How Landscapers Can Stay Busy and Improve Business During Summer

Hey, everybody. A bit of a different video for you all this morning. I'm out here. It's Saturday morning. I did a long trail run this morning, and it's super windy and super cloudy. It's kind of a cool effect coming to these forests. But I'll show you where I'm at. Just wanted to kind of give a little encouragement this morning here in the Pacific Northwest. It's been pretty warm. So it's been good, actually, that it's rained today. But usually this view here is amazing. Usually overlooks the water, the ocean, Pacific Ocean, and then all the San Juan Islands. It's super windy and cold this morning and it's raining. Which, like I said, is not a super bad. Whoa. Super bad thing. Little slippery. But this is basically a cliff. And you can't see a thing, basically. Usually the ocean is here and there's like islands and everything, but just goes right off into this cliffside here. Gotta be careful next to this thing. Don't slip off. Think you can see that. Just goes right off the hillside there. But it's June, and I know for a lot of you, you got this spring rush and things might be settling down for you a bit. But I just encourage you to kind of keep your. Keep your foot on the pedal. If you wanted to grow your business, if you want to make changes in your business, just keep grinding. This is what Saturday.

Haven't really taken a Saturday off like this for a long time. Just been busy with the franchise and all this other stuff going on. But I encourage you guys, get outside, do a little exercise. It'll be a good this time of year. June, you know, we got through the spring rush. It's a busy time of year, and. And now it's tempting to kind of just relax in terms of what you're trying to do with your business. I'm gonna try to get behind this rock. Cause I don't get a bunch of wind.

But I encourage you guys, June, July, August is really the time to put your foot on the pedal. When all the other competitors in your market are kind of relaxing. And I don't mean relaxing in terms of taking Saturdays off. Cause that's good to do. But they're getting complacent. They're not trying to hire people, they're not marketing. They're not trying to create systems and procedures. They're not training their people.

I encourage you to do that. When everyone's in spring, it's really easy to grow. There's so much business, so many people are calling you Phone's ringing off the hook. You're hiring a bunch of people, things are happening. Clients just keep calling for more and more work. It's the winter and the summer. I find that great businesses actually get ahead because everyone else is on their laurels, kind of sitting back, waiting, waiting for the next phone call, waiting for the next lead. And the people who really grow their business are the ones that during the summer and the winter, put their foot on the pedal and just continue to grind, continue to hustle. And so if you feel a little bit burnt out after the spring rush, go do a hike. This one's eight miles. I woke up around four this morning, come and did this one. So there's no one here. There's usually a lot of people here.

But I got out here early, early morning here and just trying to burn off a little steam. But I encourage you guys, just keep grinding, keep going. During June, July, August, it seems like mowing is going to decrease. So go after your projects. If you can do cleanups, you can do small landscaping jobs. It doesn't need to be anything major. If you haven't done project based work before, you don't have to do anything like massive patios or anything you see on Instagram or anything like that. But you can start marketing other services upsells that are high profit margin. And this is the time when everyone else stops marketing because they feel like the ROI on a mowing customer is low. So most people do their marketing in the spring and you get your best bang for your buck. If you get a mowing customer in the spring because you get them for the whole year, however, that's also on everyone else's marketing. So your cost per click on Google Ads, Facebook ads is less.

Crowded and so your cost per lead can actually go down. The demand's less. But remember, there's less people going, there's less supply, there's less supply in terms of ads and things. So I'd really hit it hard. If you're wanting to grow, if you want to grow and continue to scale up your business and if you're not, if you're like, hey, the size of my business is where I want it to be at, I'd encourage you. This is the time to figure out systems, procedures, ways to make your business run without you. Today I'm out here running this trail, but yesterday I was in the recording studio the whole day. I was working on the operations manual for Augusta the franchise and was able to let the business run, take care of itself. Great people that can run the business that probably better than me at operations and getting stuff done, all the projects. There's a couple patios going in this week. There's flagstone patio, there's two paver patios and then just a whole bunch of mowing routes. So lots of stuff going on and it all got done. Everything went smoothly. And to do that, you got to create systems, you got to create procedures, you have to train people, you have to put them in places to succeed. And so I encourage you to do that this summer. If you're not going to grow, if you're not going to expand, if you're not going to go market, if you're not going to go do, add more services, if you're not going to go after project based work in the summer when it's dry, I encourage you to focus on systems, focus on procedures. Figure out what broke the. This is the big thing. Focus on what broke during the spring rush and fix it now. So don't wait for next spring to try to figure out how you can make things better. Just go ahead and, wow, it's windy. Go ahead right now and figure out, okay, what broke in the past few months when everything got really busy, was there not enough office staff? Was the mowing crews breaking a bunch of stuff and you need to implement the yellow slip system or some sort of compensation around keeping things from damages, whatever it was that broke during the spring, in terms of your business, figure out the system that's going to fix that in the next couple months. So all the best to you guys. I'll show you one more time this amazing view that you cannot see. Before I run back down several miles here it is.

Just beautiful, right? If you look up Oyster Dome in Bellingham, Washington, you'll get some pictures of what this looks like. It's incredible. You can see for hundreds and hundreds of miles out across this, the water and all that. You can actually see. I don't know if you can see that all the fogs rolling through here. You can see the fog because I'm up in the clouds. You can see it running by here. It's pretty amazing. So all the best. You guys get outside, get some exercise, do some trail running. Last weekend I did the tough mudder. I'm gonna run it competitively next year and try to win the thing. But all the best, you guys.