EP87: Interview With Landscape Contractor Luke Henningsen

Awesome. So, yeah, man, I wanted to have you on here because you've done pretty good and pretty well for yourself in the maintenance and the landscaping industry. Just tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're located, kind of what you do. just get it started for us.

Yeah, so, and I want to get more into that here in a minute, but let's start with the very beginning. What made you want to start your own business?

And how long, how long have you been working in the landscaping industry before you started?

Yeah, I was going to ask you about your military. You were in the Navy. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. Four years? Yep. And so I've noticed this a lot in the blue-collar industries that a lot of veterans, and I don't know if it's just because of being in the military, it's that type of work where it's never consistent. You know, it's always like long days working outside, working in different elements. And I think when you transfer, when you get out of the military, then you get into the real world, as they would say, then it's like... going to nine to five and sitting in a cubicle does not sound appealing whatsoever. And so that blue collar industry just allows that kind of diversity like you were talking about in terms of each day is different. Yeah. A little off side note, after I got out of the military, I went in, first job I had was going door to door selling cable, internet and telephone services for our local cable provider. So that's how I got started. And then I switched over to an inside sales position. So even though the money was okay, I was stuck in a cubicle all day, eight hours a day, answering phone calls, trying to sell people on cable TV and internet service. It's about as far away from the field as you could possibly get. So you started your own business. And then why did you pick, I mean, were you doing landscaping and stuff prior to? Or were you just doing mowing or like, how did you, why did you pick mowing is what I'm trying to get to?

That's interesting because that's like the equivalent of starting off as a handyman and then moving into remodeling. So mowing is like the lowest barrier to entry. And then you move into landscaping as a result. It's like a parallel there. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So how long did you do just mowing before you started dipping your feet into like doing landscaping and stuff?

Nice. And so when you were cutting grass, was it just you for the first three or four years or did you end up hiring some people?

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you saw the video I just put in the free group of that guy going up the steps on the trampoline. Did you watch that? Yeah. I mean, that's like the perfect analogy of what it's like owning a business, right? Trying to get to the top. It's just always knocked down. You just, you take two steps, you get knocked down three, you got to get back up and keep going. And it just nonstop. So if you don't enjoy that, like if you don't enjoy the journey of... the challenges, the highs, the lows, you're not going to enjoy entrepreneurship whatsoever.

Yeah. And then, and we, we just got right prior to recording this, we just recorded a case study and you had mentioned on there about, you know, prior to joining the profit club that you were like, I mean, you were like just stressed out. Right. And so I think that happens a lot. for contractors where you, you, you do this and you get to a point where you get knocked down so many times that you just want to stop. You just want to give up. Right. And I see that a lot with, with contractors. What's been your experience just in general from the start until now? Like has, have, have you ever had challenges where you're just like, I don't think I can overcome this challenge? Oh

Do you think being in the military has given you, and in some way, a kind of a superpower of... understanding that? Because I believe that, and it's helped me immensely being in the military, but I just, a lot of people don't ever get pushed beyond what they're, what they think they're capable of. They're never pushed there. And in the military, you're pushed there all the time. Do you think that's been extremely beneficial for you?

I mean, it's going to be different for every person, right? Like it depends on their upbringings, their environment. You know, if someone grew up in the streets of... you know, Chicago with lots of crime and stuff and they survived that, they're probably going to be a lot more resilient than somebody who maybe grew up in a very nice area, didn't have many challenges in life. I think that that does, you know, factor into that. But for me, like I distinctly remember being in the military and key times where it's just like, I can't do that. Like I physically and mentally cannot do this anymore. I just want to quit and go home. Kind of like that fetal position mentality. And then somebody comes along and is like, either it's a drill instructor or your squad leader or another Marine or somebody. It's like, come on, man, you can do it. Just push. Just push through it. Take one more step or whatever. And you get through it. And then when you're done, you're like, I don't know why I was such a little baby back then. Like you were saying, just push through it. I think we've gotten to a point in culture where it's just easy to give up, right? Like we want to start a business today. And if we're not a millionaire by next year, then we're like, we just want to give up. It's too hard. Do you see that? I mean, or do you think differently about that?

Yeah, I agree 100% with that. I think that if you're the other thing, too, is that if you're in it just for the money, you're not going to you're not going to be able to withstand those. fetal position nights of I want to quit, right? Because it's like, this is, I'm not making any money. Why am I beating myself up? I don't want to do this anymore. So for you, and you just confirmed that, you know, you love landscaping, which I can tell if you've been in it since you were 14 and you haven't really done anything else besides that. Like, this is your passion. This is your space. This is what you want to do. Even if you, and I'm just guessing here, but even if you had to close down the doors, you'd probably go work for another landscaper. You wouldn't just go do something else.

So that's an interesting, because you've been there, you've hit that glass ceiling multiple times, right? So you know, like... if you were to close down the doors, like you're going to be at a somewhat of a limitation of what you can do. Like you've experienced that. What about somebody who's maybe got into landscaping? They love it. They love landscaping, but they've only been in it like one or two years and they're thinking about starting their own business, but they've never experienced that glass ceiling before. How do you think that that would affect them in their entrepreneurship journey?

Yeah, you effectively created a job for yourself. You just happen to be the owner and the employee in the same situation. Yeah. A little sidebar. One of my first businesses that I ever started when I was 16 was a lawn care business. I cut grass. That's why I know that I hate cutting grass because I did it for one summer and I was like, yeah, this ain't for me. But I did. I had a legitimate little business. I was driving around cutting grass. If I was smart enough back then, if I knew what I knew now, back then, I would have stuck with it and probably, you know, grew that. But, you know, young and dumb, you don't think about that stuff. But my reason I brought that up is you probably, I would say that the handyman is one, but I would say if not more, or at least a close second is that cutting grass, lawn care businesses, they're a dime a dozen. Like they pop up 20 a year. I mean, do you agree with that?

Do you run into problems with existing clients, you know, picking up those newer, usually cheaper clients because they don't know any better?

Yeah. I went through that pain with snow plowing myself because I, when I first started and I live in Evansville, so we don't get that much snow. I mean, we can, we could go two years in a row without any snow, or we could go, usually we'd get like two to three events per year. And we're talking like, maybe two or three inches at a time. Like nothing like what most people deal with, but you still have to deal with it, right? There's still an opportunity for snow removal. And I, dude, I struggle with, I did it just to keep busy during the winter because I was new and didn't have enough work. And it was just, my wife day one said, don't do that. Like, that's not what you should be doing. And I'm like, woman, I know what I'm doing. Don't tell me what to do. And so like seven, eight years later, finally sold everything, got out. And I was like, yeah, you were right. I should have never done that. Snow is a... What's that?

I love... I mean, I actually love getting in the snow. I love the actual act of plowing the snow. I mean, I love it. 30-hour days straight, you know,30 hours straight in the truck, no break. I don't care. I loved it. But the problem for me was you can't go anywhere when you're the one doing it. You can't go anywhere from like December till March. You're, you're there. You can't go on vacation. You can't go out of town because, you know, as soon as you leave, there's a big snow event. You got to go back home and do all that. So, and I just wasn't in it. I just, it just was not something I was passionate about. And so I just ended up, I just lost money basically. I mean, I made the most money when I sold my equipment. Cause like I said, it's a,

And then you got the same thing with snow. You got the cut rate guys out there, you know, plowing entire parking lots for like 60 bucks. It's like, what are you doing? I blew my transmission up on my truck and the motor, both of them. I mean, it cost me like. probably $9,000 combined between the two tearing up my truck. So anyways, back to the reason I was getting on that little tangent there about that is because how do you, as a seasoned entrepreneur now in the landscaping industry, it's easy for, and I see this all the time on contractor forums. There was one the other day is like somebody posted. It was like, if you're the, if you're the contractor, that's low bidding everyone. How does it make you feel that you're screwing yourself and you're screwing all the other contractors in your area? And I responded and said, I said, they're not. They're not screwing any other contractor. They're only screwing themselves. And so that mentality of like competition makes everything worse or that there's cheaper people out there. Like what's your mindset around that? And does that affect you at all? Do you don't even see that as an issue? Like I'm just kind of curious your thoughts on that.

That's interesting that your thought on that. So you do think it hurts the industry.

So my take on that is there's different price points and different customers for different businesses. So you need cheap contractors to service the cheap customers. And so it's like a match. So like you have like your elite, you know, your elite. entrepreneur, businessman, like-minded, like yourself, who are servicing the higher clientele. Then you got the brand new guy, doesn't know what he's doing, and he's servicing the cheap clientele. That's how I see it. It's almost like an equal match. There's different layers to the hierarchy of the contractor, and then there's customers that match those different hierarchies.

Oh, I agree 100% with that. Yeah, I mean, right now, if the contractor is like united across the country, we could raise the rates probably by 15,20% collectively across the board and everybody would make 15 to 20% more money. Because there's so much demand. We all know there's labor shortages. There's fewer people going into the trades, the blue collar sector. The opportunity right now is probably, it's probably never going to get as good as it is right now in terms of opportunities to raise your prices to meet demands. And so I always get, it's like mind boggling that people come in and they want to be cheap. Like they're like, man, you guys are ripping people off. I don't see how you sleep at night. I only charge, you know,20 bucks an hour and I don't mark up any materials and I do good work. And I'm just like, bro, you have no idea what you're doing. Like you're going to be out of business in like three years or less. Yeah.

Oh,100%. 100%. I see new trucks at the Home Depot or something. I'll be in there and I see a new truck pull up. Company I've never heard of before. You know, it's got a magnet on the door and I'll just look at it and be, yeah, dude, you'll be out of business in six months. Like just because of the way they carry themselves or, you know, the name of the business. It's like, you know, cheapest contractor, LLC. Like that's the name of their business. You're just like, what are you thinking, man? I don't know. It's crazy. What's your thoughts on the future of the green industry?

Yeah. That's interesting. Cause I mean, yeah, technically it's not a trade, although you could get into like. arborist and stuff like that, where it is a little more, you know, and tree removal stuff, you know, all that stuff can be probably more trade related, but it's still a service business, right? You know, cutting grass is more of a service-based. Landscaping is more of a, like, construction-based, if you want to look at it from those two different angles. And they're a little bit different in terms of how you run those. Do you, you guys still offer, lawn service? Yeah. And then is that, what percentage of that of your business would you say is lawn care versus like everything else?

Okay.

Gotcha. Gotcha. This is for the people listening that are landscapers or have a lawn mowing service now. Do you kind of run those like two separate divisions? Like, do you run them separately? Because that's what I did. I had like my handyman and my remodeling. I almost ran those like two separate businesses, if you will, in terms of how I ran them.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, even like in terms of how you go about expenses, operational. tempo production like i'm assuming those are even different as well yeah

I was going to ask you when you're going to buy one of those new DeWalt combo mowers that are battery operated spontaneously catch on fire.

Well, that's a different business model, right? I mean, this has been around for a couple of years. I've seen robot operated business model where they come around, they drop a robot, leave, come back, you know, an hour later and pick the robot up. It's still a lawn care service. It's just a robot cutting instead of a person. I've already told my wife because we're looking and we're not like, not in the immediate future, but we're looking for land to build on and I want to have some acreage. But I literally hate cutting grass, Luke. I mean, I freaking hate it. I told her, I said, if we buy land with a lot of grass, we're getting a robot mower. I don't care if it costs $10,000. We will be buying a robot mower because I'm not cutting the grass.

That works too. Get some pygmy goats or some fainting goats and plus you get some entertainment out of it. Yep. Yeah, the battery operated thing is interesting. Everybody's pushing for electric, but I don't know how the infrastructure is going to support it. You know what I mean? I don't see it.

Oh, it's going to go there. I mean, it has to. Even in construction, even in the trades, there will be robots at some point that are hanging drywall and framing houses. That will happen. I mean, whoever's going to adopt that first is going to be the one that sticks around. I saw a robot the other day that picks strawberries. Like it would go down the rows. It would determine if the strawberry is ripe. It would pick it off the vine, drop it in a basket and go completely automated. You just eliminate an entire workforce on a, on a, you know, out in the field. Yeah. So it's definitely an interesting thing, the concept, but we still got plenty of time, right? We've got, we still got plenty of time before the robots are going to take over and Terminator comes back from the future. We still got a little bit of time before all that happens. So that's, that's a good thing. What's your thoughts on just technology in general? Like being an early adopter, do you tend to wait and be more, you know, analog and like the old school? Like what's your philosophy on technology and changes and stuff?

Yeah. Yeah, I agree 100%. Shift gears just a little bit here. In terms of where you're at in your business, what do you think have been some key things that have helped you get to where you're at and stay in business, thrive in business? What are some key things that you think have gotten you there?

Yeah, for sure. As we get towards the end here, I have a couple of questions I like to ask. One is, what question should I be asking you? Like what, what's the one thing that you would want people listening to this in terms of landscapers or people want to start a landscaping company, lawnmowing company? What is it that you think they need to know? What's the most important piece of information you can give them?

Yeah, that's great. Community. Don't try to go about it yourself. That's what I hear you saying. Find a group of people to go about it together and collectively hold each other accountable, collectively work through it and do well. So awesome. Last question I'd like to ask is what book are you reading right now? Or which one that you recommend if you're not currently reading one?

Oh, you could read that book every month. Anything Chris Voss puts out is pure gold, right? I mean, like videos, whatever. If you ever have the opportunity to go to a seminar or something that he puts on, you know, I would definitely take advantage of that. So that is on my top list of books. Never split the difference in my top 10 list for sure. So Luke, I appreciate you being on here today. And how can people reach out or if they want to contact you or whatever, how could they go about doing that?

Do you have an email address or even just a Facebook page or something that they can go to? We'll put it in the show notes, but if they don't have access to the show notes, does it? Is there an Instagram or something?

Well, Luke, I appreciate you being on the show. Really, I really value your contribution and what you're doing in the profit club as well. Guys, that's the end of the show. You can find out more information about me on the social media platforms, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Just search for Hammer and Grind Podcast or go to the show notes. Everything's in the show notes, the links. Consider checking out the free Facebook group I have, the Contractor Profit Blueprint, to get more valuable information for your business. And until next time, guys, you know what to do. Be the best version of you.