Critical Mistakes to Avoid When Growing Landscaping Business

The Untrapped Podcast With Keith Kalfas

Keeping your landscaping and service business on track can be challenging, but Keith has some great tips and stories today.

In this $13,000 project, he and his crew dealt with everything from chopping down massive arborvitaes to detecting hidden PVC pipes. Keith explains the importance of saying "no" to things that aren't in your wheelhouse and why sometimes you need to learn the hard way.

In addition, Keith shares some insights from other successful businesspeople who have discovered that streamlining your services can transform your business. It's a proven fact that focusing on your team's strengths will save time, reduce costly errors, and increase your bottom line. The key is letting go of the mental blocks and old stories that make you think you have to do everything when focusing on what you're good at is more efficient.

We've covered you with real-life business stories full of practical advice to help you run your business more smoothly and efficiently.

Check out these episode highlights:

00:00 Focus on big jobs; skip tricky extras.

06:05 Stick to core job duties and skip extra work.

07:14 Turning down a stressful job taught lessons.

12:36 Identify what you enjoy and focus on that.

16:30 Join for business advice and expert insights!

17:12 Want to chat? Hit me up at keithkelphus.com/call for some business advice!

Key Takeaways:

Discernment in Service Offerings: Knowing when to say 'no' to client requests outside your expertise is vital. This protects your business reputation and helps avoid unnecessary complications and delays. As tempting as it might be to take on every opportunity, focusing on what you excel at brings better results and client satisfaction.

The Power of Specialization: Concentrate on a select few services your team performs exceptionally well. This approach not only streamlines operations but ensures consistent quality and efficiency, allowing you to train new employees and serve your clients with excellence quickly.

Embrace and Overcome Mental Barriers: Understand that many perceived obstacles in managing a business, such as controlling quality and needing to be physically present, often exist in your head. Trusting and empowering capable team members can lead to broader success beyond individual efforts.

Connect with Keith

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/keithkalfas/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelandscapingemployeetrap Website: https://www.keithkalfas.com/resources Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@keith-kalfas

Resources and Websites:

Durable AI Website: Durable AI Website Builder and Small Business Software

Here's the video and story about our Window Cleaning brother in the UK I was talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F_pxfE8A4k

Tree Work Electric hazard awareness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7QgzAauFCQ

Tree Work Electric hazard awareness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILGSn9Rx8f8&t=0s

The Time William and I climbed 115ft. in a tree: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVmT_Nhohjk&t=0s

Tree Work and Arborist Videos playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLub0_q7i2mDRR3pk7GpX3k8JhZiE2IvYm

🙋♂️Get My Free Landscaping Business Startup Video Series Here👇 Here https://www.keithkalfas.com/Landscaping-Series

Landscaping Course https://keith-kalfas.mykajabi.com/store/8bFERMcs

LANDSCAPING BUSINESS How to Guide: https://www.keithkalfas.com/16

Get Jobber: https://getjobber.com/im/ambassador-referral/?gspk=a2VpdGhrYWxmYXM4NTIx&gsxid=Rs6pwtznLDcs

Easy Budgeting Blueprint: keithkalfas.com/budget

Smartphone Video Creation Guide: Keithkalfas.com/smartphone

Identifying Your Superpower: Keithkalfas.com/superpower

Become An influencer And Monetize Your Expertise: https://www.keithkalfas.com/influence

Multiple Ways to Monetize: https://www.keithkalfas.com/multipleways

LevelUp Your Landscaping Business to $100K and beyond: https://www.keithkalfas.com/LEVELUP

Transcript

(Note: this was transcribed using transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Keith Kalfas - 00:00:10 - 00:01:02

But when I'm going through my notes thinking of what content to create for you, I always go back to what's valuable and its mistakes to avoid. In the landscaping business, or any business for that matter, every time you take on something new, there's a learning process where it could be easy, could be really hard, and expensive. And so, like, we took on this job, and I wanna tell you a couple of stories and mistakes to avoid. This is so valuable. This job was, like, $13,000, and I always think of that song, Every Rose Has Its Thorn, from like the eighties because every rose has its thorn. So a job that is like, yes, it's a jackpot job. It's gonna have something in there, and you feel like you have to say yes to that thing, or you might have to do that thing. It's just you have to have discernment here.

Keith Kalfas 00: 01:02 - 00:01:55

For instance, we removed these huge arborvitaes that were growing up as part of this $13,000 job. These huge arborvitaes were growing up behind the house and we had to cut them down and grind the stumps because the customers wanted them gone completely. And after we dug out all of the arborvitae trimmings, all the dead stuff, there was this white PVC pipe with the, basically the roots growing right up against it, and we had to grind it. And I told my guy, I was like, dude, you have to be so so so careful. Use a sawzall, chip around, cut around, whatever you do, do not hit that pipe. And I can't say that I wouldn't have hit the dang thing because he's extremely careful. He's on that thing for 3 and a half hours grinding around up against the house, and there's this pipe that was hidden, and he nicks the pipe. So we had to get this PVC repair stuff, and luckily, it was just like a drainage.

Keith Kalfas 00:01:56 - 00:02:40

It wasn't anything crazy. And we were able to completely repair it with this PVC stuff and then smooth it over and sand it. And the moment the question mark comes up, you're like, So that's what you do, you get paid to solve problems. I have a friend who, I can't say his business, but he told me, once he started standardizing his business and saying, this is what we do, this is what we don't do. It could be a $50,000 job, and the customer could be like, well, can you repair the railing on my steps? Because I really need it fixed. And in the moment, you might feel like you have to say yes because this whole $50,000 job is hanging on it. But you will eventually get to the point where you can confidently say, oh, no. I'm sorry. We don't offer that service.

Keith Kalfas 00:02:40 - 00:03:28

We can do the $50,000 job. We're experts at this, but we're not going to repair your railing because we're not experts at it. Right? And the customer, my friend, told me, he said that he was afraid to say no, and once he started saying no because he said it's the little tiny; the devil's in the details. It's those little tiny things that will snag you and mess up a whole job because then you try to fix the railing, and you realize it has parts that are discontinued. Now you have to special order them. Right? And it's part of the job. It's on the service contract. So then it takes 4 weeks for them to arrive, and it's the wrong dang parts, and then you have to reorder them from somewhere else, and you have to fine them. And you're waiting on a $50,000 check being held up or your final deposit because of some stupid little parts from a railing coming off that you're not even supposed to be doing anyways, but it's part of the job.

Keith Kalfas 00:03:28 - 00:03:48

You agree to do it. So you gotta be really careful. My friend told me when he started saying no, the customers just went, “Oh, okay. No worries. I guess I'll have to find somebody else to do that”. He's like, boom. It was all in his head. Another friend of mine said that he got completely out of all the labor in his business, and I'll tell you some other stories here.

Keith Kalfas 00:03:49 - 00:04:31

He subcontracts only. Right? But it's a type of higher profit industry that allows you to subcontract and to standardize its commercial work. And he said, I said, “Wait a second. How do you control the quality if you're not there inspecting everything?” And my friend starts laughing, and he goes, “Bro, all the stories we told ourselves all these years as service business owners, a lot of it was just stupid stories in our heads of what we're afraid of. It's all in your head.” And he reiterated it. He's like, and you're so stuck on the story of, like, I have to be there to control the quad, I have to be there. He's like, when you find the right people, or you have the right people or people that are accountable or have an invested interest, it's all completely in your head.

Keith Kalfas 00:04:31 - 00:05:03

And so the most successful people know that you don't have to be there. Right? You just have to find somebody who's, like on and on. A hundred examples. So anyways, this PVC thing, we fixed it and repaired it when removing these large arborvitaeys from behind this house on this $13,000 job. There was a hidden PVC pipe. We had to grind it and cut it around it with a sawzall to get the roots out and accidentally nicked the pipe and had to fix it and we did. And then we're removing these pine trees. They have very shallow roots.

Keith Kalfas 00:05:03 - 00:05:27

No big deal. Grind them down. Topsoil, grass seed, done. We get called Miss Dig. There's electricity, high voltage utility lines running directly underneath them. So we have to, like, change our approach and do a surface grind. I think we only went, like, 4 inches deep, and we had to cut and pull the roots up by hand. That took an extra few hours.

Keith Kalfas 00:05:28 - 00:06:05

Here you go. So you feel like you have to say yes to some stuff, but other stuff you can just outright say no to. This one customer, awesome customer, do every different type of property maintenance, but she's like, come in the backyard, look at my garden. I want you to delineate the garden beds and separate them from the grass. So there's the bushes and the garden beds, but then the grass is growing into the garden bed. She's like, “I want you to create a brick retaining, like with brick pavers, a retainer. And I also want you to install a whole patio next to my patio to install it.” Right? To extend it.

Keith Kalfas 00:06:05 - 00:06:50

And I looked at it, and I was like, we can definitely do that if I'm here because I know we're gonna dig, and we're gonna end up cutting sprinkler lines. It's gonna be some work. I said, but I don't have time to be here because my job is to keep the calendar full. I'm mostly out of the field now. My job is to do sales and marketing and, talk to customers and, collect money, and make sure the guys have all the materials that they need so that they can bang out jobs. So you might have to say no and reduce some of those extra services that you were doing when you were there because you're so focused, and you know you can pull it off even if you're not totally experienced. You just have that capacity because, frankly, because your ass is on the line to do a phenomenal job. So these things tie you to the job.

Keith Kalfas 00:06:50 - 00:07:13

So I very confidently. Well, actually I wasn't confident, 'cause I wanted to do it so bad, 'cause I wanted the money. It was another It could be another $3 or something or $4. I was like, we're not experts at this, so I have to decline that. And the customer said, “Oh, come on. You can do it. I know you can do it.” And I said, “Oh, let me think about it. We might be able to do it.”

Keith Kalfas 00:07:14 - 00:08:17

So I walk away from the customer and now I have this thorn in my side, and I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it. I already know that it's a no. Days go by, and the customer is messaging me, “Hey, are you gonna give me a price to do this garden thing and the little patio extension with the brick pavers?” I'm so stressed about it because see what happens is you learn from your mistakes. When you say yes to something that you know you should have said no to, but just because you want the money or you need the money, and then you're stuck on that job when you're supposed to be doing other things, and now you're stretched so thin that you're out there behind, you're on Sunday, then you tell yourself a story. Well, being crazy busy like this, this is where I make the most money is when you're up to here, and that's also true. When you're so busy, you're up to here, where you don't have you're on the run constantly. That is where you make the most money, but is it? Or is it just a story? So you learn all these little lessons, and I basically messaged the customer back like, I got on the phone and said, “Hey, I did some research, we're not gonna be able to do that.”

Keith Kalfas 00:08:18 - 00:08:33

No. No. No. No. No. No means no. And the customer says okay. And then what happens? Very same day, we close another 6 to $12,000 in work doing this stuff that we're good at, which is property maintenance.

Keith Kalfas 00:08:33 - 00:09:02

This is what my employees know exactly how to do. They can trim the shrubs, and pull the weeds, and edge out the garden beds. They can put in mulch. They can do decorative stone. They can do all the stuff that we do every day, and I don't have to be there at all. I just send them the work order on Jobber, and they can just do, oh, go to get jobber.com/kalfas. I'll put a link in the description below because I'm a Jobber ambassador. You can save you get just basically a huge discount with my exclusive link when you sign up with Jobber.

Keith Kalfas 00:09:02 - 00:09:42

So anyways so you have to reduce the services that you offer. So you can cookie cutter your business, so it becomes more predictable. So I remember when I first started my landscaping business, I would look at other companies, and it's called copycat marketing when you first start running your business. You see what other people are doing that appear confident, and you just kinda copycat what they're doing. But sometimes the truth is, they don't even know what they're doing. They just copycat it someone else. And if it seems to work, it seems to work. But this one landscaping company in my town, they have like 20 services listed all over the trailer.

Keith Kalfas 00:09:43 - 00:10:40

It's like tree trimming, landscaping, shrub trimming, mulch, decorative stones, sprinklers, this, that, patios, pergolas, and it went on and on to all the like, oh, fertilizing, dethatching, aerating, there's a whole list. And I was like, oh, that's genius. Because then customers are gonna see it, and they're gonna look for the service that they need. So if it's a bigger company that has different divisions or different times of the year and they specialize, like, for instance, we would do gutter cleaning only in the spring and in the fall. We'll get a huge list, and we bang them all out and we bang them all out. When we have a gutter cleaning randomly in the middle of the like the late late late spring or summer, it doesn't even fit. So if you have these services like dethatch, aeration, combo special, they're like $500, you'll come out and do all this. You just do it in the spring, right, or in the fall or something.

Keith Kalfas 00:10:40 - 00:11:16

And you segment it and you black it off and let all your customers know, hey. We're gonna be doing this for this month, this service, and you could kinda tie it into maybe when you're a little bit slower. That's what I love about doing ornamental tree trimming. That's why we do spring and fall cleanups. That's why you do snow removal.

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Keith Kalfas 00:12:22 - 00:12:36

But when you have this hodgepodge of services, it makes it very difficult. So the more refined you get and say, hey, we just do these few things very, very well, and we do them over and over and over and over again. That's so amazing because whenever you have a new employee come, you can train that employee quickly to do these services.

Keith Kalfas 00:12:36 - 00:13:55

And then you can leave, and then they'll know exactly what to do. But it's hard in the beginning when you need money because you'll say yes to all these different random things because you could just swap yourself with months of work and make literally 100 of 1,000 of dollars in revenue by just saying yes. But the problem with that is, again, to reiterate, is once you start getting employees, if you don't have if you don't have a training system and you have all these services, you might have to have all these different types of tools. So if Tuesday the guys turn in bushes and on Wednesday you got the guy pressure washing, how do you expect that guy to even learn and do a good job? That's your fault if you don't teach him. And if he doesn't do pressure washing again for another 2 weeks and randomly on a Thursday, he's doing pressure washing, how can you expect him to do a great job? Now you're gonna be walking on eggshells, afraid that something goes wrong. It's you could tell I've been through this crap. Right? So it's like, I think it's very important to get very clear about the services that you offer. And if you've been in the business for a while running solo, you can look and say, okay, What are the highest profit margin services that you do? What services do you love to do? What services do you absolutely hate doing? And try to narrow it and move it around and be like, you know what? I really like doing this.

Keith Kalfas 00:13:55 - 00:14:41

One of them could be a landscaping installs anywhere from 75100 to 15000, like installing stuff. And moving up with inflation, the bigger ticket jobs you get that are more kind of luxury, where customers have disposable income is, the higher the profit margins can go. So if you have a 50% gross profit margin on a, let's say, just a $10,000 job, 5,000 gross profit. And the one thing I like about doing bigger jobs, which is a whole another video, whole another piece of content, is that it's big rocks in your calendar that block up more time. So anyways, if you like these types of stories, let me know in the comments below. I appreciate you. I see and I read all of your comments even if I don't respond. It's because I just get so many messages.

Keith Kalfas 00:14:41 - 00:15:20

And again, I'm Keith Kalfas. This channel is called the landscaping employee trap. And if I say that in my older videos, you can look and see. I also have some announcements to make, so keep listening. If you go down and you see playlist or my older videos, I would say, what's up? It's Keith Kalfas with the landscaping employee trap. It's because when I first started this channel, I was a landscaper who was stuck in what I call dead-end landscaping jobs because I wanted to start my own business. So I said, let me make some videos for guys who are stuck in the landscaping employee trap, and the channel kinda took off. And so we also I created a podcast called The Untrapped Podcast.

Keith Kalfas 00:15:20 - 00:15:52

So if you don't have time to watch the videos, you can also go to Apple or Spotify, The Untrapped Podcast, and you can listen to it while you work. We just crossed 850,000 downloads. And then also, I have a whole much more announcements. If you need a great website, go to durable.co. Durable uses the power of AI to give you an amazing website to market your business. And with AI, it'll templatize your whole website out quickly. You just type in, like, make me a lawn care or landscaping website. And then you go in and you fill in all the blanks.

Keith Kalfas 00:15:52 - 00:16:30

And then, with my unique code, because I'm a durable ambassador, I'll put a link in the description below. You can click it, and you get a huge discount with my link. So next thing is keithkelphus.com is my website. You can get access to all my resources. If you go to keithkelphus.com/resources, you get access to everything that I talk about in my videos. If you need software, you need equipment, you need help with your business, I have also started something. We're beta-testing the untrapped alliance, which is a biweekly coaching group. So you can get on a Zoom calls with me and a few other people.

Keith Kalfas 00:16:30 - 00:17:12

It's a community where you can get your questions answered, and we can walk you through your business sales and marketing. And really excited about that. I'll also be having, from time to time, other experts come on that are have profound knowledge in running a service business, and then they can answer your questions too, so we have more diversity. So, I'll put the links to everything that I'm talking about below here. Make sure you hit the subscribe button and turn on notifications. If you wanna get on a call with me, it's keithkalfas.com/call. Sometimes people try to get a hold of me and I can't. I'm busy running a couple businesses and I'm married and I have so much stuff going on that I can't get on the phone with people anymore. And sometimes people are getting upset.

Keith Kalfas 00:17:12 - 00:17:40

They're like, yo, I wanna talk to you on the phone, bro. How come you won't talk to me? And I was like, I just can't. I spent a few years talking to people all the time on the phone and for free in Facebook, chatting and messaging, helping them the guys who are trying to start their businesses. And that's my favorite thing to do. That's what this whole channel is about. So I created keithkelphus.com/call. It's a paid 30-minute or 1-hour call you can get on the phone with me. And I also offer higher-level coaching because I'm completely obsessed with marketing.

Keith Kalfas 00:17:40 - 00:18:18

So Yeah. That's it. What up, though? My studio, I am remodeling a part of it. And I'm gonna be taking the podcast to a next level, and it's gonna be sweet. I can't wait for you to see it. Oh, also, another announcement. We just finished traveling around the country doing a season 1 of our shop tour series. And we've done amazing interviews with people like coach Carroll, Tommy Mello, Kirk Kempton from ResponsiBid, Ryan Johnson from Reach at Window Cleaning, we've done Troy Klog, and we've done, I said Tommy Mellow, a one garage doors.

Keith Kalfas 00:18:19 - 00:18:34

So that'll all be coming out soon on my YouTube channel here. I'm so excited about it. It's gonna be totally free. They're like full, almost like a TV show of amazing epic interviews. And that's it. Stay blessed.