5 Things to Know Before You Grow

Business Coach Nick Ruddle Advises How to Avoid
the Pitfalls When You’re Looking to Expand 

You’re passionate about building dream gardens for your clients. You’re excited about building your dream business. But what are the vital things you need to have in place? Avoid the common mistakes that many business owners make by following some of these basic principles—here are five things you must consider.

1. Know Your Numbers
If you were playing a game of golf or tennis, how would you know if you were winning or losing if you didn’t keep score? It’s the same in business. You need a score card to know whether you’re winning or not. Do you know your true margins? Your monthly breakeven number? Marketing ROI? Productivity KPIs? ‘Knowing your numbers’ is vital to making the right decisions to make your business a success.

2. Establish Your Vision & Values
You wouldn’t start a long journey without knowing where you’re going or how you’re going to get there. You’ll need to have a clear understanding of what your business looks like when it’s ‘finished’. Then you can go to work ‘on’ your business and not just work a job ‘in’ your business. Having a clear vision and solid values will help to attract like-minded individuals to achieve your goals. If you haven’t done so already, you must read a great book called ‘The E-Myth Revisited’ that explains how to get started.

3. Follow A Successful Recruitment Process to Attract Great People
Great people work for great companies. Average people work for average companies. If you want to attract the best people you need to be an attractive business to work for. Learning and following a successful recruitment process is the key to building a winning team of great people. If you’re consistently frustrated with your team, it may be time to assess your recruitment process and find out what changes you need to make.

4. Get Organized & Efficient
Map out your critical business processes that are performed on a regular basis, break them down into simple steps and train the relevant people in those tasks. For example, what’s your marketing process? Customer sales journey? Daily operations/delivery processes? Accounting systems? If everyone executes their tasks in the correct way and in a consistent manner, there will be less mistakes – which means you’ll be more efficient and more profitable as a result!

5. Integrate the Right IT Systems
80% systemization, 20% humanization! 80% of tasks in a business are performed on a regular basis, either hourly, daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly. Great businesses are built on great systems run by great people. Make sure you research the right IT systems in the key departments. Remember the acronym for S.Y.S.T.E.M—Save Yourself Stress Time Energy and Money!

ABOUT Nick Ruddle

Since 2007, Nick Ruddle has coached many landscape contractors, horticulturists, nurseries, garden centres and garden designers to success and works closely with the main industry associations, suppliers and leaders. With more than 5,000 hours of one-to-one coaching and delivering hundreds of workshops and seminars over the years, Nick can help implement specific strategies, methods, processes and systems that will produce exceptional results for your landscape business.
nickruddle.com