TimeToGoSolo: Signs it’s time to start your own landscape business
Hey there! It sounds like you’ve got a burning passion for starting your own landscape business, and with your impressive credentials and experience, you’re well on your way to success. 🌿
Feeling the Entrepreneurial Itch
If you find yourself daydreaming about running your own operation and creating a fulfilling career for yourself and your future employees, that’s a pretty good sign it might be time to take the leap. Your drive and vision are key ingredients for entrepreneurial success. 💼
Certifications and Skills in Your Arsenal
With your degrees and certifications in hand, you’ve already set yourself apart in the industry. Adding a few more certifications to your list while still gaining experience in your current role will only strengthen your business acumen and make you even more valuable in the market. 📚
Balancing Act – Slow Transition vs. Full On Dive
It’s tough to balance pursuing your dream business while juggling a demanding job that eats up 60-70 hours of your week. Consider this – how sustainable is your current lifestyle? Are you able to maintain your health, relationships, and sanity with such an intense workload?
Signs it’s Time to Make the Move
- Burning Passion: You can’t shake off the idea of running your own business and feel a deep sense of fulfillment when you think about it.
- Frustration with Current Job: If you find yourself getting increasingly dissatisfied with how things are run at your current workplace, it might be a sign that you’re meant for a different path.
- Dreams of Growth: Visualizing not just your own success, but also the growth and happiness of your future employees and clients, is a clear indication that you’re ready to take charge.
Taking the Plunge
Considering your experience and enthusiasm, it might be time to start planning your transition into entrepreneurship. While a slow shift can offer financial stability and security, going all in could accelerate the growth of your business.
Actionable Steps
- Business Plan: Start crafting a detailed business plan outlining your goals, target market, services, and financial projections.
- Network: Leverage your industry contacts and build relationships that can help you when you launch your business.
- Financial Preparedness: Ensure you have savings or a financial buffer to sustain yourself during the initial stages of your business.
Remember, every entrepreneur’s journey is unique, so trust your instincts and take the leap when you feel ready. Good luck on your exciting new venture! 🌟
What does your financial situation look like? This is the real question. If your financials look good and you can afford to go without a potential pay check for awhile it may be time to shoot for it.
I always encourage people to take the leap because the world needs more business owners and working for myself is literally all I know and all i’ve ever done. Literally my passion but make sure you do it correctly and wisely.
Run numbers
Other people said it and I agree. Dollars. With this particular situation it almost always comes down to dollars.
You obviously know what you are doing. Almost eight years in the space at 60-70 hours per week with degrees and certifications. You are probably in the top 10% or higher of people in your industry. Not that self-taught is bad at all, but you have a clear leg up.
So should you go it alone? What does your war chest look like? What do you have for equipment? Money is very expensive right now so will you finance all of your new equipment/tools?
Don’t forget to add your compensation, taxes, cost of borrowing (big interest rates nowadays) marketing, loss, theft, gas, etc. All the expenses. I am not saying you do this, but many people will be working on a job in a particular trade and forget all the other expenses. “This guy/gal makes $2,000 on this job?!? All I got out of it was $200!!” Take time to really deep dive into every single cost. I am sure there are free resources online (and some good YouTubers) that can give you a good breakdown.
Personally, I would aim to have six months of cash on hand and expect not to make a penny for that entire time. If you earn a profit on day one, great! But plan for the absolute worst-case scenario and then plan an extra quarter beyond that.
Man, you’re sitting on a goldmine of experience and passion! Here’s the deal: going all in can be risky, but if you’ve been dreaming about this for 8 years, it might be time to make it real. If your current gig is burning you out, think about a strategic exit. Maybe start building your client base on the side and save some capital. Once you have a stable footing, take the leap. The key sign? When the thought of not pursuing your dream feels worse than the fear of failure. How close are you to that tipping point?
Gotta go all in and landscaping is easy to find clients. Very hard to transition to landscaping. You need to go and quote people and work on designs and bookkeep and do the work. Entrepreneur means going all in, no half a pies.
Just know your new title will be sales guy and what will make or break you is your ability to find clients.
I don’t know about other’s experiences, but we had to call six landscaping companies before we had one even reply show up and actually give a quote. Then the quote was by text message and he already missed his second week mowing for us after he did a spring cleanup and some plantings with his team.
So at least in my neck of the woods in the north east, there’s clearly more demand than there are service providers.
I have a few friends who own landscaping businesses, and they are extremely successful.
And because they were aggressive when they started or bought the business they now do some pretty big jobs. But they still do the half-day job from time to time to build a client relationship and keep their staff busy when the big jobs allow or slow.
I would question whether you need any more certifications or not unless you want to get into excavation, chemical applications, and if your state requires those certifications or licenses. Otherwise, if you’ve been thinking about this hard for eight years, I don’t think another certification is going to help you start your business.
If you’ve saved up enough money for some equipment insurance, working capital, and you can start mowing lawns or doing projects yourself with some hourly labor…sounds like a starting point.
Are you good at sales? If so, do a slow transition so you still have a source of cashflow to fund your business.
I was in the same position in my industry (auto parts) and finally made the jump. If you’re frustrated by shitty owners and poor decisions you’re on the right track to doing it yourself. Start small and level up slowly. Landscaping is one of those industries where the owners make all the money
I’m a solo in the pest control industry. I made the decision to open my business because the manager at a big box company sucked! I have more credentials and licensing than I’ll ever use. I’m 4 years in, it was 2 years before I ever drew a paycheck from my business. I bootstrapped the whole thing without debt.
Make sure you have your finances in check.
Hey, been running my own Landscaping business for the past 6 years in Ontario, Canada and I’d love to chime in.
I gross roughly $250,000 in sales a year give or take depending on the year, totalling $1.5 million since inception. I employ 4 hard working fellas and I have a business partner. We have 2 trucks, 1 more maintenance pulling a single axle enclosed and 1 heavy duty diesel pulling a 7 ton dump trailer.
If you truly love this industry and it sounds like you do, go for it! Here are a few things I’ve learnt:
1. Maintenance
We started out with maintenance as our main source of income. It will be slow at first but believe me, word of mouth along with a few years of a well SEO’d website will do you amazingly well. Our new client acquisitions are, I’d say, 60% WoM and 40% calls from Google look ups. This will be mostly 95/5 for you in your early days but as you become well known in your area your SEO will pick up as people search for you. We have about 30 clients contracted to weekly services which is a nice steady and reliable source of income. Of course, projects are the big bucks but in the early days when it was just me and my partner in 1 truck, we didn’t have too much time to take on extra projects.
2. Employees
Hell I’ve seen them all. I have a crew lead who has been with us for 3 years and is so loyal and a hard worker, but then I’ve had people I needed to let go within their 3 month probation period because of a variety of reasons like laziness, lack of motivation and punctuality, and bad habits like being on phone on properties. I only allow my crew lead to be on phone as I am constantly in communication with him. A company culture is important too – make them feel like a tight knit group. Afterall physical labor is different than an office job. You literally rely on each other to have each other’s backs. If one person is slacking it creates turmoil and feelings of tension between the boys. You have to keep them in line to make sure everyone’s pulling their weight.
3. Wage
Physical jobs are demanding and your putting you and your team’s physical health at risk with this industry. Be strict on job efficiency but don’t overwork them either. Give them a day off after a brutal 4 week project that destroyed them. If you made bank, give them a cash bonus. Be stringent on time. In this industry, the saying time is money is taken to a whole new level. Every minute on a task is a billable hour that is either absorbed by your clients payment if done well or cut into your profits if they are slacking. Measure your time on properties to ensure you have quoted correctly. Pay your guys fair. Research on indeed similar positions and pay for the average. Don’t overpay. Better and easier to give a raise then to realize your overpaying someone disproportionately to their actual efforts. You can’t reverse raises. Or at least don’t. That’s horrible and on you if you fucked up.
4. Insurance
Get property and liability insurance obviously. You’d be surprised how many fellow companies I’ve gotten to know who operate without any. Also get a bundle that covers your tools. I’ve had shit stolen and reimbursed.
5. Clients
In your early years, and depending on your age, snakes will take advantage of you. Know your worth. I started out at 22 and fuck i couldn’t count on two hands how many times people took advantage of us cause we were young guys starting out. Master filtering out true and fair clients that value your hard work from the assholes. You’ll get good at it.
6. Price
Learn accounting. Overhead, budgeting, quoting, (timing yourself comes in handy here). You don’t need to and shouldn’t do everything yourself but as the owner you do need a decent understanding of accounting because at the end of the day, your bookkeeper won’t be quoting your proposals for you. And you’ll need to know your own expenses and operating costs. When you get a pushback om a price, if you’re absolutely certain it’s fair for you, DO NOT LOWER PRICE. Lower SCOPE OF WORK. You dont work for free. Neither do your clients. Be firm.
7. Mistakes
Be honest. 1 bad review will fuck you. It’s not worth the shortcut or saving of x amount when your reputation is bombed. Cut wire? Irrigation? Tell them. Honesty goes a long way.
Fuck I could go on for hours but I’m in a rush. I’m here so comment or DM and AMA. Love to help
You’re having an entrepreneurial seizure! Read the e-myth revisited.
I don’t understand why you need “a few more certifications”, except that you’re just scared. And a fraidy cat isn’t gonna be a great entrepreneur.
What are you going to do that captures market share and differentiates you from the competition? You need to make sure you aren’t just being an employee and saying “I could run things so much better for the workers!” the improvements you make need to substantially increase your value to customers. Employees are paid in part to deal with the little inefficiencies.
Take the leap
You won’t get as much out of it if you work for someone else, I’m in a horrid situation in that I gave my all to companies during the pandemic looking for a better life at the end of it all, didn’t happen, they either laid me off or didn’t pay me what they promised for my hard work, and now my unemployment is about to run out, not a single offer, and I’ll probably have to get welfare or income support and food stamps to live, I wish I’d have made the decision to start my own back when I was first let go
I’m working on a business now, but I’d probably have it started If I started it back then
Thank you all! Very good advice that helped me come up with a good game plan.
Going after certifications is just an excuse. You have everything you need to start your own company. You are basically overqualified to run your own company at this stage. Do it immediately!
I own my own landscape business. I work 50-70 hours a week. It’s very hard to keep everybody happy. And you must do a lot of volume to make money. It’s also expensive to run with all the trucks and equipment. You can make money but it’s very easy to lose money.
Go to your local SBDC. It’s free – your tax dollars at work. Talk to the people there. Ask what local resources are out there to help you start up your business. Start doing it as a side gig until you are ready to go full time.
https://www.sba.gov/local-assistance/resource-partners/small-business-development-centers-sbdc
i agree with what they’re saying, if you can find a good sales rep as a cofounder i’d highly reccommend it. they won’t come cheap though
Can’t you build it while you’re still employed? You’re going to be working a bunch either way. May as well work for yourself.