“Everything starts with your vision. You can have the greatest ship in the world, but if the captain doesn’t know where he’s going, it means nothing.”
– Arnold Schwarzenegger
Quick Summary
- A business is built to make your life better. Figuring out what that looks like will help you early on.
- A mission statement answers, What do you want to be known for?
- Your Mission Statement tells your crew, and your customers, exactly what you do and who you do it for. It’s about the now.
- Your Vision Statement is about the future. Where do you want to be in five years? Do you want a fleet of ten trucks, or do you want to be a boutique two-man crew doing luxury installs?
- When you’re exhausted at 7:00 PM, your vision reminds you why you’re doing this. It’s the “finish line.”
Skip to 15-Minute Action Plan
Herb Kelleher, the legendary co-founder and CEO of Southwest Airlines, was famous for his humor and downright ruthless simplicity. He helped grow Southwest into one of the largest airlines in the world with more than 59,000 employees and up to 4,000 departures a day.
The book Made to Stick [1] explains how Herb could teach anyone how to run his business in thirty seconds.
His secret?
“We are the low-fare airline. Once you understand this fact, you can make any decision about the company’s future as well as I can.”
To prove the point, he’d tell a story.
A marketer named Tracy comes in with a new idea. A survey says passengers flying from Houston to Las Vegas might enjoy a chicken Caesar salad. It would be a nice upgrade, after all, Southwest only serves peanuts.
Herb’s immediate reply would be,
“Will adding a chicken Caesar salad make us the low-fare airline from Houston to Las Vegas?
Because if it doesn’t… we are not serving any damn chicken salad.”
This simplified mission statement says a lot about what Southwest does and how it operates. The power of clarity saves you from chasing distractions, wasting money, and saying yes to things that look “nice” but don’t actually move you forward.
This applies to all business owners, including landscapers, contractors, and solo operators.
Your Mission Statement Is Just Your Specialty, Said Clearly
A mission statement doesn’t need to be poetic or corporate. It just answers:
What do you want to be known for?
For a landscaping company, that might be:
- The fastest turnaround in town.
- Obsessive attention to detail.
- The friendliest service on every property.
- Luxury workmanship without the luxury attitude.
Whatever it is, that specialty becomes your version of “We are the low-fare airline.”
It becomes your filter for decisions, investments, and even the kind of customers you take on.
And it ties directly into your marketing.
Quick Tip
Marketing Doesn’t Start With Marketing
A lot of people jump straight into ads, websites, or SEO, but marketing doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It depends on the decisions you make long before the first Facebook ad goes live.
A helpful way to think about it is the 7 Ps [2]of marketing:
- Product (Service)
- Price
- Place
- Promotion
- People
- Process
- Physical Evidence
We’ll cover the first three in this course, the ones you need to think about early on.
1. Product (Service)
What exactly are you offering? What’s your specialty? What do customers consistently praise?
2. Price
Are you the budget-friendly option, the premium craftsman, or somewhere in between?
3. Place
Where are you serving? Are you staying local or expanding regionally?
Answering these questions can get you closer to a mission statement and vision for your Green Business.
The good news? You can always change these. The earlier you start thinking about them, the easier every decision becomes, from hiring to equipment purchases to marketing messages.
Your Business Starts With You
Yes, you have to keep customers happy. Yes, you have to deliver real value. But at the end of the day, you built a business to make your life better.
So it helps to know what kind of life you’re trying to build.
The book E-Myth [3] breaks business owners into three roles you’ll juggle early on:
- Technician: loves doing the actual work
- Manager: loves organizing, planning, and creating order
- Entrepreneur: loves vision, growth, and new ideas
Most people are a mix of all three. In the beginning, unless you’re starting with piles of money, you’re going to be the technician by default. Over time, though, pay attention to what feels natural. Before you can lead a team, it helps to know which “hat” you actually want to wear.
If you love doing the work and want to stay small? That’s perfectly fine. You can build a stable, profitable, stress-free solo business that supports your life.
If building a multi-million-dollar operation excites you? Great! Lean into it.
This leads to your Vision, or hope for the future.
It doesn’t even have to be business related. It could be something as simple as “taking a yearly winter vacation somewhere warm” or “setting up a college fund for your kid.”
But whichever path you choose, clarity is your compass. Herb had “We are the low-fare airline.” What’s your version of that?
Take our quick quiz to get a better idea.
Final Thoughts
Herb Kelleher understood something most business owners overlook: clarity is a strategy. When you know what you stand for, you stop spending time on things that don’t matter.
Your business is an extension of you. The clearer you are about what you want, what you’re good at, and what you want your company to become, the easier it is to grow in a direction that actually fits your life. This influences every decision you make from which services you provide to branding.
If you can’t think of it now, don’t worry. BrightView Holdings, the largest landscaping company in the world, has a simple mission statement, “to create customer value through engaged local teams, providing industry-leading landscaping services” and they’ve been around since 1939.
Reference List
- Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2007). Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Random House.
- McCarthy, E. J. (1960). Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach. Richard D. Irwin.
- Gerber, M. E. (1995). The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It. Harper Business.
15-Minute Action Plan: The “Napkin” Method
You don’t need a boardroom or a suit for this. Just download this file or grab a piece of paper and answer these three questions. Don’t overthink it; just be honest.
- If money wasn’t an issue, which part of the day would you keep, and which would you give away?
(Do you want to be the one operating the skid steer, or the one sitting in the truck landing the next $30,000 contract?)
______________________________________________________________________________________________________ - When you pull the truck away from a finished job, what are the three things that must be true for you to be proud of that work?
(Is it the “white glove” cleanup? Is it the surgical precision of the edges? Is it showing up exactly when you said you would? Your communication?)
______________________________________________________________________________________________________ - If you could snap your fingers and change your business in 3 years, what does it look like?
(More time off? More profit? Specialized projects? Yearly winter vacation? A college fund for your kids?)
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Use your answers to fill out the following
1. The “Role” Reality Check
Before you can lead a team, you have to know which “hat” you actually want to wear. According to the E-Myth framework, there are three roles in every business:
- The Technician: The doer who loves the actual craft.
- The Manager: The planner who loves systems and order.
- The Entrepreneur: The visionary who loves big growth and new ideas.
Circle the role that makes you feel most energized. There’s no wrong answer here, but this choice will decide every marketing decision you make from here on out.
2. Draft Your Mission (The Daily Standard)
The “Napkin” Mission: Using the three things you’re proud of, write one sentence with this prompt.
“Our mission is to provide [Service Name] with a commitment to [Standard 1] and [Standard 2].”
- Example: “Our mission is to provide professional lawn care with a commitment to surgical precision and leaving every property cleaner than we found it.”
3. Draft Your Vision (The “Snap” Test)
This is your “finish line.” When you’re exhausted at 7:00 PM and wondering why you didn’t just stay an employee, your Vision is what reminds you why you’re building this.
The “Napkin” Vision: Using your answer from above, write one sentence with this prompt.
“In three years, [Company Name] will be [Industry Status, e.g., ‘the go-to name for landscape construction’] in our region, allowing us to [Personal Goal, e.g., ‘only work four days a week’].”
Why this matters for your marketing:
Once you have these, your website and your ads stop looking like everyone else’s. Instead of saying “We do landscaping,” you start saying, “We build the outdoor spaces where your family makes memories.”