Landscaper

He always enjoyed working outdoors. But as a recent high school graduate, should he fully commit to one specific career path? Indecision, followed by hard work and dedication to learning more about his business led to eventual career satisfaction. 

FAMILY BACKGROUND

JM is the oldest of three children. His father was a mailman. His mother was a secretary for a local college. JM’s parents made it clear to each of their children that they should go to college to create better career opportunities for themselves. 

EARLY CHILDHOOD THOUGHTS OF AN ADULT CAREER

JM recalls being fascinated as a child, watching big trucks, backhoes and tractors in action. He pictured himself as a future operater of those types of heavy construction equipment . 

EARLY EDUCATION

JM took general (not vocational) academic courses in high school. When he had the opportunity to avoid physics, he chose instead to enroll in a business course, more to avoid math than study a specific business for a future career. 

TEENAGE JOBS – THE OPPORTUNITY TO LIKE OR NOT LIKE CERTAIN JOBS

To earn pocket money as a teenager, JM always engaged in part-time jobs during school vacations. Indoor jobs included working in a paint store, clearing tables in a restaurant and miscellaneous jobs within a hotel. His favorite activities were outdoors, helping his family and neighbors with yard work. 

COLLEGE

As high school graduation neared, JM had to decide where to apply for college admission. By then, he had developed a few steady grass cutting / leaf raking customers and knew he would rather eventually work outside than inside so he applied to a local university for their two year program in landscaping. Following acceptance, JM pursued the landscaping courses but withdrew from college during his second year, due to concern that perhaps it was too early to focus on only one specific career path. What if he didn’t want to be a landscaper for the rest of his life?  

CONTINUING SELF EMPLOYMENT WHILE NOT COMMITTED TO A CAREER

Having left a college degree track, JM still needed to earn a living so he continued to build his landscaping business as he slowly began to realize that maybe he was already in a career which he enjoyed and could earn a living. 

CAREER CHALLENGE – BALANCING A FAMILY RELATIONSHIP 

While JM was still pondering his long term, future business path, his younger brother (TM) returned home as a college graduate and told his older brother, JM, that his (TM) preferred career path was to join JM as a full time partner in the landscaping business. JM got along well with his brother and agreed but they needed to understand potential family partnership issues in advance to avoid future problems so they hired a lawyer, who advised them of potential issues and drafted a formal partnership agreement, which they each signed. 

Epilogue to the family partnership story: JM and his brother have continued their positive family and working relationships, each working hard and professionally supporting each other as their business has grown. TM handles the financial administration of the business – along with an outside accountant as necessary – while JM and his wife handle landscaping design and prepare cost estimates and proposals.

CAREER CHALLENGE  – BALANCING A PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP 

While JM was now committed to proceeding in business with his brother, he was also considering another commitment as a result of dating a girl for awhile, which JM hoped would eventually lead to a different kind of partnership: marriage.  So picturing their future together with JM wanting an interesting career to contribute to the financial support for at least himself and his wife (who also planned to remain employed as a legal secretary) and hopefully children, JM decided he should obtain a four year, college degree, which he believed to be essential to fully develop the landscaping business and concurrently provide a “safety valve” for improving his professional resume if something happened to require him to seek employment other than within his own business.  

The addition of TM to the landscaping business provided a unique opportunity for JM to take a temporary “leave of absence” from the day to day operation of the brothers’ landscaping business while JM attended full time college classes. When college classes were not in session, JM resumed full-time landscaping activities with his brother. 

RETURNING TO COLLEGE FOR A FOUR YEAR DEGREE

Having decided to return to college, two issues promptly arose: 

(1) Where to find a quality, four year degree program which would accept academic credits from JM’s first two years of college? A highly regarded state university met this need. 

(2) How to explain to his steady girlfriend, that he needed to enroll in a university several travel hours away and live there for the next two academic years to improve his career preparations but that he still wanted to marry her? His girlfriend reasonably asked: “Are you telling me the truth or is this your way of breaking up our relationship?” JM replied that he was telling the truth. She said she would rely on that.

Epilogue to JM’s personal relationship story: Mr. and Mrs. JM have been happily married for 35 years and produced two children while their family story continues……….

SEVERAL BENEFITS OF OBTAINING A COLLEGE DEGREE 

While the university’s landscaping courses involved landscape design, horticulture (flowers, shrubs, trees, botany, chemistry and turf management) the curriculum also required passing courses involving math, language arts and communications. JM found all his courses to be worthwhile to increase both his landscaping and business knowledge.  Plus he now had the added confidence that a four year college degree was essentially a “safety valve” if, for any reason, he needed to shift his career path. 

GROWING A SMALL BUSINESS

The brothers found that their combined hard work for each landscaping customer provided sufficient income for each of them plus the best (best = most persuasive at no cost) advertising: recommendations from existing clients to their friends and neighbors. 

MEETING COMMON, SMALL BUSINESS CHALLENGES

From the outset of their growing business, the brothers had to deal with multiple challenges, most of them common to any small business. 

(1) Extent of Service to be Provided: A threshold issue is whether – and to what extent – to provide or limit the extent of a landscaper’s services. For example, does the business want to invest in trucks with the capacity to take down huge trees or limit services to light tree trimming? 

(2) Financial challenge: Create more income than expense; the result is “profit” – This takes time and usually requires a loan (from family or a bank) to get started because “start-up” costs may have to be spent before there is sufficient income. 

(3) Key management must remain healthy, especially when a significant part of their job responsibilities require physical labor. When is the last time anyone saw an obese landscaper? Probably never! JM and TM were non-smokers, avoided excess alcohol and led essentially quiet lives but were not immune from – and had to work through – colds and flu. When JM was diagnosed with skin cancer (not unusual for outdoor workers) and later, prostate cancer (which required extended absence from all physical activities), fortunately his brother was able to carry on the business until JM felt well enough and was cleared by his oncologist to return. 

(4) Finding and maintaining a reliable workforce. At the outset of the brothers’ business, they could employ friends and children (when sufficiently grown and then not to operate dangerous equipment), as needed. But as the customer base grew, the business required a full-time workforce of adults who would reliably appear for work and then work hard, follow instructions, and need increasingly less supervision. Proof of citizenship or approved immigration status must be verified. Even without a virus pandemic, finding and maintaining a reliable workforce is a constant challenge. 

(5) Obtaining and maintaining sufficient financial credit to purchase necessary equipment. Basic landscaping can be done with an old, walk-behind mower plus a wheelbarrow, shovels, and a rake. But large projects require more than a pick-up truck. Special, heavy digging and hauling equipment costs many thousands of dollars. Constant use requires maintenance and every piece of equipment, from mowers to trimmers to back-hoes and trucks, has a limited lifespan. 

(6) Plan for eventual departure of key management. This issue is addressed in a sophisticated, written partnership agreement. Important issues to be resolved include the amount of advance notice of intent to withdraw from the partnership, how to value the ownership interests and the procedure to pay the departing partner for their ownership interest. 

For JM and TM, this issue is closer to reality, as TM has advised JM that he (TM) will eventually (within the next several years) exit the business and the local area to move his residence close to a child who has moved to a different area of the country. 

(7) Consider how to bring family members into the business IF there is mutual interest between current owners and their relatives. Fortunately for family dynamics, both JM and TM avoided any pressure on their respective children to enter the family business. So, for the brothers, this has never developed into an actual issue since none of their children indicated a desire to enter the family business after brief, part-time involvement during their high school vacations. 

CHALLENGES UNIQUE TO OUTDOOR, SEASONAL BUSINESSES

(1) Weather is a potential issue all 12 months. Rain happens. And so does a lot worse weather develop (e.g., hurricanes, tornados) as climate change evolves across the entire world. At the least, weather can disrupt outdoor work schedules. At the most, weather can provide extra work activities for landscapers when yard cleanup becomes too overwhelming for the average homeowner. 

(2) Winter months render most outdoor projects impossible. This means zero or diminished income available to pay the owners. And of course, workers must – by law – be paid promptly. Typical solutions involve maintaining income through snow removal (itself weather dependent and requiring special plowing equipment) and reducing expense during the work-prohibitive, freezing weather months, by laying off the hired help. But once gone, will they return for warm weather work to meet customer demands? The brothers have continued to cope successfully with this business challenge, but solutions are often impacted by outside circumstances such as the national economy, changing immigration status requirements and worldwide pandemics. 

CAREER SATISFACTION

JM continues to enjoy working outdoors with constant access to blue skies (when available), green grass and multiple flowers (in season). As one of two partner owners of the business, he and his brother can arrange their work schedules by mutual agreement. They can please their own eyes and the mood of their customers by creating beautiful landscaping projects. And their physical work keeps them fit. Their dedicated, hard work over several decades, will have provided the opportunity to save enough money, when combined with Social Security, to enable comfortable retirements, during which they can sit with their family, out of the sun, lemonade in hand and watch hired landscapers cut their grass and weed their gardens.