The Mow Money Mindset

Six Essential Upgrades For A More Competitive Presence

• The Mow Money Mindset Collective.

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Upgrading your lawn care business requires strategic improvements both internally and externally to become more competitive in the marketplace.

• Accounting improvements revolutionize decision-making and financial visibility
• Software and technology upgrades (CRMs, AI assistants) streamline operations and client communication
• Leadership development enhances team productivity and client interactions
• Branding consistency creates professional impressions that command premium pricing
• Market visibility through website, social media, and physical branding expands client reach
• Equipment and vehicle upgrades signal professionalism and capability to potential clients

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Speaker 1:

What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the moment in mindset. My name is Dana, so today we're gonna shoot for a short episode or 15 minutes, so I really like to get to that block. I think that busy individuals like your owners in particular definitely don't need to be wasting your time, and I think that's gonna be where you guys find the value in this channel. So, if you will, please don't forget to leave us a like, comment and subscribe on YouTube or if you are listening to us on wherever streaming platforms for podcasts are played. I pray that you guys will leave me an honest review. That out the way.

Speaker 1:

How to upgrade your lawn care business Really, really simple. I want to use two forms of thought here. We're going to break this down as simple as possible, right? So I want to think about internal and external. I'm going to give you what six let's just take six things you can do on the internal side. Three things you can do on the internal side, three things you can do on the external side.

Speaker 1:

And when we talk about upgrading your business, I think that I have to define that, and I'm going to define that very simply as this To upgrade your business means to make your business more competitive in the marketplace. More competitive in the marketplace. That's what we're trying to do when we say upgrade, all right. So we're not just doing it for the sense of. I think that if you look at it like I'm just going to upgrade in the name of getting more revenue, you're going to miss a couple of marks. So we're going to look at how we do that on the internal side and on the external, and those two are kind of self-explanatory. But just in case you don't understand what I mean, internal upgrades are going to be ones that you make that don't directly affect the clientele, those that are looking and have eyes on your business no one, no, um, like, for example, uh, I have 80, I have 80 customers right now.

Speaker 1:

Granted, he's there with me. I have 80 clients. Okay, only 80 clients. However, one client gives me about 86 houses Okay, um, I have another client that has four. One client has four buildings. I have a couple of clients who also have me do their rental properties. So that doesn't mean that's the number of properties I'm doing. I'm just saying right now, as you take an index, I have 80 clients. But let me tell you something Not one of those clients cares how well I balance my books. Not one of them cares about my onboarding process and how I find employment and then how I train up. None of them care. Right, none of them care about the type of CRM I'm using. They could care less, as long as there's something that fulfills their needs, gets them an invoice in a timely manner, is user-friendly. They can make a payment without having to try and hunt me down and leave money under the sofa. I mean money on the rug, whatever, like boom, they're good. So these are the things I'm talking about when I say internal.

Speaker 1:

Now, when we go to external, what we're really looking at is the ideas of what are the things that we're going to upgrade that actually change the visibility or the connection between ourselves and our clients, or ourselves and competitors. Right, how do we distance ourselves further? And so when I think of external, I'm thinking of things like brandy, do you have uniforms? Do you have all one color? Or are you guys just going out on old t-shirts with ripped arms and some basketball shorts and a pair of mismatched boots and cutting grass? Right, there's nothing wrong. There's a lot of guys that are hustling, making some really good money doing that. So I'm not here to knock that. I'm telling you again, though, the upgrade isn't necessarily about me making more money than them, as much as it is about me being a stronger competitor to them. So you can also do that through other means, such as vehicles and equipment right Vehicles and equipment.

Speaker 1:

If you were like me, I just hodpodged. When I first got into the game my first three years, I had like a steel weed eater, a steel stick edger, a Husqvarna stick edger, an Echo backpack right, I had a Skag and an Exmark and I had a like I don't know a craftsman push mower to help me get in the backyard. So like stuff was just thrown together. I had this real rusted out, beat up trailer. My truck was a burgundy but it was full of dents and dings and rust, so rusted In fact, that if you lift up the floor, the floor mats, you can see the, the, you can actually see the holes. It's rusted through the bottom of the floor. You can see right through to the street. So like everything was kind of just hodgepodge and put together and it got the work done.

Speaker 1:

But also what ended up happening was I had to do work for like a discounted price. I had to do work at a price point significantly lower than my competitors because I wasn't a strong enough competitor. I didn't have a presence. I didn't present my company when I pulled up in front of people's houses and I sat out there cranking the engine because it wouldn't turn over, doing that over and over because the truck wouldn't turn over. Stuff like that, that stuff actually does make a difference. Watch this I got my new truck that I put the video up to 2020 Ram 2500. It's the latest video I just did right. So I went to a commercial lot that I've been doing the salt for. They didn't hire me for plowing. They've actually had another company the last two years and they've used me just for salt. For whatever reason, that company didn't offer the salt, so they had me go out there and do the salting these last years.

Speaker 1:

Now I've never met the gentleman that's actually my point of contact for this business, because he's the regional manager and he doesn't live in my state, right? Well, he just so happens after these last two years to come here and say, look, I want to meet you. Like I have time to be in town for 15 days, I have to meet you before that time's out. Just so happens, the day that we meet is the day after I get my new truck. So I drive up with my new truck. He sees the boss wiring hanging out. He sees the boss undercarriage plow for the mount for the plow. He sees it off the back for the salter and he says this is what he says after we meet, shake hands kind of talk a little bit about business deals and what we've been doing.

Speaker 1:

He says listen, I see that you have a heavy duty truck and you take your business seriously, that you can actually handle salt and snow. He said so this year I want to give you the entire contract. He said I want to just go through you now. He said, yeah. I said you got a really nice and it looks like take care of your stuff. And it's a nice truck and I can see that it's built to handle what we need done here at this property. So I'm just like, just from seeing my truck, he's had a guy he's depended on. From my understanding the guy's been great. He didn't have any complaints with the guy. That's the reason why he wouldn't switch over before and give me the plow. And it's like dude, we got this great, you can just come and solve behind us no big deal, just work together. But now, after seeing, seeing he had a point of contact, a point of communication, a point of impression, right After seeing that, what did he do? He gave me a new contract, all right.

Speaker 1:

So look internal, three things that you can do that'll help you upgrade your business internally. I think, three of the most important things. Number one is accounting. If you're having trouble with accounting, you're not doing proper bookkeeping. I'm telling you now, please, please, please. This is something that's going to revolutionize your business from top to bottom. You're going to be able to make better decisions. You're going to be able to know what's actually going on in your business. It's going to help you fix problems before they get out of hand, identify problems that you can see coming down, the pipe project forecast, if you will, and just make great decisions that won't leave you holding the bag at the end of the year, right when it's tax time, or, you know, when the spring rushes over and you're going into that transition between you know grass being grown late summer and early fall and, like you know, stuff's not coming down and maybe you're not as booked out as you want to be. Accounting can help you get that picture. Accounting is like the pencil that draws that drawing and unfortunately, what we usually try to do is we try to create the drawing without the pencil. You're trying to see the image without the pencil being put to the paper and giving you the image, and that's what accounting does. So I would definitely say an internal thing is counting.

Speaker 1:

Another internal thing that you can do is your software or your technology Very, very important, because this helps your point of contact with your people. For example, I have an AI assistant. This allows me to have someone always answer my phone, because I do not have an office manager and I do not have office staff. So instead of me stopping throughout the day to answer my phone, I have an AI assistant. This assists me with getting new leads and also my clients that currently need something. Maybe they got to complain, maybe they want to add a different service or they have a question about something. Guess what? I'm not having to stop in the middle of the day to answer those current clients' questions. They can call in, speak to my AI assistant and she will either forward me the call, if it's really that necessary, or she can make the decision to just go ahead and leave a message for me. So software, that's something that again has revolutionized and upgraded my business. Last year I was answering all the phones. Everybody had my cell phone number. They would just call my cell phone.

Speaker 1:

So, and then what you find, sometimes some people don't have that common sense factor, and so they'll call you at like nine, 10, 11, 12 at night. You're like, why are you calling me about lawn care this late? Or they'll call you at four or five, six, and why are you calling me at that time in the morning about lawn care? There's nothing I can do for you right now, and so that just got really annoying. So, definitely, software technology is a big one. Along with that, you can get a CRM. I did not have a CRM until after I attended Landscape Summit, and so that was what hit me. To the CRM If you're not for sure what that is, just Google it. There's plenty of them out there. Some of them are free. I personally use Service Autopilot have been since I left Landscape Summit back in 2022 or 2023, whichever one that was and so software technology accounting.

Speaker 1:

I think the other thing that you can do that's really, really big is going to be working on your leadership. Again. The company, the clients in the market that you're in really could care less about how great of a leader you are. They want to know can you produce the product and the service that they're paying for, and so the disconnect there that they don't understand, though, is the ability to deliver that product more efficiently, to deliver that product at a higher quality, comes from how you work with and interact with the team that you send out to do it.

Speaker 1:

If you have employees or if it's just you, you know working on your own leadership of yourself, working on your own ability to manage, to organize, you know what I mean To communicate properly. These are skill sets that you have to learn. You cannot just talk to anybody any kind of way. You can't just talk to your clients any kind of way, because it's your business, your company. You can't do that. You have to learn the skill of being able to communicate, the skill of being able to sell, the skill of being able to de-escalate a situation and get to a solution that secures your client but also gives you the ability to keep them. That is a skill. It's easy to just blow up a situation out of proportion and say you know what I'm done with you, I fire you. I don't want you as a client no more, or to have the client do that to you. But can you master the skill of being able to communicate and deal with a problem or an issue and get to a resolution that satisfies the customer and also allows you to retain them? That is a skill, ok. So leadership will be another thing. That's internal. That I think every business owner would do good to work on. Next we have external.

Speaker 1:

I talked about branding. I'm not going to go back over that. Visibility is a good one. How visible are you in the marketplace that you are currently attacking? And sometimes visibility could mean something alongside branding, such as like putting a wrap on your truck, right, putting a sign If you can't afford a wrap, or your truck's too beat up. My trucks used to be too beat up to get wraps. My last three were. They were like sorry, we can't wrap it, it's too much damage. So guess what they did? I was like all right, give me magnet signs. I stuck magnets on the door. Yeah, that's low budget, whatever. But again, it is a form of visibility and if you understand the statistics behind visibility, you understand why it's important for you to go ahead and actually have those kinds of things like invest and upgrade those kinds of things. Some greater visibility, making sure that you all have uniforms that stand out, that are neat, that pop, that draw attention, that clearly state the information and get people to call, call to action. Those are upgrades. Website visibility, internet visibility so now I have a YouTube channel, I have this podcast, I have a website, I have a Google page, I have a Facebook right Like. The list goes on and on because I have upgraded my visibility. Of course, when I very first started my business, all I had was Facebook. I didn't have a Google page. My very first point of contact and entry into the business was that After some years, I realized, oh, google has a free, let's get the free listing on Google. I invested in that. Then that turned into upgrading to a real website, then that turned into upgrading to a social media presence. So these are the things you do. You know Instagram and all that. Those are great, great, great things that you can do Visibility, branding, which kinds of goes hand in hand with visibility, but it's not the same.

Speaker 1:

Okay, it is not the same. Branding, visibility, equipment, vehicles. So I kind of gave you a bonus. I gave you really four, but I said I was going to give you three. But equipment and vehicles Like you can definitely upgrade your presence and your point of contact with your customers when they're at at home or they're on their ring camera and they see you came by and you pulled up in a truck that looked nice. You pulled up in your land, your trailer had all matching equipment. Guys weren't, guys weren't getting out with Red Max equipment to do this piece and then a skag piece to do that piece, and then a right mower to do this piece and do like.

Speaker 1:

When they see that continuity, it speaks to people. It speaks to them about your seriousness of business. It speaks to them about how they're not there dealing with actual professionals or they're just dealing with two men in a truck, which, once again, there's nothing wrong with chucking a truck. Everybody's starting somewhere and some people are okay with being there. But those of you that are looking to grow, develop your lawn care business.

Speaker 1:

That's my tip for today, that is my show for today. I'm going to go ahead and put this thing to bed right here. All right, what does upgrading your company look like? I would just break it down really simply in the two areas internal, external. Don't forget that to upgrade your company, you want to make yourself a stronger, faster, more visible, more powerful, right, a more dangerous competitor in the marketplace, and the way we do that is by making some adjustments in our internal and external workings of our business.

Speaker 1:

All right, I gave you those three for internal accounting, software and technology leadership. And if we went to the external, we're talking about, like your equipment, your branding and your visibility I think that if you look at those three things, you'll find some amazing gems there. You'll find some great boost in your productivity, you'll find some great boost in your revenue and great boost in your visibility and the amount of leads. All of those areas are affected, all of your standard KPIs are affected, really, if you start to upgrade and look into upgrading these six areas. So, with that being said, I appreciate you guys again. Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe, don't forget to leave us an honest review on today's episode and please join us at the next appointed time Can't say when, that is a mystery to us all, but I definitely will be back and I appreciate you guys so much. I have a blessed week. Be encouraged out there and let's make more money.