The Secret to Getting Employees to Care

One of the best ways I've found to be able to retain great team members, have a great culture, is using open book management, essentially where you're going to share all the numbers of the business with your team. Here's the thing, if you want people to work hard for you, it's probably a good thing that they like you. If they don't like you, they're probably going to constantly be playing for the downfall of your business. They're going to drive your trucks really hard. They're going to not care about your trucks or equipment. They're not going to care about your customers. They're going to constantly just be trying to look for ways to waste your money and bring the downfall of the business. Siphoning off gas from equipment and trucks. That happens when someone doesn't like you. Well, what's the number one way for someone to not like you is for you to hide things from them and not share information with them. And so if you're not going to share the information of your estimates and how much your hourly rate is and how much things cost in the business, they're not going to trust you. And if they don't trust you, they're not going to like you. In my opinion, it's the best thing to just share all the numbers with the team. And that can be a scary proposition. Ultimately, they're usually going to find these things out regardless. For example, they'll see an invoice laying out on the desk when they get back to the office, or they'll talk to a customer and the customer will have printed off the estimate and then you're going over with with the crew members. So these things happen. And if you're hiding things from them and then they find out about them later, it's not going to lead to trust. And if you don't have any trust, they're not going to like you. And if they don't like you, they're going to start planning your downfall. Open book management can be scary if you are making a lot of money or if you're not making any money at all and you're actually losing money. So let me look at both angles. First off, if we're making a ton of money and you're like, well, I don't want to share how much money the business is making because we're making a lot of cash and I don't really work there very often. I know what the feeling is. Like, I remember when I first stopped working at the Bellingham shop, my very first Augusta Lawn care location and at the time we were making more money than we ever had before. And yet I was only working at the office for maybe an hour a week and now I don't work, I don't go to the office at all. And so it can be intimidating almost to have open book management where they see you're making all this money and all this profit and they're making, you know, 20, 30 bucks an hour. Now here's the thing, when you're making a lot of money, give profit sharing. So when there is a lot of profit in the business, have a profit sharing program that they get a piece of the pie so that you can still share the numbers. And by sharing the numbers they still want the business to do well and increase the bottom because they get a piece of the action. On the flip side, if you're not making any money or you're losing money, it's still a good idea to share the numbers with the team because you can kind of get the underdog mentality and rallying the team around the fact that like we've got to make these changes and we've got to make these cuts and we've got to improve the bottom line or else we are going to be in a bad spot. And that can usually get like the entire team rallying around, kind of coming out from the ashes and really trying to turn the business around. This is the thing most team members are going to look for proof and evidence of you making money hand over fist on their dollar, on their dime, on their time. And so you getting more trucks that are new. They're thinking, oh my word, the boss is making all this money. In your mind you're like, there's no way for us to be able get all this work done this week unless we have a couple extra trucks. I'm going to go get debt. I'm going to really extend myself here to be able to get these trucks so we can deliver on the promises to customers. But to your employees, if you don't share the numbers, they just assume because you got two new trucks that you're making money hand over fist. So if you're not making money hand over fist, prove it. Just share the numbers with them. Now a lot of times when you open up the books for your team, they're not going to want to see a profit and loss statement or Excel spreadsheet. They don't like math, they don't like numbers and all of it just seems like a bunch of Chinese to them. So what we did when we first opened up the books was to make it really, really simple is we took all of the revenue of the business, which at the time was about 1.1 million, and we took $1 bill. This is real money for every $10,000. So it was 110 $1 bills that we brought to the team meeting. And then we went and started going through the actual profit and loss statements. I just started going through line by line. So trucks and equipment, okay, $50,000. Bobby, okay, fuel, $40,000. Okay, well, because $10,000 is for every $1, I'm going to get four $1 bills to Bob. Okay? And I would just go through every single lineup. Of course, when I got to wages, it was all of a sudden like, okay, half the stack of cash, there's wages. And so everyone got a different line item on the profit and loss statement at the very end. There wasn't a lot left over. I said, hey, this is the profit and this is how we grow the business from. This is how we actually are able to aff.

Etc. And I want to be able to do more of that. But what we need to figure out is how to get more of this money from all of these different line items on our profit and loss, these expenses back into the profit pile. And so everyone had their specific line item on the expense side of things. And the very next team meeting, they had to come back to the team meeting with an idea of how to reduce the expenses in that category. So, for example, the person with wages, they would come up with ideas like, hey, instead of having us all wash the trucks at the end of each day, we should have a high schooler come in the evening or on the weekend and do that for us because they're not going to be on overtime and they're less skilled. Good idea. There's a whole bunch of ideas. The trucks and equipment people, they had ideas of, okay, we should have a rag and a spray bottle in every single truck that we wipe down at the end of each day. And then we don't have to actually clean out the truck ever because it's just wiped out at the end of every single day. Then what we did is every single person put forward their idea to save money. And we voted on which was the best idea. We implement, like four or five things. Everything from how to sharpen the blades faster, how to do oil changes faster. They came up with all these ideas. We voted on. The best one ended up being the estimator, which was me at the time, should not be driving A truck. Instead, they should be driving a car to have better fuel economy. And from that day on I was relegated to a Honda Civic. But then what I did is because everyone voted on that one, I took all $110 one bills and gave it to that person that brought that idea forward. By doing that and having the actual tangible cash, it just made it a little bit more real world for all of them instead of having a big chart of numbers. And so I recommend if you're going to open up your books, if you're going to show the numbers, try to make it meaningful with a demonstration like that. Or at the very least make sure your profit and loss fits on one page. Don't have like a five page everything categorized in like 50,000 different expense items. Make it really simple so that you could literally show them a pie graph. Here's our revenue. Okay. This much was wages. This much was equipment. This much was insurance. This much was fuel. Just cover the basics. They understand and see the math of how the business is operating. And a lot of them will start to be like, oh my word, we pay $50,000 in fuel, we made $30,000 here just for insurance on the trucks. They start to actually understand where the money's going. Instead of thinking, oh, I work for $20 an hour and the boss makes 100 do per hour and I'm getting ripped off. That's not how it works. Most of us are really making 10 to 20% profit margin. Prove it to them. And furthermore, by them understanding these numbers on open book management, it'll improve their skills and get them to the next level of their career so they can take those skills and make more money. And a final note, share everything. Don't try to hide one single aspect. So for example, some people, like, I don't want them to know my hourly rate. Why, like just show everything in the business and if you're trying to hide something, yes, it will be exposed. Well, in that case, you probably shouldn't do open book management. In that case you'll get all the benefits that come with having trust and people actions at your organization, understanding why the business is doing what it's doing.

One of the things I think is really important when it comes to culture and having a great team is I expect the leader of the organization, whether you're a general manager or the owner, to be the first one to show up and the last one to leave. Now I understand there's going to be one off times where a project goes super late and you're just not Able to stick around to the very end before I lock this door. I don't want anyone else still on the field if at all possible. What I did when I was actually in daily operations is I would make sure if I had any admin work, paperwork, follow up phone calls, any sort of office stuff, I just push it all to the end of the day to make sure that when the crew got back, I was here. And I expect the same thing of my general managers. The reason for that is because if you have a crew that works till 8 o' clock at night and they know they're two, three hours after everyone has left the shop and they get back here, a lot of disillusionment can happen. Like they're tired, they're stressed, it's been a long day and to come back to no one being here can be pretty tough. And so just from a cultural perspective, from a morale perspective, I want to be the one that when they drive at 8 o', clock, I'm out helping them unload their truck, getting their equipment off, making sure that they're positively reinforced for going the extra mile that day. Now, in the event that you do need to leave early from the shop or you have a family gathering to go to or something like that, I really recommend having a communication channel with your entire team and you tell everyone publicly what you're doing. Otherwise they're just going to assume that you're always chilling out on the beach. And for all they know, you could be going home and doing your follow up calls or like on your route to go take someone to the hospital, you're trying to finish up, you know, collecting invoices. They don't know though, so if they don't see you ever, they're going to assume the worst. So I like to be there in the morning when they first get started. I'm making sure they're getting their keys, I'm giving them high fives and get water. I'm making sure they're set up for their day for success when they get back. I'm making sure there's positivity, I'm making sure I'm trying to help them if they're late after getting the project finished. That is one of the biggest things I've seen in great leaders when it comes to general managers and owners and where their team actually has buy in. And the morale of the team is high despite having long days, projects that go over budgeted hours, it happens all the time. But being there when they show up in the morning and being There when they get back to the shop in the evening, is a huge morale boost for the crew. One of the best ways to be able to retain your best talent, the employees that go above and beyond that are always kicking butt is having an upward trajectory for their career and actually having a place for them to move into. Whether it be to go from a field worker to a team leader, to an estimator or a general manager. Having that sort of upper mobility can actually allow you to get someone for a lot cheaper that otherwise wouldn't work for you, or potentially someone that has a lot more experience, but they're willing to start at your level because they know they can grow with the company. In my opinion, one of the biggest reasons to grow your business, whether it be multiple locations or just in terms of revenue, is to be able to create positions that your best talent can move into. Otherwise you'll lose them. If you have a great worker that's out in the field, if you don't create other positions, if you don't create other services, if you don't create opportunities for them to become a team leader or an estimate, or learn sales or learn management, if you don't create those opportunities, they're going to move on to someplace else. The entire reason I actually went from Augusta Lawn Care being one location to then franchising and having 150 locations is I realized that I had a couple of really, really good team members that if I didn't grow and expand and push their limits, they were just going to leave onto something else that was more challenging. And so creating that upper mobility inside your company is super important. It's obviously important to be a great talent magnet and attract great people. But if you can become a talent developer and cultivate what is currently there and make it better, you'll be start be known as an employer that people want to work for as not a place just to start their career, but also be able to grow it and get to the next level of their career. That is like the foundational perspective for my field crew members that I employ is like, look, you don't want to be mowing grass forever. And I'll say that I don't want you working for 10 years pushing a lawnmower. I want you to be able to take those skills. I want you to learn paper performance. I want you to learn about open book management. I want you to come to optional means that we have for the team where we explain business, we explain credit, we explain credit scores and loans and how to get your first car and how to get your first mortgage. These are the type of skills that we try to teach our team members because we want them to move on. I don't want them to be entry level forever. And if they, if you actually want that for them and you actually want them to get the next stage of their career, that might mean leaving your place of work and being happy for them because you ultimately didn't have the position for them to move into. And so either a, you're going to grow your business so they can grow with you, or realize that if they grow their skills, they might have to leave your organization simply because they need to be able to make more money, gain more skills, want to have a bigger challenge. And it's important, in my opinion, to be happy for the person that does have to move on to something else that is better for them because the rest of your team is watching to see if you actually mean it when you say you want to see them get to the next stage of their career. At Augusta Lawn Care, we specifically have something called a 3F program, franchise fee forgiveness. And it's essentially where if someone works at an Augusta Lawn Care location for two years, they'll actually be able to join the franchise for free. So it saves them like $25,000. And that's cool. What that allows people to be able to do is hire frontline team members or managers that otherwise would never work for them because they're overqualified or they need more money, but they're doing it for the upward mobility, the chance to learn and grow on someone else's dime and then go start their own franchise by themselves and own their own business. And you might not have that, but creating some sort of chain, some sort of ladder, they can grow their career is super important. And if you don't have the intention of growing the business really big and creating those more management type positions or other opportunities for them, you can also give them something simple like an audible program or books and incentivize and create a program around them, learning and educating themselves, which ultimately will get them to a place where they can make more money. But if you want a step by step guide of starting a lawn care business specifically from zero to past $100,000 in annual revenue, watch this video right here.