1015. Stretching the Rubber Band: Bidding Our Biggest Job Ever

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1:01You're now listening to the Fullerton Unfiltered podcast, straightforward, no nonsense business advice. Completely untimely unfiltered. Grow your business. Grow your life. Now, here's your host, Brian Fullerton. Fullerton. Hey, what's going on guys? Welcome to another episode of the Fullerton on filtered podcast. It is your host, Brian Fullerton here, hanging with you guys and good morning. Well, on today's podcast episode, I wanted to spend just a few minutes with you guys sharing a very fun, funny, relatable kind of a story with you guys about our largest snow quote today. Some of you guys have actually already been a little bit more privileged to hear more of this story and what we're doing and what we're trying to do if you're part of our link Facebook group and private membership. And it's been a really fun kind of evolution to bid this site over the last couple of weeks.

2:02The funny thing is, if I was being completely honest with you guys, we've had the quote pretty much done two days after we got the lead. However, it's taken me about three weeks to hit the send button. Now don't shoot me. You know, don't shoot the messenger. The irony here is the guru putting all the content just to have the hesitation to send it the quote. And the reason is, and I just don't know what else to title this other than like bidding work outside of your comfort zone. And I wanted to talk about that for a couple of minutes because I know I'm not the only one that feels the same way. And it doesn't have to obviously be exclusive to snow, residential or commercial. It can be your biggest design build job today. It could be something as big as your largest commercial maintenance account for long doing apartment complex, a commercial building and HOA, etc, etc. I think we've all kind of been there as we continue to grow our businesses. And look, if I'm just going to be completely honest with you, I'm looking at this giant

3:05number and it scared the bj's us out of me. The quote is around a $90,000 snow customer. And I'm thinking to myself, holy fricking cow, it's two huge campuses. And the only thing crazier at the same time in tandem of this quote is we have two other sites, whatever I don't know what tandem times three is, but in a triple fashion parallel paths fashion, we've got a $30,000 quote going out, a $34,000 quote going out, which both seem pretty promising, right? And then we've also got this one. So I'm like, what if we get all of them? What if we get one? What if we get none? So like the head games last two or three weeks have been quite a bit for your boy here at Brian's Lamynitz. When I wanted to maybe just share a couple of thoughts that I was writing down here and just trying to collect my thoughts is this is like a good tension, right? Like it's a good conversation. The irony is like it's not so much of go figure, it's not like the math isn't mathing.

4:10It's just this is like a new frontier of a very large site for us. And you know, it's funny or ironic or what could be funny in ironic even five years from an hour, 10 years from now is this could be like a normal site for us or our smallest site, you know, for example, we used to do residential mowing and then somebody would have like an acre where like holy cow, like I couldn't even imagine how to cut this. And you're like, I don't know man, 100 bucks a week, take it a leave it. Whatever the number is, right? And you know, you get it. And then after a season or two, you're like, yeah, like no big deal. Like what was what was the big deal? Now, some of you guys are there right now and I can totally empathize. Empathize. You're like, hey, I don't know what's going to happen if we get this site. Like we're biting off more than we can share. And maybe it's not just like the size of the site, maybe it's like certain aspects of the scope that you're performing. Maybe you know, you get a nature way and it's got a 20 yard mulch job for the front entrance way. And you know, your biggest mulch job today is four yards, six yards, eight yards. I get that. Like that is a real, real conversation. Maybe it includes, you know, five rounds of fertilization and you called up your local

5:15fertilizer company. Hey, could you guys sub for me? They bid it and quote it. You put it into your element account, added your, you know, subcontractor line multiple overhead recovery at a 10%. Then you added your 10% net. And the $650 weekly app that they gave you is now $725 or whatever. And you're like, oh my God, $700 with a furt work times five apps, like $3,750 or whatever it is. And you're like, we don't even offer fur. What if the guy doesn't show up? What if there's weeds? What if there's dandelions? What if we kill part of the lawn? What if there's cramgrass? Like what is blah, blah, blah, blah. And so you're, like you're stretching this bandage. You're stretching this rubber band. You're stretching this, this comfort zone, this tension, you know, that is now forming as you continue to grow and get into new areas of business, new growth. And I don't know if you guys have like felt this tension or this like a live this recently, but I haven't really like bid anything outside of our wheelhouse or our comfort zone in

6:18the last 12 or 18 months. And it's not from a lack of bidding and, you know, growing the business. Like sales are up 38% for the year. But we are sticking to our ICP and this site is kind of our ICP. Like it's an ICP we definitely want to grow into. You know, I heard many folks along the way saying like there's being a hunter and then there's being a big game hunter. And I'm like, ooh, what's that? You know, and some of you guys are excited about the 10 and 15 and 20 grand pateos and then you get a lead miraculously that comes across your desk, right, whatever. And you know, somebody wants a $250,000 back yard and then you start building this quote in this bid and I don't know if you guys can relate, but you just look at it and you look at it and you look at it and you're like, I don't know like the number, man, like is. And the funny thing is now you might have the confidence. So maybe you are using element or you know, some great software. You got some spreadsheets and you got some numbers and then you look at this, this quote. And you're like, you actually like the math, maths, everything checks out. All I did was take the same job and you know, just the math kind of rounds up by two or

7:22three acts, but you know, like the math, math and then all of a sudden you've got this $150,000 back yard landscape or this $50,000 snow account and you're like, you know, I feel like this is a little bit bigger than, you know, than what it should be or maybe my price is a little bit high. So you start checking the math, checking it again and you think to yourself, I've probably looked at this 25 times, not because I don't know how to estimate it, but because I've never had this much riding on one estimate. So you go through your production rates, your equipment recovery, you know, your overhead, your labor. I've checked my salt price 35 times, make sure we've got updated salt pricing, you know, that's $30, $40, $50 more per ton, then what we were originally thinking, you know, put it on our element budget this year. You're looking at contingencies, you know, like where to stack, where to scrape, where to scoop, whatever, right? This is what I'm talking about. And it doesn't matter like how long you start the damn quote, like the math doesn't suddenly change just because the opportunity got bigger, necessarily.

8:22Right. I'm not saying that you can't shave a little bit here or maybe you can make some stuff up with production and row density, you know, maybe it's a larger site. So there's a little bit less travel time. I'm not, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying like the math maths for what that should be in 20% net on this site or 40% net on this site is what it's going to be like. The equipment cost is the equipment cost. The production is the production. And you know, obviously like you don't want to negotiate against yourself simply because you're uncomfortable seeing the bigger number. But for me, I don't know, man, easier said than none sometimes, right? Again, when you have a $15,000 account making 10 or 15%, the margin is 1500 to 2250 or whatever the number is, right? I don't know. This is just a personal experience I'm going through. You start adding a $50,000 account, a $75,000 account, a $100,000 quote. And you know, like the whole conversation is like, man, like, yeah, I don't, I don't really care if we do or don't get it.

9:23Yeah, like if we get it great, if we don't know big deal, which is like kind of Latin for I'm really freaking nervous. And I don't know if that's a, I don't know what I'm doing thing or the math doesn't math thing or holy cow. What if we do get this and we got to flex up? What if we do flex up and then we lose it halfway through the season or we don't get this contract renewed for the next year? Like, like those are practical conversations. I'm with you there. But here's like the entrepreneurial lesson for me as we continue to grow and we continue to aspire to grow is obviously like every new level is going to feel uncomfortable the first time. In your first commercial account, your first employee, your first, you know, a nice new truck purchase. I remember you buying your new truck and we had a $560 month car payment. I was like, oh my God, what did we do? We tried to do like the right thing, quote unquote, whatever that means. I put, you know, 26, I think it was $20,000. We got 16 cash and four grand for my old truck. Whatever our old F-150 was called. I can't even remember.

10:23And, but like we had a $560 month truck payment. Now, remind you, back 10 years ago, my wife and I are rent for our apartment was $720 a month. So when you take truck plus insurance, we were spending more on the truck and insurance, and we were for where we were living. Right. And so I think about all these different goals that we said, your first $1 million revenue target, your first huge snow contract. And again, I remember getting one of our first Haways, one of our first Haways. And it was that story that I was talking about at the top of the hour. They had a mulch, it had fertilizer, it had irrigation start up and blow out, it had pruning. Like all I knew at the time was like, how to mow. And I don't even know if I, you got to sharpen a lawn mower blade correctly if you don't want to say it back to that. A little insight joke there for some of you guys. If you never watched the blade sharpening video from Gared from Magnumatic on the YouTube channel, it's an hour and 10 minute video about how to correctly sharpen a lawn mower blade.

11:24It's ridiculous, okay? And there's actually a lot of science behind it. But I remember bidding this commercial site and it was like 22 or 26 grand. And there was actually one of the Haways that we lost about two years ago. We hadn't the account for about six years, but folks I'm telling you, I subbed out like four out of those five services. And then it was three out of those five services. And there's two out of those five services. We never got into the fur or the irrigation part, but we were able to self-perform the pruning. We were able to self-perform the mulch. We were able to self-perform the flowers. We were able to self-perform, obviously all the mowing. And I'm looking back at it. I'm like, yeah, it's a little bit bigger site, but like what were we afraid of? All these ghosts and all these fears. And like fears what keeps you alive. Like I'm not trying to be too smog or too cute or say we're all too cautious. There's a reason, evolutionarily, when you see a tiger at the fricking zoo, you go, yeah, I'm not going to mess with that damn thing. Because that thing used to chase us down 20, 30, 40, 50,000 years ago.

12:26Pick your narrative. You know what I mean? There's a reason we live in caves and we're hunters. And like we're predators in prey and we're trying to like stay alive. Like so some of these fears and cautious moments are super practical. I'm not denying that. I remember one other quick story picking up another commercial site. And the guy wanted us to do the snow, which was ironic because like we were barely qualified to do this type of site for snow, large sites of $15,000 snow account for us, good site. And he's like, well, do you want the lawn? And I'm like, actually no, because like it was two and a half acres of pond and mowing and it was just it was just big. And I didn't know how to price it. And I granted, I did not know how to price it. I could have told the guy 82 bucks. We could have told him 300 bucks. It wouldn't have mattered because I didn't know. I didn't know how to measure. I didn't know how to put that against production rates and I didn't have a budget or price list like we do now without element. So folks like, I'm telling you, this is like fresh stuff from just two, three, four,

13:26five years ago. This is like yesterday to me. And ironically enough, I was bullish on snow and I, you know, didn't my best with my know your numbers calculator and industry rates and production with what we were doing and trying to charge and blah, blah, blah. But he asked me probably two or if not three seasons in a row, hey, can you take over the mowing yet? Hey, can you take over the mowing yet? And I was like, sure. And I think we're just coming online with element just a couple of years ago as we started to bid the mowing for this site. And again, I think we even had the price of just on year two or year three that we had at once, we were year two or year three into element. But it feels like just like that type of conversation from one of my commercial sites, it feels like just like that conversation from one of my Haways. And then I'm thinking to myself, and I actually had this conversation with my wife and I'm thinking about guys like Josh Gammes or giant companies that have, you know, these 250, $350,000, $350,000, $50,000 snow accounts. And I'm thinking to myself, well, like they didn't know what, with all their respect, they

14:28probably didn't know exactly what they were doing the first go around. Or they probably learned some hard lessons and some hard truths along the way. And I'm sure there was some waste or inefficiency or they forgot to charge for something that took, you know, two, five, 10% of the profit away. Oh, we forgot to, you know, charge for relocation or hey, we forgot about this and we have to put a couple extra hours into the job. Like I think that's normal. Right? I think that's normal. I think we've all have been there before. And obviously our operating state has a current comfort zone right at the end of the day. Like our current level of operation does have a comfort zone. And I know that you guys know that, but I'm just sharing a really relatable practical story, right? And think about it every time an opportunity like this comes around, it stretches that rubber band. Now here's the goal. He says, I see it like here's where I'm at is I'm not here for reckless growth. Like, of course, we want to become capable of handling larger opportunities and obviously like Brian's on maintenance two, three, four, five years ago couldn't handle these things.

15:31But that's not necessarily what, you know, I'm discussing here today. Right? This is clearly a, I'm not comfortable with the current growth of these kind of quotes or contracts. And I'm just realizing it's not because of the math, right? Like it's because it's something new. It's a new frontier for us. And sometimes you don't know, you know, whether you've built a company capable of doing that bigger work until the bigger work actually shows up, right? Let's be practical. Those other H O A's and other commercial sites like, you know, they're big, but like it's no big deal for us. We put two four five guys on it for half hour hour, two hours and we get it done. One of our largest H O A's, it's $450 weekly. No, no. Five, I think with our new numbers like $505 weekly, whatever it is. We've got four guys on there for about three hours each. It's a big site, you know, and six or seven acres of mowing. And that was like another rubber band stretch, but growth isn't just winning the bigger work, right? It's building a company that can confidently, confidently say yes to this bigger work.

16:32So one thing I just wanted to maybe just give you guys a practical takeaway that's helping me around this conversation is that I'm not trying to confer or to confuse fear with the bad math, right? Or good math. I am very practical in my approach saying I'm afraid and nervous and anxious because it's a big site, but not because my numbers are wrong, right? The number makes me feel uncomfortable, but it doesn't mean the number is wrong. Those are not the same thing, right? Like, and here's the deal. Like I don't know if you guys can relate to this, but here's what I did in a practical sense. Sometimes you have to get somebody who's a little bit smarter than you to do a sanity check, recheck your production, stress test, the assumptions, you know, drive the property again, make sure you've captured all of this go double check, triple check. But dude, once the math frickin works, you've got to, you've got to send the quote. That's, that's what I told Ken Deemer of Ford coaching, Pan Ken.

17:34I went up line, dude. I'm like, Hey, I've got this big quote. I'm looking at loader pricing, truck pricing, this pricing, that pricing and Ken's like, bit it as you know, as you would any other site. Don't try to get fancy and, you know, engineer the profitability on it, more advantageous, until it's actually sold. And once it is sold, then you can engineer it to get us scared, get a loader. Can you consolidate a couple of sites with that loader to be exceedingly more productive and efficient and blah, blah, blah. But dude, like the number is the number. You know, and of course, then maybe you can shave that number a little bit, but you're not going to take this 95,000 on a quote to 65,000 by a bunch in the numbers, like the math, math. And I kind of just had to hear it. You know, if I was being super transparent with you guys, I was on a conference call with Ken about this and he's like, dude, the math, math, everything I'm looking at. He's, dude, I know you know your numbers. Like, and he double checked and triple checked with me and we dialed it in, but he goes, dude, you just got to send it.

18:35And I'll tell you what, I don't know if like shaving, 10 or 20 grand would have made me like more emotionally comfortable sending it, but it doesn't make the account safer. It actually makes it more dangerous, right? Because now we're not actually doing the job for the price. And so just to bring it full circle, these like rubber band, you know, kind of stretching opportunities for like this giant snow account, you know, maybe it's your first hire. Maybe it's your first crew. Maybe it's sending a team member out to go to the maintenance for the first time and you're like, what am I going to do? Eight hours a day every day now. Now that the crew is out doing the work, that last for about 12 seconds, because you got 500 other fires, you're like, I need to fix the website, I fixed the branding and fix the pricing and update my element number. Right? There's always something to do. But when you send that first grout for some of you guys that have done this, you know, 10 years ago, and for some of you guys did it 10 weeks ago, and for all of you guys that are doing it, you know, in the next 10 weeks or next week or next season, right? Like every single one of us experiences like rubber band stretching opportunities, right?

19:39Here's the takeaway for me. We did our homework. We checked the numbers. We've asked for help. We checked them again. But eventually we have to trust that the system that we've built will produce the result. And we've got to take the swing. Whether we win the account or not, I know I've already gotten better from bidding it, because now that we know that our company needs to service an account like this or can service an account like this, we've ran the math. We've ran the numbers. And now we've stretched that rubber band to be like, yeah, we can quote on sites like this. And think about it. If we're closing 20% or 30%, it's only going to take knocking on the door of this company spring and fall for few three years until we finally get the account or bidding on four or five more just like it. Does that make sense? And so now I'm thinking to myself, okay, like we can bid it, we can price it. Now we got to do it. And if we get it and we do it, and my team has the win and we have the win here at Brian's

20:39that we can do a site this big. And now we're big game hunting and we want to hit some big revenue goals. Well now it only takes two, three, four or five of these sites per year to start growing at a quarter million, half a million dollars a year. And now you start thinking what if. And again, it's just like anything else. But I know we can do a million because we can do 50 sites at 20 grand, 10 long, 10 snow. That's my current comfort level. But we could also do 10 sites like this for a million dollars if we do it right and flex up correctly and run every logistical piece of it correctly. And now I'm thinking, oh my god, we could easily do five million if we had 50 of these sites or whatever the number is, right? So it's really cool to go through this experience. I'll tell you what, it's a little nerve wracking. I've been a little anxious. I have not slept as well. The quote was due at a certain timeline and we got it in and submitted it. But I told the gal, I'm like, hey, Storms rolled through. I'm waiting for my rental price back. And then I was manipulating the estimate to seem to some different scenarios and experiences.

21:42And then I was like, you know, we're also the Storms rolled through and we're waiting for Wi-Fi and internet to come back. And she's like, okay, no problem. Like, okay, I get it. No big deal. And I finally just kind of realize I'm like, dude, you're being a, you know what? We just send the damn quote. And I share the story, hopefully just to be vulnerable and authentic with you guys, that like I'm still working through this stuff too. And I don't know if it ever freaking goes away. Can I be honest with you guys? I'm sure there's a level or an element where somebody was doing a five million dollar construction job or a three hundred million dollar highway renovation. And like, you sure you checked? You checked everything, right? It was one million, you know, tons of gravel, you know, for base. Oh yeah, boss, one million. You're like, that's what the math says on a ten of whatever those folks are using for their three hundred dollar, one point four billion dollar construction job. And so don't let the math scare you at like it's the unknown scare you. But if the math is the math, math on live row.

22:43So anyway, that's what I want to leave you guys on today's conversation. I experience it. You do the exact same thoughts, the exact same feelings, the exact same experiences that so many of you guys are and are going through, especially if you're growing. So don't feel like you're alone if you're feeling the exact same way, sending out your first 10 grand, quote, 25 grand, quote, 50 grand, quote. And some of you guys, you know, you're, you know, it's all relative. Maybe you guys are doing a quarter million. And this is your first million dollar backyard quote, right? So I'm right there with you. Let's keep growing. Let's keep pushing the envelope and stretching our rubber band with moments like this when you continue to bend on your biggest job ever. All right. That's what I'm going to leave you guys here today. Did you guys listen to it? If you guys ever want to learn more about these kind of conversations, folks, you know, been talking about this for three weeks on link, Sharon screen, showing numbers, doing the whole deal. We'd love to have you part of that close Facebook community, 49 bucks a month. I mean, it's an absolute steel, weekly live streams, tons of fun, 340 members or something growing all the time, growing every day.

23:44We always add a new person every week. And we'd love to have you. All right. So links to the description for all that. If you have any questions on element, you know, to know your numbers, thank God, thank you, Jesus. We're able to bid something like this accurately, at least I believe with our numbers and with our element account. Praise Jesus that we're able to adopt that software the last couple of years. But if you have questions or comments or need anything or have anything like this, let me know. We're always here for you. One last thing I will say in just a sincerely plug it, the commercial bidding made simple training program. On launch brand new academy, if you get a site, that's a little outside of your wheelhouse and you don't know what to do by that program. It's 249 bucks. It includes one take off, lawn or snow, bid by yours truly with my numbers. Our company is so, I wouldn't say it's like super lean or super efficient, although we're doing our best every day to make it an excellent company. But it's a real company like our numbers and our averages and our compared to like KPIs

24:45for the industry, very average, good, solid, strong business, no different than your guys as companies out there. So if you guys have your first commercial parking lot for lawn or snow or your first church or first apartment complex and you don't know what to do, other than you know you could probably get the work done, even though it might be a flex up or a stretch. Buy that program for 249 bucks. You get a 20 grand account, you make 20% on it, you make 4,000 bucks. That's 4 grand just for lawn or whatever the number is, right? That doesn't count double in that first snow and then doubling up that for, you know, or I should say adding it for six or seven years that you typically have an account on average. So for $2,50, you know, you can have the upside of $25,000 net. I don't know what the ROI on that is, it's probably 1,000 or 10,000%. But that's just like the minimum investment $2,50 bucks. There's a lot of training and education like four great videos, part of that course to learn how the commercial game is played, which is really, really good content. But if you guys do need some help bidding any of these sites, I didn't do a show just to plug

25:45this around the tail end, but I'm just thinking to myself, dude, if I could have paid Pat or Ken, $250,000 to bid this site. Oh, yeah, I would have. And I do with Ford coaching because I pay the retail rate, which is really cool. So that's why Ken jumped on the horn with me during lunch hour to be able to help that out with this quote. And I'm really, really grateful for that. So I'm making the investment just like you guys can as well. Commercial bidding made simple program, launch printer academy.com, under the store, I typically have a quote back to you within 48 hours with the takeoff, our price, etc, etc. So long or snow, I know obviously the conversation is snow. But if you guys have any questions on that, check it out at launchfordoracademy.com. All right. That's what I got for you guys. Hope you guys have a great rest of the Friday and we look forward to catching up with all of you guys here on the next one. There are thousands of brands building gear for our trade. You could drive say 33,000 miles and visit all of them, but ain't nobody got time for that. October the 20th through the 23rd in Louisville, Kentucky, they are coming to you at Equip Exposition.

26:45Visit them all in a gigantic indoor exhibition hall and the 30 acre demo yard outside. Moor skid steers, chain sauce, irrigation, hardscape, tree care, all of it in one place. Demo the machines, talk to the experts who make them, try the new stuff before you even spend a dime. Early bird is only $30 if you register now. Equip Exposition.com. Register now at Equip Exposition.com or use the link in the podcast description. Save 50% off your registration when you apply the code Brian at checkout. We can't wait to see you in Louisville. Thanks for taking the time to listen to the Fullerton unfiltered podcast with Brian Fullerton. We hope you enjoyed this production. If so, please consider leaving us a five star review for the show. While the techniques and ideas presented here are designed to help you grow a more successful and profitable business, no one can guarantee these results for you. We want to emphasize that entrepreneurship is not easy. And the ideas presented here are just the opinions of Brian Fullerton and his respective guests.

27:47No one can guarantee success for you. That being said, we hope the ideas presented here help you and motivate you to go on out there and crush it with your own business. Fullerton unfiltered podcast. Thanks for listening and we hope to see you on the next episode. This has been a Brian Fullerton and Mr. Producer Production.