October 20, 2025 • 28 mins
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In this episode I talk with Wesley Parkin from Grounds Guys Keller about how the Christmas lights business really works. We go over real numbers on what homeowners pay, how margins grow from year one to year three, and why commercial installs can completely change your income. We dig into lead generation with LSA, PPC, and Facebook ads, the best time of year to start marketing, and the quick setup and takedown process that keeps this side hustle efficient. We also cover safety gear like Cougar Paws and a pitch wedge, the difference between selling and leasing lights, and how route density can help you hit $1K an hour during peak season. If you’ve been looking for a seasonal business with real numbers and proven demand, this one shows you exactly how it’s done.
Find Grounds Guys Keller at https://www.groundsguys.com/keller-tx/
Follow them on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Do you think it's possible if someone were to go all in on
this, everything go all out, this could be $1,000,000
business? Yeah, very easily.
One of the grounds guys that we're speaking with, he does a
million and a quarter. Wow, just in.
Christmas, just in. Christmas.
If you could like wave a magic wand, would you prefer to go all
in on Christmas lights or lawns?Christmas lights?
What would you charge for a house like this?
An average home of this size is 1500 to $2000.
(00:20):
Commercial customer can be worth100 times more than a home like
this. Yeah, what's not to love about
the Christmas light business? Make $1000 in an hour.
Never quit your full time job. Do it yourself or hire a part
time guy. Today we're diving deep on
everything Christmas lights business.
How to find customers, how to make money, how to install the
lights, how to price it. Let's get going.
(00:42):
All right, Well, nice to meet you.
You too. Tell us who you are and what you
do. Hi.
My name is Wesley Parkin. We do landscaping and holiday
lighting in the fall. Lots of like maintenance type of
work and then a lot of install type of work for all the
landscaping. OK.
And how long have you been in business?
Three, a little over three years.
Three years. What got you into this business?
I was in instruction management before and I kind of looked at
(01:03):
the ladder up and I didn't like how it looked.
So we started searching businesses to buy, looked into a
different couple different things.
Then we looked into a bunch of franchises.
And so after we looked into the franchise and kind of what
Neighborly stood for, that's whywe chose a Neighborly brand that
we chose this one, Browns guys, because it had a lot of
verticals that we can do. We can do landscape lighting,
holiday lighting, we can do irrigation landscape installs.
So we chose one that had multiple vertical verticals that
(01:24):
we could add to the business as we drill.
Yeah, I like it. It's funny, I talked to a lot of
people that they kind of look attheir boss and their boss's boss
and they realize I don't like that.
I don't want that. That's my future.
Right. They made a lot of money, but
the time didn't look that great.Yeah.
OK, so you pick this as a franchise, You like the
seasonality of it. You don't have to go all in on
just cutting lawns. You can do other things.
(01:44):
How did that first year go? It's tough.
Yeah, landscaping, there's a lotof landscapers.
There's a lot of, I mean, you can, you don't have any license
at all to start a landscaping company.
You don't even a lot of people have insurance.
So competing with a lot of the smaller companies takes a little
while to get enough, you know, recurring revenue, enough
customers actually get to that first year.
So the first year was just a lotof work on a grind, in the
second year, a lot of putting anextra time.
(02:06):
I was on the truck myself for a while for the first year and
then after the first year I was able to get off the truck and do
a lot more of the business portion of it as opposed to the
work, you know, the actual landscape.
Work. Now, what would you charge for a
long like this compared to most of your competitors?
We're slightly above most of ourcompetitors because they can do
it super cheap. So a lot like this including his
backyard, you know this is average probably 50 bucks and
then we typically about 36 milesa year and we we separate it to
(02:28):
where we have our customers pay monthly.
So they pay the exact same everymonth even though it is them
less in December versus August, just taking that full amount and
split up over 12 months and. Then what would your competitor
charge for something like this? Competitor might charge 40 bucks
a mo. 35 bucks a mo. How do you get around that
objection to customers? If they say, well this guy can
do it, for what do you tell them?
A lot of times one of the big things is when they call us,
(02:48):
they get they get to talk to somebody on the phone and then
if a screw up happens, we fix those screw ups.
So you know, Jeremy here, he's my protection manager.
Anytime someone calls, they're calling him.
They have complaints, they have issues, they have questions,
they call him and he's going to answer and the same thing.
If something happens, we're going to come back and fix it.
OK, so we've had instances wherewe've damaged something or, you
know, broken the window in the case we replaced the window.
Yeah. All right.
So year one, what percentage of your business was lawns versus
(03:10):
Christmas lights? And are there any other services
that you do? Yeah, the first year is probably
95% going lawns, you know, basicmaintenance, pruning, edging,
all that type of stuff. We did some holiday lights the
first year, maybe 5-6 homes. So by percentage basis around 5%
of the total revenue was holidaylighting.
And then that continues to, we do more commercial now we're
trying to do more commercials. So our split between residents
(03:31):
commercial has been growing overthe last three years.
And then holiday lighting, we'veincreased not dramatically each
year, but probably 5 to 10% eachyear as far as the amount of
revenue we get from quality lighting.
And how do you find customers for both sides of the business?
For landscaping, we use a lot ofLsas.
We have PPC that we use word of mouth helps a lot.
Whenever we do good with the customer and they refer us a lot
of referrals that didn't start happening until this year
(03:52):
probably where we got a lot morereferrals.
The first year referrals don't come that quick.
And then for holiday lighting, we use a lot of Facebook because
Facebook is a place where you kind of see it as you know, kind
of envision your own home. So we have pictures, things like
that that'll that will post in those ads.
So when people see that, they'rea lot more inclined to click on
that and. It's more visual, Yep.
When you say Facebook, do you mean like paid Facebook ads?
Right, OK. We do also Facebook posting, but
(04:15):
obviously those just bring in less because they're not being
pushed out to the customers through Facebook's ad platform.
Yeah. Now does the franchisor handle
the marketing and the lead Gen. for you?
No. That's all done locally by us.
The only thing they do is national brand awareness.
So we pay a small fee of all of our monthly revenue that goes to
national marketing, but it's more brand awareness.
(04:36):
It's not really lead generation.So all lead generation is done
locally by us. We have, you know, someone that
does our our PPC and LSA stuff as well as our Facebook.
And then you know, we do all theposting ourselves as far as just
posting before and afters thingslike that.
But all that we hire someone to do the marketing portion of for
a, you know, marketing agency. Yeah.
And for those watching, PPC is pay per click, just Google ads.
You appear at the top of the search results.
And then LSA is local service ads where you can set up your
(04:58):
profile, get the like the green check mark by Google and then
they will send you leads and say, hey, Mary needs Christmas
lights. They charge you for that lead.
And so now the onus is on you toclose it as fast as possible
before someone else does, right?In the past we've used some lead
generators as well, like Thumbtack or Angie's leads.
We used those a lot more early on because we just needed.
Anything. Yep.
So five star reviews, Testimonials.
(05:21):
Right now it's not. We don't use those so much
because the quality of the lead was lower.
And so typically, we want to improve those quality of those
leads. Yeah, and if you could like wave
a magic wand, would you prefer to go all in on Christmas lights
or or lawns? You had Christmas.
Lights really margins are significantly greater.
OK. Let's talk about that.
What are the margins on a MOW like this?
(05:42):
Margins for mowing is 10 to 15%,particularly commercial.
It's lower because the the competition's much higher as
opposed to holiday lights. It's a significant risk climbing
20-30 in the air. That's what you're charging for
the liability. And then also not only that, but
like if you have a bulb go out, you don't want to go pull up a
ladder to replace that one bulb.So we come and do you know it's
part of the services we're coming in and replace those.
(06:03):
So the margins on holiday lighting increases each year
because the first year you have to pay for the material.
So it'll be much lower, 20 percent, 25%.
And then if you have the same customer year over year, you're
going to be increasing fixing that margin up to 50 to 60%.
And I would think that people don't start shopping around for
a different provider every October.
They're just gonna call you, right?
Yeah, as long as we did a good job, as long as anytime they
call we came in service to them if there was issues and then you
(06:23):
know we take them down. We just have to schedule with
the customer for install and takedown.
We give them a week time span asfar as install, same thing as as
takedown. We'll route our areas so that we
can take down multiple, you know, multiple homes in the same
area. So as long as you did a good job
and you know, I think communication is probably the
biggest thing. Whenever they call you, they get
a hold of you, then there's really no reasons to reshop it
because next year, you know, they might end up paying a
(06:44):
little bit less too. We give a discount, you know,
two years, three years in. But even with those discounts,
we still have the margins still increased because you don't have
to pay for material. You got them cut.
The time is less to install in the second, third year because
you're not recutting and you've already got them set to the
house. So the install time is.
Less so. This is your third season of
Christmas lights, right? So 5 or 6 customers the first
season. How many the second season?
Second season was probably probably 10 to 15.
(07:06):
OK. So you doubled year over year?
It's a slow growth with it as you kind of figure it out and
same thing with our landscaping,we double year over year
revenues kind of this kind of match suit with the holiday
lighting. Did you lose any customers the
second year from the first? Yeah, there's people that move,
there's people that realize theycan get it cheaper.
Yeah, typically what happens when they get it cheaper, they
just don't get that same serviceas far as coming out and
(07:27):
getting, you know, doing the repairs or doing any maintenance
on it. So they can, they can easily
find so much cheaper because there's a lot of guys that'll do
it part time. So they'll have a full time job
and then come fall time they'll do some holiday lighting
installs on the side. So they do it much cheaper
because again, they don't carry insurance.
They probably don't have a business.
Just do it on the side. So we'll and we'll lose.
So we'll lose a handful of year.The ones that we would do it
year over year, they just tell us put the same thing up and
(07:48):
sometimes we'll add stuff. So we've done holiday, you know,
wreaths, things like that we've added to customers or we'll add
landscape or lighting in the landscape.
You can line the driveways or orbeds, things like that.
Yeah. How many do you think you'll
have this year? I know it's early in the season.
You probably haven't really. Have you started your marketing
efforts yet? We have a little bit and we also
we've we've kind of combined efforts with the grounds guys,
the Grapevine. So they had a couple customers
(08:09):
that were taking over for them. And so they have a big
commercial customer around 40 to50,000 that will worth the
revenue that we'll put in for that customer as well as.
That's amazing. We.
Have a handful of, we have quitea few leads that we're marketing
to our own internal CRM system. So we'll be doing a bunch of
that this this year for. That so commercial customer can
be worth 100 times more than a home like this, Yeah.
But it can be also a lot more complicated.
You might have to, you know, getlifts.
So we haven't done any of these that large commercial yet.
(08:31):
This will be our first one. But we'll like Zipper partnering
with them because they've done it.
This is the hospital that they do in Grapevine.
So the cost of actually installing is a lot more, plus
you have more material. Let's talk about the two
different models you have. So of installing lights so on.
On one hand you cut them to sizeand they use them every year.
And then what was the other model?
Or is that the only? That's that's really the only
professionally installed way to do it.
Yeah, but we lease the lights versus the customer can own the
(08:54):
lights. OK.
So a lot of companies, other, you know, competitors will do it
where they'll sell the lights tothe customer, we'll cut them to
fit their home. And if for some reason the
customer says I don't want you back next year, they get to keep
the lights, but better already fit to their home.
OK, We cut the lights and we keep the lights and we're
essentially leasing them to themwhere we fit in the home.
We store them so they don't haveto deal with pulling them out,
you know, in and out of the attic.
Every year. We'll bring them to the
(09:14):
customer's job site. Whenever it's time to install,
we install them and then same thing when it's time to take
down, we pull them all down and we haul them off.
They don't have to worry about how to install them to store
them properly. We keep them indoors.
That way they're not dealing with, you know, getting hot and
cold or under the weather or whatnot.
But yeah, those are kind of the two main ones.
Either lease or let the customerown them.
Okay? Just a difference in pricing on
how you do that? So for a house like this, this
is like a three to 4000 square foot house I imagine 2 Story 3
(09:36):
car garage. What would you charge for a
house like this? An average home of this size is
1500 to $2000 and install and it's by the linear foot.
So most of the time what we'll do when we meet with customers,
we'll just, we'll come, we measure everything from the
grounds, we'll measure all the roof lines, mostly roof lines,
what customers want. Often times they'll do other
stuff, but roof lines kind of the number one service.
And how are you measuring those?We use a measuring wheel, so
(09:56):
we'll just basically walking offfrom here as far as the pitches,
you know, you just have to walk the distance from the side to
the center. And then you know, there's a
little bit of math involved doing the the pitches, but OK,
that difficult measure everything from the ground.
We get a total linear footage and then we have a linear foot
price to give the customer for roof line install.
So 1500 to 2000 for the first year, yeah, OK.
And then what would it be next year?
And. We'll discount 10% each year
until the 3rd year and then it just stays the same.
(10:18):
OK. So they'll discount the second,
first year or the second year is10%, Thirty years, 10% and then
it stays the same if they were with us for 10 years?
You know, OK, and then you storethe lights on your property?
Yep. OK, cool.
And that's the thing too is if customers with us for five
years, they don't have to repay for material.
We might be repaying for material, you know, Year 5 or 6
when the product starts breakingdown, they're burning out, but
or the one replacing it, Yeah. So they don't have to worry
(10:38):
about that price really changingbecause it stays the same 3:00
as long as long as they're with us really.
Yeah, which model do you prefer?We like the leasing, yeah,
because we can essentially reusematerial if someone doesn't want
us to come back. So we have the material already
and that way we're kind of keepscosts down on material.
So for a job like this, let's say it's 1500, what would be
your profit margin on year one versus year 3?
Year one will probably be in the20% range because you're paying
(10:58):
for that material for the first year and then year 3 will be
around 2 to 60%. OK, wow, that's awesome.
And then that's with you installing it yourself or your
employees installing. Installing.
OK. So if you were to do it
yourself, the margins. Would be higher, yeah, if you
don't call yourself again, depending on if you have a full
time business doing it and you're paying for insurance and
all that, which I wouldn't recommend a customer ever really
hire someone to get on their roof without insurance, but it
(11:20):
happens all the time so. What is your insurance costs
run? With all of our insurance, which
includes auto insurance and everything, we're paying about
$12,000 a year vehicles for general liability workers.
Comp not as bad as I thought honestly. 1000 bucks a month.
I wonder what it would be if youdidn't do Christmas lights at
all. It would drop because they they
rate this as a higher risk activity.
So we pay for that. Same thing with we, we do ice
melt, which is technically snow plowing is where they categorize
(11:42):
it, yeah, which there's no soap on here in our in our market,
but we do ice melt and they charge us for that as well
because it's higher risk activity.
OK, cool. Do you guys do anything with
regards to marketing and like yard signs or knocking doors or
like talking to the neighbors? How does that go?
We do door hangers. We've done a lot of yard signs.
However, this year or Texas passed something where yard
signs are now technically illegal.
(12:03):
So really $500 every sign for the first offense?
I think it's $1000. That's the whole state, yeah.
That started in September 1, butwe do door hangers and again,
Facebook posts or Facebook, we'll do our own posts before
and afters as well as the Facebook marketing.
That's kind of the main lead generation for our holiday
lighting. And do those work pretty well
like the non digital methods? Yeah, yard signs.
(12:26):
I mean, I had another neighborlybrand, I kind of was following
him what he was doing. He he would put out 80 yard
signs a month. Sometimes he gets calls and
people complain about it, but still brought in the generate,
generate the lead. So it's working.
All work. They risk, I guess, at that
point. When you're putting out door
hangers, who does it? Do you hire a company to do it?
Do you do it? It'll be our cruise.
So a lot of times when we do onehome like this, we'll, we call
it box 9. So we'll do the two homes on
(12:46):
each side, two homes on that side and the five homes on the
side of the screen. That way all the, you know, when
we're here installing, if customer or neighbors see us and
we'll go put a door hanger on that's, you know, 2 touch
points. One they see awesome 2 they got
a touch with the door hanger. Do you have any bearing on like
how many door hangers to converta customer?
Do you keep track of that at all?
I don't know if I know the door hanger 1.
Or any of them. Typically we get more door
hanger calls from the landscaping because we're in a
(13:09):
lot more, you know, we're in a lot more homes or a lot more
properties. So every property we're putting
those out. Yep, the just the numbers are
higher and then it also kind of depends on the year or the time
of year. Yeah.
So obviously the beginning of the year for landscaping, a lot
more people call us because that's what they're starting to
think about. South.
Given another month, they'll start thinking about holiday
lighting. Or soon as everyone starts
thinking about holiday lighting.Yeah.
It's like a switch on their mind.
Yeah, Yeah. Or that I'm not really thinking
(13:29):
about it. That's why when you're doing
stuff early on the year, so July, Christmas in July is the
thing, trying to get people to think about Christmas lights to
get, you know, on the schedule earlier.
But typically Halloween's over. That's when people's minds
switches. And then so that's a really good
time to be putting stuff out forpeople to see in the vehicles or
the yard signs if we could put them out still.
So that's like when customers start to think in that
direction. But strategically, when do you
first start marketing for Christmas lights and or
(13:51):
installing for Christmas lights?That would be July.
So you do a Christmas in July campaign to say, OK, you know,
we install lights, get on schedule early.
Essentially you can offer discounts for getting on
earlier, especially when the route, when your route fills up
a lot. So the earlier you get on, you
get discounts because if you're more profit, everyone's stacking
into November, then you just don't have time to install for
everyone. So July, Christmas, July,
Christmas in July is kind of thetime frame, OK, when to start
(14:11):
it. And then again, you'll start
again end of September, early October for the actual marketing
of this time of year. OK.
And then when do you start taking down 2726?
We'll. Start after New Year, so it'll
be the week after because typically a lot of people are
out of town, still up on vacation.
So we wait a full week into January and then the first
basically second week of January, we'll start taking
down. Do you do any permanent
lighting? We don't, OK, we are going to.
(14:33):
We're planning to get into it. We just haven't got to that
point. Yet I have a friend that that
has a Christmas light business in Pennsylvania, and he says he
hates permanent lighting becauseit's one time.
Yeah, he says that he only does it when people insist on it cuz
at least he gets something out of that customer, but he would
much prefer to come back every year.
Yeah, right. I mean for the install it's two
to three times the amount. So if you're getting permanent
(14:53):
lighting, you'll expect to pay three times the amount you would
for this isn't permanent lighting, but it permanent on
there for the season. Yeah, but two to three times
more if you're installing permanent lighting.
All right, so you get to a job site.
What's the first thing you do? Well, we've already got the
measurements, we have all that we'll have pre bulb wire.
So in the shop, I thought we were not doing all the
customer's property. We'll bulb 500 feet or however
many, whatever length we need toin the shop, there's less of
(15:15):
that here. We'll have that all reeled up on
the spool. And then we'll have one person
that climbs the ladder that's kind of fitting everything,
person on the ground that's holding ladders, giving
material, things like that. But that spool just be on the
ground and you'll basically pull, You'll have it hanging in
the air as you go up and you'll have it pre clipped as well so
that we can make it faster. We want to be on the job side
the least amount of time. We'll do all the easy stuff from
the ground and then shop. So we'll have that big spool
(15:36):
here and we'll just start pulling up the ladder.
We'll have someone down on the bottom that feed material and
then as you go you just fit it up as each clip goes on and
you'll cut it at the exact length once you get to where you
need it. So for a $1500 house like this,
how much in wire are you spending?
Let's see. Well, we buy all the material
early on in the year and then they ship it around September
time frame. It's coming out of Utah.
You can buy them from the local,local stores.
There's local stores here and pick it up.
(15:56):
They're just different bulbs. But for the cost of material,
I'm not actually sure on the on that because there's cost per
bulb, there's cost per linear foot of wire.
But for $1500, it might be $200 worth of material.
Most of it's going to be the labor that first year, a lot of
time spent cutting fitting. So a lot of it goes to labor.
That's why the significant cost is in the labor.
You know, the time you do the second year is is significantly
lower. Yeah, you're not cutting if all
he goes hanging and plugging in.Well, I also think like one of
(16:18):
your biggest competitors is the fact that people move, right?
Yeah, they, they leave you because they move.
But if you already have everything custom fit, you knock
on the door of the new homeownerand say, hey, you're probably
going to get Christmas light. I already have your lights.
They're fit just to you, so I can give you a good deal or
whatever. Yeah, you could.
We haven't tried that yet. We do have a customer like and
he had a pretty significant amount of lights.
So we have an entire bin full ofthem for the customer, but we
could go knock on the door and say, hey, he moved you still
(16:40):
you've already got them cut to. Your house.
It's a pretty compelling offer. Right, and you could even, you
could discount on that more thanyou would a first year person
normally, cuz you've already paid for that material for the
last, you know, the previous customer, previous homeowner.
Yeah. What type of material you can
do. You can get all different types
of colors and they're, you know,in this particular case we have
something called light stream where you can change the color
yourself if you want. OK, Yeah.
So that's an offering you can ask, you can offer to the
customer if they, if they don't know what they want, you'd tell
(17:01):
them, you know, here's the colors we have.
And then let's say you put it upthat first year and they, it was
great, but I wish I would have chose a different color.
You can change out the colors. Yeah.
And easily, yeah. So before, you know, when we pre
bold the lights before we come back to your house again the
next year, we're going to pull all those lights out.
And if you want to change color,we'll change all the colors from
warm white to green and red or whatever it might be.
Is there a price difference thatyou charge?
(17:22):
We don't, yeah, just because we already have material anyways.
The only added time is, you know, unbolding, debolding or
whatever, and then rebuilding all the wire again because we
don't charge it. But you could.
It would very easily be something they would probably
willing to pay for it. Yeah.
For safety equipment, we use a handful of things.
We have a these boots called Cougar Paws.
They have a felt mat on the bottom so you have a better grip
on the roof. We have a pitch wedge, which is
(17:42):
a very similar thing, just has afelt mat that you can stand on.
It makes a A level platform. Do you have any minimums on a
job? Like what's the least amount you
charge on a small house? Yes, we do our typically about
$800 a minimum and those generally are for single level
homes where it might be 150 to 200 linear feet worth of wire.
The other thing you're trying todo with with bulbing is you want
(18:03):
to end on corners, you want to you know end on peaks.
So I wouldn't want to end back here.
It just looks better when you'reable to end.
Yeah. You know, do these have to be
two man jobs or can you do them by yourself?
You could, but the the most difficult part is getting the
ladders up that high. So trying to move this type of
ladder by yourself is fairly difficult.
Yeah, and it gives risk of, you know, damaging customers
property. If it's a single story property,
will you send one guy? We, we don't usually just
(18:25):
there's always kind of someone on the ground that can provide
material. So 2 would be the minimum.
You could have three on the bigger house because you could
have someone, you know, two people stalling on the House and
you have one guy installing yourown beds, your own driveways,
because we do, you know, lights with stakes.
So you can do a lot of stuff from the ground with one person
or trees. You can do trees by yourself.
Do you do a lot of trees? Trees are fairly expensive, so
not a lot of people want them. Yeah, because the labor.
(18:47):
Kind of tedious. Yeah, the labor involved is just
as much installing versus as taking down.
So if you're doing trees, they're pretty significant cost
and it takes a lot of light. So we have many lights that will
wrap around trees, but we do them, just not as many.
Most people want the roofline anchorage.
That's the most bang for your buck.
Yeah. So what are your go to tools in
your tool belt here? Really all you need is just a
set of wire Clippers and colder climates it's a little harder
(19:07):
because it's much colder. So here it's not so bad really
where your hands aren't so cold and hard to do fine work with
them because you're trying to feel wires and stuff in the
little fittings. But really this is all you need
as far as that. And then zip ties are another
one. Sometimes zip tie certain areas,
but when you use zip ties, when you're installing the lights,
you're trying to install to where it's as easy as possible
to tear down. So typically when we're tearing
down lights, we're not even bringing lighters.
(19:28):
We don't need them. Wow.
We're using a painter's pole. And so in this case, we'll reach
up and pull that and that painter's pole can get most.
So you want to install it in such a way that you can tear
down easily because your time tearing down is significantly
lower, 5 to 10 minutes. When every minute you spend on
this thing, your risk increases risk of death.
And then putting up a 30 foot ladder takes two people.
(19:50):
Yeah. So there's risk of breaking
windows, things like that, if you're not paying attention.
Be careful. Yeah.
So we're always in our minds when we're installing.
We're trying to figure out how to make this easy to tear down.
Yeah. And then same thing, they tear
down. We're trying to keep as many of
the strands together as possible.
We'll label the strands so the strand one goes to this peak,
strand 2 goes after the type of thing.
Yeah, same thing there's we're pulling them down, trying to
(20:11):
keep them together as much as possible to where when we're
reinstalling the following year makes the easiest.
Yeah. Least amount of Labor to do
that. Assuming you have everything,
perhaps beforehand as you should, how many minutes will
you spend on a job like this to set up and takedown?
A little bit of time in the in the shop, so maybe half an hour
to an hour of setup time, especially if you're changing
bulbs and you're again, you're checking all the bulbs every
(20:31):
year. So once we pulled this down
every year, this year, pull all these out in the shop, check
every bulb, make sure all the bulbs are lit because as much
easier to change that than it isto put a ladder up and change
that one bulb that burnt out. So half an hour maybe in the
shop and then reinstall. For a house about this size, an
hour to an hour and a. Half and then takedown.
Takedown would be 10 minutes. Wow.
Because all you're doing is you're reached up there pulling
it and then you're you're labeling the wires and labeling
(20:51):
the strands you put down. And then we have a drawing,
which you don't have to be, you don't have to be all that
sophisticated, but as long as you can read.
It Yeah. Heck yeah.
Sketch. I mean, that's all I really do.
OK, interesting. It just goes to show, I mean, 10
minutes to take down, 30 to 60 minutes to set up, 30 minutes in
the shop. Goes to show how important your
route density is, right, Becauseyou can easily spend more time
(21:12):
driving than you spend on the entire job site, right?
Absolutely. So if your route density is
good, your margins are a lot higher.
Yeah, Or you're able to charge less.
And then the more you make sure you're doing on the ground, less
callbacks or less service calls.Yeah.
So service calls, if you have tocome out and replace a bulb, you
have to put up this ladder for one bulb.
So ideally, you're trying to minimize the amount of of
service calls. That's why you want to make sure
everything's good on the ground first.
(21:33):
Yeah, stuff happens. We've had squirrels chew the
wire. Nothing we can do about that.
But we have we go and repair it.Yeah, but sometimes we'll just
burn out or sometimes heavy winds might pull some clips off,
so we'll go replace those. OK.
And do you set them up with timers?
Yeah, so we have a timer things in the bucket.
And that's included in the price, Yes.
Yeah. All right, Jeremy, tell us who
you are and what you do. Jeremy, I'm the production
(21:53):
manager at Grounds Guys for Wesley.
And what does a production manager do all?
Right. So I get to manage all the crews
and the the schedule. The main thing is communication
with the customer. That's what they like the most
and that's what we offer the most.
Don't. I'm available to them anytime of
the day. What do you love the most about
this job? Honestly, I I really like the
outdoors. Yeah, that's kind of why I took
the job in the 1st place. I enjoyed being outdoors.
(22:14):
So all this is kind of just fun to me almost, you know, I
actually enjoy being out here working.
So do you. Have any horror stories from
being on the job doing Christmaslife specifically?
I wouldn't say horror, but kind of, yeah.
Because you know, if you have any kind of fear of heights,
which I'm not terrible, but likeyou get, you get me a pie
enough, you know, But there's some of them that are so slanted
and even with the safety equipment like the boots and
(22:35):
the, you know, the triangle, andthen we have a bar that goes
over the peak, you can kind of hold on.
Even with that stuff, you still kind of slide, you know.
And so it's kind of it's kind ofspooky.
But I guess after a while you kind of get used to it.
We also get that mindset of we got to get this done, you know,
So you just get brave. If someone's watching this and
they're thinking about starting a Christmas light business, what
advice would you give them? It's not difficult to figure out
(22:57):
as far as the wiring and all that stuff.
I would say watch videos on safety because that's the number
one thing. I mean, one, you don't want to
get in trouble with. Two, you don't want to get hurt.
You know, it could be a serious injury, you know, falling off of
one of these roofs, even a one story if you land wrong.
So I would say safety, you know,just focus on that at first.
You'll get your own groove aftera while.
And it what about how to talk tocustomers or communication?
(23:19):
Do you have any tips for people about?
That just be open, be willing totalk to them.
Sometimes customers just want more than just the information
you're giving them. They want almost a friend.
Yeah. So you just, you just talk to
them as if you're a friend, you know, and then they will be more
open to you because that way if you sometimes customers, if they
have a complaint, they almost don't want to tell you because
they feel like you're just goingto ignore them anyway.
(23:39):
But if you start off as a friend, you know, they feel like
they can tell you about it and you'll you'll take care of them.
Yeah. They'll be more likely to buy
stuff from. You.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can't stress
communication enough. That's what that'll that's
what'll build any business on. I used to tell my employees that
communication covers a multitudeof sentence.
It does, right? If you screw something up and
you get ahead of it, like proactively, yes, a lot of times
you can. You can turn that into a good
(24:01):
experience where they buy more stuff.
You can, you know, cuz like, even when the crews, like, let's
say they run into a mailbox, if they'll call and tell me the
moment they do it, I can call that customer and head them off.
Yeah. And like, hey, we hit your
mailbox today. I will take care of this.
Yeah. And then they don't call me mad
cuz they don't have time to fester about it.
Yeah, so it does help with communication.
So if someone were watching thisand wanting to start a Christmas
(24:21):
lights business, what advice would you give them?
Hire some software down the roofbecause I've hired a few people
that they said they would and then come, you know, when push
comes to shove, they don't want to be up there.
We don't always get on the roof.We're trying to use the light as
much as possible, but. So that's like the first
question you ask because it's really not emotional.
Landscapers, I'm asking them that like I'm hiring them to MO
Yeah, telling them that in the fall we're going to be doing
(24:41):
quality lights and doing the topof the roof.
Because you just can't work around that, right?
OK, the other thing is I guess Iwould probably recommend menus
on Facebook as a as a means of getting leads.
What? About safety.
There's a few pieces of equipment I'd recommend you get.
You don't have to get everythingand you can generally try and
use the ladders as much as possible and you might even
start on some of the easier roof.
There's single store analysis that you can do that are much
easier to do. Easy to get your feet wet.
Safety equipment I would get these boots or cougar paws.
(25:03):
Pitch wedge is another big one. Sits on the roof and helps you
sit on a level platform as you're standing on the roof.
Then 30 foot ladder. You don't have to have one of
those. Really.
OK. And then I guess what I'd
recommend is just try it. The worst you could do is have a
lot of that. You get to keep your house now.
Yeah. And then you can, you know,
start on your own home, put the lights on your own house and get
a feel for how it goes. And it's, it's much simpler than
you might think as far as how tofit them together.
Yeah, you know, do it, do it that way.
(25:23):
Can someone go to Home Depot andbuy lights or would you not
recommend that? You can get some of that, but
typically there's I wouldn't necessarily recommend Home Depot
because they're not really made to fit to your house.
Yeah, you can get 100 foot lengths or 50 foot length .5
foot lengths. But pretty much anywhere you
live, there's probably going to be some sort of supply store.
So you know, where I live here, there's somewhere I can go
that's one mile away to get those supplies.
But wherever you live, there's going to be a supply store
that's selling holiday light. All right.
(25:44):
What are the startup costs for this business?
Best to buy the stuff you can inbulk because you know, the more
you can get in bulk, the cheaperit's going to be per foot
essentially. So really it's just the
materials. The materials if you've already
got a vehicle that can kind of haul the stuff you need and the
materials you can buy them in bulk.
But it's, you know, maybe two $3000 the first year we spent
about 4500 and $5000 in all the material that we were kind of
expecting to do about 15 homes. So we bought that much material
(26:06):
kind of ahead of time. You don't have to buy that much.
You could just buy, you know, 1 reel of this couple boxes of the
lights fitting and all that. So you might only if you were
just trying to get started, you might only be 4 or $500 as far
as material and then a couple pieces of equipment, safety
equipment, ladders. Do you think it's possible if
someone were to go all in on this focus, do paid ads,
everything, go all out, this could be $1,000,000 business?
Yeah, very easily. With good profit.
Margins, I was just on a call with with grounds guys, you
(26:28):
know, talking to other, other grounds guys, owners of the
nation. One of the grounds guys that
we're speaking with, he does a million and 1/4 Justin
Christmas, just the Christmas lights.
The rest of the year you're doing the landscape lighting.
How much? That is the commercial, He
didn't say. He didn't have that breakdown,
but a large portion is going to be commercial and then you know,
as far as as residential customers, you know you might
have 200 to 3400 commercial customers if you're doing a
(26:48):
million plus, OK, then the rest of that would be the the
commercial customers. Any horror stories from this
business? No, no real horror stories.
Yeah, I guess the worst that we've had, if you want to call
it, is not a Horror Story, but we just had some squirrels that
did some work on a customer's property.
So they said all the lines weren't working, You know,
within maybe a month they were up.
So we go out there and investigate it and find the
squirrels had chewed through four or five locations of it.
(27:10):
So we went and just snipped it and.
Patched it. And that happened once out of
2030 times, Right? OK, see, I think that was it.
And what are your goals for this?
Yeah. And what are your goals for this
business? Our goals are like we really
want to increase this line as well as landscape lighting.
SO22 lighting areas we want to increase in for holiday
lighting, we'd like to do half amillion to 1,000,000 a year
(27:32):
within the next two or three years.
So we're like I said, we're three years in.
So if we continue to double downon all the holiday lighting and
landscape lighting, you know, between those two, we'd like to
be doing over a million a year in, in just the lighting.
Yeah, all. Right.
Well, Wesley, thank you for yourtime today.
Yeah. Appreciate it.
If someone wants to check out your business, where are you and
how can they find you? We're grounds guys of Keller, so
we're in the DFW area in Texas and then you can go to
groundsguys.com. You get to any wherever location
(27:54):
here in the country. You can just type in your zip
code and it'll take you to the local spot where you're at.
But ours is groundsguys.com DashKeller, TX if you want a
specific location. For anything landscaping and or
Christmas lights. Christmas lights, landscape
lighting, irrigation, if you're doing installations or
maintenance as far as landscaping and then holiday
lighting this time of year obviously.
OK Browns guys, Keller, I've never really said this out loud
before, but my mission with thischannel is to inspire 1,000,000
(28:17):
entrepreneurs to start or grow their business.
So if you've been inspired by this, please just say thanks by
hitting subscribe and it would mean the world to me.
Do you think it's possible if someone were to go all in on
this, everything go all out, this could be $1,000,000
business? Yeah, very easily.
One of the grounds guys that we're speaking with, he does a
million and a quarter. Wow, just in.
Christmas, just in. Christmas.
If you could like wave a magic wand, would you prefer to go all
in on Christmas lights or lawns?Christmas lights?
What would you charge for a house like this?
An average home of this size is 1500 to $2000.
(00:20):
Commercial customer can be worth100 times more than a home like
this. Yeah, what's not to love about
the Christmas light business? Make $1000 in an hour.
Never quit your full time job. Do it yourself or hire a part
time guy. Today we're diving deep on
everything Christmas lights business.
How to find customers, how to make money, how to install the
lights, how to price it. Let's get going.
(00:42):
All right, Well, nice to meet you.
You too. Tell us who you are and what you
do. Hi.
My name is Wesley Parkin. We do landscaping and holiday
lighting in the fall. Lots of like maintenance type of
work and then a lot of install type of work for all the
landscaping. OK.
And how long have you been in business?
Three, a little over three years.
Three years. What got you into this business?
I was in instruction management before and I kind of looked at
(01:03):
the ladder up and I didn't like how it looked.
So we started searching businesses to buy, looked into a
different couple different things.
Then we looked into a bunch of franchises.
And so after we looked into the franchise and kind of what
Neighborly stood for, that's whywe chose a Neighborly brand that
we chose this one, Browns guys, because it had a lot of
verticals that we can do. We can do landscape lighting,
holiday lighting, we can do irrigation landscape installs.
So we chose one that had multiple vertical verticals that
(01:24):
we could add to the business as we drill.
Yeah, I like it. It's funny, I talked to a lot of
people that they kind of look attheir boss and their boss's boss
and they realize I don't like that.
I don't want that. That's my future.
Right. They made a lot of money, but
the time didn't look that great.Yeah.
OK, so you pick this as a franchise, You like the
seasonality of it. You don't have to go all in on
just cutting lawns. You can do other things.
(01:44):
How did that first year go? It's tough.
Yeah, landscaping, there's a lotof landscapers.
There's a lot of, I mean, you can, you don't have any license
at all to start a landscaping company.
You don't even a lot of people have insurance.
So competing with a lot of the smaller companies takes a little
while to get enough, you know, recurring revenue, enough
customers actually get to that first year.
So the first year was just a lotof work on a grind, in the
second year, a lot of putting anextra time.
(02:06):
I was on the truck myself for a while for the first year and
then after the first year I was able to get off the truck and do
a lot more of the business portion of it as opposed to the
work, you know, the actual landscape.
Work. Now, what would you charge for a
long like this compared to most of your competitors?
We're slightly above most of ourcompetitors because they can do
it super cheap. So a lot like this including his
backyard, you know this is average probably 50 bucks and
then we typically about 36 milesa year and we we separate it to
(02:28):
where we have our customers pay monthly.
So they pay the exact same everymonth even though it is them
less in December versus August, just taking that full amount and
split up over 12 months and. Then what would your competitor
charge for something like this? Competitor might charge 40 bucks
a mo. 35 bucks a mo. How do you get around that
objection to customers? If they say, well this guy can
do it, for what do you tell them?
A lot of times one of the big things is when they call us,
(02:48):
they get they get to talk to somebody on the phone and then
if a screw up happens, we fix those screw ups.
So you know, Jeremy here, he's my protection manager.
Anytime someone calls, they're calling him.
They have complaints, they have issues, they have questions,
they call him and he's going to answer and the same thing.
If something happens, we're going to come back and fix it.
OK, so we've had instances wherewe've damaged something or, you
know, broken the window in the case we replaced the window.
Yeah. All right.
So year one, what percentage of your business was lawns versus
(03:10):
Christmas lights? And are there any other services
that you do? Yeah, the first year is probably
95% going lawns, you know, basicmaintenance, pruning, edging,
all that type of stuff. We did some holiday lights the
first year, maybe 5-6 homes. So by percentage basis around 5%
of the total revenue was holidaylighting.
And then that continues to, we do more commercial now we're
trying to do more commercials. So our split between residents
(03:31):
commercial has been growing overthe last three years.
And then holiday lighting, we'veincreased not dramatically each
year, but probably 5 to 10% eachyear as far as the amount of
revenue we get from quality lighting.
And how do you find customers for both sides of the business?
For landscaping, we use a lot ofLsas.
We have PPC that we use word of mouth helps a lot.
Whenever we do good with the customer and they refer us a lot
of referrals that didn't start happening until this year
(03:52):
probably where we got a lot morereferrals.
The first year referrals don't come that quick.
And then for holiday lighting, we use a lot of Facebook because
Facebook is a place where you kind of see it as you know, kind
of envision your own home. So we have pictures, things like
that that'll that will post in those ads.
So when people see that, they'rea lot more inclined to click on
that and. It's more visual, Yep.
When you say Facebook, do you mean like paid Facebook ads?
Right, OK. We do also Facebook posting, but
(04:15):
obviously those just bring in less because they're not being
pushed out to the customers through Facebook's ad platform.
Yeah. Now does the franchisor handle
the marketing and the lead Gen. for you?
No. That's all done locally by us.
The only thing they do is national brand awareness.
So we pay a small fee of all of our monthly revenue that goes to
national marketing, but it's more brand awareness.
(04:36):
It's not really lead generation.So all lead generation is done
locally by us. We have, you know, someone that
does our our PPC and LSA stuff as well as our Facebook.
And then you know, we do all theposting ourselves as far as just
posting before and afters thingslike that.
But all that we hire someone to do the marketing portion of for
a, you know, marketing agency. Yeah.
And for those watching, PPC is pay per click, just Google ads.
You appear at the top of the search results.
And then LSA is local service ads where you can set up your
(04:58):
profile, get the like the green check mark by Google and then
they will send you leads and say, hey, Mary needs Christmas
lights. They charge you for that lead.
And so now the onus is on you toclose it as fast as possible
before someone else does, right?In the past we've used some lead
generators as well, like Thumbtack or Angie's leads.
We used those a lot more early on because we just needed.
Anything. Yep.
So five star reviews, Testimonials.
(05:21):
Right now it's not. We don't use those so much
because the quality of the lead was lower.
And so typically, we want to improve those quality of those
leads. Yeah, and if you could like wave
a magic wand, would you prefer to go all in on Christmas lights
or or lawns? You had Christmas.
Lights really margins are significantly greater.
OK. Let's talk about that.
What are the margins on a MOW like this?
(05:42):
Margins for mowing is 10 to 15%,particularly commercial.
It's lower because the the competition's much higher as
opposed to holiday lights. It's a significant risk climbing
20-30 in the air. That's what you're charging for
the liability. And then also not only that, but
like if you have a bulb go out, you don't want to go pull up a
ladder to replace that one bulb.So we come and do you know it's
part of the services we're coming in and replace those.
(06:03):
So the margins on holiday lighting increases each year
because the first year you have to pay for the material.
So it'll be much lower, 20 percent, 25%.
And then if you have the same customer year over year, you're
going to be increasing fixing that margin up to 50 to 60%.
And I would think that people don't start shopping around for
a different provider every October.
They're just gonna call you, right?
Yeah, as long as we did a good job, as long as anytime they
call we came in service to them if there was issues and then you
(06:23):
know we take them down. We just have to schedule with
the customer for install and takedown.
We give them a week time span asfar as install, same thing as as
takedown. We'll route our areas so that we
can take down multiple, you know, multiple homes in the same
area. So as long as you did a good job
and you know, I think communication is probably the
biggest thing. Whenever they call you, they get
a hold of you, then there's really no reasons to reshop it
because next year, you know, they might end up paying a
(06:44):
little bit less too. We give a discount, you know,
two years, three years in. But even with those discounts,
we still have the margins still increased because you don't have
to pay for material. You got them cut.
The time is less to install in the second, third year because
you're not recutting and you've already got them set to the
house. So the install time is.
Less so. This is your third season of
Christmas lights, right? So 5 or 6 customers the first
season. How many the second season?
Second season was probably probably 10 to 15.
(07:06):
OK. So you doubled year over year?
It's a slow growth with it as you kind of figure it out and
same thing with our landscaping,we double year over year
revenues kind of this kind of match suit with the holiday
lighting. Did you lose any customers the
second year from the first? Yeah, there's people that move,
there's people that realize theycan get it cheaper.
Yeah, typically what happens when they get it cheaper, they
just don't get that same serviceas far as coming out and
(07:27):
getting, you know, doing the repairs or doing any maintenance
on it. So they can, they can easily
find so much cheaper because there's a lot of guys that'll do
it part time. So they'll have a full time job
and then come fall time they'll do some holiday lighting
installs on the side. So they do it much cheaper
because again, they don't carry insurance.
They probably don't have a business.
Just do it on the side. So we'll and we'll lose.
So we'll lose a handful of year.The ones that we would do it
year over year, they just tell us put the same thing up and
(07:48):
sometimes we'll add stuff. So we've done holiday, you know,
wreaths, things like that we've added to customers or we'll add
landscape or lighting in the landscape.
You can line the driveways or orbeds, things like that.
Yeah. How many do you think you'll
have this year? I know it's early in the season.
You probably haven't really. Have you started your marketing
efforts yet? We have a little bit and we also
we've we've kind of combined efforts with the grounds guys,
the Grapevine. So they had a couple customers
(08:09):
that were taking over for them. And so they have a big
commercial customer around 40 to50,000 that will worth the
revenue that we'll put in for that customer as well as.
That's amazing. We.
Have a handful of, we have quitea few leads that we're marketing
to our own internal CRM system. So we'll be doing a bunch of
that this this year for. That so commercial customer can
be worth 100 times more than a home like this, Yeah.
But it can be also a lot more complicated.
You might have to, you know, getlifts.
So we haven't done any of these that large commercial yet.
(08:31):
This will be our first one. But we'll like Zipper partnering
with them because they've done it.
This is the hospital that they do in Grapevine.
So the cost of actually installing is a lot more, plus
you have more material. Let's talk about the two
different models you have. So of installing lights so on.
On one hand you cut them to sizeand they use them every year.
And then what was the other model?
Or is that the only? That's that's really the only
professionally installed way to do it.
Yeah, but we lease the lights versus the customer can own the
(08:54):
lights. OK.
So a lot of companies, other, you know, competitors will do it
where they'll sell the lights tothe customer, we'll cut them to
fit their home. And if for some reason the
customer says I don't want you back next year, they get to keep
the lights, but better already fit to their home.
OK, We cut the lights and we keep the lights and we're
essentially leasing them to themwhere we fit in the home.
We store them so they don't haveto deal with pulling them out,
you know, in and out of the attic.
Every year. We'll bring them to the
(09:14):
customer's job site. Whenever it's time to install,
we install them and then same thing when it's time to take
down, we pull them all down and we haul them off.
They don't have to worry about how to install them to store
them properly. We keep them indoors.
That way they're not dealing with, you know, getting hot and
cold or under the weather or whatnot.
But yeah, those are kind of the two main ones.
Either lease or let the customerown them.
Okay? Just a difference in pricing on
how you do that? So for a house like this, this
is like a three to 4000 square foot house I imagine 2 Story 3
(09:36):
car garage. What would you charge for a
house like this? An average home of this size is
1500 to $2000 and install and it's by the linear foot.
So most of the time what we'll do when we meet with customers,
we'll just, we'll come, we measure everything from the
grounds, we'll measure all the roof lines, mostly roof lines,
what customers want. Often times they'll do other
stuff, but roof lines kind of the number one service.
And how are you measuring those?We use a measuring wheel, so
(09:56):
we'll just basically walking offfrom here as far as the pitches,
you know, you just have to walk the distance from the side to
the center. And then you know, there's a
little bit of math involved doing the the pitches, but OK,
that difficult measure everything from the ground.
We get a total linear footage and then we have a linear foot
price to give the customer for roof line install.
So 1500 to 2000 for the first year, yeah, OK.
And then what would it be next year?
And. We'll discount 10% each year
until the 3rd year and then it just stays the same.
(10:18):
OK. So they'll discount the second,
first year or the second year is10%, Thirty years, 10% and then
it stays the same if they were with us for 10 years?
You know, OK, and then you storethe lights on your property?
Yep. OK, cool.
And that's the thing too is if customers with us for five
years, they don't have to repay for material.
We might be repaying for material, you know, Year 5 or 6
when the product starts breakingdown, they're burning out, but
or the one replacing it, Yeah. So they don't have to worry
(10:38):
about that price really changingbecause it stays the same 3:00
as long as long as they're with us really.
Yeah, which model do you prefer?We like the leasing, yeah,
because we can essentially reusematerial if someone doesn't want
us to come back. So we have the material already
and that way we're kind of keepscosts down on material.
So for a job like this, let's say it's 1500, what would be
your profit margin on year one versus year 3?
Year one will probably be in the20% range because you're paying
(10:58):
for that material for the first year and then year 3 will be
around 2 to 60%. OK, wow, that's awesome.
And then that's with you installing it yourself or your
employees installing. Installing.
OK. So if you were to do it
yourself, the margins. Would be higher, yeah, if you
don't call yourself again, depending on if you have a full
time business doing it and you're paying for insurance and
all that, which I wouldn't recommend a customer ever really
hire someone to get on their roof without insurance, but it
(11:20):
happens all the time so. What is your insurance costs
run? With all of our insurance, which
includes auto insurance and everything, we're paying about
$12,000 a year vehicles for general liability workers.
Comp not as bad as I thought honestly. 1000 bucks a month.
I wonder what it would be if youdidn't do Christmas lights at
all. It would drop because they they
rate this as a higher risk activity.
So we pay for that. Same thing with we, we do ice
melt, which is technically snow plowing is where they categorize
(11:42):
it, yeah, which there's no soap on here in our in our market,
but we do ice melt and they charge us for that as well
because it's higher risk activity.
OK, cool. Do you guys do anything with
regards to marketing and like yard signs or knocking doors or
like talking to the neighbors? How does that go?
We do door hangers. We've done a lot of yard signs.
However, this year or Texas passed something where yard
signs are now technically illegal.
(12:03):
So really $500 every sign for the first offense?
I think it's $1000. That's the whole state, yeah.
That started in September 1, butwe do door hangers and again,
Facebook posts or Facebook, we'll do our own posts before
and afters as well as the Facebook marketing.
That's kind of the main lead generation for our holiday
lighting. And do those work pretty well
like the non digital methods? Yeah, yard signs.
(12:26):
I mean, I had another neighborlybrand, I kind of was following
him what he was doing. He he would put out 80 yard
signs a month. Sometimes he gets calls and
people complain about it, but still brought in the generate,
generate the lead. So it's working.
All work. They risk, I guess, at that
point. When you're putting out door
hangers, who does it? Do you hire a company to do it?
Do you do it? It'll be our cruise.
So a lot of times when we do onehome like this, we'll, we call
it box 9. So we'll do the two homes on
(12:46):
each side, two homes on that side and the five homes on the
side of the screen. That way all the, you know, when
we're here installing, if customer or neighbors see us and
we'll go put a door hanger on that's, you know, 2 touch
points. One they see awesome 2 they got
a touch with the door hanger. Do you have any bearing on like
how many door hangers to converta customer?
Do you keep track of that at all?
I don't know if I know the door hanger 1.
Or any of them. Typically we get more door
hanger calls from the landscaping because we're in a
(13:09):
lot more, you know, we're in a lot more homes or a lot more
properties. So every property we're putting
those out. Yep, the just the numbers are
higher and then it also kind of depends on the year or the time
of year. Yeah.
So obviously the beginning of the year for landscaping, a lot
more people call us because that's what they're starting to
think about. South.
Given another month, they'll start thinking about holiday
lighting. Or soon as everyone starts
thinking about holiday lighting.Yeah.
It's like a switch on their mind.
Yeah, Yeah. Or that I'm not really thinking
(13:29):
about it. That's why when you're doing
stuff early on the year, so July, Christmas in July is the
thing, trying to get people to think about Christmas lights to
get, you know, on the schedule earlier.
But typically Halloween's over. That's when people's minds
switches. And then so that's a really good
time to be putting stuff out forpeople to see in the vehicles or
the yard signs if we could put them out still.
So that's like when customers start to think in that
direction. But strategically, when do you
first start marketing for Christmas lights and or
(13:51):
installing for Christmas lights?That would be July.
So you do a Christmas in July campaign to say, OK, you know,
we install lights, get on schedule early.
Essentially you can offer discounts for getting on
earlier, especially when the route, when your route fills up
a lot. So the earlier you get on, you
get discounts because if you're more profit, everyone's stacking
into November, then you just don't have time to install for
everyone. So July, Christmas, July,
Christmas in July is kind of thetime frame, OK, when to start
(14:11):
it. And then again, you'll start
again end of September, early October for the actual marketing
of this time of year. OK.
And then when do you start taking down 2726?
We'll. Start after New Year, so it'll
be the week after because typically a lot of people are
out of town, still up on vacation.
So we wait a full week into January and then the first
basically second week of January, we'll start taking
down. Do you do any permanent
lighting? We don't, OK, we are going to.
(14:33):
We're planning to get into it. We just haven't got to that
point. Yet I have a friend that that
has a Christmas light business in Pennsylvania, and he says he
hates permanent lighting becauseit's one time.
Yeah, he says that he only does it when people insist on it cuz
at least he gets something out of that customer, but he would
much prefer to come back every year.
Yeah, right. I mean for the install it's two
to three times the amount. So if you're getting permanent
(14:53):
lighting, you'll expect to pay three times the amount you would
for this isn't permanent lighting, but it permanent on
there for the season. Yeah, but two to three times
more if you're installing permanent lighting.
All right, so you get to a job site.
What's the first thing you do? Well, we've already got the
measurements, we have all that we'll have pre bulb wire.
So in the shop, I thought we were not doing all the
customer's property. We'll bulb 500 feet or however
many, whatever length we need toin the shop, there's less of
(15:15):
that here. We'll have that all reeled up on
the spool. And then we'll have one person
that climbs the ladder that's kind of fitting everything,
person on the ground that's holding ladders, giving
material, things like that. But that spool just be on the
ground and you'll basically pull, You'll have it hanging in
the air as you go up and you'll have it pre clipped as well so
that we can make it faster. We want to be on the job side
the least amount of time. We'll do all the easy stuff from
the ground and then shop. So we'll have that big spool
(15:36):
here and we'll just start pulling up the ladder.
We'll have someone down on the bottom that feed material and
then as you go you just fit it up as each clip goes on and
you'll cut it at the exact length once you get to where you
need it. So for a $1500 house like this,
how much in wire are you spending?
Let's see. Well, we buy all the material
early on in the year and then they ship it around September
time frame. It's coming out of Utah.
You can buy them from the local,local stores.
There's local stores here and pick it up.
(15:56):
They're just different bulbs. But for the cost of material,
I'm not actually sure on the on that because there's cost per
bulb, there's cost per linear foot of wire.
But for $1500, it might be $200 worth of material.
Most of it's going to be the labor that first year, a lot of
time spent cutting fitting. So a lot of it goes to labor.
That's why the significant cost is in the labor.
You know, the time you do the second year is is significantly
lower. Yeah, you're not cutting if all
he goes hanging and plugging in.Well, I also think like one of
(16:18):
your biggest competitors is the fact that people move, right?
Yeah, they, they leave you because they move.
But if you already have everything custom fit, you knock
on the door of the new homeownerand say, hey, you're probably
going to get Christmas light. I already have your lights.
They're fit just to you, so I can give you a good deal or
whatever. Yeah, you could.
We haven't tried that yet. We do have a customer like and
he had a pretty significant amount of lights.
So we have an entire bin full ofthem for the customer, but we
could go knock on the door and say, hey, he moved you still
(16:40):
you've already got them cut to. Your house.
It's a pretty compelling offer. Right, and you could even, you
could discount on that more thanyou would a first year person
normally, cuz you've already paid for that material for the
last, you know, the previous customer, previous homeowner.
Yeah. What type of material you can
do. You can get all different types
of colors and they're, you know,in this particular case we have
something called light stream where you can change the color
yourself if you want. OK, Yeah.
So that's an offering you can ask, you can offer to the
customer if they, if they don't know what they want, you'd tell
(17:01):
them, you know, here's the colors we have.
And then let's say you put it upthat first year and they, it was
great, but I wish I would have chose a different color.
You can change out the colors. Yeah.
And easily, yeah. So before, you know, when we pre
bold the lights before we come back to your house again the
next year, we're going to pull all those lights out.
And if you want to change color,we'll change all the colors from
warm white to green and red or whatever it might be.
Is there a price difference thatyou charge?
(17:22):
We don't, yeah, just because we already have material anyways.
The only added time is, you know, unbolding, debolding or
whatever, and then rebuilding all the wire again because we
don't charge it. But you could.
It would very easily be something they would probably
willing to pay for it. Yeah.
For safety equipment, we use a handful of things.
We have a these boots called Cougar Paws.
They have a felt mat on the bottom so you have a better grip
on the roof. We have a pitch wedge, which is
(17:42):
a very similar thing, just has afelt mat that you can stand on.
It makes a A level platform. Do you have any minimums on a
job? Like what's the least amount you
charge on a small house? Yes, we do our typically about
$800 a minimum and those generally are for single level
homes where it might be 150 to 200 linear feet worth of wire.
The other thing you're trying todo with with bulbing is you want
(18:03):
to end on corners, you want to you know end on peaks.
So I wouldn't want to end back here.
It just looks better when you'reable to end.
Yeah. You know, do these have to be
two man jobs or can you do them by yourself?
You could, but the the most difficult part is getting the
ladders up that high. So trying to move this type of
ladder by yourself is fairly difficult.
Yeah, and it gives risk of, you know, damaging customers
property. If it's a single story property,
will you send one guy? We, we don't usually just
(18:25):
there's always kind of someone on the ground that can provide
material. So 2 would be the minimum.
You could have three on the bigger house because you could
have someone, you know, two people stalling on the House and
you have one guy installing yourown beds, your own driveways,
because we do, you know, lights with stakes.
So you can do a lot of stuff from the ground with one person
or trees. You can do trees by yourself.
Do you do a lot of trees? Trees are fairly expensive, so
not a lot of people want them. Yeah, because the labor.
(18:47):
Kind of tedious. Yeah, the labor involved is just
as much installing versus as taking down.
So if you're doing trees, they're pretty significant cost
and it takes a lot of light. So we have many lights that will
wrap around trees, but we do them, just not as many.
Most people want the roofline anchorage.
That's the most bang for your buck.
Yeah. So what are your go to tools in
your tool belt here? Really all you need is just a
set of wire Clippers and colder climates it's a little harder
(19:07):
because it's much colder. So here it's not so bad really
where your hands aren't so cold and hard to do fine work with
them because you're trying to feel wires and stuff in the
little fittings. But really this is all you need
as far as that. And then zip ties are another
one. Sometimes zip tie certain areas,
but when you use zip ties, when you're installing the lights,
you're trying to install to where it's as easy as possible
to tear down. So typically when we're tearing
down lights, we're not even bringing lighters.
(19:28):
We don't need them. Wow.
We're using a painter's pole. And so in this case, we'll reach
up and pull that and that painter's pole can get most.
So you want to install it in such a way that you can tear
down easily because your time tearing down is significantly
lower, 5 to 10 minutes. When every minute you spend on
this thing, your risk increases risk of death.
And then putting up a 30 foot ladder takes two people.
(19:50):
Yeah. So there's risk of breaking
windows, things like that, if you're not paying attention.
Be careful. Yeah.
So we're always in our minds when we're installing.
We're trying to figure out how to make this easy to tear down.
Yeah. And then same thing, they tear
down. We're trying to keep as many of
the strands together as possible.
We'll label the strands so the strand one goes to this peak,
strand 2 goes after the type of thing.
Yeah, same thing there's we're pulling them down, trying to
(20:11):
keep them together as much as possible to where when we're
reinstalling the following year makes the easiest.
Yeah. Least amount of Labor to do
that. Assuming you have everything,
perhaps beforehand as you should, how many minutes will
you spend on a job like this to set up and takedown?
A little bit of time in the in the shop, so maybe half an hour
to an hour of setup time, especially if you're changing
bulbs and you're again, you're checking all the bulbs every
(20:31):
year. So once we pulled this down
every year, this year, pull all these out in the shop, check
every bulb, make sure all the bulbs are lit because as much
easier to change that than it isto put a ladder up and change
that one bulb that burnt out. So half an hour maybe in the
shop and then reinstall. For a house about this size, an
hour to an hour and a. Half and then takedown.
Takedown would be 10 minutes. Wow.
Because all you're doing is you're reached up there pulling
it and then you're you're labeling the wires and labeling
(20:51):
the strands you put down. And then we have a drawing,
which you don't have to be, you don't have to be all that
sophisticated, but as long as you can read.
It Yeah. Heck yeah.
Sketch. I mean, that's all I really do.
OK, interesting. It just goes to show, I mean, 10
minutes to take down, 30 to 60 minutes to set up, 30 minutes in
the shop. Goes to show how important your
route density is, right, Becauseyou can easily spend more time
(21:12):
driving than you spend on the entire job site, right?
Absolutely. So if your route density is
good, your margins are a lot higher.
Yeah, Or you're able to charge less.
And then the more you make sure you're doing on the ground, less
callbacks or less service calls.Yeah.
So service calls, if you have tocome out and replace a bulb, you
have to put up this ladder for one bulb.
So ideally, you're trying to minimize the amount of of
service calls. That's why you want to make sure
everything's good on the ground first.
(21:33):
Yeah, stuff happens. We've had squirrels chew the
wire. Nothing we can do about that.
But we have we go and repair it.Yeah, but sometimes we'll just
burn out or sometimes heavy winds might pull some clips off,
so we'll go replace those. OK.
And do you set them up with timers?
Yeah, so we have a timer things in the bucket.
And that's included in the price, Yes.
Yeah. All right, Jeremy, tell us who
you are and what you do. Jeremy, I'm the production
(21:53):
manager at Grounds Guys for Wesley.
And what does a production manager do all?
Right. So I get to manage all the crews
and the the schedule. The main thing is communication
with the customer. That's what they like the most
and that's what we offer the most.
Don't. I'm available to them anytime of
the day. What do you love the most about
this job? Honestly, I I really like the
outdoors. Yeah, that's kind of why I took
the job in the 1st place. I enjoyed being outdoors.
(22:14):
So all this is kind of just fun to me almost, you know, I
actually enjoy being out here working.
So do you. Have any horror stories from
being on the job doing Christmaslife specifically?
I wouldn't say horror, but kind of, yeah.
Because you know, if you have any kind of fear of heights,
which I'm not terrible, but likeyou get, you get me a pie
enough, you know, But there's some of them that are so slanted
and even with the safety equipment like the boots and
(22:35):
the, you know, the triangle, andthen we have a bar that goes
over the peak, you can kind of hold on.
Even with that stuff, you still kind of slide, you know.
And so it's kind of it's kind ofspooky.
But I guess after a while you kind of get used to it.
We also get that mindset of we got to get this done, you know,
So you just get brave. If someone's watching this and
they're thinking about starting a Christmas light business, what
advice would you give them? It's not difficult to figure out
(22:57):
as far as the wiring and all that stuff.
I would say watch videos on safety because that's the number
one thing. I mean, one, you don't want to
get in trouble with. Two, you don't want to get hurt.
You know, it could be a serious injury, you know, falling off of
one of these roofs, even a one story if you land wrong.
So I would say safety, you know,just focus on that at first.
You'll get your own groove aftera while.
And it what about how to talk tocustomers or communication?
(23:19):
Do you have any tips for people about?
That just be open, be willing totalk to them.
Sometimes customers just want more than just the information
you're giving them. They want almost a friend.
Yeah. So you just, you just talk to
them as if you're a friend, you know, and then they will be more
open to you because that way if you sometimes customers, if they
have a complaint, they almost don't want to tell you because
they feel like you're just goingto ignore them anyway.
(23:39):
But if you start off as a friend, you know, they feel like
they can tell you about it and you'll you'll take care of them.
Yeah. They'll be more likely to buy
stuff from. You.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can't stress
communication enough. That's what that'll that's
what'll build any business on. I used to tell my employees that
communication covers a multitudeof sentence.
It does, right? If you screw something up and
you get ahead of it, like proactively, yes, a lot of times
you can. You can turn that into a good
(24:01):
experience where they buy more stuff.
You can, you know, cuz like, even when the crews, like, let's
say they run into a mailbox, if they'll call and tell me the
moment they do it, I can call that customer and head them off.
Yeah. And like, hey, we hit your
mailbox today. I will take care of this.
Yeah. And then they don't call me mad
cuz they don't have time to fester about it.
Yeah, so it does help with communication.
So if someone were watching thisand wanting to start a Christmas
(24:21):
lights business, what advice would you give them?
Hire some software down the roofbecause I've hired a few people
that they said they would and then come, you know, when push
comes to shove, they don't want to be up there.
We don't always get on the roof.We're trying to use the light as
much as possible, but. So that's like the first
question you ask because it's really not emotional.
Landscapers, I'm asking them that like I'm hiring them to MO
Yeah, telling them that in the fall we're going to be doing
(24:41):
quality lights and doing the topof the roof.
Because you just can't work around that, right?
OK, the other thing is I guess Iwould probably recommend menus
on Facebook as a as a means of getting leads.
What? About safety.
There's a few pieces of equipment I'd recommend you get.
You don't have to get everythingand you can generally try and
use the ladders as much as possible and you might even
start on some of the easier roof.
There's single store analysis that you can do that are much
easier to do. Easy to get your feet wet.
Safety equipment I would get these boots or cougar paws.
(25:03):
Pitch wedge is another big one. Sits on the roof and helps you
sit on a level platform as you're standing on the roof.
Then 30 foot ladder. You don't have to have one of
those. Really.
OK. And then I guess what I'd
recommend is just try it. The worst you could do is have a
lot of that. You get to keep your house now.
Yeah. And then you can, you know,
start on your own home, put the lights on your own house and get
a feel for how it goes. And it's, it's much simpler than
you might think as far as how tofit them together.
Yeah, you know, do it, do it that way.
(25:23):
Can someone go to Home Depot andbuy lights or would you not
recommend that? You can get some of that, but
typically there's I wouldn't necessarily recommend Home Depot
because they're not really made to fit to your house.
Yeah, you can get 100 foot lengths or 50 foot length .5
foot lengths. But pretty much anywhere you
live, there's probably going to be some sort of supply store.
So you know, where I live here, there's somewhere I can go
that's one mile away to get those supplies.
But wherever you live, there's going to be a supply store
that's selling holiday light. All right.
(25:44):
What are the startup costs for this business?
Best to buy the stuff you can inbulk because you know, the more
you can get in bulk, the cheaperit's going to be per foot
essentially. So really it's just the
materials. The materials if you've already
got a vehicle that can kind of haul the stuff you need and the
materials you can buy them in bulk.
But it's, you know, maybe two $3000 the first year we spent
about 4500 and $5000 in all the material that we were kind of
expecting to do about 15 homes. So we bought that much material
(26:06):
kind of ahead of time. You don't have to buy that much.
You could just buy, you know, 1 reel of this couple boxes of the
lights fitting and all that. So you might only if you were
just trying to get started, you might only be 4 or $500 as far
as material and then a couple pieces of equipment, safety
equipment, ladders. Do you think it's possible if
someone were to go all in on this focus, do paid ads,
everything, go all out, this could be $1,000,000 business?
Yeah, very easily. With good profit.
Margins, I was just on a call with with grounds guys, you
(26:28):
know, talking to other, other grounds guys, owners of the
nation. One of the grounds guys that
we're speaking with, he does a million and 1/4 Justin
Christmas, just the Christmas lights.
The rest of the year you're doing the landscape lighting.
How much? That is the commercial, He
didn't say. He didn't have that breakdown,
but a large portion is going to be commercial and then you know,
as far as as residential customers, you know you might
have 200 to 3400 commercial customers if you're doing a
(26:48):
million plus, OK, then the rest of that would be the the
commercial customers. Any horror stories from this
business? No, no real horror stories.
Yeah, I guess the worst that we've had, if you want to call
it, is not a Horror Story, but we just had some squirrels that
did some work on a customer's property.
So they said all the lines weren't working, You know,
within maybe a month they were up.
So we go out there and investigate it and find the
squirrels had chewed through four or five locations of it.
(27:10):
So we went and just snipped it and.
Patched it. And that happened once out of
2030 times, Right? OK, see, I think that was it.
And what are your goals for this?
Yeah. And what are your goals for this
business? Our goals are like we really
want to increase this line as well as landscape lighting.
SO22 lighting areas we want to increase in for holiday
lighting, we'd like to do half amillion to 1,000,000 a year
(27:32):
within the next two or three years.
So we're like I said, we're three years in.
So if we continue to double downon all the holiday lighting and
landscape lighting, you know, between those two, we'd like to
be doing over a million a year in, in just the lighting.
Yeah, all. Right.
Well, Wesley, thank you for yourtime today.
Yeah. Appreciate it.
If someone wants to check out your business, where are you and
how can they find you? We're grounds guys of Keller, so
we're in the DFW area in Texas and then you can go to
groundsguys.com. You get to any wherever location
(27:54):
here in the country. You can just type in your zip
code and it'll take you to the local spot where you're at.
But ours is groundsguys.com DashKeller, TX if you want a
specific location. For anything landscaping and or
Christmas lights. Christmas lights, landscape
lighting, irrigation, if you're doing installations or
maintenance as far as landscaping and then holiday
lighting this time of year obviously.
OK Browns guys, Keller, I've never really said this out loud
before, but my mission with thischannel is to inspire 1,000,000
(28:17):
entrepreneurs to start or grow their business.
So if you've been inspired by this, please just say thanks by
hitting subscribe and it would mean the world to me.
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