The Koerner Office - Business Ideas and Deep Dives with Chris Koerner - Is lawn leveling the next home service moneymaker? Ep. #042

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

Last month I got a DM that said "Bro. Look into lawn leveling. These guys are PRINTING CASH. I knew I had to learn more, so I had Brandon McClellan on the pod today. Brandon is a former oil rig worker turned entrepreneur who founded Central Texas Lawn Leveling.Today we chat about how Brandon discovered the lawn leveling business, turned it into a profitable venture, and explored the untapped potential of this unique home service market.Timestamps below. Enjoy!---Watch this on YouTube instead here: tkopod.co/p-ytAsk me a question on or off the show here: tkopod.co/p-askLearn more about me: tkopod.co/p-cjkLearn about my company: tkopod.co/p-cofFollow me on Twitter here: tkopod.co/p-xFree weekly business ideas newsletter: tkopod.co/p-nlShare this podcast: tkopod.co/p-all Scrape small business data: tkopod.co/p-os ---01:22 From Passion to Business02:33 Challenges and Learning Curves05:08 Scaling Up and Market Research10:02 Expanding Services and Customer Acquisition17:12 Overcoming Growth Challenges24:19 Challenges in Lawn Care Logistics25:14 Managing Customer Expectations25:53 Unit Economics of Lawn Care28:21 Cost Breakdown and Profit Margins31:11 Recurring Business and Landscaping32:18 Exposing Poor Contractor Practices33:40 Customer Instructions and Agronomy35:29 Business Growth and Diversification38:16 Future Opportunities and Market Trends39:45 Material Business and Quality Control44:59 Expanding Services and Customer Reach46:47 Brandon’s Contact Information 

So let's go back to the beginning. So COVID happens. You've got more time to work on your own lawn. You figure it out, or at least you're cracking the code. I know it's a work in progress. You start talking about it. It's a very visual product. What does your first customer look like?

How did you acquire them? How did you know what to charge? What did you charge? Okay, so a few weeks ago, I get a DM on Twitter. And this guy says, Chris, you need to look into lawn leveling. I'm like, okay, lawn leveling, whatever. I just got my lawn leveled in Austin, Texas. And this guy rolled up in an AMG.

and he charged me thousands of dollars. My loan looks amazing. I love it, but I've never heard of this industry. And he said he is booked through the summer. You got to look into this. I'm like, okay, this is my type of DM. So not only did I look into it, but I found that exact guy that he was referring to in his DMs,

not some other lawn leveling business, but this one in Austin that has been growing like crazy. So I like talking about blue collar businesses, home service businesses. I love that space a lot. I thought you would like this. I think this is a niche that is going to start blowing up. It's interesting hearing what the actual business owner had to say about that niche.

He kind of feels two different ways about it. And he thinks you should approach it in a very specific way if you were to start a long leveling business in your area. Nonetheless, let me know in the comments if I should do more kind of profiles of home service businesses like these, especially ones that are less common. And I will. I'll do more because I love it. I love learning about business. So enjoy. Hey, how are you, man?

I'm good. How are you? Good. I know this is random, but I got a DM on Twitter. And this guy's like, Dude, have you heard of the lawn leveling business? I'm like, no, I didn't know that was thing. He's like, you need to look into this.

This is a cool business. Dude, it's all started from the pandemic. It really wasn't a business prior to the pandemic. It just kind of fell into it. Yeah, well, I started following a YouTube channel, right? I was working on an old rig, following grass, how to cut our yards like golf courses, right? And the pandemic hit. And when we all had time to stare at our yards, bought a real mower, used one.

started cutting my yard, started changing how I cut it. You know, that's when we figured it out. I was like, this yard's not really that level. So I hired a company local to come out and level it. They didn't really do what I thought they should have done. They just started getting the wheels turning. I was like, man, what if I made a business out of cutting yards like this? You know, I just started going into all of it, right? Just started chasing that rabbit and was using next door to filter out. People was like, hey, if you have this yard, how much would you pay a month? Did like a pole on it? Just took off from there. A poll like a pole on next door?

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let me say if I understand this right. You're working on an oil rig. You started leveling your own yard. You learned how to on a YouTube video. And you're like, oh, this is cool.

It's actually kind of fun. And then you just start asking around like anyone else need this? Well, yeah. So everybody thought I was going to kill my yard. They're like, are you going to kill your yard? What did you put all that material on there for? Man, I need to smooth it out because it doesn't cut. like it should.

Then they seen the results of like how it looked fake and how green it was and how clean and manicured it was. And so like the perception, right, for everybody, everything changed. And it was like, well, hey, my neighbor got into it. It just snowballed from there. See, I love that you said that that everyone thought you were going to kill your yard because I've seen that same kind of polarization happen in other industries. Like for instance, I did a podcast with a guy that owns a.

pressure washing company. And it's very polarizing because a lot of people think that the bleach that he sprays is going to kill all the plants and it's illegal and he's breaking regulations. And he's not. And it's all in compliance and in code. But like just the fact that people freak out over pressure washing makes it a really good business because it gets people talking about it and it gets fired up. And that brings eyeballs to it. And that means he can get more customers. So you're out here seemingly killing everyone's yard by dumping crap all over and they're like, what is what? And they stop and they listen and they look and they learn and then next thing you know they're a customer yeah that's basically right that's basically how it went it's just scaled from there i mean i really didn't know a whole

lot i knew different types of grasses i knew a couple weeds i mean it literally is a rabbit hole it's allison in the wonderland thing you fall down that hole it's addicting you know you start getting appreciation from people of like hey how's my grass look how do i make this better how did you do that. And so you show up every morning when you pull up to your house every day and you see your grass look like that. I mean, it automatically puts me in a good mood. Like it does. Yeah. Because it's clean. It's short. And there's so many things about it that people don't really understand. Like, we don't deal with a lot of bugs in my grass because I'm not cutting it like two, three inches where a bunch of bugs and things live in there. And so there's just so many things that people don't

really understand like how nice it is to really have it. Yeah. Like the aesthetic of it. It's it reels them in, and then the actual, the more tangible benefits are what closes the deal. Sure, exactly. And it gets easier. Like, it's been a work. Like, I've been working on my yard for four years, and I've got it to the point to where I just have to put down nitrogen only. Like, we just pulled a soil sample on my yard, because that's generally, like, where this business has gone for us, is that I don't know what anybody has done to their yard prior, and I don't know what it needs, but if I pull a soil sample, it gives me an idea of what I'm working with because everybody's yard is different. Some people don't even have material under their yards anymore today. Like

contractors and home builders, that's the number one corner that they cut is material. And like, so we pull soil samples that gives me a roadmap of how to make sure that their yard gets to how I got my yard. And were you like a freak about your yard before all this? And were you like a freak about two yard before all this or were you just kind of an average? Like what do you mean? Like a freak when I started making my heart look good? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I was really uptight about it at first.

And I think most people get that way because it's your pride and possession, right? Like you're out here in the heat, 100 degree weather. You're moving. It's 2,000 pounds per ton, right? So if you got 10 yards of material, it's 20,000 pounds of material you're sitting there shoveling all day, putting it out, putting in work, sweat, scalping. It's a lot of work. And so when you get people that are walking on it, you get all guarded, right? Like, I get off my yard or you're protecting that because it's so clean.

But I started thinking about it's like, it's a golf course. They drive golf carts and they hack jobs all over fairways. So I bought like a divot bottle and I put 80-20 mix in there. And every time there's a mark from my dog scratching or whatever, my kids, they run with cleats and practice soccer, you know, you just go back there and fill it in. It's grass. It's going to recover. And so I'm way more relaxed on it now being four years into it than I was before. Okay. So let's go back to the beginning. So COVID happens. You've got more time to work on your own lawn. You figure it out, or at least you're cracking the code. I know it's a work in progress. You start talking about it. It's a very visual product. What does your first customer look like?

How did you acquire them? How did you know what to charge? What did you charge? So that's the thing, right? So that's where the pull came in, right, was collect data, collect information. I know what the local company who came out and leveled my yard charged me and how unsatisfied I was. So that gave me a baseline, right? And then we went from there. What did they charge? It was like 900 bucks for a couple yards of material. They didn't educate. They didn't provide any instructions. They're just like, yeah, we're going to come out and throw sand on it. Before you level a yard, you've got. to scalp it because you're leveling the ground and smoothing it out, not the grass. So that was one red

flag for me of like, you guys didn't even advise me to do that. How are you going to level my yard? You already knew more about it than they did. Correct. And so once I had that yard where it was at, I took the photo. I put it on next door and I said, hey, how much would you pay a month to have your yard look like this? And I gave four different prices in a rough idea range of price. pricing for a square footage. And you're really just doing research. I'm researching. And what were those four price ranges?

It was like 225, 175, 150, and 125. Is that like $2.25 per square foot per month? No, it was really more in like how many services. So like I was going to be up to like cut that yard right in five times. So I was like, okay, if I got to do 225 divided by five, That's $45 a cut. Well, that's what a regular mowing person would cut, but they're just coming out, mowing, blowing,

cutting and leaving, cutting the grass as high as they can. I'm coming out here and I'm like, hey, if your yard look like this, what would be the price range? Now, there's several things that go into that. There's services that go off of that. There's core airation, top dressing, leveling, if leveling is the end goal, fertility, right, fertilizer. So there was a huge thing.

And so that's where it really started was understanding more about feeding the grass. Right? Not just cutting it. Not just cutting it. That's a cultural practice. And so cultural practices, most people say they don't care. They just want to cut every two weeks and whatever the cheapest is. That's not our ideal client.

They don't see the same vision in their yard as we do or the gap between what they see and what we see is so far off that they're not really interested. Somebody also has to be able to take that and say, this is how you get there and this is roughly what it costs. It's really not that hard. It gets easier to take care of my yard. I literally water it, cut it, and put one type of fertilizer down right now. That's it. So it sounds like it really started like you kind of started as a lawn mowing company with the added feature or benefit of having a level lawn and just an amazing beautiful lawn as opposed to a company that just comes in, he's in and out in 15 minutes and just cutting it, right? Because it seems like today you're a lawn leveling company.

But when you were doing your research, you're like, how much to cut your lawn, but it will look like this. And I'm going to do all these other things to get it to look like. Right. Well, it started out with called Real Cut Landscaping. And we used the R EEL, which was the mower type that you have to cut your yard to look like a golf course. So we went into Real Cut landscaping because nobody scalps yards, right? The company who leveled my yard uses liquid aeration. That's not really airation.

So there was just a couple, a lot of things. But we started in landscaping. We're back in landscaping now. Like we've broadened back because we've grown to find the right people who do the quality of work. And that's what my whole, ever since I got started, it's always been about quality and results. I've started up a long care company and I shut it down. We were growing so quick as a leveling company that we backtracked on that. but we are now pushing to become the largest lawn leveling, landscape, fertility, and then maybe we'll add mowing,

but we really want to become the largest company to be able to have all services in one, because nobody really does all of it. Some people only do top dressing. Some companies only do correlation. Some companies don't do landscaping or they don't do mowing. And so it's like, hey, we feel like most people would rather have. have a one stop shop. And we're slowly building into that based on the people we hire that we believe can

provide exactly the end result that we want, which is what the customer's vision is. Yeah. Okay. So back to that first next door post. You post the four options. What was the response like? We had like 150 something responses. Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. It was a lot. And you're an Austin, right? You're in Austin. I'm Georgetown, North Austin, right. So we was really locally in our area that kind of we did the poll. And it was pretty good.

Most people were like in the mid range, around the 175 range, 225 was a little expensive for them. But it still gave us a market that it's out there. And there's probably a lack of information for them to understand what all goes in that. And that's our job to close that gap. That gave me the information. And so I started just with a couple neighbors, right? Just doing a couple things. Look, I'm doing it on the side, very low cost, right?

Just give me an opportunity. Just learning. Yeah. Just give me an opportunity to turn your yard around. I mean, this is a great business because you acquire these case studies and then you get before and after pitchers and just like a weight loss drug. Like before and after pitchers sell better than anything. Exactly.

And so what's made that easy, like we have a really huge case study right now with a gentleman in Liberty Hill. He did like a pool. So we had to go in there and dig that area out. But he had put new saw it in last year and couldn't water it. And I says, man, I think we can really recover this. So we pulled a soil sample, right? First, what's going to put the yard in the environment to grow? That's really where we have a chance to be successful. If we're feeding it right, we add water and we add fertility and then we do a couple

cultural practice changes, we should have no issues with getting a yard to recover. Okay. Did those two neighbors come from the next door post or did those just come from them? Well, just local neighbors, like the next door neighbor started taking over his yard, started doing the other gentleman's yard, right? And then the next door post, correct. That was the other source of information at that time, like of clients. So phase one is researching on Next Door and doing your neighbor's yards. What was phase two of the business?

Phase two was in the business was with a neighbor. A neighbor had seen my post and wanted to really launch a company like a true lawn leveling. company. And so phase two was going after a market that was a niche. It like nobody really was doing what we were doing. Now your neighbor wanted to partner with you or he wanted to be a customer for lawn leveling? No, he did not want to partner with me. He, I assisted him. The partnership never was offered on my end. And so we'd split and rebranded and and took off on our own journey from there. So he's doing his own thing right now?

Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Okay. So that was phase two. Now you're like, are you all in on leveling at this point? Yeah. I mean, so after that first year of just traveling air with a lot of things, I started buying

equipment up. I started equipment was really high. So I was traveling out to Nashville to buy trailers. I went to Kansas City, Missouri to buy a dingo skid steer. Right. So we started acquiring equipment, advertising, pushing customers, building a website. So we started going all in on it and just slowly acquiring equipment and customers. Was there a template you were looking at? Like you saw another guy across town that was doing this or were you just kind of making this up? At the time, a lot of the information came from the neighbor, right? That's where it was at. We were still communicating quite a bit at that time. It got pretty self-explanatory. what all needed to be done, right? And we've adjusted our model from there and have grown into other

things as we've learned. Were you able to convert that next door post or poll into actual real customers? And if so, how? Were you able to see the poll respondents? Did you DM them? What did that look like? No, we just kind of, I honestly just kept it pretty even. I didn't target them. I did go use that, but I didn't go back. But I did just use, like you said, some of the case studies to do that. leveraging. I would find people on the next door and I would just reach out. It's a source, right? People have questions. The world that we're living in now, we gravitate towards Facebook groups or next door. We're gravitating towards social media to gain information rather than looking it up. The problem with that is you have different ways things can be done,

but not all of it may be relevant. Somebody needs insane. Antonio, Austin, or even around the street is different than what somebody needs up north. And there's not a whole lot of why behind it. Like, why am I putting down this product? They might see results, but when issues arise, they don't know what may have caused it because they've just been putting stuff down or they don't remember because somebody just said, do this. So it's evolved.

So that's been the source is social media. Yeah. So you started posting more in local Facebook groups and next door without a pretty strong customer acquisition channel for you once you had your equipment and you're up and rolling? No, honestly, it's really not. Being a lawn leveling company and the amount of people that search it is, that's just, there's only two companies. Yeah, there's only, you and your neighbor? Yeah, me and my neighbor. We're the only two, you know, lawn leveling companies. I've kind of gravitated more into a lawn revitalization company. We offer soil testing. We teach people about

soil testing. We're using organic matter in our products because that's where water and nutrients live. Like right now, there's top dressing rebates and correlation rebates. If you do that, the lower Colorado River Authority in the cities will reimburse you. Well, there's a reason for that because organic matter retains more water. And so to try to stop people from using so much water, they're going to pay us a rebate back for that. And so we're working on a deal with that to where maybe we can get our lawn leveling mix that we have because we came out with a coffee grounds manure blend of leveling mix. It's an 80-20. We're trying to see if we can get some kind of rebate program for that because I would rather people use that than just straight

sand because they both still provide the same service, right? You can still level a yard just as easy with both. Yeah. Okay. So with these rebates, does that go to you or to the homeowner? To the homeowner? So we'll help them out, right? We'll give them the who to email it to. We'll provide the invoice, the photos, right, the details of that. Here's the form, fill it out, add your water bill to it. And then they got to email it off. And if the program has money or they approve it or whatever. So it's up to like basically, it's up to $600, 50% up to $600. Wow. Now, I know you just said, like, you're getting so much business inbound. You don't really need to go chase customers. But I think you would want to like really put that, because who knows that about that rebate, right? Who actually

knows about that other than you. So if you were to lead with that, you know what I'm saying? Right. And so that's why we're trying to like look at least the top dressing is for sure in the rebate and core erration, but the lawn leveling is not. Right. And so how do we help get that into it? Because people are going to do it one way or the other, right? That's just what's going to happen. They're going to level their yard either way. But why not improve the healthiness of the yard rather than just level it. Because Sand has no value other than leveling. Have you ever thought of using an automation to basically fill out those rebate forms for the customers and then direct mailing it to them?

All they have to do is just sign it and mail it. 100%. I collect all my information into Google Forms, right? So I'm pretty data driven. I'm like, how do I do this and that? So all my information comes into Google Forms. That's just a scaling thing, right? It's just a time and a scaling at that point.

point. Yeah. Yeah. So most, and like I said, like you don't really need to right now. You're doing great. So what's the point? We've always been like mid-March after spring break. We've attempted to level yards a couple times before spring break, but you get the weather. You might get one more a little cool front that comes in. But really after spring break is what we're after. That's where we really start to crank up things. And then this is probably the slowest period of our business. You've got holidays coming up or we just went through holidays July 4th. I think a lot of people's travel starts at the end of June and into July so they're out. And then as you get into mid-July, now in August, there's generally another last push as we've gotten through most of the heat,

which this year has been completely different. Like we just got rain. We've got more rain coming, right? And so that's been a huge pain point this year was how do you level a yard when you got rain every other day. And so this one, this year's been definitely a curveball for sure. So your leads are coming inbound. Is it organic Google? Is it paid Google ads or just organic? It's paid.

So because we are the second company and we've rebranded and a lot of people have jumped in the market and they claim they do leveling, they don't really do that. I constantly get customers to say, oh yeah, I paid them to come out and do it. And I'm like, I'm sorry that we are just now finding. that out. Yeah, I know those guys. And yeah, that's just been part of the game, but there are more people getting in it. But the reality of it is none of it's sustainable just on its own. Lawn leveling itself cannot sustain it as a business only. You have to diversify. To end of September, you shut down. So what are you going to do six months for income? You have to

have other sources of revenue. It's just the businesses always have shown that. over the last three or four years. When I got laid off in January, I went full time into the business. Have you tested other opportunities in the off season like Christmas lights or anything? Or if there's someone up north and where the season's even shorter for them, what would you suggest that they supplement their income with? Landscaping or lawn care. Like even lawn cares, even, and both of those are still partially seasonal, but like lawn care can be partnered up more, right? And that's what we're looking at doing. Right now, we are seeking out partnerships and or to buy a lawn care company.

Okay. So phase two, we talked about that. What was phase three? What did it look like when you really started getting crazy? You're doing a lot of lawn leveling. You're just printing money. What does that lifestyle look like for you? And what broke during that time period?

Man, mentality. Like, we've had over 600 leads come through our website. Majority of those leads come from February to May. Like, we're getting 10, 11 leads in a day. And so I went to Google Sheets and started color coding that. Like, I found it last year what broke. When you have so many people and you don't know how to call them all back because that's like, I at least want to acknowledge I got their stuff.

And we did pretty good. I think we called back at least 90 to 95% of our leads this year. There's probably about 5% we never really got to. And then there's probably a percentage that never answered. But when you have a massive influx by March and you're already having 35 jobs that are on the books, paid deposits ready to go, just stacks up from there and then people want it done now. And I tell everybody, don't, like, you can level all year long. Don't wait till where everybody, the demand, is at its peak.

And it's just that they're afraid of the heat. And that's why we came out what the 80-20 was so we can retain more water and still do the job that we needed to do. Growth just broke everything, managing leads, hiring people, training new people. Then we got into making our own material, mixing it ourselves. Like, nobody has a compost around here that really doesn't use biosolids. Most of all of them use biosolids. And to drive the nitrogen, that's why we switch to the coffee grounds. But they also all have mulch in it, like sticks.

So when you're cutting a yard at a quarter of an inch and you've got a stick in there or rocks or something. So that's not going to work for us. These people are using very expensive mowers, $3,000 units. right cutting like scissors you can't have sticks in your stuff and so we've been wanting to solve that for two years but the growth just broke just broke everything you just couldn't be everywhere i was running 100 and something leads a week like my calendar was packed eight nine leads a day just boom i guess it's more like 50 leads like two 300 quotes just a lot of time just running and running and running and then it's hiring and then logistically. Is it going to rain a day? I need to

get material there in the morning because it might rain overnight and then it's wet. And if it's wet, we can't do it. And then the yard's muddy. And so it just becomes a really a logistics thing. And you got guys not showing up. You're dealing with all that. I mean, we have a tree trimming company. So we see all of it. Right. The best thing to do is manage expectations in the beginning. And I told all of them, hey, we're two, three weeks out plus rain. So if we get a week, a rain, that means we're four weeks out. And so we've always tried to manage that expectation. We're not going to rush to get it done and I'm not just going to come out because you want it done because it's not ready to be done. Our machines can make ruts. It's material. We're moving material

to ground soft. We need to let it dry out a little bit so we don't create more problems. And so it's just really managing those expectations of, hey, we're going to reach out five days before. But this is your projected date plus rain. And so that's how we manage that. Let's talk about unit economics. So what does an average job look like for you? Not like the best, not the smallest, average job, ticket size, time to complete, labor costs, all that. So our average ticket price is around 22 to 2300 bucks. And that is a range of what most of these homes around here. So it's really between the $1,800 and $2,600 is the average where the bigger portion of our business lives in because they're three to five thousand square feet and three thousand

to five thousand square feet. And we're using anywhere from like seven yards of material to 15 yards of material. Right. And so in everything has a price to it. If we got to scalp it, which means we've got to cut the grass down to a half an inch, bag all the grass. grass, get a dump trailer here and haul it off. That's another driver. That's another trailer, another fuel cost, right? Then we have the crew that's carrying another truck and trailer of all the equipment. And they're core air rating materials in the street. We use dingoes to fill up the top dressers, lay the material out everywhere, and then you start using drag mats. We've got leveling drags. We've got leveling rakes. I mean, we have all kinds of different tools because every yard

It has different flower beds and different slopes and things like that. And gates are small and gates are big. So it just kind of depends on how easy it is to get to a job. The easier jobs are the bigger yards. They're wide open. You can use a drag, pull behind your mower, or we use our top dresser to pull our drag. And that pulls the sand compost mix from one end to the other and starts filling in all those low spots. And then you've got to start dealing with valleys.

So we've gotten our leveling down to like two or three initially. when we started, it was kind of four. But we've went a little bit heavier on material because we have a nitrogen compost mix. And so we've got it down to where we say everybody, hey, at least just consider it twice. Yeah. Some people are happy with one. But a lot of the customers are new home builds because they're not, they're just throwing down sod and they're really bad and people can't walk in their yards because they've got ankle breakers. That's what we call them ankle breakers.

I've got a yard full of ankle breakers. Yeah. So $2,300 for a $3,000 to $5,000 square foot lawn on average. How long does that take you? And what does your cost look like on something like that? The biggest cost is material and labor, right? Those are going to be the biggest costs on that. Let's just take an $1,800 job, which is like $4,000 square feet, right?

Roughly right in there. So we're looking at six to eight yards of material. most of the time we have customers scout their yard. Before you get there? Yeah, because that's a loss leader. Like we'll spend an hour and a half, two hours to scalp a yard. And you really can't charge much more for that. I mean, materials are already $60 a yard, right?

So deliveries, anywhere from $125 to $300, right? And then you have labor. And then we use fertilizer, right? We're pulling soil test. We're telling them why their yard's depleting in phosphory. and what to do and why to do it, right? So we're constantly educating that on that information. And so cost-wise, when you look at it with insurance and maintenance and everything,

you know, on an $1,800 job, your cost is easily $12 to $1,300. Now, if a $2,300 job, is it a better margin there? Like, are there economies of scale? It gets worse as you go up. The smaller jobs are a little bit more profitable because you're having to use more material for bigger yards and the price can't just keep climbing. Like, I can't say, hey, six yards of material because the jobs do get easier. When you have flower beds and tight gates and things to go around, it's a lot more time, right?

So a smaller job can actually take us longer because you have to use wheelbarrows or some of your equipment can't get in there. So you have to do piles. You have to hand level it. You can't really drag it because the drags are too big for the yard. And so doing a bigger job is easier. It's just they take a long time too. But they're not profitable.

Okay. So call it $400 to $800 gross profit per job depending on the size. Yeah. Then you sell overhead you got to cover. That's it. Insurance is one of the, I mean, insurance sucks. Yeah. What is your insurance running?

Dude, it's like $8,000 a year. And only you. And it's, well, it's based off of income, right? General liabilities off of the income that we generate. That's how they do it. So if I make more money, they want more money. Yeah. And I'm like, but I didn't have any issue.

I didn't file a claim. And we're commercial, right? So I'm a commercial company. Thomas J. Henry's breathing down my back. We may not be a semi, but, you know, there's a lot of risk for a little bit. And that's why I don't think a lot of companies stay in it because it's a lot of work. It's a lot of equipment, a lot of logistics, and it's seasonal. Yeah.

What percentage of your jobs turn into something recurring? Maybe it's lawn care or something else. Do you have any data on that? I mean, the landscaping is the biggest reoccurring, right? Because we come out, we assure that we want to hit the end result, and this is what we're going to do. And the recovery of yards take two to six weeks, depending on healthiness of grass, sun, rain, right? But then it turns into landscaping. Hey, we showed up, we communicate, we did a good job.

Can you do landscaping? And that's why I started, I got, I wasn't in landscaping for a while because I didn't understand it. I didn't have the workers. But now I use two or three contractors. They're really good at what they do. How about this? I don't do it.

And if you want to design or you have an end result, I'll bring in a landscape designer that I use. They're going to design the plan and I'll bring in contractors and I'll make sure that you get exactly what you want and it's good in quality. You're the G.C. I'm the G.C. Because I don't, I see it all the time. People aren't getting what they pay for.

We see sprinkler heads that somebody will come in and do a flower bed and block. Like, we expose all of the laziness or crappy contractors. Irrigation lines that aren't buried six inches. We hit them all the time. Rock and material that they didn't put underneath there. Sprinkler heads. that are covered up by stonework because they didn't just turn them on, mark them before they put in the stonework. Just stupid lazy stuff.

Stupid lazy stuff, man. It's like we expose it because now your yard is scalped and I see all the sprinkler coverage issues and then you see a head that's washing out because it's covered up by a stone and their yard's not getting watered and it's in a hundred degree weather. Or we'll core air rate and we find rock underneath it all the time. Like, we pull out rock all the time. Bricks. Like, my machine pulls out so much material at times. You know, you're paying a lot of money for a house. And we have a water issue, but nobody's holding them responsible for putting down the right

amount of material that helps us save water. So we really are creating our own water issue alone. We see that. We have to be the bare bad news that they put all this stuff there. And we have to manage that because they think it's us because we exposed it. Now, after you do a $2,300 job, how much more work, like let's say they don't want to use you again, or maybe in another year, how much more work is there for the homeowner to do moving forward to keep it looking good? Yeah, we give them instructions. These are the expectations and these are the instructions.

This is how you should water. This is when you need to fertilize next. And this is the timeline where you need to start to consider cutting your yard. That's it. Same process after that. Cut your yard often and fertilize. when you need to do it and you're off and running. So we simplify that road path of instructions. Plus, we use an agronomist, right? So one of the things that we do that not even lawn care

companies or anything around us do is we pull soil samples, my agronomists will look at it and say, this is what it's lacking in how you need to feed this yard to put it in the best, healthiest state to grow. We give that to the customers and tell them, hey, this is how to do this? How do you pay your agronomist? Is it like a per soil? Well, he's become a really good friend of mine, actually. So again, this is back to the next door deal. He was on there. His passion for grass is the same way I have it. I just want to bring the passion I have for grass and close the gap of information. He's my source of knowledge. He's got his master's in agronomy. He's looking to go get his PhD. And who doesn't love drinking beer and talking grass? I do. That's one thing we have in common, right? You don't realize it. But it's like everybody else around This is bored in that subject, but we're just talking about it. But I just pay him per soul test, right? And because we both have passion with getting grass to grow, he just charges me for a

soul test. Matt, he's become one of my best friends. He's been so helpful in the success of our business. And we get it. People leave us reviews. Like the knowledge and the information that we're sharing with people, we get reviews on that because nobody else is willing to spend the time with the customers to do. that. And that's like where we're wanting to build a podcast and a private Facebook so we can

continue to control that information because there's a lot of different opinions out there, like airation, like liquid erration is erration. That's not, that doesn't deal with compaction like core erasured. It's kind of an oxymoron. It's kind of a, kind of an oxymoron. It is. And I would never want to put liquid erration down on my yard and put material on top of it. Like, What's going to breathe really the oxygen? Because golf courses don't rely on liquid aeration only. They don't. And that's kind of who you're looking for as a template for a beautiful long.

That's it, right? For sure. They're the ones that do it on the biggest level managing 18 holes in several acres of grass and water where every hole may be different. That's how I grew up. I grew up in Alaska working at a golf course. I went to Midland. I worked at a golf course.

I like golf and I like grass. When I figured out I could have how easy it was to have a grass that looks like a golf course. Dude, I was all in. I was like, this is awesome. If you could turn back time, you keep all your knowledge, you start this business all over again. What would you change about it from the ground up to make it more scalable, more profitable? What would you have done differently? I would have focused more on the lawn care.

I should have kept going in the lawn care route to solve that issue. but I already knew more about the leveling and I didn't know the seasons, but I should have kept the lawn care. And I had a lawn care company last year, but I just can't take things on if I don't feel like I can really hold up my expectation. And I couldn't do that. I had to let 45 of my lawn care clients go and I went and searched out the best company to possibly hand them off to to make sure that they were in good hands. but that was my source of reoccurring business, coeration, top dressing, here's our rebates, here's a package deal to keep controlling the growth of their yard

and the healthiness of it throughout the whole process because you need fertility to make it grow as well. Ideally, we don't want to have to live off a fertilizer because the micronutrients and organisms and all that in the grass and the organic matter will let the yard. grow itself, which I've gotten to a pretty good point to where I don't need it as much. I only need nitrogen. I wish I would have stuck with the lawn care side of things a little bit more because that

would have made it a more sustainable business in the longevity, even though it is still seasonal as well. But you can do a subscription base and break that cost up easier. Here's a question I like asking business owners, because I'm a business owner and I'm always distracted. Like, let's say, for instance, we have a tree trimming business and we find, I'm saying this like it's an example. This is real life. We find a really cool way to acquire customers and it works amazingly. And then I'm like an ADHD squirrel. And it's like, oh, man, we could use this lead generation method to sell it to all home service businesses. And,

but it's like, all right, focus, focus, focus. I'm curious what you're seeing that are tangential to your space that are, that you think are amazing opportunities that someone else could and should chase, but that you're too focused to really want to chase? That's a tough question, because I'll be honest, I'm chasing the material business. I bought a dump truck. I own a dump truck. It's hard because there's hundreds of landscaping companies. There's hundreds of mowing companies. But there's so many bad ones. So in a way, it's easier to stand out, right? You're right, but you can only stand out to those who are willing to pay for something that they really want. We're all dealing with inflation. We all deal with it. It costs us money to drive an insurance on top of the same price as a homeowners pan, right? I don't even have medical insurance. We cannot afford medical insurance. It's just expensive. I'm glad God's got us covered. At the end of the day, it's, you know, it's like that's who I rely on to protect us until we figure that part out of it. I'm focusing on right now for our business to what I see what other companies are doing and what I want to do.

What do you mean by the material business? Sand. San, loam compost mixes, lawn leveling mixes, right? Bringing out better quality materials and... Like your coffee ground leveling mix. Yeah. So we just got, like Leander requires you to use a 75, 25, kind of like a loam compost mix to put down and you're supposed to put six inches,

which is the right way to do it underneath sod. Now, if they're doing that, who knows? But we create one, we just got some material and we're going to mix up our own 75% loan, but use 25% of the coffee grounds and manure mix because the coffee grounds provides nitrogen only, but the water and nutrient retention on coffee grounds is really good. It's really comparable to spagnum peat moss, which is like the leader of compost. And Texas A&M did a huge study on the coffee grounds. And so as clean as it is, it doesn't have rocks and mulch and sticks.

and it's a very clean product. If water's an issue, why are we not doing more at the beginning of the process that helps the homeowners in the long process? Because I went to Colleen the other day and these people bought a house a year and a half ago, so they're outside their warranty. And they put no material down underneath the sod. I have it on my Facebook is like a picture where it's four inches of rock. They paid $300 something thousand dollars.

It's going to cost them another $6,000 to have a yard that they should. have had right in the first place, then fine. If you guys are going to cut the corners, then I'm going to cut the corners on everybody else. And I'm going to get a good quality product and I'm going to undercut the market because you guys shouldn't. If you're telling me, that's how it has to be. I'll sell it to you for cheaper. Just to do it right by a homeowner. Do right by what the people like own your product? And your product is a house and a home for people's family and memories. Like own that. Do you see any other opportunities like in software? Like I kind of look at this industry as like a you probably don't look at it as new or novel,

but I think most people look at it as new and novel. I compare it to epoxy flooring in garages, right? It was very niche five or ten years ago. And now there's a whole marketplace built up around it to where you can pay five grand to fly to Pennsylvania and take a course over the weekend on how to do epoxy flooring and then come back home and start your own business. Do you see opportunities like that, like maybe lawn leveling software, like booking software, where like tangential, maybe software, maybe not opportunities that are very directly tied to long

leveling. No, I won't put any more investment into long leveling that I already have. What do you mean by that? It's a niche market. And the reason why we came out in the material business is because people want to pay to do it themselves too because there's a sense of pride and joy in that, right? I mean, we all did it. I won't do it anymore.

I know how hard it is to do it in the heat and to not have the equipment because the first year we did it. It was all shoveling. There was no dingoes to speed up the process and to do that. It's tough work. So it's not more people are getting into the market. And because it's seasonal, there's only so much that's really worth getting involved in that. I think there's like a company tried to start up last year and by the end of the year,

they sold all their equipment. I'm into software. If you seem like my Google sheet, when I do a job, I collect all the information, the service, the delivery cost, the labor cost, the material amount, the square footage. I collect all that data and I color code everything because I need to follow the process. When you have 600 leads, how do I know if they made it to the next level? I use a four-tier sheet. We got responses, appointments booked, quoted, and completed.

I instantly can go in there and just divide the numbers to get my closing rates and what people were converting and things like that. I used to work at a data company called Corva, which is basically AI drilling. in the oil field because I have an oil and gas background of like 12 or 15 years, sitting on a rig, hoping my yard would look like that one day. And then I'm, you know, pandemic hits and it's like, here's your opportunity. Looking at data, data tells us a lot of information. If I go in there and look, where are all my jobs, most of my jobs are in Georgetown. Then the next amount of jobs are in Liberty Hill in Austin. And so we know where the jobs are and most of our work is new bills. I'd say it's probably 85 to 90 percent is homes that are

within the pandemic timeline. Why? Inflation. Everybody started throwing up homes as fast as they can, doing crappy jobs. And we just got to get to the next one. We got to get to the next one. We got to get the next one. Because we had interest rates at like 2.75 or two and a half to buy a home. And so there's a lot of repairs and work to be done to all these properties over the next several years. I guess that's good for business. It is. It's good for business. It just sucks because you know, you pay for something and you didn't get really too much of anything. And now everybody, everybody starts labeling it as to saw a home builder grade, right? Which is ankle breakers. Yeah. You know, that's how they refer to that as home builder grade, you know.

Yeah, I've been looking at like the Google trends and keywords. And I feel like in most markets, lawn leveling is still early. And where you're at, it's like getting somewhat saturated. It's saturated, but it's not, right? Because like I said, we've did 100-something jobs this year, right? We did more than we ever have. We couldn't get to everybody. but there's always a repeat business, a sense of you get 10, 11 clients who need a second leveling, right, out of those. And then you have people who plan for it next year. And then you've got the new people who are now starting to discover it, didn't know there was a lawn leveling company. And now a lot of what we're starting to do is like when we say lawn leveling, people think that's the same thing as lawn grading.

And they want us to solve their drainage issues because their home builder built it on a flat and didn't grade it. And so we get a lot of calls that go into that and that goes into landscaping. And so I feel bad for these people and I have a sense of ownership that I have people who want to work, contractors who want to work and do good work. So I just need to get them in partnership and say, hey, you know what? Let me send my landscaping crew out there to go take a look at it. And we'll do the best job that we think we need to do that we can do. And if they're unhappy, then we'll do whatever we've got to do to make it right.

Because that's our job. Do something right. Sure, there's circumstances outside of it. But that's just kind of where it has pulled me to it. And that's why I use a landscape designer. Somebody will say, hey, what about these plants? Like, I don't know plants. Let me get somebody who's really good with plants.

You give me a target to hit what you want. I'll put it all together for you. I'll button it up. Yeah. If nothing else, I think that one of the big unlocks for me in this conversation has been using long leveling as like your core competency and your niche and your specialty, but like that's not the main thing. That might end up being 20% of your business.

business, you're leading that into bigger five figure, six figure landscaping jobs even, right? Correct. Correct. Interesting. That's the path we're heading. Yeah. Well, Brandon, like, this has been super insightful. Yeah, Chris, I appreciate it. Yeah. Where can people find you if they want to look you up or listen to your podcast, your website? We'll be Central Texas lawn leveling. CTXLL is the brand that's starting to become it, which kind of basically Central Texas lawn leveling, Central Texas lawn and landscaping, right? you know, becoming that whole outdoor solution. So we have TikToks that CTX lawn leveling, Instagram, Facebook. We have all that on there. And then, of course, our website. As always, we're growing

and we're just managing that as fast as we can. We try to hire people and we have to diversify into landscaping. So hopefully this will be the year where we'll stay in it full time all year long because it's not anybody that's doing that. We are looking at creating a podcast. I think Saturday we're going to shoot our first video. Oh, that's cool. And so we really kind of. What's the podcast going to be called? Yeah, Level Up Lawn podcast is what we're thinking.

So, because that's what we are. We're lawn leveling companies. Do you get any business from TikTok or Instagram or is it not local? Every now and then, not really. I use it to try to just simplify what we're doing in a job and what's going on and what all goes into it, you know, loading material and delivering materials and scalping and things like that. Facebook is majority of any social media. It's going to be mostly Facebook because that's where the lawn groups are. And there's one lawn group with like 80,000 people in it.

Wow. Like just in your area or? No, just in under grass. It's called Bermuda, Bermuda lawn dominators. Okay. It's huge. There's 80,000 people from all over. I mean, it's such an awesome community. That's just kind of what it is. There's 80,000 people geeking out about grass. People have no idea how much opportunity there is in Facebook groups. Yeah. And so we poke around in there, right? So there's not really a lawn leveling company established in San Antonio, New Bromfels, South Austin.

So we will cover those areas. We go to San Antonio. I tell people, hey, we'll go to Houston. We just need two jobs to go there because we have to spend two and a half hours driving there, two and a half hours driving back. And a core air rate and level material. we're spending five hours in labor and gas just to get to the job. Here, we're 30, 45 minutes away, but we want to do a good job.

And I get it. It's like tile work and painting. I don't want to do those. I will pay somebody to do those. Yeah. Yeah, same. So I've done tile work. And I was tripping all over that bathroom.

I'll tell you what. Yeah. You know, there's just some things we don't want to do. And if you want to do it yourself, that's fine. I'll provide you a really good quality product to level your yard with. that has nutrient value, water retention value, that helps make it easier on you long term. So I'll provide you the material then. Okay.

Well, Brandon, this is great. Thank you for your time. Yep. I'll catch you some other time. Okay, man. All right. See you. Take care.

Bye. Okay. Hope you enjoyed that interview with Brandon at Central Texas Long Leveling. Please subscribe and follow me for more. Share with your friends. And let me know if I should do more home service business profile. episodes like this.