Vision and Mission for Your Landscaping Company

Vision and Mission for Your Landscaping Company

I want to dig into the topic of defining a mission and vision for your landscaping company. And why you should have one.

I’m the first to say, I’m more comfortable sticking in the “tangibles” lane than the mystical, lofty, touchy-feely “mission and vision” lane. I like to work with things I can see and feel. Give me a shovel, I’ll dig a ditch. Let the vision mission stuff up to someone else.

But…

All that said, I just came through a couple of months of doing a lot of work on defining our own vision and mission for SynkedUP.

It wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t easy. I wanted to avoid it. It was like going to the dentist. 😅

But it was totally worth it.

Why would I, a former landscaper myself, say that?

Well….

Because the clarity… feels good.

It feels good to me as the founder of SynkedUP, to have a vision and mission defined.

And right along with that, the solid core values that the vision and mission are in service to.

It makes saying yes to the things I should say yes to, and no to the things I should say no to, a lot easier.

Team

The vision and mission for your landscaping company should be something that resonates with your team. Ours become the battle cry of our team.

The clarity they get is awesome. I LOVE seeing the spark in their eye when they read it, see it, opt-in, and sign up to make that vision and mission a reality.

It makes vetting and hiring new team members so much easier.

Why?

Because when you define your vision and mission for your landscaping company, you are putting a stake in the ground and telling the world: This is who we are and what we wake up every day to do.

When hiring and recruiting, you can review those together with the candidate, and gauge their buy-in and support of your vision/mission/values.

Are they excited to be part of a team that looks like that?

It also gives you clarity when dealing with difficult issues, poor performance in an employee, etc. Or praising an employee! Lead from your vision, mission, and values. Praise an employee when they do something that embodies your values. Refer back to your values when having hard conversations with performance issues, and explain why it’s important to you that everyone on the team is bought in and embodying those values.

Vendors and Partners

It’s great for your vendors and partners to know the vision and mission for your landscaping company as well. It’s always more fun to work with someone that’s thought through things, is decided, and knows what they do do, and what they don’t do.

Being super clear on your vision can help you drum up partnerships that may never materialize otherwise.

How?

I’ll tell you a story about one of my friends as an example.

Jaak Harju ran a water feature construction and maintenance company. A lot of companies that do water features also do landscaping, hardscaping, etc.

But not Jaak, he was laser-focused on only doing water features.

This ended up being super strategic. Because of this, he was not pursuing landscape jobs, and therefore not competing with landscapers.

Instead, he fostered relationships with those landscapers in his region and got them to refer all their water features to him. And he referred all his landscape jobs to them.

This arrangement was worth millions in revenue to him.

He didn’t even have to market directly to the homeowner as much.

He got a ton of work directly from his partnerships with landscapers.

And he could give all his landscaping leads to them, and not deal with the work he didn’t want to do.

For this to happen though, Jaak had to be super duper clear on what his vision was and communicate that to his potential partners. He basically had to convince them that when they sent him water feature work, he wouldn’t rob any landscape work that came up for that client.

His super duper clear vision allowed him to do that. It was really easy for him to define what he would say no to and say yes to.

Which made it much easier to establish the trust and relationship of those partners.

Being really clear on the vision and mission for your landscaping company can also help your vendors share the right leads with you, and not send you work that you totally aren’t interested in.

The SynkedUP vision and mission

I started off by describing a bit of my own experience defining the vision and mission for SynkedUP. Let me share it with you. (and I’d love your knee-jerk reaction comments on it!)

Finding and defining this was a long process for me.

Back when the SynkedUP idea was conceived, I thought it was a cool idea to make our lives at Tussey Landscaping a little easier.

Later I evolved to: “This is a business!”

Now, as I watch the impact of the software on our customers (who also turn into friends), I find myself realizing, almost in awe, that this is not just a business, …it is a calling.

It went from

• this is a cool software that makes everything easier (super vague, I know)
• to, this is job costing
• to, this is “know your numbers”
• to, this is a tool to unlock Thrive, not Survive™ in contractor’s businesses.

So, I spent many hours “off in the mountains” rhetorically speaking, this summer, trying to define our vision and mission. I went through a vision-building exercise and framework to help me process.

I had a doc open on my laptop where I just wrote and wrote, dumping my brain out onto paper. Then started refining, editing, and finding ways to distill it down to be as successful as possible.

After I had basically finished that exercise, this one-liner just popped into my head, and I was like “That’s it!”

So here goes:

SynkedUP Vision:

To end entrepreneurial poverty for blue-collar contractors and their employees

SynkedUP Mission:

To make contractors profitable, by helping them know their numbers and make data-driven decisions****.****

SynkedUP Values:

Innovate

We reimagine and tenaciously optimize ways to make contractors more profitable, enabling them to build better businesses. Innovating and developing reliable systems that help them control the business. To thrive, not just survive.

Faith & Service

We believe in God, and we endeavor to steward the resources He’s given us with diligence. Operating with integrity. Strive to honor His Word, and treat all those we encounter as we’d like to be treated

Growth Mindset

We’re a team of high-performance individuals, constantly leveling up, seeking 1% gains every day. We exercise humility, seeking feedback and offering feedback. Relentlessly pursuing our calling and God-given gifts, living with the pain of discipline, and not the pain of regret. Problem solvers come up with solutions, not excuses.

Machine Builders

We don’t rise to the level of our goals, but we fall to the level of our processes. We’re process-driven, always optimizing to deliver the magic at scale. We believe repeatable processes in our operation deliver freedom for our team, and consistent results for our customers, enabling us to keep our promises.

Leadership

We believe that fulfillment and meaning come from serving others. We put others first and help them achieve their fullest potential. We best serve each other when we call it the way it is, not sugar-coating communications. We care for the whole person and not just the business transaction. We build the people, and the people build the business.

Can you see how that helps us clarify what we do do, and don’t do? Say no to things that are shiny distractions. Attract the right talent, (and let the wrong talent self-select out). Informs our culture. Identify potential partners.

Building the vision and mission for your landscaping company

Having just come through this experience myself, I’d say my main takeaways are:

• it’s not going to happen overnight. Take your time, but set aside dedicated and focused time at intervals to work on it. Revisit it to clarify and distill it to the core.
• the shorter and more successful, the better
• getting super clear on this is inspiring not only to yourself but also to your team
• it clarifies what you should say no/yes to
• it informs and is the bedrock of your culture (if you use the values, and they aren’t just collecting dust on a shelf)

Brian Audia just gave an incredible talk at our annual contractor summit on how having a clear mission in your company dramatically boosts employee engagement and satisfaction.

The video of his full session is here.

If you’re a skeptic, and not convinced you need this touchy-feely stuff, watch this. 👇