610: How a Teenager Built and Sold a 6-Figure Lawn Care Business

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0:01:38 How a middle schooler started a business that eventually made 70 grand in profit in one
0:01:43 year and then ultimately had a six-figure exit at just 21 years old.
0:01:49 What’s up?
0:01:50 What’s up, Nick Lover here.
0:01:51 Welcome to the SideHustle Show, part of the entrepreneur podcast and network.
0:01:54 Yes, the business podcast you can actually apply.
0:01:56 We’re not talking software today.
0:01:58 We’re not talking viral apps.
0:02:00 We’re not talking venture capital.
0:02:01 We’re talking lawn mowing.
0:02:03 Yes, simple, local, low overhead, strong margins, incredible story for you today.
0:02:07 I know it’ll inspire a lot of people to go out there and take action from mudlabscourses.com
0:02:14 and formerly of Yard Boys, Jack Fleming.
0:02:16 Welcome to the SideHustle Show.
0:02:18 Thanks, Nick.
0:02:19 Thanks so much for having me and I’m really excited to talk, share my experience and a
0:02:22 lot of the funny and sad and crazy stories along the way.
0:02:26 You guys have been a cool journey so far and I know you’re just getting started in the
0:02:29 world of business.
0:02:30 Let’s stick around.
0:02:31 You’re going to learn how Jack got his first customers, grew the business, so it wasn’t
0:02:34 relying on him cutting all the grass and ultimately sold it for a six-figure sum.
0:02:38 Talk about giving yourself a great financial foundation at a young age.
0:02:42 That’s a real magic strategy of working for a cash flow plus equity in the business.
0:02:47 Now, you might not be interested in lawn care and I get it.
0:02:49 That’s cool, but you can still apply some of Jack’s broader strategies to whatever niche
0:02:53 you choose.
0:02:54 That’s why I put together this week’s Listener Only bonus.
0:02:57 It’s my big list of 101 service business ideas to get those creative juices flowing.
0:03:02 You can go download that for free at the show notes for this episode.
0:03:05 Just follow the link in the episode description and you’ll get right over there.
0:03:09 Jack, my understanding is you’re 13 years old.
0:03:12 You get the idea.
0:03:13 I got to make some extra money.
0:03:14 I’m going to go cut grass.
0:03:15 Tell me about your first customer, your first job here.
0:03:17 My very first client, it was a rental property.
0:03:20 The client hadn’t mowed it in about six weeks.
0:03:22 I was young and dumb and super naive and I said, “We could do it for 30 bucks and we’ll
0:03:28 probably get it done in 45 minutes.”
0:03:31 Eight hours later, I think I made $278 per hour average and I didn’t subtract expenses
0:03:38 because I didn’t want to lose money on my first job.
0:03:40 I probably broke even my very first job last Saturday and I was like, “Wow, what did I actually
0:03:46 get myself into?”
0:03:47 That was the moment I was like, “Wow, this might be a little bit more challenging than
0:03:50 I actually thought it would.”
0:03:51 Yeah.
0:03:52 Well, good on you for getting out there and getting a yes.
0:03:53 I don’t know how many doors you had to knock on before somebody said yes to you, but somebody
0:03:58 did.
0:03:59 Somebody hired you and you learned a valuable lesson, underbid the work required, but what
0:04:03 happens after that?
0:04:04 One of my best friends found out the night before I was just going to go knock on doors
0:04:08 in my neighborhood and see if I could basically get some clients, get some lawn mowing projects.
0:04:12 He was like, “Jack, let me come with you.”
0:04:14 I was like, “Sure.
0:04:15 Two’s better than one.”
0:04:16 Yeah.
0:04:17 Safety in numbers.
0:04:18 Yeah.
0:04:19 Exactly.
0:04:20 We were these little cute 13-year-old kids.
0:04:21 I was like, “I need to…”
0:04:22 I don’t know.
0:04:23 If there’s two of us, I’ll feel more confident and a little bit less scared when I go and
0:04:25 knock on all these strangers’ doors.
0:04:27 I jumped on Canva, I remember, and I printed out a one-page homemade granola-looking little
0:04:34 flyer that had my name, had my phone number, our email, and then our services, a lawn mowing
0:04:39 between like $20 and $30, pet waste cleanup, I think I charged $3 for as an add-on service.
0:04:45 We basically printed out a bunch.
0:04:48 I think over the next week, week and a half, we knocked on about a thousand or more houses.
0:04:53 Wow.
0:04:54 Yeah.
0:04:55 We just made a little cute pitch.
0:04:56 I’d knock on the door and I would say, “Hi, my name’s Jack.
0:04:58 I live in the neighborhood.”
0:04:59 I’d get quiet.
0:05:00 Then Nathan would go, “My name’s Nathan.”
0:05:03 Then I would say, “We’re like, I want to know if you wanted any yard care services
0:05:06 today.”
0:05:07 Then I learned, because I heard on a podcast, you’re supposed to stay quiet at that point
0:05:10 and just really listen, and typically when you’re 13, they’re really nice.
0:05:15 They’re like, “Oh, no, we’re good.”
0:05:17 I’m like, “Oh, well, what about when you’re out of town?”
0:05:19 They’re like, “Oh, I didn’t think of that.”
0:05:21 I’m like, “Yeah, well, we could just do it up until you’re out of town.”
0:05:24 It was just kind of, we got this sales pitch nailed down as we went along and just kind
0:05:29 of grew it all organically through that process.
0:05:31 Yeah.
0:05:32 Really refined that.
0:05:33 What pitch is going to work after hitting a thousand houses?
0:05:35 Yeah.
0:05:36 Exactly.
0:05:37 That’s kind of crazy.
0:05:38 My question with Lawn Mower and really a lot of these home care services, if that home
0:05:42 owner has been there for any length of time, they have a system in place.
0:05:45 They’re either doing it for themselves or they have a service.
0:05:49 It seems hard to break into that unless it’s a huge pain point for them.
0:05:55 We have a very tiny little lawn.
0:05:56 It’s like, “Well, this takes five minutes for me to go do.”
0:05:58 That’s kind of the question.
0:05:59 What market share are you disrupting mostly?
0:06:02 Was it people doing it themselves?
0:06:03 Were you displacing other service providers in the area?
0:06:06 The industry turnover rates super, super high in all service industries.
0:06:10 With us, it’s basically, if you show up on time, you leave ish on time, you charge the
0:06:15 amount of price to the client that you actually said you would, and you don’t show up high
0:06:18 or drunk, you’re about better than 90% of the other services.
0:06:22 Hopefully, they didn’t have to worry about that with 13-year-olds.
0:06:26 But it was the pricing, it was the timing.
0:06:28 For us, our entry was, we started just with a handful of clients in my neighborhood,
0:06:34 and then it was over a nine-season period that we were getting to the point where we
0:06:38 had worked for about 80%, 85% of all the houses in my subdivision, which was a couple hundred
0:06:43 houses at that time.
0:06:44 It was cool because I’d been there for so long, I knew that Mrs. Smith was 93 years
0:06:49 old and had four cats and their names were X, Y, and Z, and then this person just moved
0:06:54 in.
0:06:55 We had all the real estate agents knew who we were because we do work for them.
0:06:58 It kind of just became like we were just the kids in the neighborhood that you would call
0:07:02 whenever you needed an outdoor service done.
0:07:04 But originally, our entry was pretty much, there’s a lot of turnover, so it was like
0:07:08 if a client moved in to the neighborhood that needed a new service or they had issues with
0:07:13 their old service and they were looking around, word of mouth was our biggest marketing factor
0:07:17 because we had an excellent reputation as we still do, and that’s what we really relied
0:07:21 on over time.
0:07:22 Yeah, that makes sense where you show up, when you say you’re going to show up, do what
0:07:26 you say you’re going to do, and be around, be a part of the community.
0:07:29 People feel confident making that recommendation to say, “Oh yeah, I’ve got somebody that
0:07:33 I know and trust and like, and they’ll help take care of you too,” so I can definitely
0:07:37 see how that fuels it over time.
0:07:39 But in the early days, a lot of grass roots, a lot of knocking on doors, and a lot of
0:07:43 rejection I imagine as well.
0:07:45 We had so many rejections that in the moment are super disheartening when you’re 13 years
0:07:49 old and then you look back and it’s kind of funny and it’s a hilarious story to tell.
0:07:53 I remember, I think it was the second house we ever knocked on.
0:07:57 We knocked on this house, this lady came to the door and I knew her son because we were
0:08:00 in the swim team together, and I remember saying, “Hey, is this something you’re interested
0:08:04 in having in your lawnmode?”
0:08:05 I remember her looking at me and going, “Well, if I was going to have anyone do it, I’d have
0:08:09 my son do it,” and so my son needs to work just as much as you, and I remember being
0:08:13 kind of off-put by that because I was like, as a little 13-year-old, I kind of had my
0:08:18 feelings hurt, and I remember now it’s funny because it’s like, you realize that they’re
0:08:22 not necessarily rejecting you.
0:08:24 It’s just that it’s not the right person or not the right service, and through all those
0:08:27 little rejections, you kind of just go, “Oh, it is what it is.
0:08:30 I guess it wasn’t right.”
0:08:31 You just move on, you do more houses, and then you get more clients.
0:08:34 It’s just kind of a natural organic progression.
0:08:35 Yeah.
0:08:36 You develop a thick skin right away.
0:08:38 We had people throw every excuse at me when I was knocking on doors, like, “I don’t believe
0:08:42 in Cole Collie,” and my brother was with me.
0:08:45 He’s like, “It’s not like it’s Jesus,” but a lot of fun stuff came out of that.
0:08:50 You end up signing up a bunch of clients doing this over the course of nine seasons, and I
0:08:54 think that’s what’s interesting here is a lot of common teenage, like, how do I make
0:09:00 money during the summer?
0:09:01 Like, okay, I’ll go cut grass, but to take that from just a summer little side project,
0:09:06 maybe I have a half dozen yards if I’m lucky, to make something that’s really scalable and
0:09:12 thinking about it from the entrepreneurial standpoint of like, how do I get crews in
0:09:15 place to go out and do this?
0:09:17 I imagine doing it yourself, starting out like most service providers, but you talk
0:09:22 about, I guess, delivering the work and the startup costs, like, maybe you borrowed Mama
0:09:26 Dad’s mower and then went from there, but what went into it in terms of the startup costs?
0:09:31 When I started, I was 13, and I actually borrowed my neighbor’s lawn mower that didn’t have
0:09:35 a gas cap.
0:09:36 I had this little maybe 20-year-old lawn mower that I just pushed from house to house, and
0:09:41 then my friend had a weed wacker and a battery-powered blower.
0:09:45 Our sort of costs were zero when we first got started.
0:09:48 Over those nine summers where it progressed to, it was completely different.
0:09:52 Like, our working cash flow by the end was close to $30,000, $40,000 just to keep track
0:09:57 of all the projects we had, all the payroll, all the equipment rentals, material costs.
0:10:02 We had a full-time office manager and staff to manage all incoming leads, estimates, financial.
0:10:07 Wow.
0:10:08 Yeah, and so I would say it was kind of like out of the nine seasons I did it, every three
0:10:11 years the business totally changed.
0:10:13 So the first three years, it was just me and my buddy, and with my parents lawn mower.
0:10:18 Well, honestly, that was just for the first couple of months of that season, but after
0:10:21 it was just some used, cheap equipment that we had.
0:10:25 The next three years, it was starting to be like, “Okay, what is actually tracking your
0:10:28 numbers look like?
0:10:29 Am I actually making money at this project or not?
0:10:32 What’s we’re breaking into social media marketing?
0:10:34 We’re breaking into some more technical construction landscape services like irrigation or maybe
0:10:40 light plant design, and then the last three years was a full-on, all those large landscaping
0:10:45 crew companies you see around where we have full-time office, we have social media marketing,
0:10:49 paid advertising, trained crews, we pull permits.
0:10:54 Our last project we did was for $60,000 and it was a full front and backyard scrape, redo,
0:10:59 new driveways, concrete lighting.
0:11:01 I think their planting budget was $15,000.
0:11:04 People spend way too much money on their yards.
0:11:05 So it’s kind of every three years that’s kind of that transition where the business kind
0:11:10 of, the operations need to change, but it’s kind of like constantly reinventing it as
0:11:13 it went.
0:11:14 Yeah, trying to rebuild that airplane while it’s in flight, and that’s really cool to
0:11:19 see the evolution of that and some huge projects.
0:11:22 Like we’re not talking about going door-to-door pushing a broken lawn mower anymore.
0:11:26 We’re talking about major, major landscaping projects.
0:11:29 Right, exactly.
0:11:30 Yeah.
0:11:31 And that’s where that last three years kind of came in as we, right at 2020, it was actually
0:11:34 a really good year.
0:11:35 That was the year that we transitioned from primarily landscape maintenance.
0:11:40 So like mowing lawns, cleaning yards, replacing mulch into like a landscape construction and
0:11:45 design firm, which that transition came about for two reasons.
0:11:48 I was actually going off to college at that point and I couldn’t mow lawns when I was
0:11:52 out of state.
0:11:53 And then the other reason is the margins were just higher from a construction perspective
0:11:57 and it was easier to land high ticket clients and then work with them over a long period
0:12:00 of time.
0:12:01 Part of me wants to ask, why college?
0:12:03 If you already got this thing that’s a six-figure business as a teenager, like do you really
0:12:07 need to go off and spend all this money on tuition?
0:12:09 I’ve already got this thing.
0:12:11 I could plow that investment into here and hopefully grow it.
0:12:13 You asked that question once.
0:12:14 I ask it to myself like every single day over the last four years, especially when I’m in
0:12:19 my finance class and they’re asking about certain things that I’ve already, definitely
0:12:24 they cover it from a different perspective.
0:12:25 But I’ve real life experience that I think a lot of my other fellow students don’t have.
0:12:29 Yeah.
0:12:30 It’s not just theory.
0:12:31 I guess something to apply this to.
0:12:32 Yeah.
0:12:33 No, like especially like even I remember in school, like we’re uncovering like the importance
0:12:36 of cash flow.
0:12:37 I remember most of the students were zoned out.
0:12:39 I remember thinking to myself, oh yeah, like two months ago when my school called me and
0:12:42 asked for a $20,000 check and I had already made $20,000 that season.
0:12:45 But I started $40,000 of other projects and you can make it on paper, but you still have
0:12:50 to have cash flow.
0:12:51 Like that concept, it was so real to me.
0:12:52 I remember being like, okay, this is probably an area where I’ve learned that it’s a little
0:12:56 bit different for me.
0:12:57 So, I graduated high school in 2019 and I was really stuck because I had a friend that
0:13:04 I had made and met who was about three years older than me.
0:13:07 His name is RJ at Greenworks Landscaping, one of the best character guys I know.
0:13:13 And I remember he spoke with me and said, “Jack, I’m three years ahead of you.
0:13:16 I make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year.
0:13:19 I work six months out of the year and I own my own company and this can be you in two
0:13:23 to three years.”
0:13:24 Right.
0:13:25 He’s laid out the path.
0:13:26 Yeah.
0:13:27 And the best part is he’s such a great guy.
0:13:28 He goes, “And I will show you how to do this.
0:13:30 I’m 18 years old and I’m going, oh my goodness, my dad doesn’t even make a couple hundred
0:13:33 thousand dollars a year.”
0:13:35 And for me, I had to really sit down and think, is this more of an opportunity to bring me
0:13:41 into my next area of life or is this an area where I really want to focus on growing?
0:13:46 And so, for me, I recognize one of my biggest goals was to go to college and to graduate
0:13:51 debt free with my degree rather than looking at this business as my end all be all.
0:13:56 I want to have the largest landscape construction firm in all of Denver, Colorado, which is
0:13:59 where I was located at the time.
0:14:01 Mine was it was an opportunity and a way to get to my bigger goal, which was going in
0:14:05 and actually teaching others how to better run their businesses and actually better operate
0:14:10 their companies.
0:14:11 And so, for me, I saw that through college.
0:14:13 I saw that through getting a degree debt free and I saw my landscaping business as a way
0:14:17 to practice what I want to eventually teach and also pay for that opportunity debt free.
0:14:21 Yeah.
0:14:22 That’s fair.
0:14:23 It’s like, well, I already got something that’s working here and my buddy has laid
0:14:27 out the path.
0:14:28 So, that’s funny.
0:14:29 A friend of my brother is like who we ski with all the time, like similar, like landscaping
0:14:32 business works hard all summer long, but skis almost every single day in the winter
0:14:37 because it’s like, well, I’m not cutting a lot of grass because nothing’s growing
0:14:41 right now.
0:14:42 Exactly.
0:14:43 It’s covered in snow.
0:14:44 More with Jack in just a moment, including how his clients reacted when it was no longer
0:14:46 just him showing up to do the work and the specific profit margins he was targeting right
0:14:51 after this.
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0:17:06 I want to talk about the transition from kind of like the scrappy middle school hustlers
0:17:11 going door-to-door to now hiring other people to do the work and if Mrs. Smith and her four
0:17:18 cats, what’s her reaction when somebody else shows up and it’s not Jack showing up to cut
0:17:23 the grass anymore?
0:17:24 Like that first level of going from solo service provider to more of an agency type of business.
0:17:29 Mrs. Smith was very disappointed when she eventually sent an email or saw me because
0:17:33 I would fill in all the time as well when I first was transitioning.
0:17:36 She would say, “I hired you guys because I saw you on the first day and I don’t know
0:17:40 where you went and I explained where I was at, how many hours, there’s only so many
0:17:43 hours in a day and I want to make sure I was doing a good job managing everything.”
0:17:48 Mrs. Smith was very understanding but at that transition it was really difficult, especially
0:17:53 I always worked with one or two other people so it wasn’t just me by myself all the time.
0:17:58 I always would hire friends.
0:18:00 I played soccer in high school so I had three-quarters of my soccer team employed by me was the coach
0:18:05 hated because-
0:18:06 How cool is that?
0:18:07 That’s fantastic.
0:18:08 That’s really cool.
0:18:09 My coach hated it because they’d come to practice dead tired because they walked 15-20 miles
0:18:13 that day and they’re supposed to run around a track out in the heat and they’re already
0:18:17 toast but so for me the transition was I already had recently ever since the beginning broken
0:18:22 into the fact like well if you’re charging the client about let’s say for round numbers
0:18:26 $50 an hour for a project and you only have to pay $20, at that time it was $20 an hour
0:18:32 to one of your employees, well you’re netting the difference $30 an hour difference and
0:18:36 if you can do that with two three people at a time you might be picking up that $60, $80
0:18:41 an hour going directly to you.
0:18:44 For me it was an opportunity well I never had an issue landing the work my issue is always
0:18:48 finding the workers that transition period what started with just my friends but then
0:18:52 it also went to I did LinkedIn posts I did indeed we did a lot of hiring off of like
0:18:59 zip recruiter next door I’ve done so many interviews at Starbucks basically it’s other
0:19:03 high school college kids that come and sit down and you walk this narrow balance of looking
0:19:08 as professional as possible but then also letting them know like at least in the early
0:19:11 days when I was 16 17 years old right right the high school business and I remember all
0:19:17 the time it wasn’t an official role but in my head I was thinking well the more mature
0:19:21 they are the better they’re going to be so I try to only hire people that were older
0:19:23 and wiser than me and so most of our crew was three four five years older than me for
0:19:29 most of the time so I was like one of our crew managers Ethan he joined back in 20 I
0:19:34 want to say 18 I should know that but he just graduated from CU Boulder physics student
0:19:40 remarkably smart just so intelligent he worked with me for years and years and I think he’s
0:19:44 about four or five years older than me which was really helpful because it grows that
0:19:48 level of confidence with crews and employees and clients but it always definitely tricky
0:19:52 when you’re 16 years old hiring a 21 year old yeah and you try to manage somebody older
0:19:59 than you yeah it’s a weird place to be yeah it’s definitely odd after a little bit you
0:20:03 realize you’re all kind of in the same boat and it’s not the end of the world is that
0:20:06 where you like to be in terms of the pricing and margins like a 60% gross margin on labor
0:20:11 you’ve mentioned okay I’m gonna charge the client 50 bucks an hour is all estimate like
0:20:15 how long is this job gonna take but I’m gonna pay 20 to the worker and is that typical for
0:20:21 pricing this type of service it depends so I didn’t know this going in but what I learned
0:20:25 over time is landscape maintenance the margins are a little bit tighter and landscape construction
0:20:30 you’re gonna have a little bit larger margins so on the construction side which is where
0:20:34 we did all of our really detailed number tracking to make sure we’re actually being profitable
0:20:38 on every single job we aim for 40% margin so let’s say if you have a product you bring
0:20:43 in for $10,000 we expect that it be it depends from project to project but around we’ll say
0:20:49 maybe $4,000 of material another $2,000 of labor and then you’ll have about $4,000 left
0:20:54 over in gross profit then from there you still have to subtract overhead and for us typically
0:21:01 it’s around a 20% somewhere between 20 and 30% net profit margin we run on the landscape
0:21:08 construction side overhead in this case would be fuel office staff exactly software stuff
0:21:13 marketing expenses yeah so all like insurance is a big one for construction companies just
0:21:18 because we have a lot of guys out in the field doing nothing dangerous but they work around
0:21:22 heavy machinery equipment training and then other trucks trailers someone drives over
0:21:27 something that pops a tire and it’s $400 and that has to come out of somewhere so okay
0:21:32 no that makes sense that’s helpful to know too and I guess that’s somewhat intuitive
0:21:37 where I’m gonna trade a little bit of margin on the maintenance side in exchange for recurring
0:21:42 week like it’s more predictable like okay every week we’re gonna go and cut this lawn
0:21:46 it’s gonna be part of our regular route and so it becomes simpler and probably more competitive
0:21:51 on that side too like other people try to come in and take that business from you the maintenance
0:21:56 was fun because it’s predictable I started to grow in Colorado the first second week
0:22:00 of April ran through the last week of October you know once a week you charge between $25
0:22:04 and $35 back then now inflation has caused everything to go more expensive but it’s
0:22:08 really predictable whereas the project side you can have a bunch of really great leads
0:22:13 come in for 20 30 $50,000 projects and then it takes three six months to actually finalize
0:22:19 all the details with the client there’s more risk but there’s a lot more reward the more
0:22:23 practice I got at landing those clients that was where the main deciding factor is the
0:22:28 fact I wasn’t there at the beginning and end of the seasons from maintenance so I kind
0:22:33 of didn’t have a choice I had to switch over but it also turned out to be one of the best
0:22:36 decisions we ended up making as well.
0:22:38 Gotcha on the tools and technology you go back to the overhead thing what kind of tools
0:22:44 are you using to manage all the different crews like where they need to be at what time
0:22:48 to hold all this together and try to do it remotely like you said early season late
0:22:51 season.
0:22:52 Every three years it totally changed the first year is real simple we had it was the end
0:22:56 of the third year so we got all set up on Google suite so Google Suites one of the most
0:23:01 underpriced technology packages there are out there it’s so great for starting any sort
0:23:06 of side hustle business and it allowed us to all have our individual emails all share
0:23:10 the same Google calendar and basically just have a place to put all of our documents in
0:23:13 one place so everyone could take a look at things as they needed to.
0:23:17 So for us we just ran our schedule off of Google so we’d open up the notes on a specific
0:23:22 day and we would just scroll down to the notes and we would see that there’s 23 lawns in
0:23:26 there and we would just go in order and the office manager that we had essentially would
0:23:32 just make sure to put them in the right order which was the most efficient route for that
0:23:35 day.
0:23:36 All right so we got Google Suites super powerful tool to help keep everything in one place
0:23:40 anything else on the tools and tech front.
0:23:42 We also use QuickBooks for a while we also looked at entering into working with like
0:23:45 Jobber and some other like CRM as well as scheduling projects.
0:23:50 Those were all really helpful because before it was honestly just me running everything
0:23:54 off a whiteboard in my bedroom and when we had a team in an office and two different
0:23:59 crews three different crews and subcontractors they all can’t see that whiteboard so from
0:24:04 there that’s where we really started leaning heavily into the softwares which for us saved
0:24:08 us so much on cost made us so much more efficient actually created a good opportunity for us
0:24:12 to grow.
0:24:13 Now at what point was the call volume such that you needed an admin staff to help answer
0:24:19 calls and get things scheduled?
0:24:21 Honestly it was probably close to the fifth year when we were doing about north of a hundred
0:24:26 thousand in revenue.
0:24:28 I think I hired it a year late and that was when we were doing about three hundred thousand
0:24:33 in gross revenue.
0:24:34 For us one of the worst days of my life was it was about ten days after quarantine starts
0:24:39 this is the first week of April of 2020.
0:24:42 We had one person post some next door saying oh we gave yard boys a call they were super
0:24:47 helpful if anyone needs anything you should give them a call.
0:24:50 That one post I had probably thirty clients that we had worked for before respond to the
0:24:54 bottom of it saying oh they’re great they’re awesome everyone give them a call.
0:24:58 Everyone in the world was on next door in that time and I think I got forty calls in
0:25:02 twenty four hours and I realized how much I was over my head.
0:25:08 I hired so I have a younger sister named Evelyn I hired Evelyn who was thirteen years old
0:25:13 and I said Evelyn when this phone rings you need a call you need an answer you need to
0:25:18 ask for their email and then I’m going to get your own personal email and then you’re
0:25:21 going to schedule an estimate to follow up with them and we’ll figure out how to best
0:25:25 train you along the way but right now I can’t answer forty calls run two crews and figure
0:25:31 out all these new clients all along the way.
0:25:33 So that was where it was basically like as the plane was flying I kind of like you said
0:25:37 earlier we were building all the processes and services as we went.
0:25:40 Was this through Google voice or is this through job or like how you manage the phone system
0:25:46 or just like your personal cell phone.
0:25:48 So I had a personal cell phone which was one of the worst decisions of my side hustle
0:25:52 idea in that moment we went to two phone numbers so we had a strictly in office number and
0:25:57 then I got my own personal phone number back which was one of the most it took out so much
0:26:01 stress for my life because it gave another kind of barrier for clients being able to
0:26:05 reach me.
0:26:06 So we got the social media and that’s great to have like customer testimonials and have
0:26:11 that kind of go live right at the start of the season basically anything else you mentioned
0:26:16 some paid traffic but what else worked on social and the marketing front to get some
0:26:21 new business in the door after the cold calling days.
0:26:23 Honestly it was word of mouth that was came for us we had a lot of also old fashioned
0:26:28 branding so all of our trucks all of our employees had an employee shirts they all look professional
0:26:32 when they drove by we had yard signs with these little stick on card holder.
0:26:38 So when you’re taking your dog for a walk in the neighborhood you would see this professional
0:26:42 crew working and go oh we need that same thing done in our house to grab a card and keep
0:26:46 walking.
0:26:47 Eventually the last two years got into like more of a paid social media marketing campaign
0:26:52 we worked with a couple other contractors in the area who were north of they’re around
0:26:56 a couple million if not like five or 10 million in gross revenue and that’s what they said
0:27:00 they had noticed the greatest change and so we started breaking into that but even near
0:27:05 the end that wasn’t our bread and butter our bread and butter was next door organic lead
0:27:09 generation and then honestly just paying my office manager to sit there and monitor
0:27:14 at the whole day.
0:27:15 If any new inquiries came in of someone saying hey does anyone have a good recommendation
0:27:19 to redo our backyard and put in a patio we were the first one to comment and then because
0:27:24 we had such a high reputation and quality of work typically we’d have two to four other
0:27:28 clients we had worked for in the area also comment below us and say oh we worked with
0:27:33 yard boys and Jack they’re phenomenal give them a try and the best part is that stuff
0:27:38 stayed on there forever so I still get calls to my personal number right now and that’s
0:27:43 why my voicemail personally now it says if you’re trying to call yard boys give this
0:27:46 number a call just because we have such like a long standing relationship on next door
0:27:51 with all those people.
0:27:52 Okay I like the yard signs with the little stick on card holders as kind of cool as people
0:27:57 and then just like the word of mouth reputation as you know it takes years to build and moments
0:28:01 to ruin if something does go wrong so like you know any horror stories of not being able
0:28:06 to fulfill the work or anything like that.
0:28:08 In all of my time doing my company I got one bad review it directly corresponded to that
0:28:14 week period where I got so many calls right during COVID and I usually didn’t have the
0:28:19 volume control set up it was an elderly lady who I had answered the phone and said I’ll
0:28:26 get back to you in a couple days and I had misplaced her number lost to completely on
0:28:30 my phone call back and then she posts on next door and says yeah I called yard boys but
0:28:37 they haven’t responded and they totally lied to me and I was like oh I can’t find your
0:28:42 number that’s not my goal I just I just completely lost it and so I message right away I’m like
0:28:47 I’m so sorry we’ll get that fixed I call her up I say I’m so sorry so we actually she
0:28:51 won I think a long million at the time we didn’t offer that at that time but I said
0:28:55 I’ve got three hours on a Saturday I don’t have any other work to do I’ll come by and
0:28:59 personally do it I didn’t actually do any work anymore but I was like oh well she seemed
0:29:02 like she was in her 60s 70s I was like I’m more than happy to stop by this what it is
0:29:06 I was like would you mind deleting that just because that was totally my bad or reputations
0:29:10 everything and she goes oh of course not a problem I mowed her lawn for free didn’t charge
0:29:14 her I watered her trees when she was there she asked me and then about two months later
0:29:18 I checked and it was still up and so I called her I said hey is it okay if I get that taken
0:29:23 down I just like really want to make sure we keep a reputation good and she goes I’m
0:29:27 sorry I’m having a bad day my dog dies and hangs up on me and so that repute that thing
0:29:32 is still on next door so I never got it taken down but that’s the only one at the time that
0:29:37 we had before I so our reputation was everything all of our Google reviews were five stars Yelp
0:29:42 was five stars next door is as good as it could be okay yeah I was gonna ask about what role
0:29:48 the Google Maps listing of the Google local business or Yelp played in this it sounds
0:29:52 like yes we did create profiles on there even though starting out like almost subdivision
0:29:57 specific like starting out super super local but going a little bit broader and setting
0:30:01 up those profiles that’s correct yeah so there’s so many competing there’s Yelp there’s home
0:30:05 advisor there’s one called Angie’s List I think it just got rebranded I can’t remember
0:30:09 what it changed into but oh there’s also thumbtack there’s probably about 10 to 15 places where
0:30:16 you can get reviewed on and so for us we had to pick about five that we really focused on
0:30:21 growing and for us that was next door Yelp Facebook Instagram the very last year and
0:30:29 Google reviews okay and because with those kind of four to five we had them tied into
0:30:34 our website so it automatically showed on our website the best reviews popping up there
0:30:39 so that was kind of where we got all of our workers word of mouth organic which is honestly
0:30:43 the best marketing you can do then just standard old-fashioned business cards out in the driveway
0:30:49 next to a lawn sign like what’s cool about the service industry is it’s still a good
0:30:54 10 15 20 years behind everything else if you just kind of implement some technology but
0:31:01 still tie in with those fundamental old-timey marketing things back in the 1950s or earlier
0:31:06 old-fashioned clean branding you’re going to be miles ahead of most of the other people
0:31:10 in the industry yeah that’s one reason I like businesses like this it’s like a lot of the
0:31:15 existing competition they don’t have a website you see like fax us for a quote type of stuff
0:31:20 like no no just make it easy for me to do business I’m used to Amazon Prime like I just
0:31:24 click the button that shows up at my house like easy right like make this easy and Johnny
0:31:29 Robinson from squeegee God on Twitter like doing his window cleaning business is like
0:31:33 so much of the branding and reputation is online it’s the digital presence it’s the
0:31:38 how you answer the phone it’s like you show up if you’re uniform you show up when you
0:31:42 say you’re going to do you charge what you say you’re going to charge like make it easy
0:31:45 make it seamless so that’s one reason I like it the other reason I like these types of
0:31:48 businesses is just growing demand like just people like I don’t want to bother with this
0:31:53 anymore like people hiring out the service and a diminishing labor pool of people who
0:31:57 want to go into blue collar type services so I think it’s a great place to play and
0:32:01 one that you’ve done really well with did you do anything specific to solicit those
0:32:05 Google reviews Facebook reviews Yelp reviews as you’re wrapping up a job yeah of course
0:32:09 so with all of us like how it is we want our reviews being accurate representation of who
0:32:14 we are and the nice part was we always had really happy really awesome clients and that
0:32:21 was just because we went above and beyond kind of the service because with landscaping
0:32:25 construction we are not a product business we are a service business and so does that
0:32:29 mean if at the end of the job they say hey Jack we love to talk to you about the project
0:32:34 you want to sit up in the front porch and just look at the yard I will sit there for two hours
0:32:37 and generally enjoy my time talking with a client that we just did a big scale project
0:32:41 for and so through conversations like that if I can tell that they were really happy
0:32:45 with kind of service provided and how it worked I’ll say one thing that’s really important
0:32:49 to us is getting these reviews and it’s something the best thing that we could do would you
0:32:53 be comfortable filling out a review we won’t tell you what to say we’ll just send you a
0:32:57 couple examples what other people have done and for us it was 95% of the time they would
0:33:01 say oh of course we’d love to in those reviews since they’re all organic they would highlight
0:33:05 different factors that I might not even thought to mention but they’re like oh they got back
0:33:08 to us on time oh Jack took his shoes off before he went in the house like those little details
0:33:12 that kind of set you apart because you are a service based company okay yeah that’s kind
0:33:16 of cool and then it allows you to branch out to hopefully other nearby cities or suburbs
0:33:22 that might be looking and can find you in maps where it’s like oh that was outside of our
0:33:27 cold calling radius but they still found us exactly at least with us it was our reputation
0:33:32 is everything and that’s kind of a misnomer I think a lot of people kind of look at service
0:33:38 industries of whether it’s plumber electrician landscape construction company as like a lower
0:33:43 paid lower wage job and it definitely is for some but it’s funny most of the time from
0:33:49 what I’ve been hearing through my experiences starting out even as like I was 16 17 in high
0:33:55 school I was making about $500 $600 a day in profit four years ago and that was me waking
0:34:01 up yeah it’s insane money yeah and it’s not rocket science it’s just cutting grass and
0:34:08 I would listen to a bunch of business podcast whether it’s from Wall Street Journal or Guy
0:34:12 Ross and I was learning about business somebody cared about making money making $500 a day
0:34:17 getting a really bad farmer’s tan but at 17 years old that’s all really pretty straightforward
0:34:22 so it’s funny that like there’s a huge opportunity here and people just they just don’t really
0:34:26 know which is kind of what the cool part was is it’s like it’s overlooked because it’s
0:34:31 so obvious yeah there’s a lot of people toiling away looking for that elusive passive income
0:34:36 stream where you might be better off in the near term especially just going out and solving
0:34:41 somebody’s problem yeah no that’s a good way to put it more with Jack in just a moment
0:34:45 including dealing with imposter syndrome bidding on some of these bigger projects and setting
0:34:49 up the business for a six-figure exit right after this I never thought I’d say this but
0:34:54 another spreadsheet of mine has bit the dust it was my net worth and investment tracking
0:34:59 spreadsheet where I would dutifully log into a dozen different accounts every month to
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0:37:23 that’s Squarespace dot com slash side hustle toward the end of this thing what was like
0:37:29 a day in the life logistics for you was this bidding jobs was this trying to play puppet
0:37:33 master on the different crews you got to go here you got to go here what was your role
0:37:38 at the end of this thing I think probably about midway through or to the end of my business
0:37:42 I realized that when you run a business you make your money when you don’t spend your
0:37:47 time running the business but you spend your time fixing it and making the business run
0:37:52 better and that was a hard transition for me because I’m used to overshort a crew I’m
0:37:59 1718 19 years old I can go move some rocks for eight hours yeah yeah I’ll just go do it
0:38:03 right yeah right and so for me one year I set a hard line of this year jack doesn’t do
0:38:09 any work and it’s not because I’m lazy it’s just because if I move rocks for 12 hours
0:38:13 I probably already had 15 hours of other stuff I need to do and that’s going to be late now
0:38:18 and so a day in the life for me those last couple years is I woke up before all of our
0:38:23 crews woke up so we started a project at 7 30 in the morning I woke up at 6 45 7 right
0:38:28 then went downstairs open up my laptop my phone responded some emails respond some client
0:38:33 questions followed up on estimates then typically by 8 8 30 I went to the job site talked with
0:38:39 the manager walked around really having that hands on making sure that everything was done
0:38:44 up to my standards because as the owner like you’re going to catch things that a client
0:38:49 would catch that just the people doing the work they’re there the whole day they’re
0:38:52 just going to miss yeah this was like mind-blowingly frustrating for me when I was running painting
0:38:56 crews in college yes it’s like yeah you can see from your truck on the sidewalk like before
0:39:01 you can get out of the car did no one notice that the masking didn’t come off that upper
0:39:04 window or what it’s just like I don’t know like the attention to detail just like was
0:39:09 really frustrating it’s like come on guys like if you don’t have time to do it right
0:39:12 when do you have time to do it over like all the guys worked with were really great but
0:39:16 occasionally we hired some people that I had to let go and I do remember and just as one
0:39:22 funny story I remember going to a job one day and telling the guys okay you can go ahead
0:39:27 and start planting those plants because he was sitting on a shovel not moving it yeah
0:39:31 and he goes okay sounds good and he like brings a couple plants over and they’re all in those
0:39:34 plastic Home Depot but we didn’t have them from Home Depot but those standard plastic
0:39:38 buckets that are disposable and remember he looks at the plant and he looks at me and
0:39:43 he goes do I take the plastic off before I plant it or do I plant it with the pot and
0:39:47 I remember being like like okay it’s a good thing I’m here just double check sir because
0:39:51 that’s when you go and you plant all these different plants in the buckets you’re supposed
0:39:54 to take off or just little things where we had one time the guys were so tired as the
0:39:59 end of the day we had two different shades of mulch and they had mixed them and put them
0:40:03 all throughout the yard so we had like a red and a brown mulch mixed together which to
0:40:08 me it’s extremely obvious when you look but they’ve been there all day so they were just
0:40:12 moving they’re trying to get out of there and so when my day in the life it was wake
0:40:16 up emails real quick double check to make sure everything’s going in the right direction
0:40:20 no plastic pots were in the holes and then run some deliveries also on the phone with
0:40:26 suppliers, clients confirming questions or answering things while I’m doing deliveries
0:40:30 and then from about 11 to 2 in the afternoon I went to the same Starbucks every single
0:40:36 day sat on my computer and then just worked on whatever as the business owner whether
0:40:41 it’s payroll fixing a glitch on the website running our next email ad campaigns answering
0:40:47 questions from the office that’s kind of how the day in the life was near the end.
0:40:50 And that’s helpful to hear like still a little bit of hands on like I got to show my face
0:40:54 and like be the leader for these crews and hopefully plug any holes before it sinks the
0:40:59 ship and but also being this business owner and like having a higher level view of things
0:41:05 whereas the business going did you ever run into like the imposter syndrome of biting off
0:41:11 more than you could chew or bidding a five-figure job for the first time or a $25,000 job for
0:41:17 the first time and you’re like can we really get this done?
0:41:21 Do we really know how to deliver?
0:41:22 Yeah, I think that’s a place I perpetually live in is imposter syndrome.
0:41:26 It’s funny even when I was getting ready to do this interview I was like oh my gosh what
0:41:30 if I forget all the stories I did for the last nine years and what if I just don’t have
0:41:35 anything to talk about when you ask me questions and then of course my next thought was well
0:41:39 that’s okay I’m sure you’ll remember as you go along but so I think for me it was big
0:41:44 too because I went to college out of state I was still running things from an operational
0:41:48 side from my dorm but I was in class full time I was studying I played on intramurals
0:41:55 I went to class and did homework and went to the library and at the cafeteria and then
0:42:00 in spring break I would jump on a plane while my friends went to Florida do whatever they’re
0:42:04 going to do I would jump on a plane I would do 25 estimates back to back to back put on
0:42:10 my car heart work boots and ride around my truck and estimate out a couple hundred thousand
0:42:15 dollars of projects and then go right back to college and then go back to being a college
0:42:20 kid again and so for me it’s always been an area where I don’t think I’ve ever felt qualified
0:42:26 and still weird to say like if I told a client oh that’ll be 25,000 dollars like in my head
0:42:30 I’m like oh my gosh what if they know I’m just like 18 years old or 19 and they’re like
0:42:35 no that totally makes sense sounds good and we’ll do it and they’re so happy and then
0:42:39 I get in my truck and I close my eyes and I go all right you’re doing it you’re doing
0:42:43 good just keep on going so that’s a place where I feel like I’ve never fully gotten
0:42:46 out of but it’s a place where I’m trying to continue growing.
0:42:49 And it didn’t start there I think that’s probably the important like you started doing the work
0:42:53 for 275 an hour like you know level up over the course of I’m like I see these big highway
0:42:59 construction crews and they’re working on building like this light rail across the I-90
0:43:04 bridge and it’s like I’m just curious like or was like four generations ago was this
0:43:09 like a little handyman service and they like slowly started bidding bigger and bigger jobs
0:43:13 I kind of ask myself that question like I see these people tackling these projects that
0:43:18 are probably multi-million dollar bids it’s like where’d they start like I’m always curious
0:43:23 the origin story for that so thanks for sharing them the imposter syndrome never really goes
0:43:27 away and it’s just every time like okay let’s learn as we go let’s deliver this and do right
0:43:32 by the clients I want to transition into a portion of getting out of this business or
0:43:37 exiting this business I think to have an exit a six-figure exit under your belt at this
0:43:43 age is something that a lot of entrepreneurs will never see I think the stats are you know
0:43:48 most businesses end up getting shut down rather than sold so I think it’s a really cool plan
0:43:53 to say you know I don’t know if this is what I want to be doing forever and to have said
0:43:56 it up in such a way that somebody else could take it over my transition kind of was two
0:44:01 different phases so in 2020 I started college for the first time I moved from Colorado to
0:44:07 Virginia and we subcontracted out about a hundred weekly clients that we had and as
0:44:12 well as fall cleanup services so all in all is probably about three to four days work
0:44:17 of full-time crew work we found another reputable contractor we had an agreement written up
0:44:23 of my lawyer and he signed we agreed I think it was probably the end of that year after
0:44:28 we’d fulfilled that agreement I went back through and ran the numbers and it dawned
0:44:32 to me that basically I had broken even for subcontracting out for those three or four
0:44:36 months and so my head I go okay well is breaking even a necessary evil like it gives me the
0:44:42 increased income over the summer but then it’s a hassle in the spring and fall to manage
0:44:46 is there an opportunity to essentially sell off these clients and then that way I can
0:44:50 just solely focus on the landscaping side which was higher margin which we had already
0:44:55 done about $200,000 in that previous season for the first time we got in okay me I reached
0:45:01 out to the guy that we had subcontracted to and said hey we’d love to offer you to purchase
0:45:06 these clients is that something you’d be interested in then that was the summer 2021 we signed
0:45:10 a deal for $55,000 which was the purchase of all our client book residential maintenance
0:45:17 client book so any services that were basically with the lawnmowering or an aeration client
0:45:23 spring or fall cleanup things of that nature 55,000 was like six months or so of the net
0:45:29 profit from running that and in the lawn maintenance industry that’s pretty uncommon because none
0:45:36 of them were under contract which is where most the value comes in typically but for
0:45:40 us it made sense because we were trying to transition out and they already had a really
0:45:44 great working relationship with that new service and clients had I think this is what blew
0:45:50 me away the new service had a retention rate I think of close to 90 or 95% which is completely
0:45:56 unheard of I told him I said I’m gonna be honest there’s no guarantee I think if you
0:46:01 do it right you’ll probably keep 70 maybe 80% and he goes okay that makes sense and
0:46:06 in the back of my head I was like you never even really know and I think we checked back
0:46:10 from the following year and he had close to 95% retention and I was like wow that’s spoke
0:46:15 directly to his quality because we actually had trained him to how we ran it and then
0:46:19 also that ease of transition between the two okay so for the buyer in this case they’re
0:46:23 looking at okay these recurring maintenance clients are not under contract but they have
0:46:27 this ongoing need currently yard boys is solving this problem we can step in and buy that book
0:46:32 of business and hopefully retain those clients this is in lieu of any marketing expense to
0:46:37 go out and get this volume of business ourselves like we could shortcut that by just buying
0:46:40 up this volume of work exactly and that’s where the value came in is it’s not that these
0:46:45 are so precious and valuable it’s just that the time it would take to grow it that was
0:46:48 a deal for them if they’re able to retain it and even from the numbers it turned out
0:46:53 to be a major success for them as well as for us cool alright and then that was part
0:46:57 one what was the second part the following year is 2022 my junior year of college and
0:47:01 I was like alright I do know for sure I’m not gonna be going back in and doing landscaping
0:47:05 after I graduate let me shop around and see if there’s a buyer for the rest of this company
0:47:10 essentially and so which is more challenging because it’s one off projects right yeah it’s
0:47:15 one off projects it’s employees but there’s so much turnover and employees and this one
0:47:21 was even way more tricky a couple years ago in high school I had applied in one first place
0:47:26 in the local Colorado competition for the top youth owned business in that state so I called
0:47:30 up one of my former mentors there and said hey I think I was 21 years old then I sound
0:47:37 21 years old I’m trying to sell business and I’ve never done this before do you have anyone
0:47:41 that I could just talk to that like I mean I already checked with my mom and my dad and
0:47:46 got their opinion but like is there someone that like I can just talk to one of the ladies
0:47:50 I knew there has been majorly helpful over these years said let me give you contact this
0:47:55 guy’s worked on he works for a private equity firm and I’m sure he’d love to talk with you
0:48:01 and so I met with him he had a free opportunity at 645 in the morning downtown so I woke up
0:48:07 and ran downtown got breakfast with him and it was so helpful he basically he said don’t
0:48:14 overcomplicate it you check a couple websites to see what the current market rate is for
0:48:18 those things see how your company compares and then create an offer that basically looks
0:48:23 similar to what you’re seeing open in the market and I remember walking away and going
0:48:28 that’s not that hard for his standard stuff it’s months and months and months of CFA
0:48:32 yeah do diligence and everything yeah of course but I just appreciated that you like
0:48:36 even took the time to talk to a 21 year old kid that had a landscape construction company
0:48:40 so went home ran a bunch of numbers looked at our financials compared to what was kind
0:48:45 of out there then reached out actually to the person that had bought our landscape maintenance
0:48:50 clients and said hey essentially do would you be interested in purchasing the rest of this
0:48:56 business and then transitioning the name as well over with him he said for sure he wanted
0:49:01 to get some more time to continue the maintenance side I want to get some more time to finish
0:49:04 running this through college we set up agreement basically that it was a year year and a half
0:49:08 training program where he got to basically I had a shadow for 16 18 months and allowed
0:49:15 me to really show him what it looked like on a daily basis so that transition concluded
0:49:20 in July of 2023 and from there he took over and started running the business without me
0:49:24 now I still in theory you think you’re done and you can pop the confetti since then I’ve
0:49:30 learned a bunch what it actually looks like to do a proper transition and even since we
0:49:35 have transitioned we’ve definitely have experienced some troubles just because when it goes from
0:49:39 you’re literally running everything to someone that you worked with for even a year two years
0:49:43 three years taking over there’s a lot of stuff that can come up with that so that’s kind of
0:49:48 how that transition worked is it was an opportunity for me because I can move on past up and then
0:49:54 also he could enter new industry that he didn’t necessarily have enough experience and to enter
0:49:58 on his own okay so it wasn’t putting it up for sale on any online business brokerage
0:50:04 like a biz buy sell or anything it was like look already have a relationship with this
0:50:08 potential buyer and just kind of like floating that idea you already bought our maintenance
0:50:12 business what do you think about the other side too exactly yeah and with our long maintenance
0:50:16 clients when we first that first transition period we did shop around with some other
0:50:21 local areas and this just the impression we got in from the research I did it was just
0:50:27 the issue of when you transition from one company to another and there’s no contracts
0:50:31 involved the dollar that they would be willing to spend would be lower than this other person
0:50:36 since they already had the relationship and so that was just we did with the first time
0:50:40 around and then the second time I was like all right there’s a lot being said that you
0:50:43 already in your network you already have relationships with people and you know how they work and
0:50:47 you know how they run their business and we already had seen success and how he transitioned
0:50:50 before and that’s why I decided to go with him again for that second term it’s an interesting
0:50:55 one because it’s like for one off projects that you’re buying basically the team and
0:50:59 their expertise but like you said a lot of employee turnover or there can be it’s like
0:51:03 almost you’re buying the online reputation and the goodwill that you have built like
0:51:09 the marketing engine almost like to even though these are one off projects like I’m reasonably
0:51:13 confident that more lead flow is going to be coming through on the basis of this foundation
0:51:18 that you built.
0:51:19 Yeah and the other thing that I would add as well too is it wasn’t as simple as oh yeah
0:51:23 we’ll sell you our website for a couple hundred grand or whatever that wasn’t it it was we’ll
0:51:27 transition midseason so July’s peak everything and it will come with whatever contracts we
0:51:32 already have under contract as well with since we did the year previous there’s no guarantee
0:51:36 so when we actually ended up did transitioning we transitioned over contracts and then basically
0:51:42 worked on training up his guys as well too so and then it’s also and this is kind of
0:51:47 going into kind of my next endeavors is a lot of the stuff I learned along the way it
0:51:52 took me a total of nine summers to basically make the wrong choice or you started when you
0:51:57 were practically a baby you know yeah I was a little baby yeah but like you make the wrong
0:52:02 choice and then you do something wrong you fix that and then you know what the right
0:52:07 thing is and so the real value came in that training along the way is don’t do this don’t
0:52:11 do this this is how we do it and there’s always opportunity for more growth but this is what
0:52:17 we found that works this is how you run your employees your operations your whatever it
0:52:22 is that you’re actually working with yeah absolutely so that leads us nicely into well
0:52:27 what’s next for you what’s got you excited these days sounds like you kind of winding
0:52:30 down the transition phase and now off to the next project I walk in graduation in May so
0:52:36 I’m super not even graduated yet well congrats on that yeah no thank you I’m all finished
0:52:41 what I really learned in high school is yes I made a really good amount of money I paid
0:52:46 for my college debt free I was able to I’ve been to Europe twice I paid for I went to
0:52:52 New Zealand for an internship in real estate development consulting like I’ve had a lot
0:52:56 of great opportunities and it’s paid for a lot of opportunities for me to grow into
0:53:00 however the real growth was in learning what it looks like to actually be an entrepreneur
0:53:07 and like learn how to talk to clients and how to know what it is to actually figure
0:53:14 out if you’re profitable or how to sell services and I learned all that in high school for
0:53:19 what I’m working on now is basically I’m building an online course that’s going to be launching
0:53:22 June 1st where it’s really designed for other high school students to really start businesses
0:53:28 that they want to start and from my perspective like my parents all the time were asked how
0:53:34 did your son learn that and for me it was because of the practice and like the failure
0:53:38 in you it was doing the thing trial and error yeah exactly yeah and for me I just wanted
0:53:43 to be able to basically create a course where you’re able to follow it takes kind of guesswork
0:53:48 and that scared like oh like do I get clients do I buy a lawnmower do I go on social media
0:53:54 like whatever it is like I want to be able to create an opportunity for because a bunch
0:53:59 of my friends in high school the only difference between me and my friends in high school is
0:54:02 I knocked on doors before I fully realized how difficult it’s going to be like there’s
0:54:08 nothing real special about my story it was just the fact that like I did it before I
0:54:11 really thought it through so I wanted to create a course that allows students to know what
0:54:16 that next step is what it actually looks like and to take a lot of the guesswork and the
0:54:19 nerves out of what it looks like and then also give parents a way to allow their kids
0:54:23 in high school to maybe whether it’s mature grow up when we learn what it actually looks
0:54:27 like how business works how to manage money how to talk to people whatever it is that they’re
0:54:31 really looking want to actually grow and I guess the my generation would be called like
0:54:35 adulting how to adult in a better way so yeah you know instead of looking for a job go build
0:54:40 yourself your own job build your own income streams and I love this call to well I didn’t
0:54:45 really give myself a chance to overanalyze and overthink it I just started knocking on
0:54:49 doors and sooner or later people said yes and then I had to figure out the next table
0:54:53 how am I going to deliver this work and then enough people said yes that I needed to hire
0:54:57 help to go deliver this work and then I hired my sister to answer the phones and exactly
0:55:01 like such a cool story. So this is mudlabscourses.com you can find Jack’s upcoming course offerings
0:55:08 over there we’ll be sure to link that up in the show notes as well again mud labs courses
0:55:13 super inspiring story really appreciate you stopping by and sharing the goods on how you
0:55:17 built and eventually sold this thing. Let’s wrap this up with your number one tip for
0:55:23 side hustle nation. Wherever you’re at you probably have enough information to get started
0:55:28 and you know what you need to do to start you’re probably not starting just because
0:55:32 you’re nervous to. I think there’s a lot of for me even like when I was going to start
0:55:37 this new like building the course I was like oh like do I need to do some more interviews
0:55:41 or do some more podcast interviews or really understand my business more. No I have an
0:55:45 understanding of what knowledge I’ve grown in and so I just need to take that next step
0:55:51 and offer that and not get stuck and overthink or get nervous I just need to go for it and
0:55:56 so for me I think there’s a lot of beauty and just kind of stepping out before you really
0:56:00 know exactly what your next step is but you know what the first thing you need to do is
0:56:04 so for me I would say that’s going to be my number one take away and that I really built
0:56:09 my business around is I didn’t let myself overthink things because I’m a natural overthinker
0:56:13 I just landed a project for twenty thirty thousand and went oh my goodness I need to
0:56:18 figure out how to do this one part of the project that I’ve never learned before and
0:56:22 I need to what does it look like for me to get there that was how I just I set a deadline
0:56:26 and then I had to fulfill it by that time and I was impressed with how things were able
0:56:32 to work out and I’m definitely totally believe that that’s an opportunity for everyone else
0:56:35 as well too. Yeah this is the entrepreneurial skill set it’s figuring it out every step
0:56:40 of the way is up against the ceiling of your skills and ability and it’s your job to figure
0:56:45 it out where do we go from here so I like this call you probably have enough information
0:56:49 to get started you don’t need to know steps two through ten to get started you just got
0:56:53 to do the first thing so I like that one a couple takeaways before we wrap up one is
0:56:57 this mention of yours to be the business owner and not the business doer and trying to get
0:57:01 out of that as soon as possible to kind of wear that CEO hat and if that’s where you
0:57:06 want to scale the thing have you love cutting grass like hey that’s fantastic we had somebody
0:57:11 like if you love teaching video game classes to keep doing the thing right you don’t want
0:57:14 to get rid of a job you love in the name of growth and scale but if that is where you
0:57:19 want to go then you got to be the CEO you got to be the business owner. Second thing
0:57:22 was reputation is everything and to have that foresight as a teenager and to show up on
0:57:29 time and be respectful and especially with people’s property like they got a lot of equity
0:57:34 and money tied up in these things like it’s not that anything isn’t reversible but like
0:57:38 there’s potential damage just screw something up and so you have to be a reputable and respectful
0:57:42 person there because all the branding that can happen in person can also happen online
0:57:46 with the example of people flaming you out on next doors you don’t want that to happen.
0:57:50 Again, your listener only bonus for this episode is my list of 101 service business ideas
0:57:56 that you might be able to apply some of Jack’s tactics to to grow a side hustle of your own.
0:58:01 You can download that for free at the show notes for this episode or just follow the
0:58:04 link in the episode description of your podcast app. We’ve got a whole host of blue collar
0:58:10 service business examples we’ve covered the pooper scooper business the window cleaning
0:58:14 business mobile car detailing there are lots of examples kind of in this ballpark if that
0:58:19 is up your alley so we’re trying to link up a few of those other examples in the show notes
0:58:23 as well but big thanks to Jack for sharing his insight. Thanks to our sponsors for helping
0:58:28 make this content free for everyone. You can hit up side hustle nation dot com slash deals
0:58:33 for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thanks for supporting the advertisers
0:58:37 that support the show. That’s it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you find
0:58:42 any value in the show the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend so fire off that text
0:58:47 message. Hey, check out the story of this guy who started this teenage business and grew it to six
0:58:52 figures paid for his college really inspiring stuff. I hope you help spread the word in that way
0:58:57 until next time let’s go out there and make something happen and I’ll catch you in the next
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