Dear Lawn or Landscaping Business Owner, It’s a frustrating conversation…we had another one on Wednesday.
Sure…finding good help is a real challenge these days. No doubt about it.
But complaining about how hard it is to find help…well…that’s not helping the situation!
Then…complaining about current employees and their work ethic…the complaints just ain’t helping! It’s time to adjust your EMPLOYEE game plan.
We were so frustrated with the endless complaints from landscape business owners a few months ago, we wrote this “in your face” essay calling out the practice of bitching, griping and moaning about employees.
We had our share of scolding replies to our strong language. That’s fine. We deserved it.
But we had to make a point…and we intend to provide truth instead of politically correct useless commentary. Yes…our essay went on to give a lawn and landscape business owner a PROVEN PLAN to solve their employee problem. Sadly…very few took our advice.
In case you missed the essay with the forward-thinking, learning from the business titan solution, you can read it right here. And…if YOU plan to hire at least one landscape technician OR one more lawn maintenance crew leader in 2022, you should read this 10 minute essay right now.
Today, we are dead in the middle of the Spring rush of 2022 and I’m happy to report on the financial productivity of the young landscaper we featured in our case study of “what to do to solve the employee problem”.
This young man is on pace to set a nationwide financial productivity benchmark that would make the CEO of Brightview Landscape salivate with envy!
Yes…
This crazy little idea of how to SOLVE the employee problem has this company producing $511,155 of revenue PER full-time equivalent employee so far in 2022. This is an exceptionally productive company providing residential landscaping! That’s 404% MORE revenue per employee than the publicly traded BV landscape company. (we show our math below)
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Brightview reported $2.55 billion in revenue ending fiscal year 2021.
With 20,150 employees reported, they have generated $126,551/employee.
$511,155 divided by $126,551 = 4.04**
**We do not have data on actual field hours worked at BV. This report is based on financial data published by BV and found at Google Finance on 5-6-22.
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Good News on the Horizon for Landscapers?
While we are on the subject of publicly traded companies…Amazon reported earnings this past week. You may have heard the news. They reported a loss of $3.8 billion on sales of $116.4 billion. (So much for paying a dividend to shareholders for another quarter!)
How in the world could this HUGE loss at Amazon be Good News for Landscapers?
Well, during the earnings call the Amazon team announced they have excess capacity in their warehouses and labor force. They even went as far to say they will be “right sizing” in the near future.
In other words…expect some layoffs in the near future at your local Amazon Warehouse…which just might be an opportunity for you to convert a warehouse worker to join us outdoors on your landscape team. Since Amazon employs 1,622,000 people…I’d say there’s a better than average chance they will lay off more than a few dozen folks!
Now wait…
Before you start telling me how unlikely it is that you could EVER get a former warehouse worker to take a landscaping job…consider my recommendations found in the essay titled Landscape employee problems? (what to do about it follows)
You see…
Our good ol’ free enterprise system has ways of working things out over time. There’s a reason we’ve only seen 3.6% unemployment rates about 3 times since 1969. These economic conditions are very rare!
What’s happening today… with the HIGH demand for goods and services is bound to swing back to a lower level…and you’ll get a chance to hire some folks looking for work down the road…perhaps they will be an ex-Amazonian!
We can’t be sure how or when the market slows down and the bitching, griping and moaning about finding employees changes to begging, praying and crying about finding CUSTOMERS willing to pay the high prices for landscape services…but that day gets closer with each sunrise!
So…please tell me…
What do you think about our recommendations and analysis?
Hit reply.
Tell us what you think.
We look forward to your feedback!
Stay energized,
Tony Bass, founder
866-923-0027
When you’re ready…
There are three ways we can help you enhance your systems for finding, recruiting, hiring and retaining super star employees.
- Purchase a copy of our little-known book titled 50 Ways to Find, Recruit, Hire and Retain Super Star Employees. The print book comes with an audio (4) CD set read by the author. Yes, there really are 50 unique ways to enhance your employee systems and we share the details, the scripts, the job offers and little-known government programs to help you get big-time tax credits for hiring certain workers. Click here to purchase.
- Get immediate digital access to The Automatic Hiring Machine training program. You can learn the 11-steps to build a recruiting system that automatically sorts, sifts and selects the very best employee prospects from the lazy and unreliable duds. Click here to order online and get started this weekend.
- You can hire us to help you build your very own Automatic Hiring Machine. If you are super-busy and want to move forward quickly, we can help. Please understand that we reserve the right to limit our services via our non-competitive exclusion zone in some markets. Order the Automatic Hiring Machine implementation service by clicking here.
