First off: Congratulations to everyone reading this. You’ve made it halfway through the 100 days of hell for landscape pros. We’re all still in the thick of long days, selling jobs, managing client demands and motivating our teams, but we’ve rounded the corner and can see less stressful times ahead. Hold on and hang in there!
If you’re like me, it’s now, during our busiest season, when you’re at greatest risk of losing sight of your vision. You’re running nonstop from early in the morning until late in the evening and if something has to give, it’s going to be your long-range plan.
Most of us, in fact, won’t even realize we’re forfeiting our vision for short-term goals. Instead, we’ll delay firing a bad apple because we think we can’t afford to let a truck sit idle. We’ll cancel and reschedule, on an endless loop, that marketing planning session we know we need to have. We’ll feel our clothes tightening and tell ourselves we’ll get back to the gym in the fall. The list goes on and on.
But the truth is the only way to see your vision through is to remain laser-focused on it, all year through. And for that, you need to hold yourself accountable. As the late, great agriculturist and educator George Washington Carver said, “Ninety-nine percent of all failures come from people who have a habit of making excuses.”
Read the full story from our July issue here.