How to Run a Successful Lawn Care Business: Plan, Prioritize, Pivot

Here are our not-so-scientific tips on how to plan for a successful week. And we start with: plan.

So we love to use Jobber. It connects our team so that they can see the schedule. Our clients can also view their schedule through their client hub. So it is such a beautiful tool to connect everyone and make sure you have a set plan for the week. Everyone knows exactly what they're doing. The beautiful thing about Jobber is you can literally set your week, your month, or even go out as far as a year with planning. Because if you have your set schedule, you can set it all up and you don't have to worry or think about it. So set it and forget it in Jobber — which we love.

While technology is amazing and efficient, I sometimes also am an old-fashioned gal myself. But if you don't have access to getting on a planner program, you can just handwrite in your monthly planner or get a big calendar out or a whiteboard. It depends on how big your operation is and what you need to help you expand and plan properly for your week. So again, you can write in your monthly calendar or get a huge calendar, set it out there for yourself to see and for your team to see. It just, again, really depends on what's going to help you at the moment and at the stage you are in your business.

So start with a good plan — and if you don't have that, you have chaos. That's right. It's crucial to have a plan set in place.

I guess next is step two: prioritize. Because again, if you don't know what order you're doing things, it doesn't matter anyway. There are certain projects that have to be done quickly because of time sensitivity and seasonality. So you just need to prioritize what needs to get done first and make sure that that gets done first, and then second, and third, and then down the line.

So for example — well actually, there's quite a few examples to prioritize — but let's say you have a hardscape job versus a tree planting, or you're going to do some sod. Everything has its seasonality. Hardscapes — you could do that pretty much any part of the season unless it's really downpouring or snowing. But if you're going to do some sod, like in our area, July is a bad idea. It's going to get droughty, it’s going to be dry, you don’t want to be playing that game. Same thing for plants. If you have to, or you're going to do it on an irrigation system, that's fine — just make sure you realize: let me have some forethought. What needs to get done first? What is the timing of everything?

So it's your business. You know what you have to do and when to do it. Just pick what goes first. And then once you have your plan, you prioritize what clients need to go where, you can then proceed with your plan in a non-chaotic order and fashion.

Now I say this lightly because sometimes you have to plan to pivot. So that means — like today actually is a perfect example, a very good example. The schedule got completely mixed up because plants that were ordered two weeks ago ended up not arriving and won’t arrive for the project that we were supposed to do this weekend. Which actually was okay. We had to pivot, and the schedule, I'd say, worked out better than it was prior.

So don’t panic. Just pivot and proceed with proper planning. Follow all those stages. And even when you have to pivot, it will still all work out to be — sometimes — even better than when you originally planned it.

Thank you, everybody. We hope you enjoyed those tips. We hope these tips were helpful to you.

My name is Jenneka, this is We Are JJ Property Pros. If you enjoyed these tips and you'd like to learn more business ideas and information for your business, we’d send you over to ECHOMEANSBUSINESS.COM. And we hope to see you next time. Thank you so much.