Roots to Revenue

How I used subcontracting to win commercial work build a 12-man team

• Robbie Lynn • Season 2 • Episode 7

Share episode

The Subcontracting Secrets That Helped Me Scale Fast (Built a 12-Man Team)
Sam Timus from Classic Gardens Ltd shares how subcontracting helped him win commercial work and scale to a 12-man team. Learn how he managed winter gritting, built systems, tackled paperwork, and used software and smart marketing to grow fast. Featuring team building, pricing tips, LinkedIn, tax, and more.

Try out Jobber for FREE with a 14-day trial with your exclusive discount Root to Revenue https://go.getjobber.com/premierlawns

Sam:

I'm Sam Timus, director of Classic Gardens Limited. When I was like 11, 12, I'd be doing like Saturdays helping going out on jobs. I was just learning the cogs of the business and that really gave me the bug for it. In the early days, I was actually splitting my time 50 50 between gardening and landscaping. Very quickly, I noticed that actually as I'm building both. I can't be on both. So I then started trying to build teams and we got involved with these national companies. Something that we actually got involved in through that was something like the Queen's funeral got a call from one of the guys. He said, look, we need trustworthy teams. Go down to Buckingham Palace. I thought it was a hoax court at first. He was like, do I go to Buckingham Palace? It was a proud moment to be able to do that. A lot of people, and again, Instagram is rife with it, they're videoing themselves, just finishing up at 10, 11 o'clock at night. Oh, we're hustling. And these people are so overrun because they don't have the team behind. Them. They're trying to do so much all themselves that they are working till 10, 11 o'clock at night. One of the most important things I learned to say in business is the word no. Everyone's a yes ma'am when you first start. Oh, can you do this? Yeah. Oh, can you do this? Yeah. Oh no, I can't do that. No, I can't do that. You run outta time in your diary.

Robbie:

What about, and welcome to another episode of Roots to Revenue. We're going to talk about a taboo subject in gardening and lawn care. Now, this episode is gonna be full of actionable tips that you can take away from this episode today. A lot of people think that subcontracting, you can't build a business on subcontracting. However, we're brought in Sam from Classic Gardens Limited, and he's gonna tell you exactly how he built his business through subcontracting. Now, before we get into that, let me tell you about the sponsor. The channel is sponsored by Jobber. Jobber is my go-to software. It does all my scheduling, my invoicing, and the quoting. If you're a busy business owner and you don't have any time and you want to free up more time in your business, so as you can earn more money. Then check out the link in the video description for our exclusive jobber discount

Jason:

to get your unique Premier Loans discount. It's Premier Loans link slash jobber. Sam isn't just talking the talk, he's walking the walk with a thriving subcontracting business and is here to share his story. Sam, would you like to introduce yourself?

Sam:

Hi, you right. I'm Sam Timus director of Classic Gardens Limited based in Hartford Cheer. So Potter's Bar. And yeah we do commercial grounds maintenance predominantly. Again, like you say, started off subcontracting for some of the big national firms and now we've grown into our own commercial work. Tell us, sustaining it ourselves. Tell

Robbie:

us a little bit the size of your team.

Sam:

So there's 12 of us involved in the business. So that's 10 operational guys. Myself and my wife running the office side of things. And yeah they're literally, we've fully booked out on a repeating recurring revenue basis

Robbie:

in the early days. How did you start?

Sam:

In the early days, we were a residential gardening company, and I actually, I first started out, I think the first week in business. I. I was actually splitting my time 50 50 between gardening and landscaping. Took on a landscaping project and I like built my gardening round and I was doing that to try and sustain each other. So I tell the landscaping jobs, I'll be on that one this week doing gardening the next week. And it, it worked and the landscaping helped to support the lack of garden maintenance. And then we. We grew from there. So very quickly I noticed that actually as I'm building both, I can't be on both. So literally when it got to the point of having more like we had landscaping work coming in and we had our grounds maintenance, gardening, building up, I then started trying to build teams and that was, at first it was using other subcontractors to help out. How long,

Robbie:

many years have you been going for a bit of context?

Sam:

So we have been going, this was our 10th year this year. In business as classic gardens, and yeah, we, that that's how we started. We started splitting 50 50 and trying to manage both, but that was really difficult.

Robbie:

What was your background before you did, before you started the business?

Sam:

My background before I actually went, my initial thoughts behind my career path was actually going into like personal training. I did sport and exercise science at college. But my, like my dad, my granddad my uncle, they were all involved in the gardening industry. So that opened some doors for you? A hundred percent, yeah. So on, even when I was at school, I think I remember way back, even when I was like 11, 12, I'd be doing like Saturdays helping going out on jobs, just got the bug for it like you do. And then yeah, as I went through that, I went into the family business was working amongst that and went even my uncle or my dad would be away, they would put the business over to me. And obviously at that point, I don't even think I was driving then, so I'd have to get a driver, pay them. I was just learning the sort of cogs of the business and think that really gave me the bug for it. And then it got to a point like I was working actually with my uncle and we was gonna grow like we we growing a on, and we had the conversation he. I didn't want the stress and the aggravation of growing a business, that and the other. So I said look, I'm gonna go and do my thing, really amicable conversation. And he actually supported me in that. The idea was that I was gonna go down to maybe three days a week, do a couple for myself, but it just took off from there. Why did you use subcontracting? In the early days of any business, you are trying to get revenue into the business and. Obviously like most gardening rounds, there was the seasonality of the round. So we would go along, get to like October, November, and you hear the whole ice getting a bit wet. We don't want you, it's cold. There's not a lot to do. So I found myself literally looking at the diary going, oh, I've got a free day this day. And I just started looking for different revenue streams. And one of them that I stumbled across was the Winter Gritting Services and Snow Clearing. So we actually wait the wait gold. That's it. So we actually started our subcontracting through Gritten and we got involved with a national company, and it would be on things like office blocks or NHS doctor surgeries. Just go there and you'll be given like a list of route. They'll deliver you the salt and they give you the cost per site. And what that did, that sort of filled that gap between, okay, we're not working during the day, we can work in the evening or at night.

Robbie:

What size was your team? Was it just you back then, or did you have other team members with you?

Sam:

So I think at that point we had two vans out at that point. And that was when I got to the point of taking myself out of one at a time. So I would be in the landscaping project. And it's really funny because we talk about subcontracting, but I was using the subcontractor model on some of our jobs, so I would bring people in. So if I needed like a brick wall doing, I'd bring in a brick layer i'd, so it I'd already dabbled in that sort of area. And then, yeah, the gritting came along and we got involved with these national companies with regards to delivering their gritting. And the more we delivered for them, the more they were coming to us and saying, you're delivering it, it's not giving us any hassle. And then I built my own sort of subcontractor team delivering the gritten on the evenings. So I would, did

Robbie:

that, did that open up other

Sam:

avenues It did with those national companies? Something that we actually got involved in through that was something like the Queen's funeral got a call from one of the guys who we was doing the gritting for. We had the, at the time we was on the police met police contract. We had the DBS checks and the Met police passes to get into the stations. And he called us up and he said, look, we need trustworthy teams. Go down to Buckingham Palace. I thought it was a hoax court at first. He was like, do you wanna go to Buckingham Palace? We need people to take the floral tributes off of Buckingham Palace and put them in Green Park. And I was like, yeah, I suppose like at that point we just learned the Queen died or that sort of stuff. So I think. Put my subcontracting hat on. I'm like, okay, there's this opportunity. I potentially don't have enough guys to go and do it, but I know enough guys, so I asked other people. I think we managed to get a team of about 10 together. I would say a lot of people,

Robbie:

I'd tell a lot of people to jump with that opportunity to get in there. Yeah, they did not. I think it's my

Sam:

experience. It was a really, it was a special experience even just being there and working it all the way up to the funeral and doing that. It was a proud moment to be able to do that. But again, it's the opportunities that own opens up, from that we grew, I think at one point we had on the grin we had 150 sites that we were doing of an evening for this company, and we were delivering it. How were,

Robbie:

how were you monitoring that in terms of software teams and just deliver that service? So they,

Sam:

what a lot of national companies do is,'cause they'd almost never see you. So they run their own central software, so they have it made. And what they'll do is they'll upload the sites. So from my perspective, I would then need to take it from their software and put it into our own. Either something like, we actually use jobber, okay. To run our business. You either put it into Jobber or I think back at that point I was doing it literally on like paper. I was literally getting it down, postcodes, sending maps via WhatsApp, all that sort of stuff. Was that

Robbie:

hard to molin?

Sam:

It was hard to manage. So the back office side of it, I was actually, at that point I was doing a round, I. And I'd have other people out on rounds and they'd be ringing me up do you know the gate code for this place? Or, so it is I've just have like headphones in or on Bluetooth just going around like a maniac, just making it happen. So I don't think there was any methods to the madness. It was just getting the jobs done to make sure that we could invoice for them and get them in. Yeah as we then learned about different digital softwares and stuff like that, that definitely made it easier and easier to prove that we'd been to the places as well. So what

Robbie:

software did you look at? Did you only look at the jobber or did you look at anything else?

Sam:

I think I had a trial on Jobber and I think I had a trial. There was a couple of others, I think, things like Service Mate and a few others that were like in the industry, but they didn't. You know when something doesn't tick all the boxes. And I was looking at job. Even now we use jobber to do everything, payroll logging in and outta jobs, everything that it covers. I was

Robbie:

talking day. I was talking to Mark from the, just last night,'cause we were talking about a podcast that's he's coming over for our podcast. And do you know that Jobber now has a, so whenever your guys land the jobs, they obviously get tracked in and out.

Sam:

Yep.

Robbie:

You can run reports now on how long that job is for. So as you can see exactly how much money that job's making you what, yeah. So how

Sam:

long they've been on site and how long's the, and

Robbie:

then if you have an early rate in jobber, then all of a sudden. Okay. You can see that information in real

Sam:

time. In real time. Yeah. I mean it's definitely helped us. We don't currently use jobber to invoice but it's something that we was really looking at. At the moment we use like QuickBooks for that just because it does all of the, like the end of year accounting and things like that on QuickBooks. And I think Jobber doesn't, I don't think Jobber integrates with QuickBooks currently does it?

Robbie:

It does, as far as I know it does. But yeah, I've learned, so I've learned. So maybe I love to look into that. Yeah. So yeah, my bookkeeper does me on the year, so'cause because I'm dyslexic. Okay. Because I'm dyslexic with numbers. The last I have to tell the numbers the better.

Sam:

No, a hundred percent no. It does, like I say, job, it does cover everything. And that's what made it easier to manage those those teams. And then, like I say, from there we so one of the reasons I looked at it, so we started filling the gaps and then they'd ask us, okay, could you cover, I don't know, doing this site. Like it might be a Tescos need a load of bushes cutting or something like that. And for me. What it done for us as a business was it gave us a portfolio of work that we could then show other potential clients. So we weren't necessarily gonna be stepping on anyone's toes, but let's just say your van is at a Tesco's and somebody drives past from an office and they're like, I. That company looks after a Tesco's or a, whatever it may be.

Robbie:

Do you think

Sam:

it made you look bigger than what you maybe were? A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And that's something I did try and do that from like early on by having the landline number info at email addresses website, so it was all funneled through a professional avenue. I tried to leave my mobile numbers out of it as much as possible, although, like site managers and stuff end up with it. So you do end up with it, it's inevitable. But yeah for me it was about the image of how you looked. And then, yeah, like for coming on from. Being with these national companies, we then started attracting things like doctor surgeries and schools and things like that, and getting a taste for that work. So where we had the experience and the kit, we'd go and do these sites and then we, it opened up the door for us to be tendering for our own work and understanding the model. So even if we at that point, if we didn't have, the staff, for example, we understood the subcontracting model. We could,

Robbie:

you don't have staff, you can bring staff in. You know exactly how it works. And tell me this here for contracts and whatnot. How much would you layer contracts if you were bringing subcontractors in, and if you were look at, if you were looking to work for a large body that's gonna hand out subcontract and work, how much contracts and paperwork's involved in that? For anyone that doesn't know?

Sam:

So the main thing with commercial work is like the. The insurances, the paperwork, the accreditations like rams, do you what I mean? All the stuff that goes with it. If you want to go ahead and spray on a site, you need to be making sure you're giving your correct licenses in and everything like that. DBS checks is a massive one, and that sort of, it's not their limits, obviously don't want criminals anyway if they're gonna be robbing from you and stuff. It allows you to vet the people that working for you, but. It shows that you are investing into your company and your people are trustworthy, for me, it set us up really well because you had to have that stuff to do the subcontracting and give all your documentation in. So we already had it almost like a ready made template, to go and

Robbie:

for your health and safety and whatnot. Do you have an outside body? Did you have an outside body before? Do you have an outside body now? So does your HR and health and safety and whatnot.

Sam:

In the early days, you just can't afford to subcontract it out. It's just they charge. Even when you're looking at like things like SEO and things like that, you're thinking I need to get more work in, but this guy's charging me X, Y, and Z. And it's a real minefield.'cause you are, you're trying to delve into somewhere where some of the bigger players have got a lot of budget for their marketing and you're trying to get that type of work, but you haven't got the budget behind to advertise the infrastructure as

Robbie:

well.

Sam:

That's it a real tricky

Robbie:

what do you need to have like paperwork wise for. The base to do subcontracting what the company's expect. And they have an, you have an outside hr I see. Yeah. HR or, and safety.

Sam:

So when it came to then like doing the subcontracting work, we researched what we needed. We did it all in house at first. Tried to run it past people. Like we might have had a, somebody who worked in a, I dunno, facilities management place, but we weren't quite big enough for them. They could cast an eye over it and say yeah, that would that's suitable. And then as we've grown, we have contracted so bigger tenders. Now we have done some like support services. So they will actually look for tenders for us and try to outsource the procurement side of tenders. And they'll come to us, say, are you interested in this? And then they'll assist us in the tender process, but that's only now. So back then I was scouring through like your Gov websites and things like that and yeah, trying to have a look for the, those opportunities through that. But I think like our sort of like transition from, I. We, I think one of our residential customers actually worked as a receptionist on a doctor's surgery. And that was our first real sort of go to quote a commercial place and win that contract. So it gave us a taste of hang on a minute. We've been doing it over here. I've now used the same rams and everything that I've used over here on this could be. We could do this, and I know the margins are bigger over here anyway, and we're working on a lower margin, so let's explore that avenue.

Jason:

How do your profit margins differ between subcontracting and working for yourself?

Sam:

Obviously, when you are first doing subcontracting, the main key point is you're doing it because you want to get the revenue into the business now you don't wanna be working for nothing. And you need to be making sure that you're profitable. And one thing that a lot of small businesses do in the first instance is they just dunno their numbers. So we all go out, we go blindly. We made X, Y, and Z on the day, and we think that's what we've made kind of thing. And it's a real sort of sticky patch. When we started sub-contracting, for me it was about trying to increase like the turnover into the business, but not be a busy fool. So I was looking at it and going, okay, quiet time. Yes, the quiet time. I wanna fill in that quiet time. Like almost you'd rather a hundred percent of something than like a percentage of nothing. Do you know what I mean? So yeah we'd go into it and you'd sit down basically at the start of this year before the season. So around I'd probably say about August time. Maybe a little bit earlier, maybe July, August time, they'll come out, have a meeting with you, and they'll run through the numbers for the year, and you base it on a round by round basis. So really like simply I was doing it, I'm paying this person X, it cost me this much in fuel. They're paying me X and I'm making a profit. Obviously I have to take into account my time managing it and things like that. But don't get me wrong, the profit margins are a lot smaller when you are subcontracting than when you're doing it for yourself just by default. One of the things that we did as a company, and this isn't for everybody, but we got to a point where we were growing as a company organically ourselves, and getting to the point where we like to do the subcontracting and gritting and things like that. It was supporting our business through the winter months. But it got to the point where I was like hang on a minute. If I don't do this, the gritting, I'm losing out revenue here. But then I could fill it with other jobs, but I haven't got those yet. So what I would say is to, to anybody taking self contracting is, and I would've done this earlier on if I'd known this now, but always don't be afraid to go back to them.'cause otherwise you ended up finding yourself in a really low paying gig that you are. Just sustaining and all you are doing is facilitating the job. You are paying for it. So you might look at it at the end of the year and go, oh, actually we turn over 40 grand on this, but it cost us 39 to operate. Oh, I've made a thousand pound all winter. But your cash flow has carried you through. So yeah, don't be afraid to go back to the bigger companies be. How soon would you go back to the bigger companies? When, how do you I would have the conversation. So now we are still involved with gritting companies and stuff as a business, but we go back to them, we. Immediately after they give us the sheet and say, look, these are your sites for the year, for the winter. And I'll basically say to them that this isn't sustainable on this price. And you just have that negotiation. Like anything in business, there's always like they've priced one price. They're giving you a margin. There's that bit in between the meet in between, it's going to them. If you've got to some subcontractor models, they get you to buy the salt and things like that so that it's completely hands off for them. At that point, you should go back to them and say if that's the case, you should be working on The margin should be the other way around. We should have a bigger margin to operate the job. Profit materials, and then they should be taking just a management fee of like 10% say, so you should push back. And I think from that perspective, I think a lot of the subcontracting, so the national companies that we've subcontracted for have actually respected that and thought, actually these guys now they know what they're doing. They've been doing this a long time, but they're actually coming back to us with sensible. There's no point in going back going, no, I'm not doing it for that. I want a hundred quid to do that. It's there are, needs to be measurable. The issue with the industry when you are dealing with bigger companies is sometimes it's a race to the bottom price. And how

Robbie:

do you, how do you stop that? So how do you stop the race to the bottom?

Sam:

It's a difficult one. It's an industry problem, especially with the gritting industry. There's a lot of people trying to go to,'cause there's basically, you'll have the big management companies. They're then almost like subcontracting down to the national companies. They're then subcontracting down to you. So there's a lot of hands to feed. Again we've now more recently got our own gritting sites and sort of companies. I think like last year we was facilitating some of the Greg sites and things like that through our own in-house gritting and through other management companies. We do gritting as well ourselves now. Far more profitable. And we also sell things like the salt to our site, stock up their bins, and there's other revenue streams that we've made from that. But yeah the race to the bottom is difficult

Robbie:

for anybody that wants to get under winter gritten. What advice would you give them?

Sam:

Depending where you're at with your business, make sure you go into it with your eyes open, understand what you're getting into. There is risk factors, like if you've got people going out and they don't do the sites properly, someone slips. You will have a claim against you from the company that you're doing it for. So it depends on what you, what risk you wanna do. But for us it was always monitored. The sites were always done and and like documentation, pictures, ev, everything like that. And we actually, one story on that, there was a school that a girl came out the door slipped at a school and we could prove through the images and the CCTV that was there that we had been. On the site and the claim was just nun and void, we'd done all of our due diligence to that. To prevent the site. Would you take, would

Robbie:

you take a picture every time you were outta site? A hundred percent. Yeah. So

Sam:

For, again, going back to jobber, we do that on every site. So we run almost like a timeline of events in the notes section of every job. Take a picture before and after you've done something. It just protects you really

Robbie:

automatically tracks you in out as you right and leave that job as well.

Sam:

Yeah, so even from a time perspective, drops the GPS points. We do run trackers on our vans as well, just to back that up. And that's more of a perspective not to watch the guys where they are, what they're doing. It's the customer rings up and says, oh, are your guys nearly here? I can get it in real time and give information for long,

Robbie:

for long term. Its a lot of customers would say, oh, he was, he here within See him, he's only here five minutes. We didn't see him or we didn't hear him we'll. We're like, look, if you hear us, then we're doing something wrong.

Sam:

Yeah. We had a, we had an instance at that where Java really helped us out where a customer. We got on the site at say half, seven. They got in at half eight and we was off the site at half nine. So we'd done our like two hour visit, say, and they were like, they're only here for an hour. I was like, no, actually you was only there for an hour. We was there for two. So we was able to, both with the GPS, our tracker and the job images support the invoice and get paid. So it really does it, it does support the business in that way.

Jason:

Do you find some companies trying. You're saying? They were saying, oh, you've only been here. Did you find some companies, try and use that to try and get you, get rid of you, or to try and reduce the price? Reduce the price.

Sam:

The customers that we've got now, we've got, what you would refer to is like your proper commercial schools and office blocks and things like that. And then you've got they're still commercial sites, but they're like flat blocks, but like residential, communal and you get a lot of characters in those blocks. And some of them might be very strong-willed and they want to use a gardener from a house that they might have come from or something like that. And they do sly little. Stuff to hinder that. But as long as your rapport is very good with the management companies, that's your client. Yeah. If you use that, they should really be going through the management company. Any issues that are raised, then come to us. For me, growing from doing subcontracting to doing the commercial work ourselves is all about building systems, teams, processes. That's. Non-negotiable if you're moving into that sector.'cause that's what protects your revenue. It also, like for us, we split all of our clients. It's an annual amount split across 12 months payable across the year. So things, there'll be less to do in the winter, but more to do in the summer. We have a sustainable amount of income coming through. It just helps with things like salaries. Knowing what you've got coming in, just controlling your revenue,

Robbie:

what tips would you give someone that wants to break in the commercial work that may be perhaps doing just residential and they want to break in? What,

Sam:

okay.

Robbie:

What do you think would be the best way or,

Sam:

So I think one of the best ways is to. Make yourself known in that industry. So whether that be take yourself to events, it might be going to something like Grounds Fest, for example, branded up. Social media really does work as well. So putting yourself on social media showing what you're doing. And that kind of goes hand in hand with your, if you were to go down the subcontracting route, you can get like images, pictures, videos of you cutting a big long hedge or whatever it might be. Put that onto your social media or your website and use it as content. It also builds up a portfolio to show people, so you may wanna fire in like an email campaign to somebody, but with a load of commercial images, done up, as a commercial approach

Robbie:

in terms of knocking on doors or for sending cold emails or, do you think like LinkedIn and cold emails work, think knock knocking on doors is probably the most popular way?

Sam:

So yeah, I would say like the personal approach has worked for us. And I would say so it's really strange. So obviously you hear a lot of people saying oh, we don't advertise. It's all word of mouth. And that is a very good way of doing it. You have to be, you have to market yourself because no one's gonna shout about you otherwise. So your first customer you've marketed from, like you weren't walking down the street and they went, you look like a guard. No, I'll come and have you. Do you know what I mean? So you have to market yourself in some way, shape, or form. Word of mouth will come. It's even helped us. So through schools, for example, we took on, I think two schools in a local area. We're now on 16 in a local area, and most of those were through recommendations from one site manager to the other, but you still

Robbie:

have to open that door and that first you still have to open

Sam:

the door. And I would say my wife will vouch for this, but I've actually been at weddings before and I'll have a business card on me and somebody will mention that they might be a facilities manager for something. I'll be like, whoa, you ever need a thing? She's we're at a wedding and I was like, literally, we are always like, as a business owner, you are always switched on. If there's an opportunity, you hear about it, it's I

Robbie:

picked up one of my best customers and I flight home from,

Sam:

there you go. It literally is it's so valuable and it's asking one thing that I always do, whether they're residential or commercial. Obviously more so if you are going to a residential house, I would always ask that person what they do for work, and it might sound like a really like invasive question. I don't care whether they've got a Ferrari or a Ford on the drive. The reason I'm asking that question is'cause I wanna know what opportunities there might be outside of this transaction that we've done now. Always staying switched on. Networking is massive and you literally don't know who the next person you talk to is gonna be and the opportunity that is there.

Robbie:

I totally get that myself. I,'cause I talk to most of my own customers and I always ask'em what they're doing. Yeah. Because it just as well, it gives you a better understanding of how much money they might want to spend.

Sam:

It does as well. It does. It does. Highlight to you what they may. Wanna invest in their projects, a hundred percent. But yeah, again and it also opens up like nobody knows what you do for work without you telling them, so you don't look at somebody and go, oh, he looks like a lawyer, or whatever. Do what I mean. So it's

Robbie:

These days, I'm also looking for guests for a podcast. That's it. Yeah, that's it. Yeah.

Sam:

Yeah. What do you do for work? Oh, do you wanna come on the podcast?

Robbie:

We actually interviewed someone a couple of days ago. And it pretty much went like that was it. He owns a scaffolding company. He has 70, 80 staff. Yeah. Yeah. And he's one of my customers. That's how,

Jason:

oh,

Robbie:

is it? That's

Jason:

how, that's how I got him on. With doing the commercial work, what do you think is the biggest mistake small business owners make trying to get into that side of work?

Sam:

I would say, so it's even from my own experience is not wanting to scale, so not wanting to put the office staff in place to support those contracts. Literally. So as a small business the common theme you hear is, oh, I'm so busy on all the sites. I haven't got time to put the invoices out, or I haven't got time. That just doesn't run in the commercial world. So commercial clients will actually get more annoyed with you if you're not on top of your paperwork side of things than if you're doing an average job. So their grounds, they're not being penalized by. Betty or Doris or whatever, face to face, they might have complaints and things like that, but they run on like budgets and monthly payments and things like that. And if you are like two or three invoices late, for example, not only does it hinder your cash flow, but it marks all their books up and the woman in the office is gonna go mad and why have we gotta pay them out X amount on this month? And it, it just goes. So consistency, growing the team is one of the key things. Because you can't take on commercial work just yourself. If you are a one man band and you're looking to go into commercial work, I wouldn't do that. If you're looking to stay small, because a with commercial work, a lot of places they'll have multiple sites per customer. So for example, a school we took on a one site for a school, they're actually a trust of 14 schools. So although that one site looks good to you, you can't then turn around to that customer and say. I only want you do your school. They're looking for a solution to a problem. And that is literally pretty

Robbie:

much you want to be, you want to be the problem solver. A

Sam:

hundred percent. And what we actually do on that basis is we, so as a company, we've actually become more of almost like a facilities company for these customers. So people will come to us and then we'll use our small network of like maybe pressure washing contractors, tree surgeons. Any, anything like that we, that you need for the outside, the customer can come to us and we have an outlet and literally on, on that. Like they, we give them enough work that they're giving us preferable rates and we can still build our com like commission if you like, into that workloads to work. A hundred percent. That's it. And in a way it may, might sound a bit controlling, but I don't really want anyone else on my sites that I don't trust. So if someone else comes onto the site, they're are. A pressure washer. They're probably gonna know another gardener and they go, oh, like this. This looks a bit here. This do you mean if more eyes on your projects? Although we are delivering and the customer's happy. I would rather be able to manage and control that site for the time that we've got it and supply all of their services. There's opportunities in every client. So

Jason:

with going for the subcontracting work, you say you work for bigger companies, do they tender the job so you don't have to, so they come to you, subcontract you, and then your subcontracting the work out again. So you are not actually tendering, it's you are just filling their need a hundred percent. Yeah. So we

Sam:

are,

Jason:

I.

Sam:

With the bigger companies, they have their own teams. They'll win the jobs and then they'll get field teams to carry out the contract. With us, we now have to tender for it or go out, view it, tender it, work, all of the contracts out. And that's one thing that I would say if you are looking to go into commercial work, be prepared to invest a lot of time. Again, this is why you have to build the teams because. I spend a lot of my time managing my teams, but also going out and trying to acquire new work. So whether you look at it as wasted time or whatever. If I win the contract, brilliant. I'm getting paid for that time. I don't win the tender, I've not wasted time. It's all valuable experience, but I. I don't get paid for that time. You can't charge them for putting in a tender. So that's one thing that you've just gotta be prepared to do. If you are going out, for example, on a, you're sacrificing your weekend. Say you've got a busy round, you wanna break into commercial work, you use the Saturdays to do your tendering. It's not the correct way to do it because you're gonna be wasting your Saturdays if you don't get them. Where you could have had other revenue, whereas if you had people doing the work. You can go and do that job. Your wages are built into your pricing structure. That's one of the things about commercial work is never take as a director of a company, make sure that you factor in for your time and your wages. Everyone's wages should be factored into your pricing structure and your profit is for your company. That's one of the most common things I hear is oh yeah, we made X this year. And I was like, okay so how much did you like take outta that? And they're like, oh no, that is what, like I've earned. And I'm like, so you actually made nothing as a company. So that's one of the key things in the industry is massively understanding your numbers to make sure that you are working. You're keeping up with the pricing model, obviously you can see it like around anyway, if you might wanna do a bit of market research, you might cheekily ask someone, oh, can you provide a quote for this job? Or whatever. And you're never gonna actually use it, but you're getting a bit of pricing modeling. But from that perspective, yeah making sure that you are factoring in your time into doing the tenders into your pricing structure, so your salary is paid.

Robbie:

For that time. So you going it within, do it within your working week? A

Sam:

hundred

Robbie:

percent. I would And,

Sam:

and that's the

Robbie:

best way to do it. Somebody gave me a better advice whenever I first started and they said to me, Robbie, if you can't make your enough to sustain yourself in, you're nine to five. Then you're not towards enough. You're doing something wrong. A hundred percent. If you're having to do it in your free time, then there's something wrong.

Sam:

A hundred percent. I see it all the time. So a lot of people, and again, Instagram is rife with it, there'd be a lot of people, like they're videoing themselves, just finishing up at 10, 11 o'clock at night. It's oh, we're hustling and all this sort of stuff. You're just being, you're busy but why are you busy? Like you are you're fair play if you're doing it to try and get ahead so that you are, I don't know, whatever you're doing up a project or whatever, it's, you wanna get ahead. But nine times outta 10, these people are so overrun because they either don't have the team behind them. They're trying to do so much all themselves. They are working till 10, 11 o'clock at night. I'm,

Robbie:

I'm gonna say I probably wear not hot myself at the minute.

Sam:

Yeah. Nice is what I mean. So literally, but

Robbie:

it can only go on for, it can only go on for so long. It's not

Sam:

sustainable. That's the main key word. And I even say it to the guys when they come into our business and they come for an interview, I'll always ask somebody what they're looking for as a salary. Nine times outta 10. It'll be like, higher than what they've had in other jobs or whatever it is. And I'll, I will know that. But I'll offer them a salary that is sustainable throughout the whole year.'cause one of the things that happens in our industry is with the seasonal peaks and troughs and not having that sustainable income, a lot of people will have you in for maybe six to eight months and they'll say, look, sorry, the work's died down. I've gotta let you go. But there's a job back here in March. That doesn't allow somebody to build a career in grounds maintenance or gardening. Yeah, it's,

Robbie:

it's really hard.

Sam:

Really hard. Its really hard. You lose good workers because of that. Yeah. You're totally losing that. I would rather have, I would rather be able to say to somebody, look, okay, I know you are, you're asking for this, but if we meet here, which is just under what you are, what you were asking for, I can sustain that for longer. If we, I could pay you more, but for a less period of time. It's as broad as it's long, but I want people to be in our business for as long as they want to be within the business, as long as they're a good worker.

Robbie:

How do you keep your team motivated?

Sam:

It's difficult at times. And I would imagine they, they look at me sometimes and say, oh, like he's just sitting at home and whatever he is doing, but can trust you. I'm not there's literally probably, I'd say a good like 60% of the stuff that people don't see that's really important to the business. I. It's completely unseen, but people will think, oh, that's all right. He gets to go here and he's doing this opportunity. Literally, I would say a good 80% of the opportunities that I go to are mostly to do with networking for business. So it might look like you're going away somewhere here. Like even today I'll put in our to one of the guys who was on the plane, he thinks I'm going like a beef or something. No, I'm coming here. I'm doing a podcast. But even this it exposes our business obviously. Coming onto the podcast,

Robbie:

this is a very different way to advertise yourself. A hundred

Sam:

percent. Yeah, that's it. But also it gives back a little bit. So there's a lot of people I was saying earlier, like off camera, the, we get a lot of dms. We haven't got a huge following, but we've got a, an engaged following. And a lot of them will ask us questions. And at the moment I'm trying to get back to people here and everywhere. And that, I was saying it's hard to find the time. It is, it's hard to find the time, but maybe in the future it might be something that I'll go into maybe as a monetized thing. Offering a bit of advice and consultancy.'cause I enjoy, I actually really enjoy the start in point of businesses. So although we've grown as to where we are now and I really enjoy growing businesses, but

Robbie:

I beg, would you like to grow your business?

Sam:

I've always said I. The phrase I've always used is, as long as it makes money, it makes sense. So if we got a large contract or a large tender and it made sense and it made money it uncapped probably if it is, if it made sense, like as long as I could put the right teams in place. I don't wanna be a busy idiot. I've seen a lot of companies that don't grow their teams and they've got to a certain point. And it just becomes chaos and when you're at that ceiling, because within your own business it seems like it's being a bit chaotic. And then, whether you've got to invest in another team or you've gotta do that, but also make sure that you've got it at the right time.'cause it might seem chaotic just for I don't know, a week in the summer when everyone's asking for stuff. But you also don't want to invest in Van Tools staff. And then a month later it's oh, hang on a minute. We haven't got any work for this team. So you wanna make sure it's actually sustainable growth

Robbie:

while we're talking about investment tools.

Sam:

Yeah.

Robbie:

How do you finance your tools? Do you believe in, do you finance the lease?

Sam:

So I've been to a lot of networking events, mastermind events, and one of the key things that I've taken away from a lot of it is. We use garden machinery as tools and a lot of people use money as a tool investors and things like that. And if you put that into our industry, for an example, if you had a pot of say, I don't know, 10,000 pounds, you could put like a thousand pound deposit down on 10 things and they could all be out earning you money or you could buy one of those things. Buy one 10,000 pound thing and that could earn you money. One of them brings you in 10 times the return. And one of them just gives you like your money back. You gotta make it back. So with regards to, do I prefer to buy outright? I have got a few, like a bit of a split with our tools, but that's more down to. Like where so we bought a tractor and a cutter from a football club. Your finance company won't finance private sales, so you'd have to buy it through a a machinery sales place. This tractor and cutter, they were moving over to 3G Surface, so they didn't need it, and we managed to acquire it, but we had to buy that as a bank transfer. But I would say as a rule of thumb, I would rather. I would rather finance the tools, build it into your pricing structure, and then it's being paid for. Out of your like your, as a business expense. There's also other tax benefits to it and stuff as well. If you do it through like a finance lease, you can get like the VAT payments and do it over time and it's all deductible.

Robbie:

What other tips would you give businesses that want to try and be more, obviously it's obviously this isn't financial advice, but what other tips would you give businesses that want to try and save or be more tax efficient than. Is relevant, I

Sam:

would say always get a really good accountant. Financial advice is one of the key things that will, so a good accountant should save you their own money and more. So some people look at it, we're actually in the process of speaking to some accountants and stuff at the moment.'cause you'll get accountants that are good for you when you are in your first stages. Then as you grow into teams, they might not be, they might not serve you as they once were.'cause they're not, that's not what they wanna do. They wanna do end of year accounts, not corporation, TX, Y, and Z. So always make sure that your accountant's able to give you advice as well, because there's a difference between just an accountant who puts the numbers in and reports them and somebody who can give you financial advice. Because, yeah, it there is a difference. An accountant will take you so far. But the people that we are speaking to at the moment are, they can give you financial advice. So give you, tax efficient planning. If your end of year is coming up, make sure that you're buying tools at the right time. Yeah, like even with your VAT, like making sure, again, if you're buying a machine, but you're buying it like after your VAT quarter, you're you're paying the VAT out, but then you're buying this machine that you've gotta pay that on and it for cash flow, that would just be a nightmare. Yeah.

Robbie:

I'm gonna give you a re-question again. You mentioned the fat and just something popped into my head. Obviously those big companies are registered and smaller companies that perhaps aren't that registered. Yep. The subcontracting, do you think it's worthwhile going back registered if you're gonna subcontract or not? Or, so

Sam:

if you are in the commercial world, VAT is almost like, it's not non-existent, but it's because everybody's either paying the VAT or claiming the VAT, you always work on the before VAT amount. So the same with the subcontracting companies. They'll give you the figure. And then on the bottom of their contracts, it would be VAT to be added, if applicable, so you can work for these people without being VAT registered. If I knew where we were gonna be heading now, I probably would've set up VAT registered al almost as we, I. Started.'cause you can, not a lot of people know, but you can actually go VAT registered before you reach the threshold. You can start your company and be,

Robbie:

because you're in, as you say, you're in a fat registered world.

Sam:

A hundred percent. Yeah. So it depends on where you are entering into a lot of people.'cause what, like when you first start out, you're obviously building up receipts and paying for staff this, that and the other. And you can actually deduct that. When you go VAT registered, you can deduct it. I think it's back three years and six months of services. You can deduct these things from your VAT when you first go registered. But yeah, if you're, if you are, if you're in the early days and you are going I wanna start a commercial grounds maintenance business. There's no difference. If you wanna go VAT registered, you're charging va. You're paying va. And it's in that world, it's you're working on the pre VAT amount.

Robbie:

The company was to look at you and you were back registered or not bat registered. Even if you were small, you hadn't reached threshold. You think it makes you look bigger. Yeah. If you're that registered and hundred percent for another reason.

Sam:

Perhaps the VAT threshold. I think it's gone up now. It's 90 thousand. But if, for example, and this is one of the things, in the early days before we were VAT registered, I think we didn't wing jobs based on not being VAT registered because one, the company that's buying your services in a weird way, you're actually cheaper to them by being that registered because they can claim your, that amount back off of their off of their VAT. So it's. For me, they look at you as well. They, if you are not that registered, you haven't reached a that threshold yet. So what experience have you got? You might be going for a contract that might be a hundred thousand a year with them. I would say the perception is that no one customer wants to be your biggest client because they're putting too many eggs in your basket kind of thing. So I think a lot of people would rather you be that registered, which makes you then look like okay, I'm giving him a 30 grand account here. He can manage that'cause he's already surpassed the VAT threshold. A lot of it is all about image, I would say. Making sure that these people know that you can handle the work that they're bringing to you.

Robbie:

I'm gonna go back to marketing as well. On a scale of one to 10, how important is LinkedIn for to get contracts if you want to subcontract?

Sam:

So LinkedIn is a very powerful tool with regards to if you wanna open or try and open the doors. I personally have never fired in like the whole generic, oh, do you wanna go for a coffee or something like that. I just find it really cheesy and whatnot. But it's a very good tool to find out who people are. So you can type in, I dunno, say I use Tesco for example. If you wanna go facilities manager, Tesco's. Maybe even Tesco's, Hartfordshire or something like that, and you'll find out like who that regional manager is. Then you can start approaching like, okay, let's find emails. Let's find like the office, for example. Go to the office and say, oh, hi is. X, Y, and Z around, I just went to have a discussion about grounds maintenance. Nine times outta 10 with a name, it will open the door for you. But if you go in there and say, oh can I just speak to the grounds? The, whoever's in charge of the grounds, it's be like, oh, not another one. Do you know what I mean? And it's it's almost like they're. Yeah, they're trained to do that. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Anyone who comes and they don't ask for me, don't let'em in'cause they're just like fishing around. But yeah, I would say get do, because they also, then you've done your research on the company. You've took time to actually, you're interested in it. And I would also say though as well, don't necessarily feel one of the most important things that I learned to say in business is the word no. Because everyone's a yes man when you first start. Oh, can you do this? Yeah. Oh, can you do this? Yeah. And then you find yourself, it's oh no, I can't do that. Oh no, I can't do that. Or you run outta time in your diary. So for me, it was about making sure that you pick what kind of commercial work you wanna do as well. Because things like the schools, for example. They have like little garden areas and things like that you can make look nice. Whereas a lot of my guys, would they be happy doing car park maintenance? Probably not. Do you know what I mean? And it's not really nice. It's not that's not the sort of work that we wanna do. So making sure that you're not just saying yes to facilities companies, oh, can you cut this virgin? Can you do this? You wanna make sure it's an enjoyable. Work that, you know what I mean? You can see our industry's very visual. Do you know what I mean?

Robbie:

For your younger self what advice would you give yourself if you wanted to grow your business quicker? Or what would you change?

Sam:

I would say to myself, don't do landscaping. That's what I'd say to myself. Because it's hard on you. Yeah it's mentally tough. It's physically tough. It's financially tough. It's, there's people that will come and do works for you, subcontracting. They won't do it right. And then when you call'em back, they won't come back. It's a real sticky and it's also like unregulated. So like you are, you'll have somebody who comes in, although you've got the different bodies that, that sort of offer things. There's no way of checking, like if that, like that person says they can put a patio down for you. You're going, okay, show me a picture of a patio you've done. And you have to say, that looks good, but this one's not. Do you know what I mean? So it makes sure you're doing your due diligence and also you just can't leave those projects. Like it ties you up if you, at the end of the day, you are. Ultimately the customer's paying you, but you are paying for this to be done, whether you're using subcontractors or not. You can't turn around at the end of the job and say, it wasn't me who did it. It's, you have to stand by your work. And yeah, landscaping is something, I think that from a cash flow perspective really held us back as a company because we tied up a lot of money in projects. Whereas I might have been able to use that on kit or focus my attention on that was focusing maybe on the landscaping because of the bigger price tags and oh, they're gonna get me to do this job for 40 grand. I. The numbers are massive, but realistically, if you put it down on paper, the profit margins are practically identical, whereas it's easier to manage teams doing, I've used the wrong word, easier, but it's more sustainable to manage the grounds maintenance. And also you've got recurring revenue as well. That's one of the key things in building a team and a business. You want money that's. Coming back to you each time. Whereas landscaping, you have to market for the job. You have to go out and view the job. You have to buy the materials for the job. You have to, and then you do that all again for the next job, but you're not promised that job. Whereas with a contract, you've got 12 and no, we didn't know exactly where. That's it. Yeah. So those monthly figures. Repeat on each year. And are most of your

Robbie:

contract, are most of your contracts on a 12 month basis on a rule? Yes.

Sam:

We've got 12 month basis, a lot of the council contracts, so we work for some of the local councils and some of their business parks. And a lot of those, they'll try and get you really for three years at least, maybe with a, an option for one more like after that. And then they retender it out. But as long as you're doing a good job and you're there. They have to do the tendering process'cause it's public money. They'll allow you the three years and then they have to tender it out to, for a fair, tender and things like that. But yeah, as long as you're delivering, you are, you're pretty much good.

Robbie:

Yeah. So tell us this here as we'll. Come to wrap up. What do you do for fun and stress release?

Sam:

Yeah, it's a, running the business takes up a lot of your time. I've got two little daughters taking them out to places like taking'em swimming or. Jump parks and things like that. I, we actually as a company look after some football clubs and things like that and I go and watch them sometimes or just go and do that. And I've just recently I'm learning to ski and I've got into that. I dunno, maybe that might be my my do thing. I've been like I'm stressed, I'm off to the slope. Yeah, no, just I would say making sure you give yourself enough time out of the business as well. And again, by building teams you can do that. Taking yourself away, whether it just be for a weekend away or just a weekend off or just to do that. But yeah, weirdly I don't get overly stressed. I think I've learned to deal with that because there's no point in, I. Complaining about stress that you've grown yourself. Do you know what I mean? Like you if there's, if you're stressed, there's a problem and you need to find a solution to that problem, whether that be that's not the right client for you, so they need to go, or whether you need a different team member or whether you need to grow your team to alleviate that stress.

Jason:

Earlier you mentioned about wanting to do consultancy. Is that something you're gonna focus on going forward?

Sam:

Yeah, so I'm happy to to open up as well on this podcast if anyone is looking for that sort of support or anything like that. And they're looking to maybe just from a mentor side of things or just a bit of advice. Yeah we would open up the conversation on doing that. I've not put anything out formally yet, but it's definitely something that I would entertain the. The option of if people wanted that support and they were willing to put their, what I tend to find is if people put a monetization on something, they're more focused, more value. Value and more value. A hundred percent. And yeah, it's definitely something that I'm looking to formalize in the future. But yeah, would open up the dms for anyone who's interested. Super.

Robbie:

Listen, thank you very much, Brooke. I'm gonna bring up your time. Perfect.

Sam:

Appreciate it very much. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers.

Robbie:

Good.