I Want out!!! ( of mowing )

[clclawn]

Over the past few years i have brought my buz from a one man opperation were i spent about 50% of my time on mowing and the other 50% on things like landscaping.

In the past year i have increased sales by 110%. I have brought in a full time person and 3 part timmers at 20-30 hour a week. This year I have spent 50-60 hours a week mowing, and average of ten a week doing otherthings. I am burned the hell out on mowing.

Heres my plan for next year. Currently I am incharge of the mowing and have help with it about 40 hours a week. My other full time guy is the onsight forman for the other projects we do, with my oversight. It seems to me it would be easyer for me to trane him on how i want the mowing done. The other services we offer are expanding to were next year it will make up 60-70% of the buz. I think the mowing would be done with 1-2 man crew & 1-1 man crew. The landscaping and other projects would be 2-2 man crews plus my oversight and contributions with the 2 landscape crews. This change would allow me to increase the amount of higher profit projrcts, incease sales in mowing and landscaping, Do more marketing, and spend a little more time with the wife and kids.

Is this the right move or am i missing somthing.

[Elwood]

Keep your mowing, it is a good way to lead trusting clients into higher paying work. You need a good foreman for the mowing. All it should need is your oversite and some inspections to keep the crews up to par.

Sounds like things are going well for you. At this stage, it becomes easy to get bogged down with too many "hats". Remember, you can only do so much, so you need to hire quality employees that can become leaders, foremen, supervisors, etc. so you can delegate more and "work" less. It sounds that soon you will be struggling to keep up with sales!!

Good Luck!!

[RRS]

CClawn you pretty much described my sitiuation to the "T". Mowing sucks, but it's a neccesary evil in this business especially when you're a startup. My plan for next season is to let my crew leader that has been with me since the beginning run the mowing operation. I'm going to add another truck and concentrate more of my time on landscaping/hardscapes.

[Braxton]

This thread begs a question that has been on my mind. I plan a startup next spring, but would like to build it to the point that I can hire employees to do the actual physical labor (most of it) in 3-5 years. How does one go about hiring full-time quality employees for what is by necessity a seasonal business?

Is there actually enough "other stuff" in the winter to keep employees over the winter and still make a profit? Of course, I'm in Tennessee, and while I would love to hear from anyone, I'd especially like to hear from people close to me who deal with the same climate.

Also, how do you determine what to pay employees?

Braxton

[GrassMaster]

I've seen this quite a few times...

Lawn Guy has plenty of good Mowing accounts (steady money coming in), he starts to doing landscaping & making more money with less hassles. He gets a taste of the better jobs, just not regular jobs, more money just don't know how many he will get in the first 3 months of next year?

Here's the Scenario...
He quits the mowing gig & goes landscaping full time. It goes good at first then landscape jobs start getting few & far between...

The 6:00 news comes on & they say Kerry stands a chance of winning, all of a sudden everybody decides they better hold on to there extra disposable Landscape money for hard times... And the beat goes on...

Your here thinking I don't have enough money set aside until Billary get elected in 2008?

GrassMaster says Quote: LOL, this is one hellified scenario so far, but this is America & anything is possible?

Money gets tight... No steady money coming in... Has to let go of some of the crew...

Standing there looking at all that fine landscaping equipment & new Truck(s), Man I sure miss those regular Lawn Service account checks coming in every month... I really hated to let go of PHD Dink, but I have no holes for him to dig...

Those mowing accounts was there to pay my guys through thick & thin, those mowing crews were my advertising for my Future Money Making Landscape Installs.

I will never let go of steady work that brings me in money every month again, I sure made a mistake... Now I got to round me up some mowing accounts so I can get PHD Dink back on the payroll.

Here's real life...
God provides us with monthly mowing account income so we can do bigger & better things when they come along.

He lets lawn mowers tear up so I can make money fixing them at my shop, when I'm not selling new equipment.

As long as I live I will never let any kind of paying work slip through my fingers unless I get paid very well for it & decide to do something else for a living... I've been there & done that several times!

PS: I could have done better on this reply, but I must go to the shop & collect money from all the morons that let their generators set since Y2K & explain to them why they wouldn't crank until they took them to a shop to get the carbs replaced or cleaned out... I will be wall to wall with some Irate Upset South Georgia RedNecks Today. We are at Amber alert as of now!

[Phil Nilsson]

I'd say spend 80% of your time on getting repeat biz and 20% on speculation (landscape installs)

It's possible to cash flow it out with virtually none of your own money so don't worry about fast growth ...

[RRS]

It's possible to cash flow it out with virtually none of your own money so don't worry about fast growth ...

What exactly do you mean by that? I'm interested, please elaborate.

[Scaper-S2k]

RRS, you can go to your bank and get a line of credit. Use their money, do the job, get paid, pay the bank back.

OPM......Other Peoples Money.






Grassmaster is right, those landscape jobs can come to a halt very fast once the economy gets rocky.

[clclawn]

I guess i need to clear up a couple things. I am not going to get rid of the monthly money like mowing, I am going to put someone else in charge of it and i will just oversee that part of the opperation. This will allow me to oversee and do some hands on work with landscaping while freeing me up to get more mowing and landscaping. The only thing holding me back is i was worried if i was not there mowing and seeing the costomer on a regular basis would the additional work i get from my mowing costomer slow down because i will not have as close a relationship with them.

thanks for the help so far!!!

[RRS]

guess i need to clear up a couple things. I am not going to get rid of the monthly money like mowing, I am going to put someone else in charge of it and i will just oversee that part of the opperation. This will allow me to oversee and do some hands on work with landscaping while freeing me up to get more mowing and landscaping.

Ditto. I will always have a maintenance division.

The only thing holding me back is i was worried if i was not there mowing and seeing the costomer on a regular basis would the additional work i get from my mowing costomer slow down because i will not have as close a relationship with them.

I took myself out of the mowing operation as much as I could this year. I still wind up mowing 1-2 days a week, but the crew goes alone often. I haven't had many complaints at all. Main complaints I get are for tire marks, but with all the rain we've had this year it's inevitable. You've got to have a person you trust.

At the beginning of this year I found myself falling behind on day-to-day office work so far that it was costing me business. I usually spend 1-2 days finishing estimates, 1-2 days on landscaping, 1-2 days helping the guys catch up on mowing, and I always spend Sunday morning getting the books caught up, billing out, and making the schedule.

You've got to add crews though. I don't see much point in doing this unless I can pay myself over $100K/year, and that cannot happen as a one man + helper operation. I can make $50K a year with full medical (which is a $1500/year expense for me), 2 weeks paid vacation + 4 sick days (another $1500 extra/year), and 401/k (easily worth another $2500/year) at Target working with my girlfriend, and it's a hell of a lot easier than running this business.

[Phil Nilsson]

The only thing holding me back is i was worried if i was not there mowing and seeing the costomer on a regular basis would the additional work i get from my mowing costomer slow down because i will not have as close a relationship with them. thanks for the help so far!!!

I think it's time to develop a marketing plan ... a production plan ... and a customer support scenario for your business ... run the numbers for production crews ... devise ways to stay in touch with customers ... that part is easy. Do quality control drive arounds each week ... satisfy yourself that you are not losing a handle on delivered services as you add more accounts ...

Question is where do you go from here and how do you get there? Put together some "blocks" of business.

[SCW]

Another way to still feel connected to the customer even though you're not out with the mowing crew every day...start a monthly newsletter that you include with each person's invoice. Our customers love ours.

[Clim Cadidlehopper]

If You still want to stay a bit closer to the outside world, while keeping up with the office work get a laptop. Make it Your main system and dock it with office system. If You want to go a step further get a wireless modem for the laptop, with unlimited airtime. You can leave it on, exchange e-mail with office and customers. One can also use laptop with digital camera and a good landscape program to take digital pic of customers lawn, then add the changes so You can show them what the finished project will look like in 2D form- or 3D if You have one of the outstanding landscape programs. This poster has found that showing them what they will have and allowing them to make changes, on the laptop before breaking ground has saved time and money. The printed pic makes for good blueprint and both Customer and You have signed off on it and know what to expect.

[clclawn]

Question is where do you go from here and how do you get there? Put together some "blocks" of business.

what do you mean by blocks of buz? Are you refering to diff service departments ( like maint. landscape, hardscape, ect.) please specify.