TLDR (in advance): Seeking advice on how to run a profitable gardening business, expanding while staying competitive and finding the 'right kind' of jobs, ie year-round maintenance requirements and clients who understand they need to pay properly for experienced, qualified gardeners!
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I run a gardening business which started as me on my own, now 15 years in I have a limited company, 3 part time employees (8 days per week between them) and have just had to register for VAT.
I 'fell into' gardening and never intended to be running a business, and while I consider myself a decent gardener, I find the business side stressful and overwhelming. I have never had a strategy and have just taken on more and more work and hired more people to meet demand. My turnover is now over £100k but I never seem to be making money.
I have qualified as a garden designer and that is the direction I want to head, but it will be a few years before I make enough from just doing design, so need to make the maintenance side of the business work to keep me afloat.
I registered for VAT in August (design work has pushed me over the VAT threshold as I now buy a lot of plants), some clients have voiced their annoyance at the additional cost, others have effectively sacked us as we are now too expensive compared to the many one-man-band gardeners (£36ph inc VAT). To them, we have put our price up, but obviously we don't see an extra penny!
I am based in Bristol, and over the years I have sought to work in larger gardens that require two gardeners for at least half a day (rather than doing 3/4 city gardens in a day) and are more likely to need us all year round. Naturally, such gardens are out of the city so we now spend 1.5 to 2.5 hours driving every day which is inconvenient and costly.
It seems gardening is a tough industry to make money in as it will always be limited by a relatively low hourly rate and maintenance being essentially labour-only so dependent on man hours.
I would be really interested to hear from anyone who has faced similar challenges and how you have managed expansion without feeling like you are just chasing turnover to cover ever increasing expenses!
Many thanks
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