Full Conference Schedule - Landscape Summit 2021

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes with Landscape Business Course. And today I'm going to be sharing About Landscape Summit 2021 and why you should come and what to expect if you're kind of wondering if you should come to Landscape Summit 2021. So this is actually our third year that we've done this event at the same time, kind of mid January. And I know for some people this is a hard time to leave because they might have snow or you might actually be in the middle of a snow event like we were last year, in the middle of our conference. And I truly believe that what you get from this conference will be far outweighing any loss of revenue that you don't get from a snow event or something like that happens. And in fact, you need to be coming to this event, Landscape Summit, in order to create systems and a team that can manage a snow event when you are away. And so I really feel like it's an important event to come to. And I don't just talk and say that because it's mine. I have left my team for extended periods of time to do training, to get to go to conferences. And I've also paid for my team to go to conferences and my managers to go to conferences and seminars and teaching and training. So it's very, very important if you wanted to grow and scale your business, make it more profitable, more systems oriented and build a team and a culture. And that's really the focus of landscape 2021. Last year we was a lot about P4P pay for performance and we're still gonna talk about that in this year. But this year is a lot about team and culture and how a lot of Those things, like P4P profit sharing tie into the profitability of your business. And it all works together, but the team and your culture so, so important. And we're gonna be talking a lot about that at this year's conference. So today what I wanna do is go over what is going to be covered, the different topics and keynote kinda titles that I already have planned for this year, go over some of the different activities that we're going to be doing and that we're planning. And some of this is still in the air, we're still adding to this, but I wanna. We're still over two months away from the event, but I wanted to give you kind of a taste of and kind of the timeline and schedule for Landscape 2021. So first things first, and that is the day before the conference is when the franchisees @ Augusta Lawn Care are getting together. And I wanted to do this very. I did this very specifically because I wanted to get the things that I needed to say to the franchisees. We're gonna spend Wednesday and Thursday together with them. And that way, when the conference is just for you all. So if you are thinking that you're gonna come here and get a big pitch about the franchise or about lawn care, it's not going to be that way. I'm very, very aware, and I do not want it to be that way because I've gone to conferences and I feel like 80% of it, I'm just getting sold on things, and I don't like that. If someone's talking about marketing, the latter half of their speech is about their great ability to do coaching and all that. That's not what this conference is. And I think people that were even last year can attest to that. However, last year we did the franchise dinner at the end, and I felt like it was. It felt a little bit more like people were feel like they're gonna get sold something, and I don't want it to be that way. So I'm doing that the day before with the franchisees. It's completely separate. It's not open to the public. It's completely private. And then Thursday, Friday and Saturday, January 14th, 15th and 16th, is Landscape Summit. I'm so looking forward to it. We've moved the venue to a massive space. The capacity on this room is over 1300, and that's so that we can have plenty of space. We're not boxed in. And, you know, knock on wood, Covid has moved along and we have a vaccine out. However, we're gonna be, you know, for precautionary sake, we have moved the venue and we have a lot more space. And so that will allow us to continue the conference without limiting our numbers as much. And it means that we can bring our own food in. So we're gonna get this catered by a professional chef that I've used before. I know very well. It's gonna be a great, great time for just the food. Like, just the. Just the $299 for the cost is literally wor food. And not to mention, like, we're gonna be giving shirts and hats, we're gonna be giving, you know, the binders and all of that sort of thing. Trust me, we lose a lot of money on conference. So don't think that, you know, paying the 299 per person is by any means going to put money in our bank account. This is not why we do this. This is a big way that we give back. Our team loves to get involved, and we've already started planning this, and so we look forward to it. And I hope you come along for the ride. All right, let's talk about Thursday. So Thursday is January 14, and 4pm is when registration opens. So. Because now there's not the hotel above the new venue. So the new venue is Ferndale Event center, and we don't have a hotel. It's not a part of a hotel. It's its own separate location as a big parking lot. So for most people, you're gonna have to drive there each morning, and it's not as ideal, but again, it's the biggest location we could find in our county where we could still have this venue and not be limited to, like, under people. It's ridiculous. Anyways, Ferndale Event Center, 4pm is when registration starts. We're gonna have a whole bunch of mowing equipment there. We're gonna have a photo booth. It's gonna be a lot of fun. And then 5pm is when we go ahead and start the event. And you're gonna meet a lot of new landscapers here at the conference. I think about 80% of the people coming this year have never been before, and the average. So when you register, we actually ask now what your revenue was for 20. And the reason for that is because we want to get a feel of where people are at and be able to group people together when we're doing some of the different activities. And the average this year is almost $500,000 in annual revenue. And so we have people as high as 2 and 3 million a year in revenue. And then we have some people just starting out. So there's a very wide variety. And we're using that information to be able to group people together in certain areas, in certain breakout sessions as well as, you know, this is definitely an event where people are gung ho on building their business. Not in just getting more equipment or making a good YouTube channel. Like, I'm not gonna be talking about YouTube. I'm not gonna be talking about social media. I'm gonna talk about how you can use those things to get customers and build your business and actually build a real company. But we're not gonna be talking about the flashy things. Like, if you've been to other conferences, talk to other people. Onlinescape business course, there's a Facebook group. Go ahead in there. If you have questions about, like, you know, what we've got covered in past years and if they liked it, definitely check it out. This is not a rah rah kind of deal. There's a lot of nitty gritty stuff that we go over and we go over your financials. Like this is, you know, I guess this is an announcement to everyone that is coming. You need to bring your financial statements. I'm going to be sending an email out a few weeks beforehand, but for now this is going to be a couple weeks into 2021. So we're going to want you to bring all of your 2020 financials and we're not going to embarrass anyone or bring everyone on stage. That's not the point here. The point is that you can look at your 2020 financials and get data from them and know where to go forward and how you can develop P4P and profit sharing and what numbers you need to know from your P and L. And so very, very important we're gonna be going over those things. But anyways, back to the schedule. I get excited here, but 5pm we start 5:30 after we kind of do a welcome intro game and we get to know each other a little bit more. Again, just such a massive variety of different sizes of companies, but a much larger size than average size than usual that's coming to this conference. Anyways, opening keynote that I have, I'm going to be talking about preparing your business for the next wave and kind of going off of how Covid changed everything and what Covid did to this industry, how it's not going to be changing anytime soon and how it's going to be permanently changed and preparing your business for the next wave. And you know, right now it's kind of playing off the words of we keep hearing about the next wave, the third wave, the second wave of COVID Now we're talking about what is the next wave. It might not be Covid, it might be a financial crisis, it might be your health going to kaput. It might be a personal problem that happens. What is going to be the next thing that tries to wipe out your business and protecting yourself against that. Then we're gonna be that same evening we're adding another keynote. So it's a little bit later on Thursday evening just to make it worth your time to be there that evening. And we're gonna be talking about humility and leadership and how humility wins the game and how that's a trickle down effect from the top down to the bottom of the organization and why that is so important as we move into the rest of the week that we're gonna be talking about how humility really is the foundational element of all of that. All right, so Friday, there's a couple activities that we're still trying to work out right now the logistics of with the buses. But we'll probably be doing tours of the shop Friday and Saturday morning that'll be optional, that you can sign up for, but it'll be separate from the regular event. So it'll be before the day starts. Several of our team will be taking buses over to the other shop before the conference actually starts, before the keynote start. So that way, if you don't wanna go, you don't have to. If you've seen it last year, totally fine. But there will be buses that you can be taking a tour of the Bellingham location, which is literally five minutes from the Ferndale Event Center. So that's kind of cool. So that'll be in the morning. We might even do a run. For those of you that like to run outside. If it's a nice clear weather, there's a good chance we go down to the boulevard, down next to the water on the boardwalk and there's a park, so some people could just mill around there. But also doing a run on one of those mornings. So we'll see kind of how the weather treats us. Friday morning, Liz is then gonna have a keynote. 9 o' clock is when technically the conference starts. But at 8 o' clock we'll have. Sorry, 8:30 we'll have breakfast. So again, Thursday evening we're gonna have a snack. They're gonna have cookies, homemade cookies and some other things. Everything's like very much from scratch and like super good food. Like, promise you this, it's very good food this year. And we don't. Cause before, we could only use the people at the hotel for making the food. And it wasn't great. It was not great. But now it's gonna be like legitimate food. So Thursday evening we have a snack. Friday morning we have a breakfast. I'll read the.

What'S going to be on the menu a little bit later on. But it's really good stuff. I've seen it the other day when they were doing a prep meeting. Anyways, Liz is going to speak at 9 o', clock, 9:30. We're going to be talking about implementation of P4P and how a lot of people don't because of laziness. I'm going to go over the different elements of that. Then we're going to be talking about creating Your team, excuse me, we're gonna be talking about gamifying and creating your team scoreboard. If we want to play this game of business having a, having a scoreboard and gamifying that process of performance, then we're gonna have lunch. Then we're gonna actually hear from some people who have implemented P4P since last conference when we talked about it so much. So you can actually hear from other people. So I'm gonna bring up some business owners, their team as well, and talk about what P4P and how it's changed their business. Then we're going to hear from Lonnie, who is the head of command center and head, kind of takes all the calls, does emails and estimates and all the office work for all our franchisees. So she has a really good perspective. She's gonna be speaking right after lunch, practicing open book management. We're gonna be talking about this and we're gonna actually make you break out into different groups and actually practice doing it. Actually practice going over your numbers so you're gonna have your financials. We're gonna force you in this activity to actually get in the habit of sharing your numbers and how to do that with your team. And so you're gonna practice with other owners who are gonna be more receptive. And then you're gonna have to go home and actually open your books to your team. And so we're gonna walk you through how to do that and how to open up your books. Then we're gonna talk about how profit sharing will change your business. This is probably a very big, big reason why this year this conference is gonna be really changing, especially some of the larger companies, how profit sharing has changed our business and how it can change yours. We're talking about different models in terms of if you have a manager and you're an absentee owner like we have down in Mount Vernon, how to do a manager type of compensation plan for profit based pay and then a profit sharing program for people out in the field. As you begin to grow and scale the business and you have a lot more trucks and employees out in the field, then you're going to hear directly from Nick Reed, who is actually worked for us locally for about a year and a half and went from a ski operator to becoming a franchisee at Augusta starting in January. And in less than two years he really changed his life. And I feel like he is a good representation of what we're trying to do at Augusta. But more importantly, what a great team culture and Profit Sharing and P4P and Open Book management, all the things that we're gonna talk about. He is a product of all of that and so I hope it inspires you to do the same thing for your team and really look forward to his talk as well. Then we're gonna be talking about staying busy in winter without snow plowing. We'll be talking about winter services, how to do recur throughout the winter. Great, great.

Data that we're getting right now in terms of converting so many of our mowing customers into winter services with keeping that recurring revenue throughout the winter. Very excited about that. Then Friday evening we're gonna be doing Q and A, live Q and A. We'll have live mics where you can ask questions to me directly. So it'll be Friday evening, Saturday morning again we'll have the morning activities of some sort, either the run or tours. We'll have a couple options that you can sign up for. We'll have breakfast obviously, you know, Friday we have lunch and breakfast and lunch. Saturday we have the breakfast, lunch and then a formal dinner. So I'll get to that in a second. So Saturday morning, Lee park, who is the office manager at the local shop now last year he was the estimator but he's now moved into Liz's role and he is now the office manager. He's gonna be talking about failure and the difference between an employer and an owner mindset gonna be really, really important. Again these are great talks to have your managers and your employees, your spouse here for because like about 70% of it I'm speaking but the other 30% is people in the office, people in operations, people in estimators, people like these are great, great keynotes for you to hear their perspective as an owner as well as for your employees and your staff to also hear them as well. So Lee's gonna be speaking in the morning, Saturday after breakfast and then 9:30, we're going to be talking about creating a career driven, money motivated team. And this is something that most owners do not want their team to be doing and that is be money motivated because they think that they're going to leave their business and they think that they're going to go after the next dollar per hour. And how do you educate them? Give them a higher financial iq, try to show them things, how to improve their careers, their future, their finances and how that that is absolutely what you need to be focused on as you begin to grow and scale up your team. And I think like hearing from Nick and Lee and Liz and the other ones, Lonnie that are speaking. All of that, the people you're hearing from is a testament to what works. And that is Profit sharing and P4P and all the other things we talk about. This all kind of comes together as the weekend will unfold. And so we'll be talking about creating that career driven, money motivated team. You've seen me open up our books, but then also have those weekly meetings with our team that are optional. Talking about everything from stock to real estate to saving money to budgeting. All the rest of that stuff is very important, I feel end up talking. We'll be sharing how we did that, what I recommend you do to get started. It's a little awkward at first, but promise you it pays off and it's really good. Then we're gonna be talking about before lunch, we're gonna talk about staying paranoid, stay alert, stay alive and how a little bit of healthy paranoia is very good. We're gonna be looking at some numbers, we're gonna be looking at some things that I think I feel very much help you and inspire you to get really rolling in 2021. We're gonna have lunch, then we're gonna have a giveaway for the $5,000 giveaway. I'm gonna have more details on that later on down the road. But anyways, we'll do it during lunch then. Marcus and Lee are going to be coming and speaking right after the Saturday lunch and talking about learning to become an estimator in two weeks. So Lee moved into Liz's role as the office manager. Marcus became the estimator. He had worked for us for about a year, year and a half out in the field. He's 19 years old. He became the estimator in a matter of two weeks. We made the switch. We're gonna be talking about the systems that are needed to make that switch. And you know, I might give some perspective too because like that was the hardest thing for me to give away. And then literally now it's been so systematized that within two weeks Marcus was basically thrown into full time estimator role. And so they're gonna be talking about that together from Lee's perspective of training a new estimator and then Marcus role of becoming trained as a new estimator and some of the things that they learned in that process. So I'm actually looking forward to that cause I'm not super connected with that office and don't touch base with them as much as I'd like. And so I'm looking forward to kind of how that all went down. Cause I knew there was a couple weeks where Marcus was with Lee all the time in the car doing estimates, things like that. So looking forward to that. Then we're gonna be talking about simplification. This is something we talked about last year. We're gonna be adding some more meat to the rule and some different things that I've created around the systems of simplifying your services, simplifying your estimate process, simplifying your sales process, simplifying so many different things in your business, simplifying the products that you install. All of those things need to be done to simplify the business and just make it very, very simple. We've been Talking about the 8020 rule and why no one listens to it in their business in the landscaping industry, and why it leads to the demise of most landscaping companies. Then I'm gonna talk about the big four, the new marketing methods I see really beginning to become big in 2021. The big four. There's four of them that I wanna talk about, go over in depth. And there's a little bit of a I told you so moment, because last year we talked about one specifically that I said was eventually not going to be around or is gonna change dramatically in the way that they priced it. And sure enough, in October, they did. And so looking forward to that. Then we're gonna have a Q and A panel where myself, Lonnie, Lee and Liz are all going to be on a Q and A panel where you can ask us questions live. Then we're going to revamp 2021, which is a new thing that we're doing where you are going to be having to chart out 2021, doing a strategy and your goals and throughout the whole year. So that's going to be really cool. It's going to take a whole hour for you to get a plan for 2021. So as we end now, the end of the conference, having a specific plan, measurable goals, key performance indicators along the entire year of 2021. And that's going to be great. So setting those goals up, creating a strategy to get there, it's going to be a lot of fun. So that ends at 5:00pm we're going to have an hour where you can go back to your hotels, shower, change, refresh yourself, catch up on emails, whatever. Then you're going to come back at 6pm and we're going to have a formal dinner. So I know landscapers are usually not formal. We want to make it special. So we're having this catered it's going to be like a very, very awesome food and just a great event where we can come and dress up. So. So bring a nice suit, bring a nice vest. I'm looking forward to see some of these rough and gruff landscapers in their Sunday best for this Saturday evening dinner. But it is gonna be a dress up formal dinner and we're going to have it plated for the catering and that's gonna be starting at 6pm and then at 6:30 to 7:30 we're going to be doing live Q and A throughout the dinner. So we'll be eating. We'll have a lot of Q and A though throughout that whole time. So as you're eating, you're still getting information but wanted to kind of make it a special time for the ending of the conference. And so that's basically it. Landscape Summit 2021's gonna be absolutely awesome. I hope you come, I hope you bring a manager, I hope you bring a spouse, I hope you bring some of your employees. One of our franchisees is bringing seven of his employees with him just to get. Just trying to change the whole culture and really trying to make a move like this is very important. I remember when we took 12 of our field staff a couple years ago to a seminar and it was expensive, like we paid all of them to be there, plus we paid for the seminar itself which was several hundred dollars each, so it wasn't cheap. But again, you're investing back in the team culture and I feel like team culture is a long term game and eventually it does pay profits. And we're gonna talk a lot about this, so I really look forward to seeing you there. If you're looking to buy flights, you'll probably wanna fly into Seattle Airport and then it's about an hour and a half drive from there to the event center. There's a Super 8 motel right across the street from the event center. It's not a super glamorous or exciting or luxury hotel by no means. You're gonna be probably only paying like 60, $70 a night. It's super cheap, but it's literally right across the street. Then there's an Orca Inn like a mile down the street. And then literally within 10 minutes, maybe five minutes even, there's like a whole bunch of nice hotels down in Bellingham, which is just down the highway. So like five minutes away, there's probably 10 other hotels that are, you know, your traditional Marriott Holiday Inn. Like there's some really nice ones, brand new actually La Quinta So definitely looking forward to it. Make sure you book your flights, book your tickets, $2.99 per person. Just go to landscapebusinesscourse.com conference and I really, really look forward to seeing you there. I think it's gonna change people's businesses and I just truly believe that educating yourself, informing yourself and learning from the mistakes of others is super awesome. I'm super humbled that there's gonna be people, people there that have 2, 3, 4 million dollar businesses that are gonna be at the conference because they've learned like, look, growing in size is great, but like, we gotta simplify, we've gotta create systems in place so that way I, the owner, don't have to be there all the time and that I can have a team that when I leave, they actually build the business up and they want the business to grow and they wanna implement profit sharing and have a great team culture. These are all things that can be done. It's not easy, it's definitely hard work. And it starts at Landscape Summit 2021. I look forward to seeing you guys there. Until next time, everyone be great. I'll see you in January 14th, 15th and 16th, Landscape Summit 2021.