Mike Andes breaks down subcontracting in lawn maintenance: outsource tasks like fertilization to boost efficiency and quality, but you're trading control for time. The catch is managing contractors and protecting your reputation when someone else does the work.
Alright, couple more here. What are your thoughts on subbing out fertilization? We are a full service lawn maintenance company and are looking at subbing out our treatments so we can focus on the maintenance. This will help with labor and take a lot off my plate. And according to their pricing, we will still make up to $15 per application. I feel that they will provide a better service than we can currently offer and will still be the ones in charge of the service. Cool. So traditionally I do not like subbing out services. However, if you are focusing on mowing or maintenance and you're trying to go out and get commercial contracts, there might be pieces of that contract you need to sub out like irrigation or treatments or snow plowing. And that's totally fine. I like the idea of you just instead of buying a big snowplow, just sub it out to someone else. Get a piece of the pie to manage the contract. I like that. It's better than going out and trying to do, oh, I got to do irrigation, I got to do treatments, I got the tree removal, I go do stump grinding because I'm trying to get this one contract. Don't do that. Focus on your core competencies and then sub out the rest for contracts. Personally, I would not go out and try to sell fertilization only to then sub it out. I would only use that do that subbing if that work was coming to me because of the services I already offered. In other words, I'm already doing a mowing service and the customer asks, then I would hand it off to a sub. Just keep in mind, it takes a lot to manage a sub if you actually have a high level of service and quality. And when they make a mistake, the customer's gonna come to you. So if that sub burns their lawn with fertilizer, guess who's in trouble? You've now put in jeopardy the mowing services that you currently offer that customer. Alright, so keep that in mind. Subbing is great. Yes, you make money, but you are liable. And I don't even mean from a legal standpoint, I mean from the fact that the services that you do offer, that client could get chopped if anything happens poorly with the sub and their quality of work. So you really got to trust that sub and make sure that they're going to be a good representation of your business.
