Intro to Pumpkin Planning
Many business owners, especially right now during the pandemic event are feeling pressure from clients, prospects, and competitors to lower their prices. Perhaps you need a new framework to manage it all strategically and create a concrete business plan for the “new normal” that supports your life vision. Now is the perfect time to add Pumpkin Planning your business, giving you a strategic approach to many complexities and a clear roadmap of how to be successful.
Currently, we are ramping up for our Intro to Pumpkin Planning Course and I thought it would be ideal to show you a great example of how a caring leader put a strategy into place for him to take his life back while also building a strong sweet spot in his business, motivating his team, and exemplifying how one can lead with intention.
Case Study: Steve Bousquet
I wanted to take a moment to showcase one of our “Giant Pumpkin” clients AND one of our favorite success stories from our Better Business, Better Life™ program.
Steve Bousquet is the president of American Landscape and Lawn Service. He often talks to his peers in the program about how grateful he is to get his life back. At Tap the Potential we are adamant that “Work supports life, not the other way around™.” Steve believes this too… but, he wasn't sure how to get there. As a landscape company, he was quite literally in the weeds. Now, while Tap the Potential provided some incredible tools, we have to celebrate that Steve put it all to use to its fullest, and it wasn't an easy task. Like anything, the return on the investment needs to be intentional. And, Steve truly shows up. as a very intentional leader—not just for his team, but even more so now, for his family.
Below is a link to a recent Facebook Live interview I hosted with Steve in response to the Coronavirus. You can also listen to it here on the Profit By Design Podcast.
Identifying the Problems
Steve says, “We've been through three different recessions when the cold war ended. The area I live in was tremendously impacted by the reduction in any type of defense spending. So that was a recession that was kind of local to our area and we always just worked our way through it; but, I didn't have a real strategy and a real plan. It was just, you know, grinded it out. Keep going. That's how we dealt with it. And so when we came out of the 2008 recession, the company had actually doubled and I'm running this company that was twice as big as any company I even imagined. I had never run a company that big. I just didn't have the tools and I was going in all different directions and continuing to grind it out.”
“It wasn't working anymore. We were having profitable years and the next year wouldn't be so profitable. I knew I had to find a way to stabilize the business, make it predictable, manageable if I was going to continue to grow and scale. I had to find a way. I had to get out of my own way and build a team that could come along with me and make this company continue to be as profitable and to grow as it once did.”
Leading with Intention Takes Strategy
Steve talks about the three things that his team put in place.
1.) In 2015, they started Pumpkin Planning and really worked diligently to identify their ideal client. This, in turn, led them to identify their immutable laws and proper roles for the team. They were finding their sweet spot.
2.) In 2016, Steve implemented the practice of Profit First. They were set up with the proper financial tools and now had proper (and profitable) margins with corrected pricing. Steve says, “It sounds pretty simple to implement that, but once you start implementing it, there's more to it. I definitely got professional help with that and profit first advisors have been really helpful with that.”
3.) Then, the focus turned to building the team, finding their strengths, and understanding how they communicate. At Tap the Potential, we offer our Leadership Bootcamp for our clients' team members as well as Coach Approach to help our clients lead more effectively.
There's so much more to Steve's story and I know it resonates with so many entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurial Burnout is a real thing!
FREE RESOURCES
- Curious about Pumpkin Planning? Check out the FREE webinar for more information and sign up for our Intro to Pumpkin Planning Course.
- FREE Assessment to Identify gaps in your business and your risk of entrepreneurial burnout
- 3 Steps to Get Your Life Back
- Profit By Design Podcast
Steve describes himself as a blue-collar executive. His business American Landscape, and Lawn Science. He founded SMB lawn and garden care in 1983 while still in high school after graduating from college with a BA in economics, he changed the name of his landscaping company to American landscape service in 1991, Steve added lawn science to the company to form American landscape and lawn science LLC. Today his company services 3000 clients with 20 amazing art. I'm sorry, 25 amazing team members.
Are you ready to Take YOUR Life Back and create a Great Place to Work?!
Dr. Sabrina Starling, The Business Psychologist™ and author of the How to Hire the Best series is the founder of Tap the Potential. At Tap the Potential, we work to free business owners from the constant demands of a growing business. We believe work supports life, not the other way around. Through our proprietary Better Business, Better Life™ coaching program, we transform cash-sucking businesses into highly profitable, Great Places to Work, then send business owners on a 4 Week Vacation™ to celebrate that accomplishment. After the first year in our program, our clients have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank account than ever before.
Never one to accept the status quo or back down from a challenge, Dr. Sabrina’s How to Hire the Best series grew from her desire to solve the toughest hiring challenges interfering with her clients’ growth and profitability. What sprang from her experience working with entrepreneurs in rural areas catapulted her into becoming the world’s leading expert in attracting top talent in small businesses — no matter what hiring challenges those businesses are facing — and earned Tap the Potential’s reputation as the go-to resource for entrepreneurs committed to creating Great Places to Work with thriving coaching cultures and highly engaged team members working from strengths. Her latest book, How to Hire the Best: The Contractor’s Ultimate Guide to Attracting Top Performing Employees, is an International Best Seller on Amazon! In this powerful book, Dr. Sabrina shares crucial hiring strategies to transform your small business AND improve your personal life. With her background in psychology, and years of driving profit in small business, Dr. Starling knows what it takes to find, keep and get exceptional performance out of your biggest investment — your team members.
Dr. Sabrina is working on her next books: How to Hire the Best: The Entrepreneur’s Ultimate Guide to Attracting Top Performing Team Members (available Sept 15) and The 4 Week Vacation: Work Supports Life, Not the Other Way Around (available Dec 1; featuring many of our Trailblazing 4 Week Vacation™ Retreat Participants!)
