Ep 024 – From Pushing Mowers to Pulling Profits: Breaking Barriers with Austyn Roth

Austyn Roth [00:00:00] The Roots of Success podcast is for the landscape professional who's looking to up their game. We're not talking lawns or grass here. We're talking about people, process, and profits. The things deep within the business that need focus to scale a successful company from hiring the right people and managing your team to improving your operations and mastering your finances. We've got a brain trust of experts to help you nurture the roots of a successful business and grow to the next level. This is The Roots of Success. Tommy Cole: Welcome to another episode of Roots of Success podcast. I'm your host, and we've got another great episode from you. We've got this awesome, blazing young professional named Austin Roth from Jupiter, Florida. In the last few weeks we've become some close friends and we've traveled together a lot lately. And I had to have this kid on the show because he is Absolutely inspirational. Austin, how are you? Austyn Roth: I'm doing good. How about [00:01:00] yourself? Tommy Cole: great. Doing great. You are in Florida, which everyone is jealous. 80 percent of the year and, you were born and raised in Florida, right? Austyn Roth: Yeah, I'm born and raised here. Tommy Cole: Good. Good. So tell me about this. You are, you're young and you are, inspirational as a young professional, but let's take a step back. You're 21 years old now. And just as of a few weeks ago. So happy, happy birthday. Austyn's Start in the Indusrty Tommy Cole: But, but you started this journey long, long, long time ago. Basically pushing a mower. Tell us us in the audience, what, how that transpired. Austyn Roth: Yeah, so it really just started,in, in my local neighborhood here Jupiter, Florida, which is just north of West Palm beach. And what started out as just a push mower, got one house, two houses and just kind of built it. And eventually, I was maxed out in my small little radius.[00:02:00] And, after a couple of years, I was probably eight, nine, 10, and and I was probably about 14. I bought a side by side golf cart got a little trailer on the back of it and expanded my, my radius. So I was able to get more accounts. And what happened with that was, that the police pulled me over. They weren't really liking it. No license, no insurance. You know, Tommy Cole: And so hold on, I got to pause there. You had a golf cart and a trailer and you were going to mow people's lawns up and around the street neighborhoods, right? Austyn Roth: yeah, yeah, I was driving on all the main streets. Exactly. So I thought I, I had the little slow moving triangle. I thought I was good to go. Tommy Cole: that's great. That's great. Instead of driving a mower, you upgraded to a golf cart and just killed it around the neighborhood. That's awesome. Austyn Roth: So, eventually that came to an end and that's when I bought my first truck, so I [00:03:00] was 15 and, I bought, I bought a truck. I got my dad to co sign on it. It was like a lease. It was like 200 bucks a month. and this was. Six years ago. and I was like, well, I know I can afford that. I just have to find a driver now. So I, I found a driver, you know, and he worked for a company that works for tens, which was perfect. Cause he worked for me on his Friday and Saturday. So, you know, it's slowly kind of built then. Tommy Cole: So, tell me about this story. Like you, you had a handful of clients, you're riding around the neighborhood and. How did you get your first bigger client? Like what are someone's like, man, I got this 15 year old kid lock knocking on my door about this HOA property or this commercial property. Like what, what the right mind should I give this guy my business? Austyn Roth: Yeah. Well, it's funny because, our first actual HOA that had [00:04:00] a board. I met with them when I was, I was 15 cause I wasn't, I didn't drive there by myself. I, I, I still remember, you know, getting out of the passenger seat. So, you know, I would, the driver that I had hired. So he took me we showed up in the truck. I got out of the passenger seat and met with them and they didn't hire me because they thought I was too young. And the funny part is six, six months later, they called me and they said, whoever they had hired isn't keeping up. And we need you to start next week. And I was like, perfect. You know, and it was actually in a PGA national where they have, you know, one of the golf tournaments at, so it's a pretty well known, you know, subdivision, and it was a little more, you know, a little town home community in there. So, and funny enough, we still do it today, Pushing through the No's Tommy Cole: Oh, that's great. So, I love the adversity. They tell you, you know, you're too young, [00:05:00] Austin, hit the road, like, get out of here. But you never let that deter you, right? And you probably got a lot of no's. Throughout your, you know, your young career, but like, why, why did you just not give up? Austyn Roth: I mean, I think, right. There's, there's always enhancement money. There's always money that they're spending. And I, I really don't recall, but I know we did the flowers before we got the maintenance there. So they might've even called us to do their flowers. And then they gave us the maintenance like two weeks after that or something. But I know we did flowers there beforehand. So, right. There's always enhancement. There's always tree work. There's always irrigation. You know, that they might not be happy with their guy. They might think he's overbilling and they don't have a trustworthy relationship. And Hey, we're always in their back pocket, you know? So they try to give us a shot. Tommy Cole: Yeah, I love that. I love the opportunity of maybe you're not getting the maintenance, but how do we do some seasonal [00:06:00] enhancements or how can I prove to you? Yes, I look young. Yes, I am young, but how do I prove to you that we're a worthy company and can do great business? So that was kind of your niche to say, I'll prove it to you Austyn Roth: yeah, exactly. And you know, I always say like, it's not, if it's when, it's everybody switches landscapers, is it in next year or is it 10 years from now? They will switch though. you will get a new car, maybe not next year, maybe in three years, so it's not always.if they will, because they will, it's just when, Tommy Cole: when, yeah, I love that. I remember starting in my young careerat a college and I was on job sites and I had to report to. Subcontractors and people out in the field that have got 25 years experience. And they'll look at me going, I'm not even going to take a word from you because you're just way too young. And I'm like, I don't really care, but I bring a different vision to this job site. I can see things a little bit differently that [00:07:00] maybe you've not, you know, been accustomed to for the last 25 years. So I love that story of the underdog, the young guy, the young girl out there that says. No is the answer now, but at some point down the road, I'm coming back and I'm going to be in your neighborhood. So, word to the wise is never give up on anything. So I love the passion. so now you've got, you know, an HOA, right? You've got a driver and then you're about to turn 16. Like what happens in that point? Austyn Roth: So, I was continuing to sell and, I turned 16 and then I was a, I bought another truck, that I drove, and it just kind of started, kept growing, I was really focused on marketing and, and advertising and that was kind of my focus. Yes. And obviously. I had the driver, so I just had to keep the sales pipeline going because I had to keep him busy, so, even when I was in high school, right, it was, I went to school after school, I was doing quotes.[00:08:00] So I wasn't really doing much, physical work, except on the weekends, because after school I had to go do quotes, estimates, and, help on little projects here or there. And then. It was, repeat the same thing the next day. So, it really kind of fast tracked building the business versus working in it, you know, as I was working on it, Tommy Cole: what, that, that is actually a really good point that you did the actual mowing and landscaping, as a young kid on the side. Right. So after school, before school weekends, nights, evenings, and what's intriguing to me is that you had the ability, like, I still got to go to school. And then I got to do sales and marketing and estimating and sell the job. So I can't be the one that, that actually performs the field work. So it's catapulting you immediately into a sort of an ownership, which is. In my opinion, you kind of have an advantage over a lot of businesses that are in it [00:09:00] every single day, right? So and then all the times we Yeah. working on the business rather than in the business Tommy Cole: we coach to like how do you get away from the business? But like you are forced to get out of it immediately. So your mind is starting to think about an owner already, right? Tell me a little bit more about that Austyn Roth: So, right. It kind of forced me to work on the business versus in it. I couldn't sell a job and go do it the next day. Right. I had, you know, a driver and probably a labor at that point. Right. And I had to keep them busy. there wasn't an option because I couldn't afford to lose the two people that I was able to get working every week for me for two days. It's hard to find someone that wants to do that, but luckily with their normal schedule, it worked out. So, you know, it really put me into it. we were, using Jobber for a couple of years early on before we switched to LMN. to really grow the business side of it. Right. It's like LMN was a really good budgeting tool for us. I think we, we got on it four or five years ago at this point. And, it really, I started [00:10:00] understanding numbers, how to actually quote jobs, in tracking, like, are we making money? Are we not making money? So really early on figuring that out, it really set us up for success, to actually build a business that gives us the ability to hire people, for the proper positions. Tommy Cole: Yeah. So, let's talk about the operations of the, of the software, right? What, whatever software you use LMN's a great one, but at the day, you just got to use a software, but I feel like you had, did you immediately get into software immediately into the business? Like I got to get something to estimate, or were you just estimating like and sell spreadsheets and word documents or chicken scratch paper or like, and then to turn that into operation to see how you're doing? Like, what was the trigger? Is it just because you were networking with others or like, there's got to be a better way to do this. Austyn Roth: I mean, I think honestly, we were just spinning wheels. We weren't [00:11:00] having the most profitable jobs. And I was like, All this money in and there's not much money left over, and we were getting into bigger maintenance customers, 5, 000 a month, 7, 000 a month. And I didn't know how we justified where we got to that number. You know, like there is no justification. They told us their budget was seven grand and we put it at seven grand, you know? So that's when, I was like, there's, there's gotta be a way to figure out how we came up with that number. And that's when I think I was looking for a better software that we could do budgeting in and, and really helps us capture how we got to that. And then, that's when I found out, we, we built our budget, we're bidding man hours. And there's a lot more to it. Like all we care, like all we do is sell labor, Tommy Cole: Yeah. Austyn Roth: like we're a landscape company, but we sell labor and that's all we do. Tommy Cole: Yeah. Yeah. We sell labor and we have a budget of labor and we go do it. And the budget that we have, [00:12:00] like, it's not, it's not hard, right, Austin, Austyn Roth: Yeah. Why is Luck Landscaping different? Tommy Cole: you make it sound so easy, but it actually is really easy at the end of the day. And so tell me about, you know, what, what makes lucky landscaping in Jupiter, Florida sort of different than anybody else. Austyn Roth: I think in, in our market, we're probably one of the last locally owned companies that has the ability to work on larger scale properties, So a lot of, what we work on is larger HOAs. 200 home to 700 home communities where we're doing every house. And I think right nowadays you have a lot of private equity owned companies, there's not really a personal touch and people just don't care about the customer or, or any of the homeowners in there, so I think, we really strive to be the local company, locally owned locally operated. me or our employees, we all eat, dine and play in the same town, So we're going to [00:13:00] run into these people at restaurants or, at the beach. And I don't want to see someone out in the public that doesn't like us, you know, because we had a budget and we couldn't deliver to them, like quality is our standard. So, you're the owner and, and, and president of Lucky Landscaping. What's your role day to day now? It changes, in the last, year, it's been changing rapidly as we grow and. My position changes all the time, but it's, it's really, right. Working on building a team, training people setting the standard in the field, production wise, account manager wise, this is how we operate. This is how we were successful getting to where we're at today. And that's what we need to continue. so it's really expressing how we got to where we're at today and continue that, because that's how we'll grow. Tommy Cole: Yeah. And so, are you selling, you're going to HOAs and, and still, [00:14:00] I, I would assume you're estimating or someone is and you're taking that bid and, and trying to get more work, correct? Austyn Roth: Yeah, so I'm always, networking and, we target a couple HOAs. I mean, and that's what we do, so I'm always looking for HOAs that are having issues. And even if they're not, hey, let's, do you need tree trimming? What, do you need anything? We're here. Emergencies, you call us in the middle of the night. You got a, an irrigation valve that's stuck on. I'll come out there at, so just being there for people. Tommy Cole: there for people. Yeah. So,now that you've got a somewhat of established You're you're starting to run into things that you never dreamed of having to do running a landscape business like You you had the mower Right, and then you had the golf cart and trailer you bought your first truck and now you've got a staff of people And and and now you have yourself where you're still selling constantly watching budget. You've got to You You've [00:15:00] got a software picked out that you're using. But I remember, I remember yesterday on a call, someone told me, he says, yeah, man, we're working with Austin, but like, he's got to have an organizational chart. Do you remember this conversation? Yeah. So there's things like organizational chart and Austin's probably like, what in the hell is that? Learning to Build a Structure Tommy Cole: Like, it's just me and a group of field staff that working, but like, you're having to sort of train your thoughts because. They don't teach anything about that in sort of any education or school. Right. So you're having to change, and, and build a business like that's good with great with structure. So tell me about that. Austyn Roth: Yeah. So, right. It's, there's a lot of challenges as you grow, of course. And when you're, when you're doubling and, you go from 2 million to 4 million and, hopefully six or seven, there's obviously a lot of growth very quickly, a lot of people. And [00:16:00] it's how quickly can you train somebody to your standard, is kind of the challenge that you face doing that it's easy, increasing sales by a couple hundred thousand a year, you're adding one account manager, you're training him. You can spend time with them, but when, when you're adding two or three and a big book of business and your whole tree service division is growing and all while at the same time managing production, cause if you're not on it, your production will slack off. so there's a lot of stuff that, we fail, I get to big numbers game, at this point of how do you manage the numbers, but also do what you promise to a customer and not sack. So that's definitely, a big part of what we do. And I think, we're, we'll cut margins because we'll, we're going to do what we said we were going to do. right now we're doing a lot of fertilizer. Fertilizer is expensive. We're probably going above and beyond, but guess what? We, we want a quality product delivered to, set us [00:17:00] apart from the competition. Tommy Cole: Yeah. I love train to your standard, right? Because in a fast growing business, what the first thing that, that starts to fail is. the standard of your company and it's the quality, it's the people, it's the, it's the production, it's the shortcuts because you're running around like crazy trying to run a business, but like you got to stay true to yourself and true to your business. Standards and that makes total sense to, to you. So, you know, I would say that you're probably recommending like stay true to yourself, to what you mean. And it's not about the quantity of, of properties you want. You want the quality. Tell me about, you've got a special niche of clientele that I've noticed over the last few years. You've been able to define the [00:18:00] client we call it the ideal client pretty dang close like you've nailed it Right, you're not doing like commercial residential, Industrial and everything under the Sun gutter cleaning and you name it You've Austyn Roth: yeah, Finding your niche Tommy Cole: Why is that so important early in your business to, to, to kind of nail that down? Austyn Roth: yeah. So, it's like we're 100 percent commercial where, 95 percent high end HOA and maybe another 5 percent of, miscellaneous commercial, but we're 95 percent HOA single family townhome communities. And it really goes back to the training, the standard. Well, if you're doing so many different sectors of commercial, you have a different standard on every single aspect. so it's, it really goes back to like, I mean, if you look at all the airline companies, right, you have spirit that is your low cost, low fare. And then you have Delta, that's going to be your higher end. And they [00:19:00] both do one thing extremely well. They can both make plenty of money doing what they do, but they know who their client is and what they provide. And that's what we've done. It just makes it. Much easier to train the standard, not only to, to, to managers, but to the field guys, there's a big difference in doing class C multifamily versus doing class a HOA, million dollar plus houses. Tommy Cole: Love it. And, and down in Florida, you're year round. There's no, there's no seasonality, snow. And this season, this, you are constantly pruning and mowing and cleanups basically year round. Oh, and then by the way, you have a couple of hurricanes and tropical storms throughout the season. And then you, you go all in on cleanups. Austyn Roth: Yeah, Tommy Cole: Early, early on, I want to talk about this tree trimming side that you added on, not too long ago, but you saw a need right of, okay, I'm [00:20:00] doing, I'm doing all this property maintenance, but I need to add something else to my. To my arsenal of services. What made you, what was the trigger point in that? And, and you chose tree trimming for what reason? Austyn Roth: yeah. So I think, really the tree service came, we were subbing some out, but definitely not a substantial amount to like justify it. I think it really came down that we had potential clients asking us for tree trimming bids. I can't send a sub out when I'm trying to get my foot in the door, not next to, they just gave me the job, I'm 17, 18 years old, whatever, and I'm just subbing it out. And they're like, well, that's the purpose, so it became, we were getting all these opportunities. We need to self perform it because otherwise we're not going to be able to get more work from these people. so I think I was probably 18 when I bought my first bucket [00:21:00] truck. it was an old Asplen truck. I think that's how everyone starts their tree service, but I had an orange bucket truck running around and we picked up, communities doing their palms, doing removals, just all sorts of side job margins were great. Finally, once I proved that we were successful with it, we bought a new bucket truck and then, we upgraded our chipper, but it all started as used equipment to prove the concept, I wasn't going to go out and. I couldn't afford to buy a 150, 000 bucket truck. So it really was that we were getting opportunity. We wanted to do the work ourself so that we could have the potential opportunity to get the maintenance or, other work in the community. Tommy Cole: that's nice. You know, I love how you progress. First off, there's a need that the clients say, trim our trees. And it's so embarrassing to say, I can't do that. Right? I don't do that. So you say, all right, we're going to get a subcontractor. Somehow we're going to figure out ways to get [00:22:00] work done. And all of a sudden you're like, all right, subcontractor, subcontractor work for a minute, abort that, get my own used truck, work it, Austyn Roth: Yeah, Tommy Cole: out the kinks, get the new truck. And now you're rolling. And now, Now that that crew's full time, correct? Austyn Roth: we have two tree trucks. It's eight guys right now. And I mean, they're full time and right now slow season and, we're six weeks out and right after that, we, we have contracted tree, contracts that we'll just roll into. we leave weeks. a week here or there open just as a time block if we need to squeeze someone in or the weather, but for the most part they stay, solid booked on tree trimming and, removals and Tommy Cole: So I so I just had a random thought. I would assume all of your field staff and everyone that works for you is the is younger. Am I correct? Austyn Roth: No, they're all there. Yeah. Oh, they're open. Tommy Cole: correct? Austyn Roth: Yeah. what do they say working for Austin? I mean, I, I, [00:23:00] I think when you're in it. It's just like any other business, So, I mean, obviously I'm a little biased cause I don't see it that way. Some older people probably do, but I think once they're in it and they see, our relationship and, I think, right, everyone has the initial doubts of like, Oh, it's probably his dad's company, but once you're here, once you see how we run, you see, me interacting with the customers, you hear from the customers, it's a totally different, atmosphere. Then, Tommy Cole: good for you. I would be very excited to work someone like you because You I believe the young kid and the young optioneer spirit that you have Austin That you're going to try anything and you're going to do anything and you're going to fail along the way no matter what and and you know, and That's great as an employee Because you're going to grow and provide more opportunity for these employees, which is fascinating So I think I would think you would have no shortage of people [00:24:00] wanting to work for Austin Austyn Roth: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, right. As long as people are willing to try something new, they'll be successful here. Right? Because you can't come and expect the old ways to work, because I'm full of ideas and we're going to, we try a lot of new stuff all the time. Some of it is stupid, but longterm it works out, so some stuff's more complicated than it needs to be, but there's always a motive behind it. And Hey, if two months from now, it's not working, then okay, we'll get rid of Tommy Cole: Yeah, abort the mission. We're, we're out. Austyn Roth: know until we try. Tommy Cole: Yeah, we got to do something else. I get it. So Austin, so for our listeners What's, what's one thing that you've struggled with or was not successful with? starting running and up until this day of, of having a landscape company. Anything that jumps out to you? Austyn Roth: nowadays it's building, building a, strong management team that is truly supportive for the client. the equipment finance obviously was an [00:25:00] issue early on when I was young. Now it's, now it's easy, I mean, we have tax returns that show we make money and we have proof of income. But we have really building a team, and, and, and training them and, and trying to retain them is always a struggle. Tommy Cole: Yeah, that's, that's going to be the, the hard task for you. That's sort of unchartered territory, but I know you're going to do it. You're going to do it very well. You've got a lot of great people around you that are supporting and even your peer group members, your team, your coaches and then anyone and everyone that you've met across the country, traveling and speaking. I mean, for crying out loud, a couple of weeks ago, we got some in depth conversations and, and actually had a really good time at the LMN conference in Orlando, Austyn Roth: Yeah. Young Professional Landscaper of the Year Tommy Cole: Tell our audience, what, what award did you win there? Austyn Roth: Yeah. So I won the Young Professional Landscaper [00:26:00] of the Year Award from LMN. Tommy Cole: to you and Lucky Landscape? Austyn Roth: I think it really, makes, it just kind of embraces like my background, how we started, and I think it, it, it motivates other young people. I think there's been tons of people that have reached out, and, Hey, I'm always here to help people. And even, even in the local market, right? If it, and I tell people like, why wouldn't you talk to your competition? They're just going to make you better because they see all your flaws and they notice stuff that the customer won't notice because they're in the business, So they're your, your best feedback in reality. And if you can become friends with them, they won't try to steal your work. So, I'm friends with all of them. I, or I try to be some don't want to be, but I try to be friends with all the competition and I look at it as right, even if they take work from us, we, we did something wrong as a company. So, why did, why did the opportunity come up for them to, to, to win that job if it, if it was just price, whatever, [00:27:00] but we, something happened that we lost a job. Tommy Cole: Yeah, there's always room for it. Yeah, always room for improvement, right? And and competition is great And it holds it goes back to your standards at the end of the day We've got to be we've got to be better than we were if we were to lose that So i've got a quote that you go by And and you're probably like thinking what in the world is he doing? I firmly believe in the principle that money will follow When we stay true to our values and consistently deliver on our promises. What made you have that on your website? Austyn Roth: think it was, the fact that right early on when we were, I was young, right, money, money talks, they say, and I was chasing every dollar that we could, and we were, we would take on any, any jobs that we could. And that's where, I brought up the multifamily and the class C apartments, they loved me because we were giving them good prices. We weren't getting any enhancements from them. So it's [00:28:00] like we were making no money on it. We were cutting grass and bleeding and, yeah, they were paying us, 250, 000 a year between three properties. And so. Being 18 and having that kind of revenue From one customer was amazing. But as any landscaper knows, if you're not getting enhancements, that's 250, 000. What are we making 5 percent on it? If that, so there was no enhancement. So that's when we really focused on, well, what does an ideal client look like for us? And it's, we want to cut the grass, trim the trees, do the irrigation, do the pest control, do the flowers, the mulch. And that's when we defined who the ideal customer is for us. And once we focused on, right, they weren't the best margin off the back cause we had to break into that sector. So we went strong, head into it, started really providing value and quality work. And Hey, our margin might not have been there then. Now it's definitely improved. But that's where that quote kind of comes into play. That the [00:29:00] money isn't always important as the quality job you do. And the money will follow, if you Tommy Cole: I, I love it. Austyn Roth: job, you build trust, they'll give you the enhancements. Tommy Cole: I love it, right? At the end of the day, you've set a standard, you're trading to the standard, and you're quality to the standard of lucky landscaping, and that doesn't change. So it's no different than the Ritz Carlton way, right? It is what it is and that's our standard and we're never going to back down from it. So I love the, I love the rawness of that. That's great. So, awesome. As we wrap things up, this is all great. Any, any, any nuggets to leave behind with our audience of, that you would like to leave, like, man, this is it. This is what kept me going. And, and I'll, I'll, I'm going to step up and say one. But I love the fact that, never, never, never give up.[00:30:00] And at the end of the day, you pushed them over around the neighborhood, got a golf cart with a trailer, got pulled over in trouble, and then that didn't let you down, you led to another no for an HOA because you're too young and too young and too young, and it's just, you kept, you kept, persevering down the way of saying, I can do this. I can do this. never give up and keep going. That's one of my great takeaways. What is yours? Austyn Roth: Yeah. I mean, right. Never give up, stay true to what you promise a customer. and that's, it really goes back to staying true to what you promise your customer and build trust with them. it's, it, and it, it, it's easier to make customer happy than it is to find a customer. So keep them happy, you can, it takes months to get a customer and minutes to lose one. So, it's always keeping the customer happy, keeping your people happy, [00:31:00] training to your standard how did you become successful and duplicate that? So, Tommy Cole: That's great. Austin, man, it has been a pleasure having you on the show. I've been looking forward to this day for a long time. Once again, it's Austin Roth from Lucky Landscape in Jupiter, Florida. 21 years old. It's just a fascinating story. I can guarantee you though, he's not going to let this go to his head. He's probably going to go and go put his head into the, into the into the business and keep excelling down the road. So awesome. We got to have you again and see, see how you're doing and keep us updated along the way, but it's been a pleasure having you. Austyn Roth: Thank you. I appreciate Tommy Cole: Yeah, absolutely. See you next time, buddy.