Jonathan:

How’s it going? I got my computer in front of me here, I’m gonna look down at my notes a bit. So here’s the question. It’s actually really simple, I barely need to look at it. How do I pay my team through the winter? So I did make a couple of notes of some services you could provide. There is no silver bullet here, it depends on your market, it depends on where you’re at. So you’ve probably heard of some of this stuff. But I do like the idea of focusing on keeping the team on payroll. And what I mean by that is through service autopilot, through academy, I’ve worked with some awesome people, awesome people that have the skill set, have the mindset, they’re totally capable of building something big and interesting. But they’re just failing in every possible way. And one of the reasons they’re failing, is they’re in markets in the lawn care industry that go dormant after six or eight months and they need to roll into snow and they don’t roll into snow.

So basically they have all these team members that serve the client through lawn care, fertilization, we control whatever the service offering is that’s outdoors. Six, eight months and then what happens is, snow season starts, they don’t participate in that game so they let their team go for four or six months of the year and then they have to rehire everybody next year. Well you can’t build an interesting company wherever you’re getting a bunch of newbies on your team with no experience and no knowledge of the business.

And so, in those types of businesses, while you might think the snow business sucks, what option do you have? Well, the only option you have is either play the snow game to solve your labor problem or figure out some other level of service. One of the things I talk about in Service All Pod Academy, all the time, my vision of the future, is if you’re only identifying yourself as a lawn mowing company, an outdoor services company, you’re thinking way too small. I believe in focus, I believe in simplicity, but let’s be honest, the future of your company is probably not just mowing lawns, probably not just fertilization, we control probably not just mowing, probably not just installation. If the companies that think bigger, that don’t just put them in the lawn care box or the outdoor services box. That eventually once they get to some level of skill add in other service offerings where there’s money and they can actually recruit employees to work in those areas. Those are the companies, the individuals that are going to win.

All right, so there’s a real risk of saying, “I’m a lawn mowing company, I’m a bush trimming company, I’m a landscape install company.” When you put yourself in that little bitty box, that winter sucks all right. So my suggestion would be that you say, “I am a service company and what does it mean to survive and keep my team on payroll through the winter?” That could mean, you’re pruning back perennials, it could mean leaf cleanups, it could mean snow, it could mean gutter cleanups, it could mean gutter installs, it could mean landscape installs, it could mean Christmas lights, it could mean handyman services, it could mean building decks, patios, outdoor kitchens, it could mean outdoor lighting, it could mean anything. It could mean cleaning homes, it could mean power washing. What is it? So if you in your mind have said, “I’m a lawn mowing company. I only know lawn mowing.” Well then you’re screwed. There is no thing I can tell you to fix your off season business if you’re just lawn mowing. There’s nothing I can tell you. I’m in Texas and my off season is three to four months for mowing.


Now if I keep going south, it gets a little better. If I go to Florida,