Million Dollar Business? Start with Your Habits – Ultimate Landscape Academy

00:00
Robert
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the I Am Landscape Growth podcast, where entrepreneurs help entrepreneurs grow faster, better, and stronger in the green industry. From leadership to sales to recruiting and operational excellence, we cover the topics holding entrepreneurs back and share how to get past those bottlenecks with the best in the industry. I’m your host, Rob Murray, co founder and CEO of Intrigue, a digital marketing company focused on helping landscape companies grow. So sit back and enjoy the show. All right, awesome. Welcome back to another episode of the IAM Landscape Growth podcast. Today I have an awesome guest for many reasons which we’ll dive into as we go through this. Andrew Leterski. Thanks so much for being on the show, Andrew.

00:40
Andrew
Oh, thanks for having me here.

00:42
Robert
It was awesome when we first tried to figure out, you know, where this call came from, because, like, these things pop my counter. I’m just like, where the f did we talk? I’m like, in my email and LinkedIn, I’m like, Instagram DM. I was like, I don’t see anything. And then we finally got on the call. I was like, how do we know each other? And you’re like, vanessa. I was like, oh, that makes way more sense. And I’m pumped that she did intro you and got you on the show because I think you got a story that a lot of people need to hear for a lot of reasons. So Andrew’s the business coach, founder at the ultimate landscape Academy.

01:14
Robert
The way you run your shop is very in line with how we run ours, so I’m really excited to have you kind of walk people through what that looks like. You’ve been in the green industry, what, 15 years?

01:28
Andrew
Ish. I started when I was 12, so, I mean, that’s a hard one to say, but like, 20 years actually, like, focusing in the industry. Yeah.

01:37
Robert
All right, cool. So then, for the sake of the audience and people understanding, you know, where your point of views are coming from today, can you give that Cole’s note summary of the 20 years and kind of where you started and where you are today? And then we’ll probably loop back to some of the stories because it’s a good one.

01:51
Andrew
All right. Yeah. So I got started, like I said, 12 years old, and my old man was in property management, so I started cutting lawns on evenings and weekends with him. And then, you know, once I got my driver’s license, I started going off on my own and picking up odd jobs here and there till my later teenage years where I started going to university. Plan was to go through for pre med, become a doctor, and I just, you know, I was having a lot of fun in the summer, making money cutting lawns, doing odd jobs for just anybody who really needs something done. But I realized I lacked the skills that I needed to actually get decent projects. So I started working for a company called Dutchman Landscapes. Worked with them for a summer.

02:29
Andrew
It’s actually where I met my wife and you know, at that time I think I was getting paid 750 an hour. It was like dirt cheap money. We were cutting lawns of these like gorgeous houses, mansions in our area and started doing walkways and patios. And I remember my first one was with a hand tamp. I had a thousand square feet patio to do with a 8 by 8 hand tamp. It was brutal. But yeah, exactly, like learned, you know, how to get into it. And then from there I started my own thing. I kind of branched out and you know, ended up dropping at a university actually when I was 21. Decided that I wanted to go full time into landscaping. And that’s when I started Brickworks Landscape and Design. So that was the launch of the business.

03:10
Andrew
Knew nothing about running a business other than how to physically cut lawns. I remember seeing a compactor for my first time and being like, oh my God, this is way easier than hand tamping. And just started to grow that business. And I went through kind of the ups and downs very quickly in that business that I think a lot of young entrepreneurs do when they start a landscape business, which is I know how to get enough work to keep me busy. But then how do I start bringing more people in? How do I keep them busy? How do I actually figure out the numbers and everything else in the back of the business? So you know, fast forward probably five years in that business and I had ridden that roller coaster of revenue up and down and up and down.

03:48
Andrew
We were doing about a half a million dollars a year in the business. And that’s when I was like ready to like fully expand. And I know we’ve had this story where I had a bunch of guys coming in and were like ready to go. And my lead guy, my project manager is supposed to run, you know, 15 different guys, just didn’t show up for work. Disappeared for three months, never heard from him. Ended up in like a house in the jungle. Like basically this guy was like gone. And were left kind of a position of like, what are we going to do? So we, you know, we just had to scramble last minute, find jobs for other people.

04:19
Andrew
And that was one of those big eye Opening moments in the business where I thought I had everything really figured out, but it turns out that I was really still an amateur. Like, I really just didn’t have the things I needed built. So, you know, from there, the roller coaster became a little bit shorter. It wasn’t such high up and downs anymore. And we always had that constant trajectory upwards. And so, yeah, built that business over about a decade. And then I exited that in 2020, where I went into traveling with my family. I’ve got two kids. My wife had this crazy idea of getting a trailer and traveling with a fifth wheel, so we started renovating it. Then, of course, the pandemic hit, so that threw a big wrench in all of it.

04:58
Andrew
But we eventually branched out on that trip and found ourselves in Mexico now. And I’ve been working with ULA for the last year and a half as we’ve done that.

05:08
Robert
Epic. And whereabouts in Mexico are you? Because there’s a surfboard there, so you got to be on the west coast.

05:12
Andrew
Yeah. So on the west coast, Sayulita. It’s about an hour away from Puerto Vallarta.

05:16
Robert
Beautiful spot. Awesome. Okay, very cool. So let’s. Let’s unpack this then.

05:21
Andrew
So you’re.

05:22
Robert
Wait, you just kind of skipped over this last piece of, like, ula. What the heck is ula?

05:26
Andrew
All right, so the ultimate landscape academy was this dream that I had. It actually started from. From about three years ago. I went into real estate for a brief period of time after I got out of landscaping, went into investment real estate. Because I was like, well, the company’s done and we’ve got money and what are we going to do with it? So I started investing myself and very quickly realized, like, it’s expensive to pay a realtor to buy investment property when I can do it myself. So I got my license, and I was actually running a sales presentation for friends of mine who were in the real estate industry as well. And were going on about sales and how to sell more real estate photography and how to sell other features to realtors and.

06:06
Andrew
And a friend of mine who was in personal development, he. He kind of looked at me and he’s like, man, he’s like, you’ve got a lot of landscape sales experience. Because of course, that’s what I was tying back everything into as I went. And he’s like, how come you’re not doing this full time? And I remembered in the, like, basement of my real estate office with a whiteboard and the marker in my hand being like, because I’m not A course creator. I’m not a. Like, I don’t make content. Like, that’s not me. I’m a landscaper and I just sell houses now. I had this totally different idea of who I was and what I could do.

06:37
Andrew
And then as I continued down the path of real estate and then working in 3D design work, because while I did that, I kept the company named to push 3D design and consultations with other contractors. And as I continued doing that, there was just more work and more work with contractors. And I really started to hear the level of pain that other guys were experiencing. I think that was something I thought I was alone in for a really long time is the ups and downs and like, you know, the mental breakdowns and drinking more than I should at times and not building relationships and really just carrying all the weight of that on my own shoulders and never sharing it with anyone because, you know, landscapers are tough and we can handle anything. Right?

07:15
Andrew
So was this, you know, this kind of realization that there are other people out there really struggling with some painful spots in their business? And I have firsthand experience of what I did, and even some of them were failures. Like, I had times where I tried to fix something and I’ve made it even worse, but I had like real life experience of what worked and what didn’t, and I was able to, like, help them through some of those times. So then you’d have guys that would message me and they’d be like, dude, like, thanks for the help on the design. Like, I’m now hanging out with my wife more, you know, and I’m now more present at home. And there was all these other wins that weren’t even business related that really pushed me to eventually launch ula.

07:52
Andrew
And the goal is to help a million landscapers throughout the entire country, Canada, the US and really the world is to help them build a better life and a better business. And in that specific order.

08:04
Robert
Yeah, that’s cool, man. Like, it’s really interesting you say that because some people are like, they’ll ask me when I go do a talk or something like that. They’re like, you know, hey, you know, we’re looking to grow and like, you know, what should we do from like, sales and marketing, that kind of stuff. And I was like, well, what? Like, what do you want for a lifestyle? Like, what does your ideal life look like? And then let’s just reverse engineer the business to serve you. But so often people are like, serving the business and it’s all upside down and you know, almost become a slave to it, which is like the worst case scenario.

08:38
Robert
So I just really appreciate that thought because if you can help people realize that we can live a life by design and a business by design as such, it can be a lot more fun.

08:49
Andrew
Yeah, it is. And I think that’s the biggest thing is we do reverse engineer, like a job, right? We create a design first and then we have to kind of like to price it. We got to reverse engineer the materials we’re going to need and the labor we’re going to need, and then we try and like sell it. So you always reverse engineer kind of the stuff we do in the job site. But then guys forget to do this in the business or they do it in the business and they forget to include what they want as part of their life in their thought process. They think about the million dollar business or whatever they want. You know, we want to grow. I hear this all the time. I want to gross $1 million a year, which, first of all, I’m like, fuck.

09:21
Andrew
Grossing $1 million a year. Like, we need to be profitable. Let’s be profitable first, then let’s scale that profitable company. But it’s like they have these goals and I’m like, perfect, like, tell me about your family life. And they. What do you mean, my family life? I’m like, what do you mean, like your family, man? You got two young kids. We got to focus on family while we build a million dollar business. Otherwise the million dollar business isn’t worth anything.

09:43
Robert
Yeah.

09:44
Andrew
So, yeah, it’s really. For me, it has been powerful. And for me, it’s been my passion in ULA and building it, that we don’t just focus on business because the individual running the business is always the bottleneck. And how we do one thing is how we do anything. So if we have bad relationships at home, we can’t expect to have good relationships in our business. So we got to take the whole picture, the whole dream life by design and then reverse engineer it.

10:06
Robert
Epic. So you just said something which is essentially the answer to this question, which is, what is the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry? I feel like you might have just said it, but why don’t we just get to it explicitly?

10:18
Andrew
So really, at the end of the day, and I don’t think it’s just the green industry, I think it really encompasses entrepreneurs as an entirety, is that we are always the biggest bottleneck, our individual self, the level of communication we have, the level of leadership that we can express. That will always be the bottleneck in our business as we move forward in life. And, you know, I tie this one into this. It’s funny, it’s a topic that guys, they kind of, sometimes they give me a hard time about it, but I really think comes down to self love, because the level that we love ourselves is the level we can give love to everyone else. You know, everyone’s heard the fill your own cup first. I think it’s the same thing.

10:58
Andrew
As a leader in our business, if we truly want to lead our team, we have to be one of the best leaders we can be. And if we’re not actively working on our leadership and we’re not actively working on our communication, then we’re always going to be the bottleneck that restricts the flow of the business.

11:14
Robert
Yeah, it’s a really interesting perspective. I love that. You know, we talk about it here. Like, I look at leadership in three levels just to simplify. Like the first, lead yourself, like, do what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it. The second one is serve others. You know, how can you add value to the people around you? And then the third one is, well, do those two on repeat and hopefully inspire someone else to do the same. But it’s really interesting because if we’re not able to do what we say we’re going to do when we say we’re going to do it, our leadership falters for everybody around us, you know, and.

11:41
Robert
And I find that with entrepreneurs, at least for myself, like, the hardest meeting I have a hard time holding myself accountable to is a meeting with myself. I can always skip those ones. Right. Because no one’s seen me, you know, miss those ones. But from all of that, it was really interesting because I realized that actually the only way I can hold my team to a high standard is if I want to live that standard. I can’t say do what I say, not as I do. Right. So how do you see this coming to life in the folks you’re working with? And what are some of the symptoms that someone listening to this might be experiencing for them to start understanding that leadership might be. They need to start.

12:24
Andrew
Sure. So I think. And actually, before I get into that real quick, I just want touch on something that you said there that I thought was really powerful. And it’s actually the first step of leadership and it really is the holding meetings to yourself accountable. Right. Like, how often as an entrepreneur do we say we’re going to do something and then we don’t do it. And the problem is what we hear in our conscious brain is like, no big deal, were too busy. That’s how we justify it, right? I got too busy today. I stuff came up, I had other things that were important. But the truth is that we all have the same 24 hours. So it’s not that we didn’t have time for it’s just that we didn’t prioritize it.

13:01
Andrew
So this gets especially difficult when we start looking at family life and home life where you’re like, hi, you know, I didn’t get a chance to hang out with the kids tonight because I was so tired and I was, you know, I was busy for my day. And it’s like, no, it’s not that you didn’t have time, it’s that you didn’t prioritize your family. Then it hits a lot harder, right? And when we think about it that way and we think about skipping those meetings with ourselves, we program part of us in our subconscious which controls, you know, 90, 95 of our actual behavior, that we don’t say we’re going to do what we’re going to do when we say we’re going to do it.

13:32
Andrew
And then when we say we’re going to build a million dollar business, the part of our brain goes, yeah, but you said you were going to walk yesterday or you were going to eat better and you didn’t do it. And you said you were going to spend more time, you know, away from your phone on the weekend, but you had it in your hand the whole time and you were on calls and you were talking to customers. Right? So it doesn’t believe the things we’re going to say and then it doesn’t give us that confidence in our actions in every day. So that’s really where I focus on a lot with leadership when I first start with clients, is building out the non negotiables.

14:02
Andrew
What are you doing right now for yourself and for your family, for your business that you know you should be doing but you’re not or not doing consistently? And number one is identifying why we’re not doing the things that we know we should be doing or that we say we’re going to do. And then we end up skipping.

14:18
Robert
And so what do you see as the most common patterns around that stuff?

14:24
Andrew
So number one is health. That would be probably the highest for personal, and then second would be the financials for the business.

14:34
Robert
Okay, cool. So let’s, why don’t we break those down too? Because so, and first of all, I also want to share that, like I hacked my meetings with myself by inviting somebody else to them. And then they would just sit there on a Zoom call or Google Meets and just, they’d work and I’d work, but we’d be doing it together on the thing that I’m supposed to be doing it on. And because I have this thing about showing up for others that I can’t let go of. So I just leveraged it for my own purpose and then I built the muscle because then it becomes easier. Right. Once you get good at it. So health, what does that look like? And where do you start? Like, what’s, what do you see people missing?

15:15
Robert
Like they’re eating McDonald’s, they’re not working out, they’re sitting in trucks, they’re what? Like, what’s the deal?

15:20
Andrew
Yeah. So for the most part it’s not taking care of themselves, it’s not exercising regularly. And then, yeah, I mean, some guys will eat well when they’re at home and on weekends and stuff like that, but it’s actually taking care of themselves during the day, eating the right food, staying hydrated. I know, you know, drinking enough water on site, everything else, which is not just about health, it’s also about the level of energy that we bring home afterwards. So it kind of all ties into this one. But one of the things with health in it is that I notice is that a lot of guys will say, and it goes back to the perspective of I’m so busy right now, I just don’t have time. And it’s this constant thing I don’t have time to take.

15:56
Andrew
It sounds crazy once you actually like hear it out loud, but I don’t have time to take care of myself. You are a grown man running a multi six figure company and you don’t have time to take care of yourself. It doesn’t sound like you own a business, it sounds like you own a job and your boss sucks.

16:13
Robert
Yeah.

16:15
Andrew
So I really like to bring things back to Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius was a, you know, Roman general and philosopher. And one of the things that he says that true. Sorry, that true perspective breeds discipline. And so one of the things when it comes to health as I try and help clients and I do it in myself, is create true perspective. Because it’s easy to say I don’t have time to eat well or time to exercise. And so I like to go into a perspective mode where I paint the picture of what happens if we don’t change? What happens if 10 years from now, you still haven’t taken your health serious and you now have another 30 or 40 pounds on you? What happens if when your kids say, dad, let’s play, you say, no, I can’t. My back hurts.

17:02
Andrew
What if you die at 60 from a heart attack, or 50 or 40 because you haven’t taken care of yourself for this line? What happens to the rest of your family? And I know I go dark in this one, in this perspective, but the thing is that in this perspective, it shows us that we need to take better care of ourselves because that helps us create the discipline we need to get up 15 minutes earlier and go walk the dog or spend an extra few minutes eating the right thing that day instead of something that is no good for us? Because as we create that habit in taking care of ourselves, we also show up better to everybody around us, especially our kids. And, I mean, I’m always. I’m a big family man. I got two kids, I’m married.

17:41
Andrew
And everything that I do will always circle back to my family because that’s what matters the most at the end of the day. And I know, like, that were supposed to have the call the other day, and the reason you weren’t on the call was because your family. Right. Like, they’re priority number one. So in creating perspective, in working with that, we create the habits. And that’s step one.

18:00
Robert
That’s cool. Yeah, it’s camera where I heard it doesn’t matter, but there was a quote of the idea of, like, the ultimate success is having your kids as adults wanting to hang out with you.

18:09
Andrew
Yes.

18:09
Robert
I was like, I’ll take that. That’s a good one. All right. So you mentioned health and. And then this idea of perspective. So people are like, yes, I understand that if I’m not taking care of myself today, it’s going to be bad for me tomorrow. But thanks for the wishful thinking, Andrew. I’m still too freaking busy to do this. So what are the actions that you see people doing where they start to, you know, win in these building of habits and these micro moments to, like, get them shifting their thinking and shifting their behavior?

18:40
Andrew
Well, ultimately comes down to a mindset shift. And I will always break things down. By the way, anytime we have a problem, it’s always in three areas. It’s either in our mindset or skill sets or our habits. This is a really useful tool for anybody who has anything that they’re trying to do. Just look at your mindset, your skill set, and your habits, and where you can break it down and find ways to improve. But that’s step one. I don’t have time. That’s a mindset issue, because we can go through a calendar, and anybody wants to give me their phone and let me check their screen time. You got time in the day. We spent a lot of time scrolling, right? So first of all, it’s a shift. It’s not that we don’t have time. It’s that we haven’t prioritized time.

19:15
Andrew
And if we prioritize or make the thing that we need to do more important, it’s easier to prioritize, and we make time. So that’s kind of step one. Step two, become skill set. Do we need to learn a new skill? Like, maybe, you know, your kid is really good at soccer and you want to play soccer with them, but you’re no good, right? Okay. So maybe you need to develop your soccer skills to feel like you can keep up with them. But for the most part, with exercise, everybody knows how to get outside and move their body. Right? So lastly, comes down to habits. So like you did with tying somebody into, you know, your. Your meeting right. With yourself is putting yourself accountable is the same thing as finding a habit that we can kind of attach to.

19:52
Andrew
You know, the dog needs to go out for a walk. And, you know, your wife normally takes the dog. Maybe you take the dog with her, and then you get to spend time together and you get the exercise. Maybe it’s something as simple as going with your kids. This is one recently for me, as my son is in MMA. He’s 6, and he goes to Jiu Jitsu and MMA every single week, which actually. Crazy story that if we have time, I’ll get into about a dog over the weekend, that his training in MMA actually saved him. But now I work out with him because he didn’t want to go originally to this mma and he was having a hard time going. So now I go at the same time, and I work out while he works out.

20:26
Andrew
So this is how we build this, like, connection where he’s got his exercise and I’ve got my exercise at the same time. And that way we hold ourselves accountable to it.

20:34
Robert
Epic. So you can hit the docks very quick. Go for it.

20:39
Andrew
Oh, well, we. So again, we’re down here in Mexico. We were walking down the beach. We’re doing a scavenger hunt. My wife was away for a week in Cancun, and we’re walking along and all of A sudden, a dog comes tearing out of a tent at him. I start screaming, I start running towards him, and the kid throws both his hands up into a full guard over the side of his head. And the dog latches onto the side of his arm and bites him. And he’s just screaming, but he’s. He drops down into a full guard with his hands up and through screaming and him screaming, the dog takes off and ran away. But in that moment, if he hadn’t thrown his. It was. It was crazy. Like, I had to. I’m so proud.

21:17
Andrew
And if I can get close to this dog, I’m going to wreck this thing. Yeah, he got really lucky in the end. No stitches or anything else like that. You know, kids, they heal so fast. It’s almost like you can. Like there’s scrapes now, but nothing. But in that moment, him learning how to protect himself in MMA saved him from getting bit on the face or higher up on his neck or anything else. So it was like, yeah.

21:38
Robert
Crazy, Crazy Jiu jitsu for anybody who has kids, I would highly recommend for anybody. My daughter, 7, put me in a rear naked choke and I had to tap and she didn’t know what tap out was. And I was like, seriously, like, we’re in. Like, I’m. I’m in trouble. She’s got this cinch and I can’t hurt her. So, anyway, okay, we digress, but we’re moving into the pieces. We’re seeing health and finances with the business. So what’s the common symptoms that people will be experiencing if they haven’t got this figured out now? It’s like, what are the problems that they’ll be experiencing day to day that are like, maybe I should take this bit more seriously.

22:10
Andrew
Sure. So when it comes to the health side of things, ultimately it’s energy. If you come home at the end of the day and you feel like you’re just totally tapped out, like, if you have to have one more conversation about a piece of furniture that’s getting ordered or, you know, the dish is getting done, or like what we’re making for dinner, you feel like you’re going to lose your mind. That’s a pretty good indication that you’re coming home totally wore out and you’re not taking good enough care of yourself, your battery is just drained.

22:33
Robert
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, that’s why whenever I see carbs on the lunch buffet and I’m doing a talk in the afternoon at a show, I’m just like, come on, people, don’t be Serving them pasta. They’re always going to be sleeping by 1:30 anyway.

22:44
Andrew
Totally. So that’s the biggest indication for that finance wise. It’s either not being able to pay themselves consistently or just not knowing how much money in their account is actually theirs.

22:57
Robert
Oh, not knowing how much money the account is actually theirs. So we’ll just talk about that quick.

23:03
Andrew
Sure. So most individuals out there have one single operating account where all their money comes into for the year. Every deposit goes into the same account. That’s the same account that pays payroll, that pays materials, that pays salaries, that pay taxes, pays everything. So when they look at that, unless they’re using the right kind of accounting software that breaks it down and looking at P Ls every month, they are looking at a what a gross amount of money for the business is. But they don’t know specifically what portion of that is profit or what portion that they can reinvest back into the growth of the business.

23:35
Robert
So then I’m sitting there being like, yeah, that kind of sounds like me because I look at my bank account and right now it looks pretty good. We got a bunch of deposits in. I’m not sure how much I’m going need to pay out. Probably not. I can’t keep all of it, clearly. So how do I start making this better?

23:50
Andrew
Right. So I mean to give you the short Coles note version on it’s ultimately, it’s knowing the cost of running our business, it’s our fixed costs or our overhead, and getting really clear on that. It’s kind of like a budget if you think about it that way, where every single month you’ll have new expenses for the business and you have to consider consistently track that and then adjust your overhead from one quote to the next to be able to recover it. Because if we can’t cover our basic costs and we don’t know what those are, that again, when we see our account and we have $100,000 in that account, we don’t know whether or not 20% of it is fixed costs, 30% fixed costs, 80% fixed costs.

24:23
Andrew
We have no idea what portion of that is already spoken to something else in the season, especially if we have off season for guys that have two, three, four months shutdown, you still have bills to pay during that time. Right. And you don’t have any income or very little income coming in depending on whether or not you do snow, whatever it is. So first of all we need to know that once we understand that, we then can really get on our pricing for a Job a lot close. We can break it down into three things, which is our fixed costs, our variable costs, and our profit. And when we can break down everything into fixed, variable, and profit. And then we know what our fixed is and what our profit is.

25:01
Andrew
We know what portion of money in that account is specifically going to go and pay materials and pay guys and what money is going to be set aside. It’s what we call profit forecasting.

25:11
Robert
Epic. And then tools to get that in place. Are you using spreadsheets or using QuickBooks? Like what?

25:17
Andrew
So combination of both. So we have spreadsheets here inside ula, ones that I built out of desperation. Doing half a million dollars a year and having no money was like, something’s wrong here. I don’t know where it’s happening. So I went like crazy. I think Matt Damon, I forget the movie where he’s just doing calculations on the board the whole time. Like, that was goodwill hunting in my office trying to figure out where all this money went because I thought I was making good money on jobs. Right. And then breaking it all down and figuring that out. So we use a combination of a. Like an estimator and job site tracker, which allows people to actually put their foot full, materials, labor, everything in, and then actually track it on the job site.

25:51
Andrew
And it’ll spit out the difference between what they spent and what they thought they should have spent for the job. And then an overhead calculator that tells them exactly what their fixed costs are for the year. From there, they use those in connection with QuickBooks or whatever other accounting software that they have to get their P. Ls and then at any point in time, we can literally take a snapshot and tell you exactly how much money is in your operating account. That’s meant for taxes, that’s meant for employees, it’s meant for materials, or that is actual profit to reinvest back into.

26:17
Robert
The business or even maybe take some home.

26:20
Andrew
Or take it home. Right. Imagine that.

26:23
Robert
Yeah.

26:24
Andrew
Where you can actually put money in your pocket. Yeah.

26:27
Robert
So then where do you. When you go to the exercise with people and as they come on board, where do you see a common, like, pitfall in terms of where they’re losing money, where they thought they weren’t?

26:36
Andrew
So there’s two big areas. Number one is that they just don’t track on the job site. Ultimately, that’s where we find the biggest discrepancy is when they start actually logging hours and materials. They’re like, oh, man, were like underbidding this by X or by Y and it’s like there’s 15 to 20% right then and there. And that’s number one where they’re like, yeah, there goes my profit. That’s where it was just in miscalculations. But again, where that comes from fundamentally is the overhead. Just not knowing the cost of business. The biggest thing that people forget is what the cost of depreciation is for vehicles and for equipment.

27:11
Robert
Right.

27:11
Andrew
That’s number one.

27:12
Robert
It’s gonna die.

27:14
Andrew
Right. And everybody will build it in on their taxes. Right. Their accountant says, you know, we’ve got capital depreciation, we’ve got all this stuff that’s going, you know, from the number standpoint and the financials, they’re like, yeah, I’m accounting for depreciation. They’re accounting for it from a tax standpoint and not paying additional taxes. But not in operations. They’re not considering the fact that truck or that machine is going to be worth five to $10,000 less every single year. And that the tape measures and the rakes and the shovels are all depreciating the laser levels, the saw, every single job, they depreciate further and further. And then when it comes time to buy new ones, they’re using their profit to buy new equipment, which is not scaling, it’s not expanding.

27:54
Andrew
If something breaks and you just have to replace it with your profit, you get stuck. You can’t do anything. If we aren’t charging for the depreciation of all these things, then we need to replace them. Or when we need to actually buy it, more to scale than the money just isn’t there.

28:08
Robert
Yeah. And just so anybody listening to this doesn’t quite follow. I mean, most of you probably have, but the idea of I’m going to make sure my pricing covers the replacement of my stuff.

28:18
Andrew
Yes, that’s right. It’s not just the cost of running it right now and the maintenance on it and the new saw blade that I’m going to have to put in this year, but it’s again, the cost of buying the next thing.

28:28
Robert
Well, and I think that highlights like a common shortfall in mindset which we see all the time, which is short term thinking versus long term thinking. Like, I’m not going to replace my truck this year. Why would I charge people for my truck this year? Well, you are going to replace your truck in the next 10, so you better start charging people for it. You’re probably going to replace everything in the next 10 years. And do you plan on being in business for 10 years, more than likely. If you ask people that now, the answer is yes. But I think a lot of people don’t necessarily look at the horizon 10 years out or even five years out.

28:58
Andrew
And I think the problem is like you said in that those guys will say, yes, I’m going to be here in 10 years. But if they’re not charging for that truck, they’re going to have to buy in 10 years or the skid steer or the next thing that they’re going to have to replace, the truth be told, they might not be around in 10 years because they’re not covering the cost of the bills they’re going to have to pay in the future.

29:18
Robert
Yeah, big time. And the real cost, just because it’s not a cash cost today doesn’t mean it’s not a real cost tomorrow.

29:23
Andrew
Totally. And again, that I think is a big mindset part of it. Right. When we break it down into mindset, skill set and habits, that’s the mindset belief that’s like, I can’t charge for my truck depreciating this year that I’m going to buy in 10 years. And it’s like, well, absolutely you can, because that’s what all the other companies who are growing out there are doing right now. That’s what every business does.

29:42
Robert
So, okay, so we look at this in terms of like the common issues that are getting in people’s way as they’re starting to try to figure out to be a better leader. Health and finances. We get our health right. We’re starting to do some stuff. We’re walking the dog in the morning with her wife. Getting some steps in. That never hurts. Maybe we’re eating a little better on the road and we got our finances moving along. We’re using your calculators. We’re charging for the things we need so we can recover our overhead. We got maybe a little bit of a profitable ship, but now we want to grow it. And you mentioned something earlier about the level of leadership is really kind of where someone’s at as a leader is going to kind of indicate how far they can bring a business.

30:22
Robert
What do you mean by that?

30:24
Andrew
Sure. So a lot of guys don’t know, but there’s about 12 different styles of leadership out there. And I’m not going to sit here and go through every one of them, but they’re 12 different ones. And a lot of business owners will operate in either one or two of those styles. Right. Like some of the. Just for example, some of them are the autocratic leader Right. Who’s telling everybody?

30:45
Robert
Some of those.

30:46
Andrew
Most of them. All right, let’s be honest. Right? But as we grow, we have to move from that autocratic leader who tells people exactly what to do. Hey, go install the pavers there. Hey, carry this over here. Go do this, go to this. Because when we do that, we’re kind of hand holding them. And then these are by the kind of leaders that when they leave, their team doesn’t know what to do because they’ve been used to being told what to do so much. So we need to start looking to ourselves as what areas of our leadership are we actually lacking in? Like, again, there’s 12 different types and we don’t need to be them all at one time, and we shouldn’t be.

31:17
Andrew
But there are a few really key ones that are important as we scale our business, like the ability to actually support our team. Support is a huge leadership style is what do you guys need from me? And this is where once guys are taking better care of themselves and we’ve got profit going, they now feel like they can actually support their team members instead of always asking their team members to work harder to support them because they don’t have their finances in check or they’re feeling low energy. So when we start working on those areas and we start reflecting on where we actually need to increase our leadership, that’s when we start doing team development. And this is ultimately where once we have profits and we’re doing better ourselves, we can start putting more time and energy into.

31:59
Robert
You said support is one of those key approaches where I’m here to like remove barriers, provide the tools you need to do good work, maybe even perspective. What would be another leadership style that you think would be important for someone to maybe consider now as they’re starting to figure out what to do next to grow?

32:16
Andrew
So I know it sounds rudimentary, but a democratic leader is somebody who actually will ask their team for advice. And I don’t mean advice from like, hey, how do you guys think I should sell this and do that? But it’s on site. Hey, what do you guys collectively, when you look at this problem, think we should do about it? Hey guys, we finished doing the upper level. What’s the next step? And it’s these simple questions that as the owner and the guy who has the plan dialed in, knows exactly what we should do to solve the problem. We should do X, Y, Z, or now that we’ve got the upper level, we’re doing this thing next. Like, it’s really easy for us to know the answer.

32:52
Andrew
But when our team is constantly being told what to do instead of having input, they don’t feel valued, they don’t feel confident in their ability to handle the installations. And ultimately, it’s why a lot of them actually look for jobs elsewhere because they actually just don’t feel like they’re in an environment where their opinion matters. So as we get better at asking the people around us what they think we should do next or how we should solve this problem and not jumping in, because this is another common mistake is, you know, somebody says we should do it this way, and the owner goes, nope, that’s dumb. Not going to do that. We’re going to do this instead. As opposed to letting them try it and spending an hour.

33:32
Andrew
We know we have the money in the bank, we can afford an hour of them starting to work on something for them to figure out their mistake. And they get going and they’ve been grading and they’re like, oh, this is, we’re off here. We, we messed up. At the beginning, you might have known that, right? But in that moment, they now realize what they did wrong and they can go back and they can regrade that area. Of course it’s going to cost time and money, but because you’ve gotten clear on your numbers, you can afford to have that team train that skill and then make the mistake, and then them realize from their mistake. And now we’re building confidence in the team.

34:03
Andrew
Now we have a team that can problem solve without you, and now we have a team that can confidently handle the installs without you. And this ultimately comes from simple asking questions of what should we do next?

34:14
Robert
Yeah, that’s cool. I mean, and the thing is, I mean, there’s a lot there, right? Some people are like, well, if I know what to do, why would I waste the money? It’s like, no, no, you’re, you’re trying to build intuition and confidence in a team that can do stuff so you don’t have to be there to do it. And, and even asking somebody, what do you think we should do next? Even a starting point could be like, you know, that’s a great perspective. Here’s a couple things you might want to consider before you go tackle it.

34:41
Andrew
Yes.

34:42
Robert
And, and so we don’t necessarily just have to let the blind go running into something blindly, but we don’t necessarily have to nix what their thoughts were, because if people weigh in, they buy in, right?

34:52
Andrew
Totally. And ultimately, you know, I’m not saying hey, ask them what to do, and then let them go and do it 100, because you don’t want to come back. And it’s like they’ve installed the patio in the neighbor’s yard in the wrong spot. And you’re like, oh, no, I was teaching them a lesson. No, it’s not that. But the thing is that if we’re very quick to jump in right after we’ve asked a question and asked an opinion from them and tell them that they’re wrong or that it’s not right, if we do it too abruptly, then they lose the confidence to even speak up. And then when they see a problem, they’re afraid to raise. Raise an opinion or raise a point about it because they’re like, well, I kind of got shut down last time.

35:25
Andrew
Ultimately, what we’re trying to do is, as we grow a business, is replace ourselves each step along the way. And we, you know, we built our business being in the field 100 of the time. If we want to grow the business and remove ourselves as the bottleneck, we have to put team members in place. So we’re gonna have to let them make some decisions as we go. But, yes, it’s got to be done with the right guidance behind it, because if it’s not, we’re back to poor leadership. We’re no longer supporting them. We’re just, like, sending them out there and saying, good luck, guys. Right. And then on top of it, coming down on them when they don’t complete the project properly.

35:55
Robert
Yeah, that’s great. Great for everybody. Yeah, Right.

35:58
Andrew
Exactly. Guaranteed to get you back in the installation seat in a hurry.

36:02
Robert
So if. If someone’s listening to this and they’re like, you know what? I do want to up by leadership game, what would be a place for them to start? Where can they go figure out how to do this?

36:12
Andrew
I think the first step is we. I put out a lot of information about this on our social media page. So just. It’s just Andrew Leterski, strictly Andrew Leterski, that they can go there and they can see a ton of free content and get it there, but ultimately within themselves, and I always encourage people to look intrinsically first is for them to ask themselves what part of their leadership they think they could better in.

36:33
Robert
Cool.

36:34
Andrew
And it’s. It’s cool because we. Most of us know the answer. We already do. And if you don’t ask your partner, your. Your girlfriend, your wife or something like that, I tell you right now, 99% of the time, it’s going to be communication. That’s just us as a, as men. I think to begin with, I don’t feel like were given the communication gene. That’s why, you know, we go out, we work hard, we kind of keep everything to ourselves. We can just like handle it ourselves. We’re just not taught to share and to have these conversations. So it really stems in every area. I said it earlier, how we do one thing is how we do anything. So if you can’t identify yourself, ask somebody close around you to identify where in your leadership you think you might be able to improve.

37:13
Andrew
And regardless, I can tell each and everyone out there listening right now, you can all improve your communication. I know I can improve my communication. It’s always one place to start and often will then actually reveal some other areas in your leadership that you need to improve on.

37:27
Robert
Yeah, okay. And then if I wanted to go study leadership, what would be a resource that you’d recommend?

37:32
Andrew
Ooh, that’s a good one.

37:36
Robert
Or a couple.

37:38
Andrew
Oh, put me on the spot with that one. Andrew Carnegie is a really, he’s got a book, how to Win Friends and influence People. It’s a really powerful book because he interviewed.

37:52
Robert
Timeless. Classic.

37:53
Andrew
Yeah. You know, he interviewed. I forget how many people it was basically and high level CEOs and entrepreneurs and basically found out like what we need to do to improve our leadership and how we can better. That’s a really good one. Again, I mentioned them earlier. Marcus Aurelius. I think there’s a lot of really big takeaways from him and leadership and how he does things. I think those would be great spots for people to start.

38:14
Robert
Epic. Cool. So if somebody wanted to engage Andrew Letersky in ULA or the Ultimate Landscape Academy, what would be the best way to do so?

38:29
Andrew
Well, before even that, I just want to say if anybody is actually thinking about engaging with a business coach is first and foremost just identify in the individual what things matter the most to them and ask if they identify with your life. Because there are a lot of guys out there who are teaching, coaching and business coaching and I’m not going to sit here and say that I’m going to be the best person for everybody because there’s certain things that are really important to me that I’m going to focus on and if they’re not really important to you, then it doesn’t make sense. So first and foremost I think is before ever contacting anybody is to find out what really matters to them and make sure you align with the Goals.

39:08
Andrew
Now, if you do want to know more about my goals and what I represent, everything like that, then the best way to get me is on Instagram, simply. Andrew Letersky.

39:16
Robert
Beautiful. And then one epic resource author. I know we touched on the leadership piece with Carnegie and Aurelius, but if there is like one author speaker that you’d recommend people check out these days. Who’s. Who’s top of mind these days.

39:34
Andrew
Oh, that’s a good one. There’s a book by Jeff Olson called the Slight Edge. This is a book that I. Years ago I got a hold of this book and it was sold to me as the thing that you need to make every other course, every other self improvement, business improvement, like course actually work for you. And it’s a really simple theory and it’s that in every day there are items. You can call them microhabits, you can call them things that we should be doing or not doing. But it’s in the simple things that are easy to do, but that are also easy not to do that make the biggest change in our life.

40:21
Robert
Very cool.

40:21
Andrew
And it’s actually locking down on these simple things that don’t pay dividends today, like walking the dog or checking the finances or entering the numbers. At the end of the day, it’s all these really simple things that don’t feel like they push the needle at all now. But long term is how we achieve real success.

40:41
Robert
Yeah, I think that’s true. Everything in life, right? You go to the gym today, nothing happens. You go to the gym today, tomorrow, nothing happens. You go to the gym for a week, every day, nothing happens. But then all of a sudden, one day you look better in a mirror. It’s amazing how that works. Andrew, thank you so much for doing this, man. Really appreciate being part of the show.

40:57
Andrew
Yeah, man, I appreciate you having me.

40:58
Robert
Here and everybody for listening. And if you want to find Andrew Letersky and the ultimate landscape academy, just hit him up on Instagram at Andrew Letersky. And that’s Andrew L E T E R S K Y. It’ll be in the description of the podcast. Thanks everyone. Sam.