Marlena Spiegeler: Our guys are very, our snow guys are very dedicated. We're doing whatever it takes to get everything done, no matter the day or the time. And we've built our reputation on that in our area for snow plowing. So we'll do about $625K, I think, this year in snow. 

Austin Gray: Okay. 

Marlena Spiegeler: About 10% of our revenue. It's the season is doesn't line up with your summer season, so it's November to April and then it's always like half and half of each year. But for the snow season this year, we'll do $625K , so from like November to now. 

Austin Gray: For those of you who are listening, just tuning in. This is Marlena with G&M Outdoor Services. She's been on the podcast before. She is an absolute magician on the back end of the business. So she and her brothers are partnered in an outdoor service-based business. They do landscaping, snow removal, and a lot of excavation work in the summer.

And so if you stick around for this episode, you're going to. Learn how Marlena thinks about just backend, like we've already dove into snowplow contracts here. I assume we'll also dive into a few jobber things, 'cause I have some specific targeted questions for her about how they are using jobber specific to financing and the marketing suite, but we'll get into that a little bit later.

For listeners who are just tuning in, can you give us a quick overview of why it would be important to get contracts in place versus having a per-plow? One of the most challenging things about the snow business, so we launched our snow services this past year, and the hardest thing about it per time is scheduling with employees because you never know when it's gonna snow, it's irregular, and you need to. If that person at that time, no matter what, and so if they go ahead and have another job, it's a challenge. And I'm curious how y'all navigate that with your team members. 

Marlena Spiegeler: During the summer season, we have about 30 employees, and for snow removal, we're around 45. Usually, we need about 40 to get done for the contracts that we have. So we're always planning for backup because there is gonna be people that aren't gonna show up every single time when you need them to, when you're gonna be relying on them. So we always have a couple of backups. 

It is difficult because we have our guys that work in the summer, they wanna work with us in the winter. And navigating unemployment for the weeks that they don't work, or finding another job. So there's a lot of different scenarios that kind of play out for the snow removal and keeping the guys on in the winter, but it's one of those things that just never works out exactly right for the employer or for the employees. So we're still trying to figure that out.

Austin Gray: Where are you currently with it? Did you pay a set per week for your contract? 

Marlena Spiegeler: We have some guys that are on salary that work year-round, so those are some operators that we can always rely on. Some high school kids for shoveling and weekends, nights, holidays, that type of thing. But it's, if they work, they get paid and then otherwise they're unemployment or they do other work and it's on them. 

These last two years, when it hasn't snowed a lot, we're able to do some other projects like we did. A two week boulder job back in January I believe. So we're able to do some other project stuff that we wouldn't normally get to do if it was snowing a lot. We did a couple demolitions this winter and stuff like that.

Austin Gray: I recently got back from launching a land clearing business down in Austin, and this last winter I launched a snow shoveling business alongside Bear Claw. In both businesses, I've implemented Jobber as a way for us to efficiently manage quoting, job schedules and invoicing, and even collecting online payments.

Why? Because it's worked so well for us in BearClaw, and it's saved us a ton of time and headaches. So if you are looking for a software that can. Help you manage the backend of your business. Look no further than Jobber. You can visit go.getjobber.com/ownerops O-W-N-R-O-P-S. 

Austin Gray: So a big question that we've had internally is when we live in these climates where there's seasonal changes. You can only operate a set amount of months out of the year for your main services for you. It's excavation now, I believe, and I'm sure your landscaping division is still, uh, humming along pretty well. For us, it's excavation and forestry work like land clearing for fire mitigation. But we can physically only do that, like pushing it seven months, but like realistically six months out of the year and so. 

That brings this challenge in our business model, and the main challenge being that for listeners who are getting into this, it's like you have to go buy expensive equipment that is very specific to that service. Take your E 145, for example, like that's a very specific piece of machine to the excavation business.

Um, for us it's, we've got a track chipper that track chipper does nothing for us in the winter, and it's $180,000 piece of equipment. Right. And when I was talking to, it's the guy I work with, it's like, all right, if we're gonna add on snow, we have to look at this as like a business in itself. Not necessarily, it's not necessarily just plug and play.

And like this model has to be able to support itself and we have to go have the specific equipment that we need to do snow well, and then utilize our summer equipment, even though if it's not as ideal, like for example, a tracked skid steer, right? It's like that thing has to be working if it's on a contract.

And so I'm just curious. Like how did you guys think about it whenever you were building this business model? Were you like blending everything together or did you look at the two seasonal models as like businesses in and of themselves? Because I know you've mentioned things like in the summer, like you guys bill out for, or you pay down double on your equipment payments to make sure you get through your winter.

Marlena Spiegeler: Yeah, and having navigating the overhead is. Difficult because we have short seasons. Our seasons like April to December is an ideal season for excavation, and then it's about April to November for landscaping, so it's just a little bit shorter, but using as much of your season equipment for the snow, but you're charging your overhead to your customer in your season of six or seven months for year round, because yeah, snow ping's not paying for the 145 or the dozer to sit for four months.

So it is difficult. We, this year we did take out a small percentage out of our overhead, 'cause we've always charged the whole year into the six or seven months of our season. And as the cost of everything's going up, as everybody knows, we need to be as competitive on our bids as we can. So what can we look at on our overhead to cut down on our budget?

And we decided to take out 10% of our overhead of salaries and insurance and that type of stuff, take out 10% overall of our summer overhead and make a snow overhead with it, which we never have had before. And then anything like the 145 dozer, all the excavators that would all stay in the season overhead.

But we are using our 15 trucks or 15 skid steers. We are using that for snow removal, so to create like a snow overhead instead of snow, just being the fuel and payroll and stuff like that as an expense. So then creating a snow overhead as well. 

Austin Gray:   Okay. So I believe what you guys used to do, based on what you've told me, is that, you guys had like a 12 month overhead and you would bill that to your summer projects and then you viewed more as almost.

Marlena Spiegeler: Just as an extra. Yeah. 

Austin Gray: Okay. And when I approached snowplowing, I did what you're doing now and I put my overhead into the snowplowing bids and we went and bid three or four larger contracts and we were just too high this last year.

Marlena Spiegeler:Yeah. 

Austin Gray: Um, so I'm curious how that went whenever you said, okay, we're gonna put this overhead amount and we're gonna bill it into our seasonal contracts, like you were still able to win some contracts, it sounds like. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Oh, it's reversed because it was in like January, just a couple of months ago that we decided to take it out of our season overhead for our bidding season coming up for this summer. So I already had all my contracts in place, but we did the percentage of the overhead roughly based on the percentage of snow revenue that we do so to take, okay, if snow is 10% of our business at $500,000, then that's how we determined it. And so I haven't done it on the pre-bid side, but if I take the 10% plus my expenses plus my income, I'm still at over like a 50% profit on snow removal.

So it's not really affecting my prices, it's just affecting my bidding for the summer season to be more competitive than spring. Summer, early spring summer bidding is very competitive and need to have the sharpest number you can. 

Austin Gray: I see what you're saying. You're, you're saying you just shifted it around on your side.

Marlena Spiegeler: Correct. 

Austin Gray: So you're competitive. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yep. And all of our snow pricing is on the higher end in our area because we are very picky on our accounts. This was our eighth season plowing snow. We've done the driving an hour and a half for one gas station type of stuff, a residential half hour away, that type of thing.

So we've done that starting in our first five years, where now we can be really picky on what we wanna do and at a premium rate. And if someone doesn't like our rate, then it is what it is. We're not bent outta shape about it.

Austin Gray: Because the reality is there's not a ton of millennials and Gen Z jumping into snow plowing. Because if you're gonna get the people in this generation to wake up at two and three in the morning and come to your, it's gonna cost what it's gonna cost. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yeah. And our guys are very, arsenal guys are very dedicated. We're doing whatever it takes to get everything done, no matter the day or the time, and we've built our reputation on that in our area for snowplowing, so we're able to do that.

Austin Gray: What does your snowplow business top line produce? 

Marlena Spiegeler: We'll do about $625k I think this year in snow. Okay. About 10% of our revenue. 10%. It's the season is doesn't line up with your summer season, so it's November to April and then it's always like half and half of the of each year. But for the snow season this year we'll do 625. So from like November to now. 

Austin Gray: Very cool. So did y'all cross six last year? 

Marlena Spiegeler: We did. 

Austin Gray: Good. Yep. That's great. I think last time I talked to you and Garrett, y'all were saying the goal was 5 million. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Our goal last year was five, and we did just a hair over six.

Austin Gray: Hair over 6 million. That's incredible. Hats off to you. I'm like y'all, yeah. That's a great milestone. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Our goal this year is to do six profitably, and we're a good start with that of doing how much snow we've already done this year. 

Austin Gray: So for snow, I wanna dive a little bit deeper into this because like we've got a lot of listeners here who live in very similar areas as, as far as climates go, right? In the outdoor services, land services, whatever you wanna call it, in the summer, and then in the winter, you either gotta hang it up or you gotta go all in. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: We tried really hard year in our business to make a year round model out of it, like travel with our summer crew several hours away. And then we just realized it was just getting away from our core values and our core values just being like.

We love our families, we love our community. We like living where we live, and we didn't want to just build this model where we're like traveling three hours down and three hours back, staying in hotels and things like that. So we said, all right, let's go in on snowplowing. When you have bid these contracts, now that you have done it, would you recommend someone in our industry who is considering getting into snow looking for the seasonal contracts or starting at the residential per plow? 

 Marlena Spiegeler: Definitely have to have a mix and we've always have had a mix. And now our mix is to where we want it to be. We're probably 65% monthly contract and then 35% per time. 

And when we started, or even like last year, we were probably like 50/50 where a company our size now, we need to have more of those contracts, but they are harder to get. It's harder your first year. You're not gonna get a $35,000 contract for Walmart every month. It's taken us, this our eighth year and we finally got, we've been working towards that, so it does take. It does take time to get there.

And I think to start out you kinda have to take whatever you can for snow removal. If it's residential or commercial or however they wanna do it, or we've done, and we still do, is subcontracting with. We partner with companies that do lawn care 'cause we don't do any lawn care. And a lot of property owners wanna just hire one person to do long care and snow removal.

So we have a couple of good partnerships with long care companies that. They can do a lot of mowing, but they can't do as much plowing as they do mowing. So then they need to subcontract their snow plowing out, or they are 45 minutes away. And for lawn care, it's fine to drive 45 minutes, but for snow, 45 minutes is actually an hour and a half if you're in a snow storm.

So that's our biggest thing that we've done from the beginning to now that we're still doing, is partnering with those lawn care companies. 

Austin Gray: Okay, so one of my questions for snow is when you're building these seasonal contracts, how do you think about paying the team members who are on that specific route or that specific contract?

And I'll be a little bit more clear with this question. So when I was bidding some of these larger contracts last year, in my head, it makes the most sense to just take a yearly average. Come up with that year over year and work with the property management company or whoever's managing that commercial property and say, here's what the average amount is.

This is what I need to make sure that you have an operator and a machine on call all winter or long. Is that how you go get internally or is there a different way that you guys have approached it? 

Marlena Spiegeler: For the contracts, we plan, depending if it's like a high priority, if it's like a HOA that they're not gonna need salting every single time or that type of thing.

We plan for three to four plows a month, is how we create our monthly rate. And then on something that's gonna be more like a Walmart or like a Coburns is like a local grocery store that we service a couple of those. We are gonna be there more because it's gonna anytime. It's basically any little flakes in the sky, you're out there salting or checking the property. So then those, you're planning more on seven to eight times per month. 

Austin Gray: Okay. And then for keeping team members on and operators, whenever you assign them to that account, are you paying them a fixed amount out of that contracted rate? To just be dedicated to that account, or do you still just pay them hourly?

Marlena Spiegeler: No, they're just paid hourly for whatever they work. Okay. So do you guys do it that way that you're paying your guys a percentage of your contract? So I've never heard of that. So that interests me. 

Austin Gray: I, I have never heard anybody about it, but I always like to think about things of like, all right, if everybody does it this way, that's great, but I, I always want to think about is there an easier way to do this. And that was the conversation I was having with the property managers last year was like, all right, you're asking for per plow. We're trying to pay per hour. The hardest thing in this equation is keeping employees during the wintertime, but the property manager wants five star service and they want us to show up like that. On the dime, right? Yeah. Real time. But they don't understand the pains of operating this business, of trying to keep people. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Wanna pay for your stuff to be, they don't wanna pay for your stuff, your equipment, and your people to be on call. They only wanna pay for when your stuff is on site. 

Austin Gray: Yes. But they want us there at the drop of a hat and every single three, you know, all 300 people in that HOA there at the drop of the hat. And they're gonna be upset if it's Yeah, 10:00 AM and their driveway's not plowed. Yeah, I really do, and this is just my personal belief. Um, and so I'm really curious how you guys are motivating people and retaining people to come and show up on the drop of a hat like that for these contracts. But in my head I had it like, let's come up with a contract at a rate.

Let's take like a five to seven year average of what you've paid out over the total six months of the winner. Okay? Let's come up with that average. Let's say, okay, we're gonna plow 35 times this year. Let's build our budget off of that, and let's come up with a set fixed monthly rate based on our targets for our overhead and our profit margin that we need to hit to operate this business.

Marlena Spiegeler: Yep.

Austin Gray:  And then let's plug in our operators in that, and then let's give them a monthly salary essentially, where it's like that salary is just built into this number, and that way you as. Mr. or Mrs. Property Manager, know that you are gonna have a dedicated operator and piece of equipment on this property for the whole winter, and they're gonna be there like that.

And the way that we can guarantee that is by guaranteeing this person a livable wage for the whole winter to stay on and be on call with us. Now we went in and we were close to getting it, but we were a little too high. And so it's like, I think if we can figure out a way to trim some of those numbers.

We could still push in that direction because to me, it's like if I don't, especially in a mountain town, if I don't provide somebody with that monthly salary, they have to go get another job to live here, just to afford it. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Right? Yeah. 

Austin Gray: I'm curious to just get your thoughts on that, and then I'll stop. 

Marlena Spiegeler: I've never thought of it that way, so that's very interesting.

I'm sure there's probably something with like labor laws or something like that with if you're paying them that plus hours worked or something like that. I don't know how that would work, but we haven't done 'em that way. On the retention side, quite a few of our guys, they have benefits, so we continue to pay.

The employer half of their insurance, and we carry that through the winter, even if they're not working. So for most guys, that's at least $400 or so a month that we're paying as the employer. And then they're still required to pay their half, but we're carrying that over where a lot of companies, if you're not working full-time, we're gonna terminate your benefits and then we'll start them back up in the spring.

So that's one thing that we try to do to help retain our employees. With that, I feel like it's harder for them to just leave and work somewhere else and not come back in the spring, where if you just terminated their benefits, the incentive to return I think would be a little bit less. 

Austin Gray: Do your operators go get second jobs?

Marlena Spiegeler: They do. Some of them work like on family farms. They'll go work machine shops. There's a lot of different scenarios that guys do. Some guys are home with their kids for the winter instead of their kids going to daycare. So there's a lot of different scenarios. 

Austin Gray: Okay. But the way that you're doing it, like you found a way to make it work by just paying hourly for the hours that they're plowing 

Marlena Spiegeler: What they were kept and their plowing rate is probably for everybody. It's at least $10 more an hour than their seasonal rate, so you're compensating them a lot higher. 

Austin Gray: Gotcha, gotcha. What is an average plow operator rate? 

Marlena Spiegeler: 35 to 40.

Austin Gray:Okay, cool. This is an interesting conversation and yeah, I think it, it's going to be even more interesting as we move further into Gen Z moving into the workforce. I'm consistently thinking about what does this person need to live a good lifestyle here? 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yep. 

Austin Gray: And 'cause like we live in a transient community, right? Where it's like ski town. We have people who live here for, they'll come here for a season and then they'll go somewhere else, but like the people who choose to put down roots here, it's an expensive place to live.

And so I'm always thinking about how does this work for that person, because you have to figure that piece of the equation out. Otherwise, the rest is irrelevant, at least in my mind. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yep, definitely. And with our guys too, that they're working 60 hours in the summer, so they are making, you know, more than livable wage in the summer when they're making $30 an hour at 60 hours a week.

But I think for some of them, more than others, it's hard to plan for the winter. So I do have empathy for our guys during that, but I also, there's only so much we can do when it only snows once every 30 days. 

Austin Gray: Yeah, no doubt about it. Just, it was a crazy year. We haven't even had, it's basically already working season here and it's 1st of April.

Marlena Spiegeler: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: Yeah. Let's talk Jobber. Recently, I have been very interested in implementing this financing option, and I'm curious to hear your opinion on it, 'cause based on our conversation, you guys have the option and offer it to some customers, correct? 

Marlena Spiegeler: We do, we do. 

Austin Gray: What are your thoughts? 

Marlena Spiegeler:  You and I went back and forth on it a little bit a couple of weeks ago, but I would give it the thumbs up. There's no downside to it. So no skin up my back. No skin up your back if somebody doesn't use it. So I like that 'cause there's programs when I was looking into it that you would have to pay like a monthly fee to be able to offer it. With this, no one's financing snow removal. So you're not using it for four or five months out of the year. You're not paying for it. You're only paying if somebody actually moves forward with it. So I really like that aspect of it. 

Austin Gray: Can you give us an example of like a type of project where financing came into play during the sales process and made it more beneficial for the customer? 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yeah. It's probably been since last summer, so I don't have a great example off the top of my head, but it would be a residential project. I don't know if it's 30,000 or 40 thousand, somewhere in there of the cap of the job, and then I think there's like a 5,000 minimum or something like that. But the homeowner does have to pay 25%. They have to pay your 25% down payment.

So then why is Stack Finance 75% of the project? So they're putting, they're making the customer have a little skin in the game. So you don't just have people hitting finance on a $30,000 job that they can't even put down. They can't even put down a thousand dollars or whatever it is, so Wise Stack makes them do that.

There's a pre-approval process, and us as the contractor, we're completely out of that. They just work with YEC directly. They apply. It integrates right in your quotes, so like on all of our driver quotes, you can just hit apply right through there. It'll say in the email financing offered for as low as this per month, and then you can apply and see your terms right there.

Yeah, this isn't, so we do have that often where people will apply just to see what it is. When rates were lower, we used it a lot more. I think it'll, a year and a half or so ago, it was utilized more than what it is now. But I think hopefully if things have came down a little bit, or we'll continue to, that will be used a time or two this year.

Austin Gray: Yes. It's very interesting to think about the world we live in and how people look at purchasing. Financing is no longer just this out of the world concept for most people. Um, interestingly enough, I got to spend time with a guy who's a very successful entrepreneur, owns an internet business. They do about 90 million bucks a year, and he said the amount of projects and products we sold when we added financing options into our sales process was incredible. 

And I'm working with him on helping him launch a land clearing business outside of Austin. And that was interesting because it was like the first thing he said needs to be implemented into the sales process. And so that's when I was like, oh, I've been seeing this thing inside Jobber, like offer financing to your customers.

And so we started diving into it. Yeah. And that's when I texted you, I'm like, Hey, did y'all use this? Um, and so I think it will be really interesting. We're gonna implement that into BearClaw this year and start offering that to people in the sales process who may have otherwise just not accepted the quote.

And  for listeners, like, I'll report back throughout the summer on how this is working, but yeah, I was consistently like, all right, where's the catch here? Like, how much is this gonna cost us? So what is the fee that you get charged? 

Marlena Spiegeler: I was trying to log into my account here to see if I could have an example job to give you like a figure of what the job was and what we paid for it.

Austin Gray: Cool. 

Marlena Spiegeler: The terms like the terms for on the customer side, so it does show me that financing from $500 to $25,000 is what we're set up for. You do as the contractor and business owner have to do. If there was like a credit app and something, I think they check your credit or there's something that you have to do just to get the initial account set up.

But it wasn't anything too out of the ordinary. It says a PR from zero to 35% terms from three to 60. So it's pretty vague on the terms based on income and that type of stuff. Let me look right now, 

Austin Gray: To be clear for listeners, she's talking about the terms that the customer would get. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yes. 

Austin Gray: So. In this process, the way I understand it, and while you're pulling this up, I'll see a quick explainer, at least from my research.

So whenever you're in the quoting process, you would quote and Jobber. The customer would have the price available, and then at a certain point, at least the way I have it built in my head is we'll quote the project in full upfront like we have been. But if a customer comes back on any of the prices, we're going to add that into our sales process as an option, then the customer would reach out, and I think it can happen inside of their job or portal on their side. Is that correct? 

Austin Gray: Stryker Digital specializes in SEO services specifically for local service businesses. Bode and Andy, the two co-founders, have helped me get Bearclaw Land services to the number one search result on Google inside my state for my specific search term. If you wanna learn more, visit strykerdigital.com. That's S-T-R-Y-K-E-R digital.com. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yes. Once it's on, I believe it's just always on, so it's not something that you have to add to their quote. If they want to use it, they'll see it in your quote email, like your quote template, that goes out. 

Austin Gray: Interesting. 

Marlena Spiegeler: The email that they received the quote from. So then they can, or you can also send them the link directly. So if you're having a conversation with them, then you can send them your Wise tag link that connects with your account. 

Austin Gray: Okay, perfect. And for listeners, I have not implemented this yet, it's on my to-do list here, so this is really helpful information. So basically, what Marlena is saying is whenever you send the quote, they will have the option there to finance it. And they'll see that from the very beginning of the sales process. And I actually don't hate that because it plants the seed early on with them as we're navigating that sales, that this is an action. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Exactly. 

Austin Gray: And so maybe, yeah, maybe that's the real benefit, where it's like it plants the seed, it lets them marinate on it, and then they can come to the conclusion on their own.

Marlena Spiegeler: Yep. Yeah, we've had where they've applied, 'cause I get an email, I get notified whenever they apply. So then they've applied to see what it would be and then they've just said, Nope, actually we're gonna pay for it. So I think they're just, especially when rates were lower, that would happen a lot is they would apply to see what they qualify for.

Austin Gray: I see. I see. And so to clarify, once again, for listeners here, customer would work with WiseTech who is a partner inside of Jobber and, 

Marlena Spiegeler: Correct. Yep. So you're not, it's not me working with the customer, asking them, okay, how much did you make last year? It's them working with WiseTech directly and that's all private and secure.

Austin Gray: Yeah. And that's awesome. Like you mentioned in your text, you're like, it's no sweat off our back either way. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: And it doesn't, yeah, require any more work. It slows down the sales process a little bit if you're having to wait for a credit application. That's where my head goes, but I don't know. You could talk to that More is the, is the approval I've done, I did it.

Marlena Spiegeler: I think I had to do it in my husband's name because I couldn't apply because it's my business. But I wanted to see what it was like when we started out, and it was like one of those, it lets you know right away, it's not even, oh, they're gonna get back to you in a day or two. It's you who put in all your information, and it gives you your approval right there as the customer.

Austin Gray: Cool. That's pretty incredible. It's, it still blows my mind. Can you imagine running a business? Like, can you imagine being in our parents' generation and trying to run one of these businesses off of pen paper? 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yeah. I can't even imagine. 

Austin Gray: What phase of the business did you implement? Jobber 

Marlena Spiegeler: Our second year, I think. So we've been using it for  five or six years 

Austin Gray: Before that,  what were you doing? 

Marlena Spiegeler: Pen and paper. Google Calendar. Google Sheets, very manual. 

Austin Gray: So just a guess, like when you made the transition, how many hours did it save you in your office operations role? Per week. 

Marlena Spiegeler: A lot of back and forth was saved between me and the field because they had to get me everything on paper time cards, all of that get. The one thing we still have to get on paper from our guys is receipts.

They can't email them in, but some people just give us the paper copy still, and getting a paper copy from the guys is very difficult. And back five, six years ago, we didn't have a shop or anything like that, so there wasn't a central location for the guys to turn everything in. And then you're sorting through everything on paper. So I can't really give a time, 'cause we only had one or two crews at that time too, so our workload was smaller than what it is now. But I would say hours, at least hours a week. 

Austin Gray: If you had to guess at your current size, if you were doing pen and paper at $6 million a year, how much more time would you be spending doing this stuff manually than using Jobber per week?

Marlena Spiegeler: I'd probably have to have at least two more office people. I would say I have one full-time and one part-time. Office scout. So there's two and a half of us doing the backend. 

Austin Gray: Okay. So ,what is a rough salary range for a full-time office person? 

Marlena Spiegeler: Full-time. 50 to 70. 

Austin Gray: So 50 to $70,000 per year and you just said that you would have to have at least one, if not two more.

Marlena Spiegeler: I would say two more if everything were paper. Yeah, just our receipts alone, like our expense receipts and vendor bills and everything like that. Like we do all of that electronically, and that's two to 300 per month. So to collect and sort out, and enter two to 300 paper receipts would be a lot. 

Austin Gray: So you heard it from her $6 million a year. If you weren't using Jobber, you would have an additional a hundred to $140,000 in wages just to accomplish what a piece of software is doing, what plan are you on? 

Marlena Spiegeler: Whatever the highest one is. The grow, I think. I believe it's the growth plan. Yeah. And yeah, even the time cards alone. Like the time cards for snowplowing in a snowstorm, with how many different properties and how many different people.

We have 400 punches. We have 400 clocks, and clock in and out, which happens that we're reviewing and paying out for payroll. So if you think of that, like if that was on paper and sorting that out in guys' handwriting and like the time sheets alone would be insane for the season when there's 30 people. But let alone the snowplowing when there's 45 and they're all going to 10 or 15 or 40 different properties, a storm.

Austin Gray: Do you think that would take you? 

Marlena Spiegeler: Right now, it probably takes us even two hours to get through all of that per snowstorm. So I would say it would at least take two people a full day to get through the paper and enter all of that. 

Austin Gray: And that's if all 40 or 45 people tracked their time accordingly and turned in their paper sheets, which, you know as well as I do, 

Marlena Spiegeler: Turned it in, yes, put the correct property, had the correct time. Their handwriting was legible. 

Austin Gray: There was no coffee stains. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yeah, they remembered to turn it in. 

Austin Gray: Yeah. Do you, what do you use for payroll? 

Marlena Spiegeler: We switched to a DP this last fall, so we export reports from Jobber and then enter our totals into a DP. 

Austin Gray: Okay. Sweet. So for listeners, if you're not using Jobber, guys can track their hours inside their own Jobber app. And then on the back end, you download the reports, correct? 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yep. My office now does, but yeah. Yep. We're downloading. We're reviewing the time to make sure that their time is accurate with their punches in and out. They can add any notes into there. If they forget to clock into a site, say they worked for 10 hours and they went to two sites, but they just clocked into.

The first Walmart, but they went to both Walmarts. Then they add a note into there and then we edit that so then we can have accurate timing in our jobs. So we can see how much time we had on site and the job cost appropriately. So, like those 400 punches, it's not just 400 punches, and then we're sending that off to a DP, we're going through and reviewing every single one of those. 

Austin Gray: Yes, yes, definitely. 

Marlena Spiegeler: But we can do that in two hours. Probably at the maximum. 

Austin Gray: And are you reviewing that inside the Jobber app on the time sheets section from your end in the desktop? 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yeah. 

Austin Gray: So it, it does make it really, I still handle all the payroll in our business. And I can speak to this as well, but on the Jobber app, on the backside, it's. Super easy. You can pull in to the time sheet section, uh, filter by the employee name, and then you can just view it by day on which ones they logged. Do y'all break? Do you have the 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yep. And check their GPS location too, to just, you can check the little GPS to see if they were, 'cause that helps too. If they do forget to put a note, then you can see what site they were on. 

Austin Gray: Okay. That is another feature that we just got access to from upgrading to the grow plan. So I'm curious to either see an example of what that looks like and time cards is like where they're, are you able to see a map of like where they went that day?

Marlena Spiegeler: No, it's just where they were when they were clocking in and out or starting their timer on a specific job. So whenever they're tapping, like the start timer or clock in or clock out in the Jobber. It's not like a live GPS of where they went for the day. No, it's just like a GPS pin at the time that they were clocking in and out.

Austin Gray: Okay. So, do you have your operators clock in for each specific job during that day? Okay. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yes, because then all their payroll is getting job costed accordingly, so we're processing all of their hours, and then once we have our payroll back, then we're splitting out their payroll costs to their jobs that they've locked into in Jobber.

Austin Gray: Yeah, I like that. So on your day view, when you're looking at, let's just use a random name, Tom's Day view. It will have each different snowplow job property there on their Yes. Specific daily route. And it will show when they started and when they stopped the timer from their app for that job. Yep. So if they did even on residential. Huh? 

Marlena Spiegeler: Residential? We give them an exception, 'cause we have 65 residential and we just job cost all of our residential together. Mm-hmm. So they don't have to clock into each one. So it's residential treated like its own one. 

Austin Gray: So ,do you have That's how we do it. Whoever's handling residential, you would just have them start the timer at the start of their route and then end it.

Marlena Spiegeler: Yeah. And then they add a note to it. Got it. If they have all of their jobs on their schedule, they have all 65 jobs, which. One guy isn't do that's between two guys. But they have all their jobs on their schedule, but they're not, the time it would take to clock in and out of them when they're only on site for five minutes isn't, it's not worth it. And I'd rather them spend the time to take the picture of the completed service, add a note, and mark it complete than worry about clocking in and out as well. 

Austin Gray: Sure. So that is part of your SOP is that you make them take the picture of the completed. Snowplow and then log it within that job visit at the time that they're there not do 'em all at the end or anything like that. Otherwise, if they just mark it complete, I don't know if it was accidentally marked complete or what. So anything that we're marking complete, they are to add a picture and a note. 

Austin Gray: Yes. And that, I don't know if you've had it. I'm sure at some point it's important because if a customer reaches out. Like I had, I had one guy this year and it was so frustrating 'cause it was like, look, we're literally up the butt crack of dawn out plowing. And I know he had a builder who was building for him. And it was one of those days where it was like, it was an account that we hit early in the morning on an eight-inch storm and then it had several more inches throughout the rest of the day.

And we had gone to the rest of our accounts and. He is emailed me and he is like questioning our integrity on whether we plowed or not. And it, it was frustrating. It made me mad 'cause I'm like, 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yeah, you can never make a residential client happy. They're either mad, you're there too soon, or you're mad, you're too late.

Austin Gray: I know, I know. All you can do is do your best and try to set the proper ation and have you have your picture 

Marlena Spiegeler: Right. But to have that, like I know that if something is so I handle like our residential, they can only email us. We have very strict with our residential clients that they're not just calling us and asking us where we are or whatever.

They only can email us during a snowstorm and they'll email and say, oh, they missed this, or whatever. They weren't here in your situation. Then I have that and I know my guy, I know my residential guys. They we're at a 99% that they're putting a note and a picture into there. Mm-hmm. So to have that confidence in my back pocket, if I can pull it up and say, Nope. Caleb was there at seven 14 this morning, and now the city plow went by, but. Again, they're gonna complain that if you're there too early or too late, 

Austin Gray: It's so true, and all you can do is do your best. Right? We're contracted to plow the snow on a certain specific trigger amount, but I will share that because at that time, I had jumped back into our snowplow route. We had about 32 accounts this year just on one of our residential routes. And so I jumped back into that route this year, and I knew that I had. Plowed it. Right? Like he was emailing me, and yeah, I of course knew that I was there early that morning and so it was no question in my mind I was frustrated.

Yeah. 'cause then he is like questioning my integrity. Um, but I'll tell you as listeners, just take the time and put that into your SOPs to make sure that a picture is logged at the end of each. Snowplows, it's just gonna save you some headache, 'cause at that time I, yeah, I was not doing that. And now, after that one scenario this year, I have it in our SOP. It's like you like, yeah, we just have to take a picture of the completed project this year. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yes. And residential is, yeah, it's important. You wanna make the customer happy, and you know you're gonna go out there and clean it up again. But on commercial it can be a whole other thing of a lawsuit or somebody a slip and fall or something like that.

So to have that is so important. Like you think of a Walmart, how many people are going in and out of a Walmart every day? That's very vulnerable for us to be taking care of a site like that with that many people, and people are very happy these days. So to have a picture in multiple formats, each of our guys, like a Walmart, we have four or five guys working on a site.

They're all taking pictures and uploading that so that we can. If something were to go wrong that we could have that proof, multiple pictures of, “Nope, we just serviced it this, or we salted the sidewalk here, or whatever it is.” 

Austin Gray: It's very important and you're so right. And it's unfortunate that we live in the time where people just wanna sue people for anything and everything.

And look like for listeners, I know a lot of y'all are blue collar folks just like we are. And it's like you're waking up early, you're putting your boots on, you're going to work, you're doing all the work, and it's just like. When you get in a situation like that where you know you did it, but a customer is questioning.

There is no better way to just stop that conversation than by showing them the documentation. And so I would encourage you to learn from my mistake this year of not logging the picture in Jobber, like we have the tools there. It's just taking the extra 30 seconds to do it. Yeah. And yeah, take the time right now.

Wherever you're documenting your SOPs or your operating processes, just go write that in and make sure that if you're hiring somebody else to snowplow that you ask them to take the photo and. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yes. And on that, too, Jobber just updated the app in notes. You can just hit a camera and it brings up your camera. You used to have to select a file and then either do camera or a photo, and it would take forever to load. So now they update it where you can just hit the camera. It's uploading. And while it's uploading, you can be typing in your notes. 'cause our guys used to complain they'd have to hold their phone open 'cause sometimes they don't have good service and wait for it to upload until they could do their note and hit save.

Now I think it automatically saves and they can be typing their note in while their photo is still uploading. 

Austin Gray: That's incredible. Do you have any concerns with jobber as you guys go from six to 10 million? 

Marlena Spiegeler: That's not the plan right now. I. But the no software is gonna be absolutely perfect. But we're able to work with Jobber and we've been working with them for six or so years, and we have our, based on how Jobber works.

So right now I'd say there's, I. Yeah, like there's always gonna be a couple things, but I appreciate that jobber listens. I have a call with them every quarter and I have my wishlist and my problem list of stuff and stuff. Does change and stuff is being updated constantly. 

Austin Gray: Yes, I can agree with that. Like super fast s support response time, jumping into snow. Like I, like you said, I think Jobber does like everything well. For a lot of different service businesses. So yes, there may be another specific, like very specific snowplow software that is like very targeted and says how you do snowplow, but. I think I texted you at the beginning of this year and had just a couple of questions for how to set up the recurring jobs with the logging, the visits.

Yeah. And after that quick, like two-minute instruction that you gave me or whatever, it was like, okay, this is super easy. All we do is set up the job in recurring and then log the visits and then at the end of the month, it's ready to invoice. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yep. Yep. Um, the snow polling, I have no complaints. Residential, no complaints. Commercial, it gets a little bit tricky with pay apps and monthly billing and stuff like that, but they're working on that. I'm working on that with them to get stuff. Easier for progress billing. You have a $500,000 contract, you're billing as built each month. It's difficult to do that with how Jobber is set up right now.

Austin Gray: Oh, what they're working on. I, I think I see where you're going. So you're saying if you have a $500,000 excavation project and you need to bill in three or four installments? 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yeah. Or six or seven or whatever it is for the season, you're billing once a month for anything that you did. It's difficult to break up line items and partial invoices and that. I have a workaround that I do, but it's pretty manual. 

Austin Gray: Yeah, I can, I'm already seeing it in my head and I'm imagining how that would happen. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yeah, 

Austin Gray: it's like probably what different jobs and different invoices for one client with different titles broken down. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yeah. Yes. Did you want me to go back on my WiseTech breakdown quick? I know we skipped past that, but I do have it open if you want me just to give those finish. 

Austin Gray: Yeah. Yeah, that would be cool. And then we are a couple minutes past the top of the hour if we need to wrap up here so you can get to your day, we can totally do that. But yeah, let's jump into WiseTech if you've got a few minutes.

Marlena Spiegeler: Okay. Yeah, I do still, no problem. So this was a job example from last year. The loan amount was 16,000, so that would be 75% of the project. And then we paid 3.9% in fees. So we paid $641. If you compare it to the jobber fee, which is. 2.6, 2.8, somewhere in there. I just call it 3% usually for a credit card. So you're gonna pay another percentage, but I've always thought of it as, you're not getting the job regardless. So if you can take 1% off of your job to get the job, why not? 

Austin Gray: That's interesting. I wasn't even thinking about that. So you're saying it costs you 3.9%, but if a customer Yes, was paying for a credit card, it would already cost you 2.9 or 3%?

Marlena Spiegeler: 3% is what I call it. Yeah. So we include on our residential bids, we mark up our bids 3% for the credit card fee Anyways, so I'm recouping that. So to me, if you're gonna pay another 1% to get the $20,000 job. It's not that much. So Yack is making out because we're paying them the 4%, 4% of the job, plus they're getting the interest on the loan.

But to the customer, then the customer's not paying any like closing costs or any loan fees or anything like that. 

Austin Gray: Ah, perfect. Okay. I see it. Cool. This makes sense. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah. Listeners, I wish we could do, we should do a q and a at some point, especially for jobber. If you're down, I think people would get a lot of value out of that.

Just like little odds and ends for how to set up jobber. I look before, before we jumped on the jobber ambassador deal, I was using jobber in my business. 'cause I like, I love software. I'm a software nerd and like. Whenever I jumped into the service-based business, I'm like, all right, let's explore all the different options here.

And so I did, and that was like three years ago, and ultimately ended up choosing Jobber. And so for each different business we've started, we implement Jobber, and I've been happy with it so far. And I think for the modest amount that they charge you per month, what is it like 50 per month for the entry plan and then 50 for the middle plan, which I was on the middle plan for three years or two and a half. 

Marlena Spiegeler:Okay. Yeah, it's very affordable, I think, for what you're getting out of it. 

Austin Gray: And then at your level, $6 million in revenue, you're still using jobber. You said you would have to have a hundred to $140,000 additional wage at a minimum to handle. 

Marlena Spiegeler: If you weren't using any software. Yeah, 

Austin Gray: And so I think that grow plan, the additional things that you get on the top tier plan is like the GPS tracking. The other thing that we've added in was the marketing suite. I just paid like a CRM specialist to come in. I could have done it, but I was just like, I hired somebody on Upwork to go through all of our quotes and our invoices and then set up specific tags.

So this year one thing we're gonna do is just like an upsell campaign. So for example, if we've done tree services for a customer, we're gonna be marketing like our gravel driveway repair, our sewer and septic repair services. We just wanna make sure that all of our customers know about the services.

Marlena Spiegeler:Yeah. 

Austin Gray: Are there any other things on that grow plan that like stuck out to you? As like big time benefits for stepping up from that. I think it's one 50 to two 50 of them. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yeah, I'm looking, I, we have a partnership with them, so we don't pay for it. So I was just looking into here to see how much it is, but it's 200-ish a month for the grow plan, and then you have to pay for additional users over 30 as well, so that's something to keep in mind.

Like right now we have 46 people, so you do pay for those additional users, but we've been on the plan, I think, at least for two or three years. So we've been on it for a while, so I'm not too familiar with what isn't available on the lower plans. But even for $200 subscription for what you get with the card processing and the ACH and just the scheduling and the time sheets and the quotes, and everything like it's nothing. 

Austin Gray: Do you accept checks from your customers still? 

Marlena Spiegeler:Yeah. Yeah. We push for checks 'cause then we're not paying any fees on it. And I think in what our eight years of business, we've had two bounced checks, so our odds are pretty good. But yeah, we try to, and on commercial it's always checks. But you're getting a check mailed from them or from the title company?

Austin Gray: Yes. Yes, definitely. And that was one of the surprising things in my mind of like how easy it is just to log that in the invoice. And it's just so simple. It's like you create your customer, you send them a quote, you book the job, and then you send them the invoice and it's all tied into one screen, essentially on the customer.

Marlena Spiegeler:Yep. 

Austin Gray: Platform. Yeah. So you can just see the journey throughout the whole phase. 

Marlena Spiegeler:Yeah, and it's very easy when you get to what we have. Our sales guys are setting stuff up ahead of time, and then when it's coming into operations and billing, everything's already there. It's not, Hey Michael, do you have John's phone number? It's all right there. 

Austin Gray: Yeah, absolutely. Anything else you want to add for listeners for? Hey, here's a benefit that Jobber helps us out with our business. 

Marlena Spiegeler: No, I am a big Jobber supporter, just as you are, so I would say I am using, getting it and using it. I think I've seen that with people starting out as they get all these softwares and then it's, oh, it's just easier to just keep writing it on a paper and then import it into jobber at the end of the day, and it's, no, just type it into jobber and then you're done instead of writing it down and then typing it into jobber that night.

So using the tool, having the tool and using the tool and creating your SOPs so that you can, you're actually using it and your employees are using it. 

Austin Gray: Yes. 

Austin Gray: This episode is brought to you by Dialedin Bookkeeping. Ben and his team provide bookkeeping services, job costing reports, and accurate financial information for the home services industry. If you're looking to keep your books up to date, visit dialedinbookkeeping.com/ownrops. When you use this specific landing page, you'll get your first three months 50% off. 

Austin Gray: And look, if you've walked in an airport recently, you can just see. The statistics of how many people are staring at their phones all day. So, rather than scrolling Instagram or Facebook, just delete those things from your phone and put Jobber on your home screen, and then you can use that as your social media app. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yes. Even with our employees too, it's okay if you can be on Snapchat when you're in the truck, you can be uploading your. Sure, job information when you're in the truck.

Austin Gray: And that's the biggest thing. And this is a completely different rabbit hole. We'll wrap up the episode after this, but it's like when people say, I don't have time. It's, come on. Look at your screen to come on your phone. I know. So all you have to do is make a conscious shift, especially as a business owner.

Marlena Spiegeler:Yes. 

Austin Gray: It's like if you're a business owner in a small service-based business, like your goal is to create a profitable business, right? So why not just change one of your current habits? It's like it's not taking you any more time. 

Marlena Spiegeler:Yeah. 

Austin Gray: You're just having to change what you do while you're looking at your phone. Social media, it's a time suck. 

Marlena Spiegeler: Yes. And you using it as the owner and the manager. So then it's just the standard practice for your employees too. So you have to, to practice what you preach, you can't make them do it and then you're not setting up the jobs correctly. You're giving them the information. So that's really important to us that they have everything that they need and everything's on their schedule accurately.

'cause we're asking them and we're paying them. To do it. We're paying them to clock in and out. We're paying them to enter their job information. Like we just had our annual meeting with all of our guys, and we were talking about like truck inspections and cleaning up your trucks and cleaning up after yourself.

And we're paying you to do this. We're not asking you to clock out and then clean up your truck. We're paying you to clean out your truck. We're paying you to upload the photos. 

Austin Gray: Yes, absolutely. And. I don't know if y'all can see this, but second behind my email app is the jobber app on my home screen because it, it is that important to me because it makes our business that much easier.

Um, thanks so much for being on here. Anything else that you want to encourage listeners with this year as we head into busy season? 

Marlena Spiegeler:I. I think if anybody has any questions on any jobber stuff, feel free to send me an email. I will get back to you in a day or two if you have any questions on anything or my email's on our website, or you can probably, if you wanna share it in the show notes, you definitely can.

So you have any questions about anything Jobber, reach out to Jobber. They're very helpful. They wanna help. They have a chat feature. They can look at what you're looking at. So there's a lot of resources out there. And they have a lot of resources too, on just even setting up SOPs and stuff like that on their website.

Austin Gray: Yes, absolutely. They do a great job of help videos, and they break down exactly like, Hey, you need to create a client. Here's a quick help video. So I actually have put together something, and I haven't made this completely public yet, but, um, I built this internally for an SOP for just a job or how-to. So if listeners, if you are listening and you want access to that, I will publish that in my Notion, which is just like a database that we store everything in. I can also copy and paste it into a Google Doc, so listeners, if that would be helpful. It's just, Hey, here's how we use Jobber and here's how to get set up. You can tell you what best way to do that would be. Just just email me my email's in the show notes as well, and I'll send you that for free.

And then Marlena, thanks for offering up. Your advice as well, because Marlena is the person I go to when I have an internal, not necessarily how do you do this in Jobber? It's more like strategically, does this make sense? So for example, the last text thread I had with Marlena was like, have y'all been using the financing and has it actually panned out with customers? And Marlena, it's been in this business for what year are you seven? 

Marlena Spiegeler:It's eight years. 

Austin Gray: Eight years, and she's been using Jobber for at least five.

Marlena Spiegeler: I can see here my jobber right now, August of 2019, so six years 

Austin Gray: Jobber needs to do something where it's like jobber pro or something, and Marlena needs to be at the very top of it. Hey, thanks again for being on, and listeners. Thanks for listening to another episode of the OWNR OPS Podcast. We talk all about starting and growing local service based business. We're on a mission to help 10,000 of you out there. Start and grow your business profitably by 2030. So we hope that you're getting value out of these episodes.

All these episodes are free to listen to. We publish one episode every Friday. And we summarize the episodes, the key learnings, and then send that to you in a weekly newsletter on Saturday. So if you haven't signed up for the newsletter yet, just go to the OWNR OPS website, it's ownrops.com/newsletter, and then just enter your name and email.

We'll send you the summary of this episode, key learnings, and points that Marlena talked about and we'll keep doing that every week. Thanks again for listening. Don't forget, work hard, do your best, and never settle for less.

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