[Mac]

Well this may seem odd, but here it goes anyways.

A pseudo mentor of mine has been hammering me for the past year or so to "think globally". After much conversation, the point he is trying to get accross is to think on a much much larger scale. Sure, thats great... if you want that sort of thing. He is absolutely convinced i am wasting my college degree if i plan on working in the field for the rest of my carreer... i dont see it that way.

There lies the problem. I am not certain i want to conquer the world per se. THis is where you guys come in. What motivates you to grow your business (or stay small)? Money is not enough of a motivator for me... what else drives you guys?

I was investigating some things last night and came across the Valley Crest Companies. wow, what an opperation. Im sure i could get to that size if i wanted, but why?

The last thing on my mind regarding growth is this: as a private company, what is your exit strategy? Obviously you would like to see financial reward at the end of ones carreer, but how are you going to collect on it?

[Nebraska]

Mac,

For me what motivates to grow my business is partially driven out of necessity; due to the fact I have six children and a wife that does not work outside of the home. The remainder of the drive (80%) is a passion for developing the business and watching it grow to the point where there is less and less dependence upon my role; rather a dependence upon the sum of the parts that make up the whole. All the while more than comfortably sustaining my family and our dreams. Acquisition of "stuff" is not the goal; rather reaching a point of complete self-sufficiency where the "money factor" is a secondary concern. I am no longer a "cog" in someone's wheel of wealth development....I am now that wheel. I chose lawn and landscape as means to get to that point simply because of my love of nature and the outdoors.

As far as this being a career??? For me the term implies the drudgery of working for someone else's wealth development with that ever elusive carrot hanging out in front. This is too much fun to be a "career".

Who says the financial reward has to be at the end of this "career"? It's possible to achieve it during the process.

[Mac]

Originally posted by Nebraska
This is too much fun to be a "career"

for certain. Let me rephrase career with working days. i love what i do but dont know if im gona love it if i grow larger. make sense?

[site]

When I first started I grew whenever I could afford more equipment. Somewhere along the way I decided it's easier to grow when I have really good employees. I don't plan on growing too much too soon. I sure don't want to be Valley Crest, although I wouldn't mind having the $$$ they make. Exit strategy?? Thats easy... EMTs dragging my corpse out of the ditch.

[Stonehenge]

LOL Site - That's probably how I'll go, too.

Maybe your mentor sees something in you. Maybe he's trying to live vicariously through you. Do what feels good to you, and allows you to have the things you want to have.

I'm sure I was like a lot of others here, wanting to buy the next piece of equipment as soon as the current one was paid off. I thought I wanted to conquer the world. After awhile you have a stable chock full of stuff with nobody to run it. I think my dream has changed over the last 5 years, to something more realistic, and something I now find more attractive. I'd like to get to around 10-12 employees, trying to take on the more challenging landscape projects in our area, and just ride that horse 'till she breaks. Or what Site said. Whichever comes first.

Paul made a very nice living with a company that did not have 50 employees. Heck, I'm not sure they had 20. And at the same time, in our local market, the biggest player (in terms of equipment and labor) was hardly making any money.

I believe the only place you can find your answer is in you. What do you really need for you to be happy and comfortable? Some need a lot. Some not so much.

[Dale Wiley]

Looking back, I would have written a more concise business plan, reflecting my desires and abilities in that particular stage of life.

Like Nebraska, I have raised 5 kids, with the last one going in the Corp in June. My wife works as a hospital administrator and has almost a 2 hour commute each way. She has worked damn hard to keep us all insured and she damn sure makes more than I do.

I worked in the field to the point of breaking my body physically over the last 5 years. Over the last year, after my doctors told me slow down and change your work habits or die, after a knee replacement, I drafted a plan that has been falling into place quite well. IN 2004, I worked over 6 months straight, with no days off, 10 to 12 hours a day. Damn near killed me. But I had to do it to position the company, and generate the net profits I needed to take the step I knew I was going tohave to do this year, and that was step out of field operation totally. Didn't really have a choice, the body gave out.

I brought a son into the business to handle field construction operations and have another son grooming for his own crew this year also. I hired a maintenance / special projects foreperson and a crew member there.

I concentrate on sales, estimating, and operations support. We bought a Vermeer skid loader and attatchments, another pickup, a dump trailer, a construction trailer and made operational improvements to our shop / facility.

I have been working on the nursery as well, and hopefully in a year, 2 at the most, the wife will give up her hellish commute and the corporate world and manage our nursery, while I continue to grow the landscape business to about 500 K and hold it there and start fully maximizing profits, and use that to create some other projects in the nursery and investments, build it to about 500K also, hold it there and start developing an exit strategy in about 10 years.

My main point is that I too loved working in the field and did so for 25 years. I should have concentrated more on building the business rather than working IN IT, and I would have a better health and physical condition today. I still have a good quality of life, but I have had to change and maintain a TOTALLY different work style now. Other people have to do the hard work, so I have to have the correct business structure and operational methods to provide the jobs and career paths those people need to fufill their lives, and help me in mine.

[BJR]

I can relate to what Nebraska said.

I am now in my 40's and can't physically do the hard yards any more. This is all I know. And I am good at it.

So to make a living I have to increase my business, as far as labour goes, so that I am not doing the physical stuff any more. Just the organising. I only have betwen 4 and 6 staff and I know for a fact that I make more net profit than another landscaper who has 15 staff and turns over $2mill a year. Just because you are big doesn't necesarily mean more dollars. That's where the phrase "Work smarter not harder" comes into it.

[Bill Schwab]

I would have loved to grow world wide at one point. After some time to really think and write out where we should be and are going, we determined that was not going to work. We set a realistic goal, which, we have broken every year since we moved. The work is here for the taking, and, we have the luxury of accepting or declining as much as we want or need. Funny thing, work will always be there for you if you look. With that, growth is an inevitable necessity if you want to get out of the day to day sore muscle calused hand routine of our great industry.

To augment our growth and achieve true wealth, we are investing heavily in real estate (my wife is an agent) and we have 2 other means of passive incomes. I know that has little to do with our companies growth but in the big picture, it has everything to do with our companies growth. No matter how many hours you work, no matter what size your company grows to, you can only make so much money. The passive incomes are helping to relieve the stress of payments being due, and rain days occuring (we lost 14 in January now they tell me we will get 6 days in Feb not to mention the days the soil is too wet to work).

I never want to stop landscaping in the capacity we are. I truely love it, and I alos have other personal goals that I know this business won't provide if we grew to say, Brickman Industries size, so, that's the plan...

I'm a little off track here, but, hopefully you can fill in the blanks.

[Nebraska]

Some of what Bill alludes to appears in the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad. You can view information about it here:
http://www.groundtradesxchange.com/f...ed_reading.php

It is a must read!

[Nebraska]

On that note of passive income......

One of the things that I am in the process of is purchasing a farm in central Nebraska. Land is cheap, fully irrigated.... We would lease the land out; earn a percentage of the harvest. Some of it is CRP, guaranteed $ no matter what..
The entire thing would be managed by Farmer's National Company.

It would also give me my own place to take clients Hunting i

...if you know what I mean.

[cutntrim]

You probably already know the answer to whether or not you want to grow "big". At least it sounds that way in your original post.

I'm one of the smaller guys on here, $182,000 gross last year and never more than four (including me) working at any one time. I'm happy staying small, $300,000 per year gross will suit me fine and I'll be there in a few years time I'm sure. I'll probably always work in the field to a degree. I'm a phys ed grad, and it'd go against my nature to not work up a sweat every day.

Do what your heart/mind/gut tell you. Getting dirty alongside your employees each day doesn't mean you can't also be considered a successful businessman IMO. People just have different ideas on what being successful means.

Exit strategy? Hopefully one, or both of my boys will want to continue the business. In the meantime, my wife works too and we plan to continue contributing to a Retirement Savings Plan through the bank for the next 20-25 yrs or so.

[Paul]

Question I pose to you Mac are how do you want to live?

[Mac]

Paul, retorical question or would it help if i answered?

[Paul]

No it really helps!

[Mac]

Thanks Paul, i didnt want to appear more dense than usual if it was a retorical question and i spouted off all the following.

In my mind, the phrase "the simple life" seems applicable. As i indicated earlier, money is not the ultimate goal for me. I want to have enough to provide a comfortable environment for my (future) family but i have absolutely no desire to live extravagently. In old age, i dont want to look back on my life and regret that i didnt spend enough time with the family. I dont want to say to myself, 'why did i work so much' I want to be able to have time to build solid relationships with the family and whoever God may put in my path... perfect example, my mentor. We randomly crossed paths and he was open to our relationship. I want to have time for things like this.

I want to be able to send the children to college and treat the wife to nice things occasionally. In my market our 2500 sq ft house was built for just shy of $200k. In my mind, that is plenty sufficient. I have no desire to ride a bmw or the like and trust that my wife will hold the same position. My only weakness is that I want to be able to take the winters off and go skiing. Ive always said that vacation property was going to be my retirement porfolio with few other financial instruments.

One other thing, Im a very competitive cyclist. I would be very very upset if work caused me to give up that aspect of my life.

Hopefully this gives you some insight into how i want to live... at least that was how i interpreted your question.