Running a Lawn Care Business 3 Years

Transcript:

​Hi, neighbors, Merritt Island, Cape Canaveral, Cocoa Beach. How are y'all doing? Three years, three years down, and many more to come. It's been really awesome, and I've learned a lot, and I have a lot of plans, new plans within the next few months. Coronavirus kind of slowing that down a little bit, but I have a lot of plans for the future, and I'm here to just talk about what happened in the past three years, and with customers, business, what I've learned, using what I've learned to lay out a new business plan for the next few years, and this is also kind of a tutorial for small business as well. If somebody's wanting to start a lawn care business, you may pick up on a few things here as well, but I'd like to start off with what I've learned, and one of the biggest things that I've found to be important out of the research that I've done, and taking that research, and implementing it with what I do on a daily basis is the customer experience.

Yes, you're going to have quality, you're going to have everything else, but the people that I have met over the past three years, good, bad, in the middle, everything. I've seen it, I've seen a lot, and it's been awesome, and that's what I believe is going to get us through these tough times right now are the great customers that we currently have, and some of the bad seeds that we had to avoid, and you have to do that, so it's been great, and it's created a lot of patience. I've learned to take things one thing at a time, one step at a time, baby steps, as you would say it, and implement things each step at a time, and move along, and it's worked, and the business is growing, month after month, year after year. I think this is going to be the first month where I haven't grown a ton, but that's expected, but I'm still going to hire. I'm still going to move forward, I'm still going to push, and I'm just so excited to see what's coming up next, and, well, actually, I'm going to bring that up.
That's another thing that's been hard is to stay motivated, to keep that drive that you first get when you first start, and you're just going on at it. You're doing 100%, 110%, and 130%, and then sometimes you plateau, and you feel like you hit a wall, or a speed bump, or things go wrong, and mowers break down, and weed eaters break down, and you almost have to skip a week, but that's where the great customer experience comes in, because your clients trust you. They know you're going to be there, and some of them went through strides with me where I didn't have a mower for a week when I first started out. It was tough, and I was freaking out, but that's where I learned the patience. You don't have to freak out. A lot of these people will work with you, and I'm really happy they did, and those things happen less, and less, now that the business has grown, become better, and I have more standardization in place to implement. In case something goes wrong, I have this. If this goes wrong, I have this, and it helps a lot. It's been just great, and I've had issues with equipment, clients, team members, but we've pushed through, and pushed through, and pushed through, and it's more a perseverance thing.

Persistence beats resistance, because there's a couple times where I did, I've broken down. Like one time I remember, I broke down hard, because everything was going wrong. I had every single day, something extreme went wrong. Losing a customer here, losing a customer there, then I had a breakdown, then the truck broke down, then I had another breakdown, and it was just all at once, but I made it through it, and I'm completely fine, and again, that's where the patience came in. So, and there's a lot of things that I've learned with techniques on how to cut grass. How to buff the grass with the weed eater, and how to make stripes, and make the grass look better for a client that really takes care of their yard. When they get mowing service, spray service, weed service, pest service, they get everything done, and fertilizer, the grass looks really nice, and you learn how to work with the other spray companies to make it its best using sharp blades, so the grass doesn't get infected, and all that stuff. There's so much to learn, and it's been just super exciting, but the different techniques, it's been a lot, and there's still a lot to learn. I learn something probably every single day still, and just when I think I know this, it changes, or something else hits with the grass, with business, with team members, and clients. There's always something different, and it's wild, and that's why I love this. That's why I love this so much, cause yeah, I go out and do the same thing every single day, but there's always something different that happens.

I meet a new type of person. Like with this corona virus going on right now, I just put a post on Facebook about it. The one good thing about it is a lot of people are still home now, and I got to see a lot of people. I haven't seen some of these people in two years. Some of them, three years I haven't seen, cause they're always working when I'm mowing, and they came out and said, "Hi," and, of course, staying a six-foot distance, and all that. If you're watching this down the road, you'll understand with the corona virus, if you've heard of it, or read up on it. It's serious, I guess, but I got to see all these people, and that was a good thing out of it, and a lot of good smiles, a lot of happy people through a tough time. It's been great, and learning, learning in business and leadership has been a great experience. I've done so much research on it, and I'm still implementing things, and learning things about business that is making this even more exciting. It’s not like it's bringing me down, or tearing me down, or anything like that. It's becoming more interesting.

The more I learn, the more excited I get, and the more opportunities show themselves, and it's just, I see a different future than I saw last year, and then I saw a different future from that time, and it's always changing, and implementing different, it's just, it's amazing, so I'm just super excited. I wanted to make this video, because I'm looking for another three years, and another three years, and another three years, so I'm just really, happy. So, that brings me to what is coming to Cole Lawn Care, and right now, I'm conducting interviews. Tomorrow I’m going to be conducting a lot of interviews. I've had team members come in and out, but I'm looking to bring somebody in for good, and we'll see how that goes. That's going to be a new venture, and whole new things to learn on payroll, and leadership, and taking care of somebody, because they basically become a family member. That's how I consider it, and I can't wait to see what that brings. Who it is, and how they're going to be implemented, and see if this takes off, and goes further, even faster. Even if it goes slow, I don't mind, as long as I keep going up, and they're happy, and the clients are happy, I'm happy. It's just, it's super exciting, and the expansion to this, I do plan on having more trucks, and all that, so hopefully bring this person in, it makes it come a little faster for their helper, and the next truck, and then the next truck, and the office, and office staff. I cannot wait, it's super exciting, and I guess that's another reason I am making these videos, and I'm blogging, is I'm holding myself accountable, because being a business owner is lonely, and it takes a lot of responsibility to get up and do it yourself.

You got to make sure you wake up on time. You got to make sure this is done, and that's done, and payroll's done, and invoicing's done, and right now, many of the yards are cut, and the clients are happy, and I'm communicating with them, especially through these tough times. I just send out an email letting them know I'm still cutting, and if they could leave the gates open if they don't want us to touch anything, have the gates open on their scheduled day, so we're in and out, and just congratulations to me, I guess. Three years down, and I feel for any businesses that don't make it through this tough time, but if I were to have any advice for small business owners, or anybody starting out a lawn company, is to be persistent, and don't give up when you think it's tough. I've had many tough times. Do not give up and give a great customer experience. I think that's more important than quality.

Now, I do rely on quality, and trust, but I think the trust factor is becoming more important than anything, cause there are going to be days where you just come in, and you got to get in and out. The rain's coming, or something's happening. You may not do the best cut that day. It does happen, I'm not going to lie, and try to say that I've just, we remain as professional as possible, but as long as you're communicating, and dealing with the client, and dealing with your family, which are your team members, I believe that's very important, and the quality comes after that. You find people that know how to do it better than you, or you train them to be better than you, and all the quality, everything, will just fit together, and I look forward to learning more.
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I look forward to meeting more people, and this week, hopefully, I'll see more clients that I haven't seen in a long time. That'll be great, and it's nice to talk to you. I'm just super excited I've made it three years, and now we, now that I'm bringing people on board, we can keep going, and make it four, and five, six, seven, 10 years, and it's an exciting time, it's a very exciting time. So, if you want to make comments, I will reply, and I will answer any questions. You can always ask me questions about anything. If I don't know, I'll try to find out, so I look forward to seeing y'all out there. All right, thank you, have a good day.

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