How to Stay Busy in Winter

Hey everyone, it's Mike. I'm over@landscapebusinesscourse.com and today I want to talk about winter work and how important it is to you as a business owner running your landscaping business and what to do when the months get slow and work isn't coming in. So for some people, if you're in Florida, California, southern part of the US you might be mowing around.

Around the entire year. But for where we live up in Washington state, we, we mow seven to eight months out of the year. And so there's a lot of time in the winter that you got to fill up. So some states, and depending on where you live, you can do snow plowing. And that's an easy way to use the trucks and the different equipment that you already have in place. And the reason it's so important, I feel, to have winter work, or maybe this isn't so much just for winter, it's just for months when it gets slow. So for some individuals, they, they might get really slow during actually the summer months when it gets really, really hot and there's no work to be done or they can't even find workers that want to work outside and just very hard for morale. And so I'd encourage you to, if you want to build a great team and you want to build a great business, you have to be able to keep work year round. And so we've been really focusing on our company hiring people that are 24 years and older that have a family and have to come to work and provide. These individuals, you have to pay more. They usually are looking for more benefits and longer term, however, they are also going to be showing up on time. They need that job, they need that paycheck to put food on the table and they have to provide for their families. And so they do cost more. And that's something we've had to address. We have to pay more up front. However, it's in the long term, those few dollars more per hour that they're acquiring pay off just an enormous amount. And so the amount of professionalism that you can have with someone that you're paying more, the type of applicants you're going to get coming, your business is much greater. But in order to retain those individuals, in order to retain those family providers, the breadwinners of the home, there has to be that level of dependability that the job isn't just going to stop and that they're going to have to figure out what they're going to do for four months or go get a part time job or go on unemployment. For a lot of these people, a lot of these individuals, they cannot afford to take four months off the year or even three months. They can't afford to go on unemployment or get only 50, 60% of their paycheck coming in during the slow months. So it's very, very important if you want to grow your business and you want to make it into something long term successful and scaling because you can't depend on a constant turnover in your workforce, you can't turn over 20, 30 people a year and expect to be able to grow sustainably over the course of the long term. And so if you want to grow a team, that's the only real way I see being able to grow your business. Because it's very difficult to get 30, 40 individuals as you grow and scale that are trained and professional and that you can get, you know, up to the standards that you have in your business and then you lose them all in the fall and the winter because you get slow and you have to rehire 30 or 40. Like it's very difficult to run a, have good quality control when you're having 30, 40 new people out of your, in your company new every year. And even if you're smaller, even four or five people, if you let them all go during the winter, you have to find four or five new people in the spring. It's very, very difficult to grow your company, add services, have management team in place. And so I'd really, really encourage you even if you have to save up cash reserves throughout the year for the winter months, do whatever you can possibly do to make sure you can keep your crew and your team busy throughout the winter. So I'm going to go through some of the ways we've done it, some ways that some of the course members have done it, all different ways, just ideas for you to make money during the winter and keep your crews busy so you don't always have this constant turnover and you can guarantee someone 40 hours a week year round, which is very, very important. If you're going to have older people that are working for your people that aren't just, you know, guys out of high school or college, but actually have families and want to stick around, make this career. If you want to attract those type of applicants, you're going to have to have year round work. So how do we do that? Number one, like I said, you're going to have, there's going to be a financial sacrifice because if you do have those months during the winter to be Slow. Usually you're going to have to pump more marketing dollars in, you're going to figure something out and you're going to lower your, maybe your labor rate even in order to keep people busy. And so I would encourage you, even if you lose money during the winter, save up for it. What you're striving for is even if you can just get by, even if you can just keep the guys busy, break even on the work that you're doing to keep everyone engaged in the team and that you can guarantee that year round work. So first thing we do a lot of times we do all our facilities, maintenance, repairs and build out during winter. So excuse me, during the winter is when we, we build out our office space, we build out our storage facilities. And so right from like June, July, I'm already starting to make a list of things that we need to do during the winter. So we have an entire list of, you know, we're going to probably triple our office space this year. We are going to be probably doubling our storage facility. We're going to be probably, we're trying as next week trying to rent another acre of land to grow into and that will be space that we needed to repair and build out for over the winter. So I have a whole list of things we need to do to the trailers to make them better, the trucks, all different types of maintenance issues that could be done any time of the year, but they aren't super imperative to be done now. So we put them off until winter. Cause that's when we need labor to keep our guys busy. But then also it is keeping our trucks running in operation during the summer and then during the winter when we're slower then they can be getting worked on in the shop or we can be doing maintenance on them and things like that. So we keep a track of all the things throughout the year that we need to work on. Facilities, equipment and all of that. So like I said, we're moving into a bigger office at one of our locations at the other location we're probably gonna be building there. And so the facilities, we get them minimally done and then we use our crew, our staff to drywall, do the painting and the flooring, bringing in the cabinetry, like all of that stuff, all that simple stuff, the paint, like they can do all of those things. And so facilities, if you're gonna do big facilities stuff, do it during the winter and use your crew. It's gonna be cheaper labor, it's gonna keep them busy. It's cheaper than hiring a Contractor to paint. Your guys can paint for 15, 20 bucks an hour and keep them busy throughout the winter. So another thing that we do, we really focus on during the winter is employee training and development. So we hire people throughout the entire year, but then come winter is when we really start working on their certifications. We work on standardization of our training. So we have like hardscaping training days and then mowing days. We have two days where we go off site and do like a seminar with the whole team around leadership and teamwork. So like those times during the winter is when we pull everyone together. We have training, we have development, we have certifications that they can pass and recognition that they can get to get more pay or just more certifications and more learning in the field. And so that's the time to do it. I don't want to be training people on two day off sites during the middle of summer when they could be making money out in the field. But during the winter when I just need to keep them busy, I want to give them a paid training day or you know, so we probably will have six plus training days throughout the winter where they will be paid and they will have the opportunity to gain new skills, be able to join with the team and make that cohesive unit within the team. And so training and development, those are perfect opportunities to keep your crew busy during the winter. Obviously, if you have snow removal, this is a slam dunk. If you're in certain states, certain areas of the country where you can get snow plowing throughout the entire winter, that's a great option for us. We do snow plowing. We have snowplow and salting and stuff. However, we might get one, maybe two times a year where we actually use those snowplows. Again, we only did that in order to keep the crews busy when the snow falls. Because we can't trim trees, we can't break ground, we can't do any excavation, can't do any landscaping, you can't do leaf cleanup, you can't do anything if there's a bunch of snow. And so we got snow plows and the salting traction simply just to keep everyone busy if in the event of there being snow fall. The reason we did that is because a couple years ago we had a snowfall maybe six inches and it stuck around for like two solid weeks. And we weren't able to keep and do any work. And so that's very difficult for someone that's providing for a family. And the type of individuals we are hiring usually are older, have families and need to provide and put that paycheck on the table. And so that is why we went into the snowplowing again. Not to make a bunch of money. We're not going to ever make a killing on snow plowing up where we live in Washington state. But when it happens, we can make sure we can guarantee our people that they're going to get full time hours year round. Janitorial is another thing I see a lot of people going into in order to be indoors during winter. So if you don't want to do snow plowing, you know, get in janitorial. You can do everything from more of like maintenance to like cleaning banks or commercial buildings. The problem with that is usually they want year round. So you're not gonna be like stop during the summer and pull your crew back to landscaping. So you could do something like doing cleanouts or janitorial cleaning of, of new construction to get in contact with contractors and say that you can bring your team in, bring shop vacs and shovels instead of fine toothbrushes and that sort of cleaning. More like industrial commercial construction sites, just cleaning them all out. More labor intensive junk removal, moving. You can use your trucks to do junk removal and moving services. Gutters and roofs are a great way. You already have the ladders, you have the trucks, your crew can get up there and make sure you check with your insurance about the height levels and things like that. But you can do everything from putting on moss off on their house roof to keep the moss off, to cleaning out their gutters. And even just a visual inspection of their roof is very valuable. If someone's lived in the house for 15, 20 years and they never got on top of the roof because they may be older client, maybe they have had knee issues or maybe they're just their equilibrium is messed up so they shouldn't be on ladders. They've never had the opportunity even look at their roof and evaluate like should it be changed? Is there leaks, is there bunch of moss? So you can give these roof inspections away as well. Another idea for the winter, pressure washing is a great idea. Obviously if it's going, if it's freezing temperatures, it's not easy to be doing pressure washing. However, during the winter months when you don't have a lot of landscaping jobs coming, you can do pressure washing. Driveways, walkways, even the siding of houses. If you have vinyl siding or even hard board and things like that, you can get mildew and things. So be careful about doing certain types of materials, brick, things like that. Getting moss on the side apartment buildings are great place to go and literally drive by apartment complexes. Look for that green mildew starting to grow. Email a project manage or email the project property management company and say, hey, we can do, we do pressure washing. And you can do the siding of that and you know, siding hard surfaces on the ground, whether it be walkways, driveways, etc. Great places to make money. Pressure washing Handyman services indoors is a little bit nicer during the winter if it is really cold or really wet. And in your environment, being able to do handyman services, if you have a large clientele base of older clients that are willing and wanting a handyman to fix the leaky faucet, you're not going to want to be doing like remodels unless you have someone on your crew that's a contractor. But a lot of simple stuff like taking stuff out to the junk or changing out water faucets, or fixing a toilet that just keeps running and little handyman stuff, changing out the changing towel.

Rungs, towel bars, light fixtures, fans, all of those things that usually we would just do ourselves. But if an older client can't get up on a ladder, they don't have the strength to do some of these little smaller tasks. You can charge for handyman services, and if you have a large enough client base, sending an email out to them in the middle of winter might be enough to keep your guys busy the entire winter with those handyman small type services. Leaves and tree cleanup, that's another really great thing. If you haven't gotten into it. If you're doing mowing, if you're doing landscaping, it's a really natural progression. But all those leaves that fall, during the fall, you're gonna be cleaning those up all winter long, literally. If you have a good marketing campaign and there's not snow on the ground, you can be doing cleanups, mulch installs, trimming trees and bushes. This is the time to trim bushes. Like the best time to trim bushes is when they're dormant, when the leaves have fallen off. If they're deciduous trees, trimming those during the time when they are dormant and it's cold is the best time for the plant to be trimmed. And so if you can convey that knowledge and that education to the customers, hey, this is the best time to trim those fruit trees and all the other deciduous trees that you have, the maples, like all of those, it's time to trim those because they're. All the leaves are off and during the cold season. So those are just some ideas I hope it gives you kind of some just random ideas as far as what type of work to do during the the winter. There's an incredible various amount of, you know, staining fences to building things. Like you could build wooden playground sets or even picnic tables. And you build them and then sell them the rest of the year. But all of these things are really just to keep your crew busy. You know, I would stay focused if I was you on your landscaping, on your lawn care, where the net profit is, where the money is, where you're experienced at, where you know your numbers, where your experienced labor is at, is the landscaping part. But you want to be able to give them the opportunity to benefit, to be able to stay year round, busy. You're able to pick up employees of other landscaping companies that are getting rid of all their people because they don't have any work for two or three months. And you're able to pick up and cherry pick all the great employees because you are offering work during that time. So even in the past couple weeks, we've had a couple people apply because they know they're going to get laid off here in the next couple months as we go into the winter season. And if they're great employees, I'm either going to do one of two things. I'm either going to make them a killer job offer starting in spring, or if they're really great, or if we can afford it, or if we have enough work, which is what we're trying to do, is to actually hire them now and keep them busy throughout the entire winter. And the whole objective of this, the reason we're so focused on this right now, is because my goal is to be accelerate through winter instead of just kind of coasting. And what most landscaping companies do, they lay people off or they try to get by. I want to actually be like, accelerate into the, into the spring by, throughout the entire winter hiring people, growing, scaling the company instead of just going on cruise control or just kind of coasting along, actually being able to like fuel the growth of the company during the winter. That's my goal and I think you can do it if you stay focused on keeping your team busy, number one, then as you get really busy, you can actually make it a profit center and make the winter apart when you actually accelerate instead of just coasting along. So I hope that helped you. Hope it gives you an idea of what you can do if you keep your crew busy, your team cohesive unit together, and really get some more winter work. If you haven't already. Go to landscapebusinesscourse.com Some great things happening there. And if you haven't already, sign up for the conference. It's going to be fantastic. It's January 17th, 18th and 19th. It's in Bellingham, Washington, right next to the airport. You can fly in and literally walk across the airport parking lot and see us there. Three days. It's going to be fantastic. I'll be there the entire time. And. And I can't wait to see you there again. Landscapebusinesscourse.com I'm Mike Andes. We'll see you next.