We were lucky to catch up with Sam Gustin recently and have shared our conversation below.

Sam, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s jump right into the heart of things. Outsiders often think businesses or industries have much larger profit margins than they actually do – the reason is that outsiders are often unaware of the biggest challenges to profitability in various industries – what’s the biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?

I believe the primary obstacle to profitability in any service-based business, particularly in home services, is the labor cost. In the lawn care industry, where profit margins are already narrow, the inclusion of labor as a variable cost presents a significant challenge. That’s why we have modified our approach to employee compensation. Instead of paying our staff on an hourly basis, we provide them with a base hourly rate as a safety net, but their actual pay is determined by their performance. We offer them a percentage of the revenue generated from their labor, granting them complete control over their earnings.

The traditional method of paying employees by the hour is outdated and fails to benefit both parties involved. It incentivizes employees to complete the minimum amount of work while logging as many hours as possible, while employers desire employees to accomplish an unrealistic workload within minimal hours. It’s a lose-lose situation for everyone.

By compensating our employees based on the percentage of labor revenue they contribute individually to the company, we transform a variable expense into a fixed cost, facilitating profitability projections. Additionally, this approach enables our employees to earn significantly more than the industry standard. Just last week, all of our employees earned over $22 per hour.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Our company, Troops Mowing, is a veteran owned and operated lawn care & landscaping company based out of Hutto, TX. We are currently working on opening a second location in Georgetown, TX that should be fully operational by February 2024. Myself (Sam) and my brother-in-law (Dylan) own the company and currently have five amazing employees that helps propel our mission and vision.

To make a long story short, a little over two years ago I was working in Sales and felt that God was pushing me to pursue a career in lawn care full time. In obedience, I quit my sales job and dove in head first into lawn care. Fast forward to today, we are the number one lawn care company in Hutto, TX and are quickly approaching $1,000,000 in sales. None of this would be possible without God’s favor and blessing on our company.

We truly consider ourselves more than a lawn care company. We joke all the time that anybody can load a lawn mower into a truck and service properties (you see this all the time just driving around town). However, we have heavily invested into backend systems and procedures that elevates the overall customer experience. Our biggest priority every day is to far exceed customer expectations in all areas, and mowing lawns is just a fraction of that process.

The one thing that I can say that I am most proud of is the culture that we have created which breeds personal and professional development within all of our employees. Both Dylan and I breathe so much life, positivity, and encouragement into our employees and we are seeing the fruits of that. One of our first employees, Davey, had a rough up-bringing and was bouncing from job to job. He is now in college (the first member of his family to do so) pursuing a career in Cyber Security and will do amazing things in that field! We have seen employees get engaged, announce pregnancies, and we are so honored to be alongside of them in such amazing life opportunities.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

There was a famous author that visited our church a few years ago, John Maxwell, and ever since then I have consumed some of his content that he pushes out. One of his quotes that has stuck with me is “a leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” I particularly like this quote because although it is brief, it perfectly sums up the all-encompassing verb of leadership.

Both Dylan and I do are best to lead by example in all areas of our business and are out in the field with the our employees, even on days where it might be better if one of us handled emails, quotes, or other pressing items. We believe that our employees are the backbone of our business and we want them to understand that their input matters and that they play a vital role in the company.

We also touch on the fact that every single person in our company is a leader, even if they are on their first day of work. In many ways, they are the first impression a potential customer has on our company, and we ensure that they feel confident in every situation they may be placed in.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

The best source for leads that we have found has been our organic reach via Google. We have structured our website to maximize our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in hopes that our organic reach outperforms paid marketing efforts, which yields an increase profit margin. This has worked exceptionally well for us as over 90% of our inbound leads are from organic searches on Google.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.troopsmowing.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/troopsmowingllc
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/troopsmowing