[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to the Grow show, brought to you by Marty Grunder's Grow Group, where we specialize in helping landscaping companies clarify their platform, grow their people, build their processes, and realize profits, everything we teach is grounded in real experience. Our team is actively involved in the day to day operations of Southwest Ohio's Grunder Landscaping Company. New episodes are released weekly on Wednesdays and are made possible by the support of Aspire, Bob Yard, exmark, Proven Winners and nalp. Remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Filling in today from Marty Grunder is Grow Group Vice President Vince Torchia.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Hi, everybody, Vince Torchia from the Grow Group, here for another exciting episode of the Grow Show. Hey. We are winding down 2026 and we are looking towards 2027. And today I wanted to share some things that I would be thinking about if I were you. Whether you're the owner of a company or a leader of the company of some things that you can take care of now that will help set up your 2027 for success. And what do I mean by that? Let's cross this off. Let's not procrastinate. Let's get some things set now so that next year when we get into operating mode, we can focus on operating and not focus on all the little drips that might consume us from a planning or organization standpoint. So today's gonna feel like a little bit of a to do list. That's okay, right? That's why we have these recorded. That's why there's show notes. So you might have to listen to this once or twice, but I'm just gonna start running through my list of getting your plan together for next year and why we need to start that now. So let's start with the calendar, right? Let's focus on the calendar first. So great leaders do not just wait until January 1st to start planning what happens in January, February or March. If that's where you are right now with your business and you think you can't plan until next year, that's okay. But how can we get to a point where we can get some things planned starting now? So let's start first with our team event calendar.
What team events are we doing? When are we doing them? Where are we doing them? What is our plan for them? Are we doing barbecues? Are we having food trucks? Are we having a baseball game that we're going to? Are we having monthly town halls? What are our team events? Right, so get them on the calendar now. Build trust with your team, whether it's your company kickoff Your summer picnic, your family party, team building, activities, planning, meetings for your team.
Think now what that calendar needs to look like. Go month by month and block them. Now, you can always add people to the invite. You can always change it from starting at noon to 12:15. It doesn't matter, right? Even though you shouldn't. But just get it on the calendar and get it set. So start with your team events. And again, maybe you're adding some team events, maybe you're taking some away, but get all of your team events on the calendar. And again, as you've heard from Marty or other members of our team say, add to team members birthdays, add their anniversaries, put that, all that on your calendar. It can be a recurring item for them, but get that set. Now let's start with team events. So we're done with team events, number two. Community events, chamber events, charity events, golf outings. You go to industry events, you're coming to grow. You're going to your ACE meetings, you're coming to ACE Connect or your ACE Discovery. You're going to Louisville, you're going to nalp, you're going to your state association events.
That's just from the industry. Then we have local community events, right? So what things do you sponsor locally? What networking things should you be at in your community?
Run through your list, start adding them to your calendar. Now we've got our team events, we've got our community events. And then again, if we don't already, let's make sure our meeting invites are recurring for next year, right? It happens to me all the time. You're sitting there, it's a Monday morning and you're thinking, how do I have nothing on my calendar right now? Oh, it's because our team meeting is always at 10 o', clock. But it fell off the calendar because I set the occurrence for 50 weeks and now it fell off for whatever reason. So go back and look and make sure you've got all of your team meetings, your team huddles, your monthly meetings. Make sure that's all set and on everybody's calendar so that we can continue to again, focus our energy on attending those meetings and being present in those meetings and not wondering when the next one is. Right? So just ensuring that all those recurring meetings are up to date and they're on there, including team training.
What are we going to train on? How often are we going to train? Is it going to be weekly? Are we going to do monthly sessions? What will we cover? Right. We for many years have followed a 52 week training schedule. We update that every year based on what we've learned the previous year. But we've got our 52 weeks. We know who's presenting them, we know when we're doing them again. We want to get into operating mode, not thinking and planning mode. And all we're trying to do is create a rhythm here. When you create rhythm, you create trust.
So let's get these on our calendar. Let's go back and start from the top with our team events, our community events, our business events, our meeting schedule. Let's get our rhythm in place now so that we can roll right into rhythm in 2027.
[00:05:01] Speaker C: Folks, if you're serious about your landscaping business, you must join the national association of Landscape Professionals. Led by my friend CEO Brit Wood. NALP provides great education, networking, and most importantly, advocacy. Andrew Bray and his team in the advocacy department fight for us in Washington on H2B and regulations that impact our businesses that work alone is worth the membership. I've always said your network is your net worth. NALP builds that network and gives our industry a voice. Join today@landscape professionals.org
[00:05:40] Speaker B: so again, those are the easier ones to get on there and make sure we do. The bigger ones that I want to call out for you to put on your calendar now are what I call like check in dates. What dates of the year do you need to be hyper aware of? Things that should be done by then or should be happening by then?
So what things in the first quarter of your business can help make or break your year?
Do we need to have a flag in on January 20th to see that all of our pricing and contracts are out there? If we renew maintenance services, Right. Do we know when all of our renewals should be in and are we ahead of that?
Do we have our again, monthly town halls or do we have our sales planning meetings set? What are those key dates starting in Q1 that you know you need to be plugged into?
For us, that's the arrival of our H2B. It's the renewals for our residential maintenance services.
And it's our spring kickoff for our team maybe pushing out into Q2. We want to have a majority of our year sold before Memorial Day. So we put a calendar item on for May to say, hey, it's the beginning of May. We got 30 more days in May. We want to have a majority of our year sold out by then. How are we doing? Let's not check on that May 31st. Let's throw that flag up May 1st so that we have Time to execute over the next 30 days, right? How about July 4th? Do we know what our plan is for that? What needs our clients have? Right. If we know that July 4th is a really busy, really critical time for us, let's start communication with clients about that in June, not the week before. If we know when our spring cleanups all need to be done by, let's put that on our calendar. Any of those pieces that you go through, they just need to bring you into alertness or awareness of the thing you're trying to resolve.
That's all we're trying to do with these calendar invites for ourselves as leaders of an organization. It will cause you to pause, will cause you to think about it and then take action on it. So nothing worse than saying, oh, shoulda, coulda, woulda. All we want these to do is throw a flag out to you to go, oh my gosh, we haven't talked about these renewals yet, or oh my gosh, July 4th is a month away. Last year we had a huge fiasco scheduling. Let's start talking about that now in June.
Right? Those are what we're trying to do. So again, go through Q1, go through Q2, go through Q3, go through Q4 and just get your schedule set. Maybe it's your reviews for team members, Maybe it's again, any of the opportunity that hey, we know we hired this person and this is their one year anniversary. Is that on the calendar? All those pieces will make a big difference as we go to plan and execute for next year.
And again, needing to look at this from a perspective of, I just want awareness. I want it on the calendar, I want other people to see it. You can add people to the calendar invite if you need to. So it's not just you worried about it, but when is our big hiring? When is our again our ramp up for hiring? We need to start that probably 60 days before we need the people. What are we doing for our spring kickoff, our fall kickoff, our snow rodeo? All those pieces, let's get those all on the calendar.
[00:08:56] Speaker C: The most expensive thing in your business isn't your equipment or your payroll. It's not having the right information.
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[00:09:35] Speaker B: and finally, let's not forget our work life and our personal life completely intersect in all that we do. Do we have our family calendar set? Do we know when we're going on vacation? Do we know when spring break is? Do we know when school starts? How about not just for us, but for members of our team, right? Do we know when these key personal things going on in our life are set so that we can help plan and create a good experience not just for ourselves, but members of our team as well?
If it's on the calendar, there's a good chance it will be handled. So that is what my flag to you is for this week.
So go methodically through your calendar. Start with your team, start with your community. Move through your culture, your normal business recurring meetings into your get flags up for yourself as a leader in the organization. Maybe that's month end close. Maybe that's taxes. Maybe that's cat tax for you. Maybe that's QuickBooks Reviews. Whatever the case may be, just go through week by week, month by month, quarter by quarter.
And don't forget your family and personal calendar. And that as well.
This might seem overwhelming. It might seem like we're doing a lot of early planning. You will absolutely thank yourself for doing this if you just take the two hours to sit down, quiet at your desk, cup of coffee, cup of tea, Red Bull, whatever. You need a Celsius, right? If you're really feeling crazy to get this set for you and your team and I promise it will help.
So take care of that now.
Get it on your calendar. Start talking about the calendar. Start talking about what's important and only handle it once. Ohio. So I hope I've helped you in a small way in this short episode this week. Get your plan ready for next year, but go get that calendar set and get into Ops mode. Thanks for listening this week. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the Grow show and a special thanks to Aspire Bobyard Exmark, Proven Winners and NALP for making this episode possible. We'll talk to you next week.
