Not sure if T-suite is right for you?
Take the Quiz Now!
In the beginning, this Owner was overwhelmed - working long hours in a “cheap” market with unreliable employees, outdated equipment, cash flow stress, and little belief in the business’s potential.
A pivotal shift occurred when he recognized his market for what it truly was: a luxury vacation home community where trust and access mattered far more than price. He set a new strategic direction to reposition the company as a premium service provider built on reliability and trust.
The transformation came by working through the business - aligning daily operations with this new premium positioning. With the help of T-suite frameworks, the Owner:
doubling rates to reflect the value of trust while filtering out problem clients.
replacing broken-down assets and unreliable employees with higher-paid, higher-quality talent.
paying wages that attracted strong candidates, even from outside the local area, while establishing the company as a desirable place to work.
using numbers and margin to guide choices instead of panic and compromise.
Over 15 years, revenue grew five-fold while net income increased more than six times. The company moved from a struggling local landscaping company to the premier landscaping and property care provider in the area - trusted with the homes and estates of some of the nation’s wealthiest families.
This is the story of a man in his mid 20’s, married, with young children, and completely consumed by his landscaping company. His market is what many small business owners consider a “cheap market.” The local demographic is mostly rural, with a low cost of living and low wages. Neither this Owner nor his employees believed that this market was anything special, and the company truly suffered from many of the problems other business owners face. There were constant problems with employees, an inability to find good help, aging equipment, cash flow problems - you name it; he experienced it.
His bias towards his market kept him from seeing its full potential for what it really is - a vacation home market, on a lake, where some of the richest people in the country spend their weekends. Oh yeah, and this Owner had the keys or access codes to over 75% of his clients’ second homes. He wasn’t just the landscaper - he was in essence, their property manager.
His clients didn’t live there year-round. The company was tending to the homes of the people who spent maybe 6 weekends a year at their lake houses. With the help from a couple of our key Advisors and T-suite tools, he was able to re-frame how he viewed his market, realizing what he had, where he was, and who he worked for - and his outlook for the company changed overnight. The value he delivered to his clients far exceeded the $30 per hour he charged for labor. Ultimately, what he offered wasn’t just measured in dollars, but in the trust he built
By implementing appropriate pricing – to reflect the value of not just his quality of work but also the trust he’d built, he was able to double what he had been charging. This pricing shift also freed him up as he came to realize that, even if he lost half his clients, he would maintain the same revenue and would likely not have to deal with many of his current problems. The result of his charging clients appropriately increased revenue and margins, weeded out problem clients, and freed this Owner up to make decisions based on numbers and data rather than scarcity and panic.
Pretty quickly, problem employees were replaced with reliable ones; old, broken-down equipment was replaced with new equipment that did not break down; wages for employees more than doubled; and the company began attracting people from an hour away to move to the market because it is such a great place to work.
Fast forward 12 years: the business has come a long way! The business that produced $400K per year with a net income of $90K in 2010 now generates $2.5MM and over $500k in net income; and has become the premier landscaping company in his market.
