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PROFILE
Years in business – 17 years
Years using LMN – 5 years
Revenue – $300,000
Number of Employees – 2 (owner and his son)
Why did you start using LMN?
I started using LMN at first because of estimating and budgeting. Before I got really serious about it, LMN had a workshop thing that I went to with my son in Philadelphia. I found it on accident just looking for landscape software on the internet.
There was a guy who I subscribed to that was talking about these workshops and Mark Bradley was talking with him about it, so it got me curious. I took the plunge and ended up getting an account after doing some research.
How has been your experience using LMN?
It was tough at first. Luckily I had someone slow things down for me explaining how it works and the terminology. We also did little exercises every week until I got better, and better, and better.
It took us a few months to get to where I’m at, but you just can’t overload me or I shut down. The LMN support is great because if I email or call, I get a response within a few hours, so that’s major. It may be the simplest of questions, but it’s something that has me stumped where I can’t go forward, but they get me through it, so I greatly appreciate that.
What’s the most impactful feature LMN has that’s helped your business?
Scheduling and invoicing. Of the two, invoicing is my favorite. It literally took me, I would say, about two weeks to do my invoicing. Now it’s taking maybe two hours at most invoicing through LMN. I spent so much time writing those out and then I’d forgotten something, have to put it on the invoice and then add it all up again. There would also be times where I would get lost in my long invoicing process and forget if I submitted invoices or received payments. I would be giving services like mowing or snow plowing away for free accidentally. Now I input everything including clock in and out times through LMN Time and it will generate invoices automatically for me. Using LMN’s invoicing tool has given me a lot of time back, so now I have time to spend with my family and grandkids again. My business is also so much easier to manage.
Estimating is another big feature that changed my business operations with the analysis function alone. It breaks down your estimate of what you have for labor, profit, material, and equipment. Before, I’d just get one of those estimating books you would get from Staples, and it had a carbon copy. You had to write your name, customer’s name, everything that you were going to do, and if you messed up, you had to rip it out and start all over again on a new page. Now with LMN, I can draft up an estimate digitally and submit it to someone, and even if they don’t go with it initially, they might call me up next year and book me for some work because they have the money for it now or whatever their reason is. It’s super simple for me to go to my computer, type their name, and bingo, here it is.
Are there LMN features that you plan on implementing into your business in 2023?
Well, I want to try to use LMN to receive payments. That’s something I currently don’t do right now. It’s always sending out an invoice, and they’ll send me a check. And also, I want to use the customer portal, because I want to try to go as paperless as I can in my business. Most, if not all, of my customers have access to email and the internet. Come wintertime, I’m going to push the customer portal on to a lot of my customers.
How did you measure your landscape business budget before LMN?
I didn’t. I had nothing to measure it by, so I just got up every day to go to work. No software or way of measuring KPIs or tracking what I’m spending my money on. With LMN’s budgeting tool, I was able to figure out how I could budget to hire on my son while staying profitable. Before that, it was more of “hey kiddo, lets go!”. If we needed something like new equipment, we’d have to save up for that or just pulling profit out at the end of the year to make some purchases.
What are your growth plans for the rest of 2022 and into 2023?
The growth plans now are really just to maintain what we have. We did have a growth spurt and did a lot of more landscaping and yard installs that I normally do. Part of that was because of the software. I was able to give the customers a turn around within a week or so with an estimate on doing a yard repair, mulch, or putting in shrubs wherever the case may be. So it was pretty nice. Everything was already etched in stone and it was great. As far as next year we’re looking to get more equipment, newer trucks and so on and so forth.
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