Steps to Dominating PROJECT Management in Your Landscape Business

Landscape business course. This is Mike and these. And today we are going to be answering questions about project management. And if you haven't already, make sure you join the texting platform. That's where I'm getting all of these questions today. I don't know if we'll get to all of them. I'm going to try to go as fast as I can. So if you haven't already join by texting the word landscaping. Text the word landscaping to 855-575-1267. Again, that's 855-575-1267,. Text the word landscaping and you'll get added to the group so that when I ask for questions, you are notified. Big thank you to everyone that joined landscapebusinesscourse.com the new P4Pmodules complete on there, all of the training and access to the software that we built. Trust me, that software costed many, many times what it cost to join the course. So take advantage of that. Learn all the training you need for P4P as well as the software to actually calculate it, as well as Excel documents, everything. Check it out there. It's version one of our software. Check it out on there as well as lawncarewebdesign.com so many of you have joined with that. I appreciate that so much. All of those proceeds that I make from the course and from lawncarewebdesign.com go towards giving us better content. And you've seen probably in the past week some more creative stuff. We got a lot of stuff coming down the pipe and that's because we have Josh working for full time now on the media, for the franchise and for the public. So without any further delay, let's go ahead and jump right into the questions. There's 80 questions, it says in my inbox. We're just gonna see how many. Maybe we'll take 15 or 20. I asked, I sent out a text message that asked for questions about project management, on landscaping jobs. So let's jump into it.

August 4th. Yes. Okay, cool. When to give yourself a raise. Generally speaking, from when business is good. How much is too much for an absentee owner to take? Ben from Hawaii. Ben, as much as you can possibly take out your business, the better while maintaining that business from a cash perspective in a very good.

Position. So I really want you to have at least a couple months of revenue set aside in your business.

In a bank account or in liquidity. So maybe you put in stocks or some sort of low risk stocks so that you can keep it liquid Keep that for the business and then you personally can take as much money as you want after that. As long as the business is sustainable, you can usually take more from the business. As long as your cash flows are more consistent. You don't have big lulls in the winter or the summer, depending on your slower season. And the more consistent your product profitability, the more consistent you are with that number, the more you can take out of the business. So this is my $0.02. Next question. What is the best way to go about hiring a project manager so that I can get out of the field?

How much should their starting pay be? So at Augusta Lawn Care, we try to have a very flat hierarchical approach. We don't really have like okay, you are a mowing person, then a mowing manager and then a crew leader, and then a project manager and then an opera. Like we don't have a whole lot of, of different layers like that. We have it pretty flat and then we have designated project manager for jobs. That being said, the simpler you can make your operations, the less you have to pay someone that is a project manager. If you are expecting a project manager to have excavation and know how to build walls and patios and all the rest of it, you're going to need to be able to fork over a big chunk of cash. Because they probably have five other offers that they can make in the oil industry and the construction industry, and you're competing with all of those fol, you're going to have to pay them a lot of money. That being said, if you can simplify all your services, simplify. So you don't have 50 services, you have two or three that you focus on. And they're simple services and they're repeatable and they're scalable. Those people, you don't have to pay as much. So I recommend using that type of a model and then having your managers being more or less the people who are people people. In other words, they manage the people. They don't manage projects as much as the people that are out working. And so that's one way to look at it. Another way is go pay someone a significant amount of money to be a project manager and then be able to offer those other big services. The question is, do you want to be trying to find laborers that are willing to work in those type of environments carrying 70 pound blocks, or is it hard to find people that can actually operate excavators in your market? These are things you got to think about. And a lot of times if you want a project manager that is going to kind of manage all of your projects. They need to be pretty skilled. They are going to be expensive. You got to be willing to pay them something. And if I was you, I would pay them based upon profitability on those projects or even just budget hours versus actual hours for them to be incentivized to get them done quickly and efficiently. Again, I could do a podcast on every single one of these questions, but let's just keep moving along. Where would one start with processes and procedures for landscape projects? How to outline the project in such detail that someone with little experience can get plugged into the system? Alright, so again, spend a whole episode on this. But what I would say is a couple takeaways if you listen, if you've been at the conference, you know how important these are to me. Number one, your estimate notes need to be so detailed that anyone from your company should be able to walk on the property and based upon just the notes from the estimate be able to perform the work. We do our estimate notes and our our job notes the exact same. So that way what the customer sees is what the crew sees. Which means sometimes on the estimate tells where something is at in the property or something. That's really clarification for our crew. But that way the information the customer sees and the information that our crew sees is exactly the same. There's no miscommunication. Second thing. So I talk about estimate notes. The second thing is project management videos where the estimator takes a video for the crew and so between the estimate notes, which should be really, really clear and the project management video, there should be absolutely no questions. And guess what? There always is people are people and there's going to be things fall through the cracks and customers change their minds, they don't forget, they don't remember things and all sorts of chaos. But doing those two things will dramatically help at least. All right, next one from Brandon in Michigan. Hey Mike, how do you typically present a landscape project to your client? What does that process look like? We are looking at investing in.

Vistura landscape design software to better sell installation services through a much more visual method. Any recommendations? Okay, so I'm not going to talk about too much about landscape design software because we have not used it a lot at Augusta Lawn Care. We are much more focused in creating a scalable model and something that scales. Something that's simple, that I can get lower level of laborers to join and get profitable and make more money on P4P quicker and not have to spend 5 years teaching them on excavators and skid steers and track loaders and how to do certain types of trees and a whole bunch of other chaos. So we don't really use landscape design software. That being said, if you really love hardscaping, this is probably a great way to sell jobs. I would recommend making sure that the customer pays for the design. If they want the 3D beautiful design software layout that you're going to do for them, make them pay and then have that money go towards the project. If they accept. Do not sell yourself short and spend hours creating these designs for free. That's ridiculous.

They need to pay what you're worth and the last thing you want to be doing is spending a whole bunch of overhead and un billable hours just to get these projects. Because guess what, they a lot of times aren't super profitable unless you are managing them yourself. Because as soon as you get a project manager that's just completely overhead and isn't actually working, that's a big chunk of profit coming out of your jobs. And you better have a lot of jobs to make up for that guy. If he's making 50, 60, $100,000 a year because he's so skilled and experienced, you better make sure you have a lot of jobs filling up the pipeline because he's taking a piece of every single one in the form of non billable hours. So just something to think about. That's again why I'm not a huge fan of projects is because it requires a very skilled person that's going to cost your company a lot and that person is not usually working. They're just non billable hours. They're just managing. It's expensive. For the price of that one person you get two or three labors doing weeding and mulching jobs and things like that. Again, just my opinion. If you love landscaping and hardscaping, having software where you can do designs is super cool. Great way to sell it, make sure you charge for it and then have that just credit towards the job. Or just make them buy it up front as an option. Like hey, I can either just do an estimate for you with a quick sketch for free or I can do a 3D design for you and it's going to cost $500 and it doesn't get refunded to the job. All right, next question. Hi Amity here. How you deal with overworked and saying no to customers because you're booked out? Also, how do you deal with customer calling office and complaining every week about the services? Seems we can't please them. Do you just let them go? Appreciate it. Thank you. Appreciate all you do for the lawn care industry. All right, Amity. How do I deal with overworked employees? This is a tough one. This is something that I really hate because I know the guys work really, really hard. And so when it is really hot, especially right now, which is for most of you listening, it's really, really hot. Or if it's really, really cold or it's really, really wet or whatever is happening. I hate when they feel that way. We try our very best to not make them work too many hours. We try to be sensitive. By the end of the day, you gotta get work done. And if five people ask off and you have 20 people out working, that takes a lot out of your labor force, and that's 25% of your labor's gone. That can hurt you. So you do might have to ask them to work longer hours when they do come back for the four other days out of the week, for example. So, yeah, overworked employees, you gotta be empathetic because it's very hard work and it kills me when it's happening. It's just one of those things that we are probably pretty soft on, honestly, in terms of letting people like, you know, hey, you're not feeling well, okay, we'll let you come off for the day instead of just pushing through. But again, you got to have that balance of getting work done and being a human being and being empathetic to that. It's very hard work out outside. In terms of saying no to customers because you're booked out. This is not a bad thing. Make this a sales pitch. Instead of saying, oh, I'm sorry, we're six weeks booked out. Say, you know what? We're six weeks booked out right now. Why don't we go ahead and get you on the schedule now? Because we're starting, we're going to keep booking further out, and we want to make sure we get you on the schedule. When you start booking far out, you use as a sales tactic. You do not use it as a negative thing. How do I feel about customer calling office and complaining? If someone's complaining every single week, you need to raise their price to accommodate for their pain in the neck. And if they drop you, who cares? Or B, you say, look, I don't think we are fitting your exact needs, and there's probably a better fit out there for you. We're willing to mow your lawn until you find somebody else, but we are not going to be continuing to mow your house. They might completely change their tune after that because they like you and they've just been a pain in the neck this whole time. And they might just all of a sudden be a perfect customer. Or they go find someone else and they move on. And they don't hate you because you just were honest with them. Hey, I don't feel like we're a good fit. Why don't you go find someone else, here's maybe a few options for your other competitors and.

Go from there. All right, next one.

Skip job site management notes that we talked about that. All right, what percentage of your big shop's revenue comes from project versus maintenance?

It's about. In terms of revenue wise, about 50. 50. But again, remember that out of your projects is going to come material cost. You got bigger equipment, so you have more overhead because of those projects. So it's not necessary. You can't say, oh like 50% of our.

Profit comes from that. Definitely not. Even if it's 60, 40, like 60% for project, 40% for mowing. The fact is that for mowing there's only labor costs going in. Whereas for projects, you got equipment cost, you got material costs and a whole bunch of other stuff. And it increases our insurance more than it does the other services for maintenance. So for someone to say, oh, well, 80% of my revenue comes from landscaping, so I should really focus on that. Well, guess what, you. 50% of your profit could be coming from your maintenance. Just keep that in mind. And vice versa. All right, next question. How do you price materials with all the tax cooked in? Currently, I'm charging $60 per man hour, but I really just made that up off the top of my head. At least you're honest. Also, how do you delegate projects, tenor time with the company, etc. Okay, so how do you price materials with the tax, with all the taxes cooked in? So in our state, we charge sales tax on everything and including labor, the whole deal. And so.

We get charged taxes, then we pass that along to the customer. We use a reset. You can get a reseller's permit, so you don't have to pay sales tax on the raw materials. And then you still got to charge in our state, the customer for sales tax. So I don't know exactly what you're talking about there, but in terms of pricing the materials, I'm going to be charging tax on it no matter what.

Currently I am charging $60 per man hour, but I really just made that off the top of my head. How Do I? You delegate. How do you delegate projects? Okay, so in terms of who's the project manager that is going to be coming down to the scheduler, who they're comfortable with, does that person communicate well and looking at the estimate and then asking, okay, who's going to be a good fit for this job? Occasionally the estimator, because they were at the job will literally make a note like so and so or you know, these people are the only ones that could be the ones managing this job. But we try to only take on jobs that most of our crew could manage. That being said, if someone's new, they're just not familiar with the systems in the business, if they don't have the confidence, the skill or the experience, then they're not gonna be able to manage a bigger job, for example. But the goal, instead of trying to find more and more experienced people that can do those jobs, we try to dumb down the systems, dumb down the services, so that people who are newbies can get up to speed a lot faster and become project managers on those jobs. Now when I say project manager might just be a 40 yard mulch installation, but they still have to manage when the product's getting there, who's going to be with them, where they're moving materials. That takes a level of leadership. And so we try to focus on that versus delegating, you know, four or five hundred hour projects that have excavation and chippers and materials being all over the place. So in terms of the scheduler, she's gonna be looking at the estimate versus.

Who'S available the next day and determining, okay, you know, experience tenor. Things like you mentioned come into play. But really it's gonna come down to who's communicating with the office, who's who takes accountability, who talks, who's good at talking with the customer. Those are all things that she kind of weighs out to determine who's gonna kind of lead on a job. What do you do when you have time overages on a job and you already have that crew scheduled for a new job to start say the following week, but there are still hours or days left to complete a job? There's a few things you can do. Number one, if there's overages on a job and it's your fault, that's when it becomes difficult. If it's overages on time because the customers ask new things, you should have been doing work, change orders throughout. Now if you're booked out solid for six weeks and someone midway job starts adding all of these things, you got to eventually say, look, we're booked out. I got to be off this job next week. So, like, you can add all this stuff, but we're going to have to come do it in six weeks. Like, we got to put you on the schedule. It's going to be a separate estimate and a separate job we've got to get completed. What's been put on the schedule now, that's what needs to happen if the customer is adding things. Now, if you and your crew are just slow or the weather's bad and you've been rained out or equipment breaks down, whatever might happen, that's when you sometimes have to be just honest with the job that you're supposed to be at the next week, because you can't really, like, tell the person, hey, we're back in six weeks if it's your fault. And so you really got to be able to just tell the customer that you're supposed to be there next week. Hey, I'm really, really sorry. We're going to have to start three days later because we're just running behind on this job due to rain, equipment, etc. And if they cancel, you know, hopefully you've got 50% down on that large job. If they cancel, hey, you got you. You filled their time anyways with this job that's gone over. And then two, if they usually don't cancel because they've given a deposit and they're usually pretty understandable, like, hey, if it's been raining like a deluge for the past week, they understand and stuff. They can usually understand if they're a reasonable person, that trucks and equipment can break down or people don't show up because they're sick or whatever it might be. And can you use some random excuses sometimes to get that person to be more understanding? Yeah, you can say, like, hey, it rained, when really, you know, it's because four of your guys didn't show up to work on Friday and you need to get the job done. So you can, you can use some of those excuses sometimes because people are usually pretty accepting of the fact that there's things in this industry that cause delays. All right, we got a few more. Wow, we got. Whoa, we got too many. Okay, let's just try to get a few more of these. What systems? Dylan from Tacoma. What systems do you have in place for efficiently getting materials to a job site? We struggle with depending way too much time in big box stores. Have you used delivery systems? If so, is it worth the cost? Are they reliable with deliveries? So when we talk about raw materials like rock blocks, pavers, etc. Always try to get those delivered to the job site. Unless you have bulk materials at your shop where you can load up in the morning, in which case you need a dump trailer. But in general, if you're smaller, if you don't have big dump trailers or big trucks, have it delivered to the site. It's always worth it. Companies do not make money on their deliveries. They make money on the product itself. And even if you think it's, oh, it's crazy, it's $60 for delivery, I promise you the time it takes you to drive there, sit there, wait for them, have a big vehicle to transport those goods and materials, just get the delivery. It's almost always better. In terms of little things, it sounds like big box stores, you're going getting like little parts and pieces. I would make sure that you do that somewhat more efficiently by having like a whiteboard in your office that you keep track of the things that are needed. And then you have one person go and buy 10 things instead of 10 people. Going once a day and going to the big box store. Trying to combine those runs to the store would be helpful. How do you relay the details about the job that the customer told you to the project manager? I talked about that already. Job notes and project management video can you give an explanation of how you would structure P4P on days when the project manager or owner of the company has to step in for a few hours or even be involved during the whole project? Okay, so I'm going to assume that you have watched the P4Pmodule in the course. What you would do on this is you would add yourself or the project manager as an employee and allocate hours towards that job. On the right hand side of the Excel spreadsheet, you're going to add those hours as the job is going on, that you worked on the job site and it's going to become a part of the calculation at the end of the job and you're going to become an employee. Remember, as you add the employees, you put how many hours they worked on that job. You're just going to be another employee. So clock your hours, keep track of it every day and that's what you should do.

What systems have you found beneficial and important while deploying an entirely new crew and crew leader to a job to ensure efficiency and leaving a quality job? We try never to have a new crew, new crew leader on a big job. Like someone's got to be somewhat experienced with at least our Systems. Even if the person doesn't have the experience for for the type of work they're doing, they need to be able to know how to use our software systems, how we're supposed to do a walkthrough, how we communicate with the customer, communicate with the office, how we make notes of when materials are leaving the yard, things like that. That's important to have regardless of whether or not they know how to actually do the work. You might have a brand new project manager that's really good with operating equipment or grading or doing a big installation. And is the manager on the job. Someone's going with that person that knows how to use the software and the systems has been around for a while. Alright, last question. This is a long one. Mercy. How do you avoid making trips back to manage the project? Basically send your team and they know everything that needs done and what's expected. I have a mowing team, 100% self sufficient and a landscaping team has questions and one to two visits at a job site by me daily. And it's hard to perform applications. My role as I am the only licensed tech at the moment, it really cuts down on my productivity. More elaboration on the project videos and how to streamline those projects would be great. Okay, so this goes right back to how to streamline your projects notes and your video. We'll go back to that in a second. Are very, very important. The next thing is the minute you show up on a job site, if you take ownership of the job, like dominate it and like you're talking to the customer. As soon as you talk to a customer after the project manager's there, you've completely disarmed him because the customer will always want to talk to you. If you're the estimated, the owner, whatever. They will always want to think that you're the decision maker if you ever show back up on that job. So our goal is for the estimator never have to show back up on the job. Unless it's like something's terribly going wrong or a project manager got sick or something crazy and it's not a good thing if he has to show up. And so how you do that? Clear job notes, Clear estimate notes. The project management video is simply after the estimate is done, the estimator takes a video of everything that was talked about in the walkthrough with the customer and then that video is sent to the project manager and the entire crew going to be on site and they literally see the estimator point things out on his cell phone. With a video on the job. So that paired up with the estimate note should be very, very clear. And the big thing is they need to know that you're not going to step in and overpower them, that they can take ownership. You give them responsibility, you back up their decisions if they decide something. There's a balance there too, obviously, but you've got to be able to empower them and not like step over them. And even if you think that they're doing something wrong, not to just show up and dominate, because if you do that, they're just gonna step back and let you do your thing and the customer's gonna always wanna talk to you and it's gonna become a mess. You're gonna be tied to that job forever. They need to be given the tools, that is the notes in the video to do the job. And then you need to let them go die on their own sword and figure things out. There's a balance there. Again, supporting them, trying to help them as much as possible, and also making them accountable so that they take ownership of the job. Very fine balance there. But having the notes and the. And the video, very important. And then not disempowering them later in the job by showing up or just making decisions for them or being the liaison between them and the customer, they should be in direct communication with the customer and so there's not any issues with communication. So that's my two cents on that. Hopefully something on project management helped was said today. Make sure you check out lawn careweb design.com if you need a website and make sure that you check out landscapebusinesscourse.com and I look forward to seeing you there.