This will CRUSH your Lawn Care Business (and keep you small)

Hey everyone, It's Mike Andes. Landscapebusinesscourse.com Today we're going to be talking about how you can make more money in your lawn care business by making decisions quickly. I see this so oftentimes with landscapers and business owners in general that try to over analyze the decisions that they're making in their business. And I see it so often with landscapers. So we're going to talk about different scenarios and different tactics that I think you can use to make decisions quicker. Because at the end of the day, sometimes just flipping a coin and making a decision is better than trying to make a perfect decision. If you're in baseball, I'd rather you swing 10 times to the fences and get three home runs. That means you're going to strike out seven times. For example, you're going to strike out seven Times. Horrible. 70% of the time I'm going to lose. But you got three home runs. I'd rather you do that than for those 10 at bats, try to wait for the one perfect swing. I think so oftentimes in our business we're constantly trying to think about the perfect, the perfect decision instead of making a decision. Speed over perfection. That's what I want you to think about when it comes to your mowers and your equipment. Should I get a 36 inch mower or should I get a 48 inch mower? Should I get a stand on mower? Should I get a sit down mower? Should I get a push mowers only? Should I, should I get a ramp rack or should I get a MPR? Should I get a flatbed? Should I get a 3500 pickup or 1500 pickup? Like and you get over, you overanalyze everything. When at the end of the day you got to make action. Action is what is rewarded in business. Not making the perfect decision. So if right now you're thinking about what type of mower should I buy and what kind of brand, oh my goodness, what kind of brand. It's very simple when it comes to brand for your mower. Make sure it's commercial and make sure the dealer is close by so you can get repairs and parts and backups needed if something goes down in the field. It's not rocket science. Don't overanalyze and take 10 to do different demos at different sites. And now you're traveling an hour to a different dealer to try to test out their machine and you're doing all the numbers. Like just the time that you spend on all of that. If you're a small operator, it does not make a difference. As the business grows and you get 10, 15, 20 employees making those decisions actually really do move the needle. And you can spend some time thinking about it, run some analysis and some numbers and do some more testing. But if you're just getting started, if you have 1, 2, 3, 4 employees, literally flip a coin on the type of mower you're going to have. Flip a coin on the type of truck you're gonna have. I know there's people out there gonna hate this and say, oh no, there's only a certain type of mower you gotta have. You gotta make sure it's all lined up exactly right. And I think, hey, use common sense. Obviously if I'm doing one and two acre properties, I'm not gonna use a 21 push mower. It's not rocket science. But I'm not going to spend two years deliberating over if I should get a 52 inch skeg or a 48 inch gravely or if it should be a stand on versus sit on. I'm gonna make a decision and I'm gonna go for it. And if I'm wrong, I what's the worst that can happen as I grow my business? For example, if I get a 48 inch push mower, 48 inch stand on mower, and I'm like, you know what I really want a 48 inch sit down. Because it just, it's a lot of wear and tear on my knees, for example. That's fine, I'll get my 48 inch stand on. If I make a poor decision, I got that instead of a sit down, that's fine. Next year when I get my second setup, my second crew going, I'll get a sit down mower, it's fine. And I'll use the stand on for a few years and I'll get another one, another sit down down the road. So it's rocket science. Don't over complicate this and just have paralysis by analysis where you don't do anything because you're just trying to make the perfect decision. Same thing goes for trucks, same thing goes for your shop space. Like people just get so analytical and they watch 500 videos on YouTube when they just need to go out and make a decision. Now if you're really at the point, like man, should I be in my garage? Should I be in a storage facility? Should I go get a buy a shop? Should I go get like a warehouse? Should I just go get some land I can park my vehicles on? And get a storage container. Like there's so many options. And in my opinion, you want to reduce options. You just want to make a decision. And so go out and get a storage facility. It's really simple. You can literally today go get a 10 by 20 or 15 by 30 or whatever size, even a 10 by 10 in storage, like you really roll up the window, roll up the door and you can get your storage facility almost right away. There's there everywhere self storage facilities, basically everywhere. Ready to do business with you. Get started, just go do something. Don't spe next year or two years. If you're wanting to start your business deliberating over where you're going to park your trucks, that's not going to move the needle for your business. What's going to move the needle for your business is hiring and marketing. And those are the things you should be focused on, not the little tiny details of what type of equipment, what type of truck, where am I going to park the trucks, what's my logo going to look like? These are not things that you should spend years deliberating over. If you're the type of person that spends 30 minutes or 40 minutes trying to figure out the point the budget hours on a mowing estimate, I just cannot overemphasize enough to you that just making a good decision and just, just flip a coin, go for it. Like action over perfection, speed over perfection is what you got to think about. I was just talking to one of our franchisees in our monthly coaching call. I told him, hey, look, you're spending so much time on one of these estimates, try to get the budget hours just perfect. Well, is it, is it 8 budget hours or is it 10 budget hours? Like flip a coin, just go for it. In the amount of time that you spend 40 minutes deliberating over which one it is, you could have gone done another estimate, you could have got another at bat, you could have tried to swing for the fence again. And so at the end of the day, if you have a problem with estimates, for example, you're just over analyzing what should be on the notes, what should the budget hours be? And you're just hypercritical of your notes and how long you think the job is gonna take. And if it's gonna take 6 yards of material or 10 yards of material or 8 yards of material, and if it should be, it'll be 2 inches thick or 3 inches thick. And you have all these things rolling around in your head. I just encourage you, if you gotta set a timer, you know, set a timer on your phone and literally be like, hey, I am not going to spend more than five minutes on an estimate. You say that's impossible. What if you're doing a big project? We do massive projects in a matter of a few moments in terms of the estimator's time. Why? Because we have an estimator template. Have a template of all the different job notes that you would have for different types of work. So, for example, have a template for mowing, have a template for weeding, have a template for bush trimming, have a template for property clips, have a template for molten solution, have a template for paver installs, whatever services you do. Have a template that you can copy and paste your job notes or I should say your estimate notes from. Why? Because then you're going to add like one or two things to customize it. And there's your estimate. You don't have to spend 20 minutes customizing from scratch the verbiage on every single estimate. Copy, paste, and then slightly modify. And literally, it should be literally be five minutes or less to do any size project, whether it be mowing, whether it be pavers. There's massive 10, 15, $20,000 jobs that we do that literally within five minutes. The estimate is created because we made sure that the estimator can have speed over perfection. Maybe those notes are not exactly perfect, maybe they're not 100% right. But I'd much rather someone get to 95% accurate, 95% efficient, then try to spend three hours getting it to 99.9%, because guess what? You're never gonna get it to 100%. You're never gonna. Everything just perfect in your business. What you wanna strive for is getting it to 95% and then having speed of execution. Go do more, do more, get more jobs, hire more people. That's how you scale a business. By constantly overanalyzing and thinking and deliberating, you're slowing down the speed of execution. And at the end of the day, speed of execution is what builds businesses. Not getting the per or the exact right mower setup, or the right truck setup, or the exact right colors and logo schemes. That's not what changes the game. What changes the game is executing on the actions that you're making. And whether that is making a wrong decision once out of once in a blue moon, that's fine. You'll make up for it by the five more other decisions you got done in the same amount of time it would usually have taken you to do one set a timer. If you're doing estimates, set a timer. If you're doing invoicing, if you're deliberating over things, if you have struggled with that, set a timer and make a decision, flip a coin and get started today, making action.

Hey, everyone, Mike Andes here. Thank you so much for watching the video. Make sure you click down below where at Lawn Care Media, we're creating flyer templates just like these that you can make money mowing lawns, doing landscaping, and these flyers are going to help you do it. We'll see you in the next video.