[Bill Schwab]

GREAT POINTS GANG! One of the things I find most frustrating is at our size, I still do alot myself. And, by the time I input all the info into the machines, I can do it on paper just as efficiently. I am one of those guys who can by the time one finds thier calculator, can do the math in my head, accurately. And, I think one of the reasons that I can is because I do it regularly as routine. The machines when used properly or not, sharpen our computer skills, but deaden our math skills.

Knowing numbers is essential for success. And there is this growing thing in the industry that more is better. You go into one forum or the other and you read "hey you should get this program or that program and yada yada. It is like getting the pick up with leather and froo frooisms that would be a great work truck and not getting it dirty type of syndrome. Just reading this post, my gears are turning and QB contractor may be what we need rather than me inputting my hand job P&L sheets every day. But, more is defintiely not better. More if it is used to it's capacities might be as good, but there comes a point when enough is enough.

The crux of business has not really changed in 400 years. Basically, if you take in more than you spend, you have the right idea. If you keep more than you have to spend you are getting better. If you can project what you will be able to keep, then you can plan. And, believe it or not, this is all achievable on paper, I have been doing it for a few years now when a former program whose name I will not mention would not open. I had enough at that point. Now before we ad any programs I research it and ask howmuch time we will have to optimize what that program is supposed to accomplish.

A great example is the digital imaging program we recently got free for being a CLCA member. This program has not gotten one more sale I could not have gotten from doing a 15 minute sketch. Thus, if I paid for it, I would have been a very POed boy.

Anyhow, bottom line here. Using your head about what you buy and factoring in the learning curve and what the program will save you vs what the manufacturer claims it will save you. Those decisions will make or break you.

[jwholden]

Bill,

There are two things I admire about you (and Paul).

1) Years of hard earned experience.
2) I know, by the way you talk, you are a successful businessperson.

I wish I could have stepped out of school and been as streetwise as the veteran members on the site, but it took me time and experience (as it did you) to get where I am. I look at my helper, who just turned 20, and enjoy watching him experience every job as a new and unique experience. I'll never know everything about running a business or installing landscapes, but I know more today than yesterday.

At times I have lost my focus by playing with technology, dreaming of trucks, or attempting to write my own website. I may not have achieved total success in these endeavors, but learned plenty along the way. I am glad to say none of my decisions have put my business, or myself, into financial peril.

The only way to learn is to try. As nice as it is to hear someone who's opinion you value say ,"Don't do it that way", sometimes you just gotta give it a shot. I agree 100 % that the imaging programs don't work, but know several people who swear by them.

I loathe the thought of manually calculating stacks of receipts at the end of the day. I highly recommend you demo QB contractor edition. You won't need to search for a calculator, just hit the equal sign and it appears automatically. It has a money back guarantee if you don't like it, but I know you will.

[Stonehenge]

I got my copy of Pro today, and read through the article by Mr. Porter. I'm not sure I have a clear sense of where he was going with the article. The title, "Three rules for monitoring your business and avoiding the systems myth" seems to elude to the idea that creating systems for your business will not 'fix' your business. He compares the management book E-Myth with a nuclear holocaust. Hmmm.... Gotta say I'm not buying in so far.

He goes on to list Rule 1: If you don't use it, lose it. Gotta say he's on the money there. If you purchased some whiz-bang technology and find you aren't using it, then don't. Problem is, you don't know if you aren't going to use it until you demo or buy it and try it. I think the prudent advice, advice he gives later in the article, is to evaluate the thing you are interested in buying. I also suggest removing all the pairs of glasses you may be wearing during the evaluation (the ones with rose-colored lenses, the geek ones with masking tape holding them together at one hinge, and the deeply tinted, mirrored ones that you look really cool in). If it looks like it'll still fit into your operations, then buy it. You may make a bad purchase. Happens to all of us. Just don't spend $500 of your time evaluating something that costs $50. That would be a terrible use of your most precious resource - your time.

He describes some of the pitfalls of cellphones in great detail. And while I have to agree, there are opportunities for abuse, any manager who truly manages their resources is on top of this issue, and it rarely goes more than a month or two without being noticed and addressed. I've found that when I hand an employee a cellphone, I only need to tell him that I get an itemized bill every month, for every phone. End of story. I think he may also be the victim of being away from jobsites for a bit too long. Back in 1988 when the boss let me use one of the 20-pound cell phones equipped with shoulder strap, it was an enormous status symbol among my coworkers. Today, every one of my men has their own cellphone in their lunchbox and routinely makes a call or two during lunch. The days of Mr. IAMTHEMAN are no longer.

I wholeheartedly disagree when he says "...you cannot talk on the cell phone without taking up production or sales time." Whenever I'm driving from one site to another, I use time that was once idle to instead check my voicemail, return calls, check on materials orders... all things that either got done late in the evening or not at all, prior to the cellphone. It allows a foreman to alert me to a situation I may not have been aware of on a jobsite, and allows me to redirect a crew's efforts for the day if the need arises.

I did chuckle when Mr. Porter described how he has a system he uses with his consulting clients to help them with these issues. Wait a second - aren't systems were bad?

I think the more important lesson in this article is to accept that to be a manager, you have to manage. Having systems in place is great, and the more you can remove subjectivity from the daily tasks of you and your staff, the better off the company will be. But you'll still have to manage. Manpower, suppliers, finances and more. There is no system that will allow you to become an absentee entrepreneur.

But technology bad? Can you honestly read through the pages of this forum and tell me you aren't a little smarter than you were before you got here?

[Monroe Porter]

Well I see my old PRO Forum buddy is giving quoting me and I received and email regarding a possible reply so here I am. As an industry consultant, I am pretty buried time wise but I don't mind now and then offering some opinions. What I did is take the time to make a pretty long post but forgive me if I do not have time to enter into an internet debate.

The only point I want to clear up is regarding Bill's comments is regarding a computer. I think a company of ten employees definitely needs to use a computer but they need to track the info in a simple format and keep it useful. I find many landscape companies have lots of info but do not do a good job of using it and many times it is not in a useful format. I also agree with Bill that you can do it by hand but a simple spreadsheet can run the math so much quicker.

The software industry has changed a lot in the last ten years and accounting programs like QuickBooks has more and more info a contractor can use. It is a better software package than one might purchase for 20k in 1980. The cost of cheaper software is making it harder and harder for special industry packages to keep up. My comment is that you just need to keep it simple. Focus on the big picture and don't look for a magic system. Software, cell phones and other tech stuff will not take the place of you being a leader.

You should run a profit and loss statement and balance sheet each month. It should compare year to date last year to this year. You should do simple job costing but look at the trends so you know where you make and lose money. Only looking at one job at a time is not very useful. You want to adapt your business according to the strategic information you generate. If you are losing money on sod, then raise your sod prices. If you make good money on pavers, promote more paver work.

One of the greatest values of computers is that they force discipline. In the old days you could generate a paycheck without social security number. With computers, no number, no check. Now the bookkeeper does not go nuts at year end trying to sort it all out and find the social security number.

I have been a consultant for nearly 30 years, since 1976. I have worked with a lot of industry even outside of the landscape, painting and roofing industries, which I currently run networking groups for. In the early 80's we wrote estimating guides for people like the concrete pumping industry and changed how they price work, we helped change how plumbing and hvac service companies look at billable and non-billable time. We also did a lot of work in the portable toilet business and that is why I told one of my chemical application PROSULT guys, that his business was just that process in reverse. Same truck, same routing, just one puts it out, the other takes it out. You have a route, a truck, customer service etc. Well why go into all of this? Of all the trades I have ever worked with, landscapers are the most difficult to get to take the time to pour through and learn the numbers. I have thought a lot about why this and would offer some comments. Please don't be offended by what I have to say, maybe my message may not apply to you. Remember I am talking about the broader industry as a whole.

Landscapers seem to come in two flavors(of course this is an extreme over simplification of it) The grass mowers who are the Frito Bandito kind of guy running from job to job, not trade focused and very entrepreneurial and the installers who tend to be designers and tree lovers.

I think the grass mowers tend to be very entrepreneruial and deal cutters. Mow this, maintain this, move snow, hustlers really. Their personality is to hustle work. The thrill of the hunt, not lets look at the numbers. To make matters worse, if you work hard and hustle, you can generate a fair amount of success for a guy with a mower and make 50k or up a year. It is when they get off the mower the numbers are so hard to make work and since so many people in the industry are kids with a lawn mower, they convince themselves they cannot raise prices.

The landscape installers are very visual folks, many with a design or horticult background. Many love the industry and unlike other contractors such as painting and roofing, which can be perceived by the public as a step above mildew and tar, has a certain amount of societal respect. However this love of the business and diversity of products can bury installers in a sea of time buying, designing and selling jobs that is very hard to get compesated for. Being visual also impacts learning and that is why landcapers must visit other people. This one of the reasons people succeed in our networking concept as they can visit other people and see how they are doing. Landscape installers must know how long it takes to design and sell jobs and control that costs.

Diversity also hurts the industry. One of the founding principles for successful business is what is your core competency? 3M uses innovation and research, Walmart purchasing and inventory control, and PROOF Management its ability to use simple and common sense business approaches. To truly succeed, it is important to stay with what you know. Landscapers seem to let the customers and diversity drive the market. Yes, we can cut your lawn, apply chemicals, trim trees, install irrigation, plant trees, do decks, retaining walls, lay sod, push snow, apply chemical salt and by the way we are thinking of Christmas lighting decor. Such complexity drives up overhead and confuses the process of making money.

Because landscaping is so entrepreneurial it seems to be full of magic bullet systems and solutions. There is no magic bullet and being distracted by the idea of the month and keep you from succeeding. In 1987 we started a networking group for painting contractors. At that time I had traveled over a million miles teaching seminars and I did not need to see any more airports. The business started gradually and because I did not need the networking money to live on, we learned a lot and adapted in the process. One of the greatest things I learned is that contractors don't need more ideas, equipment, software or other stuff. They just need to implement what they already know. So the same guys meeting year after year drives accountability and each group puts goals up. Contractors are also lonely, so making friends means you want to see others in your group succeed. One of the reasons I do not post as much on the internet is that there is little or no accountability. Anyone can be a giant in there own mind as they post stuff. Busy business people info they can use and trust. They get bored with all the BS and opinions that don't count.

Industry practices of trippling the price of a tree and so much per square foot or cut mistakenly create the image that people are making more money than they do and they are not really looking at the big picture. People also justify buying new equipment when they really can't afford to. One of my basic business philosophies is that you need to make money to grow, now grow to make money. We have landscape people who do as little as 300k a year in their business make 100k income from it. If you are not making money at 200k in sales, you probably won't make money at a million. Growth is not your friend. The more your grow, the people, cash, equipment, and leads needs grow also.

So where am I going with all this? You have to take time to do learn the numbers. No matter how good you at other things, that is the foundation that will drive your business success. It is not hard but you just have to take the time to do it, until people do, they are driving with no road map. You actually do not have to dig through the files and numbers yourself, someone who works for you can but you must understand what answers you are looking for.

What is ironic, is that many people see me as a numbers guru. I would tell you that is probably my weakest management skill but I am good at because I work at it and force the clients to take the medicine. Knowing the numbers is the first step to business success and if you do not take time to learn and use them, all else is much harder than it need be. For example, firing a foreman can be tough but if you know day in and day out that person is losing money on their jobs, it is a matter of facts not emotion.

So I am not againts systems, what I am against is complexity that misses the big picture. If a palm works for you, use it but it is just a tool, not the answer for solving your business problems.

My messages is pretty simple. If you work too many hours and don't make enough money, it is probably a business structure issue, not a gadget or new idea issue. Don't let the stress of your working too many hours and not making any money cause you to try magic bullets or the greatest manager who will help or whatever. Your stress is a symptom of a problem and failure to fix that problem and only through bandaids at it, will just make it worse.

If you would like to know more about our networking groups and talk to me personally, simply call me at 800 864-0284.

Monroe Porter
PROOF Management-PROSULT Networking Groups
www.proofman.com

[Terry D]

Being able to click a mouse and REALLY see what is happening in your company PRICELESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love my computer for the access to forums and worldwide and up to date news, even enjoy doing searches and using the resources it access's, but for my business it all boils down to a simple spreadsheet.

Sales
Cost of sales (including labor, burden & overhead)

After that, what you see is what you earned.

Wanna monkey around and buy toys, & gimmicks, waste some labor, run sloppy etc.? you'll find out quickly that there's nothing much left over, unless you're making a ton, and living high off the hog. If that's the case, imagine how much more you'd be making running leaner & cleaner!

Been there, done that!!!