Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brandon Muise. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Brandon, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

Our incentive program P4P (Pay-4-Performance) has allowed us to grow our business from 0 – to $700k/year in revenue in only 3 years while maintaining a 15%+ profit margin every year since we started. P4P has completely reinvented how we think about compensating our workforce and has allowed us to almost completely remove micro-management from our company’s leadership structure.

How P4P works is all our team members are guaranteed a rate of $20/hr OR 33% of the labor revenue they generate every week. They are paid whichever is higher on a weekly basis. For example: If a team member works 40 hours AND generated $3,000 in labor revenue that week; their hourly would be $800 and their P4P would be $990 ($3,000 x 33% = $990). So they would get the $990 instead of the $800. If their P4P was lower, they would get the hourly instead.

High performing individuals LOVE this system because they make $25-30/hr every week doing basic lawn care tasks such as lawn mowing (Industry standard in our area is $18-20/hr) because they have good core values, work hard, and want to improve their skills. We never have to worry about our team members sitting on their phones or stopping at the gas station for an hour because they understand they make more money the harder they work.

Brandon, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I grew up in Peabody, Massachusetts with both my parents and an older brother named Colin. My mother has been a bartender for 26 years and my father an electrician his entire life. The majority of my extended family is tradespeople. My brother did terrible in school and I was naturally very good at it.

If you came by our household growing up, Colin would always have some machine taken apart that he was in the middle of re-assembling, or building a hoverboard with plywood and an old leaf blower engine (he really did that, I still think it is one of the coolest things to this day.) Meanwhile, I would have my nose buried in a book and the word “socket wrench” could be a French cuisine for all I knew. Luckily, our father was a smart man and understood Colin was naturally interested in things and I was more interested in ideas. He never shamed either of us for it and set reasonable expectations for both of us. If I got anything less that a B- I was grounded for a month. Meanwhile, my dad’s favorite thing to say to Colin was “just pass the class so you can graduate and join the union.” (Note to reader: if you feel you relate to Colin, just know he now makes $100k+/yr at 26 in the electrical union, it’s a phenomenal career). It was expected of me to go to college and work my way up to a high-paying job in corporate America.

Fast forward to high school graduation, I was off to university to get my business degree as was expected of me. I had done AP classes so I got to skip a whole semester worth of classes. I did well in university and got straight A’s my first two semesters. Through networking I had offers to intern at places such as Bain Capital, Cisco, and some other major companies. Externally, things looked like they were going great. Internally, not so much. I was beginning to have doubts about my career path. The more I learned and chatted with people, the more disillusioned I became with corporate America. I still remember having a conversation with the son of someone making $500-750k/yr at a major financial company. The son was anxious to follow in his father’s footsteps and I asked him what does it take to get to that level? He said to me excitedly “All you need to do is work 80-90 hours every week for the first 10 years, then you get promoted and get to sit back and relax.” He had a big grin on his face. The whole time I was thinking about how previously he had told me his father is on his third marriage and is still working 60+ hours/week.

After my first year I transferred back to community college to save money (at least that is what I told people). And slowly began lessening my course load. First 5 classes, then 3, then 2, then Covid hit. Great timing, as I could sense a talk was coming soon from my father and this gave me an excuse to avoid it. At this point I had given up on my career path, basically dropped out of college, unemployed, and still living at home. It was definitely one of my lowest points in life.

Because of Covid there was no work, so I called up my best friend from childhood Scott and said “What can we do for work that is all cash”. One of us suggested landscaping. That day we made flyers, printed them out, and put them in every mailbox within a half mile of my house. From there we began getting calls and slowly gained clients. This whole time thinking it was just a part-time thing to make some extra cash.

Sometime around August of 2020 I started listening to a guy called Mike Andes on youtube, He had a successful landscaping company in Washington and would share how he built his company and got it to over a million dollars in 5 years. I was immediately hooked. Over the next 6-12 months I consumed every piece of content this guy put out. He implemented open book management, we did. He implemented P4P, we did. My thought process was, if I do exactly what he says to do, then I should also have a 1 million dollar landscaping company in 5 year.

3 years later through blood, sweat, and tears. Here we are. My partner Scott and I are 24 years old. We are about to finish at $700k in revenue for the year. We averaged 7 field team members and 1 office team member throughout the year and I type this while sitting at my desk in our office. 18 year old Brandon sitting in university never saw this one coming.

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What sets us apart:

Our company is built on 3 core values: professionalism, communication, honesty.

Professionalism: Our team members are always in uniform, non-smoking, and hard working. We are professionals first and foremost and always act like it. We provide our customer’s a 100% satisfaction guarantee and our reviews speak to that.

Communication: “I’ve called 10 companies and you are the only ones to answer” That is a common thing for us to hear on the phone. We believe in making sure the customer is always able to reach us (phone, text, email) and always understands what is the next step. The customer should know exactly what they are getting, when they are getting it, and how they are getting it. If the customer is confused about anything, we consider that our own fault.

Honesty: We practice open book management. Our team member know every revenue, expense, and KPI of our business. We have a white board painted on a wall in our office that is updated daily with KPI’s of the company just so our team knows where they are at and where the company is at. Therefore, we expect the same honesty from our team members and expect team members to always tell the truth the us and themselves.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Facebook is King. Most people waste money advertising on Facebook. Join every: “town of…” “people of…” group on facebook of every town near you. Every time you post on your company profile, just repost in those groups using your personal account. We average 5-6k impressions every single FB post completely for free this way.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Always lead by example, Your team members are intelligent people and if you ever ask them to do something you yourself would not do, they can tell. Your job is to take care of your people first and profits will follow. The great thing about P4P is the only time I’m mad at a team member is if they do not make more than $20/hr. Because if they make more than $20/hr it’s a win-win for both of us.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.simplylawncareservices.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brandon.muise.7
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-muise-92b4a5265/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXb8yQE7wckLFK3YHP2iEDQ