What It Really Takes to Grow a lawncare Business (6 vans)

In this episode, I sit down with Jack Chapman from Kingsbury Lawn Care, who explains how he scaled his lawn treatment business to eight staff members and a fleet of vans while staying profitable.
We cover:
 Why the first £50–£70k of "profit" isn’t really profit
 The systems he’s put in place to scale without chaos
 How to hire (and keep) the right people
 The truth about marketing, referrals, and customer retention
 And why if you’re not profitable… you’re out of business

If you're serious about growing your own service-based business, lawn care, trades, or local services, this episode will give you the hard truths and real-world strategies that work.

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

Transcript

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You think of what is on your balance sheet in terms of equipment and vehicles and what it would cost to replace that. You need to be super profitable. Sometimes people think profit's a dirty word. Really? Yeah. it's vital. If you're not profitable, you're outta business with hiring and building a team. A lot of it comes down to trust. You've gotta be prepared to let go of the reigns a little bit. You still wanna keep them tight and make sure everyone's getting the sort of service level and experience that they will get from you. However, you've got to be able to trust, again, a keyword research and knowing what's not only gonna score well on Google, but what is like a hot search term? What are the real key search terms that are gonna actually turn into potential customers for you? Because I could score for moles in Lawrence something if I wanted to, but there's no point. You've gotta be intentional and purposeful. Everything that you do as a business owner.'cause there's only so many hours in the day. I think a lot of business owners will say, oh yeah, we grow through referral. We grow through word of mouth. What's the strategy? What's the scheme? What are they doing to incentivize and gain more referrals? Welcome to second series of ster revenue. Today we have Jack Chapman back in the studio I found out how he has grown his business to a six span setup and scaled his business. Before we get into that, let me tell you a bit about a sponsor. The podcast is sponsored by Jobber. Now anybody who is seriously busy and needs to free up time needs to check out Jobber. I use it personally for the last 10 years and it does all my scheduling, invoicing, and coating. But best of all, it gets me paid faster and my customers love it. And don't forget to get in the link in the description to get your special premier launch discount. Jack, nice to see you again. You just want to introduce yourself and maybe give you a business. A bit of a plug. Thanks Jason. I'm Jack. I am the founder of Kingsbury Lawn Care. We are a lawn treatment specialist based in the West Midlands, covering much of North Warwick shear across Stafford Shear into Darby Shear. But yeah, most of the West buildings as a whole. We run six fans. A little bit about me, I am a keen runner, keen cricket fan, Akeem football fan, a bit of everything. Jack, what was the one key decision that you believe helped grow Kingsbury Lauer? That's really tough, but I'll give you a good shot. Key decision. I don't think there's been. One, the one sort of secret magic formula, one sort of point in time. I think it's more mindset and a number of things over several years. Nothing's an overnight success. Ultimately if somebody was thinking about starting up their own business, what would be the one thing you would say to them? Do this thing first. From the absolute startup, you wanna make sure that obviously what you're offering and that the service proposition that you're putting together is robust and that there's a need for it. That you've, there is an element of market research there. Ultimately, there's a need in for the service in the area and ultimately that you're serving your customer's needs. Otherwise, you're not gonna have a business full stop. So that would be the absolute ground up is the service that you're offering or product. Then it's probably how to sell that and how to market it. Ultimately. We are going to, we are gonna get, we're gonna go there. We're gonna, we're gonna go there, I'm sure. Yeah. So for anybody that watched season one that came over and it has a really robust'cause, you believe hrs a really big part of growing your business and you did a really good, we're gonna link to the end of that. We're gonna link to that podcast at the end of this podcast. Jack did a really good interview on how to hire the right team members and having the right team members is the big thing. But how do you, so with six fans in the road, how do you make sure that everyone gets the Kingsbury long care service that you're known for? Firstly, I think with hiring and building a team, a lot of it comes down to trust. You've gotta be prepared to let go of The rains a little bit. Still wanna keep them tight and say, make sure everyone's getting the sort of service level and experience that they will get from you. However you've got to be able to trust. So I suppose it first starts at that hire, and having the right person in that hire, because then that sort of knocks on into that sort of service level. The right sort of mentioning training onboarding again, yeah. But it's having the right systems and processes in place, What do you do to onboard new team members as they join? So tell us about that. Yeah, I'll put together like a calendar almost of where they're gonna be.'cause from day one, your new joiner isn't gonna know how to use Java, for example, and actually see where they're going and who they're visiting. They literally just need a blank piece of paper of on day one, this is what we're gonna do, this is where we're gonna be. These are the things that we're going to work on. We're gonna get your uniform issued, we're gonna do these absolute basics on day one. And then if you skip forward on day three, day four, sorry, week three, week four, actually a bit more advanced, then the sort of things that may be being discussed. And that way it's not all on me doing the training either. A lot of that is actually done by my lead tech, Stan. He's actually out with the new technician so they can follow along. And obviously if things crop up from that, then obviously can be bounced off me at the end of the week and such. Just to give an overview of your ha, so in your first podcast you said that you don't hire on experience, you hire on attitude. So a lot of the people that are joining Bury Long Care don't necessarily know how to carry out along treatment. Ultimately green keeper's out there, pull your socks up. What I'm gonna say it's difficult to find somebody that has the experience and has that core value fit with maybe what we're looking for.'cause ultimately what we're looking for is a mobile green keeper. It's more customer service people facing that sort of attitude. Doesn't matter what background people come from to come into the lawn care industry, because we're so niche, no one's done it before. So it doesn't matter if you're a green keeper or a postman, neither have pushed a two foot wide aerator and got it down someone's garden gate sort of thing. So many different. It's just different. Again, it's so niche, so no one's done it before anyway. And then if we do have people that applied that have done it before, you've obviously gotta dig into why it was that they actually left the previous role as well. It might not be suited for them. For example, I suppose whoever you get in, you're saying they've got to have, I suppose they've got to have the want to be in that industry as well. It's the willingness to learn above all else. As I say, regardless of where they're from, it's where they want to go and where they see themselves and how committed that sort of warm vibe that you get towards your company and when your process might be cv, phone call, interview, little ride outside, whatever it is that can't be faked. We see through that, we've done enough sort of thing with people that, it's say, matching with the core values. It's that want to grow and develop rather than someone that's just gonna come and coast. You guys have quite a rigorous recruitment process and it typically takes, I can remember you down from the first podcast up to six months to find someone. So again, you're really focusing in on a really specific type of person. And then I suppose that then transfers whenever they come and start, then it's easier to teach them exactly how you do things as opposed to them coming in with a lot of experience. I think people, again, if they've had no experience, almost really appreciate the opportunity and appreciate that you are investing in them. And maybe we are a little bit different in that I believe we've already got that experience within the company. So I've already mentioned Stan as an example. We've got other experienced techs, we've got a structure around them and a foundation and a process where we can actually train people from scratch because a one man band that actually is still viable'cause it's still on them. But if it's a team of three or four it's how you bring someone. Do you use any software to manage that onboarding process? Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, there's a software called Air Manual, I don't think I mentioned before, to be fair. We can document. Any processes, anything that I'm looking to delegate, this would be a great one for you, Robbie. Free up some of your time as well. But anything, it probably works better with office staff to be fair, but if there is a job that I am doing how can I let that go to somebody else? If that is just a checklist of this is how you carry out this job, do this first and this and this. I'll have it on a different monitor, doing something and documenting what's going on. Or I can use Loom and do a screen recording of actually what I'm doing. So even if it's just to check payments or something, I can record a video. Someone on day one could literally watch that video, do that job if they've got any questions. At least then if they're asking any questions, they're high level questions. Rather than how do you do the real basics? How to ensure that people are just aren't checking that box. Is that just from really homing in on. What exactly they need to do. So you're not creating a role where people come along and go, oh, I have to do this, or I'll just check those boxes and that'll be grand. How do you stop that? Ultimately, it's in everyone's best interest really. In terms of if, does that come down to That person. If you are as a new starter, if you are saying, oh yes, I feel happy doing that, and you're paired up with somebody and then you by yourself, you're gonna fall on your own sword a bit later, aren't you? So you almost wanna make the best use of all the resources you've got around you in your early weeks to make the very most of that training, onboarding. And with a new starter, I'll have a weekly catch up, so I'll give'em a call on Friday or meet face to face on a Friday, say, how's your week been? I'll say I speak to Stan as well, but how's your week been? What is it that you've liked about the week? What is it that you haven't liked about the week? Is there anything that then we can tweak and pick up on? So actually the little things that we've missed out on, can they actually help that next hire? Can we actually tweak the process a little bit? So you almost need to be continually learning, but, so I'll catch up with'em every Friday and then we can iron out some little things or things that they feel, ask a question of them, what is it that you need to work on? What is it that you are a little bit unsure on? Because you can tweak that plan. Then each time it just gets incrementally better every time you bring someone on. That's it. Yeah. Just incrementally better. Yeah, for sure. You never stop learning. Ultimately, it doesn't matter where, what position you are. In business, the challenge is just develop into different ones all the while. And I suppose when we'll have a team of eight, as of including myself next month. I suppose where we are in my mind it's a bit more of a recruitment and HR sales and marketing problems are maybe a little bit different to someone that's a sole trader or a two, three man band. As you grow a business, it develops as you're gonna get into leadership shortly, but your rules teams as the business has grown really massively. I can remember only a couple of years ago where I was out on the tools four, five days a week, and then I would be doing an hour or two in the morning of admin and bits and piece in front of the computer between six and eight, going out and treating lawns for the day and then sandwiching another couple of hours of work of an evening and effectively doing the work of two, or at least one and a half, very least. It just wasn't su it's not sustainable. You've gotta be prepared, I think as a business owner to suck up some long hours now and then there's gonna be a bottleneck. It's going to happen. Do you want to work in the business or on the business? On is obviously key. Yeah. As things have progressed, then I'm say completely off the tools. Now that's vital. It has to be'cause we're too busy from the office side. And when, if I'm in front of customers, that's amazing. But again, as saying before I could be stuck in traffic, you're not achieving anything.'cause the business owner sat behind the wheel, stuck in traffic. Apart from listening to this podcast maybe. So it's the only thing. It's the sort of take on, in all seriousness, that's what I'll listen to podcasts.'cause you're taking on new information then at least. Yeah. But that's all you can do. At least then if you're at your desk, I can actually be in contact with a lot of customers and achieving much more. How have you found customers? if the owner's not turning up there to do the quote, you think that has an effect if you're looking to grow your business, like you say, times's, the only thing that they don't make was there much pushback from customers if the owner's not turning up the, give them the care that they think that they want. I am, I'm gonna say no, but only because of the skills and experience of Stan going back three years, for example. Do you wanna tell us a wee bit, do you wanna tell us a wee bit about Stan and what he does? Yeah he's our sort of lead tech. So we've got a technician team at five now. He's been with me nearly four years, coming up to four years now. Previously he was head groundsman at a local football league club that were also in the championship for a time as well. Before that had done some time at Wimbledon. And the Chelsea training ground. So he's got a CV that you'd swap just for those experiences. Like it actually looked really fun. He news about grass, but his knowledge is so he is got a foundation degree in turf management. He's the perfect boy, don't he? His, but so it goes further with Dan, rather than just being a good lawn and technician. It's almost being a mentor then to other technicians ultimately.'cause again I'm sat here now. I'm not training somebody new that maybe they started a few weeks or a few months ago. I've now delegated that role as well, We did a podcast. We did a podcast with guys last year and they went on, did some networking with them, and they, they're in a three to five, the nine to five club, or three to five club, and it's all about, it's all about how much time can you spend away from your business? Does your business have you by the neck or can you go away for a set period of time? And having the processes and stuff in place. How long do you think you could take off if you, if something came up or if you wanted to go on holidays? Or how long do you think you could be away from the business? I remember us speaking about this last time. Yeah. And I think at the time, I said a month, maybe longer. Not sure I'm gonna test it. Certainly not through the spring, certainly not at the moment. We've got a lot going on at the minute. So just a day here's call sort of thing. But spring time's different spring time. Yeah. Definitely a month. Definitely a month. I'm extremely confident on that. Would you say longer than a month would come down to the trust from yourself? Good question. There's no doubt I trust everyone. I'm just trying to think off the top of my head what sort of things need me. All but moving that needle. I think it's just little monthly banking processes. what am I keeping hold of that Olivia, who's in the office would need from me right now? So we got quite a bit going on at the minute, so it'd be tough at the moment. Certainly a month, but maybe a couple. And the season as well. Maybe springs coming on the springs pick season for longer. You can't. Yeah. You have to. You have to. You have to be there. I think for me, with me pushing the business, it feels though I need to be fairly close to it at the moment. Whereas I think it'd be different if my foot was off the gas a little bit than I could maybe disappear three months. If I wanted to. But I love what I do. I'd get bored. I'd get bored like some. People would see maybe a 50, 55 hour week and think that's hard going. I do.'cause I enjoy it. There's times where it's not as enjoyable and you think nah, that's weighing me down a little bit. But when it's going well you'd love it. We don't choose to do, you don't choose to be in business and run your own business and you're still here after a few years if you don't enjoy it, ultimately you have to genuinely into it. How long have you been running for Jack? How many years? I was thinking about this on the way over actually just from the book that I was reading. But I was at school and I was cutting lawns and I'm 31 now. So that brings me on to my next question. Oh, was that intentional? I'd love to say yes, but I'm gonna say no. How has your brand changed from you going from a young lad with a lawnmower to expands in the road now? Was it as important back then as it is now? It makes me cringe. Thinking back to I, I had some Vistaprint magnetic stickers that went on the side of a Ford Fiesta with folded down back seats with a mower in the back.'cause you couldn't even afford the van insurance then.'cause it was ridiculous for an 18-year-old sort of thing. In terms of how the branding's changed, I don't, I think proving it there that it's probably not that important when you're first starting out. Ultimately the brand is you. So all the bells and whistles that go with it, your logo, your uniform. I think some, it'd be easy to almost sweat about the wrong things to start out. So it still needs some sort of brand, even if it's very average. The turn up, the look a lot more of a professional, turn up the job and logo on your t-shirt and as time's gone on. Obviously that's developed and that's changed. It's had to move forward, say we are looking for an ideal customer. Of course. And that ideal customer wants a professional outfit. Ultimately, we're, we are on people's properties and they want typically a more professional outfit than the competition. When people come to us, they might have had bad experiences with with franchise operators, for example, before. So how we put ourselves across, and that's not just people think Brandon, they just think logo, and they just think uniform. And that's not the case. Like our shop window is the internet ultimately. So it's how we are displaying ourselves from the very first contact and how the vans are looking and such. All of these little things add up. Again, it's something that I'm not certain on the stats, but I think someone needs to see your business seven times before they pick up the phone. Even if that's just a social, seeing the vans, seeing it a piece of marketing or coming upon Google, for example. So it definitely is important as you're looking to grow, as you're looking to start. I think even having clean, like a clean van clean tool says a lot. If somebody's done up their job and everything's clean, I appreciate. Whenever you're busy, things get dirty and dirty. Van can often be a sign of a busy person. But at the same time, I think a lot of customers appreciate it if they see you make an effort at the very start. Yeah, as things progress as well. But having, so having clean vans, even if you have an older van, like I have an older vans 2009 and it's a lot of miles in the road, but we just paid to get the paid to get the bottom. But Resprayed.'cause I believe that it's important to have some fresh oil chimps on it as well. Yeah. It might be an older, it's an older van and it looks older, but it doesn't look as old as No dead. It doesn't look as hard. Definitely not, I dunno if it's just me, but a trades person that has no wheel trims and there's just, it's just the wheel arch. It just, you think cost you 20 quid from me, no problem. But no, I say how long it took to get wheel trims. Yeah. Little details. Sometimes they add up, don't they, is what we're saying. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you on that. How has your branding changed over the years? It's probably all it's online. Is the key thing. Tell us about your online presence. Where can people find it? So hopefully how much effort do you put into those? Yeah. How much effort do you put into those different, hopefully when people search for a lawn care company in the West, Midlands will be the top three which is where we wanna be. Ideally you'd be number one, but you'd still is like trust a trader and. maybe major franchised operators that you're never gonna get past. But if you're the number one independent and you're sat in positions 2, 3, 4, you're in a good place then. Hopefully we are capturing really good customers just through Google search there when starting out, you might put a website together and it might be a one two page website and it's a start, but that is an ever developing tool that's not a one and done. A lot of people get a new website and then it's just great. I've got a website, everybody says my website's with SEO. Yeah, this is somebody, they're design now a website for you. They'll say your website has SEO but unless you're creating content on a regular basis, it just gets lost. Think, be proactive. What gets measured, gets managed and everything. And yeah, we'll have regular blog posts going on there. New landing pages. We'll do that in-house. But we'll forever be pushing that website. Fresh links. Just make it, Google is just aware that is not a stationary website that's just been created and abandoned. I've read your blogs for years and I know you work very hard at the blogs. How often do you think you should publish one? Or how often do you think blogs that go out? Probably not the right person to ask. Firstly, doing some things better than nothing, isn't it? If it was one a month. But I think the key thing with blogs, it's a keyword research. Why are you doing it? Don't just write without a plan. What keywords you looking to boost. If you've got maybe an SEO tool of some sort that is doing some keyword research or giving you suggestions on your website then yeah, and then it's how then you're promoting that. You might put that onto your social channels, onto your Google My Business with the link there and such. Who is stumbling across that blog post? I've got a blog post I'm trying to think of the title off the top of my head, but it's how much does lawn care cost in 2020? I don't think I've used the date actually. what is a true cost of lawn care? A lot of views. There's a lot of people typing that into Google. I just saw something on there and put together a good blog, like a lengthy blog with lots of images, very descriptive but same time. Interesting. I get that. Told, had said we could at written titles as well, obviously for videos and whatnot. You really need to, for SEO, you really need to think about what people search for not what you, the business owner. You need to think about what somebody's gonna type. You got to think of it from the other side a keyword research and knowing what's not only gonna score well on Google, but what is like a hot search term. I'm sure there's a posh SEO name for that, but like an intentional sort of thing. Not someone that's just searching lawn fertilizer, which maybe just be looking for a product, not a service, for example. What are the real key search terms that are gonna actually turn into potential customers for you? You've gotta be intentional and purposeful with everything that you do as a business owner.'cause there's only so many hours in the day. And yeah, it needs to be high quality, what you're getting out there. Apart from websites, what other platforms do you use for your online presence? Jack reviews if that be Trustpilot or our Google Business profile are absolutely massive. It doesn't matter if it's a product or a service. People are going to the reviews. That's the first thing you do, isn't it? How many reviews do you have? They're across lots of platforms. We've got over 200 on Google. It might be 20 or 30 odd Ont Trustpilot, and I think there's like a few on Yell and Bark and a few others that are just scattered around. But that's what you do for any product or service is you head to the reviews regardless of what it is that you're looking for. A good customer does their homework. And they're the customers we want. So 200 reviews is quite high. What would be your tips on customers give you a review when a customer is at their happiest? If that be a few months after a lawn renovation, or even if they're absolutely blown away by the results on the first treatment. For example, if someone is at that peak of that sort of happiness curve, that is the point to verbally ask for a favor face to face rather than just spamming out an email and I'll leave as a review. It's just, I easily just get deleted. If someone face to face is saying, look, this would be a huge help to my company if you are able to do this for us, and maybe you've got something then that you can hand over if it be a card with a QR code maybe, or an email link that you send when you get home just to touch in with them. But if that customer has verbally said yes, I'd say 80% of the time they're actually then gonna follow through with it email and other. So you've just gotta get a verbal yes. That human connection and they'll be happy to help you out in return because you've helped them. I know you said like face to face, but do you ever get any. Messages through to your phone saying how good somebody's done. Would you then just reply to that message to say, just go ahead and try and give us a review online or, yeah, I've done it via email before. We've had customers that were blown away by the results and said one of the technicians, Stan, Matt, mark, whoever it is, oh, they were fantastic. And then I will not think okay, there's an opportunity here. And it's not just nice for the company, but if they mention that technician's name in the review, that gives them a little bit of a boost as well. That's their name in lights. And you've obviously aided that, but that's cool. I don't want the company just to be about me. That's not my style. I want everyone's name, you want everyone love. Yeah. That's it. Alright. You want to, Do you use Facebook? Is that more just for the ads or across the, your standard social channels, your Facebook, Instagram LinkedIn, Google Business profile. I've got an account on Twitter. But they're not massive customer generators as such. Certainly not organic. I think we might have picked up a dozen from organic social channels last year. So they're very time consuming. They good rate as well. Yeah. You've got a really play the algorithm. We, we've used Facebook and Instagram for paid ads to, to some success. But on that note, yeah. Do you find the customers that come through Facebook and Facebook paid ads, they find that they stay with you or. How sort of customer retention on that. do you find that customers would typically stay with you a lot with through Facebook ads? It's a good outlet. But it depends on what other marketing channels that you've got, what your cost per customer is per different marketing sources. And then ultimately you need the data to then back it up. How much are they spending and how long are they staying with you? Are they causing you much bothersome thing as a customer, where are your best customers coming from? So I think anyone hearing this almost needs to answer their own questions in terms of their own marketing channels. From my experience though we've had some success with Facebook and Instagram. I think we had 90 customers via paid ads. Facebook's reasonably easy to set up the ads on as well. Yeah, they the cost per customer is low, but the retention. It's also questionable. And the size of the lawns that we pick up are smaller than average. So it's got its pros and cons. You think it's almost like a different sort of clientele you're getting from Facebook Exactly. Yeah. This is all, within every source there's outliers, but that's what the data says that we've been able to pull out. How's your marketing changed over the last lot of years since you're going from small to large while we're on the subject of marketing? How's all that team? Yeah. So a few years ago there had been a lot of fly drops, if that be paid fly drops, or. Even myself. It's almost just sweat equity almost. You're putting into the company. You're out there, you're banging out flyers sort of thing. You're almost putting yourself out as much as possible. Trying to be visible. Sticking stuff online on your social channels is very much, you're not spending much money. You're spending lots of time. And I think that's how a company, in a startup phase that's the way to go unless you've got a lot of investment going into it. That's almost the, and that obviously works to a level, but it gets to a point where then you've gotta explore pay channels and the website starts to get going and say the time and investment needs to go into marketing channels.'cause there's only so many flyers that you're gonna post, for example, first couple of years, flyers nonstop. And as you get going,'cause whenever you first start, you're probably not gonna be doing that many. Blogs and it's not really that important to start to see the crossover then. And you can't pun with paid channels. If you've only got a limited budget when you're starting up your company and money is tight, then you're not gonna say, oh, I'm gonna experiment with this, and this. You're gonna have to be savvy. Yeah. And marketing is just constant experimentation anyway. But you still gotta be savvy with that. So starting out, yeah. Flyers. But the website, again, I keep coming back to it, but moving your way up those organic rankings is obviously key. The more vans you have on the road, obviously you're becoming more visible. There's so many different marketing avenue I could reel off. But striking up, what's your best ways? Let's just, yeah, let's start from the top Work down. Yeah. Let's skip an eye. What, what do you do now? Yeah, so our biggest sources of new customers, not just leads, but customers would be Google. Organic Google. Secondly is probably then referrals. As a small company, if one in 10 customers are referring you to somebody else, then it's probably not a big number. But as soon as then you have got hundreds of customers, then that actually becomes quite serious. Then and again, are you ballsy enough to say, do you have friends and family that we might be able to help when someone is absolutely delighted with your work? Yeah. Requiring you? Yeah. I don't think it's important though,'cause I don't think people do it for the discount. Certainly the current customer doesn't. We actually offer the option to donate it to cancer research that 20 pounds when I was running the London Marathon a lot did that that year. But, for a new customer that they get a 20 pound discount that they're grateful for. But the people referring typically are happy to refer you, but it's always maybe helped incentivize some of them. Yeah. At least you hand given away something. what we've trialed this autumn I've sent a letter to a customer that has referred, I have sent them a typed up letter, signed the bottom, handwritten the address stamp into the post just as a thank you. And to actually say to them, look, you are like a part of our journey almost. Because if they've referred once, they could well refer again. Yeah. Statistically, they're more likely to refer again, so they deserve, I think as business owners, we try and almost treat all of our customers equally, and to an extent we should, but to an extent we shouldn't as well. Those people that have gone outta their way To refer or review deserve like a, at least a personal thank you. Even if you're not all about just checking cash or discounts. Yeah. That's not what they're doing it for Often. When you say not treating them different, it's not the fact that you're treating them different as in the way you do the treatments or anything like that. It's like you said, just that personal letter just to say it's that little bit extra. Yeah. We just trialed that. Just see if we can prompt some sort of repeat referrals. But there's definitely a further opportunity there. We refer It's a nice way to grow as well, isn't it? But it works both ways.'cause that customer that has referred you, they're not going anywhere anytime soon either. They clearly, they've got their feet digging, aren't they? Yeah. Sort of thing. But I think a lot of business owners will say, oh yeah, we grow through referral. We grow through word of mouth. What's the strategy? What's the scheme? What are they doing to incentivize and gain more referrals?'cause some just expect them just to appear. These referrals. You've actually got a, you can actually. Grease, the wheels that you sort of thing. And after referrals, what would you find would be your next biggest lead generator? Google referrals. I could potentially say Van Sightings at this point in time. people will just ring and say, yeah, saw Van on so and so registry. Or it could be that a customer actually approaching a technician that's a, just a neighbor. So just those sort of walkups if you like. And again, a lot of branding that comes down to branding as well. Yeah, I think the vehicle graphics might cost eight, 900 quid. Depends if you have a van like fully wrapped in such, doesn't it? But if you're gonna have that van for five years, then what's that? Couple of hundred quid a year maybe to have the graphics when you break it down like that? Not very much. Yeah, it makes sense when you think of it, investment over time. Following that mail. Actually no. Probably Facebook and Instagram. Potentially then was in terms of customer volume, again, these are smaller lawns. It depends on how many scoring things.'cause it could be less customers, but bigger. So yeah, Facebook and Instagram paid ads. And then, so an interesting one that not everyone might do would be mail. So this is using a mail company to send letters to purposely bigger homes. Think of it as a very fancy flyer. Are they addressed to the customer or is it their dear Gardner? Yeah, we don't have their names, but yeah, if you think of flyer, you would scatter gunner flyer. Say you were paying for a paid flyer, dropping it work out and it costs you a penny of flyer or whatever you melt it down to with the mail. Imagine you're only going through the biggest homes. You're on a seven, 800 K million pound plus properties, but each one might be costing you a TP. To get out, for example.'cause they're going out in the post and maybe it's a bit better what you're putting out there. Now we only got 35 customers through that. However, the average lawn size is triple Our average lawn size. And chances are they're ba they're not just buying the basic service. Depends, real big lawns, they only tend to have the basic service'cause the cost. Yeah. Keeping a real nice lawn that's really big. It'd actually be quite daunting to us. I know it's the biggest scarify you guys have ever done, but I've been to a couple and I'm like, if we, if they wanted this scarify, I'm thinking we're gonna have to hire some kit almost. We have a long list, 5,000 square bids. I really wouldn't, I really wouldn't Fancy scarf fund on them. Yeah. I don't think they'd fancy paying the bill, but, yeah. So Jack, let's talk money. What is the best advice for funding new vans and equipment when you are expanding? And also for now as well, I could give a lot of different answers for this one. And I think speaking to a different business owner could give you a different attitude. Someone quite bullish could say, go get a loan and go for it. How I have gone about things, it's largely been out of retained profit. Now, if you, this is the key thing. If your company is not super profitable in the first place, you are not gonna go anywhere. I'm passionate about this one is that if you, again, if you're not profitable, you can't grow, you can't advance those equipment. You can't advance your machinery. You can't give your team pay rises unless your business is not just profitable. It needs to be comfortably profitable.'cause there's always unexpected costs. There's always changes in the budget. For example, There's things to trip us up everywhere. Some things that you can see, some things that you can't. So being super profitable is important. Now this one could be crazy to a lot of business owners, but the first 50 70 grand of profit of what appears on our profit and loss, I don't see as profit because we've got six vans. Think of the depreciation on those vans. Think if you wanna add a van and you need to replace a van in the same year, it's 50 grand. You are waiving goodbye to corporation tax, 25% waving goodbye to VAT, maybe 10 grand a quarter, sometimes thing, waving goodbye to straightaway what you might deem as. Profit what your accountant might deem as profit. That's just basic reinvestment budget. It's gone. It's basic reinvestment budget to either, not just grow your company, but maybe even maintain it because so many will drive around in a van without the cash to replace it. Machinery again, it's not as pricey as vehicles, but again, you've got all these machines, bands have gone up so much. Amazing. Oh, massively massive. Massively. But if you think of what is on your balance sheet in terms of equipment and vehicles and what it would cost to replace that, have you got that knocking around? You need to be super profitable. And I think a lot of small businesses are scared to be profitable. Sometimes just interrupt. Sometimes people think profit's a dirty word, really. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely not. Yeah. It's vital. If you're not profitable, you're outta business. Yeah. You've got two choices here sort of thing. That's key because you can't grow without cash. Cash is the oxygen the blood flow, isn't it, to, to your company. And it takes cash to grow. Yeah, it takes cash to grow. Yeah. So yeah, there are sources of finance. But are you what risks are you taking as well? And what sort of interest rate are you gonna pay? I was a little bit fortunate when I was 20 17, 20 18. This was about seven or eight years ago. we had two voxel combos at that point in time. To now we've got six real vans, so to speak. These are, again, the insurance when you are 20 years old, but these vans just refuse to die. These were the two sort of thing, but one did, one of these vans went down and it was February. Oh. I went out to swear on this. Yeah, you can swear. I was like, shit what do we do now? Because you want the investment for spring and into your marketing at that point. A lot of flyers. I need a van and I want a bigger van so we can actually get some decent equipment onto people's lawns as well. So I borrowed some money from my grandparents and I think they were a bit shocked at how quickly it got paid off again you would've worked extra hard to give your grandparents back there. Yeah, I borrowed some money from my grand just to, to fund this van ultimately. So you still paying wages and VAT and such, but I think it might have been Do you have the, now do you have the vans bought or leased? Oh, bought, yeah. So obviously there's different ways of funding vans. Again, everyone will have their own sort of method, weren't they? With lease. Maybe we just pay the monthly payment. There's one van that was on higher purchase now paid for outright. But at that point in time the interest rates were rock bottom. So it didn't cost us much more to, for that high purchase and keep some of the cash, but yeah, they're all paid for outright. It's just been my way about it, but it depends on if you've got cash sat around where you can do that. If you need to spend elsewhere, then higher purchase could be a good move. Otherwise you're gonna have cash tied up in an asset when actually you could pay that off over a bit longer and stretch the payments out. So there's lots of ways of funding your company say, I wanna give you different answers. your preferred is expand with profit, retain profit because are you gonna get a bank loan anyway? Sort of thing. And at what sort of interest rate? You need to be profitable anyway, whether you're gonna get this loan, you're gonna be profitable now or profitable later. If you are a small company, and maybe it's even before VAT registration, you should be making mint. And keeping hold of it. And you've got a reinvestment fund. You could almost pretend you can't pretend you're VAT registered, but with the mindset that you are VAT registered to bank extra profit for when the costs do start to ramp up. Any company that is out there undercutting a bigger player because they can do it cheaper, that's fine, but they can only feed themselves. As soon as they start taking on team members and those national insurance contributions and the PAYE tax and everything else that comes with it, the say right now outside it's frozen, isn't it? We've got, we won't be able to do anything anyway. So all that downtime, that's gonna catch up with you later and then you're gonna have to bump your prices up massively. Probably know a lot of customers and then they're gonna leave. So you've gotta bake profit in from the start rather than thinking, oh, I'm gonna be a budget provider. Those companies have got costs, so it can't last. you have six fans in the road, and how many office staff do you have or how many other staff do you have? Apart from the guys that are out in the road, in a couple weeks time, we'll be a team of eight that is five full-time technicians two full-time office staff and myself. So there's five vans and my van that spare basically sort of thing. So there's five technicians that on the go and an office team of three. And while we're on the subject of money, do you pay yourself a set wage every month or do you take, I'm assuming that you pay yourself a set wage. Yeah. And then you don't take the money out, you just leave that for put back in. The, I'll pay the, what is it, the threshold, 12 and a half grand or whatever it is thing That's, the most tax efficient way going about things. And from their dividends.'cause that's then the most tax efficient way up to a set level. Get a good accountant. Yeah. Obviously that, that all might be foreign language. Someone that doesn't have a limited company and now with the changes incorporation tax, it might not even make sense to form as a limited company, like forming a partnership or stand as a sole trader and paying the, as mad as it sounds, the 20% tax rate. If you're a limited company, 25% disappears in corporation tax on your profits. Yep. Before you are taking those dividends. So you're paying Yeah. And even the dividend tax keeps going up as well, again, speak to your accountant. I don't have to deal with any of that stuff. That's just, I'm not a financial advisor, nor an accountant. Disclaimer. And then the labor government banging up the tax on the employees as well. So like you say you're talking about unforeseen costs and all of a sudden Yeah. All of a sudden, things like that. Just, when a, on a bigger team I've done a maps on that. If you're a team of, I think three or four, you actually get a deduction in your national insurance bill.'cause they change the threshold that you start paying it at. But what it does sting is the really big companies, even me, with employing seven, we will see, there'll be more that will go out in national insurance, but it won't skyrocket if you are employing thousands. They're the ones that, they're the companies that will pay more, but they're not gonna give pay increases as freely are they? Or hire as many people. Yeah. So you can try and tweak things. The government can, as best they can, but the market will. The Economist image just says the market will just balance itself out and do its own thing anyway, won't it? So tell me this here, what systems, you have talked about some of the systems you had in place, but what other systems have you put in place and how has that changed over time? Air manuals fantastic one for delegation and onboarding. A new team member or letting go of tasks. Again, I just love a screen recording where you can show someone what you're doing. Someone else can watch that and they can pick it up. All they need is a login. Watch your screen recording or follow the checklist of the bullet points. And then at least the questions that you are getting in return are high level ones. So that's really good. Sorry. I suppose that's handy though. They have that to fall back on if you are not about Exactly. If they have Yeah. Or not a hundred percent sure on what they're doing. They've done it a couple of times, but yeah, they keep, I have it to fall back to it. Yeah. I forget. I thought I could mention MailChimp within this, but Yeah, if if I was uploading the customer, the active customers onto MailChimp say Olivia's off, say it's a task that Olivia would usually do, and I haven't done it for 12 months. I need to go to our manual to actually make sure step by step that I'm gonna do this right and do this the proper way. So it actually gets stuff outta my own head. Rather than it's going around and around, oh, I need to do this and that. It's getting it down, isn't it? Out of your head. And at least it can be shared around. That's actually quite a good, that's quite actually a good idea. Yeah. I had actually been thinking about doing different things like that for job earn and actually sticking them on the, onto this channel. Manual's good. I think for a team of up to five, it might be seven, 800 qui a year. So less about 40 quid a month, I dunno. Something like that. The last time you were here, you had a bit of software and you've told me that you've recently moved different software. Do you wanna tell us your reasons behind what you were using before and what you're using now and the reasons why you've switched over? A real green Yeah. Ah, it's a big one. This, yeah. We we used our main CRM that would send, or email reminders, send invoices, payment reminders condition reports from, and do all our scheduling was a system called Call Data Manager. And we've moved to Real Green, which could potentially be the market leader for lawn treatment. I think I would say. However, it's definitely not for everyone. It is probably the most costly as well. What sort of monthly prices going out the door for that? With Core Manager, I think was based on per customer, and I think we might have been. Our bill might be about eight grand for this year if we stuck with it, something like that with real green and 1314 KI think in all. And I think the payment processing will have to go on top of that as well. So it's definitely an area of cost, but as I say, it's not for everyone because there's so much to it. This system looks after some of the smaller franchises as well, so it has all the bells and with too much information. Currently the technicians are learning the mobile app and a couple of them are, that's just information overload that there's too many things to click and things to do. That's great. The functionality is fantastic, but there's so much to learn. I think any software switch, it's not an overnight job. No. We started this on purpose back in July. So we're ready for spring. It's not, oh, it's January. Let's think about our software for the years, even as a small company and that's, you have much crossover time between each software. They've running two at the same time. Five months. We were still on actually sending everything through call data manager right into December while we were still learning this system because again, there's so much to learn and your reputation on the line, if these emails are not sending or it's not working, you didn't know what to do with it. You've got to know it inside out and you can't just down tools completely and learn a software, you've got a business to run. So it's, you've gotta find the time to do that. And I thought that Autumn into winter is gonna be the only realistic time of year to try and make that switch. Jack, what's your secret to getting that phone ringing? To fill the diary when you have multiple crews? On the quiet times. On the quiet times. On the quiet times. So if you have them, yeah, we don't have many quiet times getting the phone to ring while it's quiet. You're not going to from those that aren't already customers. Is gonna be my answer to this. There's no, no matter what marketing, how good that is, if you're gonna put that in December, depends on what services I suppose. But for us in lawn treatment, people are thinking about Christmas, not the lawns, probably not in January either. There's no point in wasting time and effort at the wrong time of year. If the phone is quiet, though, you've got your current customer base, they're already bought into you and what you do. For example for us, we'll be putting out a prepay offer this year. So even though we're not got the work instantly, we've got some money coming in. How would you do, how would you do that with a newsletter? Yes. Yeah. So via MailChimp and and via email. So that's a, an angle. Say additional services? It depends on what you offer. Like for example, it could be aerations for us and at least then we could get them booked in for maybe February, March or April. So it depends on the ground conditions. it's the weather that's doing as in rather than it more than anything. So marketing to your current customers is going to be my answer. And then it's how you go about that. If you are a company where you've got 50 customers, you might wanna ring them all up, check in on them and see, look, is there anything else I can help you with? I used to do this when it was when we were mowing and the mowing season would finish. It's is there anything else I can help you with across December or January or a few years ago whenever it was really dry, that would've been, yeah, that's it. So you can maybe actually give them a call and they'd appreciate that and at least then you've got an answer.'cause emails half a time won't get read or replied to, but to our customer base, yeah, we can segment that customer base and maybe send different. Things to different customers, for example. And we've got all our cancel customers and quotes not achieved if they maybe not come on board for one reason or another on that email list. So continually putting bits out on that such as a link to this podcast, for example just to say this guy knows what it's all about. But yes getting some, and it's cheap then via email. But getting information out to your current customers for different services that maybe they're not even aware that you offer is criminal that sort of thing. If you offer something, tell them. I suppose the other thing is just is trying to predict those quiet times and then having something in place.'cause that if you've been running for a set length of time, you start to see the rhythms and then it's just Yeah. If you have a quiet time, then you your marketing's nearly filling you. Yeah. But for us, we know when the inquiries are going to come. So it's having the people at the end of the phone at the right time and having spaces at the right time. We also know when the inquiries aren't gonna come and we know when the the weather conditions might be up against us. The guys for example, this week are servicing the machinery. There's lots of training and bits and pieces of sprayer servicing, calibrations. There's a lot of little health and safety things that can all be ticked off during these times. They're gonna come to, again, have a plan for them. So then at least when the weather does arrive, it's as beneficial as possible. So then again, when the three on days. Training days, have a meeting. There's so many little things that can be chalked off that we're getting done this week to be as prepared as possible for next week.'cause what we don't want to be is into the start of March and then it's, oh, that scarify still needs the blaze changing. This still needs doing and this still needs do it. It's we've had the time for that. So that's, you don't wanna be getting delayed later on and having to dedicate time to that. Our unit's a mess each September'cause we haven't got any time September months, October to do that. We're busy. It's immaculate. Come the middle of December then.'cause we've added maybe just a frozen day or two to set things straight. So that's how we'll try and count and balance a quiet time a little bit. But that's the weather rather than demand. As such. Yeah. You mentioned there about, you have the mailing list for customers that have canceled or the, that have not gone through with a quote. Do you go back to them often then to like customers that have left you, would you go back to them regularly to try and get them back or We will email our list. It should be each week. It probably ends up being once every three weeks to be honest. But there's so much content that can be sent their way. Not everyone reads everything you put on Facebook that you are already creating the content. Repurpose it. Get it out there and get it sent. And it doesn't need to be buy from us. Just helpful stuff. They will come to you. Or you could have automation set up as we do in MailChimp where someone after six months of canceling say there'll be a, an automation that'll say, look, you cancel. It was about six months ago. It was just to check in with you to see how the lawn's getting on now, because we all know that lawn's gone downhill. Yeah. In those six months. The customer might have thought six months ago, oh look, it's fixed. It's fine. But then they obviously you take the fertilizer applications away, it's not got the food. So a little check in emails depend And that's an automation that's going on and you've forgotten It's almost even set up. Gonna say as well, also earlier on where you were talking about blogs for your newsletters, those blogs are the, can be dual purpose for your Yeah. For your newsletters to help sell the past customers and current customers. And even, I would use my newsletters. The worst thing a customer can say to is, I didn't know you did that service. Exactly, yeah. If customers say that, do you feel your marketing s field, so newsletters are really good to keep your customers informed all the time. You just stop and put a bit of thought into it. There's so much you could send on a tell. It doesn't mean to me a lot on an email. Just keep it short and snappy. So it can just be a link to a blog or look, here's this voice. If this is helpful, tell me, that's why we're on the subject. How do you communicate price raises to customers? Do you do it by newsletter or do you do it like a new quote every year? Would you do it? I know. Whenever you have a, I know whenever you have a, you have 12, 1400 customers, then obviously that becomes quite a challenge to communicate price raises to individually customers. Can't go through every single customer individually. Send them a new quote for the year and be. Yeah, that's manually time consuming nightmare. That would be all current customers are very are welcome. We reassess the lawn each winter, so that's fine. we'll say that in newsletters. Look, we'll carry out your winter treatment. If you wanna have a little think about it with a technician and let us know. We'll add in a bit of extra time for you. Just a little complimentary sort of resurvey if you like. I think that's a nice touch. Yeah. M likely come across that before your winter treatments they're a bit quicker, aren't they?'cause it, maybe it's just a single spray, whereas if it was a fertilizer and a spray, you'd need a little bit more time on the lawn and a lot of customers might not be in any way, for example. I've almost half forgotten the question now. how do you communicate cross increases? That was it. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. How do you communicate that to your customer? So our email when on call manager, we could on a spreadsheet, drag out the price of the treatment. That could be uploaded into MailChimp for each customer. So then it's like a mail merge field, so it'll say your price per treatment per cut, whatever it may be for the business you're in is this much sort of thing. And that will go on an email. Important things for this this is something that I've been working on this week. Someone might have unsubscribed from your email list, even though a current customer. So I now have a email drafted to go to all the ones that are current customers, but have unsubscribed to say, look, you've unsubscribed. I need you to resubscribe so we can actually get important service information to you. If you want to re unsubscribe next month, that's fine, but they're helpful emails, but I think some people see things and just in their inbox. The reason I ask is'cause it every year I send coach dol my customers, I. And Jason gave me a hand with it last year. Take some time. It is a super big task. But now John will have mailing system. I think it integrates, doesn't it? With mail? Yeah. It's big. So we can take, say, launch among customers and we can email along price and just say, yeah, the price is going up X amount this year instead of sending people individual quotes.'cause it just, it's so much of a, it's for my own business. I just wondering how you did it with having, you guys have 10 times of customers. I have. So my big tips would be making sure that those people you've covered yourself because what you're doing be doing is turn up in the spring and it's gone up two quid. It's I didn't know about this. And it's'cause they're unsubscribed because then you've gotta honor the old price really, and you feel like a bit of an idiot. So that would be a big point. Actually on the email, I'd be tempted to just almost not even refer to last year's price. I'd say this year's price is this. If you put your prices up by 10% and lost 10% of your customers, you would be doing less work for the same money. And you've got space, then that just be a heads for new sort of thing. So don't be scared. You will lose some and some that you lose. They were going to leave anyway. They were just waiting for the right moment. They might have been on the way out three months later. Final tip, I would resend MailChimp or say via jobber. You'll be able to see who have opened, who's opened that email and who hasn't. If they've not opened it, you can resend it to them and then they've had it twice.'cause you'll still have someone that will come back and say, I didn't know about this. Actually we've sent it on this date and this time, and this, and you've just not opened it, What's the best way to communicate a price raise to the customer? How do you, would you just say, this year the price is X amount and just leave it at that? Or is there anything you would add to that? I do you do it as a percentage. Tell'em the percentage it's gone up, or do you just give'em a number of the what it is, go treatment. I'd go at a number. And this is more out of necessity rather than design, because by the time you've, it's rounded to the nearest pound in our system anyway. Would you just save it might be out a little bit. It, because our price increase this year are gonna be between one and 4% depend because it it might have put, yeah, it just depends on the rounding. So I'll stay away from that and I'll be saying this year, this is the cost per treatment. You could then wai the argument and actually highlight the things that you have. Just, it could just be three bullet points. So the things that you've done as a business to actually enhance your service. This year you have access to this customer portal. For example we've done this and we've done this and we've got this, it almost demon, a little bit of demonstrating, actually providing really good value, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't over egg it. I think you can.'cause they'll For myself, yeah, for myself, we just, so I've learned just Yes. This year your lawn treatment costs X amount and that's it. Thanks for your customer last year. This year, this is your price. Your mobile phone bill goes up by whatever, plus infl doesn't it, each year And it's, we know what sort of costs that we are bearing in terms of fertilizer and vans and such. Over the last two or three years now, we've kept up with the increases, but some businesses won't have done, some businesses are still carrying out lawn treatments at 20 qui a time sort of thing. And like it comes back to profit. if you want the crew, you have to charge enough. So tell me this here how has your leadership changed as the business has evolved? Probably the wrong person to ask. That'd be a good question for Stan. I think I. Have a hope. I've every year I'm in a different position. It's a different size business trying to achieve different things with different people on the inside. So I would like to think that I'm aware of that and continuing to grow and develop as a leader, because as I've never been in this position before it feels a little bit odd sometimes saying out loud that I employ seven people. That feels almost a little bit uncomfortable unnatural. Anyway so I suppose it's you have to look at now you have to look at things, what moves the needle. If you get involved in small things, then nothing really happens. So really delegating a lot. Really just learning to delegate. Yeah, definitely. that trust in handing things over and delegating. But I am focused on looking after those seven individuals are making sure. They have everything that they need and they're turning up being the best that they can be because collectively they're moving the needle with the customers. There's only so much I can achieve directly with the customers. So as much as I'm really customer focused and love speaking to customers over the phone and in person when I can, I've got to, I'm playing like a leadership HR sort of business development role that's very different to what was maybe three or four years ago. So it's almost self-awareness that I have to keep progressing as a leader and try and predict situations and advance a little bit and continually grow sort of our HR leadership, and it's not just me, it's actually progressing leadership opportunities within the team. eight's a bit of a funny number. I've got seven people directly reporting to me now. I almost need a couple of. Middle managers if you like. It's not really a Yep. No one really likes middle managers, sort of people. But I need if anybody else has a question, there's somebody else that's there. Yeah. And yeah, like Stan, Olivia are growing into that at the minute no one directs so into, reports into them directly as it stands thing, but they're approachable. Yeah. I need to develop leaders now, not just lawn techs, because when we're a team of 10 or 12 my head's gonna be scrambled unless I continue to delegate even higher level activities, I have to continue to get that off from a plate as well. Just so it's outta my head because I have one more question for you. On that note, do you delegate stuff? How much stuff do you delegate out and how much stuff do you do in house? So hr, health and safety and all the other fun stuff, bookkeeping. Accountancy obviously. Sure. You have an accountant, do you have a bookkeeper, HR who does all that for you? I'm a big fan of keeping as much in-house as we can because we have control over it. It's done the way that we want to do it, and if it goes wrong, we know how to fix it. And we're not waiting on somebody else or paying a big invoice. However, if it is specialist stuff and we literally do not have the knowledge or resources and it'll just take us longer to do it or we dunno what we're doing, then outsourcing is definitely the way. Accountant's an obvious one. But get the best out of your accountant and ask some good questions. Don't just abdicate it. You just abdicate it and have no idea what's going on. That's a bad business owner. You want to delegate it and actually be able to have a high level conversation with your accountant, Bookkeeper was probably the best one of the last three or four years'cause I was doing a lot of that and when it went wrong then it'd be paying the backside then to work out where it went wrong. So we have a bookkeeper who also works with our accountant, so everything, he's perfectly in lockstep there for the amount that we pay in bookkeeping. It's just done and done effectively. Where I've done it badly before was actually with payroll. When I first started employing, I was almost a bit scared of payroll and I thought, oh sorry I get involved in this or this is scary. And actually for how much work it is, I was paying over the odds. I think they were gonna charge a flat fee for any company between North and 10 and we were like two or three and it was actually weren't getting best value for it. Yeah, that would've been a lot. And now even I don't do payroll. Olivia does it. So that's fantastic. So yeah, there's some things definitely are good to delegate to the right people. There's some things where I'll try and keep it in-house as best we can. We use an answering service. That's quite a good one. So if for some reason the phone isn't answerable, if we're already all on the phone or if it's out of hours, the call will be taken. How soon did you enter just a answering service into your business? I think we've had that for maybe about three years, maybe four years. When, and is that somebody local or is that like one of the national ones That is, we've actually switched not that long ago. They're called the VA team. Literally started with them last week sort of thing. So far so good. But it means then the human being has answered the phone rather than it going to voicemail or not being picked up at all. Because if you get that, they might go to the next one on Google and we've already done all this hard work as we've already discussed, to get the phone to ring, so don't let them go. So it's just an extra layer of customer service from that point. Then just lastly Jack, how far have you traveled and what hobbies do you do to. De-stress traveled as to get here today. Yeah. So yeah. From near Tamworth. Yeah. Early flight over F fa Cup, giant killers Tamworth yeah. West Midlands. Yeah. So flew us what, a 50 minute flight or so. And then this bloke called Robbie then gave me a lift down here dodgy driving, that guy. That's it. Yeah. Not too taxing to get here really. Yeah. It's just to drive a flight and a drive. What I do in my spare time. What do you do to de-stress? Rather than put my head under any stress, I'll put my legs under stress and go running. I'll run maybe five days a week before work or after work I like to get out. I think it helps me I will do a run in the morning and then I'm ready to sit at my desk. I think if I didn't run, I'd just be fidgety at my desk Yeah, run. I'll play cricket on a Saturday when I can in the summer. But yeah, just a sporty kind of guy that lights grass ultimately is, excuse me. Cool. Thank you. Very good. Thank you very much for coming. And anybody, if you want to watch Zach's first podcast about how you recruit and get your team members, that's a really good podcast for anyone to watch that wants to scale their business properly. Zach, thank you very much for coming over. No problem at all. Thank you. Great to be again.