During the early years in my career, I learned and mastered all the field level skills that helped me become a landscape technician. When I started my own business, I realized my field skills weren’t enough to make me a successful business owner. At first, things flowed smoothly, but as the business grew, things began to get out of control. No matter how many people or how much money I threw at the problems, I couldn’t control them.

The turning point came after reading Michael Gerber’s book “The E-Myth.” His simple but profound insights on building a process-based business hit home.

My team and I began to change our task-led enterprise into a well-oiled machine. We learned all landscape jobs flow through a predictable path from start to finish. We figured out how to break each sale into phases and then group tasks and accountabilities into the right phases.

We coined our formula the Start Clean Finish Clean (SCFC) System. SCFC is a way to organize all of the chaos into a process that guarantees satisfied clients, happy and safe employees and profitable work. SCFC breaks every sale into six main phases: lead; design; estimating; sold/closing; work in process; and job close out.

In each phase, there are processes and accountabilities ensuring success. All phases are connected and work together. No one person is responsible for the entire process. Each team member just has to execute on his portion of the job.

When you are ready to turn chaos into an organized system, consider implementing a standard product delivery system like SCFC.