Working on your Business!

[lawnandgardenwv]

I had the pleasure of participating in the Gopherhaul Podcast last night and I always get a pearl of wisdom out of each time 5-8 of us participants interact.

I realized how important it is to work on your business. *I look back at my days of owning a Lawn/Landscape company, and how I was putting in 18 hour days in the summer because I felt that I had to be out there mowing, selling, doing, and it was the only way I would be satisfied with the quality of work we were performing for our customers. *In hindsight, I realized that I loved to sell, and I could have sold 8 hours a day and then went around and inspected the jobs, and just entrusted crew leaders to lead the rest of the team from a execution standpoint. I am sure the results would have been far greater**who knows I may have stayed in the business.

So many times we get so invovled as business owners and we forget what is important to the growth and sustainability of the business. *

If I could offer a piece of advice to other business owners especially new ones**is to choose your role that you want to play in your business, because you cannot be the owner, the bookkeeper, the salesperson, and expect to achieve great things. *If you are passionate about your line of work, the business will flourish and you will have passionate employees, and customers will love it!

Three Important Goals
#1 Focus
#2 Focus
#3 Focus

Best of luck!

Brian Gardner
President
Lawn & Garden Webvision (http://lawnandgardenwv.com)

[Steve]

Hi Brian,

That was a fun and interesting discussion. Some of what we talked about does remind me of the e-myth. The concept of working on your business and not in your business.

It is very difficult to let go and let others take over. As you look back on your experience why do you think it was so difficult for you to

Quote[/b] ]just entrusted crew leaders to lead the rest of the team from a execution standpoint.

Because I bet there are a lot of people right now scratching their heads trying to figure out how to do that.

Do you have any thoughts on that?

[ritchiem]

What a fantastic topic Brian. All too many a time business owners get trapped as a working owner and don't know how to break away.

It is a trust issue really...by doing the physical work you know that it is getting done and to what your clients expect...hard to put that trust into someone else.

However you'll get to a point in your business to where you have reached a plateau...and you will never get over that point unless you start delegating and trusting your team leaders.

Bang on Brian.

[lawnandgardenwv]

Comes down to trust, fear, stubborness, etc.

I hope that there are others out there that can benefit from my learning experience.

The other thing is that I did not look past the "well if I am not doing the work then I will have to pay someone else" mentality. Had I gone out and just focused on selling new jobs**then I could have afforded the additional crew leaders.

Another lesson learned!

Brian

[Steve]

Quote[/b] ]"well if I am not doing the work then I will have to pay someone else" mentality.

So in a sense your mind set was, I have to keep expenses low and hiring someone else would be an expense.

But the larger picture was that keeping you working in the field on the jobs and not selling was actually a bigger expense. It wasn't seen at the time as an expense, but it indeed was.

This expense kept you from expanding outwards. Maybe this is something to the effect of being short sighted vs. having a longer view into the future of what you want to do and where you want to take your business?

This could be something a business owner should at times take a moment to think about? Do they have a more long term view of their direction or are they just too focused on day to day issues.

It does make you pause for a moment and think about it. What is my long term goal? If you can answer that, you are ahead of the game it seems.

[lawnandgardenwv]

Exactly**look at things differently and be open-minded. If you own a business don't be afraid to take some small risks that could take you to the next level, yet at the same time weigh out the ROI.

[Steve]

We all know of the business plan concept. We know that we can create a business plan and we can plan out where we want to be in a year or 2 or 5 or 10.

My take is, all to often, we don't plan. We just want to be busy. We wake up and ask ourselves, do I have enough to do today to keep myself busy? If I do then great, everything is fine and I am happy.

I could be wrong on this but it does seem guys in general just would rather not plan. They just want to be busy.

If this is actually the case, this could explain why all too often there is no planning. And then once in a while, someone comes around with a plan and they are able to say ok I have these milestones I want to achieve within a certain time frame and this is how I am going to do it.

It's people like this that tend to take their business to a higher level.

I have helped make a bunch of business plans in the past for lawn care business owners and I have them posted on here for free. Check this post for them (http://www.gophergraphics.com/forum/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST&f=1&t=4380&st=&&#entry19779). But think about it. How often do we see any posts at all on business planning? Like never! I can't remember the last time someone asked about it or brought it up how to plan.

Why is that? Why are we so averse to planning? Is this hurting us?