Don’t Let your Landscaping Business Steer You—Steer the Business
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Corey J. Halstead,
Co-owner, HALSTEAD.
Simply pause. Pause from the incredibly demanding day-to-day activities of owning and running a landscape firm. This is, of course, easier said than done, I understand. But that does nothing to change the fact that the keys to success are vision and planning.
So many owners I meet express that they just ended up as a business owner, and the path was one that just seemed to happen and evolve. They started mowing a few neighborhood lawns as a high school student, and today they design and install $200K backyards—that kind of thing. But the details in between aren’t always crystal clear—things just ... grew.
There are certainly a select few who had a vision for the business they were building from the start. But the number of those folks pales in comparison with those who reflect that it “just kind of happened.” Many of the owners I speak with started out young, working for other local companies in the industry and soon proved to be invaluable employees for those businesses. But as all owners know, retaining top talent requires incredible effort and support. There is a delicate balance between empowering and mentoring someone to become an owner someday. But even the best employees are often not fully appreciated or treated fairly—some simply become overworked because of their willingness to take on more responsibilities.
When this happens, it doesn’t take long for those employees to realize that their knowledge and capabilities are being taken advantage of, that they’ve hit a promotional ceiling, and that they need to rethink their professional priorities in order to support their families.
At this point these undervalued, high-performing individuals begin to take on a few side jobs here and there. They make important connections outside of their current firm. Then, one day, they build up the courage and take the plunge, often just starting out with one part-time team member. It feels like just one week later, they have gained an actual team, a network of customers, and so much equipment. And stress.
This is because these business owners simply fell into the role of creating a company. They did not envision the course they should or could take. They have simply been trained through circumstance to worry about where the next job will come from, whether they have made enough for payroll, and what to do about competing businesses. As you may have heard from me in other writings, this state of scrambling often comes from owners running their business on fear, rather than love. This is understandable. We all know that owning a business is an incredibly stressful, scary thing, especially for those of us who are not “business people” in the traditional sense. We are rarely stiff suits with multiple degrees in finance, business strategy, and sales. More often, the business owners in our industry are at heart craftsmen, with a passion for creating.
“What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.”
– Ralph Marston
In order to take control and steer and shape the business, it’s necessary to take a stance sooner rather than later; decide what you want your own role as an owner to be in your business, and decide exactly what kind of business you want to own. You have a choice and an opportunity here to create a rewarding career for both yourself and your employees.
Don’t be afraid of making mistakes when creating a new vision for your company. Mistakes are inevitable in every business, and they are part of growth and development. Whether you’ve just started your landscaping business three years ago or have been leading your company to success for decades, you will still experience the odd error or miscalculation that might set you back. The trick to success in our industry is to learn from our mistakes, not repeat them, and to forge ahead with determination.
What exactly does taking control look like? Let’s take a look at a few key areas that strong leaders tend to hone in on, dedicating their time and company resources to each year.
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Target Ideal Landscape and Pool Projects.
Are you blindly accepting any and every customer who reaches out to your company for a bid, regardless of the type of work or time commitment? Instead of accepting absolutely any job, remember that you can use marketing to target your ideal customer. You can use marketing to promote your specific brand mission and specialty to attract more of your dream projects! As we say at HALSTEAD, a design/build firm’s brand is closely associated with your body of work—don’t treat the selection lightly.
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Own Your Schedule.
No matter how much we might like getting our hands dirty, the fact of the matter is that, as owners, we have other duties. So instead of spending all day in the field, managing projects and running materials from crew to crew, and then spending all night on designs and administrative work—take control of your own schedule. Consider only taking new sales appointments within set hours on designated days each week. Don’t let the fear of losing a customer affect your schedule. As an owner, you have many hats to wear, so make sure to schedule yourself enough time to do so and to get your personal life back. There is more to live than business.
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Control the Competition.
Tired of making only thin margins on every project or account and worrying about whether you’ll actually see any return to the bottom line? The solution is actually quite simple: Increase your prices. As long as you are actually a premium service provider and delivering superior quality work, then there is no reason for you not to charge premium prices. Don’t let your prices be influenced by those of the competition. Control the competition itself and rise above.
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Dominate Your Desired Service Areas.
Do you love spending all your time and gas every day traveling to projects that are hours from your shop? I thought not. Again, remember the power of marketing. You can control and dominate your local market by brand-wrapping your trucks, investing in hyper-local paid advertising such as Facebook and Instagram Ads for residential projects, and LinkedIn Ads for commercial accounts, Google Ads lasered-in on certain neighborhoods, and SEO that targets only the ideal cities and towns. This will bring more local customers to you and allow you and your team to take back that irreplaceable, unbillable windshield time.
