Beau Hartman doesn’t want to think about what his hourly wage would be on the salary he pays himself as owner of Hartman Land Care, a Zanesville, Ohio-based business that does about $1 million a year. Hartman is the primary salesperson, manager and so much more – like most small business owners in the green industry. For years, he paid himself $25,000 to $35,000 annually. “Finally, my accountant said to me, ‘Maybe you should start paying … [Read more...]

Travels with Jim follows Jim Huston around the country as he visits with landscapers and helps them understand their numbers to make smarter decisions. Ike was an entrepreneur and in his eighth or ninth year as a landscape contractor. I met and worked with him on a recent trip to the Northwestern U.S. His story is typical: He was making money and thought that he was doing OK. However, he didn’t understand the numbers and the financial side of … [Read more...]

During college, I’d often work construction jobs in the summer. Occasionally, I’d work on a dairy farm in Maine owned by an old-timer named Lincoln Partridge. We called him “Link.” Link had euphemisms for most facets of life. “Three things are impossible,” he’d say. “First is climbing a fence that’s leaning toward ya. Second is kissing a girl that’s leaning away from ya. Third is making someone else successful.” Often he’d add, “It’s like trying … [Read more...]

My 450-mile January drive to Jackson, Wyoming, for our annual brainstorming meeting was uneventful. Uneventful, that is, until 10 miles from my final destination. As I rounded a curve on U..S. Hwy. 191 something seemed out of place on the road ahead. Through the evening darkness, I saw the lights of cars and pickup trucks catawampus to the road. Many were making U-turns. I had just missed an avalanche that covered the entire highway. … [Read more...]

In January 2016, I conducted several estimating workshops in Colorado. At one workshop, I asked a landscape contractor how 2015 wrapped up for him. He responded that he didn’t know because his financial information was with his CPA and the CPA hadn’t analyzed it yet and gotten back with him. It might be too late to fix problems for 2015, but he needed to see his P&L statement moving forward. Essentially, the P&L statement is a snapshot … [Read more...]