[Westcoast99]

4th year running my Landscaping business, have 1-2 employees. About to turn 30. Spinning my wheels trying to make 40-50k.

Upside is I work when I want, don’t have to work around women, SJW’s, etc. I could make 50-75k but I would have to invest in another truck, more equipment, etc and step it up to another level. Also difficult because weather makes working outside pretty miserable mid dec-mid march. However this time gap would allow me to travel to South America for 1-2 months per year but If I did that I would still barely be making it.

Do not want to enter corporate America, but it seems like the most stable place to make 100k for a few years. Advice or tips particularly from guys who have done both the corporate route and self employment?

[the1element]

I worked for a landscaping company that my dads friend owned, this cat was easily pulling in 1M.

The secret was that his work extended beyond just landscaping, they did haulage and other construction jobs.

And the clientele was those big shopping centers, you know the ones that have a Wal-Mart, KFC, DrugMart and a bunch of other retail places? That's what he targetted (mainly), we did some condos too.

My dad would say his friend got about 300-500k each contract, regardless if it snowed or not.

He'd also do any maintenance work and construction jobs on these sites.

Another customer he had was a big real estate development company, he'd do the landscaping for all of the show homes and homes that are waiting to be sold.

I think the trick to take landscaping to the next level is to branch out and focus on larger clients, I worked for another company that did nothing but really high-end properties. There's no way this guy was making the same as the first guy.

The nice thing about targetting these massive shopping centres is you don't have to be super detailed. You still have to do a good job, but nobody goes to the back of the buildings to check if every blade of grass was cut/blown. With high-end properties, you better believe people are inspecting also with high-end comes a lot more things you have to watch out for. Like the 150k driveway that the owner doesn't want damaged.