One man's journey from near death to success // Against all odds

In this episode of the 'Roots to Revenue' podcast, hosts Robbie and Jason interview David Miller of Pristine Gardens

Who discusses his 25-year experience in garden maintenance and the significant challenges he has faced.

David shares a personal story about sustaining a severe head injury with three brain bleeds about five years ago, which led to extended time away from his business.

Overcoming speech and cognitive difficulties, David realized that the only person who could help him recover was himself.

He talks about how his injury prompted him to restructure his business to ensure sustainability during his absence.

This included implementing better systems for handling customer details, invoicing, and job quoting and setting up a franchise model that gave employees more ownership and incentives.

David has transitioned his business to a franchise system with five franchise vans, which has helped reduce his workload and improve business efficiency.

Throughout the episode, David emphasizes the importance of strong supplier relationships, effective communication, and adaptable systems to navigate business challenges.

#Smallbusiness #smallbusinessstory 

Try out Jobber for FREE with a 14-day trial and then 40% off for your first 3 months; use this link https://go.getjobber.com/premierlawns

Transcript

 Opening Up About Personal Struggles

I'm very more open about it or I don't have the filters I used to because I don't worry so much my darkest day as well. I remember sitting on the sofa in tears and I was always the one that would be  not that worried about other people. Oh, what's the matter mate? Cheer. Cheer up. Come on man.

Man up. Get through it. I was always that, yep. One, so I remember sitting on the sofa crying my eyes out whilst I was the one trying to console myself. Yep. And again, it was those two different parts of my brain going. And at that point I realised that  the only person that can actually help me out is me. 

People are upset, they're sad, they can see my condition, how bad I am, but  that's not going to change. The doctors have said that I need rest. My brain needs to repair itself, get back to it. That's going to take time. Again, that stressed me out because there was no timeframe of it. 

Introduction to the Podcast

Welcome to the Roots to Revenue podcast.

The podcast where we talk to small business owners to find out about the challenges that they've had to overcome to run a successful business. I'm Robbie. I'm Jason. And in today's podcast, we're going to be talking about how to run a business whilst knocking on death's door.  Before we begin, let me tell you about today's sponsor.

The channel is sponsored by Jobber. Jobber is easy for me to recommend as it's scheduling and invoicing and quoting software that I've used myself for the last 10 years to run my own business. Not only do my customers love it, but best of all, it gets me paid really fast. Don't forget about the link www.

premierloans. link forward slash jobber to get 40 percent off your first three months.  

Meet David Miller of Pristine Gardens

Today, we have David Miller. David, would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself? David Miller of Pristine Gardens. We're predominantly a garden maintenance company with a smaller lawn care department. 

David's Journey in the Gardening Industry

I've been in this industry, what are we now, 20, 24, nearly 25 years now.

Started off as a greenkeeper, groundsman. Got to a point where  I fell out with working under people. Not enough rewards, too much there. One day I decided that I'd had enough. It was just after my honeymoon, actually. We were on a two week honeymoon. My wife turned around to me and said,  this is the first time we've had a two week holiday and we've been together over ten years at that point.

I was like, no, we went to see my uncle in America. She said, it was ten days because you couldn't take two weekends off from the golf course. So at that point I was like, do you know what? I've had enough. I'm going to put things on my terms. So the day, my first day back after the honeymoon, handed me notice in.

So I had 30 days.  How long ago was that, David? That was 2012, so probably 12 years the company's been going for now, yeah. Plenty of ups and downs on it, but we've ride through them if it was easy, everyone would do it. Of course, yeah. It's all about the challenges, man. Yeah, plenty of them. If self employment was easy, everyone would do it. 

The Life-Changing Injury

You suffered a really bad injury. Do you want to tell the viewers a bit about that and how long ago it was? It must have been about,  about five years ago now. Somewhere around that I sustained quite a serious head injury.  Three bleeds on the brain. One minute I was fine, going out, doing what I was doing.

Next thing, woke up in hospital the next morning, no idea what had been going on. I spent Two weeks  in hospital before they released me.  It was probably three months before I actually left the house. Another 12 months near on.  I've slowed back to work, bits and bobs. 

Struggles with Recovery

And what did, was the advice at the time that you'd be going back to work, or did you think that at the time I was struggling with speech, reading, writing, so where the bleeds were so severe it hit me pretty much from every angle.

The first bit of work I'd, this must have been around October, November time, and every year we sell Christmas trees. I get the same format. Spreadsheet from the supplier.  I pick the ones we want  Highlight them. It's always the trade price minus the vat So I work out my vat work out my profit margin and then how much i'm going to sell them for  And I remember it really i was sitting on the sofa With my phone as a calculator and it took me 45 minutes  To work out the plus vat prices  on five trees because I couldn't physically function.

I knew what I was wanting to do. I know I was trying to do, but I just couldn't put things together. And one of the trees as well was 20 pounds. So off the top of my head,  I didn't need the calculator. I knew it was 24 pounds and I knew what we sold it for previous years, but I just couldn't put all that stuff together. 

It must have been very frustrating. Yeah, that, that was the hardest thing, because it was so frustrating knowing that, a lot of people have issues and are born with them, whereas mine was overnight, so I can appreciate more now where people struggle with certain things, like Robert, you were saying about,  You're dyslexia and that sort of stuff, that you don't a lot of disabilities are invisible.

Yeah. Yours really would have been invisible. Yeah, and you don't, I don't think people appreciate it because you can't feel it. And like I said, you don't know any different, because that's how your brain works, that's who you are. So for you, that's just How it is for the viewers, sorry, just for the viewers.

I'm dyslexic with numbers and it's something I've always struggled with. And I try and be quite open about it these days. Cause I think a few people are talking about it. Yeah.  I think definitely people need to be open about it because everyone's affected the different ways. But so that's where I found it so frustrating because, I wasn't born with it.

I didn't struggle. Numbers and maths at school, as much as I hated school, maths and science was what I loved and what I was good at. Because there's always a right answer to it.  You can always get to that name and I knew how to work it out. So to all of a sudden, be And it was that thing that you couldn't And all of a sudden, to be, not be able to do what you can do, something like if you're fertilizing a lawn or doing a lawn care job, you know you can do it, sometimes you make mistakes, but to be able to not physically do it, and you know how to check that machine and turn it on, to then not be able to process to do it,  it's almost like being an amateur again, you know how to do it.

Has your has that response returned? It, it has, most people, all my friends, people who have known me they joke around it now because they go, you're fine, there's nothing wrong with you, it's just made you more you. All my good points I've managed to work out, all my bad points have become worse.

Yes. I'm very more open about it or I don't have the filters I used to do because I don't worry so much anymore because I've been through it. I know what it's like  and I think my darkest day as well. I remember sitting on the sofa in tears and I was always the one that would  be  not that worried about other people.

Oh, what's the matter mate? Cheer. Cheer up. Come on, man. Man up. Get for it. I was always that. Yep. One. I wasn't a moral support giver, I was, come on, plough through,  crack on. Yep, that would probably be me.  So I remember sitting on the sofa, crying my eyes out whilst I was the one trying to console myself. And again, it was those two different parts of my brain going.

And at that point, I realised that  the only person that can actually help me out is me. That people are upset, they're sad, they can see my condition, how bad I am, but  That's not going to change. The doctors have said that I need rest. My brain needs to repair itself, get back to it. That's going to take time.

Again, that stressed me out because there was no timeframe of it. Yeah. You don't have time. And in the background you're having, you have a business that's ticking away there. And are you going to have a business to come back to? Are you going to be fit to come back to that business? What's going to happen And that was one of the sort of stressful things. 

If I was, if you were told that, so if you go on holiday, leave your business for a couple of weeks, you can set procedures in place, for a couple of weeks, you'll be back. But when that's open ended,  that then adds more stress and pressure. So we got to a point where We had to try and come find ways to get around it because  it wasn't looking like I was actually ever going to come back whatever so  How long were you how long were you like totally gone for were you gone for a couple of days a week?

It was took two weeks I was in hospital and then it was a few months I had communication with the staff and guys and one of the guys would come around for it again because I struggled with my Speech and actually I'm doing so  we were able to communicate, but I was pretty useless You  at what I was doing and we couldn't, we had no systems in place to generate new work.

Support from Family and Community

I'm sure as well that your wife and family and probably the guys working for you were more concerned about you trying to even get better than worrying about work as such. Yeah, I guess they must have been, but my view at the time as well, because I'd spent all the years building the company up that the smart thing.

How many years were you in? So we must've been about, I reckon we were about five years, five years in. We were established enough, but we were still very wet behind the ears.  Still a lot of issues and stuff we hadn't come across.  I never made a business plan because I was always, most people would wing it and no things change.

So again, I had that attitude of I can write a business plan, but I personally don't know what I want to  Myself yeah, or where the company's going. We're evolving as times change as things go along The money was good. The money was coming in times are good. You're thinking why they need a business plan because yeah, and I didn't want to then be structured and tied in to a plan that I wasn't happy with myself.

Whenever I first started, did you start your business with a business plan? No. Again because I handed my notice in coming off of honeymoon, it was very much a whim. I had a couple of little gardens that  I'd go to off after work. A few people went in me. Did you have a, did you, before you decided to  quit your job, did you have a, did you have a Did you have a round build up?

No, I had probably, I think one of the customers was my granddad's  that I'd go around and do him once a week. Again, that was more of a family favor thing opposed to actually generating money. And I think I'd won maybe two other little customers that I'd done. So the company was born.  And how did you, in the early days we're going to go back to your engine shortly, but in your early days, how did you first get your name right there?

I think originally it was touting around with people I know, making a point that  I was looking for work, did they need anything soon. Facebook was good, Facebook's still good and all the social media stuff, platforms are still good, but I think it was better then because all the new community groups had only just been established and it, before Facebook was, you put your post on, your friends see it, And as all those community groups hadn't  been established then.

That was just really the start of maybe ads for free or the buy and sell groups? Yeah, so for us that made, so Facebook generated a lot of our new leads at the beginning because if someone was asking for a gardener or a landscaper, there would be three or four of us posting up. Now, if someone asks for a trade, there's 50 or 60 people within the space of  a couple of minutes.

So we still post our name on there to do it, just to,  for more of a branding. Occasionally you might get a bit of work, but it's not Yes, so Would you run any ads on Facebook? We didn't really These days? These days or then? I do the odd one here and there, but again, because our vans, since we've evolved, we've We were always in purple, we've got bright purple and green vans.

How many vans did you have on the road? At the time of your accident, how many staff did you have? There was two vans, one that I was very much doing 24 7 back then, running the business whilst still on the tools. So we had two gardeners on the gardening side of things. One driver, one apprentice, and then I had a lad that worked with me who's just finished his apprenticeship.

So we had two, two vans and I was one of the drivers of the van at the time. And then you had your accident and how soon did you think, because you were in hospital for two weeks, you were obviously gravely ill for quite a, for a good week I would say, at least a week? It was a good few, it was probably about three months before I actually, So I left the house and done anything at all.

Rebuilding the Business

What happened to the business whenever you got sick? That was, again, we were very lucky. All the guys chipped in and done their part. Which was, which is good to keep us afloat. But, in reality, they were doing what they were already doing. They just didn't have me to hold their hands anymore.

Things like the marketing and advertising, I was in control of all of that.  Ordering all the materials, paying all the bills, that was all answering the phone, all that stuff relied on me. So we were very lucky that we had a good client base for the gardeners so they could crack on and do. I take it somebody, I take it somebody stepped in and emailed all your customers to let them know that something had happened or,  Was that communicated through your, was that communicated through your your employees?

Yeah, the employees, Danny, be because I was so oblivious to what had been going on. There was a lot of people that knew about it before I even knew they would. So the word spread pretty quick about it. So again, we were lucky in that aspect that the guys would pass on to the clients to say that  they would need to be dealt with directly.

That I wasn't gonna be in contact a number of years ago. My own wife wasn't well.  We emailed all the customers and I must say the support that we had from customers was amazing. Yeah. Amazing and a lot of people give you a lot more leeway obviously if they know. Yeah, we were  very lucky again with that, especially with suppliers and people again.

I've always been,  Again, like in the early days it seemed because you're trying to cut down on costs, get things as cheap as possible. But then I got to a point realizing if I was doing a fencing job, I was spending so much time chasing around to try and get the customer a better price,  the materials may not match the quality.

So I very fastly realized that to stick to, I've got my preferred supplier,  whether it be lawn feeds, topsoil,  paving, fencing, that's the supplier I use. There's no negotiations on it. We use them because I can guarantee the quality of it. They may not be the cheapest, they're a fair price and you're going to get the good quality, which is my reputation.

You'd provide a local, if you're buying off a local supplier, then if you're always just buying all your stuff off the one person, then they're going to be getting a good turn out of it, and you're going to get a good turn out of it, and they're going to look after you. Yeah, and that, that did pay massive dividends in this aspect, because we had a landscaping job that was mid project that I wasn't able to, all the materials for pay for them.

But again, because we had a good relationship, they was still sending materials to the job, saying, don't worry, we'll put it on, and we didn't even have accounts with some of these. Do you want to, do you want to give a, or do you want to give any of them a wee shout out? Yeah. Mania, based in Guildford.

They were absolute diamonds whenever the guys would call up.  to all the materials, straight, straight round. How's Dave doing? I hope he's doing all right. Any larkies? We got Gunners skip hire. Same thing. We owed them, I think I've had probably about a thousand pound in time anyway.

They were still sending us skips, still supplying us. When I started to get back on my feet, they refused to take money for probably about six months because they said that they knew how much stress the company had been under.  They wanted their money, but also they, I was a small fish, and they didn't want to put the company under any more pressures.

So whenever they sent the monthly invoice out to us after that, it would always be with a note saying, don't worry about paying us, pay us when you can, if you've got extra, then top it. That's really nice to hear that local suppliers totally step up. Yeah and marketers fixing and fastening the same thing for nuts and bolts and that sort of stuff.

All AVS fencing, they all done as much as they could to keep us going with the view that we understand there's no one there to pay the bills as when you can.  So it's made of To me, isn't it? Yeah. And I said they are all local businesses in which we use that principle because we know they're good and local.

And I said at a time like that, it massively paid dividends and I don't  Suppliers are quite often taken for granted because You feel that you're giving them money, they need your service, but you don't appreciate how much they would do for you and what relationships you build. My local supplier is called Andy's Stores and I'm upset about being dyslexic with numbers.

Can be, a lot of the time now I just walk in and tell them what I need and they'll work it all out for me and I'll walk out the door with whatever I need. As opposed to most people walk in with the numbers and they'll say to me, what about this? Yeah. Again, one of our suppliers is still saying now, I won't, I've already mentioned, but I won't show you cause I don't know whether he should actually be doing it, but it's something like.

I won't call up, I've got his personal number, so if I need some materials or something delivered, I'll send him a quick text because I'm too lazy or too busy to call. I'll send him a quick text.  That's good service. Can you do this, can you order this for me? Yeah, no worries mate, it'll be delivered whatever day. When I owe money anyway, thinking about it. I always say to him, I'll pop, can you get it delivered, run the order up and I'll pop in tomorrow and settle up with you. And I think that was last week. I should have.  On the same token, you would have good customers yourself. It would say David, we're stuck here.

Can you do A, B and C for me? And you'd move them to the top. So you would do whatever you can for them. So good. I suppose it just comes down to good customer service. Yeah. You were off, you were out of action for two or three months. Yeah. What happened then whenever, was there suddenly a break in work because you were doing all the quoting?

What happened? Yeah, there was a massive break. Again, we were lucky that we had a few big jobs lined up for the appointment. So again they ran over time, over budget. But yeah, my,  the sensible thing, and everyone advised me, the accountant said, I should just shut the company down.  Worry about myself and then set up again later, which would have been the sensible thing to do.

But I didn't want to see all four of us down the job centre. I was very stubborn in the fact that I've worked this hard, I can plough through it. So we had work lined up.  It then started to fizzle out. So we, financially we struggled. The company,  in the years before, we weren't making great money, but we were making money.

So we those two next tax years come through, we run at a loss of around 35, 18 months across those two, two bills. And then, obviously, once I was back in action and come back. Yeah. So You must have had an understanding bank manager as well. Lucky or unlucky enough my Nana's passed away, so I had inheritance money in the bank.

So So again, like whether you could fight or time. So we were in a good position that with the money we owed suppliers I didn't have enough to cover that, but there was money in the bank to see. So again, maybe if I didn't know that the suppliers weren't going to give us leeway, I couldn't fund it again. 

I was confident that  I was going to come back because if I sat there with that negative attitude of shutting the company down, what would I have, what would I have to go back to? So I think for me, it gave me that extra fight, and I've got to go back, I could see things slowly slipping away. We didn't just vanish, but you could see it slowly slipping away.

So it gave me more of the incentive to fight, to get myself up and running, to get back in, because it was the only option. To run your own business, or run a small business, you do have to fight, but you had to fight, especially yeah, especially when the doctor's saying you can't go to work, you can't put yourself under stress and aggravation and have a negative effect on your recovery while  you're still there.

Implementing New Systems

So what systems did you start to put in place then so the business could push forward? So we had to pretty much do everything.  When everything's running fine,  you take it for granted. So where does We didn't even have customer's details properly. So if someone was going to another job and trying to describe it to someone else, oh Mrs, you need to go around Mrs Jones's house and fix a fence panel. 

Oh, which one's that?  Oh, Ennismore Avenue. What numbers? So some of the guys would have,  the house name. Some of them would have the name and address and wouldn't even know the customer's name. The red door. The red door down the street. And that's how bad it was. But again, we'd worked like it for years and it wasn't really an issue because if someone was looking for a job or we hadn't had a document, it was either  part text on one of the work phone or my phone on an email somewhere so we could always access it or someone would know. 

So we never really saw it as a problem. It was a bit of an inconvenience, but some would go I've got a job sheet with Mrs. Jones on it, Who the F is Mrs. Jones?  And then call up and we get it sorted. Which is fine, until I wasn't there. Yep, and then it's not fine. So you've got all these pieces of the puzzle, and it's same like invoicing and sending out the quotes. 

The guy's perfectly capable of going to do six fence plans and posts, they know where to order the materials for, they know AVS Fencing are going to sort it for them, they know that they don't have to worry about paying for it as well, but,  and they know roughly how long it's going to take them, but they don't know how to quote.

Yep, or if a van breaks down, or if something breaks down and there's an unusual bill that's not in the banking system, then somebody's going to have to set up that payment. Yeah. Yeah, like you say, the work's not coming in because those guys don't know how to quote. Yeah. So again, like  I think  there's so many apps and stuff.

Obviously we're sitting around one of the now there's so many different apps and ways of doing it  and they are great. They make things streamlined so much easier, but even if you still stick to pen and paper and don't want to do it, it's having that system  because it  was all up there. I've been using Jobber for 10 years and.

I can go back, I can look at any customer I have and go back 10 years and look at all their quotes and invoices and visits. I know everything about how long we've been there and all the rest. And it's amazing having all that just in the one place. Yeah, exactly. And again, whether it's an app or documented, if you've got that paper trail, the guys could have guessed a job. 

So like I was saying now with the apps now, they could actually go through the old invoice, the old job sheets, and see, we've got it all systemised now, the price per post and panel, and all the equations, you literally, like I was saying, you just tap it in, and the computer does it all for you, but you can check.

What app are you, did you have a look at a few different apps? What app are you using? What software are you using? We're using one called Big Change at the moment, so very similar to what Jobber is.  Job or ease, because that's like profound.  Everyone's slowly moving away food, but they've all got  their usage.

They're all very similar on it  for us because we run multiple maintenance vans. That for us, it was more the way that the set out and scheduling is done, but the basic principles are all the.  And then, do all your guys have, would you give all your guys access to the code now? Would you give, how much access would you give it away?

Or  what sort of policies have you since put in place since, because you've brought on software to manage your business and you give people more responsibility. It's something that I've actually taken away from these podcasts is we,  Had a fellow Jack Chapman from Kingston. Yeah, I know Jack. And Jack said something to me that's really stuck in the podcast.

How long could you manage, how long could your business run with you not there? Yeah, that's an old comment. It's been around for, that was one of the first things. 

Networking and Building Relationships

I go back on  Facebook, how we generated work local networking groups was where we generated a few. It wasn't, good.

So it's not good as in generating enough leads, but there was a few there. But what I found with local networking groups is for a startup company,  I didn't go in. I wanted to get work from these people, but also as well, there were contacts that I didn't yet have. Yeah. So I had my accountant as I've known Hockley Wright Co. 

I've known him for a long time, used him, I would never change, but there's still certain aspects abstract design My  graphic designer, Tara, I met her through there and all those little people that you don't necessarily have, that's a friend I met a good, great network as recently the networking group, and met girl that does HR and see since it's done contracts for me and we had her on the podcast.

It's amazing just going, trying to get out and meet people. The amount of people you have in contact with you. Yeah. That is in your local area that you would never meet unless you actually get out. Yeah, and again, it's having that personal contact. People. I found it as well. People buy from people.

Yeah,  rather than going to a big company that may have been cheaper. 

Managing Insurance and Finances Efficiently

Again, to have that personal contact. Again, because I'm very lazy in what I do. I don't have the time  to wait around for people. Even  insurance for the vans and the cars.  It's done through a broker. The finance is done through a broker. So I've got that one point of contact.

I don't have to remember or worry about it. They're the ones chasing me. for the renewal. Whenever you were lying ill was the likes of, was any of your current charges, was any of the banning charges up for renewal?  Luckily that was one of the things I did have in place before getting out of my laziness with that aspect.

It wasn't with the broker, so I'd get an email, I'd get a yearly email from a month beforehand saying the renewal policy is up. up for renewal. These are the vehicles we got on file. This is what you paid last year. This is what renewal wanted. I didn't think that was good enough. So I  recommend that we go with this company.

Are you happy to do that? And it's literally, yes.  So again, even little things. 

Implementing Remote Work Procedures

And what other things have you put in place to, to manage the business now? Cause you have a, you have quite a, I know, You've quite a unique way to run your gardening  lawn care business. But what other policies or what other things have you put in place that would allow you to work  remotely away from the business?

So again it is all down to the procedures on these apps because everything's all there. So the guys, all the customer's details are all there in, in one place. It's easy a access if they need to. On our one, we've got. I can see every team's diaries, all the customer's details there. If one of the guys is going on holiday or leave or needs a job covered by someone else, I can drag it across. Everything runs on my back end. Yeah. In the office, everything runs on jobber and the whole, my whole business is it sits on jobber like you say you can see where times are does so many different things yeah so i mean my job we just focus on doing the work yes we exactly yeah so the job that i had when i was off it's pretty much become obsolete now because  i advise the guys  with their jobs i help them quote the stuff i do like the admin side of things but the bulk of it is done So I say that I'm in the office doing admin, so the computer's doing most of it.

So whenever the workers are watching, that's what he's actually doing in that office. Yeah. Yeah so again, everything is there.  Which helps me then focus my time.  I'm training the guys, helping them out with stuff. Doing work, getting, focusing on getting the work in. 

The Importance of Answering Calls Promptly

But even down to the core handling, that was where we lost, we didn't realise how much work we were losing by not being responsive.

Because as much as,  if people were looking for a garden in a local area we've got six or seven vans out. We've got good branding, I think we've got good branding. So most people around the Guildford area, if you mention Preston Yardens, they will have seen or know or heard of us. Even with having six fans in the room, I'd imagine if somebody says, Oh, can anybody recommend a gardener?

You guys have a really strong presence. Yes. So that's what we realised once we've restructured things.  On that recommendation of someone looking, we come quite high up that list. We're easy to find on the internet, we're easy to find, but unless it's a personal recommendation of someone that does know us and wants us directly, we may have come top of that list, but they're not going to sit and wait for us.

So if they make that phone call and we don't answer, which was probably happening nine out of ten times,  They would then phone someone else. And by the time you get back to him in the evening, sometimes, like even the next day, it's already been sorted. So we found that quite hard, especially being a small business, because whoever answers the phone usually wins the work.

Yeah. If you can answer the phone, get out to see the customer in a good time, get the quote to him in a good time, then there's a very good chance that you're going to win that work. Yeah. And we found that no one could answer that phone. Because , something they can relate to. Yeah, because we even on, so we tried swapping it around with the guys to do, they were busy on the tour.

I was either, and it is always  . I could be sitting around all day. I go out for one, one meeting  and the phone rings whilst I'm in the middle of that meeting.  So we were just constantly, so do you use the call on turn service or is it that, that's what we do now. They, all the calls now go straight to someone to answer for us, they take all the details and then again I can just fire it out to whoever is relevant to chase up, up to do it.

Do you use somebody, do you use somebody local for that or do you use like a national company? It's a local,  it's a local VA company that do it all for us. I think, so I think because it's, a lot of people have, I've talked to people about this in the past and they say, oh loads of national ones could be really good.

A lot of people then, if their accent's different, then they're like, Who am I talking to here? Is this a, is this a large company I don't necessarily want to deal with? That type of thing. They're phoning you because they want a local gardening company.  So having somebody with a low accent pick up the phone is  key?

Yeah, and I think that definitely is key, but again, it's just that point, that first point of contact, whereas they can take the message and say someone will be in touch, I might not, that might be 8 o'clock in the morning, and I might not be able to call them until 8 o'clock at night, but  Somebody answering the phone and saying, Yep, we've got your details, we're going to be in touch.

Yeah, so as long as you don't go too far out, people then wait. And I would say, but if they've called the first, they won't call at 8 o'clock in the morning and you not pick up and then try again at 8 o'clock at night, they move on. But if you've picked up that phone the first time, then they will sit and wait for you to do it.

So I think that is a very key. Yeah, because people, they have it, They have a need. At the end of the day, people have a need. Oh, I want to get my gardens on, I want to get that fence fixed. They'll go through, they'll find the gardener, phone him up.  Yes, they'll be in touch.  That's that need served, and they can go off and do something else then.

Yeah, and it wasn't until we'd done that we realised how many jobs we were actually missing. Because obviously we were getting like, You thought you were doing well, but actually Yeah, a few calls every week, or whatever it might have been, all of a sudden, the emails coming from the VA company,  We're four or five times what it was previously, and we go, we're not advertising or marketing more.

It's just that when the phone hasn't got signal or what we're missing, it escalated. You're probably the same. When you set up,  your pockets are so tight that you haven't got money. You try and do everything because you can't  afford to, because you're I could do that myself, so I can't afford to pay someone to do  But as soon as you take that jump and do it, all of a sudden that money comes back.

So it's easier for us to say now because we're more established. So stuff like that, we go, yeah, let's get that in. We're not  raking in the money, but we've got cashflow  coming in. We've got an amount sitting in the bank for our marketing stuff. So if we see something, we can action it and do it. We don't have to, if we see it as an investment for the company, we can go out and do it.

But I think even. as a small company,  have that confidence in yourself to do it by something like that. We pay probably between 40 and 80 pounds a month  and it's based on that. I think there's a minimum charge and then we get X amount of calls for it and then tops up on top. So  those little things like that have the confidence that you're going to do it because they will generate the work and make life easier for you.

And while you're doing all this admin  stuff.  You're not earning money either. Yeah. Unbillable hours. The time you spend, any small business owner will  relate to that. Anytime you spend not on the tools,  there's a time that you can't relate to that. Yeah. That was giving me a reason. We still do landscaping work, but we don't promote it as much.

It's normally people that know of us. That to do. There could be a lot of, there can be a lot of wrong around and pacing and then all of a sudden you don't get it anyway. Yeah. Mortgage, like you can earn, you might earn high rates on the landscaping, but for the eight hours you've done on site, you've probably done two or three site visits all the time in a quote.

So you've done four hours unbillable, so every time you take your UN time off.  We're not actually making any more. Have you looked at, have you looked at charging for that quote and then if they buy, taking the money off the price? Oh we did. Potentially I might start doing it again, but I got to the point and the guys were pretty much the same, even the ones that prefer the landscaping side, realise that  there's money, the guy on maintenance is always going to go,  once you've got a customer it's the customers there, you're not chasing it.

And also he's.  Do you want to be carrying like 6. 99 paving slabs or concrete fence posts while you could be walking behind a mower? Yep. So  we got to the point where it goes, it's Landscape is a great industry, and in a lot of respect there's some really good guys out there that do it. But there's not a lot, there's not a lot of old guys that do it.

No and, do I actually want to be doing that?  Not really.  Don't forget about the link www. premierlawns. link forward slash jobber to get 40 percent off your first three months. This will also help support the channel.  Did you know that you can find this podcast on all the major platforms such as Apple or Spotify or you can watch it on video on YouTube. 

If you know anybody who you think could benefit from this podcast. Please share it with them, or if not, if you could leave us a review, that would really help. After all that, it'd be interesting to know if anyone else has had any issues like we have, whether it be yourself being off sick, a key member of staff being off sick, or even when you go on holiday, how does your business function?

What issues do you have? Do you come back to a mountain of issues and problems? I'm sure everyone has that. these sort of problems, whether it be major or minor leave us a comment and let us know what issues you've had along there and how you've dealt with them.  

Transitioning to a Franchise Model

So after your accident and  coming back into sort of running the business again, what is the unique way that you run your business now?

So this all started a bit prior, there was a big overlap. So we run on a franchise basis. It was something that was pretty new.  I can't remember the exact dates, my memory got a bit screwed with it all, but it all coincided around the same time is  my biggest issue with running a business, which pretty same for everything is customers and staff are your biggest headache.

If we didn't have either of them, life would be great.  But I would have quite easily taken that. And we had it a number of times on the garden maintenance round again because we didn't have.  Ways to check up and pay we didn't have procedures the guys would be given a list of jobs cut for the day Call the team leader at the end of the day.

So five o'clock How'd you get on everything done? Yeah. Good any problems? We didn't get to mrs. Jones's house okay. Yeah, the a3 was bad. So we were stuck on there for two hours. See look, you've left it till  The end of the day to now tell me this You Mrs. Jones is going to be on the phone to me soon, asking where her gardeners are, what's been going on, why hasn't she been notified.

Have we made any money now, because we haven't completed all the jobs?  And you sit there going,  Why didn't you just not go on the A3? Or come off at the next junction? Or go round the other way round? Think for yourself a bit. You've got a list of jobs like that,  You don't actually do them in the older, I've written them down. You've got your set round that you feel is best, which is what you do, which is fine, because that's the route you go round. But,  why didn't you just go backwards?  Or change it around? But, it's not there. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to give a wee shout out to Jobber now, because Jobber on their app, you can see all the customers for the day on the one location.

I used to put all the, I used to put all the jobs in order, but now Jason just ignores that. And just goes the most sensible route for the day, for the traffic. Yeah.  Also on the booking system. It's still booked in at zero, zero, zero for midnight because I know they're not going to do it in the way, but also for pure reason is if the customers, if the customer sees that they're bookings at midnight, they're not thinking you're going to be there at midnight, but if they see that they're booking showing up on the 10 o'clock or whatever they will.

I don't think, I don't think in our game, in Gordon and Gordon Maintenance, you can't work off times. It's just not No, so a lot of people do expect it and want to, but again, it's not viable. Too many variables. Yeah. Too many variables. 

Franchise Operations and Benefits

The weather and traffic and trying to get around everyone and So how do you, how does that franchise model work?

Because the way you do it is quite unique for a Gordon Maintenance thing. Do you want to tell us a wee bit more? Yeah so Rizzi, he showed up, again, all piggyback. When I got to that thought pattern of going like, How do I get them out of this routine? And I said to one of the apprentices at the time,  he was probably on, say, 60, 70 a day, something like that, apprenticeship wage, he wasn't great, but I think we were charging 15 an hour,  and they would never message me  too close to the end of the day, because they knew a standard job would be an hour.

So if it got to an hour or so towards the end of the day, if it was a two, two o'clock, they might go, Oh, we've done all the work, anything else you want us to do? If it got to three, half three, they'd be in that realm of going if we call Dave now, he gives us another job. We're going to get another job and we're going to be working 15 minutes.

So do I want to work 15 minutes late or finish 45 minutes early? So no one in their right mind would do that on a Saturday. And I said to the apprentice, I said, look if you rang me up.  It's a quarter past three  for another job and I said, yeah, so you can go to go and do this job  I'll give you an extra ten on your wages go and have an extra tenner and that's an extra tenner's profit for the company. 

I Said you'd do that wouldn't you and I could see you ticking he's playing how much he was earning an hour that ten pounds of extra 15 minutes  Was of absolute steal for him. Yeah, of course. Why don't you then?  But again  So that's why the franchise thing just came up because I was like, do you know what all the problems i'm having with running staff Is because they don't feel it benefits them they feel the same as a lot of, most employers stuff the same.

They see someone at the top, you're earning them money, which isn't actually the case half the time, but that's the mentality that people see. And all the  problems that we were having,  a one man band gardener doesn't have because he goes, Oh, traffic's bad. Either it's going to be a late day or drive the other way around.

You don't get that loss of income. You don't have because you just deal with it because it's you're doing it for you  So how can I get that? Through so so what we ended up doing was dividing the company up between the current staff All right, that's your round that you're doing now have the same time round  You use the same time that either by the van off me or it can be financed in your name  But what you do, you pay a token amount into the pot to cover all the marketing, the advertising, we still generate the work and you're doing the same job you were. 

And it ended up being that by the time we worked it all out, they were getting more money because our overheads dropped by doing it that way. They were earning more money for doing the exact same job. They were working underneath the umbrella of your name. Yeah. But they're invoicing the customers themselves.

So you're providing the work to them and they're self employed. So a lot of,  because whenever you first think, whenever you first explained to me this, I thought, God, why doesn't that's something the revenue would put you on. Yeah. Yeah, because they're invoicing, you're not invoicing? No, we're not.

No, so they invoice the customers. Yeah, they invoice the customers, they do it. But what it meant was they then had that vested interest in the company that they didn't. If they work that extra half an hour. Yeah. It's their money, it's not. Yeah. And I think with some of them in the early days as well, it wasn't even so much if they did an extra half hour, it's extra money.

Once they started getting the complaint, if they weren't there or decided to come up, they didn't like that. So then they would, even for yourself, you go, I can't be bothered to do that last job, I don't really, and you will try and delay it to another day if you can, but also you go, oh no, it's that customer, they're not going to like that I'm just going to work late, to keep them happy, because I don't want them to be complainers.

It made us more reliable because the guys didn't want the issues. They didn't want the problems and they were doing it for themselves. And do you just charge them and advertise it? Do you charge them an advertising fee or would you take a cut of their revenues? No we don't take a cut of revenue.

I know a lot of franchises do the solicitors when they drafted over the contract said that I should do it. The accountants, everyone said I should. My pure reasoning for it was is because they're, most of them are small. One man band people, not necessarily the money. They don't want to build up like that.

And I didn't want to encourage people to doctor their books and because  if I've had access, it would mean I'd have to have access to their accounts to see how much I should be getting of it. It's more work, but then it, it is more work for me, more stress and also is. That would then encourage, or, maybe they, they wouldn't, but I felt that might then encourage people to adopt their books and not declare as much because I was going to take 10 percent of it or whatever out, that then the revenue I just thought it, as much as it would be a money maker thing it would open a can of worms that I didn't want to be, for the sake of what, You just wanted, you wanted a little bit easier, as well.

If you've been, if you've been through quite a traumatic experience, your life is reasonably easy as you can, and you can do it like that, and the guys get a really good deal, and the customers are getting a good deal as well, because they're not having to, they're not having to pay your, franchise thing.

So I suppose like a, we'll not name any, we'll not name any franchises, but if you're paying a franchise, any franchise, then a certain amount of that money goes towards head office. Yeah. Yeah.  And that's why it's not necessarily the money and garden maintenance to pay for that. No.

So again, I've, my view was like to help. I enjoy helping other people. And that was always my biggest downfall as being a boss, because  I'd help the people as much as I could. Yeah.  I enjoy giving the advice and helping people. So for me, it was more like, I want your business to succeed. So I don't want you to think that I'm helping you out so you can earn more money.

So I earn more money. If your business does well under our banner or doesn't, it has no impact on me.  We're offering you advice. We're giving you marketing. What happens? What happens if somebody comes along and they the society said they, they want to work under that and they're happy enough and then they go out and they provide substandard work.

That's it, so again the contracts that we have are sort of 30 odd pages, so again this is where the systems, because we don't actively advertise. To get franchises in either. So most people, some people are aware that's how we act. A lot of people don't, because all the people that have come on board are people that know us, know the company, previous employees, and see the benefit of doing it.

And how many vans or how many people, how many people work underneath that? And how many other staff members do you have? So there's five franchise vans running out at the moment with about 12 of them. 12 on the ground. Do you think you would've done that if you hadn't had the I think I would've done because it was something we had in the pipe work you were thinking and I'd been thinking about anyway.

It would, it just got pushed further ahead because it was a, it became more of a necessity of doing it again. That's why we don't actively look for people to come on board, because even over the last four or five years, we are still. Trying to develop those procedures, check things. Would it generally, sorry to interrupt, would it be generally people that come and work for you and then after you know them and they know you, you would offer it to them?

Yeah so that everyone on the, has been an employee or employee of a franchisee at some point down the line. So we haven't actually taken So one of the guys Steve,  if you sit, watch this he worked for me at the very beginning when I first set up. I started to get a few extra jobs in.

I needed someone to help me out. He worked with me for a few months on and off, but  because we weren't generating enough steady money he had to go and get a job elsewhere because I couldn't sustain him. We always stayed in contact. Once we had the franchise system set up,  I got talking to him. I said, why don't you come back?

back to us. And Steve his terms were,  this is what I earn each month.  I've got grandkids now. I'd quite like to have Mondays off for a long weekend.  If I can earn the same amount of money, even better if I can earn more over four days rather than doing five now, he said I'll definitely come back.

He said, you know me, I'm not about the money.  I don't want to be a millionaire, but I want the lifestyle I know you, I know the company. Yeah. If the money stacks up. So we put the figures together and he ended up earning nearly double what he was  over the four days and his five days before. So it's all people that know the concept, know how we work. 

That would be more than a self employed business. So I know he's earning double. Would that be double after his expenses or double before his expenses? That's after his expenses. Yeah.  Yeah. Yeah. So like I say, like he, he wasn't in, I wouldn't make you millionaires overnight. So he wasn't in obviously it wasn't in a massive high paid job.

He was in an okay job, but he got the lifestyle he wants. Again, with someone like Steve,  a lot of the guys need the regular income. So they're trying to put people on contract, make sure there's work coming in the winter. Whereas Steve.  He's not bothered if it rains, and he's got enough money, Ah, no, I can't be bothered, if he takes a few weeks off over the winter.

He's in a very nice position that he's managed to get the lifestyle from it. So we have a  very mixed range of people like him that  just tick along. He's happy, he has his family life. Other guys that are more hungry, need the money. But they know the more hours and the more they put in, the more they're gonna  make.

Challenges and Future Plans

And tell me that's your, do you have any exit plans for taking yourself out of the business or do you think that's, is that something you're looking to build up and then sell on? I don't think I'd ever say, you never know what's around the corner, but I never You're still young, you have another Yeah, I've got a long time to think about it.

I never enjoyed the office work. Like I was saying, when I was working on the golf courses, I enjoyed working with the younger staff and training them and helping them. So the job suits me, it doesn't, we haven't got enough people on board for it to pay, I mean I still do bits and bobs and lawn care on the side because it doesn't generate money, all the money that comes in from the franchise gets, goes straight into that account, we then use it for more marketing, more advertising, so we get better clients, bigger jobs, so everyone, so that, so it's more of a long term view.

I suppose a bit like Uber or  a lot of Airbnb or They see the money coming in, but they constantly spend it on marketing to grow it bigger and bigger. Yeah, and keep going. Eventually at some point down the future it'll  make a lot more money. And again, with me learning that I didn't have systems in place to even sustain the business myself to start with, when I was off sick, we had to put that in place, but this opened up another can of worms.

Even though we've been doing it for a good few years, I still don't feel confident enough to get something external in to work under our name, because that money's not there. I'd love the extra money,  but not at a  cost to the company. So we want to make sure that everything's set in stone. We've had a lot of teething problems, a lot of issues with franchisees, which we knew were going to happen, but also  we didn't know what was going to happen with it, how it was going to happen and how we were going to deal with it.

So I've deliberately keep dragging it out until I know that I'm confident that everything's in place. Like I say, the better the devil there's probably another avenue there that you, there's probably another avenue for you. You'd probably find that there's quite a lot of companies out there that would probably pay you for advice on how to do it themselves.

Yeah, that's something. I'm going to yeah. We'll leave David's, we'll leave David's email down in the show notes. And anybody that wants to maybe contact you. Yeah, I'd be happy to. You could maybe offer a wee consultation on that.

Because I would say There'd be people out there that'd be less versatile. I like that business plan. I quite like the thought of that.  Years ago, we used to call it the pristine curse, because pretty much anything that could happen to someone, extreme or not, we had it happen to someone.  So most issues with businesses,  we're pretty adaptable. 

I'd imagine we've you've done pretty well. You've grown a business after having a near death experience. 

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Take my hands off Dave.  Listen, David, thank you very much for coming over and taking part in the podcast.  Very interesting talking to you. very much. Do you want to just, before we go, do you want to tell the viewers where you travelled from today?

So Guildford Surrey, flew out of Gatwick this morning. Over the Belfast here. So brilliant. Listen, thanks very much. And don't forget to smash the like button.  Thank you.