Hi All,
So I'm a hortracutral gardener and have gardens over Oxfordshire. I've been around plants most of my life as my mother has been a professional gardener for 30+ years.
I only started taking it seriously a couple of years ago and went self employed and have built a nice client base over the last two years that keeps me busy year round.
I feel I'm doing well and getting a comfortable profit for what I put in, but then I don't have much to compair with. My mother works less than me and doesn't get involved with one off landscaping projects, so no direct comparison with her.
I work Monday to Friday, normally 8 billable hours plus travle but sometimes less. I never do weekends and I don't do bank Holidays. Family and work life balance is important to me with having two young children.
I take about 6 weeks off a year for holidays/Christmas through the year.
After all that and expenses ect ect I'm clearing just over 50k a year profit. In my mind, for a job that I enjoy that's low stress and good life balance if feel I've got it just right.
But that doesn't mean I'm right. Are people in the same field doing similar to me? Or am I potentuly missing out on something? As I said, it's mainly hortracutral work, fortnightly maintenance to a good standard with some occasional one off light landscaping, ie raised beds, arches ect.
Part of me thinks, should I be looking to expand and up my game to earn more. But then think do I really want the hassle of worrying about what comes with that, like getting the right staff, making sure things are been done as they should, finding extra work for them and so on.
Any opinions and insight would be interesting.
Cheers
Tim
Views: 365
Replies
Hi Tim, I would say you're doing very well. Many on here will be earning less.. Be careful on expanding, as I think there are a couple of sweet spots, firstly, single man / van below vat threshold (ie you), secondly, multi van but around 4 vans to give a good balance re profit / effort / risk / infrastructure. You won't earn much more than you are at the moment, as all gets invested in building from 1-4 vans. Lots of costs & heartache, especially finding staff, so not for the fainthearted or cash starved. The benefit in expanding is to get a value return when selling or running part time, not so much an extra income for several years.
BTW, I would not equate expanding with upping your game, there are many ways to do this as you are, from efficiencies via machinery / techniques through to customer selection via the ladder techniques (see the BOG).
Spoiler alert, I'm at the multi-van stage, which is good for me, but I still have "the good old days" in my mind from when it was just me...
Sounds like you are doing great at the moment, so consider the next steps carefully.
v useful & would say thats real life experience & knowledge being shared in that post above.
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the reply, very helpful and confirms a lot of what my gut tells me.
When doing ruff working out in my head. Having to take in to a fact that as soon as I take someone on I'm going to end up having to go VAT registered and 99% of my clients are privet customers adding a 20% increase to my hourly rate could see me out pricing myself as I feel I am already charging a premium (my customers know this, I'm very open with them about being able to get a cheaper gardener. But as with everything you tend to get what you pay for)
So I'd need to absorb most of the VAT and offset it with earning a cut from whoever I take on. Then as you say, getting other vans, equipment ect ect. You can't really make up the difrance with one extra person. It turns in to a numbers game and you need to be earning a bit of a number of employees to cover it all.
Or ode have to change my business model and do a lot more B2B work, but its not what I enjoy.
All in all a big jump to feel like your financially in a similar place. Obviously having a team behind you has some great plus points, not least but when I'm off I'm not earning. To be able to be in a position to grow the business to the point that you can take a step back when wanted or required and still have an income in a envious position to be in.
As you say, a lot of heartache and stress even risk to get to that point.
My head tells me that while my kids are young, keep things simple, enjoy life and have fun and don't add to the demands of a young family. Perhaps in 5 or 10 years time I might feel its time to scale up.
Why change anything you've got what you want regarding family life , a lot of people would bite your hands off for 50K profit I certainly would.
It sounds to me like you are at the stage where you need someone you can delegate some responsibility to as opposed to expanding and taking on employee's .
50k sounds like an income which can sustain a nice lifestyle but you are putting in the graft but i wonder if this is taking its toll physically and mentally and you are astute enough to realise unless you take your foot off the gas it could lead to burnout making something you love doing turn into a chore ?
If you take someone on obviously this is going to make a dent in your income unless you expand but only you know if you have the customer demand in order for this to happen but at the same time as you realise this will increase your workload add responsibility and upset your work life balance .
As Andrew points out there are other ways of increasing your efficiency but you have done amazingly well so far in such a short time and sounds like many could learn from your experience .