Lead with Intention: Pumpkin Planning

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!

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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?!

About The Author

Dr. Sabrina Starling, The Business Psychologist and international best-selling author of the How to Hire the Best series and The 4 Week Vacation™, is the founder of Tap the Potential and host of the Profit by Design podcast. 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. Clients in our Better Business, Better Life coaching program have more time for what matters most and more money in their bank account than they’ve ever had. Next, we send them off on a 4 Week Vacation™ to celebrate their hard-earned journey to take their life back!

Dr. Sabrina and her team at Tap the Potential are on a mission to change the story of entrepreneurship from one of long hours, grinding it out, to one of sustainably profitable businesses that support and enhance life. The Tap the Potential Solution™ and our Tap the Potential Family of Business Owners are disrupting small business as usual. We are on our way to making the Tap the Potential Solution™ the mainstream model for growing business.

By 2023, 150 Tap the Potential clients will have taken 4 Week Vacations. These are the trailblazers, role modeling what’s possible for entrepreneurs. In many entrepreneurial circles, it is becoming more and more common for one entrepreneur to ask another, “Have you taken a 4 Week Vacation™?” (as opposed to asking “How many employees do you have?” or “What is your annual revenue?”). Taking a fully unplugged 4 Week Vacation is rapidly becoming the recognized symbol of entrepreneurial success.

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.

As The Business Psychologist, and with her years of driving profit in small businesses, Dr. Sabrina knows what it takes to find, keep, and motivate exceptional performance out of your biggest investment—team members.