#1 Mistake Landscapers Make [IMPORTANT for Small Lawn Care Businesses]

I'm going to talk about something that could save your landscaping and lawn care business and potentially lead to massive growth in the future. I'm Mike Andes from Augusta Lawn care. We have 40 locations around North America. But I want to talk to you today about something that I feel is going to damage many small business owners and landscapers, and that is the. That we compare ourselves to our competition. Do you know that the average landscaping and lawn care business is going to lose money this year? Did you know that the average landscaping business is not going to exist in five years? So why in the world would I compare myself to what they're doing, to the size of their trucks, to how many employees they have? How much? Do you have a 6 inch lift? Do you have a 20 foot long enclosed trailer? How new is that equipment? How new is that equipment? Like these are the vanity metrics that will do absolutely nothing for your business. What we've seen over the past 12 months with COVID and what's happened with the labor shortage, we have seen the companies that had weak team cultures, they lost their employees to unemployment benefits. We saw companies that were over leveraged and when the economy hit the fan in March of 2020 and their projects that were six months booked out evaporated, we saw it happen. These Black Swan events, these things that happen out of the blue, they're going to happen again. The question is, is your business going to be ready for it or are you going to continually be comparing yourself to Bob down the street and the other landscaping company down the street and wondering how no. Do they have tint on the windows? What kind of lights do they have? Do they have new equipment? These are the vanity metrics that are going to keep your business from growing. It's going to keep your business from providing for your family, keep your business from creating systems, procedures, and a team that can make a business that elevates you and your team, Comparing yourself to how other people treat their team, how other people employ their employees, what rate they're charging? Why in the world would I compare my prices to another company that in five years, probably statistically, will not be in business? Why am I going to compare how I treat my staff and the way that I think about them and the passion I have for their future? Why should I compare myself to the average landscaping business owner who doesn't give a care in the world about what his employees are doing or what their futures are or. Or what their potential financial wherewithal can be down the road by growing inside of my business. Why would I compare myself to that. The average landscaper is going to fail. So why would I put the pressure and the anxiety and the fear and the depressive ability of thinking about those thoughts that, oh, you know, Bob down the street, he just got more trucks. Oh, no. Bob down the street got new equipment and like, oh, my goodness. For all you know, Bob's on the brink of bankruptcy. For all you know, he's in debt. And if you don't think that Covid or the next recession or the next real estate bubble is not going to be extremely difficult to get through, you need to make sure that right now, when times are good, when you're making money, we're heading into the summer, in the fall, when landscaping companies, we got money, we've been saving up, we are making good money. This is the time to cut the fat. This is the time to get in shape. It's not time to the day before a marathon to start thinking, oh, my goodness, I gotta get in shape, gotta exercise, I better watch my diet. No, you get ready for the marathon. And the marathon of business is constant. The marathon of business will beat up the people that show up on the day one, show up on race day with no preparation, with no exercise regimen. And if your business has been got, got fat and lazy because of good economic times, because the past year has been amazing, we've had record years. You need to make sure you cut out the fat. You do not try to compare yourself to what someone else is doing. You don't get pride out of the size of your truck, how many trucks you have, how many employees you have, and how shiny and bright your equipment is. That's not what pays the bills. That's not what your employees really care about. What your employees really care about is you creating a business that's sustainable, that can provide for their families and give them an opportunity to get to the next place in their career. Whether that's becoming an estimator, becoming an owner, learning the numbers in the business, learning how to run a business, manage other people, lead a team, lead a crew, be able to communicate with a customer, these are the skills that they actually need to know. These are the things that are actually going to move their career forward. But if you constantly are comparing yourselves to what other people are doing, other business owners, what they're buying, how they're treating their employees, what rates they're charging, why in the world would I care about the prices of another landscaping business? It has absolutely no reflection on what my Apple. They charge $1,500 for the same product that Windows sells or Dell computer sells for 600. Why brand, why would they compare prices? They know they're creating a better product, they know they're creating better quality service for their customers, and they're creating something that people love. Why don't you focus in your lawn care, your landscaping business, on creating pricing? That's irrelevant of what the competition is charging. Who cares if Bob's Lawn Care charges $40 for that lawn? I'm gonna charge 50. So I can pay my employees, I can give them paid for performance instead hourly wage. I can give them profit sharing, I can share numbers, I can have team meetings and be able to invest back in the team. These are the things that matter. And if you constantly compare yourself to others and you constantly compare yourself against the standard mean of the industry, you're going to fail. If you constantly are impregnating your mind with what other people think and gaining pride by the things you buy and the truck you drive and the equipment that you get from the dealer on credit, you're going to fail. And why am I passionate about this? Because I've seen it time and time again. I saw in March 2020 when project companies that had massive debt, massive leverage, depending heavily on low wage earners with absolutely no culture, and immediately, within a matter of weeks, lose five, six months worth of backlog of work, lose 100% of their employees because there was no culture keeping them from going and getting unemployment checks and sitting at home. That's what I'm worried about. I'm worried about the next recession, the next economic crisis, the next real estate bubble. It's going to be the black swan event that's going to also wipe out other companies that were not prepared because all they were doing, their focus was on the competition, their focus on what everyone else was doing. And go ahead, look it up on YouTube. You're there. Now look at what other what happens to people when they're about to the finish line where they're running a race and they look behind them and they start seeing where everyone else is at and it doesn't end well. It ends up in falling, tripping up, going off course or potentially losing the race to someone else who's focused on one thing and that's the finish line. And if the finish line for you is retirement, if the finish line for you is selling a business, if the finish line is for you is making $100,000, if the finish line for you is building a business that runs on systems that you can go on a vacation. And the business still runs without you. Because the team that you put in place and the systems that you've put in place, you need to stay focused on one thing and one thing only, and that is the finish line. Don't focus on the competition. Don't on who's running ahead of you. Focus on who's running behind you or who you are, quote, unquote, beating in your market. This is not about domination, is about one thing. Reaching the finish line without falling down. Stay focused on what you're doing. Stay focused on your business. Focus on how you need to treat your team and the profits that you need to make in your business to make it sustainable.