Cracking the Code to Profit: The Blueprint for Building a Real Business in the Lawn Care and Landscaping Industry - Softcover

Sciamanna, Ryan J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1546225188 ISBN 13: 9781546225188

Publisher: AuthorHouse, 2018

Synopsis

What is Cracking the Code to Profit?

Cracking the Code to Profit is the complete, start to finish blueprint for building a REAL BUSINESS in the lawn care and landscaping industry. The author, Ryan Sciamanna, shares all his knowledge on how he went from a solo operator to six crews in three years.

Who is the book for?

Cracking the Code to Profit is for anyone thinking about starting a lawn care business to companies trying to break through the $200k to $300k gross revenue barrier. If you would like to, but are not already, making $100k per year as the owner of your lawn care company, you will benefit from reading this book.

Why Ryan wrote the book:

In 2016 Ryan narrowed his lawn care companies service offering down to lawn mowing and lawn treatments only. Prior to that, his company was a full-service lawn and landscape service provider offering all of the typical services including mulching, pruning, cleanups, leaf removals, hardscapes, landscape design and installation, and snow removal. He made the change in his business model to increase profit margins and reduce the amount of time required of him as the owner of the business.

Naturally, he needed to find referral partners for his lawn care customers because they still had other lawn and landscape needs his company no longer performed. He contacted several other lawn and landscape business owners in his area and told them he wanted to send them referrals for the work his company no longer performed and only asked they don't 'steal' his customers for the services they were still providing.

After shooting off the first several referrals, Ryan quickly realized that a lot of these companies needed help and until they improved their business operations, referring his clients to them was only making him look bad! He has since stopped referring work with the exception of a couple companies that proved they would provide his customers quality work at fair prices and actually be reliable.

Ryan says, "I think most lawn care business owners started their business just like I did...they enjoyed the work and were good at it, so they said, why not work for myself. In the beginning, it usually goes pretty smooth, but as they add more and more customers and eventuallyneed to hire employees, they get in over their heads. I did the same thing, but quickly educated myself on how to run an actualbusiness and not just be self-employed."

He organized all of his knowledge into Cracking the Code to Profit in hopes it will save new business owners years of frustration. Ryan read a similar 'book' before he started his business that his father had bought for him online. It was actually just a word document that someone had written on starting a lawn care business and his dad printed it off for him. It cost his father $79.95 for that! Ryan still has that 'book' and even though it was overpriced, terrible quality and a lot of the information was not good, he still credits that book towards helping him get his business off the ground.

What you can expect from Cracking the Code to Profit - How to Start a Lawn Care Business:

The book flows in chronological order from starting your business to your exit strategy. Ryan put every detail he could recall from his own experience. You can see the book chapters in the book preview. After each chapter, action steps are included so you know exactly what you need to do. At the end of the book, you will find the resource section for continued learning and execution. You can expect to have a much better understanding of how to start and grow your lawn care business is a healthy, profitable way. Ryan's contact info is also included in the book. He would love to hear from you after you finish it!

About this title

About the Author

Ryan grew up in Florence, KY in a middle-class family with both of his parents and 2 younger brothers. He I got caught up in the wrong crowd in high school after Tommy John Surgery ended his dreams of playing professional baseball. He still managed to get accepted into the University of Cincinnati's Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning Program which he ended up completely blowing. His uncle got him his first job in the green industry at a commercial lawn care supply warehouse after he dropped out. He bounced around working at a couple restaurants but always ended up back at a lawn care or landscaping business of some sort. When he got hired at a small family owned lawn care and landscaping business he realized that is what I wanted to do. He started his business, Loyal Green, with his parents' lawn equipment and even their vehicle to haul the equipment around. He literally had nothing and didn't have the money to buy it either. He also did not have a clue how to run a business at that point! He kept working at the local business until he built up enough clients of his own...Ryan would do his customer's lawns in the evenings or on the weekends around his full-time work schedule. In March of 2011, he had to tell his boss that he was sorry and could not put in his 2 weeks. He had to handle his customers' lawns full time. After 1 year of running the business full-time as a solo operator, he hired one of his friends and his brother in the second year running the business full-time. He kept adding trucks, equipment, and employees through 2015 which was his lawn care company's biggest revenue year ever. The problem was the profit margins were terrible and the number of hours he was working was not sustainable! So, in 2016 he made several changes to his business model. 2016 and 2017 were the most profitable years of his business and the best part was, he was only working 8 hours a week on his business! The systems Ryan had created allowed his employees to handle most of the daily operational tasks. 2018 is poised to be Loyal Green's best year ever. Ryan just wants to see more people succeed!

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Cracking the Code to Profit

The Blueprint for Building a Real Business in the Lawn Care and Landscaping Industry

By Ryan J. Sciamanna

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2018 Ryan J. Sciamanna
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5462-2518-8

Contents

Preface, xi, 
Introduction, xiii, 
Chapter 1 The Potential of a Lawn Care Business, 1, 
Chapter 2 Make your Business Official - Business Structure, 8, 
Chapter 3 Getting Started, 16, 
Chapter 4 Get Some Clients, 21, 
Chapter 5 Business Operations – Scheduling, 26, 
Chapter 6 Business Operations – Invoicing, 33, 
Chapter 7 Business Operations – Bookkeeping, 37, 
Chapter 8 Business Operations – Maintenance, 41, 
Chapter 9 Business Operations - Position Yourself for Growth, 45, 
Chapter 10 Time to Grow – Marketing, 52, 
Chapter 11 Customers, 63, 
Chapter 12 Employees, 69, 
Chapter 13 Services to Offer, 78, 
Chapter 14 Business Finances, 87, 
Chapter 15 Pricing Services, 94, 
Chapter 16 Purchasing Equipment, 100, 
Chapter 17 Cashing Out, 104, 
Chapter 18 Conclusion, 107, 
Afterward, 111, 
Resources, 113, 

CHAPTER 1

The Potential of a Lawn Care Business

Here is the reason I started my business. When I began working in lawn care and landscaping, I was on a 2-man crew, just the aforementioned boss' nephew and me. I asked him questions all day long until he inevitably said, "Ok, no more questions today." One day, before I reached my daily quota, I asked, "How do you guys get paid for doing these jobs?" He said, "We give the customers a quote for the work they would like us to perform, and if accepted, they pay us that amount each time we provide that service." My mind was blown because I was used to getting $9-$10 an hour as a cook or a helper before I started working there. So, I was like, "Are you telling me that it doesn't matter if it takes us 10 minutes or 2 hours to cut this place, they are going to pay the same amount?" He confirmed that is how it works. I was thinking to myself, 'You have got to be kidding me! I am a beast at this and fly through these jobs while still getting everything done perfectly. I could clean up if I had my own business.' And that was the moment it all clicked for me.

Although I don't know your situation, my goal for this book is to benefit as many people as possible. If you already have experience running a business, you may not need some of the information in this book. However, every bit of information in this book is tried and true, so you may find something that you had not considered before. Or you may find something that I overlooked! In either case, please feel free to contact me to discuss any topic in this book, or not in this book. You reach me by going to LawnCrack.com or connecting with me on any of the social platforms @LawnCrack.

As mentioned earlier, the most important thing that you need to define is your goal, or goals. It is certainly okay to have more than one goal at a time. Your goals are critical as you are getting started. Specifically, you need to determine your financial goals. Do you only want to get enough work to provide for yourself? For yourself and your family members and friends? Do you want multiple crews? Or do you want multiple locations in several states? Any of these scenarios are possible. Knowing what you are aiming for will guide you as you make decisions as your business grows.

Although I am not a hardcore business plan guy, I did write a business plan before starting my business. I would highly encourage you to do the same. If you are already in business, it is not too late, you can write yours now. A business plan is a living document, meaning you should come back and add to it over time as circumstances change and you strive to reach bigger goals. Your business plan will reflect your goals. Goals that are written down get achieved at exponentially higher rates than goals that only remain as thoughts. Go to SBA. gov and use their business plan builder. It will walk you through the process and make it very easy to do. Writing your business plan down is going to force you to consider many things you probably would not have otherwise thought. It is also the only way you will be able to come back to it and reference it. An important part of the business plan process is your mission statement. Your mission statement should be a paragraph that is laser focused on the purpose and intent of your business and should let people know why they should do business with your company.

One thing I wish I would have done earlier was financial forecasting. I know ... it sounds intimidating, but it is not really. If you don't have the Lawn Crack Profitability Calculator already, it is free, and you can get it on the resources page at LawnCrack.com. This tool will make it very easy to see how small changes in your business' numbers will affect your bottom line. Most small businesses fail because they fail to understand the basic financials of their business and industry as a whole. What is the cost per man hour to provide each offered service? How long does each service take to complete? What is your capacity per day? Per week? Per Year? How long is the working season in your area? And finally, you must know what your target profit is. Knowing these five things can help you determine exactly how profitable your business will be and get you a realistic overview of how much work, time, and money will be needed to accomplish this. This can change over time as you hire more skilled employees and can purchase more efficient professional equipment, so you need to reassess this from time to time.

Here is what I mean:

Let's keep it simple. Let's start with only offering a lawn mowing service and you, the owner, as the only employee. We will use $50 as the average mow price. And yes, $50 is going to be a very realistic number for your average mow price. I know pricing varies in different parts of the country, but in my area, this is very realistic. In the Midwest, where I operate my business, we average around 30 cuts per year on a typical property. If we use the $50 per cut price, times the 30 cuts per year, we will get $1500. That means for every $50 mowing account you pick up, you can expect to earn $1500 per year from that account. In other words, a $50 mowing account has a gross yearly value of $1500 to your company. I hope you are getting excited! These numbers add up quick!

Now we have the value of an average mow customer per year. Next, we need to know how many lawns you can cut per week. You will be able to cut many more lawns with a 60" zero turn as compared to a 21" push mower. This is why you will need to upgrade your equipment to professional grade equipment as quickly as possible. I will give you two scenarios right now for you to consider. I will reference back to these scenarios a couple times throughout the book.

Scenario 1 – You have a 21" push mower. You can cut five lawns a day, five days a week, and you cut these 25 lawns 30 times in a season. 25 lawns per week at $50 each is $1,250 per week. $1,250 per week times 30 weeks = $37,500. In my area, the season is roughly nine months long, so your gross income in this scenario is $37,500, and you still have three months per year to generate more earnings in some other way. If for some reason, you are satisfied with this amount of money and three months off per year, I would advise you to do business as a sole proprietor and not carry insurance. You are already making more money than most American's with this micro business. In reality, in this scenario, you own a job. A business must be able to operate without the owner's daily involvement to qualify as a business.

Scenario 2 – In scenario 2 we are going to use a 52" walk behind lawn mower on most lawns. You are going to want to keep your push mower to get in smaller gates though! You can cut 12 lawns a day, five days a week, and you cut these 60 lawns the same 30 times in a season. 60 lawns per week at $50 each is $3000 per week. $3000 per week times 30 weeks = $90,000. The season is still roughly nine months long, so your gross income in this scenario is $90,000, and you still have three months per year to generate more earnings some other way. The crazy part is, the time it takes you to cut 12 lawns with a 52" is going to be about the same as cutting five lawns with a 21" push mower. Call me crazy, but I would do whatever it takes to get a larger mower and open the door to this type of productivity, which translates to more dollars in my bank account. You still own a job, but now you are bringing in some pretty good money and hopefully see the potential to add crews and expand your income potential.

In scenario 2 you will have more costs, but you will still net more money at the end of the year. Did you know you can get a loan for a commercial mower with no money down? If not, it is true and at the time I wrote this, almost every lawn mower manufacturer is offering 0% interest for 48 months. A $6,000 walk behind is going to cost you $125 per month. You can cut $125 worth of grass every day before 10:00 AM if you want to. I had to put how cheap the equipment is in perspective here. Now that you have a larger mower, you will probably need a trailer too, although you could just use ramps to get the walk behind in and out of the bed of your truck. It would be wise to bite the bullet and get insurance now. You never know what could happen while driving from stop to stop, or driving the larger mower on your customer's property. You are making $90k per year now, pay the $1k to $3k per year to ensure that if something terrible happens, you won't be paying for it out of pocket. That is the point of having insurance!

Before we get too far along, I want to clarify a couple of things. The first is gross income compared to net income. The way I remember this is gross is gross because it is what you would have received if you didn't have to pay taxes or spend money to earn the income, and it makes me feel sick in my stomach. On a paycheck, gross would be the amount before taxes are taken out and net would be the amount after taxes are taken out. In your business, gross is the amount of income your company takes in, and net is the amount that is left once all associated expenses have been paid.

I also wanted to touch on owning a business versus owning a job. You will more than likely start off in this industry owning a job. There is nothing wrong with this, even if it is the ultimate goal of your business. All this means is that you do everything in your business, or the majority of the critical tasks, and your business would cease to operate if you were not there completing the tasks yourself. You can have employees and still own a job. A business can function without the presence of the owner. Businesses have systems in place for the employees to follow to complete each aspect of the work. Minimal time is required from the owner to operate their business if they desire. If you can run your lawn care business based in Kentucky from your beach front condo in Florida, you own a business. If you can't take a 10-day vacation until your season is over, you own a job.

I would like to provide you with some motivation moving forward. Each of my 2-man crews mow $110k worth of grass per year. Before I decided to change my business model, I had three of these crews out every day, along with two landscape crews, and a spray truck. Now we are getting into some interesting numbers which will allow, you as the owner, to make a comfortable living. This is why I encourage you to think big! Why limit yourself to $37.5k per year with a push mower and you doing all the work yourself? It just doesn't make sense. Just because most of the people in the world are satisfied, or at least seem to be because they don't do anything else to generate more money and are happy with $30k per year, does not mean you should be too. Don't compare yourself to others. Most people will never reach their full potential. Set your goals high and make it happen. I am reading another Grant Cardone book as I am writing this titled, Be Obsessed or Be Average. Read that and tell me it doesn't get your blood pumping!

To make this book easier to follow and understand I will be using a simple model of a company that only offers a lawn mowing service. I will go into the different aspects to consider if your business offers other lawn and landscape services later in the book. My company has done them all. Whether you want to take the advice in this book or not will not affect my future success, but it could very well have a positive effect on yours. Like any other knowledge you accumulate, what you learn in this book will do absolutely nothing for you if you do not take action and implement it in your life and business. I know you can and will. Please always feel free to reach out to me if you ever get stuck.

CHAPTER 2

Make your Business Official - Business Structure

Before we get into industry specific advice, we need to keep everything on the up and up. If you already have your business formed, bank accounts set up, all licenses filed, and insurance policies in place, you could potentially skip to the next chapter. I encourage you to review this section though as there is valuable information contained within. You will need to form a business entity. You may want to consult a local lawyer, but it is not necessary. Your choices are to operate as a sole proprietor, a general partnership, an LLC, or an S-Corp.

The simplest and least expensive way to start your business is by being a sole proprietor. Operating as a sole proprietor means that you are conducting business as yourself. You will file an assumed name for your business with your state. This will be your DBA, or doing business as, and is also referred to as a trade name or fictitious name. While this is a viable business entity, you need to be aware of some downfalls with this model.

The major downfall with conducting business as a sole proprietor is that you and the business are one. If someone sues your DBA, they are, in fact, suing you. This could put all of your personal belongings at risk if you were to lose in a law suit. I have never been sued in nine years of running my lawn care business, but America is a sue happy country, and a lot of people would rather sue for money than work for it. It is aggravating, but it is the way it is. If you choose to operate like this, you know the possible consequences. Knowing this information, I still do not think it is that bad of an idea to start as a sole proprietor if you are the only employee, do not have a trailer, and do not use commercial grade equipment. You can switch to an LLC at any time.

Another business entity you should not use is a general partnership. A general partnership has all of the same downfalls as a sole proprietor, but now you have the liability of your partner getting sued and taking your business down with him or her. Not only that, but I do not recommend forming a partnership, even if in the form of a multimember LLC, if you do not fully understand the terms and conditions of your partnership agreement. You will want a lawyer to draw up, or at least review, your partnership agreement. I have heard far too many horror stories of one partner contributing far more than the other partner, but they both get compensated equally because of their partnership agreement. Getting out of a business partnership is similar to getting a divorce. It will be just as expensive, if not more, and will be equally mentally draining for all parties involved.

An LLC, or Limited Liability Company, is more than likely going to be the best fit for a new lawn care business. As the name implies, an LLC does offer some protection to the members or managers assuming everything is set up and documented properly. Negligence on the part of the LLC owner, while conducting business, can put your personal items at risk in a law suit. Also, signing documents in your personal name, instead of as a member of your LLC, can allow the corporate veil to be pierced. 'Piercing the veil' is when the court determines for a particular reason that the protection offered by the LLC will not be enforced, allowing the plaintiff to go after your personal belongings as well as the business' belongings in the law suit.

There will be more fees associated with maintaining your LLC as compared to a sole proprietorship, but if everything is done right, you will receive much better protection. Make sure you run a name availability check in your state to make sure the name you pick for your business is available and not taken by another existing business. If you do plan on becoming a large company operating in multiple states, you will want to make sure the name you want to use is not trademarked.

Once you get to a certain revenue level, you will probably want to consider an S-Corp as your business entity. You can elect to have your LLC treated as an S-Corp by having your Certified Public Accountant (CPA), file a form with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). You will want to discuss this move with you CPA to determine if it is right for you. At a certain point, switching to an S-Corp will save you money on taxes. My business elected to be taxed as an S-Corp around the $300k in revenue mark to give you an idea.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Cracking the Code to Profit by Ryan J. Sciamanna. Copyright © 2018 Ryan J. Sciamanna. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1546225188
• ISBN 13: 9781546225188
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 138