When You Need a Five-Year Plan and How to Implement It
When you set goals for your landscape company, are they truly ones that challenge your business or are they ones you can easily achieve?
Justin White, CEO of K&D Landscaping, based in Watsonville, California, says when he brought on a business coach, he challenged White to create a big, hairy, audacious goal (BHAG).
White settled on reaching $30 million by 2030 with 300 employees. They are at $15 million this year, and he says they are on track to reach $30 million by 2026-27.
“Your goals can be so much more than you know,” White says.
RAISE THE BAR: Pricing for profit: a landscape for success
Landscapers and professionals in the green industry excel at delivering top-notch services. Yet, one crucial aspect often overlooked is how much to charge for these services. Our landscape company, K&D, was once in the same boat. We had a solid reputation for quality work but we didn’t truly understand our numbers. As a result, we consistently undervalued and undercharged for our services.
RAISE THE BAR: The Power of Trusting Yourself
What would happen in your life if you started trusting yourself a little more each day? Could this belief in your ability to set and achieve goals truly make a significant difference? A few weeks ago, I found myself preparing a presentation for NALP’s Elevate conference. The topic was, “How to build a 5-year plan.” During this process, a simple but profound question surfaced in my mind and has since become an obsession: What if I trusted myself more?
RAISE THE BAR: Technology Conference takeaways
Last month I attended the annual Lawn & Landscape Technology Conference and Top 100 Executive Summit in Las Vegas. It was another amazing event with many new vendors and cutting-edge discussions filling the weekend. As one might imagine, there was a steady buzz of talk around AI (artificial intelligence). The keynote speaker of the conference, Kevin Surace, gave an inspiring conversation on AI, the tools of AI and how to implement modern technology into your business.
RAISE THE BAR: Plug the leaky bucket
I was recently talking with a few of our supervisors at our mid-year planning session and received some great feedback that I think many of us overlook. The busy rush of summer brings more work than available people, more leads than estimators and more to do than time allows. This leads to increased stress and reduced efficiency. We also tend to lose sight of important data points like “shop-time,” “drive-time” and “non-billable time,” or in other words, time spent by employees that you do not get paid for. This was what our supervisor team was worried about.
K&D Landscaping, Inc. Voted a Neighborhood Fave in Nextdoor’s 2023 Local Business Awards
WATSONVILLE, CA – K&D Landscaping, Inc. has been named to the winning list of Nextdoor’s 2023 Neighborhood Faves, the only annual awards where neighbors vote to celebrate their favorite local businesses. This year, Neighborhood Fave winners like K&D Landscaping, Inc. will receive greater visibility and ranking on the Nextdoor app as well as a sticker to showcase their win in the real world.
RAISE THE BAR: Mid-Year Realignment
On a scale of 1-10, how important is it to have your team bought in and aligned around the vision of the company? If your answer is 7 or above, this article is for you. We just hit the midway point in 2023. I hope your business is going as well as planned. Chances are there have been substantial changes and adjustments in the last six months that you didn’t plan or anticipate. This means your 2023 plan and current status may not be in alignment. This month is a great time to reflect on those changes and realign your team for a strong second half of the year.
RAISE THE BAR: Freedom and Discipline
Published in Lawn & Landscape, June 2023
What do some of the best athletes and top performers have in common? They show great discipline in their work and day-to-day life. I truly believe that discipline and healthy habits can create an unstoppable team. As I researched where discipline comes from and how to develop it in my company, I stumbled upon a simple statement from Author Michael Abrashoff: “Freedom creates discipline.” It may sound counterintuitive at first, but I firmly believe that freedom creates discipline. Let’s dive into why this is the case and how it applies to your business and life in general.
Landscaping used smart irrigation to save clients 1 million gallons of water.
Published in Irrigation & Lighting June 2023
Upgrading an irrigation system to use smart controllers can have a big payoff for clients. Just ask the managers at the Seascape Resort in Santa Cruz, California. In just 12 months, K&D Landscaping in Watsonville, California, cut their client’s water usage by 1 million gallons. That generated nearly 30% cost savings or about $35,000 in water bills in one year, according to Justin White, CEO of K&D Landscaping.
2023 Women In The Green Industry Award Winners
As the landscaping industry plugs away through the labor crisis, supply chain issues and inflationary pressures, there are numerous leaders in the industry that work tirelessly to elevate the industry.
Many of these leaders are women: Women whose achievements and success stories have helped move the needle for other women in the industry; women who promote safety, sustainability and workforce development; women who work toward advancing the green industry as a whole.
