As Strong as Your Weakest Link

When you start your own lawn care business, there are a lot of new situations you have to get used to. Perhaps you did lawn care for years as an independent contractor or you worked for someone else on their payroll. The work of lawn care doesn’t change and if that is what you love to do, you are on the right track starting your own lawn care business. But when it is you who runs the show, the world is a very different place.

Perhaps the biggest adjustment will be that when you own your own business, you suddenly are confronted with this new creature called an employee. But it is the employees you have on board with you that will make or break your yard care business. That means that one of the most important skills you will develop as a manager and owner of a business will be your ability to pick, hire and retain great employees. That is because your business will truly be as strong as your weakest link.

If you used contract labor when you got busy before you turned your lawn care into a business, you developed some skills for evaluating who would be a good worker. If you did get that chance, that judgment will be invaluable to you as you build your own small army of quality employees. It is quite a balancing act to capture enough business to keep all of your employees busy and then to think about growing your business as well.

If you get a rush of new business, you want to capture it and turn those customers long term clients. But you have to be able to add new employees to take care of all of that business and be able to trust those employees to take care of that business well so the job they do for those new customers is just as high quality as you would do yourself. Perhaps the best important resource you can find is a labor source who can provide you with a consistent supply of workers who do a good job for you. Whether this is a community that you network with to draw workers from or a placement service, you will benefit from having a way to recruit good employees without having to make that your job in life.

It seems that the balancing act of work and employees is one of the most difficult parts of owning a business to work out. You might have too much business and not enough employees you can depend on. Then you find yourself overworking the good employees you have and playing higher wages for their longer hours and you get overworked yourself which cuts down on the time you can spend growing your business. Or you have too many employees when the business shrinks. Then you have a decision of whether to lay off good employees that you want to have on call when your business expands.

Above all, when you develop a strong staff of good employees, you should bend heaven and earth to take care of them. Morale in your employee ranks can be as much of a determining factor for the growth of your business as good customers or good equipment you need to take care of all those lawns that are the heart of your work. Learn to be a "good boss". If employees you know are good workers develop problems, try to work with them to return them to productivity.

If you can keep a good group of employees working with you and you are always developing new talent, you will have conquered one of the biggest challenges of running your own lawn care business. It will be a skill that will be a key component to long term success. And if you can give your employees a little part of the success you are enjoying, they will become an even more valuable asset which is a loyal crew that will work hard for you because you take good care of them.