Awards, Vacations, and New Perspectives

With summer just around the corner, it’s the season for landscape awards. I appreciate the fact that CLCA members have begun to use Landscape Warehouse as their choice for “Everything you need for your next award-winning landscape,” as our motto proudly announces. Make sure you and your crew members mention CLCA with their purchases, and we’ll see you at the SFV Regional Landscape Awards Dinner on June 21 at The Odyssey in Granada Hills.

As I write this message, I am in Mexico with my boys, having a wonderful time fishing and enjoying some R & R – that’s rest and recreation for those of you who don’t know how badly you need it. There was a time when my vacations were few and far between, but I have come to realize that it is important as a business owner to have FUN once in a while to keep your sanity and give your business mind some time to reset. Health experts will tell you the same thing.

Speaking of fun, our next company fun event happens to be our big fishing trip for employees and guests in the waters around Catalina later this year. We will also have barbecues this summer at several of our Landscape Warehouse locations. Hope to see you there.

Finally, I must confess that every time I go on vacation, I don’t entirely leave my business behind. I have great store and office managers that are in charge while I’m away, so I am confident that the business will do just fine without me for a few days.

But when I am on vacation, I always use the opportunity to look at my business from a new perspective pulled back and away from the daily grind. You’ll be astonished how helpful looking at various parts of your business can be from a new perspective, perhaps even from your favorite vacation spot.

Because you are usually so close to every bit of the operation of your business, you could easily lose sight of “the big picture.” Like the classic truism states, “You can’t see the forest for (because of) the trees.) I have another way to describe this common business failure.

For the sake of proving this point, let’s say your business is like a very big and valuable diamond. Examined from the perspective of way up close you see a strangely shaped, flat-sided, smooth object. Pulling back little by little, however, now you see more and more of its facets as your point of view changes. Finally, you reach the perspective where you are able to see the whole diamond.

Doing this with your company should help you see more easily what changes and adjustments need to be made within certain departments and divisions of the business. You may also see ways to improve how the various parts of the company interact with one another to make the entire operation more efficient.

Because you have taken the time to get away and see things from a fresh perspective, any changes made to your “diamond of a company” will make it more precious, even brighter, and certainly more valuable than it was before you went on vacation.

Hmmm. Now that I think about it, maybe I should stay away for another week.

– José Robles, owner, Landscape Warehouse