Hey Macka, I have nothing against working smarter - all for it! I have geared everything towards that, pulling up to a job I can be mowing within a minute whether it's ride on or push mower, and packed up just as quick when I'm done. Everyone has to work out for themselves what they want out of their business. Money is one thing, but I'm sure that I'm not the only one who would rather spend time on customers who appreciate the work I do and happily pay my asking rate - the job satisfaction is immense when you are fully booked with these types of customers, makes the work enjoyable and motivates me to keep pushing my quality of work even higher. Heck, I have customers that have volunteered to pay more! One lady had a $60 mow, a while back she increased it to $70 one service and has been paying that ever since!
Being so busy that I have subbies with me most days of the week, thinking about putting on a full-time employee - it's hard to continue growing your business when you accept work at lower rates, you only have so many hours in a day and if you're giving preference to these type of jobs it means you don't have the time to take on higher paying work. Had the situation recently where one lady got a mower for Xmas, no more lawn service required but I still do the $30 job next door. If I was taking that on as a new job now it would have a minimum fee of $50. Majority of my work is fairly contained within a few suburbs of each other, maybe that's where I should keep my focus. I understand that acreage is slightly different with increased travel time etc., but again you come back to the question of whether it's worth the small bit of extra travel & expense for that full fee job, or do the reduced rate job next door which is convenient because you're already there, but also stops you from taking on new full fee jobs...
Everyones situation is different, still is a good conversation to have as it helps to bring your focus back to business processes, streamlining, efficiency etc.