5 MUST HAVE Tips to Build a $1 Million Landscape Business

Hey, it's Mike over at Landscape Business Course, and I had someone ask me a question the other day. How what were the top tips I would give to someone that wanted to make a landscaping company that grossed a million dollars in revenue each year? And what are the five tips that I would give to get you to that place? And obviously everyone might have a different opinion on what those tips might be. We've been fortunate enough to build the company to a million dollar company. And so I'm going to give you my five tips that I think you have to have in order to get to that place and exceed it going forward. So the number one place, number one thing you got to do to get to that place, that million dollar marker in revenue, is get out of the field. It's very, very difficult to get to a million dollars in revenue in your landscaping and your lawn care business if you're still out mowing lawns, raking beds and pulling weeds. So there's kind of a progression that we have in the course that goes from when you're out in the field, maybe just starting your business. As you grow the company, you want to become the office manager, where you're taking care of estimates, answering the phones, emails, etc. All the other stuff you do that you're out of the field. And then from office manager, you want to step into an estimator role. You want to hire someone else to do that office work and answer the phones and be a receptionist and stay in contact with crew managers as well as your clients. And so you become estimator. And that might take a couple years to kind of get through the estimator rule until your company grows the place, usually right around a million, you become CEO, and so you hire an estimator to take that sales portion of the company off of your shoulders. And then as CEO, you're kind of juggling a whole lot of things, hiring, really focusing on that part. And so you're also focusing obviously on big sales and big contracts as CEO. But there's that progression from the field to the office manager to being an estimator and becoming a CEO. I think if you want to get to a million dollars in revenue, you have to go through all those steps and it might take you three, four years to get there and slowly work through each step. Hire someone for that position and then move to the next position up. So that would be number one, get out of the field. Some people say get out of the field as fast as possible. I don't say that. I just say Let it be a natural progression when you're filling your, you know, 40, 50, 60 hours a week out in the field, alright, time to hire someone else to do that, hire two guys to do that and move in. Office manager when you're working 40, 50, 60, 70, now hours a week in the office manager role, time to hire an office manager, become an estimator. When you're working full time again, just doing estimates and all the other things you need to do as a business owner, time to hire an estimator and you become CEO. So it's a natural progression, I believe, and something that shouldn't be rushed, but then you shouldn't be just dragging your feet because the faster you can get through it, the sooner you'll get to a million dollars in reven. So the second thing you have to do to get that million dollar marker is creating systems and procedures. This is kind of a very broad way of looking at it, but there's a whole lot of systems and procedures. You need everything from your hiring process to your marketing process to how you train somebody, the process for new hires, how you, your process is for giving out estimates, your process is for following up with leads, following up with past clients, your referral program and policies as far what employees are allowed to do in their compensation plans and their benefits. And are they allowed to smoke? Are they, you know, what are the different things that your policies are? So there's got to be systems and procedures in place to get to that place. Because to get to that million dollar marker, you're going to need a team. You can't do it by yourself. And so in order to effectively run that team, you need to have policies, procedures and systems that increase the efficiency of your business systems when it comes to scheduling and routing your crews on mowing routes. So there's got to be systems, there's got to be procedures. That's number two. Number three is making a marketing plan. You should have a marketing plan in place that is tested and proven and gives predictable results. So what I mean by that is when you're first starting out, you might do a little bit of mail, a little bit of this, a little bit of Facebook ads, a little bit of postcards, a little bit of door hangers. You might kind of go all over the place, but by the time you get to a million dollars in revenue, you should have a pretty good idea as far as what is the roi, what is the customer acquisition cost of those different marketing method, played around with each kind of discipline or different medium and you know what the return on investment is, you know what type of clients are going to come from those different advertising venues. And so you have a really good idea of what your marketing plan should be and you have predictable results. So you know if you're going to spend $5,000 on a certain medium, you're going to get X amount of clients and they're going to convert to be an X amount in lifetime customer value. So you got to have that predictable marketing plan. That's number three if you want to become a million dollar company in annual revenue. Number four if you have to become. And so this is probably the hardest part for small business owners because a lot of us are great at what we do as far as the landscaping, the lawn care. A few of us are good at the business part of it as far as estimating and marketing and websites and all that. Very, very few of us are very good at the leading part of the business. And that really is when you get to that CEO role. So we talked about working out in the field, working, working in the office, becoming an estimator and then finally becoming a CEO. That CEO position, when you're getting to that million dollar marker, that's all about becoming a leader. It's about leading your crew, it's about leading your managers, the people that are over those crew, people out in the field, making sure that you are hiring and firing. The firing part's the hardest. Creating systems, creating procedures, looking for efficiencies, making sure that you are connecting with your crew, making sure that they are being compensated correctly, that you're getting to know them in a personal way and you can critical feedback be radically candor with them as far as what they can improve on. And so I think leading is one of the biggest shortfalls. I would say that 90% of the people in our field are good at what we do as far as.

The landscaping, the lawn care, like we get in the business because we're pretty good at it. I'd say 20 to 30% of us are good at the business side of things as far as the marketing, the website, developing sales plans and introduction packets and things for our clients and walking them through a sales process, a sales funnel. I would say 5 to 10% of us max are good at leading a company. And that is the one thing I think if it was the biggest one of these five, number four, leading is probably the biggest factor as far as whether or not you're gonna become a million dollar company or if you stay small, is if you can lead your team effectively. And create an efficient system within your business by leading your entire organization towards a common goal. So that's number four is leading. Number five. If number four is leading, number five is creating leaders. It's really the next step. So you can lead all day long, but at the end of the day, you've got to create leaders within your organization that are not you, that are not the CEO, but that can lead individual teams. So it might be a crew manager, it might be an office manager, it might be a location manager. If you have multiple locations by that time, effectively teaching them and communicating to them how to become leaders within their own silo, within their, you know, if it's a crew manager, they might have three or four guys underneath them. You got to teach them now to become a leader. Not just you being the leader, that's one thing, but now to effectively teach others to lead. You know, I talked about how only 5 to 10% of people, I think, in our industry are good at leading. Literally, we're talking 2 to 3% might be good at teaching others to become leaders. So if you do those five things, I really believe that that's what it takes to get a landscaping company, a lawn care business, up to a million dollars in revenue. So we talked about getting out of the field, going from that field person just doing the work yourself, that office manager, to that estimator, to that CEO role. Getting out of the field is important. Creating systems and procedures is important. Number three is creating a marketing plan that has repeatable results and predictable results that you'll pump money in and get exactly how much money, how many clients and revenue you want out. Number four is leading being a leader. And number five is creating leaders within your organization underneath you. So that's it for today. I hope those five tips helped you, and it'll get you to a million dollars in your business.