Mike Andes says pick a few core services like irrigation and weed treatment, then build systems around them. Offering everything at once, from putting greens to patios, kills your ability to scale and makes training a nightmare.
To this day, it is still extremely painful for me to have to say no to specific services like I did with Karen. But in this case, when I have a general manager stepping in and I want to make the business as hands off for me as the owner, I want as little friction and as simple services as possible. Irrigation and treatment of the lawn for weeds. Do you do seeding or we don't? I know there's lots of money to be made in fertilizer and irrigation, but when I'm first getting started, I've done this mistake in the past. That is I just offered everything to everyone. I did putting greens and patios and everything from the get go. I'm not saying you shouldn't do those services. There's lots of money to be made in those services if you can figure out the labor behind it and figure out how to train it and make systems around it. But for me, in my case, where I'm not going to be here every day and I want to make this as scalable and simple as possible, we decide what our core competencies are and then we can train our staff and make sure we're most efficient at those specific services.
