STOP Comparing Yourself to Other Landscapers! Why Many Lawn Care Businesses Fail?

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes from landscapebusinesscourse.com and today, just early in the morning, the shop is now empty. Everyone's filled out for the day out to their job sites. But today I want to talk about something that I was thinking about over the weekend and that is comparing yourself to other landscaping companies. And I think it's very damaging when a smaller landscaping company starts comparing themselves to a company that has a lot more employees, a lot more trucks. It's been established for 10, 15, 20 years. It's a very different business business. And especially as we head into winter, a lot of smaller operators will get very despondent or.

Just, just unhappy and like kind of depressed with the fact that they're heading into winter. They're not going to have a lot of work. They feel like, you know, everyone else, they see these big companies still rolling around doing projects and you know, having systems down for winter services and bush trimming and leaf cleanup. And yet now they're slowing down because they're small. They just got started. Especially though, like your first year, your first year of you had a busy mowing season, but now it's winter and things are slowing down. Like it's not right to compare yourself to a business that's been around for 15, 20 years, has commercial contracts in place, has massive residential clients that have been in place for 15, 20 years. They have work throughout the entire winter with a 12 month contract. The first couple years of your business are brutally hard, especially during the winter when it slows down, the leads aren't coming in, you don't get the phone isn't ringing anymore. Starting to wonder in terms of cash flow if you can make it. Like those are real questions that you have in your first and second year. And so to compare yourself to someone that's been doing it for 10, 15 years and has winter services figured out, has their crew all figured out, has 12 month contracts in place. Like you're going to absolutely only hurt yourself if you compare yourself. And it works both ways. If you're smaller and you're comparing yourself to someone bigger, you're going to get depressed, you're going to beat yourself up, you're going to feel like you're a loser. And that's just not the case. The first couple years are so hard in this industry. The first couple years, if you're investing back in the business, if you're going like, my first year I did 30,000 in revenue, right? The next year I did 200, the year after that I did 500. But those two years were brutally hard. Even though in the second year, even when we were growing so much, it's like you're putting all your money back in. We hadn't figured out winter services yet, and it was difficult. Like, during the winter, it was hard. And I think it goes both ways. I feel like a large company should also not compare themselves and get advice from a smaller company. If you're bigger and you have 20 employees, the advice that someone is giving you that has one employee or a solo operator is not the advice you should be taking. It's not going to lead to what you should be doing in your business. It's not the right thing for someone that has 10 or 20 employees to be like, oh, I need to go do a leaf vacuum and I need to spend my whole day work on the leaf vacuum. No, you're a leader. In the case of having 10, 20 employees and 15, 20 trucks, you should be out leading your team. You should be training them. You should be out figuring out ways to improve their careers and train them more. And so I really feel like an issue in this industry is the fact that we constantly compare ourselves, whether it be small companies, compare ourselves to bigger companies, or even same size companies, like, oh, well, they have so many trucks, their trucks are bigger, they have more employees, or they have bigger jobs than I do. Their trailers look bigger and better than mine. Like, those are all absolutely vanity metrics. The same way that when you go to a gym, you got guys in there that literally all they do is bench press and lift bicep curls. What they're doing is they're flexing their vanity muscles. The ones that look good when you have a tight shirt on. The ones that everyone can see. But they're not healthy. They're not healthy. Their lower body is underdeveloped. And I feel like a lot of times the reason we as landscapers do pathetic business habits and have pathetic business systems in place is because we're simply comparing ourselves to other YouTubers or people on Instagram we've seen that have the nice equipment, that have the big trucks, that they're taking vacations all the time, or they treat their guys this way. They pay their guys under the table, do them 10.99 and they don't pay them correctly in terms of when they're out in the truck and they're out working, they should be paid above board. Like, well, I'm just comparing myself to everyone else. I'm just flexing my own vanity muscles because I want a bigger truck. I want to have suspension on my trucks and I want to have big tires on my truck. I want to have brand new trailers, I want to have brand new equipment. Those are all vanity muscles that's keeping your business from being healthy. And a lot of that has to do with comparing yourself to other people. Whether it be you comparing yourself to your competitors, you comparing yourself to bigger companies that are already more established, and you're not looking at the first five years of their business where they were struggling and trying to figure things out and couldn't find good people. Like, those are all hard steps that take a while. Don't be hard on yourself. If this is your first winter, we're heading into winter right now. You can see everyone's gone. Most of the trucks are gone here. We're just kind of heading into winter, beginning of November here, middle of November. And like a lot of landscapers, this is a tough time of year. You've had a busy season. You have money in the bank, but now you're getting worried because you can't keep all your guys busy. You're not getting all of the leaf cleanups that you used to be getting in October. Like, this is not the time to beat yourself up or get depressed. And the reason that happens is because you're comparing yourselves to your competitor on the street. Another landscape that you see is really busy right now. You see them hiring people, you see them getting new trucks. Stop comparing yourself to other people. Be satisfied and content with what you have. I always say be content, not complacent. What that means is I'm happy with what I got. I'm satisfied with what, how big my business is or how many employees I have and the money I'm making. But I'm also not complacent. I'm not gonna sit back and try not, you know, I'm definitely gonna be trying to improve myself and make myself better, make my business better. As we head into winter, this is the time to make your business better. This is the time to work on the systems that you said you were going to work on all winter long. This is the time or all season long. Oh, I'm so busy. I'll work on that in winter, this is the time to do it. If you were gonna paint your truck, if you were going to implement P4P pay for performance, if you were going to implement open book management or start having meetings with your team, the winter is the time to do those things. And this is why we have Landscape Summit during the winter. This is a Time for you to step back, recalibrate and get ready for next season. And when we come for Landscape summit in January, January 14th, 15th and 16th, three days, you can come aside and you can work with other landscapers that are all trying to make their businesses better. They're all content but not complacent. And we're trying to make ourselves improve ourselves, improve our businesses, improve our leadership skills, improve our financial capability and our financial iq. These are things that are so important. What's different about Landscape Summit is the fact that the average business, when you do registration, we ask you what the size of your business is in terms of revenue. The average size of business at Landscape Summit this year is over half a million in revenue. What that means is you're going to be getting, when you come, you're going to be networking with serious business owners, people that have employees that are trying to get to that place. We're not going to be talking to a bunch of solo operators, people that just want to have a bigger truck or increase the size of their mower or make their truck fancier, put a decal on it. We're not interested in that. We're interested in making solid businesses and treating our teams correctly and leading by example and creating teams that can work the business without us being there every day. And so I'd love to see you there at Landscape Summit 2021. It's happening in January, just a couple months from now. Just go to landscapebusinesscourse.com conference. Sign up today. But more than regardless of what size of business you have, regardless of how many trucks you have, regardless of how many employees you have, stop comparing yourself to other people. Whether you're comparing yourself to people below you or people above you, it'll only lead to either depression or it's going to lead to you, to pride, like, oh, I'm better than everyone else. And it's going to keep you from your full potential because you're not going to go out and you're not going to learn and improve yourself and come to conferences and listen to audiobooks. And that's why we have Landscape Summit. I hope to see you there. Until next time. Be great. Nothing else pays. We'll see you then.