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After moving to Seattle, Fingado raised money to build out Mowdo\u2019s app and launch it across the country. Fingado was approached by Amazon when it launched a Home Services division and the company as absorbed into it.<\/p>\nAlmost like a magic wand, a smart phone app can make just about anything appear very quickly. A consumer can summon a grocery delivery from Instacart, a dog walker from Wag! or a ride from Uber or Lyft.<\/p>\n
And now, too, he can use a number of app-based services such as Plowz and Mowz, Lawnly, Green Pal, LawnGuru, YardLove, Lawn Love, Cuttly, Mowdo, LawnStarter and others to have someone come in minutes to mow a lawn or plow a driveway.<\/p>\n
On-demand, app-based companies all work in a similar way. A contractor signs up for free. He is then offered jobs through the app, which he can accept or not. The company decides how much to charge. When the contractor completes the job, he gets paid within 24 hours.<\/p>\n
The app company takes anywhere from 15 to 30 percent of the gross. That percentage pays for the cost of booking and dealing with the customers. If there is a problem, the app company handles it. All the contractor has to do is the work. He doesn\u2019t have to worry about advertising, accounting or other overhead costs.<\/p>\n
However, he\u2019s using his own equipment and vehicles and must supply his own fuel. He must have a business license and all the requisite liability and workers comp insurance. The app companies pay for none of that.<\/p>\n
Whether these companies prove to be as disruptive to the green industry as Uber and Lyft have been to the taxi industry remains to be seen. But people, especially younger ones, have become accustomed to using their smartphones to get everything they want, right now.<\/p>\n
On-demand does seem to be the wave of the future. The Harvard Business Review recently reported that the on-demand economy is atracting more than 22.4 million consumers annually and $57.6 billion in spending.<\/p>\n
The on-demand entrepreneurs for the most part come from the tech world, not the green industry, although a couple of them mowed lawns as teenagers. Like Mike Fingado, founder of Mowdo. He and his brother paid for college through the landscape company they started in their home state of Michigan.<\/p>\n
In 2014, after college, he began working with a program at the University of Nebraska that helped student athletes who didn\u2019t make it into the pros find work with startup companies or start their own. While there, he met a woman from Berkshire Hathaway Home Services.<\/p>\n
She wanted to know if he knew of any startups that could help her realtors keep up the curb appeal of homes for sale.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did some research but couldn\u2019t find anything. So I said, \u2018I\u2019ll work with a couple of athletes to see if we can\u2019t pilot something.\u2019\u201d Mowdo was the result. \u201cWe got our first hundred customers within that first month. That\u2019s when I realized there was a business case for this,\u201d Fingado says.<\/p>\n
After moving to Seattle, Fingado raised money to build out Mowdo\u2019s app and launch it across the country. Fingado was approached by Amazon when it launched a Home Services division and the company as absorbed into it.<\/p>\n
Jeremy Yamaguchi, the CEO and founder of Lawn Love Lawn Care Inc., started the San Diego-based company in 2014. He had spent the three years leading up to the company\u2019s founding creating software for home services startups, a career he began at age 16. \u201cI saw an opportunity to bring technology to a market that really hadn\u2019t had it before and make it easier for homeowners to find lawn care services,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of having to call a bunch of contractors after finding them on Craigslist, Yelp or through a Google search, and then wait for them to come to his property and give him a quote, he can take out his smartphone and use the app,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n
Yamaguchi says it solves a lot of problems for lawn care professionals as well. \u201cThey can find a lot more work immediately, instead of running around trying to drum up new business by leaving flyers on people\u2019s porches or purchasing leads. When they sign up with us, they immediately see a huge list of customers who are looking for their services.\u201d<\/p>\n
2014 is also the year that Wills Mahoney co-founded Plowz and Mowz in Syracuse, New York. The app originally offered snowplowing on demand, then moved into lawn mowing and landscape services on demand. To date, more than 3,000 landscaping companies have signed up.<\/p>\n
Working with on-demand services can be a good way for a new contractor to get a jump-start in finding clients. David Bowen started GreenUp Landscapes in Indianapolis in 2012, after having worked for a number of different landscape companies. Besides grass cutting, he provides sod and landscape installation, lawn fertilization, gutter cleaning and builds hardscapes and patios.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore I joined Plowz and Mowz in the middle of 2015, I was hitting the streets and putting out fliers and talking to people at their homes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Work and clients trickled in. \u201cBut after I started working with the app, jobs started coming in left and right. This gave me the opportunity to buy better equipment, and make sure the bills were paid.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jesse Perez, a snow plowing contractor in Syracuse, New York, also works with for Plowz and Mowz. \u201cThe app means that there\u2019s never any down time. If I\u2019m out plowing a driveway for my own residential clients, and I see a job pop up on the app that\u2019s right down the street, I\u2019ll jump on it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It has for Bowen. \u201cWhen I first started doing lawn care with my own business, things were slow. By my third year, I was probably averaging something like $30,000 a year. I\u2019ve made much more money since 2015, when I joined Plowz and Mowz, averaging $60,000 to $70,000 a year. 2017 was my best year ever \u2014 I broke the $100,000 mark.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perez is planning to expand as fast as he can, adding lawn mowing this spring, finding those jobs, too, through the Plowz and Mowz app. He says his success with the app is the main reason he\u2019ll be able to grow his business. He\u2019s even thinking of hiring another person to handle his own clients, while he focuses on the app customers.<\/p>\n
Bowen says, \u201cIf they required me to do every job they sent me, I wouldn\u2019t work with these apps (he works with more than one). But because I\u2019m able to pick my own jobs and get 70 percent for them, I think that’s pretty smart business.\u201d<\/p>\n
But is it \u201csmart business\u201d for established contractors? Mahoney says yes. \u201cAlthough a lot of new companies did start out with us, we also work with many established landscaping companies. The average contractor who works with us has been in business for about 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
A contractor since 1979, Lebo Newman, owner and CEO of Signature Landscapes, Reno, Nevada, and Coast Landscape Management, Napa, California, is wary. \u201cNew guys just starting out don\u2019t yet know what their costs are yet and often think they\u2019re way lower than they actually are. And asking 20 or 30 percent off the top makes it awfully cheap work.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he concedes that getting paid up-front with these apps does take away the receivables problem.<\/p>\n
Todd Tindel, co-owner of Cutting Edge Lawn Care in Austin, Texas, says on-demand work is not for him. \u201cWe\u2019re more of a full-service outfit, we don\u2019t just do mow-and-blow. That\u2019s not the kind of client we\u2019re looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n
His main objection echoes the famous quote from Forrest Gump. \u201cWith mow-on-demand, you never know what you\u2019re going to get.\u201d<\/p>\n
Newman, who has looked at some of these apps, agrees. \u201cMost people really have no clue how big their yards really are. They also often don\u2019t tell the truth about how high their grass is.\u201d<\/p>\n
This puts the contractor in an awkward position.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you tell somebody it\u2019s going to be $40, but then, it takes three man-hours or whatever to cut it, and now the bill needs to be over $100, well, it\u2019s hard to go back to them to get approval,\u201d says Tindel.<\/p>\n
Uber and Lyft drivers have it hard enough. They buy the gas and pay for the license, registration, repairs, insurance, and the car itself. Can the fares really offset those costs, not to mention the wear and tear on their own vehicles?<\/p>\n
Multiply those factors for a contractor, whose expenses run even higher. On the other hand, he\u2019d have similar expenses working for himself. Perez and Bowen both say the 30 percent Plowz and Mowz takes off the top is reasonable. They figure it\u2019s about equivalent to what they\u2019d be paying out in overhead.<\/p>\n
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One advantage the on-demand companies have is their cutting-edge software. Newman has tried to fix the estimating problem by having his staff pull up a client\u2019s property on Google Pro and verify the square footage. \u201cUnfortunately, you can\u2019t see every yard that well, because of tree cover or other things in the way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s Lawn Love\u2019s secret sauce,\u201d says Yamaguchi. \u201cThrough a combination of our proprietary software and recording algorithms, plus satellite imagery, machine learning and human mapping, we are able to give the customer a price quote in two minutes, sight unseen.\u201d<\/p>\n
While a contractor has the right to requote any job that is too far off the mark, this rarely happens, according to Yamaguchi, who claims the technology produces quotes with a 95 percent accuracy rate.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s really exciting is that when we get enough density in certain geographies, we can employ sophisticated job routing and job costing optimization, and that\u2019s powerful. We can create much denser routes, so lawn pros don\u2019t have to spend as much time and fuel.\u201d<\/p>\n
The on-demand business model can sound strange to the ears of a contractor. Someone calls to have his lawn cut right now \u2014 fine. But what about next week, or next month? Won\u2019t it need cutting again?<\/p>\n
On-demand contractors do get repeat business, but without a contract. Bowen says, \u201cAs long as I keep getting high ratings from people, they keep giving me the same yards, over and over again.\u201d<\/p>\n
This can be troubling. That\u2019s what a conventional maintenance contractor offers, plus mulching, trimming, fertilization, aeration and weeding, which on-demand companies are also starting to offer.<\/p>\n
The looming question is, why don\u2019t these contractors simply convert their repeat on-demand customers to their own regular clients and keep 100 percent of the gross? The companies call this \u201cdisintermediation,\u201d and they have different ways of handling it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just ask them not to do it,\u201d says Yamaguchi. \u201cIf it happens a lot, then we may delist them from our platform. But contractors have a super incentive to stick with us, because they ultimately make so much more money with us than without us. The thing that prevents disintermediation for us isn\u2019t so much the stick as it is the carrot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bowen, for his part, is happy to keep things as they are. \u201cWhen customers ask me to become their permanent contractor, I tell them to keep going through the app. It just makes the scheduling and everything else easier for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only thing I see as a threat is that a lot of those companies are charging really cheap rates,\u201d says Tindel. \u201cBut at the same time, I\u2019m not too concerned about them. It\u2019s more of a speed thing. The cut isn\u2019t nearly as good. If people want that, that\u2019s fine.\u201d Newman isn\u2019t afraid of the on-demands siphoning off his maintenance business, either.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s one more thing that might put a chill down a contractor\u2019s spine. \u201cWe\u2019ve been watching demonstrations of these robotic mowers that work kind of like Roombas for lawn cutting,\u201d says Fingado.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ll eventually see these apps integrating them,\u201d Fingado predicts. \u201cThe partners will focus on doing the edging, irrigation and other things that go with maintaining a lawn, and the robot will do the mowing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Things are changing fast, and not just for the green industry \u2014 technology is rocking everyone\u2019s world. It\u2019s going to be fascinating to see how all of this shakes out.<\/p>\n
+ Easy to find immediate work<\/p>\n
+ Signing up is free<\/p>\n
+ A way to fill downtime<\/p>\n
\u2013 App gets a share of the profits<\/p>\n
\u2013 The project size can be underestimated<\/p>\n
\u2013 No signed contracts for repeat business<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
What you need to know before putting your business at your customers\u2019 fingertips.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":3063,"parent":0,"template":"","main-categories":[28],"class_list":["post-3060","features","type-features","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","main-categories-landscape"],"yoast_head":"\n