Business growth isn’t just about creating a second branch or pulling in the most expensive jobs — Landscape Management Network’s Mark Bradley says it all comes down to revenue per hour.

Bradley is the software company’s CEO, but it wasn’t too long ago that he ran a $50 million landscaping company that operated out of a tiny office. It fit eight people, maybe nine comfortably, and it only had one yard for equipment. Bradley built the company from the ground up, and it eventually churned a significant profit.

Now, Bradley’s out on a Mastermind Sessions tour, bringing interested landscapers together for two-day segments where he walks through the process of growing a company into a “business utopia.” The sessions kicked off in October in Ontario and Lawn & Landscape made a stop at his Cleveland visit.

Though the sessions were designed as in-depth workshops for landscapers hoping to elevate their businesses, Bradley offered a few key points to consider, including revenue per hour’s impact on a company. Whether an attendee is starting a company from the ground up or they already employ 100 people, Bradley says revenue per hour is a critical factor in developing a growth plan.

“Most landscape companies don’t think about this when they write prices, write contracts, or train staff,” Bradley says. “When your revenue per hour is great, you can grow exponentially.”

Setting goals

With all that in mind, the process of growing the company starts with knowing where it’s headed with a company growth plan.

First, Bradley told attendees that creating a company mission and vision statement, plus devising some core values, is important to developing a profitable business. These statements set goals for the company to adhere to as they work.

“If I didn’t really set goals, I couldn’t really set expectations for my staff,” Bradley says. “As I got a lot more transparent with goals and metrics, they started to actually grow the business for me.”

These statements are about one to three sentences in length; the mission statement is a brief description of what a landscape company does, why it does that work and what makes it different from other companies. The vision statement is more about the company’s long-term goals and how it affects the community it surrounds.

Bradley says talking about these statements with key company leaders is important. When everyone gets stuck on where to go next, he recommends using ChatGPT to revise those statements.

Bradley suggests using these statements to kick off every meeting to show people why you’re focused on what you’re focused on. These statements should also call to question the company’s target customers, which markets they serve and what types of services they provide.

Key to the plan

Bradley says it’s at this stage when business owners should start restructuring their pricing model to grow their business. This doesn’t inherently mean raising prices alone; markets will always dictate the rate, but Bradley clarifies that the market doesn’t dictate a company’s profitability.

He remembers teaching budgets to people on pen and paper before his time at LMN, and the worst budgets almost always lacked a focus on revenue per hour. In the past, Bradley’s found that telling his sales team to grow revenue just leads to them selling more and more jobs. He’s also seen companies just buy more equipment or add more employees and hope it leads to more profit.

Bradley says that while this may lead to a higher volume of work, it doesn’t mean those jobs are making more money. It may actually just increase a company’s overhead costs and ultimately lose money if a business owner is not careful. He says the largest companies have exceptionally low overhead costs — Bradley’s percentage hovered around 3% when his company was at $50 million.

Bradley achieved that lower overhead by becoming more efficient, like by reducing travel time between clients. He also built in hourly costs in his contracts. He suggests landscape maintenance companies can add in hourly gardening costs or charge clients for things like disposal fees, whether that’s per visit or per bag of debris. He’s also charged clients per bag or per load for mulch, per application for weed control and per application for fertilization. He recommends avoiding a base fee for all those services.

“As an industry, we give this stuff away and at the end of the year, we say we didn’t make any money,” Bradley says.

Bradley encourages landscapers to change their pricing model as soon as possible, even if it’s in the middle of the season. He has often received pushback — business owners fear they’ll lose their business.

“Well, that’s not a bad risk to take because you’re losing on all the contracts you’re doing now,” Bradley says. He adds that if a business owner wants to sample these pricing changes, applying it to a smaller set of contracts in the middle of the season might offer some reassurance. He once had a client who applied the hourly charges to 20 clients in the middle of July. Eighteen said it was okay, and two asked for it the following year. That company made an additional $380,000 that season.

Bradley admits he used to view contracts as a huge pain, but once he shifted his thinking on how to construct those contracts, the money came in much more sustainably. But a major factor in whether this works or not is earning buy-in from the employees actually out in the field completing the work.

“If you scale your company with everybody thinking like an entrepreneur, you will crush it,” Bradley says. “The staff will continue to unlock more revenue for themselves.”

Going all in

Bradley urges strong incentives and bonus programs for workers.

“People go to work each day for themselves,” he says. “They don’t go to work for you. They’re supporting themselves; they’re supporting their personal vision.”

Bradley says crew leaders should know what’s expected of them and should have micro-budgets that define their goals. Without those budgets, foremen might not know they’re succeeding or failing. They should know what the revenue goal for the year is and how much that’s going to impact how much they’re paid in bonuses by the end of the year.

Labor cost typically occupies about 25% of total revenue, Bradley says, and bonuses should occupy about 10% of payroll. He encourages employers to structure their plans in a way that protects themselves from losing revenue on bonuses.

He budgets for bonuses each year but won’t budget it under revenue — he’ll put it under a line item that won’t take away from profits if they fall short on sales goals.

Instead, Bradley encourages putting bonuses under areas for extra billing. He says many small business owners shy away from telling their employees how much profit they make each year, so he told attendees to be unashamed to say why they need the money. Profits are necessary to invest in the growth of the business and for a rainy day should there be any financial pinches.

“We need that profit for other things,” Bradley says. “There’s no fun in working at a company that’s not making any money. There’s no reason on earth to hide that you’re profitable.”

To know how much to pay employees in bonuses, Bradley suggests creating a clear scorecard for how they’re performing. High performers will shine, he says, and underperformers will ultimately leave. It motivates employees to eliminate company waste like lost time at gas stations or inefficient work in the field.

He calculates the field staff bonus by saying that reaching the crew revenue goal is 50% of that bonus. Then, customer satisfaction factors into it — were there many callbacks? If there were, it’s possible the employees just completed the work quickly just to reach that crew revenue goal. And finally, the last 25% of his proposed bonus structure centers around the scorecard system. Was the employee on time? Was the employee showing up happy? Were they completing the mandatory training? The scorecards also functions as an end-of-year review.

Bradley notes that once a company reaches $1 million or more in revenue, the business owner’s job shifts from the daily operations into empowering employees to do that work for them.

“Your people are your only asset,” he says.

Most recent strong El Niños show many outcomes are possible for this upcoming winter

A powerful El Niño in 2015-16 delivered a heavy snowstorm to the East Coast.

A strengthening El Niño is in place, but the last two U.S. winters with strong El Niños were different in several key aspects, adding uncertainty to this season's outlook, according to weather.com.

Not all El Niños are exactly the same. Even a stronger El Niño doesn't necessarily guarantee strong impacts on the weather pattern. It's not the only factor influencing winter weather.

A 2015-16 El Niño was already strong by late summer and eventually topped out as one of the strongest on record by that winter. It was, and still is, the warmest winter on record in the U.S. In general, most stronger El Niños generate a mild winter over much of the country.

2015-16 was the nation's warmest winter in records dating to 1895, according to the weather.com report. It was record warm in every New England state, as well as New York City, despite a short-lived Northeast cold outbreak around Valentine's Day. It even soared into the 70s in late February in North Dakota.

But it delivered a whopper East Coast storm. Despite all this warmth, just enough cold air was in place ahead of a vigorous jet-stream plunge to wring out a massive snowstorm for parts of Northeast in late January 2016.

Winter Storm Jonas was New York City's all time heaviest snowstorm (27.5 inches), as it also was for Baltimore, Allentown and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. NOAA estimated 21 million in population picked up at least 20 inches of snow from Jonas.

Eleven states, and the District of Columbia, declared states of emergency, according to NOAA. Travel bans were issued in both New York City and Newark, and more than 13,000 flights were cancelled.

That's despite New York City and Philadelphia waiting until January for their first accumulating snow.

Even a record mild winter can generate one or more major winter storms.

For the complete story, visit bit.ly/lawnelninos.

Landscape Workshop acquires Meliora Landscape Group

The Southern Louisiana company amassed well over 100 team members in its 18 years of operations.

Landscape Workshop recently completed the acquisition of Meliora Landscape Group, expanding its footprint in Southern Louisiana.

Brandon Luteman, Randy Luteman and Ben Dutruch founded the predecessor companies of Meliora Landscape Group beginning in 2005.

Over 18 years of operation, they built a commercial landscape maintenance and installation firm serving Southern Louisiana, including Covington, Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Lafayette, with well over 100 team members.

“Our reputation speaks for itself, as we have consistently delivered outstanding results to our clients. We believe in investing in our employees and providing them with opportunities to grow. That is why we chose Landscape Workshop — they not only value our team but also offer outstanding career prospects," says Brandon Luteman.

“We did a lot of diligence on Landscape Workshop before choosing them as our partner,” Dutruch says. “Brandon and I are both joining the Landscape Workshop team, and we wanted a culture that both we and Meliora’s other team members would enjoy and prosper in.”

Brandon and Ben will join Landscape Workshop, assuming general manager positions. They will be accountable for facilitating a seamless transition for Meliora’s valued customers and dedicated employees.

“We are excited to announce our recent acquisition of Meliora Landscape Group, a highly respected landscape company in Louisiana. This strategic move allows us to expand our services and cater to a broader clientele in the Southern Louisiana area. We extend a warm welcome to the talented Meliora team members, and we are excited to once again extend our LW family,” says J.T. Price, CEO of Landscape Workshop.

Landscape Workshop is a full-service grounds management firm, delivering professional service and expert maintenance for commercial outdoor spaces since 1984.

Serving 21 Southeastern markets, Landscape Workshop operates in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and the Florida panhandle.

Landscape Workshop is backed by Carousel Capital and McKinney Capital.

TruGreen names Kurt Kane as CEO, president

Kane most recently served as president and chief commercial officer at The Wendy’s Company in the U.S.

TruGreen has appointed Kurt Kane as its president and CEO, effective immediately.

Kane succeeds John Cowles, who is leaving TruGreen.

"We are pleased to welcome Kurt to TruGreen and believe his brand-building skillset and proven ability to lead and motivate employees will serve TruGreen well as it enters this next chapter of growth," says John Compton, TruGreen chairman and an operating partner at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, TruGreen's majority investment partner.

Kane has more than 20 years of experience. Kane most recently served as president, U.S., and chief commercial officer at The Wendy's Company. In this role, he led all aspects of Wendy's U.S. business, which during his tenure grew to include nearly 5,900 restaurants and increased sales from $9 to $11 billion.

Among his key accomplishments in this position were the development and implementation of strategic plans that drove the highest same restaurant sales growth achieved by the Wendy's brand in more than 15 years, and successfully launching breakfast, which delivered approximately $750 million in incremental sales during its first year.

"I am excited to join TruGreen and collaborate with all of my new colleagues to help TruGreen deepen its associate and customer engagement and continue on its strong growth trajectory," Kane says.

Before joining Wendy's in 2015, Kane held senior management roles at YUM! Brands, where he led and motivated frontline, service-oriented colleagues in the execution of innovative strategies to achieve growth at YUM!'s licensed brand Pizza Hut both in the U.S. and globally across 95 countries worldwide.

Prior to his tenure at YUM!, Kane held senior executive positions at Frito-Lay, Molson Coors Brewing Company and Procter & Gamble. He served as a Platoon Leader, Air Defense Artillery, in the United States Army and earned a Bachelor of Science from the United States Military Academy and a Master of Business Administration from The University of Texas at Austin.