Have You Adapted Today?
Adaptation is the ongoing process of making incremental adjustments that improve your business. Little by little you are making changes improving how you operate your business, or how you serve your customers. Sometimes adaptation is small, such as adding a new product line. Other times it may involve a major change, like opening a store in a completely new marketing area – as we have done in Bakersfield. Either way, the goal is to stay efficient and stay connected to your customers’ needs.
Most industries are going through lots of changes right now due to supply issues, fuel issues, and political issues. Additionally, we in the landscape industry also have to deal with increasingly restrictive conservation mandates, anti-sound ordinances and the change from gasoline to battery powered equipment. This makes it doubly difficult for us to adapt. But know this, if your business can’t adapt to these continuing changes in a timely manner, you may not have a business for much longer.
Today, there are a wealth of new technologies available to our industry that are designed to make our businesses – and our lives – more creative, more productive and done in a lot less time. Landscapers can now take a picture of an area to be landscaped, for instance, and using one of the new programs, import samples of landscape features into the original photo until you and your client are happy with the look. It used to be there were only specialized, expensive companies that could do this, but now you can.
There are new technologies that are available for your office as well. They promise more efficiency, more accuracy, and a happier office staff. These new technologies are the big elephant in the adaptation room. Some business owners are reluctant to address them – let alone invest in them and adapt them into the business. This is because their benefits and programs may not be fully understood. This is especially possible with business owners from my generation. As I have stated before, we don’t speak the language. We don’t speak geek…yet. But the cavalry has arrived at Landscape Warehouse just in time to save the day. I now have two members on staff who do speak geek…my sons Joe and Shawn…and they are helping guide our adaptation into this new technological age.
Joe, who graduated with a degree in business from UC Riverside about three years ago, is managing the implementation of an entirely new business operating system in our nine locations. My younger son Shawn, who helps out at Landscape Warehouse on a part-time basis, attends PCC. He is a product of the new technology generation and is familiar with – and understands – many of the apps, platforms, and programs currently available to businesses like yours and mine. We have begun to use this information and these resources in online promotion, social media marketing, and in the development of our new customer friendly Landscape Warehouse website.
Adaptation doesn’t just happen. On a regular basis, you need to review what’s working, listen to customers, test improvements, and keep learning. Yes, it’s a big job, but thankfully adapting is not done all at once. Like the familiar business tip cleverly asks, “How do you eat an elephant? Bite by bite.”
– José Robles, owner, Landscape Warehouse