Mike Andes (speaker) discusses the third major barrier that keeps lawn care and landscaping businesses from scaling past $100,000/month: poor employee management and weak leadership. He recommends written position/employee agreements that clearly define duties, schedules, raises, and policies; leading by example (doing hands-on work and setting the pace); and building personal, empathetic relationships with staff to secure loyalty during stressful periods.
Chapters
Alright everyone. Number three, the third thing that keeps lawn care and landscaping businesses small and keeps them from breaking $100,000 per month in revenue. And that third thing is employees, the way they treat their employees and their leadership skills. Okay, so when we talk about employees and leadership and everything to do with being a team leader and a boss, quote unquote, I don't like that term, but just use it. Now, number one, it comes kind of back to systems. And that is when you hire people, you need to have them sign an employee agreement or a position agreement. And what that document should be is a couple pages worth of clearly defining what the roles and responsibilities are of the person you are hiring. It should outline things like what their schedule is going to look like when they are expected to have a raise, or pay raises, pay increases. And it should also include what type of policies you have in your business for things like smoking, breaks, taking vacation time. All of that should be clearly defined. And the most important thing is clearly defining what they are responsible for in the business. Because that's gonna be the benchmarks for them to realize, to keep score in their mind of where they are at, how they are performing. And you wanna make sure they know. Are they responsible to sharpen the blades? Are they responsible to do the landscaping or the lawn care? Who's reporting to them? Who are they reporting to? All of that should be very clearly defined in the employee agreement. Another thing to do with leadership and owning a lawn care business is that I find a lot of times the owner has this mentality or this air about them that everything is like below the owner or certain parts of their business is below them, like sharpening the blades or washing the trucks or cleaning out debris from the truck, stuff like that. And it's like, oh, I'm the owner, I would never do that. I think a lot of times if you're just humble enough and willing to get your hands dirty and work harder and with everybody else, it just shows that you are committed to the business and that if you can do it and if you can do the dirty work in your business, that you expect everyone below you to do the same. And I really believe that everyone within an organization will typically follow the beat that might be an upbeat, that might be really downcast of the owner. So if your beat is positive and rhythmatic and you're up to beat always on the go and getting things done, they're gonna follow that same lead. And so I think you gotta lead by example. You should be the one that's early to Work late to leave the first one there in the morning. And when they're pulling out, you're still working hard because it's gonna embr breed that culture within your business of going the extra mile when things need to get done, working overtime, putting in the hours on the holidays and the weekends and on nights to get things done. And you're gonna start to see the people who really excel in your business and take your company.
Personal is you're gonna start them following, start to see them following you doing those things. You're gonna see them when they know that there's a deadline for the next day, they're gonna stay a little bit later. They might even clock out and do it. And you're gonn follow your lead. If you lead by example, the last thing when it comes to employees and leadership is you want to show empathy and interest in the team's life outside of work. So you don't want your relationship with your employees, your managers, your office staff, all of that. You don't want your relationship to be with them only on a commercial basis. In other words, they only come to the relationship with them is only because they work for you and they create value for you and you pay them a paycheck. It should be where you get to know them on a personal level. Their family, their spouse, their kids, what they like to do, what their interests are. And when it comes to push to shove. And when stress starts coming in a certain part of the time of the business or certain time of the year when things get stressful, the relationships that are built when that it's gonna be so much more secure and you're gonna be able to get to know people so much better and have a better image and better perspective of how they see things. If you get to know them outside of just a commercial relationship. That's it. Day. This is Mike Annie's landscapebusinesscourse.com.
