Q & A Decoding Estimates for Construction, Landscaping and Lawn care #3

Q & A Decoding Estimates for Construction, Landscaping and Lawn care #1

Q & A Decoding Estimates for Construction, Landscaping and Lawn care #2

And once you start to learn how to do it over and over again you will always get better and you gotta realize this Francisco somebody is being you learn I love this.This is best part of it somebody is paying you to learn.

Three, two , one

Your last question was about grading how do you get grading the right ?

Franciso; yeah

you know is that what you want to find out perfect I know now you are in my neck of the woods this is what I grew up doing and I can tell you that there are not going to be any two grading jobs are like heart skipping just like everything else there's never going to be two projects alike and we really got to focus on learning how to bid not necessarily just by going by the numbers but how to interpret those numbers.

How to interpret those sites and use your past experience you're going to build up a wealth of experience of the very first thing you're going to do when you go into a grading job we're going to be grading with a skid loader correct.

Franciso: Yeah

OK perfect so you can be grading with a skid loader or what you're going to try to do is if you've never graded before you're going to try to do it T.N. am basis of time and material basis you can have some customers that give you a little pushback on that but you gotta learn to sell a time and material basis and what that's going to do is that's going to tell you if you have a medium size yard you know hundreds of hundred foot lot by hundred fifty foot lot it takes you ten hours to grade it.

Well if you want to get sixty five dollars an hour first started eighty five dollars an hour average for a bobcat medium sized Bobcat you know that this is going to be eight hundred fifty dollars worth of work plus travel time to in there you want to make sure you cover your basis because getting to that job and getting back to the job if you can be paying somebody to haul that skid loader for you if you have an employee you've got to pay them you've got to be compensated for that time so you've got to add that in there all the little little factors that you don't want to forget about.

So an eight hour ten O grading job may take you eleven or twelve hours by the time you get to and from the shop point the point is once you understand how to break them down in the very first one that's going to help you lump sum your bids that's where you're a largest profit margins are going to lie OK when you can look at a job and you can say you know what I know this job is going to take me ten hours but you get a little more experience in it and you give the customer a call for eight hundred fifty dollars plus Let's see a couple hours you go out of your first big no we're working on you so I can be your first period was ten hours a day five dollars an hour eight hundred fifty dollars plus two hours of transportation let's just call it an even thousand dollars .

You charge them on the time of material basis for your first bud you get to the second bid and you say well I know I get twelve dollars involved here but I can do just as good a work in eleven hours but I'm going to charge them a thousand dollars and I'm going to sell it this way your bid is a thousand dollars you don't give them a time and material basis you just say here's my bid it's a thousand dollars.

Now if that job doesn't take you twelve hours like the other job did you made more money you worked less you made more money, but if the job does take you longer than twelve hours and then you end up eating a little bit and this is where you start to get experience under your belt because your lump sum bids are inevitably always going to give you the potential not always the actual.

But the potential profits that an hourly basis will never lead you to an hourly basis will never lead you to it's safe it's a very secure way to bid but you know exactly what you're going to make as long as a customer pays you of course on an hourly basis. But when you put it on a lump sum man if you could do that same job they you have for a thousand dollars you could say hey Mr Mrs customer I've done fifteen yards I've graded up in this neighborhood over here going to give you referrals and then each one of the thousand dollars.

I'm going to bid it to you for a thousand dollars but then you can do it in six hours do you see where you're making a ton of money because that maybe just maybe in that exact same day you could do a second yard grading job so that then you get two of them done in the same day and once you stop to learn how to do it over and over again you always get better.

It's just like with snowplowing it's even my crew members tell me hey first snow plow we are we're learning the ropes we're learning the nuances of the lots second snowfall we've got it down third, fourth, fifth snowfall we can cut our time down by thirty percent my crew members tell me this because they've been doing it for so many years they know every time they go into a new site that they're going to learn how to do it a little better every time they do it every job you go on is going to be a little different but you can learn how to chain down equipment faster you know learn how to get to a site fast you're going to learn how to cut a great faster how to balance it out you're going to get more experience and you're going to become better every single time you do it ,but your bid is going to be based off the first or second or third time did it because that's where you're going to be say sit so the first time second third time you did it you're not going to make a ton of money.

But all the times after that you're going to make more money and more money and more money because you're going to switch from our hourly to a lump sum same with tree removal same with sprinkler system you're going to learn and what I want you to get your mind around on is the learning process how important it is to understand you're not going to make money all the time .But you're going to learn all the time and you've got to realise this Francisco somebody is paying you to learn I love this this is the best part of it somebody is paying you to learn. Your are not going to a university you're not going to a school you're not going to an academy and fork you know dow to have somebody slip a book in front of you and go where you go to study this this and this. Even if you don't make a ton of money if you've got somebody willing to let you go in to learn their property that is why we we go back to the sprinkler system example if you've got somebody that is willing to let you put a sprinkler system in and learn on their property beautiful you've got to do it at your own house beautiful.

If you came to my house you would see three different kinds of retaining wall on my property now that's that's a big no no you don't ever do three different but every wall that I've done in my own property I've experimented I've got Wall seven feet tall with no children that I engineered myself to make sure that I knew when I went into a customer site I could build a seven foot tall wall with no geo grid because I knew how to place the batter in the wall the correct way I knew how to deepen the drainage and I could use it as the exterior experiment on my own property a learning curve for me it also tells me this was lasted for ten years.

I built this way so if I go into a customer's property I can say look this isn't by code this is by experience .I'll show you where I've done the exact same thing over and over and over again .I learned my own property wherever I can somebody else is willing to pay me to learn to do it it's beautiful thing it's going to that's how you get started down this road

Francisco: Beautiful thanks so much.

Francisco thanks for your question appreciate it thank you Dad thanks for reaching out to me

Franciso: Thank you very much

I hope this is how you guys out.

Francisco :Thank you so much perfect thank you all right

if you get it's got questions out there and you want answers I'll do the best they can email me send me an email Stan at landscape business pro or info at dirt monkey university we can do a live video chat and the reason I like doing this is because the questions that Francisco has maybe the same ones that you guys have and instead of answering it for one person we can answer for everybody .And if you guys want to help me out if you guys appreciate these videos I'm trying to help you out you want to help me out the absolute most important thing you can do is share these videos distribution if you're a lurker, if you're just watching in the background that's OK I want you to learn but there's a little botton that's a share that has a big impact to me it helps me spread this out reach more people and that's my mission and you guys can help me do. Only you guys can tell me that I can do it on my own I don't share these on the forums .I don't share these on facebook but that's up to you guys to love you guys hope this helps you out hope this helps you guys are going to be guys all right Francisco page later my friend

Francisco: Thank you have a great weekend

You too bye