Filed under: Generosity | Tags: business, career, entrepreneur, extra money, franchise, garden, gardening, grass, grass cutting, grass cutting business, home business, investment, landscape, landscaping, lawn, lawn business, lawn care, lawn care business, lawn cutting, lawn cutting business, lawn maintenance, lawn maintenance business, lawn mowing business, lawn service, lawncare, mowing, small business, unemployed, unemployment
A lot of people who have accumulated wealth have shown that it pays to give back to those who aren’t as fortunate. We have all seen this.
As most people already know, people and businesses (lawn care businesses) from all over the world are doing what they can to help in Haiti.
Bill Gates has started a foundation on global health and learning. Warren Buffet has also followed this ‘giving spirit’ and set up his children with sufficient inheritance and then decided to pledge the rest of his enormous fortune to the Gates’ foundation.
Highly paid athletes and celebrities have also created foundations to help less fortunate children accomplish their dreams. Most of these people have more money than they can ever spend in their lifetime and perhaps their children’s lifetime. That’s an amazing thought.
But even those of us with a more modest fortune can help raise the fortunes of others – especially those in Haiti right now.
Think of ways that your lawn business can contribute to the betterment of society. Let your employees know that this is an essential part of your business plan. Include them in the conversation about which organizations your lawn company will support or set up a matching fund so that your company will contribute to charities that match their personal interests.
Adam Smith, the founding father of modern economics, knew the incredible value of social status. The same rules apply today some two hundred years later. So remember to use your good fortune to help others who are less fortunate and make a real difference.
Successful Lawn Business Strategies
Filed under: Charm | Tags: business, career, entrepreneur, extra money, franchise, garden, gardening, grass, grass cutting, grass cutting business, home business, investment, job, landscaping, lawn, lawn business, lawn care, lawn care business, lawn cutting, lawn cutting business, lawn mowing business, lawn service business, lawncare, mowing, small business, unemployed, unemployment
“Charm is the quality inothers that makes us more satisfied with ourselves.” – Henri Frederic Amiel
Everybody and their dog can think of someone they know that is charming. This is the kind of person who always seems to be on the up and up. They are happy and have a skip in their step. They’re someone we like to run into. We look forward to seeing them.
Filed under: Mastermind | Tags: business, career, entrepreneur, franchise, garden, gardening, grass, grass cutting, grass cutting business, home business, investment, job, landscape, landscaping, lawn, lawn business, lawn care business, lawn cutting, lawn cutting business, lawn maintenance, lawn maintenance business, lawncare, money, mowing, unemployed
Our brains are like a battery. The more of them put together, the greater the power. A group of brains in unity, focussed on a single purpose can provide more thought energy and ideas than a single brain. The increased energy created through those like-minded individuals seems to become available to every person linked together in that group.
I remember reading that Henry Ford used this strategy to get from poverty to riches in 25 years. I think its applicable to the lawn care service business industry.
Not too many people know he came from a place of poverty and illiteracy. The odds seemed to be against him.
People say his greatest advancement in success came from the time he befriended the famous inventor Thomas Edison.
He later went on to add to his mastermind group the likes of Burbank, Firestone, and Burroughs. Henry Ford tapped into the mind power of these 4 brilliant men and used the knowledge and experience gained to help himself rise to the top of success.
And that’s worth thinking about and acting upon.
Successful Lawn Business Strategies
http://www.HowToStartYourLawnCareBusiness.com
http://www.HowToGrowYourLawnCareBusiness.com
Filed under: Resilience | Tags: business, entrepreneur, garden, gardening, grass cutting, grass cutting business, home business, landscape, landscaping, lawn business, lawn care business, lawn cutting business, lawn maintenance, lawn maintenance business, lawn mowing business, lawn service business, mlm, network marketing, Resilience, resilient, small business
Resilience is such a powerful word for the lawn care maintenance business industry. A character trait needed by all of us. The dictionary defines it as the ability to return to original form after being bent, stretched or compressed. Its the ability to bounce back from any adversity we face.
Lets just keep it simple.
Resilience in the arena of the lawn and landscaping industry means being able to withstand setbacks, broken hearts and broken dreams, financial crisis, etc.
What would you do if you ran into a problem that cost you everything? How would you handle that? What would your next step be? How long would you cross your arms and be angry at the world? What would it take for you to pull yourself up and stir yourself to start all over again? How much resilience do you have?
Here are 3 ingredients to bouncing back from anything you face.
1.) Faith
You would first need to believe you could do it. We rarely attempt anything we don’t believe is possible for us. It would take a lot of trust in God to move forward.
2.) Self Reliance
It would take a lot of self reliance not to point fingers and play the blame game. It doesn’t matter if what happened was your fault. All that matters is that your actions after the fact determine your future.
3.) Discipline
You would have to dig deep within yourself to get going and to keep moving forward every day. You’d have to focus and concentrate on the goal ahead. It would take a lot of discipline to balance the fear and the worry with the knowledge that, if you did it once, you can do it all over again. You can succeed.
Resilience is the ability to bounce back from anything you face in your lawn business. Regardless of what you face, big or small, you have to bounce back. Even if you just lost a huge client. One of your biggest ones. This client accounts for more than 30% of your gross revenue.
Yes, losing this client is going to hit you hard. Losing this client is going to leave a negative ripple effect for a while.
As my mentor instructed me, the first thing you do is analyze why you lost this business. What did you do or not do? How are you responsible? Don’t go yelling at an employee or another associate. That’s unprofessional.
Trust me. You’ll lose respect. And respect is hard to regain once you’ve lost it, whether it’s the respect of those you work with, your trusted colleagues or your valuable support people. You have to approach the situation intelligently and ascertain how to bounce back.
Look at the situation. Analyze it. Then work out a plan to bounce back and get the lost lawn care business back. You can’t sit back and dwell on what’s happened. As they say, “That’s water under the bridge.” You’ve got to get back into the game and recapture what’s been taken from you.
My mentor told me that children who grow up in terrible circumstances and later become successful are known as “dandelion children”. If they can succeed and prosper with terrible conditions, they can grow anywhere. It’s important to be more like a dandelion child. To be able to grow and prosper and succeed despite our current conditions. To be able to grow and prosper and succeed despite our losses. To be resilient.
Building a resilient character turns what others would call failure into success. It turns the bad into the good. A resilient person just won’t quit. A resilient person will, in spite of everything they face, keep doing it until they accomplish their goals.
The more trials and tribulations you face and defeat with your lawn mowing business, the more resiliency you will naturally develop. There is nothing that can hold you back if you can bounce back.
Until next time…
Successful Lawn Business Strategies
http://www.HowToStartYourLawnCareBusiness.com
http://www.HowToGrowYourLawnCareBusiness.com
Filed under: Failure | Tags: entrepreneur, extra money, grass, grass cutting, home business, job, landscape, landscaping, lawn, lawn business, lawn care, lawn care business, lawn maintenance, lawn service, lawncare, mowing, unemployed, unemployment
Defeat in your lawn care business can be good, once in a while.
Think about it.
There is no where to go but up!
Oftentimes we can be so down in the dumps that because we are sick and tired of being at the bottom of the barrel we pull out from within us such intensity and desire for change we astound everyone – including ourselves.
It seems to me that as we face difficulty, that is where change begins. That is where we make the decision that enough is enough!
This is where the miracle begins.
Here’s an interesting point to consider. Most people don’t change themselves. They actually wait for change.
This group of people wallow in their victim rants. They never seem to suck it up and resolve to change. To take control of their life. They refuse to take responsibility and as a result never seem to get to that place of “having enough”.
If you are facing a problem right now, don’t fear. This terrible state you find yourself in is only temporary. You can and will rebound from this failure.
This too shall pass, if you dig deep and resolve to see things through. You need to pull yourself up by the boot straps and start to put together a “come back” plan.
It’s funny now but in a difficult moment a while back, I didn’t think my mentor’s advice was correct. He said that I should be thankful for my current limitations or failures. He said they were the building blocks from which to create greatness.
Here’s an example I absolutely rave about when talking to people who are facing what seems impossible in your lawn business.
Think of yourself as a frog in a jar of milk. If you keep kicking and kicking and kicking, pretty soon the milk will turn into a lump of butter and you’ll be able to jump out.
That’s exactly why defeat can be good. We all have to keep trying and trying and trying. We’ve got to dig deep and make a decision that we are going through this and will come out on the other side alive and well.
Defeat can be good. At the same time, make sure that it’s working for your future not against you. The world makes room for those who know where they are going. Once you decide that your present situation is only temporary, doors will open to help you get back on your feet and move ahead in life.
I used to say, “I don’t care.” This is wrong when in a difficult place. We have to care. Keep your eyes focused on the successful outcome. Dig down deep within yourself and resolve to commit to winning.
Until next time…
Successful Lawn Business Strategies
http://www.HowToStartYourLawnCareBusiness.com
http://www.HowToGrowYourLawnCareBusiness.com
Filed under: Success | Tags: entrepreneur, grass, home business, landscaping, lawn, lawn business, lawn care, lawn care business, lawn cutting, lawn maintenance, lawn service, lawncare, mowing, unemployed, unemployment
My mentor told me these three words would change my life. He said if I use them correctly I could fast track to lawn care business success. Here they are: weigh, count and measure.
I have to be honest I didn’t see what was so important about these 3 words when he told me. Then he explained further that these 3 words all have to do with keeping track. You see what your results are should dictate how you act and react in situations.
You know like measuring the response rate of an advertisement over a reasonable amount of time should tell you a few things – if you keep track.
My mentor went onto say that if I discover that my results are not to my liking there are only three places to look.
My philosophy needs to be in check. My attitude needs to be strong and on track. And my personal disciplines need to continually improve. Activity, attitude and philosophy create results and results are the name of the game.
Now on the topic of results I teach that we all need to make measurable progress in reasonable time. This is a great philosophy to adopt. Not too quickly and don’t take your time. Do what you must in reasonable time.
Lawn Business success is a numbers game. How many prospects have you talked to? How many calls have you made? How many customers have you thanked? If your numbers don’t change your life won’t change. If you’ll start working on improving your numbers then in time you’ll start to see the change you want to see.
The bottomline is that success and results all come down to numbers. It’s the numbers that count. We’ve all got to make measurable progress in reasonable time and the numbers are the GPS system of our life.
Here’s the best time to start. Right now. Don’t wait, keep track now. Measure, count, and weigh all you can. You’ve got to add up some of your own numbers and ask yourself if you are moving along on time and in the right direction.
Keeping track keeps you on track.
Until next time…
Successful Lawn Business Strategies
http://www.HowToStartYourLawnCareBusiness.com
http://www.HowToGrowYourLawnCareBusiness.com
Filed under: Courage
When I was young there was a statement mentioned that I have never forgotten.
“If you can believe it, you can achieve it.”
How dramatically we change our results in our life and lawn care business is largely dependent upon our imagination. Really.
In 1960, it was simply impossible for man to travel into outer space. Within 10 years, however, the first man stepped out onto the surface of the moon and the whole world tuned in.
One of the astronauts on this mission said that there were only 2 problems to overcome in order to get to the moon. The first was getting there. The second was getting back.
The miraculous process of turning the dream into reality began when one voice challenged the scientific community to do whatever was necessary to see to it that America “places a man on the moon by the end of this decade.” That bold statement started what ended up birthing a lunar reality.
We can take this success principle and apply it to every area of our life!
Can you rise from the bottom to the top in whatever you set your mind to? Definitely.
The unique combination of desire, planning, effort and continual perseverance will always work its magic. The question is not whether the formula for success will work, but rather whether the person will work the formula.
This is the unknown variable, as they say. Will a person work the formula?
That is the challenge that confronts all of us. We can all go from wherever we are to wherever we want to be. No dream for our lawn mowing business is impossible, provided we first have the courage to believe in it and a big enough desire to put one foot in front of the other and take a step in that direction.
Successful Lawn Business Strategies
http://www.howtostartyourlawncarebusiness.com
http://www.howtogrowyourlawncarebusiness.com
Filed under: Procrastination | Tags: extra money, grass, grass cutting, job, landscape, landscaping, lawn, lawn business, lawn care, lawn care business, lawn cutting, lawn maintenance, lawn service, lawncare, mower, mowing, unemployed, unemployment
Personal discipline is about as important to personal achievement as rocket fuel is to a rocket. Of course there will be moments when you will feel like someone poured molasses all over your life and your lawn care business, but you’ll always get out of that mess with some consistent and persistent disipline. Without it, you’re destined to stay stuck in a rut.
The opposite of self discipline is procrastination. Discipline means you never throw in your towel. Procrastination usually means you never get started, although on the other side of the spectrum, the inability to finish something is also a form of procrastination.
Ask people why they make excuses and you’ll often hear something like this, “I have to get this “just right”. Everything has to be perfect before I can get down to business. Let me just shuffle and straighten out my business cards first, have to make sure there are no distractions, not too much noise, tidy up my desk, no telephone calls interrupting me, and of course I have to be feeling like working, too. I can’t work when I don’t feel like working.” On the other end of making excuses you’ll hear things like, “That’s just not good enough just yet. It has to be perfect. I’m really not satisfied.”
Do you see where I am going with this?
The root of making excuses could be (more likely than not) fear of failure. That’s what perfectionism is all about really.
You’re essentially paralyzed by fear. Afraid to make a mistake. You’re stuck. You’re still going nowhere. You’re still overwhelmed by the responsibilities that are before you. It’s an endless cycle of having your thougts dominated by a negative view of the road ahead. So in the end you convince yourself not to do anything.
Here’s my recipe to end making excuses and procrastinating. I’ll show you how to turn procrocrastination into self discipline. If you’re brave enough to do what I suggest you consider, the process will be easier than you think. It involves two steps.
The first step comes from Henry Ford. He said no task is too big if you break it down into smaller jobs.
No matter what you’re trying to do with your life or lawn care maintenance business the simple key to achievement is your ability to break down the job into smaller more manageable tasks and then carry them out one by one. Concentrate on accomplishing what’s sitting before you right now. Forget about what’s off in the future.
Suppose I were to ask you if you could lose 52 pounds. If you’re like the majority of folks, that would sound like an improbable job.
But what if I changed up my question. What if I asked you to lose 1 pound a week for one year? Do you find this smaller task more plausible? All I did was break down the 52 pounds into a weekly goal.
Trust me. If you keep this up for one year, you’ll lose the weight. Discipline yourself to stay focused on the day at hand and you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish.
The second step is to put thought to paper.
Writing is to goal setting as carbon is to steel. The writing you’ll do in order to end making excuses is very similar. Instead of focusing down the road, you’re now going to be writing about the present just as you experience it every day. Instead of describing the things you want to do or the places you want to go, you’re going to describe what you actually do with your time, and you’re going to keep a written record of the places you actually go in your life.
In other words, you’re going to keep a journal. Write about your activities. If you’re like me, you’re going to be surprised by the wastes of times and distractions you encounter each and every day. All of these “things” get in the way of achieving your goals. The brilliant thing about keeping a journal is that it brings all this out in the open and lays it on the table for you to see. It forces you to face what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong.
Your journal doesn’t have to be anything overboard. Just a little book you carry on your person at all times, making quick notes as you go through your day. A note every thirty minutes is best, and you drive yourself to create this daily habit for at least 7 days. 21 days is ideal.
Break it down. Write it down. These were the instructions from my mentor and I pass them onto you. These two steps are simple. Don’t wait. Make the changes you need to make now. Put an end to making excuses and keep moving on the road to achieving your goals.
Until next time…
Successful Lawn Business Strategies
http://www.howtostartyourlawncarebusiness.com
http://www.howtogrowyourlawncarebusiness.com
