Will Kelly warns landscaping owners not to chase one-time spring cleanups as their main business. A single cleanup pays well and earns a 5-star review, but recurring mowing and weed-control contracts are what actually keep crews busy and profitable year-round. Treat cleanups as bonus work for rainy days, not your revenue engine.
The one-time property cleanup, great work. You are able to keep one guy busy for most of his day. In an 8-hour day, 5 hours of work. He goes out, he installs the mulch, he does a great job, gets a 5-star review from the customer. Awesome. But then what? What about tomorrow? What about next week? You sold a one-time project that the crew went out and did, and then now we have to go out and do it again and again and again and again and again. You're constantly stuck in this loop of having to consistently sell all the time to keep your crews busy. The mows and the weed control, you sell the customer one one time over the phone how we're going to do a good job and show up and make sure their lawn is nice and pretty. And all of a sudden, for your crews over the course of 12 months, it now starts to create consistency. We have more consistency with our scheduling, our routes, our crews. Don't get hung up, guys, on trying to get the one-time property cleanups in the spring rush. The one-time property cleanups are icing on the cake. You can fit them in on rain days when it's too wet to mow. That's when we should be doing that stuff. We should be focusing on obtaining and attracting and marketing to the mowing and the weed control services.
