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Today we're going to talk about something that seems like a small software feature request, but actually reveals a much bigger issue. And that's the way some businesses think about scheduling their work.
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Today's episode is brought to you by Yardbook, the all in one CRM for your lawn care business. And as an exclusive partner of this podcast, you can get started today and begin simplifying your business and maximizing your profits. Sign up now@yardbook.com the link is in. The show notes. Time now for Profits with Paycheck, an essential podcast for you in the green industry who are looking to unlock the full potential of your business. Hosted by John Pajac, your certified financial coach, the show features in depth discussions with successful entrepreneurs, thought leaders and industry experts, providing practical advice and proven strategies on financial planning, operations, marketing and sales. Profits with Paycheck has valuable insights and action steps that you can implement today for creating long term success. Now here's John Paj.
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Welcome to Profits with Pajak the podcast. We talk about business strategies and financial insights for the green industry. I'm your host John Pajak and today I was just, I was in the Yardbook Facebook group question popped up that really started to make me think it was much deeper than what the surface level part of it was. So my question is, or the question was, you know, this is my question. It was why would someone schedule a job but not schedule a job? And you know, when I was in the art book user Facebook group, someone asked if it was possible to keep jobs as an unscheduled status while they're getting ready to place them on the calendar. And I just sat there and thinking, I'm like, why would you create a job if you have no intention of scheduling it? And I understand, yes, they have intention to schedule it. But if your system requires a pile of unscheduled work sitting somewhere waiting to be dragged onto the calendar later, you don't have a schedule. You basically have a to do list. And I kind of wanted to go over that because it really, it was like, oh man, that, that's, that there's an itch there that I think I need to scratch. And it's really going to be, I want to talk about the difference between running your business from a to do list versus running your business from a system. And you know, again in the group discussion, you know, I've seen several people mention that they wish Yardbook had an unscheduled job board. And basically I think what they're asking is a list of jobs that exist in the system, but they're not placed on the calendar yet. And you know, they, they stated that, you know, when they're ready, they'll just drag those jobs onto the schedule. Now I, I guess to a certain degree I, I could, that could sound convenient, but when I hear that, it raises a bigger question. You know, why does that job exist if it isn't scheduled? Because, you know, what that really means is the business is operating from a backlog of work and not from a plan. And that difference matters more than people realize. Because, you know, some businesses operate like this. The work comes in, they create a job, that job sits in a pile and someone eventually decides when it gets done. That's not a scheduling system, that's a task list. And task lists are one of the biggest reasons businesses feel constantly overwhelmed. I don't understand the concept of I gotta fit this in somewhere. I don't know where to fit it in, but I gotta fit it in. It's like you, you, you know, as a business owner, we, we have to make, we have to make it fit because, you know, most of us, we have timelines, deadlines, things like that. I could see where someone might say, well, I want to schedule core aeration. Well, where I live, we don't do core aeration until late summer, early fall. If somebody asks that for that in springtime, you know, we advise them, we say, listen, we don't, we don't do this service now. But I could get you on the list for when we do it. Okay, but even when I put them on that list, it's not a to do list. It's like, we know what time of year we're going to be doing that. So I'm going to, you know, put them on, on, on the schedule or say like August 20, you know, it might not be perfect and say that it may change due to weather or whatnot, but at the same time, it's like we're putting them on the schedule. If we need to, we could move them around, but they're on the schedule. It's not like this work is going to slip through the cracks. And that's the main thing. You know, for my business, we do not operate from a backlog of unscheduled work. You know, our system is program based. You know, for example, our fertilization weed control program, you know, we have one that's a seven. You know, we get seven visits throughout the year and each one happens in a specific order. We get, you know, just a simplified, you know, round one, round two, round Three and so on. You know, when a customer signs up for the program, the entire season gets scheduled. You know, all seven visits. If they, if they start late, well, they miss, you know, whatever the ones that they missed. And then we pick up and schedule for the rest of the season. So let's say they come in in round three. You know, we don't schedule round one and two. We just go, okay, well, the nearest, you know, they're going to be in this area, this route is, you know, they're going to be on this route because they're geographically located there. And then we slide them in and we say, okay, you're gonna start round three at, you know, like May 5th or whatever, you know, whatever. Whatever the date is June, you know, maybe it's June, but essentially, I mean, it's done. It's, you know, they, they sign up for the program, we schedule the whole thing. All the visits are allocated on the calendar. It's done. Now, does that mean the dates never move? Of course not. Weather happens, things happen. Rain delays happen. But instead of trying to manage a pile of unscheduled jobs, we simply shift the schedule forward. Everything moves together, the sequence stays intact, and nothing gets lost. And because when you're operating from a system, the calendar drives the work, but when you operate from a task list, the work drives the chaos. And that's the big difference. Back when I was getting my lawn care business off the ground, I was juggling routes, invoices, and customer notes with paper and prayers. It was chaos. Until I found Yardbook. Yardbook gave me the structure. It helped me track chemicals, route efficiently and invoice faster. And most importantly, it helped me grow a profitable business. If you're tired of duct taping your systems Together, go to yardbook.com and sign up for free. And if you're ready to go premium, use promo code PayJack to get your first 30 days on me. Hey, it's John from Profits with PayJack. And if you're like most green industry pros, you're always thinking about whether you have enough cash to pay your team, buy materials, and still cover surprise bills. And that's why I'm excited about Relay, a banking solution designed for small businesses that need true cash flow clarity. With up to 20 checking accounts, you could separate money for payroll, materials, taxes, and every expense, so you'll never wonder where your funds stand. Ready to simplify your finances, head on over to the Show Notes and click the link to sign up for relay in just 10 minutes.
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So the way that I see it, you know, there's really two operational models that I really see in this industry. What the Model 1, which is the backlog business. You know, jobs sit in a pile and someone decides when they get stunned. You know, it's not. There's really no schedule to it. You know, the schedule keeps changing. It's. Things often get skipped, things get forgotten. And you know, as the owner, you kind of feel like, you know, you're always chasing your work. The second model, which is the, the systems that are in business, the word the work is planned in advance. You know, your programs follow a sequence. Your schedule exists before the work begins. And you know, adjustments, they still happen inside the system and not outside of it. We're not like, well, I got a whole, you know, calendar filled with jobs, but on the side of my note, on the side of my desktop or the side of my laptop, I've got about 14 or 15 post it notes of, you know, jobs that we still have to do. But it's like, well, they're on the computer physically. Huh. See that? It's like the post it notes are stuck to it, but it's not in the computer. You know, it's not in a place where everybody has access to it. And that's how things get skipped, you know. And the crazy thing is it's like the difference between these two models is the difference between feeling overwhelmed and feeling in control. And I know this from, you know, from personal experience. It's not, I've, I've run the, you know, when I worked for another company specifically for them, they had their list of, you know, like all the mowing on a. You know, it was crazy. It was just a big yellow notepad of, of, you know, a list that was handwritten and then xeroxed over. That was our, our route, you know, and whenever it changed, you know, I would see like little ad, you know, like highlighted stuff where things are like, okay, we'll make sure you fit this in. Between Ms. Smith and Mr. Mr. Jones, there's a new account, you know, and it was just like a big messy thing. You know, it wasn't very organized. It was in order, but at the same time it was very messy, you know. And then anytime we had any additional jobs, there was another piece of paper Floating around there. It's like, hey, when you get check. When you get a chance to do this, go ahead and, you know, trim the bushes. It's like, well, I don't actually have time for it. Well, you know, I'm not going to make time for it. I want to just mow lawns, right? If it's up to me, I'm just going to keep kicking that can down the road. I don't particularly like trimming bushes. And this is how things get overpassed. You know, it's like back in the day, I mean, I wasn't as responsible as I am today. And you know, sometimes it's like, well, I don't really feel like doing that, so I'm not going to make time for it. So it's going to sit on the to do list forever. And then the customer is like, where the hell are you? Because remember, this isn't about our convenience. This is for, you know, serving our clients. And you know, again, I've lived both sides of this. I lived that to do list way of doing things. And you know, sometimes my boss wouldn't get all those jobs done because it was not made a priority. It was like, well, just get it done when you can. I would never make time for it. I'm being honest. You know, this is me looking back 20 some years ago and going, oh, I don't like doing this work. I don't want to do it. I'm not going to make time for it. And you know, a lot of times he would end up coming out and doing those bush trimming jobs. Maybe I was a bad person. I don't know. I'm going to, you know, I'm only human. But the other thing is, you know, as a business though, you know, like when I took control of my business and I have everything scheduled, it's. It just makes more sense to, to schedule your work and have it in the system, you know. And here's some takeaways that I want to give you guys so that, you know, if you're, if you feel like your schedule is always messy, here's three things you could do immediately to change that. And first is schedule your reoccurring work in advance. So, you know, if a service repeats week to week, month to month, year to year, whatever it might be, there's no reason to schedule it. You know, one time, one job at a time. You can, you could build the whole season out. You know, we use yard book. You could have recurring jobs in your account. You can even have it to where there's off seasons. So, you know, let's just say for mowing, you know, you, you. Let's just say we mow from April until October, and then November might be cleanup season, whatnot. We're still out there working, whatever, but you could literally have it to where all your mowing kind of stops and say by Halloween, you know, November 1st through March 31st is a dead zone. You could set that as an off season, you know, so the jobs still stay in your system. And then. But they're there. And then, hey, April comes around again. Boom. They restart. You know, all you got to do is make sure that those, you know, people are still customers of yours. If not, you could take them off. It's no big deal. But, you know, instead of reinventing the wheel every spring, it's like, boom. Everything could be set on autopilot. You know, build your season out whenever possible. You know, when it comes to fertilization, we control. Like I said, as soon as people come on, they get on the schedule, you know, for our applications that are, you know, they're time based, you know, they need to be done by a certain time. We get them on the schedule. There's no wait list or whatever. It's like, ah, we're just going to put them on the side and get them done when we can. It's like, no, that doesn't happen. You know, the second thing you could do is stop treating your CRM like a to do list. You know, your CRM should represent a system of operations, not a pile of tasks waiting for someone to decide what's the next thing to do. That's why I love Yardbook, you know, even though, you know, some people say, hey, it needs a, you know, the, the waiting list for the jobs. It's like, what are you waiting for? You can only do this job, like when it's raining or something. Well, then just keep it on the schedule and wait for a rain day to hit. I don't know. That seems kind of, you know, like when we do, we even schedule our maintenance on our vehicles, on our equipment, all of our stuff. It's like it gets put in there. It's like it has to get done sometime. You know, whether we're taking the trucks in to get the oil changes and service at a shop or if we're doing it in house, you know, these things get scheduled regardless. And we work around our schedule with it. So it's like, hey, you know, if it is a rain day or something, maybe we'll Clean the trucks out. But it's, you know, on a weekly basis we have a task set up in Yardbook to say, hey, you got to clean the trucks out. It's just part of the schedule, you know. But anyway, third thing that I can recommend is that, you know, you need to design some workflows that prevent mistakes. And the best systems are the ones that are, that make it hard to skip the steps. That's exactly why, you know, for like inside Yardbook for the fertilization, weed control, we use the multi step program feature for our lawn applications and that sequence, it protects our process. We do the same thing with, you know, things that happen, you know, at the beginning and the end of the season. Like I've helped people set up that do irrigation work. I've helped them set up, you know, multi step processes in their business where it's like, okay, we're going to start it up. We're going to, you know, start the sprinklers up. Well, guess what? We know that at the end of the season you need to blow out. So instead of like just saying, okay, we're going to do all these startups, why don't we schedule the blowout the same time? So it's like, all right, beginning of the season, say it's April, we do our startup. Hey, we know in, you know, let's say late September, early October, we might need to be doing our blowouts. So even though it might not, the timing might need to be perfect that those jobs still get put on the schedule. And you know, when we're using the multi step process or program feature, it makes it easy because it's like, start it and automatically the end is there and it gets put on the schedule. So I don't understand, you know, sometimes I get a little anxious when I'm trying to answer these questions. You know, for operators it's like, listen, I understand that you want that wait list, but at the same time, like as a business owner and that's been through a lot of things and has seen how so many jobs can fall through the cracks when you just kind of have them like hanging around. You know, you don't have them on your schedule. That's when stuff goes wrong because you, it's like all of a sudden everything will be going really well for you. You're like, man, we're way ahead of schedule, this and that and the other. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh dude, we totally forgot to do this. You know, we had this, this job set up we just never scheduled it. Oh man, you know, we're. It was. And it turns out like, you know, it could be a pretty big thing and it just fell through the cracks and now your, your client's unhappy. They went and found somebody else to do it. You know, it's, it, it's a, I don't know, it's organization and being on top of things. So anyway, you know, the next time you feel like your schedule is messy or chaotic, you gotta ask yourself this question. Are you running your business from a to do list or are you running it from a system? Because to do lists, they might work when you have 20 customers, but when you have hundreds of customers, they fall apart. I really wanted you to take a look at how your workflows through your business. I want you to look to see if you have piles of unscheduled jobs just waiting for somebody to decide what to do with them. And if you see that it might be, it might be time to build a better system. So I just want you to say thank you for listening to this. I hope it helps. As always, God bless. Keep pushing through. We'll catch you on the next one. Thank you once again for listening. If you've enjoyed the show, please leave a review and share it with friends. Fellow business owners, your support means the world to me and helps keep the show going strong. I want to give a special shout out to our friends at Yardbook. Their continued support has been instrumental in bringing this podcast to you week after week. If you haven't checked them out yet, visit yardbook.com and see how they can give you the tools to streamline and manage your lawn care business. Also, don't forget to explore the resources and upcoming events that I've collected just for you in the show Notes. These are curated to help help you stay ahead in your business with the latest tips, tools and networking opportunities. Whether it's a new tool, an insightful article, or an event you don't want to miss, I've got you covered. Until next time, keep pushing through and God bless.
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Sam.