Robert owned a residential design/build landscape company in Michigan. His estimator, Charles, had been with him for more than 15 years and he used our estimating software to price jobs. Charles was an expert estimator and he job-costed every job. He also tracked all of his bids on the Bid Board – an MS Excel worksheet where he entered every project and its status. He could legitimately claim that it had been years since the company had a project … [Read more...]
Control Your Major Risk Factors
Business, by its very nature, is an analytical and quantifiable enterprise. You may be providing products or services, or both, to your customers. Either way, in the end, you have to have enough margin on the products and services you sell to generate a profit. If your costs exceed your revenue, you’re upside down. If, on the other hand, your revenue exceeds your costs, you’re making money. During my 30 years working and consulting with green … [Read more...]
The Bid Recap Report
In order to make your business and its processes more quantifiable and measurable, you need to break it down into three components. Successfully addressing these aspects will make you profitable. They are: Price it right. You have to price your services and projects accurately. Produce it right. You have to deliver your services and projects as you price them or you have to price them as you produce them. Produce enough of it. You have … [Read more...]
All The Wrong Reasons
Why did you get into this business? That’s a question I often ask attendees at my seminars and workshops. Here are a few of the most common responses I receive. I mowed lawns as a kid in my neighborhood and I liked it. I like designing and creating beautiful landscapes. During college I worked for a landscape or irrigation company. I stayed there (or started my own business) after college because it seemed like a good … [Read more...]
Mentally Dead
It was 1975 and the flight surgeon in our U.S. Marine Corps F-4 Phantom fighter squadron convinced me to get a septoplasty to correct my deviated nasal septum – that’s the center part of your nose dividing the two nasal passages. Mine was so crooked that I could only breathe through one nostril. After a brutal operation, the doctor asked me when I had broken my nose. I responded that I didn’t realize that it had been broken. He then told me … [Read more...]