The Secret to Finding AMAZING Lawn Care Employees (in a Labor Shortage!)

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. We have over 70 locations around North America. And today I'm talking about what you should be thinking when it comes to hiring employees for your lawn care and landscaping business. And going into 2022, it's going to be the hardest year we ever had for hiring employees. Now if you thought that 2020 and 2021 were difficult because of all the money that was pumped in by the government for people staying at home and for lockdowns and for stimulus checks, do not think that the absence of that is going to make 2022 any more easy to find employees. The reason for that is because a massive amount of money has been shifted to massive conglomerates and massive companies that are willing to pay a premium for frontline staff when they're labor crunch. The people that have the most money are going to be the ones that can afford to pay those higher wages. So instead of working for a lawn care business for $12 an hour, they're going to go work for Amazon for 16 or $18 an hour in an air conditioned facility in a warehouse. That's just what's going to happen. So what you have to do is raise your prices, be able to afford those higher prices, higher wages for your employees. But I want you to start thinking about really looking at.

Finding employees, finding your labor as a way of marketing. We've always talked about marketing for customers and getting new customers. Well, for most lawn care businesses in 2022, their problem is not going to be finding customers. There's going to be a massive amount of demand for, for our services because people are buying new houses, the real estate market is hot and a lot of the baby boomers are even getting older and needing us to do their services. It's gonna be a great time to be a landscaper for getting more work. The challenging part is gonna be finding the employees to do that work in a sustainable way and a high quality manner. So what can you do now to actually prepare for 2022 and make sure you have good employees on staff? Number one, I already mentioned raise your prices, make sure you can actually afford to pay and compete with the Amazons of the world and make sure you can pay a prem. Those laborers, you're not going to be able to offer them 30, $40 an hour, but you don't have to. You offer a place that's going to compete with other frontline employees and give them potentially a place where they can start their business or start their career and grow that you can help them learn in their knowledge with open book management and use P4P to really change their mindset around waste and being efficient throughout the day. Those are the type of things that they'll be able to work with you for two, three years and then go on and do something else. And that's fine for most people in this industry. As an owner, we should stop thinking that we're gonna keep people for five or 10 years. We should start being happy if we can keep people for two or three and they can start their career with us, get certain skills, develop their skills, and then move on to some other position. If it's not with you internally and in your business, it can be with another company, it can be with another, maybe not even in the landscaping industry, but just move on to some other place of management so they can grow their career and make more money. If you change your mindset and you can start thinking like that, you won't be as disappointed when people come and go every two or three months and when they're always, you know, you're always trying to think about 10 years down the road because an employee is really, really great and then they don't work out. That constant disappointment can be really, really demoralizing as an owner. So as we head into 2022, what can you do to actually take advantage of this labor shortage? So right now, if we look at our current time, as I'm making this current video, we're just starting December. So how can we plan over the next few months to actually get planning for spring rush right here? So spring rush usually starts for most of us in March or in April. So spring rush is coming. What can we do to get ready for it and actually have employees ready to go so we don't hit the spring rush and wildly are understaffed. Most people will not take advantage of the spring rush simply because they don't have enough employees. And the reason they don't have enough employees is because they wait for the demand, that is more customers and jobs and estimates to come pouring in in the spring rush. And they start trying to hire people right here. They start trying to hire new employees once the spring rush has begun and they're overwhelmed with work and they can't find anyone there because every other contractor, every single fencing company, roofing company, electrical, plumbing, every single business that's out seasonal is also starting and trying to hire people now here. So it's even a more competitive labor market. So what can you do about it? Well, the fact of the matter is that you're going to have to start now, right? December and January, you're going to have to start actually putting out ads, interviewing people and trying to get them to start before the spring rush even begins. And we are literally doing this at our local shop now. We've just recently hired three individuals and we actually just hired another person and we gave them a job start for the end of February, I believe it was. Actually in our market, we start mowing really heavily March 1st. So we had them start like a couple weeks before that, middle of February. And literally their start date is a couple months away from now. And you say, well, why would you do that? Why would you interview now, hire people now, have them sign a job offer and a compensation contract like two and three months before they're even going to start working? Well, the reason for that is because I know that if I can hire them here, that there's just no. They're going to have no problem finding a short term position. Over the holidays and into February, they have no problem. Every single retailer, every single delivery, UPS, FedEx, Amazon, then retailers like Target, they're all trying to get more employees during this time to fulfill the retail demand that's required for the holidays and the month thereafter. So if I can hire them now for a position in March or in February, there's just no reason why they can't go get another position until that time. So what I would encourage you to do is think ahead. Why not try to start hiring now? Because guess what? Guess what else is happening right now. All the other seasonal laborers are being laid off. The best employees in the construction field, in other landscaping businesses, they're being laid off right now. Why not come in now and advertise now when there's not a bazillion job postings for landscapers. Come in now, hire them, give them a great position offer and have them sign and get ready to start on a starting date out in the spring. Now, will you lose one or two of them? Absolutely. But if you can do a really great interview and sell them on why they should start with your business and you've set up a framework and a culture where they can actually see that this is the first step of their career, that you're going to actually help them get to the next spot of their career, you're going to set them up for success, for a management position or for something down the road, then they'll be like, hey, I want to work for this company. And I know for the next two months I've got to go find something else. And tomorrow, tomorrow they could find another position at a bigger company that's willing to pay them pretty good money. Not going to really concern. They're going to be a cog in the wheel. They're not going to. Big companies are not going to be worried about them long term. They just need them seasonally throughout the holidays. But they can actually go there, get the experience needed, and then have a start date ready, locked up and ready to go for you here. Because what I don't want to see happen is you come into spring rush, you don't have employees and you get bombarded with work. And then this is what happens during the time when demand is highest for our services and products. During the spring rush is actually the time when a lot of people will turn off their ads. When demand is high, it means your customer acquisition cost is extremely low, which means every single dollar you spend on ads during the spring rush is gonna have the largest roi.

Your customer acquisition cost during the spring rush might be $20, $30, whereas that same exact ad ran in the middle of September. October, November, December might literally be 120, $130 customer acquisition cost, simply because demand is lower later in the year. If you can advertise during the spring rush and spend money on marketing, it is absolutely the best bang for your buck. How can you do that? How can you actually advertise and pour more fuel on the fire of spring rush? You can have employees ready to go. And you say, well, what happens if I hire too many and there's not actually enough work for them? Guess what? There's going to be another hundred other landscaping companies. There's going to be another bazillion other companies ready to hire them the day after. You have to let them go. And I don't think you're going to have to. There's going to be so much work. There's going to be so many people going back to work. I believe this coming spring because now in September, after all of the.

The unemployment benefits worn off, well, I knew was happening. A lot of landscapers, this guy's mowing out of their truck, doing it for cash. Venmo me money. Send me some money on PayPal. Use the cash app. All of them are going back to work now because those unemployment benefits are over. So I feel like there's going to be a massive opportunity this coming spring to get lots of work. But it will only come to the people who have staffed up and have employees ready to go. And I believe you should be advertising and interviewing and giving out job offers and signing people up and giving them a start date for the spring. And if you're wrong, at the very worst, if you hire five people and you end up only needing four, that one person I can just guarantee you would find a job the next day. Is that disappointing? Yes. Do I think you'll actually have to do it? No. There's going to be so much work. It just really comes down to whether or not you're prepared, whether those individuals are skilled enough to actually do high quality work. And if you get the right people now and they're the ones sitting around right now just being laid off for the, for the winter season, get them now, get them locked up, stay in communication with them for the next couple months and have an incredible spring rush this coming spring. This is the type of analysis that we're going to be doing at Landscape Summit 2021. We're actually going to be talking about how do you create a marketing plan for finding employees? And so I really encourage you to be there. It's going to be January 13th, 14th and 15th. I lose money on every single ticket we sell just because it costs. It covers the food, the venue, the speakers, and all of my staff and team that help everything that goes into it. So it's not a money grab. We don't make money in the conference, we lose money in the conference. But I really believe it's a great event for you to be at. Bring your manager, bring a spouse, bring some of your employees. I know some landscapers literally bring their entire team to this event. We got dive very deep into the numbers, deep into your culture, deep into the leadership and the what you need to grow your business this coming year. So I look forward to seeing you at Landscape Summit. Just go to landscapebusinesscourse.com conference and sign up today. We'll see you there.