Operations: Understanding and Communicating on Production Hours - A Key to Profitability

Addressing a question we received from a listener, Marty Grunder talks about the importance of understanding how hours impact the profitability of a job, how he helps his team understand the impact they can have, and what they do to monitor and manage hours.

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Episode Chapters:

00:00 - Start
00:31 - Why Production Hours Matter: You Sell Time
03:09 - Get Off Paper: The Case for Software Systems
07:36 - The Estimation Standardization Meeting
09:54 - How Grunder Grew from $4.5M to $18M
12:31 - Finding Your Minimum Job Size & Profit Sweet Spot
14:00 - Start Simple: Taking Action on Production Hours

Resources:

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips

The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Stihl

Show Notes:

Core Principle: You Sell TIME

Every hour you pay for labor needs to be billable vs. unbillable (travel, training, loading/unloading, repairs, shop work). The sooner your entire team understands this, the better your financial performance.

Universal Language: Hours transcend language barriers. Sold for 110 hours, took 130 = No bueno. Sold for 110, took 105 = Bueno.

Get Off Paper, Get Software

Why It Matters:

1. Pay teams to serve clients, not push papers

2. Young workers expect technology - paper systems hurt recruiting

3. Impossible to scale or create sellable business with paper trails

4. Software eliminates human error, provides real-time data

Recommended: Aspire or LMN (far ahead of other landscape software)

The Chick-fil-A Test: Imagine writing your order by hand for someone to read before cooking. That's the inefficiency of paper systems.

The Estimation Standardization Meeting