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Review your season
We are not done yet, but it's getting late in the season. What did you learn this season? Did you have any huge successes? How about disasters? I'll start-
This year wasn't as easy for us as the past few have been. We had some really good jobs, but we also pieced together a bunch of weaker ones to make it through. For the previous couple of years we have had one really big client and a few smaller ones. This year the big client didn't have much for us- so we had to fill in a pretty big gap. They will have more next year, and a ton two years from now. From that experience I learned to ask ask ask the big clients what is on the horizon in order to plan ahead.
The biggest disaster was a job that was supposed to take 8 days took about 20 days. It was a challenging hardscape job, and nothing went right. Guys misread the plan, the quarry cut the stones wrong, The landscape architect made a big math error on the plan, violent thunderstorms attacked at exactly the wrong moment two different times, The asphalt paver made me wait too long for his services. Needless to say we didn't get rich on that one.
It definately wasn't the best year ever, but it sure wasn't the worst. I learned a lot more than will fit on this little screen, and plan to use it next year to do it better.
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