It’s Not Just You–To Grow A Landscape Company Is Hard

Don’t be discouraged! This video tells you what a lot of entrepreneurs haven’t about trying to grow a landscape company.

Something I’ve been thinking about lately is that there’s an absolute dark side to entrepreneurship and being a business owner. It’s really easy to watch some videos from me talking about where I’m at in business and giving some ideas to help you get there. Maybe you’re reading books by very successful people or watching videos by somebody like Elon Musk to give you ideas to improve what you’ve already got. But, while you are doing that, it is so easy to start thinking, “Man, I’m not there. I’m just not achieving. What’s wrong with me? Why are all these other people able to pull this stuff off? It just seems like their life is so much better and easier.”

What’s missed, I believe, is everybody that’s built a company has been through hell and has been through a lot of hard stuff. Yeah, there are the examples of a few of these individuals that made it on their first try and made it to billionaire status, but that is so incredibly rare. It’s like winning the lottery. The reality is that the vast majority of all of us started with very little help, very little assistance, probably very little money, and not really an absolute plan or the complete knowledge on how to get there. We had to figure it out. We had to struggle. We made a lot of mistakes. That’s the reality of what everybody goes through. That’s what I’ve been through.

I’m in my late 30s. I’ve been working on this for quite a while. I feel like everything really started clicking for me in my late 20s. It’s been getting better from there, but it really took me all these years to learn a lot of the things that I know now. To be able to record some of the videos and talk about some of the things that I talk about, I had to go through a bunch of stuff and had to be frustrated. I had to have money concerns. I had to have doubts and questions and not know how I was going to get my business to where I wanted to take it. I had all of that stuff. I believe everybody does. Trying to grow a landscape company is hard!

The point of the video is, as you’re working through your season, no matter what size company you are because you have problems at every single level, and I’ve said it before, every level you get to in your business means a new thing you have to learn and a new person you have to become. When you go to a million dollars, it doesn’t necessarily mean that suddenly everything’s great. Now you have million dollar business problems. Then when you go to 5 million dollars, that means you better know what it means to be a real CEO of your company and be able to manage your company and be able to run a company where you can’t actually do anything. You delegate everything. Then, when you get to 10 million, that’s another level.

All of that’s challenging and it all comes with pain and frustration and concern and worry and all of that. That’s part of becoming a great business owner. The downside of that is it also isolates you from other people, in some cases from your family, because they can’t possibly understand. There’s nobody to talk to. There’s a lot of stress. That can lead to a lot of mental anguish in a sense, especially early on, if you’re in a really tight financial spot, or if you have employee problems and it’s heartbreaking to have to let certain people go.

That kind of stuff just tears you down and wears you out and you’ve got to be around people that can build you up. You’ve got to be reading things, reading books, that can build you up. You’ve got to be seeking those answers by studying and talking to people and reading. The point here is that’s how you get through it. That’s one of the ways you get through it, but more than that, it’s normal and most people go through it of varying degrees. For some people, it might turn into depression, whereas other people, it just turns into a lot of stress. Everybody deals with it differently. But, I believe almost all business owners go through these extreme highs of, “Yay, everything’s going awesome,” and these extreme lows of, “Oh my gosh, it’s all going to end.” That’s normal.

As you’re working through whatever level you’re at in your business, and you’re working through the hardest part of your season, of your year, and you get beat down, you get stressed out because things don’t run the way they should, you can’t find the people you need, you didn’t sell that big deal and you lost another estimate. When you think about throwing in the towel, you think about giving up, you think about maybe you should have done something else, maybe you should have gone into another industry, maybe you’re not smart enough for this, or maybe you should have gotten a college degree and then somehow you would magically be equipped to do this. Everybody else had to go through that thing just like you.

The point here is don’t let it get you beat down. Don’t throw in the towel. Don’t give up. Don’t say, “I can’t do it.” Rather, figure out a way to be around people that build you up, motivate you, that have been through it, or are going through it, so you have somebody to talk to and just keep pressing on. It’s exactly what you need to be doing. It will one, get you to the next level, both financially and wealth-wise, but what I think is even bigger, two, ability and capability and knowledge-wise, because you are going through the low points and going through the trials and the tribulations and all the stress.

The gist of the video is, just keep pushing on and know that you are not alone. Most people don’t talk about it. Most business owners, you only hear the good stuff. They don’t tell you about all the junk they went through. All you see and hear are the stories of everybody else being successful and it’s not uncommon to say, “Why am I not moving faster? Why didn’t I get there faster? Why are they better and more talented than me?”

Generally there’s a little bit more to the story than that. Keep pushing on.