They say that many hands make light work and the same is true in business. I would go one step further to say that employing help will almost certainly make your landscape gardening business more profitable, as long as your price point is right and the costs are being managed well. If you find that you have more work to do than there are hours in the day, then you are at the point where you need to find some help in your business. But where do you start?
There are many areas in a business where you can employ help and it can come in different forms. You need to ask yourself the following questions to narrow down which area of the business you might need support and in what form. Do you need help regularly or on an ad-hoc basis? If you need regular help you might want to recruit an employee to give you control and security over the role, as you will know exactly when they will be working and for how long. Of course, you must ensure that the cash flow of your business is stable enough to pay the employee’s salary. On the other hand, if you want ad-hoc support, you could look for a subcontractor who could help when needed and on a more flexible basis. With this type of support, there is much less commitment involved on both sides.
In addition, you will need to ask yourself in which area of the business do I need help? It could be more than one area. To answer this question, you will need to be clear on your role in the business. You might be wearing all the hats now, but what do you want your future role to look like and what would be the most valuable use of your time? Play to your strengths and do what you enjoy. As a landscape gardening business owner, you can create a business that works for you. Of course, there will be ups and downs, but the goal should be to do the work that makes you happy. Once you work out what your role is going to be, you can go about finding help for the other tasks that you don’t want to do or aren’t worth your time.
Typically, landscape gardening business owners aren’t usually ‘numbers’ people or don’t have the time to process the figures. It is a good idea to outsource the bookkeeping, payroll, and accountancy from the start. A good bookkeeper will not only keep your books up to date, but they will advise on your profitability and cash flow as well. Having a good understanding of your profitability and cash flow is key to running a successful business so the outsourcing of this task should be top of your priority list. Making sure you have enough skilled labour onboard to carry out the work should come a very close second. Other tasks you could outsource are admin and marketing.
Your time is precious. You can make more money, but you can’t make more time, so spend your time wisely! As business owners we don’t create successful businesses by running ourselves into the ground by trying to do it all ourselves. This first step to growing a successful business is reaching out to find help.
