kind of sounds overwhelming to someone where would they go getting a professional light and I believe these are, are these custom cut to each specific roof line how do you a customer calls show them or tell them the value they’re getting because they can just go get cheap lights from Lowe’s.

Tyler Fred

Okay, so the lights themselves, they’re C9 bulbs is the most common you’ll see that a professional light install is going to do. They’re the big bulbs. There are C7s, which are smaller and then you have minis and there’s another one that I never use. I can’t remember the name of them, I apologize. But it’s the size of the bulb. The ones at Home Depot and Lowe’s, they are a cheaper brand. They are technically C9 bulbs. You can go get them and they will technically screw into any socket wire and anything. You can technically do that. 

What nobody isn’t familiar with on those things is that most C9s have a failure rate of, I think it’s like 25%. You’d have to understand how the bulbs are made. The ones in Home Depot, there’s a reason why they go out a lot. You have two to three years out of them max, and then you’re going to start replacing them. The commercial grade ones are gonna last you five to ten years somewhere in that they’ll tell you seven because that’s the average but it’s basically somewhere between five to ten years. So if you were to want to like hey, I want to do this. There are different suppliers. You got different suppliers that can buy them and that’s normally why I get them from suppliers. 

Now there are some guys who actually order them from overseas and get them shipped in directly to them. I don’t have that much storage space. So to make that worthwhile, you got to have a lot of space, but like there’s different websites you can go online and they have all the different things listed, different colors, different stuff, things like that.

Ezra McCarthy

So for the first year, obviously, if you’re having to invest in this specific home, say you get a quote for, let’s say an average, I don’t know, there in Louisville, maybe a $400,000 home, got a pretty good roof line. So you’re saying, okay, let’s throw out a number. And this isn’t going to be exact, but Tyler, what’s a rough approximate for a medium sized home there? Just let’s give a random number.

Tyler Fred

About a thousand bucks.

Ezra McCarthy

Okay $1,000. How much of that the first year are you gonna have to be investing into your Christmas lights because obviously your first year on a home your profits gonna be left or how do you structure that?

Tyler Fred

So the first year, the way I do it, I don’t do discounts year over year. I’m maybe giving a little bit more of how different things you’ll hear, depending on who you talk to. I don’t do it year over year. It’s basically the same price. So I don’t have a gigantic markup on year one. If they stick with me in year two, three, because I don’t do year over year contracts either, that’s where I make all my money in year two, year three. If I do a good job, they’re going to come back to me. The way I sell it, honestly, is you get to have a stress-free Christmas, stress-free magical holiday season.

You don’t have to worry about a thing. Literally. If you have to think about me after those lights are up, I failed somewhere because I’m just everything is taken care of. So let’s just say it’s a thousand bucks that I’m going to charge the customer a thousand bucks. The material is going to be, you’re looking at, I’m going to go high. I’m not, my numbers ain’t quite right. I’m off the top of my head. Like two, 250 in material. That’s the timers, the cable, all the socket wire, all the bulbs, all the clips, everything that’s 250, maybe 300 bucks all in. Now you still got to put them together. You got to go through and custom cut them and all that stuff like that. But that’s just the material. 

Then so year one, you go up and we’re going to custom fit into the home. There’s no weird overhangs. Everything is lined up just perfect. The bulbs are peaked at the top. Everything looks perfect. That’s the key. They are perfect. Well, now when I take them down, I know to communicate with the customer honestly in January when I take them down. They’ll get a call from me, hey, Mrs. or Mrs. Smith, we just got your light down and I’m basically asking if they want to go on and sign up for next season. I do offer an early bird discount.

It’s pretty significant and most people will go on and take me up on that. Honestly, because they get a discount, a lot of times they’ll add more. Most people they’ll start with the roof line or the next year, hey, let’s add some reeds, let’s do all the shrubs. If they got columns, let’s wrap the columns or what I call ginger-breading where it’s not just the roof line along the gutter line or the front of the house. Now we’re going to go up every single gable, every peak, light the whole thing up because they’re getting a discount. Their spending is about the same by the time it’s all said and done. They add more stuff in there. But like I said, there’s no actual discount because I’m not under a contract. It’s not like, hey, I’m going to charge you a thousand bucks this year. And then next year, the next two years after that, it’s five, 600 bucks. 

I never liked those contracts when I was when somebody did that with me. I don’t like it because then what happens in year four or five is you get this gigantic spike in prices. What normally happens is, we got to redo the material. We got to do the or whatever my business. I get to make the rules. I’m like, no, we just do year to year contracts. And most like I said, most people sign back up in January.

January, February, I got about 50% by September. Well, I’m at 100 % and we signed up so far for this year for my previous customers. I’m already full this year from my previous year’s customer.

Ezra McCarthy

That’s amazing. So let me ask you this. Say someone didn’t sign up because their custom cut. Can you reuse that? Obviously some of it’s going to be wasted. How does that go into it?

Tyler Fred

I have a really strict organization. Thanks to my wife, she’s the best, she can be very OCD when we need her to be. I know what I want, but I struggled to do it. So all my lights are marked year to year. So let’s just say house A and house B, okay? This is a long winded answer to that question. House A was put up in year one, house B was put up in year two. Everything that’s on house A is marked year one. It’s in our system, that’s year one. That’s important because if a bulb goes out and you got to replace them and you realize they’re not the same, hey, you just may need to replace all of them. But now all these bulbs go into a year one basket. All the cord and everything, goes into a year one basket. So that way, if I need to repurpose them, I can repurpose things from the same year. 

So let’s just say customer A, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, decided it was out of the budget. They move, that happens. They move, they don’t want to do it next year for whatever reason, those lights will come down now if at all possible if I know early enough let’s say uh john and jane doe they call and they want to sign up this year. I’m gonna get them all new stuff but last year I had three customers call me the week before Christmas. We’re talking January 18th. I was getting a phone call from three of them all on the 18th. It was weird.

Ezra McCarthy

Wait a sec. You had people call for Christmas like January 18th?

Tyler Fred

Yes. One of them, they had planned on being out of town and something came up and so now they were gonna have Christmas at their house. Two of them in- no, no, January, December. ⁓ I said January. I apologize. I was- ⁓ I apologize.

Ezra McCarthy

In January?

I was like, wow. You must be a lube or something.

Tyler Fred

Yeah, no, no, I apologize December 18th the week before Christmas. I was saying January No, December December 18th one adjust they realized they weren’t gonna go out of town They were gonna have all the kids over this year instead They wanted to decorate the house two of them had just moved into the home and wanted the house decorated the week before Christmas Suppliers are pretty much out of stock. You’re not it’s difficult to get stuff in it’s difficult to get orders in and I was out. Well, I had just enough because I had stuff that was sitting. Hey, it was repurposed from other houses that decided not to use them this year. I already have a mark I got new stuff ordered going to, because some of them, they’re wanting to change the colors in any ways, add a bunch of extra stuff. 

So two of them, I’m going to completely put up new stuff. One of them we’re going to keep with the repurposed stuff because it was one year old. They weren’t old at all. So, but you can always repurpose them because everything, when you see the wire, if you’ve seen how it was done as, oh yeah, that’s, it’s pretty easy. You can, you can make cuts everywhere. You can have plugs everywhere. I wouldn’t recommend it. That’s more failure points, but you could, you can repurpose that stuff all over the place if you need it.

Ezra McCarthy

So probably one of the biggest concerns naturally that people would have is safety. So you mentioned you bought a bunch of safety equipment. What are some kind of ways that are, and are you having someone work with you? And have you had any pushback on, hey, I don’t want to do this. I feel like unsafe or you’re worried about team members getting hurt.

Tyler Fred

Safety is priority number one, truly before anything else. I have a rule. It’s my family, then my employees, then my customers. I love my customers. I care about my employees more than I care about my customers. If you are not comfortable being on the roof, I do not want you on the roof. This is for me. I’m very comfortable up there. I’m comfortable with the safety equipment.

I have another guy who’s very comfortable with the safety equipment. I have two other guys that helped me that are not. I’m going to be honest. They are phenomenal on the ground and a good ground guy for anybody that wants to do this. Get a good ground guy. If you’re comfortable on the roof, get a good ground guy. He will make you money hand over fist because they just make your life easy. The roof guy, the reason why he’s important is because he’s up in the air. That’s actually that’s the easy job. The organization of getting everything set up. The ground guys there. So let’s say you’re not comfortable. We’re going to train you and I’m going to make you the best ground guy ever. Now you got to run a lot. You gotta move, you gotta be comfortable moving ladders and stuff around. You gotta be comfortable with that. But that, I don’t want you up there. 

Training wise, we train really, really hard. I have a couple houses around my house, or all what I call different levels. I’ve graded houses out. Got this from a mentor of mine, like grade one, two, three, four, five. Of difficulty, of, yep, that’s not safe, or it’s very complex. And I have a bunch of them that are all kind of around me, and all those, the neighbors, they get one heck of a steal of a price because they let me put up our light super, super early. And we bring all the guys out and we go through the training of how to use them up and down on level one. Then we move up to a more steep roof and we figure out really where they’re comfortable at. 

Now, two, I don’t pay by the hour. I pay off the job. Part of their compensation though is if I’m not on site, you have to take a picture of you in the safety equipment going up and down or using the goats or using the pitch hoppers, using the harnesses. Somebody hits the ground. The guy is going to get a picture of that and save it and send it to me. That way I know you’re using it. If you don’t, part of your compensation goes down. And it’s understood that your percentage drops and you forget who said it, but you get what you get, what you compensate for, what you pay somebody for. That’s what they’re going to do. What they get paid to do. So if they’re getting paid to use it because they have to take a picture of them using it and send it to me, they’re going to use the safety equipment. 

But also, now, this is just a trick. It’s actually my actual ultimate goal. Bucket trucks, if you’re comfortable in a, if they’re not comfortable there, most guys are comfortable in a bucket truck. Those can be really, really useful, especially for some of these really steep roofs where you it’s…It makes people really uncomfortable. Bucket trucks are really nice. There’s a company up in out of New York. That’s all they do is bucket trucks. They don’t, they don’t get on a roof. Everybody’s in the bucket truck. It also allows you to not have to have three guys on a crew. You can run with one to two. I recommend two because eventually at some point time that bucket’s going to get stuck and you need somebody down below to lower you back down. 

You’re going to need that. So at least have two. But you don’t have to have a third guy because that guy with the bucket, he just runs around. Also, if you’re doing wreaths, you’re not dragging them up the ladder. You’re just bringing it up in the bucket truck. Set it there. You’re setting your anchors. You’re not on a ladder. You’re just, everything’s in the bucket truck. That’s the ultimate goal, I think for me, but they’re not cheap. So we’ll get there.

Ezra McCarthy

So people probably wonder, okay, this sounds all great. The profits sound great. It sounds like work, but possible. But what is the volume? Like how, obviously this is a luxury service, even more so than I would say landscaping and lawn care for sure. What would you say is kind of, obviously, you’re in Louisville, they’re a decent sized town. What is the demand for this? And then another question might be, what is the conversion rate of people that call? What to expect?

Tyler Fred

The demand is high and lovable. It is a luxury service. People really want it. Nobody likes to get up on the roof. I’ll be honest. Everybody I talk to, they want Christmas lights. Then it’s just a matter of can they afford it? Because they’re not getting up there. So the opportunities there, then the question is budget. At the end of the day, the bottom line is the bottom line. And that may be the final selling point. Can they afford it or not? But I don’t want somebody going into debt for Christmas lights. I’m not. But I do have my minimums. I’m not going up on a roof for under a certain amount. It’s just not happening.

So the conversion rates for me, for me, I know some guys have much higher, some guys have lower. I’m not the cheapest guy in town. I know guys that are a whole lot cheaper than me. I don’t know another company that is almost twice my price. Yeah, it makes me think I am leaving something on the table because those guys are slammed as well. But they’ve also been doing it for a long time.

It’s about a 35% conversion rate when my phone rings. They’re calling and that’s if they’re just calling me just off my personal Facebook post or anything like that. If they, I will say this though, if they get through my screening process. So like if you call, we get really, really quick kind of, kind of what you’re wanting. We’ve talked about this, talk about that. Hey, my minimum is an average for a house before I even look your house up. It’s going to be somewhere around here. I’m listening to how they respond. I’m actually not listening to what they’re going to say. I know that sounds weird, but what I’m listening to is their gasps or long pauses. Are they hesitant? 

They’re either going to jump on it. Yeah, that sounds really good. It’s what I was thinking or this is out of your ballpark. OK, well, if it’s out of the ballpark, I’m to get off the phone pretty quick because I can pick up on that. I’m going to push just a little bit more, but I’m not going to try to sell somebody that’s completely out of the budget. I know some guys do. I don’t. I don’t spend a lot of time on the phone for that. But it’s about once they kind of get through that screening process. Once they get through that, it’s like 60 percent once we get through the screening process. But the grand total is about every phone call I get to actually do the job. It’s about 35 percent.

Ezra McCarthy

So what have you found? Now at Green Frog here, we actually made a website for you for your Christmas light business, but…Thank you. Other than the website, what have you found is a great way to kind of help promote that? What are you using to get customers?

Tyler Fred

Thank you. It’s awesome.

So knowing your target audience. I will tell you what my target audience is. I will have no problem sharing that mine is between 32 and 55 with school-aged kids at home. Where do they live? They live on Facebook So Google which is where your website comes in helps them a lot there. I haven’t done Google targeted ads. I’m not a great marketer when it comes to that. I don’t do a lot of that. I have hired a Facebook marketer and a lot of people can do that themselves. So rock on I’m not good at it. I’ve tried, I struggled, I’ve tried spending more money. It didn’t work. I hired some and they’ve been phenomenal. I actually have just had three things at the top of my phone so far. You have a new lead you need to call since I’ve been talking with you for the social media side. What I have found though to be the biggest bang for buck ROI is yard sign bandit sign and I’m gonna be honest I don’t like them.

I don’t think they look good. I don’t like them in my neighborhood, but they work. I will keep being told like when I first started, put out the bandit signs, put out the signs, put out the signs, put out the signs. I finally did. put out 50, a hundred total, 51 weeks, 50 the next week. And they weren’t even in good spots. I was driving around Friday night and put them in the ground over the course of that Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the 50. had 300 calls the next, the next Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I had an additional 600 calls and that’s not what I was saying. Now I was getting, because I’d done it so late, I was getting everybody that was waiting at the last minute.

The budget was way down. They knew what they wanted, they didn’t know what they were going to have spent to get it. That’s what it was. So there was a whole lot of it, it’s kind of out of my budget. That’s how I got really quick to going through that screening process. Because when you’re on the phone, literally all day.

And my wife’s on the phone literally all day helping me get through all these. You get really quick at screening really fast to figure out, hey, do we need to even continue talking for 20 minutes when we’re out of your budget to begin with? And like I said, that was just because I did it late. I was late. This year I already have all my signs out and my phone, my phone just keeps ringing. So it gets really, really busy in November and then Thanksgiving hits and then everybody wants their lights up right now.

Ezra McCarthy

So you mentioned you’re at a customer’s home. Are you quoting something or are you already putting something up?

Tyler Fred

Oh, right now? I’m at a customer’s home. So actually, I do have a couple of quotes today. I have, I’m not busy enough to start putting them up in September. There are guys that do, you do not have to turn the lights on. I start mine going up in October, the first week of October. I’ll be, when I leave here, I gotta go do a quote on a couple of the properties. They want some permanent lighting, which is another thing we offer. 

They’re not Christmas lights. They are their own separate thing. There’s more to them than just putting clips involved. Yeah, I start in the first week of October when they start going up. I don’t put any of the greenery up. So any garland, wreath, I don’t put ground stake lights in. I like stuff that goes along driveways or sidewalks. I don’t put any of that in because ground stick lighting gets damaged a lot no matter how far you put them off the driveway. And if you put them too far off, they just look stupid. So they have to be close to the heads of the driveway so they get damaged. But November, the week of Thanksgiving is when all my greenery from all my other installs that have a guide. Literally all he does is drive around with reeds and start putting them up. That’s his only job. We literally load up a truck and trailer and a big ladder.

Ezra McCarthy

So perhaps someone’s listening, this is intriguing to them. This is going to be released sometime early October. There’s still time to kind of hop on it. What advice would you give to someone who’s thinking about adding Christmas lights to the server?

Tyler Fred

Here’s my advice to anybody who has ever asked me on any business thing: start small, do not try to… Alright, you’re gonna see the internet gurus so you can make six figures in six weeks. You can and you can make more. It’s a lot of work. You have to have your sales process dialed and you have to know your numbers. You need to have crews to do that. It’s hard to do that by yourself. It’s not that you can’t. I know guys that did but if we’re in October start marketing now.

You have customers call every one of your customers. So, hey, listen, I’m thinking about adding this. Would you be, is that something you’d even be interested in? Figure out if your market even supports it? Almost bet it would almost. But if none of your customers even wanted it at all, well, now you have a, now have to try to sell to all new customers. A whole lot easier to sell to a customer you’re cutting grass for than it is for somebody that isn’t because they know you, they know your work. They know which, how you stand and all that stuff. So, but start marketing a lot of the suppliers. So is it okay if I list some of the suppliers out there? 

Ezra McCarthy

Oh yeah, go ahead. 

Tyler Fred

Okay. So you got Christmas light contractors, thunder lighting. They’re out in New York, Christmas light contractors are out of North Carolina. They have some warehouses, Indianapolis, and a couple of other places. There’s another one. I can’t think of the name. They’re out of St. Louis. You can go on Facebook and look up like Christmas light contractors, Christmas light installers. A lot of them, a lot of them are actually run by suppliers. It’s a wealth of information. It’s a great place to learn. 

Go on there, ask questions, ask a ton of questions. You’re going to see, oh, the markets it’s warm. There’s too many people. There’s too many people. There’s not. If you do good work, there’s not too many people. If you show up and do what you say you’re going to do and provide a seamless white glove experience for your customers, there’s enough people out there for you to have enough work. There’s enough work for all of us. I promise you that. But do that. 

So anyways, all those suppliers like Christmas Light Contractors and Thunder Lighting, I know they both have what they call starter packs, which come with everything you need. It’s going to come up. There’s different links, but I would recommend getting a thousand. Get the thousand foot socket cord. It’s going to come with all the bulbs. Pick your color. Also stick with the brand. There’s different brands. There’s HBL, Minlion. There’s another one evergreen I think. HBL and Mendelian are the two most common. Stick with them because their sockets and the bulbs fit better. It’s not that you can’t put them in other places, it’s just better. They work better together. Mendelian socket cord works better with Mendelian bulbs and vice versa for HBL.

You’ll get a thousand foot socket cord. You’ll get all the clips. You’re going to get all the wires. You’re going to get a bunch of the plug and you can literally start putting stuff up on your house. So if you would start it in October, go buy a starter kit, start marketing, decorate your house, take this stuff down, take a lot of pictures after you decorate your house, then find somebody else in your family that would be willing to let you take pictures of their house. Go decorate their house, take pictures, start posting and you keep doing that. You’ll start getting work where now like I don’t, I don’t have to decorate my house for pictures. I decorate my house cause I want to, like no.

I got every customer’s house gets pictured. Yeah, that’s what I would do. If I had to start over right now and I knew nothing by starter pack, take pictures, all your current customers and start posting on Facebook.

Ezra McCarthy

Well, Tyler, this has been highly educational. I’m sure those listening in, if they’re interested at all, are going to be looking for the starter pack or looking for some more information. Someone’s interested in reaching out to you or perhaps looking you up. What’s the best place to find you?

Tyler Fred

Alright, so you got my website, blueskies-lawncare.com, made by Green Frog. If you don’t have a website by Green Frog, use Green Frog, they’re awesome. Okay, serious, shameless plug. So that’s Blue Skies Lawn Care, also Louisville-Christmas Lights, which is my Christmas light website. And you can also find me on Facebook at either Blue Skies Lawn Care or ⁓ Blue Skies Lights and Illumination. Either one of those will pull me up on Facebook. And seriously, if you have questions, let me know, I will gladly help. Don’t get in over your head. Ask questions before you do that.

Ezra McCarthy

Definitely a good idea. Well Tyler, that’s a wrap for this episode. I sure enjoyed chatting with you and appreciate all the insights on Christmas lights. So if you’re looking to stand out, increase your profits and light up your Christmas season perhaps, offering Christmas lights might be a service for you. If you’d enjoy this episode, if you’re not subscribed be sure to do that. Perhaps share it with another lawn or landscaping pro and we’ll catch you on the next one.