Lawn Care is CRAZY Competitive! (Low-Ballers & Massive Companies)

What are my competitors doing? What, what, what about this? Oh, someone's working on a contract. Oh, they hired. Oh, they're doing that average. I should do the same thing. I don't want to do that. Well, that's just laziness.

Yeah, that was not good. Restart the fourth one, it was not making.

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes. And today I'm going to be talking about why you should never worry about competition if you are in the lawn care or landscaping industry. If you have no idea who I am, I am the founder of Augusta Lawn care. We have 60 plus locations around North America. And I just see time and time again people talk about how hard it is to operate in their local market because of so much competition. There's so many chucks in a truck. There's so many big players. It's always funny. There's always one or two excuses. Either a, there's a whole bunch of people that are small, like chucking the trucks by themselves, that are usually underpricing everybody, or there is the big guy. There's always these big companies. It's like, well, guess what? Everyone seems like they're somewhere in the middle. And so you've got to realize that competition is not a bad thing. Competition is a fantastic thing and it's also a great indicator that you have a great market.

I actually get really worried when we look at potential locations for Augusta Lawn Care. And I don't see anybody else is working there because if where there is no supply, typically it means there is no demand. Now obviously in an inefficient system, there can be those sort of of opportunities. However, in capitalism, usually if there's any demand, supply will eventually match it because the price is increased. But let's get past that for a second and talk about the four reasons why I believe you should never worry about competition.

The first is simply from a mindset perspective, and that is abundance versus scarcity. If you think that competition is in any way going to affect you negatively in your business, it immediately puts you in a place of scarcity versus abundance, which is there is work everywhere. I just need to go find it that everyone out there has a lawn for me to cut and bushes to trim and beds that need to have weeds pulled out of them, and I've just got to go find them. That abundant mindset will unlock so much for you and your business, not just from a growth standpoint, but from an employee standpoint, from opportunity standpoint, contracts, customers. It will be a massive unlock for you, just switching from a scarcity to an abundance mindset. This type of mindset is also why I always talk about people that give and are charitable. It does not matter how much you give in terms of dollar amount. Like, for example, a billionaire could give a million dollars to someone and literally it's a rounding. It doesn't even move the needle for them. That's not really the impact I'm talking about here. Because someone that makes say $50,000 a year might give $5,000 away, and that's a big sacrifice for them, but the amount it unlocks for them. And it's not about the fact that one person gave 5,000, other person gave a million, and the person who gave a million is somehow going to get away more of abundance mindset. It's not that. It's about the fact that that person that gave $5,000 unlocks something in their mind. That is what, when I can give this money away to a church, to a family member, to someone in need, to someone else that's underprivileged compared to them, they give that money away. It's not about the money. It's not about the person they're giving it to. It's the fact that by giving money away, it unlocks this thing in your brain, which, like, I have money in excess of what is required for me to survive. And by giving this money away, I unlock an abundance mindset. It means I have things to give because I have more than I absolutely am needing to survive. That mindset will unlock so much in your business, in your personal wealth, in your investing, the way you hire all those things, that mindset and that ability to be able to look at competition and say, you know what, there's plenty more customers. If there's more people that come into my market, if another competitor grows their business, if they get more employees, if they're successful, if they get new trucks and new equipment, that's fantastic. There's plenty of customers for me to still grow my business.

The second reason why you should never worry about competition in the lawn care landscaping industry is from a team culture standpoint, if you are always thinking about your competition and worry about them and what they're doing, how they're advertising and who they're hiring, what customers they got, what contracts. This is a big one. I always see people like, oh, so and so, just got this recent contract. Do you see them in that neighborhood? That hoa. Yeah, they got that. You see the strip mall up, they got that contract. Oh, my goodness. Like that kind of mindset is again, that Is going to affect your team culture. Why? Because the offense versus defense is a massive shift in your team culture. Who wants to play on a team where they score three points per game in the NFL? Nobody wants to play on that team. Who wants to play for the team that gets 40 points every single game? Absolutely. People love seeing offense. And you say, well, it doesn't matter as long as we win the game. Because as long as our defense was good enough and we held them all to zero points, we could still win every single game if we scored three points. That's true. And you're like, all that matters is wins and losses. But guess what? Really boring to watch a game that's 3 to 0 in the NFL. Just really boring. I'd rather have an explosive offense to attract a crowd. The team with the best offense in any sport are typically the ones who get the most views, the most people coming and watching, the most spectators, the most brand deals, all the rest of it. Best players usually want to be around that type of team. So if you have a great team culture, focus on the offense. Which means I'm more focused on getting the next score. I'm focused on getting the next customer and growing the business instead of defense, which is, what are my competitors doing? What, What. What about this? Oh, someone's holding a contract. Oh, they hired. Oh, they're doing that. I should do the same thing. That kind of defensive mindset will trickle down from you as the owner down to your team. And no one wants to work for an owner or for a business that is constantly thinking about defense. In other words, what is everyone else doing and how am I going to react to it? They want to be working for a company that's new offense. Where are we growing this business to? How are we creating better opportunities for the people that do work here? How do we create better opportunities for our customers? How do we solve their problems? How we do? That's the type of team that most people want to work for. At least the good people, because guess what? There's a lot of NFL players that do not want to play for certain teams. Why? They don't win and they don't get a lot of points, and no one wants to come and watch them. They have an empty stadium and no one wants to work for them. And if you're in a place where you're always playing defense against your competition, no one will want to work for you, at least not the good players.

Number three is networking. All right, again, why should you not be worried about competition? Number three is for the sake of networking, being able to refer work to people that you know in your community, other quote unquote competitors that are potentially better at certain services than you, you should refer the work to them. Because what goes around comes around. And maybe I'm really good at lawn care and they're really good at hardscaping, so I'll refer some hardscaping jobs over to them. I because guess what, there's a really good chance that they'll then be self aware enough to realize that I'm better at lawn care than they are. I might be really bad at hardscaping. They're really good at hardscaping. I'll give them some work, they'll realize that I'm really good at lawn care, so they'll give me some work. What goes around comes around. And if you treat other competitors like trash, you try to downplay them, talk them down. My biggest pet peeve is when an owner will talk down another competitor in front of a customer. Don't do it. You just like when I see when I have contractors or other people that are working for me or like real estate agents or insurance agents, whatever, and they talk bad about their competition, it's a massive red flag to me that they are in defense, they are in scarcity mindset and it's a massive turnoff. But that's aside, the networking standpoint is extremely valuable to you. If you don't have this mindset of worrying about the competition, what they're doing and that they're growing their business and hey, look and realize that a rising tide floats all boats. And if you're in a market where the economy is booming, if you can help all your competition grow and you are all getting more leads and you're able to refer work to other people that you potentially aren't the best at, that is least efficient in your business systems, that is least profitable for you and then they can refer back work to you that you're really good at and that they want to give to you. So again, networking extremely important. It's really valuable when you are really doing bad, when you need help on a job, when you need someone else to step in and help you out, guess what? Other landscapers probably a good resource for you when you're behind a job site, when you don't have enough material, when you're after hours and you need some supplies or you got someone broken and stole a bunch of your equipment, someone lends some stuff to you for a day or two, probably a good idea to know Some other landscapers and network with them and have a good relationship with them, share some stuff with them, share some equipment, give them some ideas, help them in their business. That's very helpful.

The fourth reason why you should never worry about your competition is because the competition makes you better. This is not a zero sum game where if someone else wins, you lose. It's not that way. You can all win together. And realizing that when someone else is doing better than you and they're a competitor, it should make you work harder. It should make you want to outdo them. And that's a good thing. That's the beautiful thing about capitalism, is the fact that it's an extremely efficient, efficient model, that whoever delivers the product to the customer at the lowest price, the best service is going to win the game. And so that makes capitalism extremely efficient because we're always in this ever ending cycle of how do we make it better, how do we make it faster, how do we make it cheaper? If we always are thinking about that, we're gonna make a better customer experience. And that's why capitalism typically, if left to its own devices, will work itself out because it is extremely efficient. So realize that competition, seeing other people, what they're really good at, what you know, marketing, what are they doing in hiring, realizing those things, then upping their game, them becoming better, them growing their business, forces you to improve your business. And instead of thinking about them, think about you. You just look at you and realize that them doing good makes you better. You want them to do better too, because it will up your game. You'll have to hire better people. You have to improve your interviewing process. Well, I don't want to do that. Well, that's just laziness. You got to realize that markets change. You've got to be adaptable. And you've got to realize that by looking exteriorly and seeing your competition do well, it should push you to do even better and improve your systems to the point where you are most efficient. You serve the customer the best, you attract the best talent. That's the name of the game. Hope that was helpful. And if it was, I really look forward to seeing you at Landscape Summit. January 13th, 14th and 15th, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It's gonna be an incredible event. It's a summit. It's a conference just for landscape business owners like you. We're gonna be digging deep on some of this content. I hope it's helpful for you. We'll see you then. Until next time. Be great, because nothing else pays.

All right, we're done.