[jwholden]

Nice post Jeff!

Many here are landscape contractors because they love landscaping, not because they love running a business. You have to put the time in to learning how to run a business early in the game and develop a business that can support you and your family.

NEVER GET CAUGHT IN THE TRAP OF TRYING TO MEET THE STATUS QUO OF THE INDUSTY! The course your business takes and your pricing methods are 100% unique to your company, no matter how similar you think they are to others.

When you are calculating man hours for a project, calculate realistic man hours. For example, if it takes 20 minutes to drive to the place to get the aerator round that number up to 1 hour round trip to take into account time to pickup the machine and the trip to pick up a gatorade (hey, this is the real world).

If you are going to hire employees, BASE YOUR PRODUCTION TIMES ON WHAT YOUR EMPLOYEES CAN PRODUCE, NOT YOU, your experience and desire to get the job done efficiently will make your production rates faster than your crew.

The greatest thing you can do to help your business is to let your customers see your passion for your work. This will have a far greater impact on DESIREABLE CUSTOMERS WHO ARE NOT SHOPPING BASED ON PRICE. These are the people you want to work for.

If you give a customer a price for your work and they say they can get someone else to do it for less tell them you agree with their decision if they see the services you are offering as equal to the competition.

YOU HAVE TO DEMONSTRATE THE VALUE OF WHAT YOU ARE PROVIDING. My company(I) will return calls promptly, show up to take care of 'little questions' you have, stripe a lawn like no other company out there, provide a unique solution to your landscape needs as opposed to the cookie cutter landscapes most offer.

Hope this info helps some of the aspiring green industy professionals out there.