Welcome back to the Lawn Hustle.
I am your host, Andy Wilson.
I own and operate professional lawn maintenance in Newcastle, Indiana.
In today's episode, I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I want to talk about being
a professional.
What does it mean?
Being a professional in business consistently demonstrates competence, integrity, and ethical
behavior in all interactions and tasks.
It involves mastering the skill relevant to your industry.
In other words, in our industry, the green industry, I want to master the skills of
laying stripes, edging that perfect edge down the sidewalk and the driveway.
I want to lay the mulch to where it looks beautiful.
I want to be a master at work in my industry.
When you strive to be a professional, you adhere to deadlines.
You maintain strong communication.
And I would make a recommendation.
Your communication in front of clients and in front of peers, in my opinion, is better
without dropping the F-bomb every other sentence.
You might not agree with me, and that's fine.
We can agree to disagree.
We can disagree without being disagreeable.
But when someone's dropping the F-bomb every other sentence and they can't put a coherent
sentence together without cussing, it makes them look foolish.
We're not in junior high school anymore.
It's probably past time to grow up.
Well, now that I've said that, when you are striving to be a professional, you foster
respectful relationships.
You want your colleagues to respect you.
I want other business owners in the green industry to respect me for who I am, to respect
my business.
I want my clients to respect me as much as I should respect them.
Simply put, I want to be a professional.
I want to run a professional business.
And in order to do that, number one, I need to exhibit expertise.
I need to have a deep knowledge of my field and apply it effectively to solve problems
and to deliver value.
When I have a deep knowledge in my field, when I make a recommendation to a client, they're
going to be more willing to accept that recommendation because they know I've done my homework.
I've put in the time and the effort, studying and listening and watching.
I say studying.
Get yourself involved in a good course, study, listen to good podcast.
I have a list of about 20 to 30 podcasts that I listen to consistently.
Number one on the list is the Green Industry Podcast with Paul Jamison because our beginnings
are similar.
We didn't have a lot of upfront money to start our business.
We went through the similar struggles, similar financial setbacks.
And the knowledge that I have gained by listening to Paul Jamison and many others has helped
me increase my knowledge.
It's helped me to become a better person, a better business owner.
And for that, I am grateful because in the green industry, I want to know what I'm talking
about.
I want to be able to make recommendations that will enhance my clients' properties.
I want to exhibit expertise.
Not that I want to be a big shot.
They say a big shot is just a little shot away from home because he can pretend.
I don't want to pretend.
I want to know what I'm talking about.
I want to be able to make educated recommendations to enhance my clients.
Number two, when you are striving to be a professional, it shows accountability.
It causes you to take responsibility for your actions and the outcomes.
Owning mistakes and learning from them.
I would be a fool if I said I had never made a mistake in business.
You wouldn't believe me anyways, but you have to understand failures are not fatal.
Mistakes are not final.
We have the opportunity to try again, to brush ourselves off and go at it from a different
angle.
Take responsibility for your failure, learn from it, and go on and achieve what needs
to be done.
When you are striving to be a professional, it demonstrates ethical behavior.
It appears to the moral and the ethical standards of your industry.
I am so happy that there are numerous podcasts on the air and available for us to listen
to you.
Why? Because it's raising the ethical and the moral standard of our industry.
I know there are still chucks in the truck and dans in a van, but there are a lot of
good people in our industry doing a lot of good things for our industry.
I watched the videos of SB Mowing and Mosit Well, and they're doing these properties that
are overgrown, that have been neglected for sometimes years.
They're doing them for free to make a neighborhood look more presentable.
Those are good people doing a good deed, raising the level of morality and the ethical standards
for our industry.
Being others with respect and fairness makes you a professional.
You can't treat people any other way than the way you would want to be treated.
I have a rule that I operate by, I want to be firm, fair and consistent.
Firm, fair and consistent.
I want to treat people with respect because I want to be respected.
I want to treat people with fairness because I want to be treated with fairness.
You do not demand respect.
You earn it.
And you earn it by the life you live in front of coworkers, in front of employees, and in
front of clients.
If they see you trying to take the easy road, they'll know you cannot be respected and you
cannot be trusted.
But when they see you going above and beyond, doing more than what you said you were going
to do, it builds trust, it builds respect.
The other day we rolled up in front of a house and evidently their trash had just come by
and I told my helper, take that trash can and roll it up by his garage door.
It's not our job.
It's not our responsibility.
And it's the little things that we do that are unexpected of us that will set us apart
from everyone else in this city.
I want to be professional.
I want to conduct myself in a professional manner.
And I want to live a life that displays professionalism.
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So today we're talking about being professional.
I have some men in this industry that I look up to.
And I know we're not to put men on a pedestal because men can fail us.
Men can disappoint us.
Men can let us down.
But there are a lot of good men in this industry that have worked hard to achieve the things
that they have achieved.
I want to study them.
I want to listen to them.
I want to watch them.
When you strive to be a professional, it prioritizes a continuous improvement.
I should be better tomorrow than I was today.
I should be better next week, next month, next year than what I am this week, this month,
and this year.
How do I do that?
Find you someone that you can look to, look up to, watch, listen, and learn from.
Like I said earlier, I listened to probably 20 to 30 different podcasts.
And the podcast that I have chosen to listen to, I chose them because they add value to
my life.
They add value to my business.
These men don't know me.
Probably never will know me.
But they're making an impact on my life, on my business, on my family because I am learning
from them.
I read books.
A leader is a reader.
I watch their content because I want to be better than I am today.
When you strive to be a leader, you seek to develop new skills.
You stay updated on our industry trends and you improve your performance.
EquipExpo will be here before we know it.
Our industry's greatest show.
The first year I went, I was just overwhelmed with the booths, the hats and the pins and
the coffee cups or whatever, the tablets, whatever the giveaways were.
I went to the demo area and I demoed some mowers because I was in the market for a couple of
new mowers.
It's so exciting to do those things.
But this year, I will go through the booths.
I will demo a few things.
But more than all of that this year, it's about relationships.
It's about building friendships.
It's about interactions with peers that can make me better.
I want this EquipExpo to be more educational than visitation of all the booths.
I hope you understand what I'm saying.
I want to learn.
I'm going to take notes.
I want to interview some people.
I want to record some podcast while we're at Equip.
I want to watch and learn on PodRow.
I want to see people like Paul Jameson, Naylor Talefero, Cornell Mack, Prophets with Payjack.
I want to watch these men.
I want to listen to these men.
I want to take notes because these men are successful, number one, in business and in
life.
So I want to learn from them because I want to be successful in business and in life.
When you strive to be a professional, every day there's just a burning desire to be better
than you are presently.
You might be good right now.
You might even be great right now.
But you can be greater and you can be better.
When you strive to be a professional, you manage your time effectively.
You meet deadlines.
You're organized.
You balance competing priorities effectively.
There's one pet peeve that I have.
A cluttered shop drives me crazy.
And we get so busy, it's easy to just unload and sit down.
But every piece of equipment, every tool should have its place.
That way when you need it, you don't have to search for it.
As part of being a professional.
A dirty cluttered truck drives me nuts.
Why?
Because I want the appearance of being a professional.
And when I'm driving a vehicle with trash all over the floorboard, trash all on the
dashboard, water bottles rolling all over the floor, the bed of the truck full of trash
and garbage blowing out as you're driving down the road.
That doesn't say to me that you're a professional.
Or you might be busy, you might not think it matters.
But when people see you, when they see your appearance, your vehicle, your clothes, your
boots, what does it speak?
I want to say professional lawn maintenance, they run their business professionally.
I want to manage time.
When I tell a client I'm going to be there at a certain time, I want to be there at that
time.
When someone calls, they get my information off of Google and they call.
And I return a phone call within 30 minutes.
I do that because I want to be professional.
And most of the time, they say you're the first one that ever calls back.
Or you're the only one that's ever returned a phone call.
It's important because you want to conduct yourself as a professional.
And you want to manage your time and meet deadlines and be organized.
When you try to be a professional, it builds trust.
And trust is another thing like respect.
You cannot demand it.
Building trust earns the confidence of your clients knowing that you are reliable.
And can I say just be transparent with your clients?
If there's something you don't know, you don't have an answer to, don't fake it.
Don't act like you know what you're talking about.
If you don't know what you're talking about, do your research.
Tell them I'm not sure right now.
Let me do some research.
I'll get back with you.
I'll find you an answer.
When you try to fake it, they know you don't know what you're talking about.
They know you're trying to pull a fast one on them.
Just be transparent and say, listen, I don't know, but I will find you an answer.
It builds trust.
It builds confidence.
It builds a relationship that goes just beyond, you do this job and I give you this money.
When my son was in the hospital and sick, I could not tell you the number of clients
that texted or called or emailed me.
Hey, I just want to check on your boy.
He's making sure he's okay.
Don't worry about our property.
It's just grass.
Everything's going to be fine.
You'll get to it.
We'll get through this.
Now had I not built a relationship with them, their reaction could have been a whole lot
different.
That because I have worked hard and diligently to build trust, to build respect, to earn
their business.
There's a relationship between me and my clients.
I like to say 97% of my clients, I never hear a word from, but it's at 3%.
You know what I'm talking about.
In essence, being a professional reflects both the quality of work and the attitude towards
your role and your responsibility.
Nobody wants to hear you talk about how professional you are.
You demonstrate how professional you are.
Hey, I've enjoyed this podcast.
I hope you have.
I hope you have found some value in this and I hope something was said that will help you
be a better person, help you to be a better business owner.
If you have found value in this podcast, go to Apple Podcast and leave us a five star
review and a kindly worded review.
And if you go to Spotify, leave us a comment under the show.
It helps boost the algorithm to push our show out to more listeners.
I appreciate you.
I thank you for listening until we talk again.
I wish you nothing but success.
I hope you have a great week and I hope your business absolutely crushes it this week.
Until next week, God bless.
We'll talk again real soon.