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hey good morning guys Joshua here with I cut grass it is November the 9th 2018 almost 8 o'clock in the morning Eastern Standard Time I'm trying something a little bit new and different today I'm trying to change the position of the camera to see if maybe there's more screen to be viewed when you watch these videos I'm going to talk today about how I approach residential snow removal and I've got a sample contract that I'm going to share with you today I'm going to talk with you so you can take notes and have something that would help you to get started before we go any further as I always do I would like to ask if you have not already subscribed to my page please consider doing so if you know somebody that you think could benefit from this I am sincerely hopeful that you would consider passing the link to my YouTube page over to them because the whole genuine reason that I do this is to get out there and help people of course I want to help as many people as I can and sometimes I don't know if I'm really helping anybody or not but I know from my experience that if I knew the issues and the situations and circumstances that I try to share with you on these videos if I knew about them when I got started I could have avoided a lot of headaches I could have made more money I could have spent less money and my overhead would be lower and so to me that helps in my view it helps for people to become successful and that's what I want to help you do with your business ok you don't want to own a part-time job you want to own an actual business and if you do that you're not having to punch the clock for somebody else and I'm not suggesting that there's anything bad with taking a job we all know that that's not the case but I just like to see people when they can to live out their dreams and work for their dreams to become their own reality opposed to working for someone else's dream all their life to make you know to make somebody else's dream become a reality again I don't have anything against people that want to work for somebody else but these videos are directed to those who want to see their own dream or dreams excuse me become a reality so today I'm talking about residential snow removal you may want to pause this video throughout the video to take down some notes and tweak your agreement to your liking and what's important you tweak your agreements to your liking including what you feel is necessary to help protect you and this again as I said before this is a sample sometimes I'll change some things up pending on how I feel about the customer depending on the outline of the property that I'm gonna go service and maybe if they're wanting something a little bit different than what I traditionally you know see when I go out to a property most of the properties that I go to guys are the you know the traditional two-car driveways that are 30 40 50 feet long okay the property has some sidewalk out front for kids to walk on or neighborhoods to walk people in the neighborhood to walk through and a pathway to the front door okay most of my customers are my lawn mowing customers but I do get about 20 to 30 customers every winter that we don't do anything else for and we may never you know service them ever again and there could be a variety of reasons why they've called us for that particular season so my contracts are spread out I create these on a Word document and every time I create a contract for a customer I save an e copy to my computer nine times out of ten I will email the proposals over to them okay you can hardcopy mail it to if you want to I like the idea of email because that's a further point of reference for the communication should anything ever go sour now you never want things to go bad and you're hopeful that they don't but the whole purpose of a contract is to protect you in the event that something goes bad and it's also to create a level of expectation between the customer and the contractor okay so first thing I do is I'm you know I create a title for the for the agreement and it says snow-removal agreement for December 1st 2018 through March 31st 2019 for example okay and you know this is central Indiana keep in mind guys we don't deal with a lot of snow here okay so my pricing might be different than how you do it if you're up in Michigan or if you're in New England I'm hopeful that the majority of the guys that are going to see this are in cases in situations where I'm at but regardless if you're just getting started you'll benefit from this so I'll read through this not to be boring it'll take me just a few minutes to do so but I'll go paragraph at a time snow removal services are outlined in this agreement I cut grass LLC hereby referred to as contractor agrees to provide snow removal service for customers named hereby referred to as customer at whatever their address is service is set up for a two inch trigger if a customer once service with snowfall less than two inches then he or she agrees to call for service um to be scheduled once the two inch trigger is met we will be out servicing homes and the customer agrees to give contractor at least 24 hours from the snow event having ended to get to the property and get it cleared service will include clearing of the driveway the site walks out front as well as a pathway to the front door now understand that there are some customers there's no there's not one single case where it takes me 24 hours to get to a customer it's never happened it's just a point of reference a lot of my customers are older they're not going anywhere okay but again it's a point of reference you can change that however you know you see fit you this is all basically personal to taste let me go on to the next paragraph appropriate customer agrees to have all foreign objects cleared out of the areas that will be serviced for example old newspapers dog leashes etc customer also agrees not the whole contractor responsible for accidents or damage that may result another the direct control of contractor its employees its affiliates and any other agent associated with ICO with the contractor in any way shape or form now I've got another indemnification clause later and the snow removal agreement so it might be a little bit overkill keep in mind guys I'm not an attorney I've gathered this from my years of experience in talking with attorneys for things that are acceptable in my state so ultimately it will be in your best interest to consider contacting an attorney in the cases when I got started I did contact attorneys and most of them just put together you know joke proposals they don't have the experience out there being in the field to know the things to look for for example are you going to put down snow stakes for your customer I don't know are you are you gonna charge them for it because you can you know you need to do and on a sidebar real quick on these on this node removal route that you have for each property you need to do an inspection at the top of each season to make sure that there aren't any cracks in the concrete because you'll get blamed for them make sure that you know when the property is clear that any landscaping beds along the side of the driveway on the sidewalk that you will clear whether or not they have mulch in them or rocks because if they have rocks the last thing you want to do is throw you know rocks at the window you should never be throwing snow from a snowblower to a window anyway but you want to know what is in those beds you need to know what is in those beds and for another sidebar I always tell my customers because of the size of my properties yeah I could put a plow on the property but I choose not to because in the cases which is ninety nine percent of the time my case our money situation you got a driveway this concrete that has control joints and eventually those will crack over time and they'll start to rise one corner you get that with a plow and you're gonna wake yourself up possibly cause an accident if you're not strapped in but also you're going to get a call later in the year from a customer hey don't you damage my property and that's for another time and another conversation about that but the point is is we don't want to damage anything so what do I do I use snowblowers guys for me it's real simple I figured out several years ago that it's more profitable for me to use snowblowers and clear properties than it is to put a man in a truck for an entire hour out in a parking lot like at Walmart or someplace else to work that entire hour from anywhere between $85 an hour to maybe 125 dollars an hour if you're subcontracting for someone else maybe 40 or 50 dollars an hour which is a joke don't subcontract for anyone unless you simply have to put food on the table there's no it doesn't make any sense but I found that the risk and those situations was high right the risk was high for hitting someone for something going wrong for the wear and tear out of my equipment I started thanking gee if I do snow remove on these residential properties and if I use a snow thrower my risk is way down for killing somebody at the property and my profit margin is way up because the snowblower my case is you know we use single stage snow throwers we don't need dual stage snow throwers so the snowblowers maybe cost six hundred dollars if I'm very very very young much into spending money I might find one that's eight hundred bucks but a six hundred dollar snow thrower does what I need it to do okay so I can go in there minimize my risk increase my profit margin maximize that difference right there okay so my profit margin what I'm charging my profit margin is higher anyway guys you're gonna use what you want to use you tailor your service to your needs we get a lot of people that I call snow removal Cowboys or snow plow Cowboys they do whatever they want to do worth or whatever their job is during the week all year round then we get a snow event and all of a sudden they got a snow removal business I'm not throwing anybody down that wants to do that that wants to be an entrepreneur but if you're serious about doing this service you're gonna come in competition with those guys because those guys are gonna often under quote jobs and it might be out there a service two or three times and every once in a while you might have a guy that can commit the whole season but more times than not they fail for a variety of reason something comes up they can't do the store removal their truck dies or whatever who knows what it is okay so again we're going back I didn't need a sidebar all this is for the guys that are doing snow removal and need your contract my next section is called billing the invoices will be billed out once service for the event has ended this is important we don't run a 30-60-90 for people we didn't waste em with you know within 24 hours of the event having ended and we invoice them by an email and they can pay you with a check with Jase quick pay however you set up that you want to be paid you can outline how you want to be paid in the agreement customer agrees to pay invoice upon receipt and agrees to pay for service either via cash and I discourage that as much as possible but you'll get some that will insist on paying cash I don't like it it's a liability check money order cashier's check or through a chase chase slash Zell quick pay now more and more I'm also open to the idea of taking credit cards or PayPal because a lot of people are set up that way but understand that you're going to pay a fee for that service so cases where maybe you find out initially from the customer how they want to pay you would include all of your expenses in your estimate and what you're going to charge people otherwise you're gonna eat that from your profit okay credit cards in this particular agreement it says credit cards and debit cards are not accepted for this customer their local there's a reason for it if I get someone that calls me from Denver Colorado or from Florida and they have a property here but they're away from the winter maybe in those cases I'm making an exception these can be personalized for each customer customer understands that there is a $75 non-sufficient funds fee for any check that balances and accounts that are delinquent 60 days may be forwarded to a collection agency and may be assessed collections attorney and legal fees court costs etc in addition to the outstanding balance now I also include in most of my agreements this one doesn't have it that that due date is 7 days from the date of service ok I tell them in paper that it's due that day but the actual invoice that they get from QuickBooks puts 7 days on there because if I don't do that ok and I don't include that for example which I didn't read I don't think that there's a $25.00 late fee charged for a counseling are paid on time if I don't do that if I just say he's still on receipt then they'll call so how could I pay you this I can't mail you a check there's no way you're going to get it today so the invoice will say 7 days from the date of service for example again you can personalize this however you want to do it for you I have found in any 11 years this works for me and this is why I stick with it fee for service breakdown ok a blatant in this particular case a $50 non-refundable deposit is to be paid by customer when this contract is signed and that deposit covers the cost of mapping and initial site inspection your time is worth something if you want to go and work for free go ahead but if you get 50 60 75 homes it's going to take you a long time to get everything pictures taken care of a time before an event and it's going to take you time to take mapping I'm not going to work for free you shouldn't work for free either it doesn't mean you're not a nice guy but the whole purpose here is to yield a profit continuing accumulation measure we'll be taking a time of service this is important because the news station might say that there's three inches but you might have a property that has five or six in a cul-de-sac because of drifting and other situations that doesn't matter what the news says it matters what the property accumulation has and so that's why I put that into the agreement customer understands that drifting may occur which may result in additional depth of snow in addition customer understands its service and set up on a per occurrence method for example if the lot is cleared and has to be cleared later in the day all subsequent service is built out separately above and beyond the previous service / clearing it's important if you're there two times you need to be paid for it now maybe some guys up in New England don't do that I know a lot of guys that create contracts on the top of these season say hey it's $500 for the year and every time there's ex accumulation will be out you have to do that if you want to you're rolling the ball and but those types of contracts are more common in those areas where I'm at it's not common to have that every once in a while we'll get somebody that moves here from New York and says hey this is how we had it I'm not willing to roll the dice like that because while majority of the time we don't get the snow I wouldn't be paid every time I do the work period I think we're in for a good winter this year let's continue so then it outlines the increments snow up to 3 inches is $75 every additional one inch of snow accumulates or results in an additional $10 per additional inch above 3 inches pretty simple Christmas Eve and Christmas Day fee-for-service is three times that of the normal rate that's never going to be negotiable if ice melt product is is used is Jesus per customer request we use a concrete safe ice-melt product at $35 for the bag $45 for the bag whatever you want to be charged that's in addition we only put that down if they want it to and keep in mind that a lot of that stuff is considered safe it's considered safe if you put it down at the recommended rate if you're going in and over a 1,000 square foot area you're dumping 50 pounds of product you're an idiot you don't know what you're doing and you're going to possibly damage the but you're gonna awesome that's gonna wash off and it's gonna have a hard a hard result on the turf come in the springtime and then I have another indemnification here indemnification customer and/or property owner assumes total responsibility and/or indemnifies contractor from any damage that may occur from the scope of any work being performed as a result of this Agreement plain and simple and then I have a clause that's titled individual snow event in season cancellation in the event that customer receives service from another source other than contractor then customer agrees to pay contractor for service as outlined above just the same as if contract to provide a service time out that's important because oftentimes the neighbor will come out and do the line right or they'll call someone else because they're in a hurry guys I get it I understand but here's the thing you have to understand you made a commitment to the customer you didn't take on other customers in that spot you need a hundred percent commitment back from the customer and all the years that I have had this clause into the agreement it's never been a problem plain and simple if you don't want it in there you don't have to put it down there customer might cancel this agreement at any time with a seven-day written notice submitted via email to your email address and they agreed to Carbon Copy themselves as well the cancellation date is affected seven days or effective seven days from the date that you receive it okay you receive it customer agrees to pay a contractor for any service that is triggered as outlined in this agreement over that seven day period of time however contractor may agree or a customer may request the contractor doesn't perform the work okay you're still going to get paid I'm not a fan of that I want to do the work but if they want you to stop they agree to pay you just as soon as if you did the work okay and then also customer agrees to pay a $100 cancellation fee along with any monies for services that have and/or have not yet been paid to through to the cancellation date cancellation date will be effective again seven days from the day of written requests having been received contractor McCann agreement anytime for any reason and agreed to provide no less than a seven-day notice to the customer and then a sentence this agreement is hereby agreed to on this blank day of November 2018 a place for contractor to sign a place for customer to sign guys that's it it's real simple a couple quick explanations earlier I said that I wanted my customers to have their property ready for service what that means is they can't always get out and do it I understand that but some of these people will like the doggone snow pit or the newspaper excuse me sit out in the driveway for three to four weeks because they have five or six of them out there and here's the problem you go through with a snowblower you can't see that boom it will freeze up your snowblower so you just put that little clause in there some of them have something connected so their dog can go out and when they let their dog out maybe they don't let them out front maybe they let them out back maybe they'll let them out front for whatever reason they need to keep that stuff up and off that way if you damage your equipment because of this you know there's a decision make do you ask it in the repair it don't you ask them the repair it that's up to you you use the individual circumstances of your relationship to make that decision but this way you know it's outlined that they are expected to keep it in somewhat of a workable condition guys it's quite a bit of information it's really simple you can include different types of clauses that maybe I didn't mention here something to fit your tastes however you see fit but this is just an a basic example of a snow removal agreement I hope that it helps you guys I hope that you get something from it maybe it causes you to change your agreement maybe you would never you know use any of this that's fine remember you only your own business you could have called the shots but again as I fault or as I stated earlier please consider passing this information on to someone that you think could benefit from it thanks for watching guys hope you have a great day and I hope wherever you're at you get a lot of snow removal work oh one quick note maybe you don't title this no agreement as snow removal maybe Thailand s snow clearing because some might perceive snow removal meaning that you take the snow when you that somewhere else just something considered never been an issue here in central Indiana we don't get that kind of snow maybe we will this year peace guys