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Lawn care and landscaping pros. Listen up. If you're tired of guessing your way through pricing, marketing, hiring and sales, this is your wake up call. The LCR Summit hits Downtown Louisville October 19th and 20th at the Galthouse the same week as Equip and it's going to change the way you run your business forever. This is not another sit and listen event. It's two full days of hands on workshops from leaders who've actually built what you're trying to build. Neylor Taliaferro shows you how to generate better leaders through smarter marketing. Paul Jamison teaches content that converts. John Pajak breaks down your numbers so you'll stop working for cheap Eric Triplett, the pond digger reveals how he built a multi million dollar business making more money with less work. Plus you'll have a surprise guest speaker. Add in live Q and A panels, powerful networking, and an exclusive VIP dinner with all the speakers. When you purchase at the platinum level, grab tickets and infolcrsummit.com or just tap the link in the podcast description. That's LCR summit.com stop guessing. Start growing. Build the business you've always imagined at the LCR Summit. Here we go.
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On this thinking Thursday I believe in not having my schedule completely 100% full. Like I plan on not filling my schedule past 80%. A similar theory and you know, many, many may or will disagree with me. Maybe you might disagree, but just hear me out and then how I how I think about all this on on Thursday here. This is also for food. There's a as far as being healthy with nutrition and the food that you ingest, there's a practice of only eating or being filling your stomach up to 80%. Like I remember learning about this a while back about some of the healthiest places in the country or I'm sorry, in the world. Most of them are not even in our country like states or whatever. But there are several places in the world where people live past 100 years old. Like more than just one anomaly. Like it's more of a common occurrence that there are multiple human beings that live past 100 years old. I think they're called centurions, something like that. Something, something along those lines, but which just means they live past 100. And there are some factors that are common with all of those people. And one of them is the way they eat. You know, the the way they eat and what they eat. So of course they eat what you would consider healthy. But we all have different definitions of healthy. There's just a specific type of diet that they eat, which I'm not even going to go into that, that's a whole nother topic for another day, which I probably won't even bother getting into. But I mean, of course we should all be healthy and we're going to have more energy, especially in the heat when we're out here working. Nutrition plays a huge role in that. But my point is more about, about filling your stomach. Like, about filling like the, the quantity of the food that you eat. Not, not just the quality that, that's a different topic, like I said, but as far as the quantity of the food that you eat. These people that live, these humans that live over 100 years old, they don't eat until they get completely full to, to, you know, 100% capacity where they feel stuffed. And I'm sure, sure you've had that feeling before or can, or close to it enough to understand what I'm. That feeling or what I'm saying about how maybe it's a holiday, maybe it's like Thanksgiving where there's a whole lot of food, you know, turkey, if that's your thing or whatever it is, or any other get together, gathering of family, friends, a party, birthday party. Just, that's typically when you would eat a lot more than normal because there's just like, there's a lot of food being provided. Typically it's free and you're there, like there's nothing else to do. So you're like, well, might as well just eat. And some people can, you know, eat more than others, right? Like, but everyone has different, different capacities of how much food they can eat. But if you eat too much, then you, you, you feel full. Sometimes you feel sick and you're just like, oh man, I just don't want to, like, I can't even function. Like, you know, we talk about sleep comas, right, where you're so full again and like Thanksgiving's common time for that, where you just get so full that you feel like you need to take a nap, you know, and there's all kinds of memes and jokes about that, but it never feels good when you're full, right? Maybe you feel satisfied, you ate so much, the food tasted so good. Like, maybe you really love food. You know, some people, they, what are they? I think they, they're called foodies. You know that they just love eating food so much. But, and, but they eat, they overeat. So what? When you overeat and like I said, maybe you have done this before when you overeat, you Limit the capacity of what you can and can't do. Like, you're just not as mobile, you're not as mentally clear, you're not as physically capable of doing the same things as when you even have an empty stomach. I mean, if you're starving and you're super hungry and your stomach's, you know, cramping up and you just feel like you need to eat, if you do that for too long, then yeah, you can't do anything that way either. You know, you're, you're, you don't have any, you're on limited calories for energy so you can get a headache, you can feel sick. So of course that opposite is the same difference. But when, when you're in between starving and over full, anything in between there, you know, in between meals, you're usually, that's when you are at peak performance where you can do more things physically, you can think better mentally and so on. And back to the people that live over 100 years old, they don't ever fill themselves up. Every meal they have, they always stop at 80%. Now, I mean, how do they measure that, right? I don't remember or know. But the point is, I believe they were saying that they just stopped, right? They stop eating before they feel full. Like they eat until they feel like satisfied, right? Like, oh, okay, that's good. Like I feel like I've got some food in my system, my body is feeling better. I feel like I have a little more energy. I'm not, I don't have that starving feeling anymore. You just eat enough to feel satisfied. And you know, some people, that's obviously different perspective than others. Some people, they just can't stop eating like I've said, and they overeat easier than some others. Me personally, I'm not a huge eater to begin with, which probably contributes to me being on the leaner side. But I've never had a weight gaining problem. In fact, it's hard for me to gain weight when I want to build muscle or throughout my life when I wanted to build muscle. Now that I don't really try to build muscle as much, I just go to the gym consistently and eat healthy. Goals. Go figure. I've built more muscle and gotten stronger than I ever have at this point in my life. I'm the oldest obviously right now, but I'm getting stronger and bigger and feeling better than I ever have just from consistency and proper nutrition and just focus, I guess. But not focusing on those things to get bigger or gain weight and muscle mass, no the focus is to be healthier and to feel stronger and to be stronger. So go figure. I actually gain, you know, gained some, some weight, not nothing significant, but, you know, I've gained actual muscle mass. And that's something that I had a hard time doing when I was younger. You know, when I was in high school and college years, it was really challenging for me. I'm what you call a hard gainer. I have to ingest a lot of calories and a lot of protein and all kinds of other stuff in addition to lifting heavy weights to break my muscles down in order to actually gain mass or weight, if you, you know, want to call it that way. But it's, it's mainly muscle that, that I'm trying to gain. I'm not trying to add fat onto my body, which that's very difficult also because my, my, my body just burns it real quick. So anyway, it's not very, I digress. I, I, I, it's not very hard for me to stop eating, but there are definitely times that I have been so hungry that I just don't stop eating. Like when I finally get food, I just eat, eat, eat, eat. And I, I don't. Another thing, if you do it too fast, if you eat too fast, then you don't wreck it. Like you're, you can't, your mind can't catch up to your body or vice versa, where you don't know that you're actually full yet. Kind of like when you're drinking alcohol too fast, if you've ever heard of that or you've ever done that, if you drink alcohol too fast, like, but by the time you realize you're getting drunk, it's too late. By the time you feel like you've had one too many, it's too late. You have to stop proactively. You have to have one or two drinks and know that that's your limit because if you have a few more and then you start feeling the effects, you're like, oh, I need to stop drinking. Well, now it's too late because now the feeling is just going to intensify based on how much alcohol you've had. So it's a slower process. So if you drink too fast, that happens. Same thing with, if you eat too fast and then you wait until you get full. Like you eat until you feel full. Now you're, now you're going to be really full because it's, you know, you're, you, you just didn't allow yourself to catch your body, everything to connect and Catch up. So like a lot of times they say if you, if you want to avoid overeating, eat slower, right? Add more food into your system slower. Before you go back for seconds, just pause, have several sips of water or a half of glass of water and see how you feel after that, you know, a few minutes, five minutes after, before you immediately go get seconds and fill your plate back up. And then you feel obligated to eat it all because you don't want to go to waste. Even when you start feeling full halfway through the plate, a lot of us are like, oh man, I got to finish this. I don't want to go to this to go to waste. And now you're really over 8. So the people that live past 100 years old, they don't allow that to happen to themselves. They don't fill themselves up to 100% capacity with food. They recognize, and after doing it for however long, they know portion control. They can see, okay, they know how much of this plate can I eat or should I fill up to eat or how much of this or how much of that food and so on that they know, like, oh, a cup of rice or you know, a cup of cooked rice, you know, is enough or whatever it is. Like they know their portions, but they also know how they feel. And they don't eat past the point of being satisfied. They don't eat until they're full, until they're stuffed. So now bringing this back to my work schedule and interpreting it the same way, a lot of times we can get really carried away, adding a lot of work onto our schedule really fast before really processing and reflecting on whether we can handle all that work or not. And our schedule, you know, we end up filling up our schedule quickly and then realize we're overbooked, we're over full, our schedule is too full. And now we're struggling to get all this work done. Especially when you got the heat that's upon us now, these terrible heat indexes, over 100 degrees all over the country. It's really rough. Not just for you, for your employees. If it's just you, it's, you know, it's still just you. And that's even more like, because if you end up getting hurt because you're so tired or exhausted, or you end up getting some sort of heat illness, heat stroke heat, heat stroke, heat stress heat. What, what is the other one? Just whatever, just any, any, any kind of heat, top heat issues from, from the heat, then you're going to, there's no one There's. You don't have backup, it's just you. So it's even more on you to be careful and to pace yourself and not overwork yourself. But if you have a, a packed schedule, if your schedule's over full now, you're struggling to figure out how to get it all done. And you're forced to work weekends, you're forced to work longer days in the heat. And it's rough because you naturally are going to perform slower in this type of heat, this type of weather. And then also right now, it's the longest days, the dog days of summer, they call it. I mean, we're just getting started, but the days are longer and they're hotter and you feel like you can pack on. You pack on more work. And then in the fall, the days get shorter, meaning daylight. There's less time in the day to get stuff done. And yes, it's not nearly as hot, but it starts to get cold, which affects everything in a different way. Right. You have to warm all your equipment up. You have to stay warm. Your hands, that's the worst thing for me, my hands and my toes when I'm doing lawn care work in the fall, winter, on those really cold mornings or days where it's just blistering cold and the wind's blowing, you're trying to. I mean, if it's too bad we don't even try to clean up leaves or do too much. But I mean, if it's just really cold and you're out there trying to clean up leaves, final cuts of the season, maybe putting down some, some final treatments, like, you know, granular treatments. Yeah, you're in those situations. Sometimes you're moving around, which keeps you warmer. But if you're standing on a mower or you're just walking around with a backpack blower man, your toes start getting cold, your fingers start getting cold. So you got to really layer up and keep yourself warm. And that slows you down a little bit too. That impacts performance as well. And now you're trying to get all this extra work done that you maxed out during the summer or maybe even the spring. And now you're dealing with that situation because you stuffed your schedule, you overfilled your schedule, and there's no wiggle room for anything. There's no room for when it's really hot and you need to slow down or you need to stop early. There's no room for if you are not feeling well, whether you get like, you know, a cold or the flu or something, you Injure yourself. Like, there's no wiggle room for you to take a little bit of time off or a delay, equipment breakdown, staffing issues. Like, all of that now makes a full schedule over full schedule, like, and seeming like an impossible schedule and an overwhelmingly stressful schedule. And if you had just filled your schedule to 80% like I do, then you would have 20% wiggle room, 20% rain delays, 20% equipment breakdowns, 20%. Okay, we gotta call a little bit early today because of the heat, you know, 20% for anything. 20% like, okay, I think we're gonna end the week like, we're done with this week. Let's just have a three day weekend and enjoy the holiday or whatever the scenario is, right? Fourth of July. Let's have a three day weekend. Like, who does that, right? Well, I do. Because my life matters to me more than my business. My business is supposed to support my life, not vice versa. I schedule my business around my life, not my life around my business. Now sometimes that's definitely tricky and it does get challenging and it's stressful from time to time. But at the end of the day, my life is first. That's the whole point of why I started my own business, became entrepreneur, so that I could have more control. Some of us, some of you might think that that's not the case. You think you have less control, but that's because you are running your business by default instead of by design. You didn't design a business the way that you need it to be designed to function around your life instead of you functioning around the business, right? And you get kind of stuck in that groove and you don't realize there's, you don't even realize anymore, or you just don't think there's any other options and you just have to look up and realize, wait a minute, like, let me get my head out of the weeds, literally, and let me focus on, let me get some clarity. Look up, take a break, get some clarity. Take a weekend off, take a day off, Go somewhere else, go to the park, go to the beach, go camping, whatever. Go for a walk or a bike ride, something just to clear, clear yourself away from your current everyday situation so that you can see, like I've said in the past when I talk about take a, take a break for your breakthrough. That's when you can get that clarity and realize, man, I'm doing too much. My business is running me by default instead of me running, designing it, running it by design, me running my business, running a landscaping business. Doesn't have to mean endless paperwork and constant chaos. That's why LCR Media podcast sponsor Toro built Horizon360 to help you handle scheduling, routing, estimates, invoicing and job tracking all in one place. And right now, they're giving my listeners an exclusive offer, a seven month free trial of Horizon 360 Unlimited. If you're ready to save time, stay organized and grow your business without the stress, click the link in the episode description and enter the code LCR at checkout. To start today, all these different things that come up and all these fires you have to put out. Instead of being proactive in designing systems and training people to follow the systems so that the business runs the way you designed it and not just going with the flow by default. So by having the 80%, like I said, by me not filling my schedule past 80%, that gives me more. That's by design, not by default. So when the emergencies or the unexpected last minute challenges pop up, then I can, I have 20% margin in my schedule to figure that out as well as I can add some more stuff if I want to. Like, all right, well, you know, let me add on some, some, if some new clients or we also have that room for when it's time to trim shrubs, when it's time to aerate and seed, so on and so forth, all the different seasonal type of jobs, those are all part of that 20%. And I make sure that I don't fill up that 20% either. And if I do, it's just for like a week or two temporarily, just to get everything done. But the goal is to not fill up my schedule of work past 80%. And you might think that, well, I'm not making enough money if I'm not 100%. Well, then that's because you're not charging enough. You're not doing enough of the right work that you can charge enough. Right. Like, I'm not saying I fill my schedule with 80% only mowing. I'm talking about my schedule period is full 80%. Like we're working four days out of five. You know, like. But within those four days, there's a lot of other, there's a lot, a lot more than just mowing lawns. It gets done. I have to treat lawns when it's time to treat lawns and when it's time to trim shrubs, sometimes I can squeeze some of that in, other times I have to add that on Friday, part of that 20% to get that done temporarily. You know, like to, to, to Fill the schedule temporarily to get that done seasonally. Technically, right? You know, we're not trimming shrubs every week all year. We're, we're mowing lawns every week for most of the year. But that's different than a lot of these other seasonal services. So I make sure that I price all of my services properly. So I only need to get four days worth of work every week in to make the money that I need to make and the profit margins that I need to take. So just remember that too. Like if, if you're not making enough money with 80% of your schedule full, think about how you're pricing everything and think about the services that you're offering. Are you only offering mowing? Are you, are you only like doing landscape job like random one off jobs? Like what? How can you diversify? How can you add more for your current customers? How can you provide more value for your current customers in addition to raising the prices strategically of the services that you're already offering your customers? And I say strategically because the number one thing you can do is figure out what your man hour rate should be for you. Like, is that $95 per man hour? Is it $60 per man hour? Is it $115 per man hour? These numbers might seem totally out of whack for you, but it all depends on what your overhead is, what your expenses are, what your, what it takes, how much money you need to make personally to pay your personal bills, right? Your owner pay like your salary, how are you paying yourself? And in order to be able to pay yourself enough, you need to have the right man hour rate, which then tells you how much to charge for every job. Because if you know it takes you on average, you know, one hour by yourself for your typical lawns that you take care of, whatever size that is and that all the trimming and edging that's required and so on. If it takes you an hour, mow, trim, edge, blow on average for whatever size properties you have by yourself, then. And if your man hour rate needs to be $95, then you should be charging $95 for that hour because you're by yourself. That's one man hour. You're one man. One man hour. And you might think no one's going to pay $95, well then you need to find a way to go faster or be more efficient to save time or both find better equipment or ways to be more efficient getting that property done as well as how you can speed it up, which being more efficient does speed it up. But you can also physically go faster. Like maybe you kind of get struck on your phone or you take the extra breaks, you know, to do this and that or whatever. Or you just kind of mosey and on around the lawn doing some random trimming and edging here and there instead of having a purpose and a mission and you're just going around the perimeter real quick. Boom, boom. Zipping around the perimeter, trimming everything, zipping around the inside of the property, which is the house and walkways and all that, and getting all that trimmed and edged, getting all the mulch beds in between. Boom. And having a system inner, outer, outer, inner, whatever, however your order of that is. But instead of just kind of haphazardly wandering around and forgetting stuff, have to walk all the way back to a whole nother section and do this. And that's, that's eating up minutes, which is costing you money ultimately. Like, so if you save time by doing that, you walk faster, you do it more efficiently, then you have more efficient equipment. Like instead of a walk behind, you have a sit down or stand on zero turn things of that nature. Now that's ways to speed up the process. Do you need a hand blower or a backpack blower? You know, like what if you have all the right tools, then you can be more efficient if you physically move faster and do everything in a very organized time saving fashion. All of that's going to reduce that time from an hour to maybe 45 minutes. And now you charge them. I don't know what the math is. I didn't pick a good number. But let's say I think if we do $100, if your man hour rate's $100 and it takes you an hour, okay, you feel like you can't charge them $100. I mean, but you don't even know. You might not have tried. A lot of times we are our own worst enemy and we just say no for our customers without even giving it a chance. Like, you never know if it's a big enough property and you provide high value and they think it's amazing and you charge them $100 takes you an hour, they might say yes. I mean, who knows until you try? But in the event that they don't and no one says yes to that, or you're just too nervous to anxious to try that, well, if you can reduce the time to 45 minutes, now you only have to charge them $75 to make that $1, that $100 an hour, because it's taking you 45 minutes instead of an hour. So 0.75. I believe that's the math. But you get my point. I didn't, I didn't bust out the calculator on this one. But my whole point is you, you can, in order to achieve your man hour rate, you either need to charge that man hour rate. Like you need to charge more or you need to get faster, more efficient. You need, you need to complete that property in less time. So those are the, those are two variables. And you could complete it in less time and charge more, and then your profit margin goes even higher. But that, that's the number one key factor that when I talk about pricing strategically is that if you just focus on that, then you don't have to have your schedule 100% full all the time. Again, like I said, things are going to happen. One off jobs might come up, if that's your thing. And that's fine. That's the beauty of our business. We can scale it up and down whenever we want. We can take on as much work as we want, whatever we can physically do and so on. If we, if we need a little extra money for one reason or another, hey, let's take on some more work, you know, but, or you can dial it back, but the point is I keep my schedule full to 80% so that I have that margin in my life so that I can do. Aside from the fact that I have, you know, other businesses and so on, I'm just talking about lawn care and my personal life. 80, like, even from like the first few years when I really discovered this, when I was maxing myself out and I was burning myself out, I'm like, this is the same thing as retail. This is ridiculous. Like, I, why, why did I leave retail to start my own business to then just work all the time and still not see my family and feel burned out? Like, that's not cool. I was still happier because I didn't have horrible bosses and horrible customers. I was in a lot more. I was in complete control. I could fire a customer if I wanted to, and I was my own boss. So if I needed to take the time off or change a schedule or whatever, it was all on me. That comes with its own new challenges, of course, and stresses, but it was for that and working outside, I enjoyed all that. So of course that was all beneficial compared to retail. But I was working all the time and I was getting stressed out because my whole point was I wanted to get my time back. And I'm like, what the heck am I doing? And then I realized I had to restructure things and follow the 80% rule and not fill my schedule up to 100%. 80% is a really good rule. It's a good rule for your stomach. It's a good rule for your, for your life, for your business, for your work schedule. And then, then things started to start to, to, to get better in my life. I had more time for family and rebuild that, that life experience and focus on those priorities while still getting 80%. While still getting, you know, having 80% of my, my work schedule full for lawn care. So the other 20% allows me, allowed me and allows me to have more personal time and more like, again, like I say, wiggle room or flexibility so that I can move things around if I need to for emergencies, weather, so on and so forth. All the things that I mentioned earlier in this episode. So just think about that on this thoughtful Thursday, about how full is your schedule and how is that really hurting you or is that helping you? Is that helping you or hurting you? And be honest with yourself, or is it helping or hurting everyone around you? Maybe you just don't even realize it because you're just built different and you're just working hard and you're getting after it. But maybe the people around you, whether you're your employees or your family or both, are stressed out because they're working too much. Because you're working too much. So think about that as well. It's not just about you. It really shouldn't be about you anyway. I mean, we obviously have to think about ourselves, of course, and keep ourselves healthy and happy and everything so that we can be the ones that are doing what we have to do. Of course we're the leaders, but we're leading others. We're not just supposed to be leading ourselves. So what we do impacts others as leaders as well. So just. So remember that too, you know, don't. The 80% is helping everyone around you as well. So, so just take a look at that now that we're, you know, getting in the summer here. And don't overfill your schedule if you, if you can help it. I mean, I know you might need whatever you need financially, but again, maybe your pricing's off. Maybe you're not offering enough value, enough services, and, and you feel the need, right? If, if you're charging way too little for mowing a lawn, then you're going to need a lot more lawns to make a certain amount of money that you're trying to make so if you charge more or charge properly, then you will be able to do less mowing. Right. And get closer to 80% of your schedule being full instead of 100%. So it's, it's really just simple math and whatever else you would say with the whole concept of, of eating, you know, only 80, filling yourself up only 80%, filling your schedule up, your work schedule up only 80%. So hopefully this made sense and was helpful. I have zero feedback when I'm just talking to myself, essentially, but I know I'm talking to you, that's listening, but I'm not looking at you. I don't know if you're getting it or not. So sometimes it's a little tricky when I'm going through these processes and these principles and sharing my stories around them and experiences. So hopefully it did make sense. Listen to it again if you need to. But the whole point is I don't allow my schedule to get full past 80% because it's not going to always work out well for me. It just, it just gives. It's more stressful when it's past 80%. There's less flexibility. It's just not a stable, profitable business for me when I do that. So sticking to 80% max has helped me out. And I just was comparing that to the people that live past 100 years old. They also don't fill their stomach past 80%. And that's one of the things that they all do that is related, that helps them, contributes to them living past 100. So clearly they figured something out there as well. So why not do that with your work schedule so that you have. You're not so full that you can't do anything. You can't move, you can't. You have zero flexibility in your work schedule. And now one thing goes wrong and it's just a chain reaction and everything starts falling apart and everyone's all stressed out. So just remember that. Hope this was valuable. Thanks for listening. Thank you to Toro Company for sponsoring the LCR Media podcast. Until the next episode, this is Naylor Talia Farrow signing off.
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This has been an lcr media and Mr. Producer production.