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Learn to conquer the one real hurdle to scaling your company and growing rich: Time

How you use your free time will make or break your success. The secret? It’s not about working harder or finding more time to do work. It’s about designing the freedom to engage in the high-value work that brings you energy and fulfillment. This is at the heart of the message that has made Dan Martell the world’s most popular SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) coach. Now, in his first book, Buy Back Your Time, he teaches entrepreneurs at every level how to scale their business, fast, while avoiding burnout. Trading money for time—that is, literally buying back free space in your calendar—will give you more financial success than you ever dreamed was possible.

With over two decades of experience as a serial entrepreneur and founder, Dan Martell will teach you the secrets to work less and play more while building an empire. He’ll dig into the practical steps that will allow you to start buying back ...

How Cell Phone Addiction Can Lead to Entrepreneur Burnout and How to Prevent It

The original published article by Gary Wilbers can be found HERE.

If you’re an entrepreneur, business owner, or simply someone who’s always on the go, it’s no secret that your cell phone is your lifeblood. It keeps you connected to your work, your employees, and your customers. But what happens when your phone usage goes from being a helpful tool to a full-blown addiction?

Burnout is a state of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion that can occur when you’re overworked or constantly under stress. And while burnout can affect anyone, it’s especially common among entrepreneurs. After all, running a business is no easy feat. There are always deadlines to meet, problems to solve, and new challenges to face. So it’s not surprising that many entrepreneurs find themselves chained to their phones in an effort to stay on top of everything.

But here’s the thing: constantly being glued to your phone can actua...

^{The original article, written by Randy Dombrowski, was posted on Green Industry Pros on January 13, 2025 and can be found HERE.} 

From site prep to specialized installations, the people you hire can either drive your project forward or increase risk. Here's how general contractors can help mitigate risk.

Every subcontractor you hire can enhance or derail your work. A focus on subcontractor risk management can be the difference between a profitable, well-executed project and one that suffers costly delays—or worse, injuries or fatalities.

A strong subcontractor risk management strategy is built on three key pillars: a thorough risk assessment, clear control measures and adequate insurance coverage. These components protect your workforce, property and equipment and ensure your project stays within budget and on schedule.

Key steps to assessing subcontractor risk

Before signing a contract, evaluate how your subcontractor will impact your project’s safety and bottom line. A thorough v...

Being a landscape/snow business owner is hard. There are a million things vying for your attention, and
it’s usually the most urgent that gets it. Meanwhile, your business keeps going – but is it growing? Has it
increased in value over the last year? The truth is that most landscape business owners have no idea
what their business is worth or how it’s actually doing. They’re usually fantastic technicians, happy to be
working IN the business, but rarely ON the business. But knowing the value of your business, and
understanding the steps needed to take to increase its value are critical for the growth and health of the business. It will increase profitability now and also make your business more attractive to potential buyers – whether you’re looking at selling now or in the future.

Let’s take a look at six pillars of business and identify some best practices and tools you can implement
fairly easily to increase efficiency, productivity and profit.

SAFETY
The health and safety of your staff i...

Our next-door neighbour builds the most amazing ice rink in his backyard every year. It’s complete with curved corners, painted 2’ boards all the way around, lights, and netting to catch stray pucks. The only thing that’s missing is a scoreboard and lines in the ice, though I expect those are coming. It’s a work of art. But this year, it’s been more like a wading pool than an ice rink. It’s been so sad.

The weather this year has been unlike anything I can remember in all my years in landscaping. As I write this, it’s February 7 and 9°C in Toronto. There are no snow piles and no frost in the ground. Many of our clients are concerned about what this means for their business, both this year and in the future if this weather trend continues. While a light winter may have its pros and cons, one thing is certain – we need to adapt and make changes in our practices and snow contracts to survive in the face of low snow seasons.

Let’s talk about some of the pros of a low-snow season:

1. Reduc
...

This week in our strategic planning series, we’re focusing on marketing and sales. This is often an area that we give little attention to. We generally focus on providing an excellent product or service – and we should. But if we don’t let people know how our excellent product or service will enhance their life, and why we’re the best choice for that product or service, we will likely not experience the type of growth we want.

MARKETING

Marketing can be thought of as all activities a business carries out to:

• Identify its target market
• Prepare promotional material designed to appeal to ideal client
• Communicate the material in a cost-effective manner
• Distribute the product or service to the target market

To be effective at marketing, you should be doing each of these four activities. If you have a great product or service but communicate it to the wrong market segment, the marketing won’t be effective. If you have great marketing material, but don’t deliver on what you’re adve...

A strategic plan defines who you are as a business and lists concrete actions to achieve your goals, so creating one takes time and thought. Let’s discuss the W’s of strategic planning:

Who should be involved?

Clearly the owner should be involved. And depending on the type of plan you’re creating, you might also want to include division leaders, administration, sales staff, operations management and a facilitator.

What should be discussed or decided?

The strategic plan meeting should identify or review the company vision, mission and core values, a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis, company goals and objectives as well as an action plan.

When should you prepare a strategic plan?

A strategic plan should be created annually, reviewed quarterly and discussed weekly.

Where should the meeting take place?

It has been our experience that the most productive meetings take place outside of the office. We recommend booking an offsite location for a day where y...

This month we’re focusing on strategic planning. If you’ve been watching our social media at all, you know that I’ve been teaching about strategic planning at the Waterloo Chapter monthly meetings. These meetings are open to anyone, so I invite you to join us in December. For more information about the meetings, or to view the previous content that’s been presented, click HERE.

To begin our series, we’re going to focus on HR. This can feel a bit like navigating landmines, but by implementing some of the following tips and recommendations, you’ll be able to recruit and retain great employees.

1.  Implement effective recruitment and hiring practices

“Always be hiring” is advice we regularly give. Finding the right person is more important than just filling a position, so always be looking for great people. Then once you find them – or they find you – you’ll be more prepared to find a spot for them.

One of the best ways to ensure you hire well is to encourage referrals. Your current...

Over the last four articles, we’ve been talking about how we, as business owners can get healthy and stay healthy. We’ve talked about physical, mental and emotional health, as well as decision fatigue. For this article, we’re turning the attention to our staff and how we can promote a healthy work environment for them. Perhaps we can use some of the information we’ve gained over the last few articles to create a work environment and mentality that promotes the well-being of our greatest asset…our staff.

We are heading into darker and colder months, months that are generally harder for people. It is my desire, as I’m sure it’s yours, to provide an environment that acknowledges and actively seeks to provide for the needs of staff in order for them to be healthy and effective, as well as ensure they’re with us for the long haul.

A safe workplace

In my experience, the best thing we can do for our staff is to make sure they know it’s safe to talk to us. To share when they’re stressed, ov...

I love going out for dinner with my wife. But I hate deciding which restaurant to go to. This is an issue for us because she, too, hates deciding where to go. If our conversations about where to have dinner were recorded, they would be painful to listen to. For your amusement, here’s an example:

Me: “Where do you want to eat?”

Her: “I don’t care. Where do you want to eat?”

Me: “It doesn’t matter to me. I’ll eat anywhere?”

Her: “Do you feel like anything in particular?”

Me: “No. Do you?”

Her: “No. Would you please just make a decision?!”

Like I said…painful. I remember the first time I heard about decision fatigue. Finally our struggle to decide on a restaurant made sense to me. We make so many decisions each day, that by the time dinner rolls around, we are done.

Medical News Today defines decision fatigue as “a psychological phenomenon surrounding a person’s ability or capacity to make decisions”. They go on to say that “the theory surrounding decision fatigue is that a human’...