YouTube video (transcript) by Mike Andes advising that counting lawns per day is the wrong metric; instead track the percentage of daily labor revenue paid out as wages. He recommends keeping wages at one-third (≈33%) or less of labor revenue, and gives numeric examples to illustrate how to calculate this for hourly or pay-for-performance crews. The video closes with a brief call-to-action to visit landscapebusinesscourse.com and attend an upcoming January landscape summit.
Questions this video answers
One third (≈33%) or less.
$150 wages on $600 revenue = 25%.
$180 wages on $600 revenue = 30%.
P4P (pay-for-performance).
Chapters
Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes here. And today I'm going to be talking about how many lawns should you be mowing in a given day for your lawn care business? Now this question comes up all the time. How many lawns should I be cutting a day? What's the average number of lawns I can cut? And I've always said, like, it totally depends on the size of the property and how many crews you, how many crew members you have on that truck. And it depends on how your route density is. There's just so many different variables. But here's the thing that actually matters and the thing that you want to measure when it comes to how many lawns should I get done in one day? That's the wrong question. Because if I have two acre parcels and I have one mower, and that mower is a 48 inch mower, I'm going to get way less lawns done than if I'm knocking out posted stamp lawns that are 3,4000 square feet, one right after the other with a push mower. It's going to be completely different. So it's a bad metric. Here's the metric you want to use. What percentage of the labor revenue earned went towards wages? What that means is If I earned $600 in that day, regardless of what type of lawn, what percentage of that $600 goes out the door to wages? Your goal should be that you are pushing out the door one third or less of your labor revenue to wages. So if I am going to pay someone $15 an hour and they're gonna work 10 hours, that's $150. And if I went out and I did $600 in revenue, that individual did $600 in revenue and I had to pay them $150 in wages, that's 25%, that's under one third. And so this is the thing that you really want to track is what percentage of the labor revenue that was earned in the day went out the door towards wages. Now we use P4P, which is pay for performance. We're going to set that number so it doesn't vary, it doesn't go up and down. But, but regardless, even if you're paying someone hourly right now, you can track this number. And this is gonna be the best way to measure one thing, and the only thing that really counts when it comes to lawn care and mowing, and that is efficiency, not number of lawns. Efficiency is the key here. Regardless of what size of property, regardless of what your route density is this is the metric you wanna keep constantly tracking every single day for every single employee. And if you're mowing by yourself and you're like, well, I don't have any wages, I ask yourself, what would you have to pay someone to do the job that you're doing now? Maybe it's $18 an hour. Okay, great. Now I'm at $180. So I'm doing $600 in total revenue that I earned for that day. And then I'm doing $180 for. Would typically I have to pay someone to replace me out in the field? Well, now again, I'm at about 30%, still passing the test of one third or less of labor revenue going out the door towards wages. That's the most accurate measurement. And the 1/3, that's just a really easy number for every business a little bit different. But that's a really good benchmark to base what your calculations are. And as long as you just calculate it every single day and start to see a trend, that's where it really becomes valuable. I hope that's helpful. And if it was, make sure you come and check out landscapebusinesscourse.com conference. I'd love to see you in person at our landscape Summit this coming January. I'll see you there.
