Avoiding Bottlenecks In Your Business

Welcome back to the Mike Gaines Podcast, where we discuss the ins and outs of owning a small business. If you're new here, the Mike Gaines Podcast is all about taking your business to the next level. It's been a while since we've had Mike in front of a whiteboard, and today's episode is all about bottlenecks. Specifically the bottlenecks that are keeping your business from achieving the growth you want to see. Mike knows all about these bottlenecks. He's faced them at every stage of growing Augusta Lawn Care. Let's sit down with him and identify what is stopping your business from exploding like Mentos in a Coke bottle. As always, you can find these lectures, interviews, and the Mike Andes YouTube channel. But without further trimming around the bush, let's get right into it.

Hey, everyone. Really looking forward to talking today about bottlenecks in your business. And I want to specifically talk about how to avoid bottlenecks and get around them using systems. And how I kind of think about it is if you had a river here and there's a dam in the way that is built either by, you know, a beaver that's trying to block it or potentially even like an actual, like, electric hydroelectric dam. And so you have this massive BL and a bunch of pressure built behind this dam now, a way to alleviate this. Because honestly, in my opinion, with business, you actually have to have a lot of structure and you can't have a river flowing super fast and sometimes really slow. Super fast, super slow. That's actually why sometimes they'll build dams, not even for hydroelectricity and for creating power, but just to. To be able to control this system of the river so it's not flooding and then there's nothing. And flooding, like have a reservoir and then be able to have a controlled release of the river. And so it's not necessary to say this is the bad things in your business. Oh, or move the dam. It's like, no, there's gotta be certain controls. There has to be a certain amount of structure in the business so it doesn't just run haphazardly. But one way to release this pressure that can build up over time against the back of this dam is to create.

Use like a side tunnel or they'll have a side track where it allows the water to come around the dam in the case that there is so much pressure behind this that this potentially could actually give out or the water level could rise above the height of the dam. And so this kind of a pressure release, as I like to call it, this release here and the overspill is going to be based upon in your business systems. Allowing a system in the business is gonna be the thing that releases some of that pressure that's built up that's typically common around certain junctions in the business and how I like to look at it. And what we want to look at today is there's going to be four different distinct dams or blockages or bottlenecks in your business in terms of size. And one of them is going to be 100,000 in annual revenue, One of them is going to be $250,000 in annual revenue, one of them is going to be $500,000 in annual revenue. And then you're going to hit a million dollars plus. And so obviously as you grow, you can go 10, 20 million, 100 million, et cetera. There's more different types of bottlenecks that you're going to face. But today I want to specifically talk about these four different types of bottlenecks in the business. Now, when we think of bottlenecks, we don't necessarily usually think of a dam like I just drove out. What we think about is sort of like the top of a 2 liter bottle. And that is where you have a whole bunch of. If you throw Mentos into a Diet Pepsi, for example, and Diet Coke and you throw it in there, why does it blow up? Why? Because it has this tiny little hole in the top that all the pressure built up in the bottle is released through and that makes it have a high velocity and spray way up into the air. And so the question is, what parts of our business are taking a huge amount of pressure, a huge amount of operational drag in the business, and then causing blowups, causing massive financial, emotional, psychological issues and massive mistakes and massive failures. This is the result of this bottleneck. Because honestly, if you have a bowl, if you have a bowl like this and you put Diet Pepsi in here, Diet Coke, and then you throw some Mentos in, it just fizzles. It doesn't even blow up the same amount of pressure. The same amount of chemical reaction happens. However, because there's no bottleneck, it literally just kind of like fizzles off in terms of the gas. And there's no big explosion. You don't get someone spraying 10, 20ft in the air like you do here, because in this case you have a bottleneck. So in your business, the question is, what are the bottlenecks that are taking the pressure? That's gonna be natural in your business. It's not gonna be easy. It's gonna be very difficult. There's a lot of pressure and there's a lot of things going on in the business. But what can we do to remove these bottlenecks and open up this business? So that way instead of having bottlenecks, we have a way when the pressure does come, not if it comes, but when it comes, it doesn't create a massive blow up. And, and rather we can deal with the stresses of growing the business because the bottlenecks have been removed. If you cut off the top of that 2 liter bottle that used to have a bottleneck, now you remove that again. That same amount of pressure, the same situation, the same issue that's thrown into the business, the same employee walking off the job, the same $10,000 balanced invoice, whatever it might be, that same thing thrown in doesn't create a massive explosion and collateral damage. And now you blow up at your wife or your husband, and now you have issues in your family and then your health starts to deteriorate, then you can't sleep, and then now you have financial issues, now you're taking on bad credit card debt. That stuff doesn't happen as long as you can remove the bottlenecks. So that is the goal of today, is to walk through what are the bottlenecks at each of these four stages in business and what can we do to eliminate them? Alright, so I'm gonna talk about these four different stages because at every stage there's different type of bottlenecks that I typically see most common at that size of business. Because the same bottleneck that you have at $100,000 annual revenue is not going to be the same bottlenecks. The same things that are typically going to be that pinch point, the dam, the thing that blocks up and creates pressure, is not going to be the same in a million dollars in annual revenue. So I want to talk about that. From really the stages of growth, starting off with 100.

Now $100,000 in annual revenue. Typically you're working by yourself full time, usually some pretty long hours if you're getting that 90, $100,000 marker, but very doable to do $100,000 in annual revenue by yourself. Now at this stage in the business, the bottlenecks that you're going to be facing are mostly physical. Okay. And these are going to be more evident bottlenecks if you are older. Because if you're doing the physical work, whether that be like mowing lawns, doing landscaping, doing roofing, doing fencing, or doing the physical work of like at a retail store you're selling every single thing. You're the person behind the cash register, you're the one stocking shelves, you're doing everything. You're typically going to have physical constraints on you because you have limited number of hours, you have limited physical capacity. And if you're out doing physical labor all day long, you better be very clear that you're going to be the bottleneck in that business. Physically, you're going to be the bottleneck. You might have a whole bunch of other potential, but because you are bottlenecked at 100,000 nano revenue, you typically, you're just going to start physically breaking down if you stay at this level and start to again allow this physical constraint to be a part of the business that is the bottleneck. Okay, and so the question is, well, how do we get around this stage of growth and the stage of growth of 100,000 in revenue? How do I get beyond that? How do I get to 200,000 or sorry, $250,000 in annual revenue? Well, in order to do this without a massive blow up, you're going to need to remove a bottleneck. Now what are the bottlenecks that I typically see being in this first stage? Well, we talked about physical, but how do we solve that? Okay, first of all, project management videos. Now this is most common for home improvement businesses, but the same could be applied to any type of business where you can create standard operating procedures around doing the work. Because this is the part that is your bottleneck is doing the work. The physical actual manifestation, the physical delivery of the product or service is the part that you're struggling with in this first bottleneck of physical. And so what we want to do is how do you create procedures, SOPs or standard operating procedures around the work being done? Now in lawn care and landscaping, for example, when we do a landscaping project, the estimator goes out and does the, does the initial consult, but then they're going to make a video, or we call project management video for that client and we're going to attach it inside of a group and that video is going to be then given off to the employees down the road to be able to do the work. What does this do? This allows you to not be the physical constraint, not have to do the physical work. The main hurdle that most people have at this stage is how do I just get someone to do the work for me and do it right? Well, you're going to have to create project management videos, you're going to have to create SOPs, standard operating procedures, because in order to get past this stage where you're doing all the work yourself, you're going to have to hire people. That is the differentiation between stage one and stage two is you're going to have to hire people. In order to do that though, you're going to have to make sure you have project management videos or some sort of stage standard operating procedures documented with video to be able to give to a potential employee so you can move on and grow the business without a massive explosion. Because what happens is most people will do this. They won't create SOPs, they won't create project management videos. So what happens either a they as the physical constraint, the physical bottleneck in the business will overwork themselves and lead to a massive heart attack. Something really physically they start to fall apart, especially if they're older or two, they'll hire people. But because they don't have the project management videos, because they don't have standard operating procedures, that bottleneck again blows up and they're like, I can't find employees. Everyone's just so hard to find people. And no one works out. No one works as hard as me. Why? You haven't created standard operating procedures, you haven't created project management videos to give them the tools and a step by step guide of how to do the physical work so that you don't have to. Alright? And 80% of business owners will never get past this first stage of growth because they fail to remove the number one bottleneck, which is physical bottlenecks. And to get around that, to get around that dam, that release point, you're gonna need project management videos and SOPs. What are those? Those are the systems required to get around the bottleneck. Okay? So over here we have systems required to get around the physical bottlenecks of growing your business past $100,000 in annual revenue. Now another system, another procedure you're gonna need to be able to hire people is you're going to need some sort of orientation and training program. This is again another system that needs to be created in order to get around the bottleneck and the dam of physical constraint. Okay? And that's what's gonna be needed just to get past 250. Now, now I see some business owners doing 500, 700, 800,000 in revenue and still they have not done these things. And typically that's the person who will burn out or run a very unprofitable business because they've never even solved these issues. And you say, you say, well, how do they grow their business past the first stage of growth, probably because they're just crazy hard dropping pens, probably just because they're crazy hard workers and they simply just will themselves into growing their business. And that's fine. That's awesome. All power to them. However, you can absolutely do this without a massive blow up, without physically falling apart, without financially falling apart, without going into massive amounts of debt on all your trucks and equipment and having employees scream at you in the face. You can get around these things by having these systems in place prior to moving to the next stage. So I'd really recommend, before you start growing your business, make sure you have a project management videos in place. Make sure you have standard operating procedures on a video. Make sure you have an orientation and a training program, a checklist from new employees to be able to be like, yes, I did that. Yes, I know how to do that. Yes, I know how to do that. And then like, okay, you are now officially through the first two weeks of training, an orientation process. It should not be, hey, show up to work, here's your uniform, jump in the truck, go like they, okay, well, who do I ask to get time off? How do I move up inside this organization? Is there any bonus program? What are the medical benefits? Who do I ask about that? These are things that are really important for the employee. And if you're not answering those questions in the orientation, you can promise yourself that they're probably not going to be as engaged. And so if people wonder why I can't keep employees past a week or two, they just show up and then they just stop showing up all of a sudden. Well, they might have a whole bunch of questions that you could answer in the first 15 or 20 minutes if you just had an orientation and a training checklist and some sort of system to get them onboarded again. What is that doing? All of that's allowing you to have hiring. And that hiring is going to be the thing that allows you to get around the physical constraint and bottleneck that's going to keep you from growing sustainably past $100,000 in annual revenue.

At the beginning stage of your lawn care business, you'll need to focus on growing your customer base. We're talking flyers, yard signs, door hangers, mailers. But templates, cookie cutter promotional material won't help your business stand out. We'd love to help you sidestep the design phase and offer lawn care media as the perfect solution to your physical advertising needs. Our designers have created countless original designs for any service your business might offer. Just download the package, add your Logo number and email. And you'll have everything you need to storm the Lawn Care Marketplace. Head over to lawncaremedia.com and get started today.

Now, this next one is what I call mechanical.

And you could even just call it technical. So this is going to be the part of the business where you actually have technical knowledge or mechanical abilities that are the bottleneck to growing the business. Because at this stage now you really need to know what you're doing in terms of managing multiple employees and you physically might be able to have that handled. Like, the employees do their job, that's fantastic. But now you have the problem of I've got to train them all. The technical side of the business is too much for me to be able to train all these new employees. Like, yeah, I have standard operating procedures, yeah, I have orientation and training, but I've got to train these people in some really complicated stuff and it's taking me a long time to do that. And so at this stage, to get around this as the bottleneck, them having to know about certain types of mechanics, like if you do a roofing, they gotta know all about the ladders, they gotta know about the nail guns, they have to know about the shingles, they have to know about the underlayment, they have to know about how to do it around gutters and how to do it around chimneys and all these different things. And so the question is, okay, I know that there has to be a better way to do this, but yet I also know that I have to be able to have the technical ability and I have to have the mechanical ability to get the work done. So at this stage, this stage of growth, if you want to continue to grow without a massive blow up, this is when you really need to make sure you have these systems in place to allow you to get around these bottlenecks. What are those systems? The first one is going to be simplification. This is going to be where you simplify the services that you offer, simplify the products that you offer, reduce the skews that you offer. Because simplification is the going to be the way that you don't have to have as much technical knowledge, you won't need as much mechanical knowledge because you won't need as much equipment, you won't need all these complicated things, and you'll be allowed to keep growing the business past one or two or three employees because now you've simplified things. It's easier to get people up and trained and profitable and efficient inside the systems that you have. So simplification is extremely important at this stage of growth. If you're going to. Not if you're going to alleviate or if you're going to circumnavigate a massive blow up. And the whole point here is to use these systems to get around these bottlenecks so you don't blow up, I. E. Quit on the business. Most people will just quit at some stage of growth mostly because they haven't implemented these systems. Alright. The next system you're going to have to really create at this stage is the mechanical side. Mechanical. Especially if you're someone like myself. There's parts of the business that I have no idea how to do in terms of like fixing things like mowers and trucks and trailers and equipment. I have no idea what I'm doing. So what am I gonna do? I'm gonna create some sort of a mechanical system. Okay, is that a checklist? Is there a way to keep and document the service records? Is there a way to document who did what in terms of maintenance on those pieces of equipment? The mechanical side of things at this stage now you're not in possession of all the equipment at all parts of the day. You, you have crews leaving without your supervision, using the mechanics, using the equipment, using the trucks. And now you've gotta have some sort of system around the mechanical part. This is usually a lot of times at 250,000 revenue where I see business owners camping down on types of equipment, types of trucks, types of trailers, et cetera. Because they get so wrapped up in the mechanics of their business. And they never create a system around the fact that like, look, we gotta have a certain type of truck, a certain, certain type of trailer, certain type of mower and we'll just keep rolling with that. Or that's for a mowing company and maybe the excavation. We're going to use a certain type of excavator, we're going to use a certain type of trailer, certain type of dump truck. And this is how we roll. And they don't get wrapped up in like all the different fine details in the minutiae of like, well, I got three trucks and now they leave and I can't manage them. They're driving the truck really bad. And now I'm going to spend all my weekend redoing the bodywork of this truck or the engine of this truck and I gotta redo the clutch. So these are the things that bog people down. These are the bottlenecks inside the business. Create a system around having the mechanical side of the business, the Equipment, the assets of the company taken care of. Okay, Cost of non revenue producing employees. All right, I'm just gonna. Non revenue employees. These are what starts to crop up after 250,000 and, and that is employees that do not generate revenue. Rather they are office admin mechanics, lead technicians, they are managers, quote unquote, operations managers, project managers, random managers that basically do not produce revenue. Very scary at 250,000 in revenue to be having a lot of employees or staff that are not producing revenue. Non revenue producing employees. At this stage of the business, you've got to create a system around how do I reduce that as much as possible? Can I outsource my office staff? Can I outsource the person that does the mechanical side of the business? Can I outsource these things? So I do not have non revenue producing employees on the payroll. It will suck the profit out of your business, especially at 200, 300,000 revenue. And I typically see companies that go like 3, 3, 4, 500,000 revenue. They're like three office people and an operations manager and a full time estimator. It's like, look, you have five people that aren't even producing revenue for the business. And if you've got three or four employees out in the field, how in the world do you expect to be able to cover your overhead? And so I see a lot of times at this stage because there's technical and mechanical issues, because there's a lot of moving pieces now in the office, in the admin, phone calls coming in, emails coming in, people way overspend on non revenue produced employees. Their overhead goes through the roof, they get a really nice office. All of these things are because of the mechanical and technical issues that come up at this size of the business. They start getting too much trucks, too many equipment, lots of loans, non revenue producing employees to manage all the mechanics and the trucks and the equipment, et cetera. Don't do that. Try to keep it lean and mean at this stage so you don't have a ton of overhead. A ton of overhead is going to be what's keeping you when getting to 500,000 revenue. That's typically why I call this the wilderness in business. 200 to 500,000 in annual revenue. Because a lot of times what happens is at this stage, because of the mechanical and technical issues inside the business, people will go overpay on equipment, they'll overpay on non revenue producing employees, they won't simplify their business, they'll just add more services. And because of that they don't make any more profit. Profit at 250 versus a business doing twice as much in revenue, 500,000. But they won't make a single penny more in profit. Why? Because they did the opposite of these things. They did not simplify, they added more services, added bigger services, added more complex services and now there's all these moving parts in the business. So what do they do? They go get non revenue produced employees and managers. What do they do? They go buy more equipment, they get more into debt because they need more trucks and equipment to add more services. And because of that it adds more and more complexity which adds more and more of a pressure on the bottleneck of the business which at this stage is a technical advantage. Alright, so now the third stage of growth where we are talking about $500,000 in annual revenue. What is the major bottleneck that I see at this stage? Office and admin. And I already kind of alluded to some of these things already. But the second stage, the 250,000 stage typically is going to be like a pro project manager, an estimator. You start putting a lot of hierarchy in terms of team leads, et cetera out in the field. But now office and admin, very, very important in your business. If you want to grow past 500,000, you need good office and admin. However, this starts to trickle down into this next stage and then is non revenue producing employees. And now all of a sudden you have two or three office people, you have a really nice office, your overhead is high in this rent and you have utilities like you got to pay for the Internet and you and you got to pay for the water and the power and all this other stuff. And all of this is to feed what the office and the admin side and as business owners we hate office and admin work. I understand you don't like answering the phone calls, you don't like answering the emails, you don't like having to get back to people. You don't have to like doing payroll, you don't have to doing invoicing and QuickBooks and balancing the books and all the rest of it. This is why I recommend that until you pass $500,000 in annual revenue subsequent substantially that you use some sort of virtual office to be able to answer your phone calls. Do your emails send out your estimates? Do as much as they possibly can. Because I don't want you have to go hire somebody to be an office manager. Here's why. Number one, if you hire someone as an office manager, $50,000 and that's their salary. Guess what? If you're running a 20% profit margin business, you're going to have to do $250,000 in annual revenue just to be able to pay for their wages. 20% of 250,000 is $50,000. That's their wages. So you literally have to grow your business from 500,000 to $750,000 and you won't see any more profit in between. There why you have to hire an office person. And we're not talking about all the other overhead that comes with having an office staff like computers and utilities and rent and all the rest of it. We're just talking about their wages. You've got to grow the business by 50% just to cover the cost of that office and admin in person. This is the one we always jump to. And this is why I so often times see people just immediately want to actually like, oh man, I have like 200,000 revenue. I need to go get an office person. I literally see people embracing this bottleneck. And the reason I call it a bottleneck is because I don't want all the keys to my customer's knowledge, to what's going on in my routes and my dispatch and to my billing and my invoice. I don't want all that locked up in the mind of one person. And so often the time I see businesses that are doing 6, 7, 7, $800,000 in annual revenue and they have an office manager who leaves and the business just falls apart because they were the bottleneck. And what's so important is you cannot just hand off the bottleneck from one person to the next. You can't just be like, oh well, I'm gonna pass the physical side of the business along to someone else. And you know, I'm not gonna, I'm no longer the bottleneck, but now you just pass the bottom bottleneck on. Now if you don't have these systems, I don't care if you delegate, you can delegate to another person and they might be better at the physical work than you. And if they're really capable and experienced, it might kind of improve the situation, but it doesn't remove the bottleneck. You have to have the system to get around the bottleneck. Otherwise you will eventually lead to a blow up. And if you hire a really great person, it might put a band aid on the situation. But eventually if they leave, guess what? All that pressure gonna be released. And I don't want that to happen when you're at the office and admin level because they're out here doing phone calls, they're out here doing email, they're doing billing, I can't hardly spell billing. All these other things and you're like great, this is fantastic. But they're a non revenue producing employee and if they don't have the system of being able to have this, a duplicate system from one person to the next, this is what I truly believe, that until you're doing well above 500,000, I'd rather have a mobile office, someone else answering the phone by the minute, doing emails, doing all my admin work, because I don't want to train someone up for six or seven weeks on my CRM and how to balance the books and how to run payroll. And I train them all up just perfectly and I know I'm paying them a really good salary, but I'm doing it for the long haul. And then what happens? They leave and you just wasted a month and a half of your time putting and investing all of your time and effort into what? Building a bottleneck in the business which is basically hinging on one other person. And so if they leave, you're toast. If they ask for a big raise when you just do not have the money, you're toast. I don't want to create that bottleneck inside the business. I want to allow as much as possible for my phone, email, billing. All of this needs to be simplified and then handed off to someone else that can do it by the minute or virtually have someone else do it, have two people do it virtually part time, however you want to break it up, I really could care less. But I don't want the bottleneck of your business to be built around one person, two people in an office and all of a sudden you have a bunch of overhead, non revenue producing employees. But most importantly, you've created a bottleneck in the business. Now a lot of times the office and the admin side is taken care of by the spouse of the owner and this works out really good as long as they stay spouses. And so you've got to make sure if you're going to build a business. I don't want my personal life, I don't want relationships, I don't want my health, I don't want anything to disrupt the business. And you might get started with your family, your spouse, your wife, your kid, whatever it might be, doing the books, answering the phone, etc. But again, what happens if they don't aren't able to make it? What happens if they physically cannot do work anymore? What happens if there is a struggle in the relationship, do you want that to affect the business? That's why so many businesses fail when there is a divorce, when there's some sort of friction in the relationship, the business falls apart because the bottleneck was built on some sort of familial tie with the business owner. And so if that ever gets broken, the business is kaput. And you've created a bottleneck around the office and the admin side because now, depending on a different factor outside the success of the business, I don't want to do that. And it could be a good place to get started. But just remember, you are building a bottleneck around the family side of the business instead of actually getting the work done in a way that systems and procedures cause guess what? If your spouse is doing your books, it's really easy to communicate with them. It's really easy to be like, hey, what'd so and so say? Customer? What did they send the email? Oh, what was their message about the other day? Because you're always with them, it's so easy to be able to just. It's so much. It seems easier just to do office and admin inside of your family. The problem is like, what if that goes away? And now all of my systems depends on me being with the person all day long. Well, that's a problem because if I have to get my office, an office person who's not my wife, who is not my spouse, who's not my husband, who's not my kid, and I don't get to see them all, I don't have that connection with them. Do I have the systems to be able to actually run the business efficiently? And again, this is gonna be the systems for your phone service. Okay, you're gonna need a system for onboarding clients. How do you send, what emails do you send them when they need a job scheduled? You're gonna need a system for leads or sales. These are all systems that you're going to need. You're going to need a CRM. You're going to need to know how to do your QuickBooks or balancing the books and doing your balance sheet and doing your financial statements. These are all parts of admin and office that you will need to create a system around if you want to continue growing the business and not have bottlenecks. You can, and most people do, build their business past 500,000 in revenue and they still will have more bottlenecks inside the business. It's not to say you cannot grow the business past this stage with These bottlenecks. It is simply to say that if you want to build the business past these markers, you're going to need these red systems at each of these stages in order to be able to build the business without bottlenecks that down the road are literally like a ticking time bomb and could blow up at any point. And that's why most small businesses fail, because all of a sudden they fall apart physically. All of a sudden the technical people that they've hired that they put all the responsibility for a certain part of the business, the actual doing part of the business, they all of a sudden leave or office and admin. All of a sudden the one person, they had all the trade secrets, only person know how to get into all the software and run the books and everything. Well, they passed away or they move and now what, what happens? Honestly, most businesses go half the size the next year. I was like, oh well, Sally always ran the books and she knew all the routes and now we don't have her. So I'm going to learn a new software. It's going to take me all next three or four months. We're just going to cut back our staff and we're going to grow back to 250. That's what happens all of the time. And that's what I'm trying to prevent for you right now.

Hey, if you're enjoying this breakdown, there's plenty more knowledge where that came from. Mike has taken it upon himself to uplift the small business world around him as he's developed a small special course called the MBA for Entrepreneurs. Whether you're starting, growing or saving your company, the MBA for Entrepreneurs teaches you the principles and fundamentals of small business ownership. With over 350 plus in depth lectures and bonus live streams, you'll have access from anywhere through the teachable app. You can read all about the course and more over at the NBA, the number four entrepreneurs.

Com.

Last stage of growth, $1 million in annual revenue. And at this stage, the typical ball and lex that I see, $1 million plus. I'm gonna go over that now. Now again, if you like this type of content, I'm gonna be starting to drop one of these every single month on mbaforantrepreneurs.com and landscapebusinesscourse.com More specifically, landscapebusinesscourse.com will be for landscaping companies and lawn care companies and more general topics like this are going to be for MBA for entrepreneurs. So check out both of those more generic service based businesses. Check out mbaforantrepreneurs.com if you're a landscaper. If you do lawn care, I highly recommend landscapebusinesscourse.com because I'm going to be doing a lot more larger content like this. We are creating final exams for all the current curriculum. And then once you're past that, you're able to start unlocking the monthly lectures that are going to be more in depth, such as this one. Alright, At a million dollars plus in revenue, oh, the business is good. We've gotten through those other stages. Maybe you have or maybe you have not implemented all these systems so that each of these bottlenecks can be removed or circumnavigated. But now let's talk about some of the bottlenecks that will happen at this stage of business and what you will need to do to get around them. You'll need some sort of decision making process.

This one is tough. Decision making process. Okay, so now at this stage of growth, a million plus in revenue, you're going to have decisions in the business. You've got to have a process of coming to the right decision based upon all these inputs. Because no longer are you doing the physical work, no longer do you have the mechanical, technical knowledge of all aspects of the business, no longer do you have the office or admin side that you are doing, because you've eliminated them as your responsibility as you the bottleneck. So now you've got to take all of these inputs because they're all important parts of the business. It's not to say these things are not important, they can just become bottlenecks and they typically do at these sizes of business. But even once you've grown past it, you gotta take these inputs and now run it through some sort of decision making process. Which means you've gotta have goals, you gotta have objectives and you've gotta have a clear defined future of what the business is going to do. And that is usually gonna be the determining factor of what decisions you make using these inputs. Does the output of these inputs. Inputs lead you in the direction of the future that you want for the business, the goals that you have, the size of business that you want to grow. You've got to create a decision making process. And that's a fancy way for saying have a plan for the company, know what you want From a 5, 10 year perspective, how big of a business do you want to grow? What does your role look like in five or 10 years? Because that is the decision making process that everything needs to be filtered, heard through all of the inputs, need to Come through this decision making process and ask yourself the question, does this get me closer to my goal? Is this moving the company in the direction that I want it to go long term? Alright? Another thing that you're gonna have to start doing is creating a system around delegation. Cause all of these things I talked about here are all important and in every single one of them I could probably have 10 different things that you need to delegate inside of that input. The first physical side, for example, let's just take this one input of physical labor or physical doing, getting the product or service actually performed for the client. Physical. You would have to delegate everything from ppe, personal protection equipment. You're going to have to do the physical work and you're going to have to actually like tires, equipment, all these other parts of the business. You're going to have to start delegating and you're going to be really good at delegating when you're at a million plus in revenue. Because you're going to have 10, 10, 15, 20 employees at this point. And you better make sure you're not the one that's out there like every single morning, checking every single thing. You'll run yourself crazy. And I typically see people doing a million dollars in revenue plus. If they have not created all these systems at each stage of their growth, what happens? They run a million dollar business, alright, but it runs them. They do everything in the business. They haven't delegated anything and if they were sick for one week their business would fall apart. And the reason for that is the because they are so confident in their abilities, which are amazing and an entrepreneur type a person, they can do a lot of stuff and that motivation is what powers them through all these stages without having to use these systems. But I promise you, having these systems at each of these stages of growth will allow you to get past a million dollars in revenue and not pull out your hair every single day and not lead to the massive Mentos and Diet Coke blow up that happens in so many businesses that causes them to quit and fail. You're gonna have to become a good meetings person, alright? Meetings. Everyone hates on meetings. Meetings are so important. I actually really enjoy meetings and it's something that must be done at this size of business. Back here you could be like, hey, you do this and you do this and hey, I'll chat with you after work and see what you're up to and all the rest of it. You don't have to have meetings because you're start having mid level managers and in Order to have mid level managers, it means that you're not gonna have direct contact with every frontline team member. And so what are you gonna have to do? You're gonna start figuring out how to have meetings with your mid level managers so you're all unified in front of the frontline team members and meetings are very important. I don't care if it's safety meetings with your frontline staff, I don't care if it is equipment maintenance meetings with your mechanics and people who are doing the technical side of the business. I don't care if it is about systems and procedure inside the office and the administration. You've got to get good at doing meetings, communicating with people. You've got to create a system for those meetings. How do you present, how do you have an agenda, how do you make sure that you wrap up and give the actual points that people need to work on until the next meeting? You're going to have to get good at meetings. When you're building a business above a million dollars and you can't micromanage through all of this. You cannot micromanage at this size of business. If you are, if you're bouncing back into the office, if you're telling people how they should be answering the phone and you're doing jumping and you're like, no, no, no, this is how you do it. And then you're seeing someone fill up the gas in the shop in the morning, you're running over, no, no, no, don't do this, don't do that. That is not being involved. That is micromanaging. And if you're running back and telling people, oh no, no, you gotta make sure you edge this and do this right, do this wrong. You're building a million, 2 million, we're talking 10 million dollar business. You can't be jumping in and being a helicopter manager. It's like, oh no, no, no, no, no. You gotta do it like this. And then you jump into their situation, this start fixing it, telling them how they're doing it wrong and micromanaging. You're gonna now start leading through delegation, leading through other people, allowing leaders to grow up underneath you. And you've gotta create a system around that form of leadership. You've gotta develop that leadership, you've gotta have meetings around that leadership. You've gotta cultivate them and educate them on becoming a better manager and a better leader. So these are four different stages of business, all the way from zero to well above a million dollars in annual revenue. And at each of these stages, there's bottlenecks. There's points in the business that are crucial, important points, but they can build up pressure and cause a massive blowout, a massive failure, a massive explosion if there is not a system to fix it. And everyone's always like, man, what are systems? Tell me about some systems. Okay, all of these red things are just a few of the systems required to get around the common bottlenecks that I see at certain sizes of business. And you might talk to someone who's like, you gotta talk about management and leadership and all the rest of it, and that's important. But honestly, that system is only gonna be super necessary once you're past a million in revenue. If you're just getting started. The type of systems you need to really be focused on is like, do I know what my standard operating procedures are? Do I take videos of jobs and projects so I can pass it along to somebody else? Do I have. Do I know how to give orientation to a new employee and train them up? These are the type of systems you need to focus on because the size of your business matters. The size of your business is going to be the determining factor of what systems you need to be focused on. So when you listen to me or anyone else talk about systems and procedures, you've got to ask yourself, what size of business are they talking about? Because it really does matter what systems you implement at certain sizes of business and which ones are most important to implement when you're small versus when you're big.

Cool.

I really hope that was helpful. If it was, let me know in the comments what kind of jumped out at you and spoke to you. This is the type of content I want to do at least once a month on landscapebusinesscourse.com for all landscapers, green industry professionals and lawn care professionals, and any other business that wants more generic business foundational concepts in addition to already the curriculum that's already built there. Mbaforantrepreneurs.com, check those out. I'd love for you to be there and I'd love for you to join us in four to six weeks when I can post one of these more longer form lectures that don't do well on YouTube. They're not going to get a bunch of views. Not going to do well on YouTube. But inside the courses I can share this content for our community and I think it'll really help your business. Check it out.

Today this has been the Mike Andes Podcast. We hope that you enjoyed this episode. Now you can identify the bottlenecks that might be stopping your business from reaching its full potential. If you like what you heard, we have tons of more lectures, interviews, and more over on the Mike Andy's YouTube channel. That'll be right up your alley. But that's all we got for you today. We'll see you next time.