 It's summer. You don't have a job, but you need a laptop for school. Can you make enough dough mowing lawns? That's what we're gonna find out on this episode of laptop or bust The VITES mouse from Phoenix features a lightweight design and an Avago 3310 optical sensor check it out at the link in the video description First up is lawnmower we've got a gas mower you can go electric or manual but Electric is gonna slow you down and manual means you're gonna have to rake up all the clippings as you go so ideally a gas mower is the Way to be and then we have two weed whackers. Both of these are electric. We don't need two we just have two because I guess We might as well bring them and a long extension cord because you don't know where people outlets are gonna be yard bags and rakes This way we can take away any of the grass clippings that are left over from the weed whackers a Broom for cleaning up the sidewalk because you don't want to leave people with grass covered sidewalks and a spare gas can so we can fill up the lawnmower Extra trimmer line and a clipboard. Yeah a fresh haircut and a clipboard says professionalism. There's nothing on it Lots of water. We're gonna be in the Sun. We're both wearing pants. It's gonna get hot We're gonna sweat a bunch gonna need to rehydrate an entire pack of earplugs, you know for hearing protection of all our ears and orifices and A couple garbage bags just in case we got a haul some garbage away. That's pretty much it. Let's get going Now a car with a trailer for getting from job site to job site and hauling equipment is ideal It increases your maximum range and means that you don't have to carry equipment with you while you're cold calling and knocking on doors but obviously if you're not able to borrow something like that that dramatically increases the cost of your business and may not be something that you Can afford until a little bit later The good solution to this problem would be is some type of wagon that you can fit your lawnmower in and ideally your weed Whacker as well They're pretty cheap and you can just pull them from door to door if you're somewhere in suburbia walking from door to door isn't gonna Be that long anyways, and it shouldn't be that hard to do. So if there's anything that I learned from my days of painting counter intuitively you don't want to go after the people with the worst lawn because they probably don't Give a rat's ass And you definitely don't want to go after people with the most manicured lawn because they're probably doing it themselves or they have a professional service already this This is a prime candidate because it's a little bit on the long side. There's some weeds in it So they're probably not doing it that regularly But you look at their house they have flowers or Christmas lights. They don't completely not care So it's a good door to knock on I Just push the clipboard under the mower. Oh come out clipboard Oh So, what do you think for front front door should be we wearing our safety goggles? I don't think we should be wearing our safety goggles Whatever we do decide to wear on our face like I'm gonna have my glasses in my pocket and gloves I want to have like strategically hanging out of my pocket so that it looks ah ready for use Ready for use, but I'm not doing it yet. You have to pay me to put the gloves on Ah, all right. Okay. Yeah, good call. So I won't I think we should have the safety goggles with us though That looks really professional like having safety equipment Like your sunglasses or safety go because we're both gonna be wearing I plan to actually wear sunglasses But I wanted like the safety goggles to be kind of part of the uniform we can do that So I was just gonna have my sunglasses kind of hanging out of my pocket And we don't want anything that covers up our super professional slogan. Yeah. Well, I'm not hanging it from yeah Yeah, I know I know Wonderful naming choice. I really wanted a W but Yvonne screwed up the shirts like we mow your grass. We know your problems I got it. Okay All right, it has been a long time since I have done like door-to-door sales Me too. Are you ready? You have experience my door-to-door sales was like literally elementary school trying to get that thing from the flyer You actually did it professionally Okay. Oh, there's no cars in the driveway. That's a bad sign There's another pro tip for you guys car in the driveway means they're at home usually I mean someone's at home Well, that was anticlimactic I Guess we'll move on to the next place then so that one unsurprisingly due to there being no cars in the driveway Nobody home try the next one. Yeah, the next one with no cars in the driveway Okay Yeah, it should also not spam people so we should bill okay We're mowing lawns, yep, we're charging $30. We'll do it right now. We've got all of our gear in our trailer it's just parked around the corner and That's pretty much the whole thing. We're actually well What we're actually doing is we're creating a video about earning money in the summer as a student and we're evaluating different methods of doing it so today we're trying mowing lawns and That's pretty much all there is to say So that house did seem like a good place to start And that's pretty much all there is to say so that house did seem like they would have been interested and it did seem like we're Gonna get some work there But unfortunately, they actually already have a company who's gonna be coming and doing their lawns They just moved in so that would have been a prime candidate We're doing we're lowing mawn mowing Okay, thanks Hello, we're mowing lawns. It's $30. Well, we've got our gardener comes you do Nobody home son claims he already mowed the lawn. I don't think his mom checked. So we're already discovering that the Right now nature of when we want to do the lawns is a bit of a disadvantage We've had some people who I think would have been interested, but just they're busy right now or they Their lawn doesn't need to be mowed just yet, but Still feeling confident To make sure that we're on the same page We mow with the mower and then we go around with the weed whacker and do the edging and we will take away the clippings with us Thank you very much. All right, let's do it. Well, I was feeling a little discouraged before but um, I I mean, hey, we're seven eight houses in and No haggle, $30 I mean, I think that that's a good competitive rate. So, you know, I think we're I think we're being very fair about our rates Let's just get our trailer of equipment pulled up here and we're ready to rock. I'm excited I'm excited Okay, we'll be we'll be right back our trailers just grabbing lunch. So we'll be back in probably about 15 minutes Okay. Thank you Hi, is your mom or your dad here? Hello, my kids will know not to answer the door when I'm not home, but you know, whatever Cold calling can be a bit of an emotional roller coaster So we went from being like depressed to we booked a job to now Kind of nothing's happening. So on the bright side at the rate We're going if you can book like three jobs a day if you were by yourself You'd at least be making minimum wage, which is a whole lot better than no job at all. Anyway, here's our equipment. Let's get going Pro tip guys It's gonna be hot It's not uncool to wear sunblock. I mean it is if you wear it like this, but We all knew I was uncool already Pro tip have your gear ready including extension cords when you arrive at the person's house You don't want to look like an idiot standing outside untangling a cord that you could have had prepared before you showed up Pro tip so familiarize yourself with your equipment before you start This one is supposed to auto feed the filament, but there's actually a manual advance button here So I'm gonna hand this back over to Luke and he should be should be ready to go with the full length of his cutting line As we said earlier, we brought a lot of water I would also recommend trying to have something clipped to you being able to take sips and drinks as you go So if you're not sure what to do, you can go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead and go ahead So if you're able to take sips and drinks as you go, it's pretty sweet. Then you don't have to stop working stopping working is bad Pro tip this guy has a pretty sweet car. There's also rocks right next to grass right beside the pretty sweet car Maybe don't do that Maybe try to get them to move it first or just move on and tell them about it later on Do not screw up the person's car or any property for that fact. Let's see how big the backyard is something I probably should have checked Never claimed to be a professional of this Fairly large. Okay good Little extras like walking around in the yard and picking up garbage or loose rocks Might seem like they're cutting into your margins on the first job But remember guys going a little bit further could help one-time jobs turn into regular repeat business And for certain things like removing rocks from the lawn a you'll only have to do it once and B It keeps your equipment safe, so it's not damaged and you can continue to pull low lawns for the rest of the day So there you have it it's an hour later we're sweatier we're dirtier and we are thirty dollars Richard No, this is not quite minimum wage here in Canada when you consider that there were two of us working here, but We have cash in hand and we're ready to continue our day This is kind of a do as I say not as I do thing But make sure you're packing yourself a bag lunch it not only wastes money when you go out to eat Like say for example at Subway, but it wastes time that you could be spending knocking on doors or mowing lawns So last time we made the mistake of giving our flat rate quote before we had seen the backyard Yeah, that was not great It was pretty messy and there was a lot of edging this time we planned to do the exact same thing This time we plan to do the exact same thing because we're trying to make a video not create a lawn mowing business Oh, yeah, something for you guys to consider. We'll be right back after these messages You know what makes you look professional in addition to a clean haircut and a clipboard a clean shave And if you're a member of Dollar Shave Club you can have one affordably and comfortably Every day of the week just by being a member Dollar Shave Club delivers razors and other high quality bathroom supplies Directly to your door once per month and you get to save money and speaking of saving money They've actually got a special offer right now You can get a free month of the executive razor when you buy a tube of Dr. Carver's shave butter so the first time they've ever done a promo like this and once you try Dollar Shave Club You'll be a proud member like millions of others I guess the reason they're doing it is that they figure once you try Dr. Carver's shave butter. You'll be hooked It's got a conditioning formula made of high quality natural ingredients and leaves your skin soft and smooth not to mention it goes on Clear so you can actually see what you're doing Dollar Shave Club also has their one wipe Charlie's peppermint scented butt wipes for men and their aftershave and it's available in the US Canada and Australia so go check it out and take advantage of the promo at the link in the video description Hi there No, okay, I'll leave you alone. Thanks a lot. Hi there We're doing lawn mowing and edge trimming for 30 bucks Thank you I don't have a no soliciting sign. We're doing lawn mowing and trimming It's been a while since we've got a fight We're doing lawn mowing and trimming and stuff. Maybe be ready for some nudity. Naked dude might answer the door. You never know. Okay It is not gonna be hard to do a fail montage of my efforts here I keep thinking wow, we've been like at this all day, you know, we're gonna run out of time but I think time just really drags when you're doing this because I'll look back and it's been like I think it's been an hour and it's been like 10 minutes This would be a lot of grass Do you think you could get closer to like a six out of ten creepy Because right now you're at about an 11 Brandon So I guess I'm to believe that a house with literally five cars in the driveway in front of it has nobody home Our recurring frustration for us today has been prime candidates that are not home But again, if this is something that you're doing on a longer-term basis Then you should definitely have a bunch of flyers that you can leave on homes. Those kinds of follow-up leads will be Incredibly valuable as you try and build your customer base over the course of the summer Bunch more houses still no bites. No call from Linus. So I'm assuming he's not doing any better either. Unfortunately So it hasn't been the most productive afternoon ever What we realized is that if you want to see every house Walking is fine because the distance between the houses actually isn't that far in a typical suburban neighborhood But if you want to skip over the ones that are already perfectly manicured or where the owner obviously doesn't care Then having a bit of a faster mode of transportation helps a lot I was able to hit probably three times to four times as many promising leads With a bike versus what I was able to do on foot So in spite of doing our marketing at what I would consider to be a sub optimal time of day In spite of not having any flyers or a phone number to give anyone to contact us back we still managed to book our second job of the day for this charming couple and It's time for us to get to work this pile of mushroom manure stays You have to pay money for this. They don't want us to take it away They've just asked that we exercise, you know common sense when it comes to where the obvious bit Well, apparently this was a problem with a previous carter. This looks like a weed is not here Is a rose bush that is going to be transplanted don't go in there Because there are some flowers in there, so she needs to weed Okay, I think we're clear So it's become obvious to us now Looks like this job is going to take anywhere from 20 to 30 percent longer than our first one Even though we quoted it the same because it's about the same square footage That it's going to take a little while to really get the hang of quoting these things At the very start of your endeavor borrowing the client's lawnmower Using a cheap lawnmower or borrowing one from a friend may be viable But if you're serious about doing this for the entire summer or even multiple summers The main features that I look at from my experience are going to be the size of the cutting blade So the wider the better for large lawns the smaller the less expensive and the better for tight lawns With a lot of narrow places that you have to work As well as the grass bag on the back that saves you a lot of cleanup And the front wheel drive gas assisted push I mean yeah it sounds kind of wussy but if you're doing this all day you'll thank yourself So there we have it in about 10 man hours So 5 hours each we made 60 bucks Which is going to be like under minimum wage for most people but that's also our first day First day it assumes nothing about moving forward being able to bring people on as recurring customers So based on the interest that I had about that from people Some people didn't want to talk to me about today but wanted to talk about I also had a lot of people that seemed like they would have been open to us undercutting them on a recurring service But that doesn't make sense for us doing a one day thing either so that could have been pretty good So based on our rough numbers it would take about 5 to 6 days to make back what we spent on our startup costs It would take about 2.5 to 3 weeks to make $1000 for a back to school laptop And if we stuck with this for the entire summer we could expect to make about $3500 Assuming that the first couple weeks is like feet to the pavement running around cold calling like this And after that you have mostly recurring customers and assuming you can only do about 3 to 4 lawns a day Which you can do more than that And like the last lawn we mowed we probably could have gotten his neighbours if we wanted to do recurring stuff as well So you can do more than that it depends on the density of the houses and the density of the customers that you have And the other thing is once you're working on something weekly or even bi-weekly You won't run into something that's quite as far gone as that We could do that place in an hour which is what we estimated if it was in the condition that it would be in a week from now Especially because I wouldn't have had to spend any time on the driveway And that took so much of mine So overall laptop or bust? I'm going laptop Yeah definitely a couple of them if you wanted that for some reason So thanks for watching this episode of laptop or bust I hope you guys enjoyed it please leave a comment letting us know what you thought This is a pretty different video for us So let us know hit the like button all that good stuff and money! We should go buy ourselves like some slurpees or something We should all go out for slurpees Alright good work today everyone