1st Thing That Keeps Landscaping Businesses Small

Hey everyone, this is Mike Andes and you're listening to the Landscape businesscourse.com podcast. Today we're going to be talking about the five things that keep landscaping and lawn care businesses small and keep them from breaking the hundred thousand dollar month per month revenue marker that we so long to achieve. So this is number one. And in the next few episodes I'm going to share the five things. Number one, the first thing that keeps landscaping and lawn care business small is their systems and procedures. All right, so when we talk about systems and procedures, it's super important to think of it like a franchise model. And what I mean by that is if you think about McDonald's, you think about Subway. All of those franchises essentially have systems and procedures in their entire business for everything from how to create a hamburger, to how to create or create a workflow for their employees, to how to hire people, how to clean, what the schedule should be like. All of that is very systematized and very has so many systems and procedures in place. Now what the reason I want you to think of it as a franchise, your business is because as a franchisee you get access to the operation manual of the franchisor. So for instance, if you wanted to be own a franchise McDonald's, you would get their operation manual inside their operation manual. They would have all their systems and procedures clearly defined. And what that means is that that anybody, any person can pick up that operation manual and carry out the laws or carry out the systems, the procedures in place and essentially create a successful business. And so what you want to be doing in your business as a small business owner in your landscaping and lawn care business is creating the same systems and procedures so that literally if you died, you have to think of it like this. If you died, anyone else could pick up in your spot and continue to run the business because you've spells out every way to do things. That means like everyone's role within the business needs to have a system. It needs to have exactly what the procedures are for completing their tasks. For instance, how do you create an estimate? How do you create an invoice? What's your estimating process? When do you create marketing material? All of that should be in your operation manual. And literally you want to create like a franchise prototype. As if anyone could walk into your business and you could show how exactly every little thing was done. Because you have a very system in place for every single thing. Along with systems and procedures, your whole people strategy should become a system. How you hire them, what their roles and responsibilities are should all be very clearly defined so that there's no ambiguity. However you say that ambiguity for your employees. They know exactly what's expected of them and because you have a system, you have procedure with very clearly defined roles within your business. They don't have questions as to who they report to, what they are responsible for, what their task should be every single day and what they're going to be accountable to and also marked against when it comes to pay periods, pay increases and raises. So that's one of the most important things you want to be thinking of especially if you want to scale your business. Create a second shop, expand into further more locations, hire managing people managers that are going to watch over your teams or have team leads. You need to have clear systems and procedures in place or else you will not be able to scale your business. This is Mike Andes. You're listening to the Landscape businesscourse.com podcast. Signing off.