Roots to Revenue

Building a 100k+ business as a ONE MAN band

• Robbie Lynn • Season 1 • Episode 13

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Building a 100k+ Landscaping Business as a One Man Band 
In this episode of Roots to Revenue, former greenkeeper turned successful small business owner Peter Roberts from PR Lawns and Landscapes shares his story of building a thriving grounds maintenance and landscaping business. 
Peter discusses overcoming challenges like breaking into the commercial market and managing VAT thresholds. 

 Learn about his use of subcontractors, effective pricing models, efficient cost management, and ways to scale up using machinery. He also emphasizes reinvesting profits, maintaining sound financial practices, and leveraging word-of-mouth advertising.

Try out Jobber for FREE with a 14-day trial with your exclusive discount Root to Revenue https://go.getjobber.com/premierlawns

Peter:

I didn't plan to go that reg. Didn't know much about it. I always had it in my head that there'd be The VAT threshold maybe went from April to April, where it really goes on a 12 month basis. So it could be January to January, February to February, March to March. And when we sat down and looked at it realized that over the 12 month period going forward, I went over the VAT threshold eight times. The money that I got from that, I was able then to put back into my business and set me up with long, with all the equipment, the vans, the trailers, the scarifiers, more developments being taken on next year. Nate Becker Equipment. the way I always look at it, you may as well buy it. If you've got the money to pay for it, buy it, buy the equipment.

Robbie:

What about you? And welcome to Roots to Revenue, the podcast that helps small businesses grow. Before we get into the podcast, I know this podcast is weird for both gardeners, a lot of the tips and stuff that we're going to talk about today. are going to be relevant, whatever service industry you're in. If you're starting any small business, I think a lot of the tips and what we're going to talk about today, and especially crossing through the VAT. So whenever you get to a certain size and business, then the VAT is something, but we're going to, we're going to get into that later, but these tips will apply to anyone. It's not just for gardeners. This video is in association with Jobber. Jobber is software that I've used for the last 10 years to run my own business. It does all my scheduling, my invoicing, and my quoting. And best of all, it gets me paid faster and my customers love it. If you want to try it out, it's free for the first 14 days. And if you use my link down in the video description, we'll get you 20 percent off your first six months.

Jason:

Today we have Peter Roberts in with us. Do you want to tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into the business that you're in?

Peter:

My Robbie's, was in Greenkeeping. Started in Greenkeeping, Clannady Boy Golf Club. I worked at Clannady Boy Golf Club 12 years. Came to Clannady Boy as an apprentice at, I was 20 when I started at Clannady Boy. Always worked in golf previous to that. Worked in the golf shops and whatnot. Got a job advertisement at Clannady Boy. Looked at it, had a young family. Just thought it was a better career path. Greenkeeping. It's a brilliant area to start at if anybody's interested in sports turf or turf management. It's an excellent area to go into to learn the trade get your education, going to Greenmount, level two, level three, and even moving on, possibly doing your foundation degree. Moved on from Clandyboy after about 12 years, went to Bangor Golf Club briefly. And then in the background he always did. Had a small business built up, whether that have been scarifying, grass cutting, then fell into grounds maintenance, site management, into housing developments, new housing developments. Had a builder knock on my door one day and offered me a site that I was living on. Never looked back from it either. Went to Bangor briefly. Friend of ours, Aaron Small who got us, who got me into Clandy Boy, was the system manager at Clandy Boy. Aaron Small went to Beaver Park. He had a part time job at Beaver Park offered it to me, took it up and that allowed me then to build the business even more. And then also still making revenue coming in each month.

Robbie:

A lot of greenkeepers would do. Working the side that green keeping is a fantastic career. Fantastic career. The pay is not

Peter:

unfortunately the pay is not great. Yep. And they are paying the price for that now'cause Dreamkeepers are very few far between. Yeah. They can't get the staff, they can't get the staff. Now. Golf clubs, a lot of golf clubs that I know are starting to wake up part technically Clowny Boy and Beaver I'm starting to pay the wages that they should be getting paid on being recognized as a trades, like a joiner, like a plumber.

Robbie:

It's harder for them to get stuff and keep stuff then.

Peter:

Yeah, to this day, because boys know they can go out and triple their wage by going out and cutting people's gardens. But as I said, that job I took at Beaver allowed me to build the business even more. All our management agents were seeing the jobs that I was doing through the developments that I had taken on, and then even more developments came

Robbie:

to me. How did you get your foot in the door in the first development? Were you doing gardens before? Basically doing gardens beforehand or how did

Peter:

you? Basically just doing gardens beforehand. Private customers, scar, whether I've been scar fan or just grass cutting, hedge cutting. The grounds maintenance was another level. Grounds maintenance the way I look at that is that I have cash flow every month.

Robbie:

A lot of guys would struggle to break into. You got into the commercial market. I

Peter:

fell into it. I fell into it because the builder knew me. The builder that built the house that I was living in at the time built the house that my mum and dad live in. So he had known me from when I was six or seven, and when we moved to Dungate Heath. That opened the door for you? A development called Hedgewater, and they built this development which was on the corn mill, which was in Mill Isle, and the builder knew that I was a greenkeeper, and he just knocked on the door one day because they were having problems with the landscape at the time for it, and people paying the bills. and just asked me, would I be interested in doing the site maintenance off it?

Robbie:

That was a really interesting tornach, I'm sure. It was a tornach because

Peter:

the money that I got from that, I was able then to put back into my business and set me up with long, with all the equipment, the vans, the trailers, the scarifiers more developments being taken on next year. Need bigger equipment, the way I always look at it, you may as well buy it. If you've got the money to pay for it. And

Robbie:

just on that note, I talked to some businesses and they use debt to grow or would you tend to use debt to grow or would you try and take the money from within the business and spend it on it? I'd make money.

Peter:

The only debt that I would have in my business at the minute is my van. It's on finance. Bought a digger back in May and I paid, I'd saved for that digger. Previous year I just sat down and looked at my rentals to be able to hire. hiring diggers off them and you're looking at 10, 000 pound and higher costs for the year doing landscaping and just thought it wasn't feasible going forward. And a couple of digger men spoke to them, they recommended a certain digger, a sally is the digger I bought, two, two ton sally, priced it up, bought it and haven't looked back with it. It's bringing in another income, bringing another field of work in moving heavier and heavier into landscaping. Paving, black paving, putting big lawn installations. It just, I just don't know how I did my work without it beforehand and maybe put a stone of weight on the last year because you chop into the digger to move something before you move it with a shovel.

Robbie:

And on whenever you were growing your business before you, even before the VAT, what challenges did you face? Like you were working part time on the side, you were obviously flat out keeping everybody happy. Trying to juggle a lot. Trying to

Peter:

juggle everything. Luckily Aaron was a very good manager and he worked with me. I worked with him whether I went in earlier in the morning and finished earlier or I went in an evening time and did work for him. You were doing a lot of work.

Robbie:

We then, how was COVID for your business? Was it good or bad?

Peter:

COVID was good. I was very lucky at the start of COVID. I got, we put a 10 acre lawn in at the start of COVID. Seven acres of field and three acres of a lawn, which is still maintained to this day. But we were at that job for three months, and it worked well with COVID.

Robbie:

And how many, for, were, are you on your own or do you have staff?

Peter:

I have staff, but I, them staff are subbed into me. I don't employ anybody full time. I have sub subcontractors if you want to put it that way.

Robbie:

So your subcontractors are only a couple of days a week gonna take it?

Peter:

Yeah, but that works well because you can get a day, you can get the week when you have to do your maintenance to the housing developments. You can bring them subcontractors in to help you with it and then the other days there you might be sitting in the digger preparing an area or preparing a place that's going to be black paved or paved and maybe that person would be standing there looking at you. So half the time, so those days I can go in and do that and them guys who have their own work will go and do their own work and then come back when the heavy handed stuff needs to be done.

Robbie:

You were initially doing some scarifying, hedge cutting, grass cutting, and then a builder came and knocked on the door. and then you were, you've managed to get your foot in the door a couple of developments. Yeah. How did that, how did you grow from there? Tell me how you grew from there.

Peter:

All our management companies came to me and offered me on our, all our housing developments, to tender for all our housing developments.

Robbie:

Were you were still working part time at this stage? Still working

Peter:

part time at this time, but then the more and more housing developments came on board, I had to then take the foot away from greenkeeping.

Robbie:

How much money did you invest into your business to get the sort of, the scale, the sort of things you could do? The ground care work for the housing developments.

Peter:

Housing developments when it started off really, where I am is like you were running 21 inch lawnmowers. And I started into that. I've started to collect. I was always collecting the grass, but now that when you get into bigger developments and all, you were looking at how am I getting rid of this grass and with the way things have gone with councils and trying to get into the skips and having to book and having to, getting rid of green waste was harder and harder. So I looked at it in a way that. I maybe have to start mulching. So I looked up in the machines and then that Ferris, the ZX36 stand on, zero turn sort of machine.

Robbie:

If you're mulching, does that mean you're making more visits to the site? If there's more growth? Or

Peter:

No, not really, no. Not really. Just making sure you cut at the right times. You maybe have to start, you maybe have to start your grass cutting at 11 o'clock when the dew's cleared or the grass is dried out and maybe work to 8 o'clock that night. Keeps things cleaner. You're making sure you're getting a cleaner cut and you're getting a proper cut. You can't go in on that morning time and the grass may be lying over it with a dew and you're not getting a clean cut. And then you will have to start going in more to cut it. How many years have you been out on your own? Five years now,

Robbie:

so good. Five years. So you went through the VAT unplanned. Unplanned, yeah. I could see how landscaping would take you into the VAT a lot quicker because you have to buy a lot of materials.

Peter:

Fell in the landscaping because Private customers were coming or maybe talking to me when I was making a visit to maybe cut their lawn and go and I'm thinking about changing my patio or putting a patio in here and all. And just, Me being me and being the business man, I went, I can do that. Because groundwork is groundwork. Whether we were on a golf course, and we were building Ts or greens or buckle bunkers in it's all the same fundamentals. Get your levels right get your ground preparaiton right the bit that I then needed to learn was how I lay the flags or how I lay the block pavement how I keep things square how I get my finishing heights making sure you've got drainage run off. I then knew a guy who did it and as it says at the time I was doing the housing development so I had to be there so I would have went in, did the ground preparation, had everything sitting ready for this guy and he'd have came in and done the paving for me. So

Robbie:

You just brought in a subbie? I just brought in a subbie and paid a

Peter:

subbie. But, at the time I started doing it, we'd had a caravan site on our site, so that kept us very busy. But then there was days that, you got your grass done quicker because we had a dry period. And I then went and laboured for that him. Maybe helped bring in the pavers and stuff and just learnt off him. And then come COVID, he disappeared. A lot of boys just took a backseat, come COVID, took their A

Robbie:

lot of people had

Peter:

different reasons for that. Took their self employed payments. Maybe a lot of families and whatnot, or a lot of guys maybe were a bit more scared of it than others. So I just had to teach myself. I had to just get in there and get it done. If it took you a bit longer. Took me a bit longer. Yep. Yep. And that's just, I went from there, and started doing my own over COVID. And then just since then, I've always just done the, if I've laid my own flag, laid my own papers,

Robbie:

a lot harder. I'm sure then the VAT started creeping up on you a lot quicker. VAT started

Peter:

creeping up because obviously if you're going in to do a job at 15 pound, And you're bound to 10 grand of materials or 15 grand of materials, and I'm putting it through the business, then that takes me closer and closer to the VAT threshold. You got up to the, what is it? 90, 000 now or 85, 000. So that just got me closer and closer to it. Yes, a lot of guys maybe just have the customer pay. Pay for the materials, but then you're

Robbie:

losing you're also losing out there.

Peter:

You're losing out, but you have to cover your overheads, and to help cover your overheads, you do need to make any materials. And that's why a builder, a building supplier will give you a trade price. And you then sell it at a retail price. There's no point in getting a trade price and giving the customer a trade price.

Robbie:

Would you, so for your pricing, would you do, would you work off an hourly rate? Would you work off a per square metre? Or would you do like a hybrid of the two? Depending on the If

Peter:

I was sitting, if I was sitting down to do a price, I would the more jobs you do, the more you get to know the length of time that it's going to take to do that job. So I would price it per day. Two men on that job, price per day for that job.

Robbie:

In my own business, I look at a job either, can we do it? Can we do it? Just somebody turning up in 5, 10, 15 minutes. Can we do it? Is it going to be an hour? Then I'll have a set, then I'll have a sort of set hour, yeah. Then, is it going to be a half day job? So I'd have it like a higher scale and a lower scale because if I think we're gonna do it in two and a half hours I'm not gonna charge my full half day rate but I'm gonna have to, we have to drive to it and drive to it.

Peter:

There is jobs that I do and I give them a black price for the job and then there is jobs that I've done recently that somebody has came to me and going Peter we're putting a lawn in to this job can you put me the black pay border or something like into it. I would just give an early rate for two guys. And then if my digger is going in there, then my digger has a digger, a day rate for the digger as well. And I just tell them that before I start. And rather it takes me 40 hours or 60 hours to do the job. I haven't told them that, but they're happy enough, they know they're going in at that price, what may already price is if they want to help you and move it on and move it on. But

Robbie:

a lot of your stuff would be, cause there might be a lot of unforeseen things that come up. Yeah. Whereas with, if we're going in the scarifier to the garden, we know how much it's going to cost. We know the product cost and we know roughly how long it's going to take. Whereas if you're going in to dig something up, then obviously you don't know what's, you don't know what's below.

Peter:

No, a hundred percent. Yeah. Like the job I did during the summer, like when we started digging around the back, houses built back in the fifties and sixties, they just put clay up to the house, if yeah. So you start doing a dig out and you're going, you're expecting maybe crushing run, a certain edge of crushing run to be up to the house. If you build, if you go to a new build now, a new build will have a certain amount of crushing run up to the house to out from the house. So you know, if you're going to start digging, you're going to hit hard ground. But if a house is built in the fifties and sixties, you just, you're building right. You're digging around the house. You're digging out clay. And you're going to have to fill that. And I've had a few snags with that.

Jason:

Was there much planning into going into becoming VAT registered? It happened. I didn't plan

Peter:

to go VAT reg. Didn't know much about it until really talking to my accountant. I always had it in my head that the VAT threshold maybe went from April to April. But where it really goes on a 12 month basis. So it could be January to January, February to February, March to March. When we sat down and looked at it, realized that over the 12 month period going forward, I went over the frost. that threshold eight times, and that, that was needed. So I had then to go.

Robbie:

Then you have to back, then you have to backdate it and you have to backdate it. So how did, talk us through that, talk us through that process. How it backdated it. Just about how you went through it and did your accountants say, look, Pete what's going on here? Do

Peter:

you my accountant sat down and worked it out that from the first of June of last year, I had to register myself. Whenever

Robbie:

you went through it, then did you find it? No. It didn't

Peter:

get fined. A lot of people panic when they hear the word VAT. But it's, once you actually look into it and learn it, that's, it's simple. It's very simple. So you just basically come back through my accounts and then looked at the date that I had the VAT reg from, and from the 1st of June I had to start submitting. VAT returns. So I do that every quarter.

Robbie:

And do you, what software do you use to manage that? Or do you do it manually? I

Peter:

use QuickBooks to manage it.

Robbie:

And you find QuickBooks works really well for you to manage? Works

Peter:

extremely well. And it's just a matter of if you've purchased something, taking a photo of that receipt and that receipt then through the app and then loads into the app. And then when I sit down on the laptop, do my quarterly one, everything's loaded in. I would then just go through my business account and making sure everything adds up and I've got every receipt in that needs to be in and then you click a button and it tells you what you have to pay, what you have to pay in VAT or what you have to

Robbie:

submit to the

Peter:

VAT

Robbie:

man. How long do you find that process tends to take you? I could sit for an hour, a couple of hours,

Peter:

just

Robbie:

one evening,

Peter:

just knock it out. Yeah, because of that software. Yeah. If you imagine you were doing it by hand, like it would take you for an all day. And the software does it for you. Software works excellent for it. It's purposely set up for it. Keeps you right.

Robbie:

Whenever you went through the back then, did you have to, did you have to re quote all your customers? Or did they, how did you manage?

Peter:

Obviously private customers have been with me for a year. They had to start paying VAT on whether that meant private grads cutting. And it's no problem with a lot of customers. Customers were pleased to see you grow as a business. Did they lose any customers over the thing? No, surprisingly not. I was scared that I was going to maybe lose The housing developments that I had done. Now I've put my prices up with them this year, but I did take the hit on it last year, the 20%. Now I leveled that out this year, but you know, you looked at it and you'd be losing 20%, but you're also getting the return back on, on the materials you were paying, or you're paying for your diesel, you're getting your return on it, so everything balanced out.

Robbie:

We've talked to a lot of people in the say that they put their prices up 10 percent and then they take, they take a hit in 10 percent as well. That's what I've done this year. Yeah. Yeah. Just talking about prices in general, how much would you typically raise your, would you raise your prices every year in line with inflation or would you? I was very

Peter:

dumb that way probably to be honest. That's the kind of first year that I've learned to learned to have to put the prices up

Robbie:

Every year though. So Yeah. The last load of years whenever inflation was only one or two percent, I put my prices up one or two percent and some people would say he's 50 P. What's that? Yeah, you're like, that's what it is, and I've

Peter:

bought a, I've bought a piece of equipment and I'm doing this job quicker and I don't need to put the price up, but you do, you keep having to put your prices up, everything else going

Robbie:

up. 100 percent not only. So not only you have to buy a piece of equipment, then you have to maintain it, but you have to have enough money to buy it the second

Peter:

time. And again, that's when we go back to making, when you're making sure that you're making money on your materials. So whatever you're overheads,

Robbie:

whenever you went through the VAT, and you've obviously invested pretty heavily into your business. Yeah. That lump sum, that you say to yourself, Oh I can. You claim back, you claim you, you claim back smart, you claimed it back. Did you put that back into the business or did you buy new kitchen in with it?

Peter:

No, it went back into the business. I was able to claim back the three years, so I was able to go back and claim back the VAT on the trailers that I bought, the digger had bought machinery that I bought Van and be able to get a nice bit of money back. But it just took it back and I've just put it straight back into the business again. by ordering an arm machine, just

Jason:

to make life easier, I suppose that goes back as well to not using debt to grow. So you're using profit. Yeah.

Peter:

Yeah. Yeah. Business cashflow, not having too much financed is a good thing. Like

Robbie:

in a general sort of rule of thumb. So whenever I'm running my own business, I always, I pay myself a set wage early on, but instead of having all the peaks and troughs, some people will say we profit first. But instead of having all the people instead of having like pizza tossers getting paid and then it's getting for a while I pay myself a set wage yeah and there's always money in my account what way do you pay yourself or would you just

Peter:

set a mind every month And then if you need

Robbie:

to take more, you can. I can't take more if

Peter:

you're going to go on holidays or something does come up. I generally just try and keep myself on a set wage, a living wage, not to be greedy. The end of every tax year, if you've money built up, I reinvest it. Maybe freshen tools up, heads trimmers or blowers, just keeping everything fresh and keeping it running, making sure nothing's going to hold you back. And

Robbie:

I learned from Clanty Boy as well. You're better. Yeah, Clanty Boy was. Always pretty switched on and always ran with good tools that ran well. Whenever a tool starts to give you bother, instead of trying to, instead of running with machines that you're going out and they're really hard to start. More down time. Falling behind. Always invest in and just keep it

Peter:

growing forward. Always chasing your tail. Just stressing yourself out. not investing, keeping things fresh, keeping it tidy looking after it. The worst thing you can do in business is make yourself stressed, and would

Robbie:

you do a lot of, would you do a

Peter:

lot of the maintenance yourself, or would you get someone to do that for you? Funny that Digger got his first service there, but they'll not be servicing it again. No? Mechanic at 70 an hour. I probably should be learning to do that myself, to do a basic oil change and stuff. Filter their changes and

Robbie:

I'm not mechanic my dad, I'd rather just get someone else to do it. Then I know it's done. Unfortunately, my brother-in-Law works in diesel,

Peter:

diesel old tractors and watch stuff like that. So all very handy. Move forward. It'll be fricking handy. I'll just get him to do it. Look after,

Jason:

watch him do it. Then Don, not to do it yourself. Yeah. Yeah. I,

Robbie:

Jason if you're watching this on YouTube, don't forget the smash like button. Alternatively, if you're finding this useful at all and you think. You have a friend that would find this video useful. If you could send them a text with the link or an email, that will be fantastic. How do you advertise yourself? How does your typical customer find you? All word of mouth. I know you don't really have much of a website. You have a bit of a Facebook page. Don't have a,

Peter:

don't have a bit of a Facebook page. Don't do it. Not good with social media. Can't be bothered with it. Sometimes brings. Heartache, people being smart arche on it. I'm sure you found that

Robbie:

a lot of things and on Facebook aren't necessarily true. We covered up one of our, yeah. One of our older podcasts.

Peter:

But I'm just told word of mouth. As I said, I've been a member of a golf club for 30 years. And do you find a lot of know me? Do you find golf course? My best advertisers being a member of a golf club. Yeah. So it has per my membership every year and boys going do you know if anybody in Hi Peter's good at that. It's just all word of mouth. That's really good. That's really good for itself. Yeah. Do a bit of advertising. I just took an advertisement there with my local golf club and I've given them a few quid there. That's about the only advertisement I've paid into or got involved in. Maybe there's ways that you haven't for a long time in that golf club and don't actually know what you do. Might just think you're the local gardener from the town, but you're not.

Robbie:

You having that saying at the first thing or wherever it, yeah,

Peter:

wherever it is. And that's a

Robbie:

really good. for the, for your customer market. People talk

Peter:

yeah, people talk. Like I just have my name on that sign. I don't have my business name. It's Peter Roberts Lawns and Landscaping. So people just see my name straight away and just saying, then saying PR Lawns and Landscaping.

Robbie:

If I was to start a business again, I'd either start my business Robbie's Lawns or Robbie Lynn's Lawns, or I would have the town name in of where I work. So we might call it Belfast Lawn Care. It'd be a lot easier for

Peter:

No definitely. People people pick up on it a lot more. What do you think the future holds for the business? Keep doing what we're doing really. Moving more and more into the landscaping. That just seems to be the way it's going. More and more grind maintenance contracts.

Robbie:

Now you have the digger. Do you see yourself doing more digger work and less work on the tools? Is that the way you'd like

Peter:

to go? 41 now, yeah. The time I get to 50, it'll probably be more and more digger work.

Robbie:

More digger work than less. You're not going

Peter:

to ban a bigger digger maybe next time as well. I'll always do the grounds maintenance. But as I said previously there, that grounds maintenance contracts creates cash flow in my business. So if I have so many grounds maintenance contracts and that's divided by the 12 months of the year, I'm getting that coming in every month. So I know where I'm starting every month. So particularly this time of year when you're a wee bit quieter. And I have been lucky since I started doing harder landscaping that I always have a project in around December, January that covers those two months. And then you're getting into February, March. I'm still doing a wee bit of scarifying and it's all starting to pick up. A wee bit of lawn care. And then you move into lawn installations. Maybe picking our contract up during the summer months. Haven jobs or whatever. And then you always have the Would

Robbie:

you find many leads come to you through? The housing developments you're looking after, would people approach you there and say, would you? Yeah.

Peter:

Definitely. Yeah.

Robbie:

Yeah. I always say that work leads to work, if you're sitting in the house and you're saying, Oh, there's no work. A lot of time whenever you're, it's amazing. Whenever you're out working, whenever people approach you and say, can you do this for me? Work leads to work.

Peter:

No, definitely. Oh, it's all word of mouth. I just think word of mouth is the best advertisement that you can get. If you're good at your job, you'll get word of mouth.

Robbie:

Pete, thank you very much for coming down. Thank you very much for having me. My podcast. Good man.