People do it every day. They see a business opportunity, scrape together the resources to get started, grab their nose and jump. This is America, isn’t it? The land of the free, the home of the brave and the fountain out of which flows endless prosperity. If Elon Musk can do it, why not me? What does he know that I don’t? You hire some labor, plant some shrubs, mow some lawns, prune a bunch of trees and/or install some irrigation heads. I mean, how hard can it be?

I admit, it sounds simple. So simple, in fact, that if it were so, I’d probably not have a job. However, after 38 years of working with thousands of green industry entrepreneurs, preparing tens of thousands of budgets and bids, and reviewing just as many financial statements, I don’t lose sleep worrying about job security.

In his own words

I met Justin Sandefur, president of All Purpose Landscaping (APL), at an estimating workshop that I conducted in 2013. We’ve been working together ever since. His story is similar to what I hear from hundreds of contractors that I meet during my travels. Here’s what he told me:

“I started my lawn care business in 2008 and struggled to make a profit for many years. I was barely making an hourly wage. In 2013, CPS Distributors sponsored Jim’s estimating workshop, so I decided to attend it. At the time, I was losing money doing mostly design/build landscape projects and billing about $500,000 per year. I was tired of losing money and was hoping the workshop would help.

“In the workshop, we created a budget for the upcoming year and calculated all of our costs to include: our general and administrative (G&A) overhead costs, labor burden for our various divisions and the cost per hour for our trucks and equipment. We also benchmarked our businesses and identified key performance indicators (KPIs) for them. Once that was completed, we turned to calculating hourly rates and daily revenue goals for our various services. Once I saw all of these costs compiled and laid out on paper, it was undeniable that they were accurate and much higher than I had thought. It was then that it all began to make sense to me.

“At the time, I was charging $65 per crew-hour for a three-man crew. This wasn’t $65 per man-hour but $65 for all three men. It wasn’t even enough to break even. No wonder I was losing money. As I left the class, I finally had the knowledge to start making money and began charging $1,200 per day for a three-man install crew. At first, I was nervous that the higher price would cause me to lose lots of customers. However, as it turned out, I didn’t lose a single one due to the price increase. I billed $750,000 by the end of 2013, paid all of my expenses and made a profit. All of my hard work was beginning to pay off and I could see a bright path heading into the future.

“Every year since 2013, I have not only grown the top line at APL, but I have also grown the bottom line. Without the knowledge and the simple, common-sense solutions that I was introduced to at the workshop, I don’t think we would have made it past 2014. With Jim’s guidance, industry software and the help of other green industry experts, APL has grown to become a multi-million-dollar business. We’ve been able to successfully scale our lawn care, irrigation, snow and design/build divisions while achieving a very respectable profit.”

Justin was not only teachable, but he was also looking for solutions and a better way of doing things. He wasn’t afraid to admit that what he was doing wasn’t working. He knew that he had to find and implement change. Unfortunately, there are a lot of entrepreneurs (if you can call them that) whose attitude is, “You can’t teach me nothing.” And they’re absolutely right. I can’t teach them anything.

How hard can it be? Pretty damned hard if you don’t have the right information, knowledge and methods. Fortunately, all three of these are available if, like Justin, you are willing to seek them out.