How to Systematize Your Paperwork: Landscape & Lawn Care Business!

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes and you're listening to the Business Bootcamp podcast. You might be listening now on YouTube or on Facebook as well. This episode, you might definitely want to be listening to the video version of this podcast episode. If you're listening to this, you might want to actually view it because today we actually have some demonstrations going on. I'm going to be showing some of our paperwork and going forward. If you enjoy the podcast, you definitely want to subscribe to our YouTube channel because I'm going to be getting a whiteboard behind me here so I can do demonstrations, we can work through some numbers and really dig into the business side of things and you'll be able to see those examples live. So check out YouTube, just search Landscape Business Course, Mike Andy's as well as on Facebook, Landscape business course and landscapebusinesscourse.com so a few announcements before we jump into the show. First, first of all, I'm going to try to find my cadence here because I know we have a visual audience that is a little bit different than a podcast where people are not actively watching. So I gotta kind of balance out how many announcements I do and things like that. However, I do want to bring everyone up to speed on a few things that are happening with the course. Especially the past three, four months. We have an enormous amount of people joining landscapebusinesscourse.com the course and the 247 option we have right now. It's a one time that is going to be changing here pretty soon. The reason for that is we are completely revamping the website, completely for those people that are on the site right now that you know that there's periods where it gets a little bit slow. There's periods sometimes where there's little issues and glitches. It's because there's so many people on it now that we're running into a lot of issues. The system's really overloaded. The website isn't made for as many users that are on it now. And it just, it's a lot of upkeep for me and it's just been a lot of maintenance. And so finally I just had to bite the bullet and say, let's do this right. So we've already started the process of creating the new website. It's going to be the same landscape, businesscourse.com, same URL. It's just going to be completely changed, the design of it. It's going to run on a completely different platform that's much faster, much, much Better user interface. As far as for users, once they sign in, just the design will be a hundred times better. Right now it kind of looks like it's stuck in 2010.

Like as far as design and it's not very functional. It's more or less just a compilation of a bunch of videos and a bunch of documents. It doesn't have a very good flow of design. So we're really working to change that. It's gonna be phenomenal. We already have what it's going to look like. We just have to make sure it all works. And it's probably gonna take a good month or two. So already are working on it. It's going to happen. When that change comes, I'm guessing in the next four to eight weeks when it's completely finished, the price of the course is going to go up basically just to recoup the cost of that new website and then the ongoing expenses there. So it's probably gonna go up to 297 instead of 247 like it is right now. And so really looking forward to the new site though it's gonna take a little bit of burden off me. Cause right now there's so much one on one that I have to do to get some people set up. They're having issues sometimes logging in because if they log in when it's like a couple hundred people on a site, it can break. And so it's gonna be much, much better. And so I really do appreciate all the users. I haven't had a single compl.

There was one person I was having a lot of trouble and I ended up just refunding them and telling them try again later. They're having some technical issues, but there's been absolutely no one complaining about it. And I really, really do appreciate your patience with that. When there are little glitches or getting signed up if there's a problem or you forget your password and sometimes not as easy to get that password back. So I really, really do appreciate everyone being so cooperative and I'm sorry that I'm not a tech genius. I don't know how to code very well. And so I've kind of been bumbling along. I'm hoping to change that. Really get set up really well with the technical side of things so that it can be more seamless for the users and it's easier for me to update more content and things like that. So that's coming, that's in the works. The price will be going up. So if you haven't thinking about it and you want to get into the course before the spring, definitely jump in now because all the users that are currently in the system, we will migrate all of your user account information. It will not change, it'll just go over to the new system and. And you should really have no problem logging in at all or anything like that. So we're working on that. That's gonna be a lot of fun. That's in the works. Next thing.

If you are a user and if you are a member of the course, some updates today we're gonna be talking about some of these. Here are a couple of the papers that we're gonna be talking about today. These documents that we're talking about today are on the course. Go to the, the document section, go to the templates and documents unit on the course. And at the very bottom these are the ones I most recently updated. So you can download these, I put them as Word documents so you can actually go in them, go in there, download it and then customize them to what you need for your market. That being said also if you go to the TIPS section module of the course, that's the one that I'm constantly updating as well. That one has a recent seminar that I took my management team to. It was a two day seminar on management. Everything from leadership mostly though focusing very on the nuts and bolts of project management and managing larger jobs.

From the estimating process right through to the job costing to the scheduling and resources as far as people, how to allocate those, how to manage these bigger jobs. This was a seminar I went to is locally but the speaker, excuse me, was from Dunn over in Jersey and he used to run a company that was did 7 to 10 million dollars in revenue and they focused on massive, massive design build projects. So it's really, really good if you have any sort of landscaping, if you do multi day jobs, any sort of pavers even they're a little smaller. But two three day jobs, very, very important if you're starting to manage a team of people. How to job cost, how to estimate and how to manage that job through from selling it all the way through the end of the job. So I know there's a lot of updates but if you are on the course, check that out, it's in tips. It's eight hours worth of content. So it's a phenomenal amount of content. It's not the best audio, I just recorded it on our little recorder when we were at the seminar. But it's definitely worth your while. You can listen to that over the course of a day, while you're mowing or while you are in the office or driving, and I promise you one or two things we literally, that's how I kind of think about these seminars when I go to them. A lot of it I kind of know I am a student of the industry. However, I'm looking for the one or two little things. Literally one of the things we picked up is at least thinking about is should we hire a high schooler to come after school every day and unload all the clippings out of all the trucks instead of having our guys that are tired, that are on overtime and that are paid much more, have them do that every day. So little things like that that we picked up on, as you would talk, that is totally worth it. It's 8 worth of content and so definitely check that out. If you are on the course, you'll want to listen to that seminar. So let's jump into the day. Sorry for the last seven and a half minutes. If you're watching this, I know it's a little bit more laborious to hear all updates, but I want to make sure that everyone on the podcast is listening and the course members get their updates. We're going to be going over these two pieces of documentation here that, like I said, are available on the course in doc form. So you can download them and edit them, customize them as much as you want. The first one is this paper that we have implemented most recently in our company. It is the project management schedule. This is for jobs that take more than one day. And it's essentially to make sure the implementation of the job happens smoothly from the customer standpoint, from the office standpoint, from the crew standpoint. The communication, there's never a breakdown in communication. What this does is allow you to before the job starts, what you want to do is break down into each day. What, what are the tasks that are going to be done each day? So like I said, if you're on the course, you'll want to download this. But you can see here, we have over on the left side here, different columns that you can put in the different tasks. So for instance, let's say that we are installing a patio that has some stairs and maybe a little bit of retaining wall down next to a pond, for instance, is one we're going to be doing here pretty soon. And so day one might be excavating it might be getting rid of the soil, preparing the soil base for the paver patio, installing some base rock and compacting that day two, there might be different items here as far as installing the rock and putting in the jointing sand, installing the wall, whatever it is, it might be three or four days long all in all. But what you want to do using this document and the reason I encourage everyone to make this, whether or not you're in the course and whether or not you get access to this document, is you want to make sure that the project goes smoothly from all standpoints. Like I said, from the office standpoint. So from the billing and scheduling department, you want to make sure they're on point. Because if that's not on point, you're going to start running behind on jobs. You're going to start calling customers, saying, sorry, we're running behind on another job, we can't make it to yours tomorrow. And you don't want that happening. So from a scheduling standpoint, super important. From a job costing standpoint, if you can start nailing this down, you can figure out much better what your costs are going to be as far as labor and materials and all of that. This is super important. So we do our pre job, kind of our job management scheduling each week, and we go over the whole week, what's gonna be happening over here on this side of the paper. So we might have four, you know, four, five, six of these clipboards, different jobs are in progress or that are starting and that we gotta go over. So essentially what this paper is, you got your customer name, you got your project manager. So who's kind of owning this job? The project manager for us kind of sees that, right? From estimate, right all the way through to job completion in the field. Then you go your address to the customer, the start date up here, day one, like I said, you're gonna have these task items here in the columns on the left. Over on the right hand side, this is gonna be filled out at the end of the day by the project manager. And it's gonna have the percentage complete of each one of the tasks that they have written down for that day to be completed. Because not everything's gonna go always as scheduled. It's not gonna go as planned. So. So what needs to be clear to the office is where are we in the job? The reason we want to have this is so that when this comes back to the office every day at the end of each day, they know exactly where we are as far as scheduling on each job. Are we ahead of schedule? Are we behind schedule? Do we need to bring in extra people? Do we need to have people work overtime? So this is super important. And then what they got to do is every single day, if it is a multi day job, they need to communicate with the customer. They so you can see here, there's a yes or no that they got a circle here if they have communicated the status with the customer of where the job's at. And it also gives the project manager area for notes. That's for things like commenting on maybe someone's sick, maybe they need more materials, maybe we underestimated on certain amount of materials. And in that note section they are going to make note of that. They're going to make note of things. Maybe the customer said, they came out and said something they liked or didn't like or asked if something else could be done or ask for more work and they need to have now an estimate that's all going to get done in the note section. And so it's very important this paperwork that it is being carried through seamlessly. Like I said, from a scheduling standpoint, from the office, from the field crew standpoint, because they like being able to see what's going on. They like to see where their progress is in a job. They like to be able to come in at the beginning of the week, know that they're mowing Monday and Tuesday and be able to see these clipboards hanging up underneath those specific jobs and kind of get a good idea of what those jobs are going to entail. They can prepare themselves kind of mentally, look at the weather like people like that. As far as from our team standpoint, everyone's on the same page. And then finally, most importantly, this is super important for the customer because they've got to know that you got things in control and that you take notes and you listen to what they're saying and it's being conveyed back to the office. And there are a bunch of surprises for the customer that just pop up at the end of the job. I heard something very, very important for from I believe there's a book I was listening to recently about customer experience and customer satisfaction. And what they said is there's two different points that if you average out, you can determine the satisfaction of a customer. Number one is like the peak. Where is the customer most happy? That feeling. Okay, so whatever that you plotted that out on a graph, where is that and then what is the feeling that they have a level of satisfaction they have at the end of the job? If you average those two levels out, that's where you kind of get your average of how satisfied the customer is. So what we've been trying to focus on is how do we make the highs even higher? How do we make them even more impressed at some stage of the job, make them super, make the high even higher. And then how do we, at the end of the job, communicate with them over deliver, be professional, ask for the referral, over deliver in so many ways that also increases that level of satisfaction. And then we have a satisfied customer that we can get referrals from, that they're super happy, they'll give a customer testimony, testimonials on our website, things like that. And so that's what we're trying to do. And one way to do that is to wow them with how organized you've been and how seamless. When they call the office, somehow the office knows exactly where they're at on the job. And when they talk to any of the crew guys, they know exactly what they're doing that day, what the expectations are, what items they need to complete. Everyone is on the same page. So when it comes to project management, this is imperative. If you're a course member, download this, make it your own, adjust it to however you seem fit. If you're a smaller operation, you probably take out the project manager, because as the owner, you're probably going to be the project manager in every single job. Things like that you can take out. But this is super important from the office standpoint, from your standpoint and your team standpoint on the field, and then also the customer. And even if you're smaller, this is something a lot of the course members talk about. And sometimes, especially when they first start their first year or two in the course, they're questioning whether or not a lot of these things pertain to them. I genuinely believe you want to prepare and act like a bigger company. Whether it be policy, whether it be the way that you create systems and procedures within your company, act like a bigger company. Because if that's where you want to be, you want to create the infrastructure for that growth before it's needed. Because if you try to build a building on a weak foundation, it's going to fall over. Build the foundation, build your systems, build your procedures, build your paperwork and your communication systems on a solid foundation so you can build the growth of your company and it won't fall apart down the road. For instance, today we spent the entire day with all of our field staff on training and policies. And the reason we did that is communication, making sure they all know they're all buying into our policies. The new compensation plan we're implementing, the new Training policies, how they have a checklist, they have to have certain amount of hours on each task, have their project manager sign off on those things. In order to get at their employee review, they have to submit that. And that would be part of their compensation benefit package, bonuses, things like that. And so tying in training and then also most importantly, just having their input on our policies, vacation time bonuses, their compensation plan policies, as far as timing of day that they got to come in the work, like all sorts of getting their buy in is super important. So that was the first document I wanted to go over. Project management, super important. For jobs that are especially taking more than a day, you've got to stay on top of communicating the client. If there's weather that's bad and there's a day that you simply cannot work, if you're like grading and you've got to communicate that with the customer. And the best way to do that is have good communication internally within your business. And so I'll probably one day make a whole video on that and probably show how we do it at our shop with a whiteboard with the clipboards underneath for each job. And we move magnets around as far as people is one color and equipment is another color and materials another color and be able to move those things around so people can look at that and have a really good idea of what's going on in all aspects and jobs of the company. So now this piece of paper here, another document is also available for course members. You can download it and you can make it your own. This is what we are using now for all our full service residential as well as commercial jobs. This is basically what we are trying to do. If you're in the course, you know this and if you've been following, listening, you probably kind of have a good understanding of what I'm talking about here. We're trying to kind of dumb down every position within our company. So I don't want it to be to train an estimator. I don't want it to take two years to train an office staff to be very proficient. I don't want it to take six months. I want it to be how do we dumb down each position? By creating systems and procedures that run the business instead of people. And so one of the ways that we want to do that is a person out in the field a lot of times they don't necessarily need to know the numbers or even want to know the numbers as far as cost for labor hours and cost for materials. They don't a Lot of times don't even want to deal with that. They don't want to deal with the billing or the invoicing. They don't want to deal with that aspect. They just know what they're good at out in the field as far as how to do the work, how it needs to happen, how much material they need, how much time they need. So what I'm trying to do is, okay, how can I take that and make them an estimator? By simply making them fill out a form, they ask them how long things will take and how much material will it take. So when it comes to the maintenance side, that's one thing for the landscaping, but the same thing applies for the maintenance side. So what we have done is very basic, very simple form that basically anyone could fill out. And it's very self explanatory, similar to the other piece of paperwork, the client name, the estimator name and the address at the top. Like I said, this piece of paper specifically is for the full service residential contract. But our commercial, everyone's basically identical. And so what we did is, we said, okay, what are the most common services that are going to be in a maintenance package? So when we in our area, maintenance is going to be obviously mowing, it's going to be weeding and bed maintenance that can include chemicals and pre emergent, you got trimming shrubs and bushes, you got plant and shrub fertilizer. Then do they want treatments as far as core aeration and fertilization and things? So that's one thing. Then you got winter work. As far as do they want us to show up in those three months of dormant or pick up things or rake up leaves or clean up the beds or there's nothing in the winter. Then we have an other section and then irrigation. Like do they have irrigation? If they do, does it need to be blown out? And so basically without having to know any numbers, a field person could basically fill out this whole form. Because if you're in the course, you know, we have a standardized pricing menu that the office then takes those numbers, crunches it through the menu, the standardizing pricing list, and then can come up with numbers. And so that's all the office side, they figure out the numbers, they figure out the estimate, they sell the product, they sell the estimate, they sell the job. What the estimator's job to do is just figure out, okay, I got my services over here on the left for the mowing line item. So I'm just going to start at the top of this document. The mowing item. All they have to do is ask the client, do you want weekly or bi weekly service? That's all they got to know because they all you got to do is circle one of those. So I'm trying to make it as simple as possible. And we know based upon our market, how many mows and how many visits are going to be in a weekly service, how many are going to be in a bi weekly. So we already know that number. We just need to know, are you weekly or are you bi weekly service? Then for the weeding and bed maintenance, all we need to know is number of visits and do we need any materials or are there any debris coming out and how much time is that going to take? Those three columns are pretty consistent as far as how many times per year and then each visit, what materials do we need and how long, how much time do we need most? An experienced field worker could fill this whole document out not knowing any numbers, labor cost, anything. They just got to answer these questions, okay, for chemicals, are we going to be using a caprene? Are we going to be using cast iron? Circle one or the other. How many pounds are we going to be using? And they know the poundage of a bag is, you know, 20 pounds. How many bags in their mind? Okay, that would probably take two bags. Okay, £40. We're going to do that once a year. Trimming shrubs and bushes. Most of the time we do that twice a year, usually June and December. Every single client might look a little bit different. So we can put two times per year. It's going to take a certain amount of debris, and it's going to take a day's worth of work, eight hours. You just fill in the boxes. Plants and shrub fertilizers. Do they want it? How many pounds of fertilizer will it take and how many times will it be done? Each year, they're just filling out the boxes. Next thing is the treatment package. We made it really, really simple. Instead of trying to customize every single client what they want as far as treatments, we have two very basic packages. A basic package where they have four treatments a year, and then a premium package, they have nine treatments a year. So if they have any sort of, you know, treatments and they just want it to look green, the basic is probably enough. All the person that's filling this out needs to do is circle this. We standardize all the pricing, and I'm going to be uploading a new pricing, standardized pricing list on the course here in a couple weeks of what we have updated in the past few months. We standardized more and more things, everything from equipment usage. So if we're using larger pieces of equipment and that is needed and put on an estimate form, we have a standardized price charge of what we charge for that. So anyways, back to this one. For the treatments, they just got a circle, basic or premium. Down to winter work, same thing. Are there any sort of services we're going to be needing during the winter? How many times will it be done each year and on each visit, are there materials and time? What will those be on the irrigation? Will it be blown out? Yes or no? Very simple. We standardize the pricing of those blowouts and the startups for the irrigation based upon the price of the mowing. So a lot of this comes back to the price of the mowing, which we determine by square footage, which again, the office can figure it out via square footage via satellite. So like it's very, very simple. We were able to take a document like this and sell a 6, $700 a month maintenance package. And the process of creating that estimate can be done in less than 20 minutes. And so that's what we're trying to do. Dumb things down. And I don't like using that term. That's really what we're trying to do. Make it as simple as possible for everyone. Because the person, the office person has no idea how much molt it's going to take. They have no idea how long it's going to take to trim all the trees. They have no idea how much debris is come out of that job. They just don't know those things. They don't need to know those things. If you have the systems in place where the field people who do know that fill out this document and obviously an estimator needs to have the communication skills and you teach them on other things besides just the field work. But what we're trying to do is so I don't have to go out and hire an experienced estimator that's going to cost me 80, 90 grand a year to get a really good person that has 20 years of experience and can just jump into the role instead of that, I want to create the systems and procedures that run the company instead of people. Because people come and go, but systems stay forever. So what you want to do is create as many systems as possible so your business is dependent on the system, not the people. Because people, people come up, come show up late, people get sick, people die, people change jobs, people get promoted, people find other work, people you know People's families, stuff happens. Systems don't change. And so what you want to be doing is creating those systems and constantly making them evolve obviously. But you want. They're just, they're solid, they show up every single day. So that's, that's what going to be pushing more and more in 2018 with the course uploading a lot more of this documentation. So if you are on the course, like I said, go to the template section. You're going to see the project management page. You're going to see this full service residential contract page and figure out. Because then what. This is what the office does, right? They take this page, this full service residential or commercial maintenance estimate form once it's been filled out.

On the bottom here there's a section for notes for things like specific things. For instance, today we did a big KANO association and they wanted those little styrofoam vents to be put at the bottom of their crawl space vents to be blocked each winter. So that was something we had to add here at the bottom. But anyways, once this gets completed we just take a picture of that attach to the customer profile. So it's always going to be there for us to reference. The office is going to get this. They are then going to. They know based on the hours what our hourly rate is. Then they just have to multiply across. For instance if they are mowing and we're doing bi weekly service, that's 19 visits a year. They're going to take 19, multiply it by let's say $40 for the MOW. They're going to get that number and drop, you know, probably just ride it over here. They're going to do the weeding maintenance. Okay, we're going to go once a month. That's 12 times a year. So that 12 would be right here. And let's say it's going to take 30 minutes per time, that's six hours a year. They multiply that by our hourly. Put that number over here. They just work out their way right down this whole thing. You know, coming to the basic package and the premium package we know it's a certain number of times the mow price. For instance, it's 40 bucks for the mo. One of these packages might be 10 times the mowing price for the whole year. So they would then take that, put 400 over here on this side. They're going to add up all the numbers here on the left once they are done each of those services and they're going to divide it by 12 and all of a sudden you have a monthly price for a 12 month moving contract for maintenance. It's very, very simple. And when this is a beautiful thing about it is when a customer asks us about something, when they ask us, well, what would the price be? If I take this service away, it immediately, we know the number. We're not making these numbers up. We're not rounding them not off. We're not just kind of shooting in the dark. We're not just saying 499 because no, the last one we did was close to that or so and so had an estimate around that. We are getting down to the penny as far as what we're going to be charging. We know that when we get that job we're going to make money because we've broken every single aspect down. We haven't just kind of looked at it and said, okay, it's going to take about two hours worth of work a week and just kind of average out the trimming and average out the weeding. We looked at every single item and it didn't take us hours, it took us minutes. So focus on systems. How can you make your business better with the systems? And I promise you these two pieces of paper, whether it be the project management for the landscaping for larger jobs, or whether it be the commercial and residential year round maintenance contract estimate form, because obviously we have another contract form that would actually make them sign for the year. But this, as far as getting the estimate, getting a clear, concise estimate, making it fast and efficient, there's just no way around it. So thank you all for listening. Thank you for watching on YouTube and Facebook. I really appreciate all the support. And like, like I said before, if you're wanting to join the course before it goes up, it is going up in price. It's going to go to 297 at least because I just got to cover a lot of these costs that we're getting cards right now for the web upgrades and online. Totally going to be worth it though. I promise you it's going to be a hundred times better for the users that are on it now. You're going to absolutely love the new design. They'll allow me to add much more content and it'll look a hundred times better. It'll be much, much more organized. So I look forward to that. Again, thank you for listening. I'm Mike Andes, landscapebusinesscourse.com check it out until next time. Be great because nothing else pays.