All, business start-up

Steps to Starting a Successful Side Business

There’s nothing wrong with supplementing your income, or, to start on a journey to pursue a dream. A side business is an avenue for both, but, like most full-time employees, you’re wondering just how to get started. It might surprise you, but it’s not just about the logistics. While the nuts-and-bolts are certainly vital, you’ll also have to deal with other things. In other words, it’s not just about carving out the time, being able to deliver on your promises, but also, finding personal fulfillment. Too many people start side businesses, burn the candle from both ends, and wind-up burning out.

What you do need to understand is that, especially early on, the right mindset is key to future success. You’ll probably start out on fire, ready to tackle whatever comes your way. Inevitably, there will be problems, whether big obstacles or temporary setbacks. If you keep in a positive frame of mind and learn from mistakes, you’ll go much further. You’ll also need a workable game plan that rewards each achievement step you reach.

Steps to Starting a Successful Side Business

First, you must consider a few things, such as: is this a needed service or product? Can I deliver on a tight schedule? What competition will I face? Is there room for scaling-up? Of course, the biggest question will be can the time invested turn a profit and if not immediately, when will it realistically do so?

People’s initial motivation is often money – they want to save more, pay off debt or simply afford a better lifestyle for themselves and their families. But then, it often morphs into something deeper, as people realize that their side businesses allow for a creative expression and satisfaction that can be hard to find in their full-time jobs. —Entrepreneur.com

Next, understand and accept that you’ll have two demanding jobs. That’s going to bring some stress, it’s just unavoidable, and, it will also zap your energy. The trick is to set your sights on your goals and be convinced they are within reach, it’s okay if it takes time to realize. Don’t make the mistake of rushing because you’ll likely sabotage yourself and be willing to give it a solid test run, knowing that it might not work out.

If you’re willing to make the commitment, get past the planning and taking action, you can make it work. Getting down to the nitty-gritty, the following steps are what you’ll need to do in order to start a successful side business:

Reframe your way of thinking. Don’t let your day job be an obstacle, instead, think about all the positive things it provides. First, it does put a constraint on you, but that’s a good thing because it spurs creativity. In addition, look at your full time position as a funding source and a place to sharpen your skills.
Determine workable, key actions. You’ll need a written list of workable, key actions — things that will move your idea forward, but don’t just keep ruminating. Every step should move you in the right direction with purpose.
Restructure your schedule. This probably sounds too obvious, but too many people who try to start a side business, fall prey into thinking their schedules are already set. Dedicate routine times to work your side gig and be willing to make adjustments as necessary.
Network whenever you can. If circumstances allow it, you can network at your full-time position, letting co-workers know what you’re offering. If not, there are plenty of other venues: your child’s school, your church, your gym, places you volunteer and visit often.

Entrepreneurs are one of America’s greatest assets! Whether you are starting a business part time or full time, now it’s your turn to be an All American Entrepreneur while achieving your goals and growing our economy one great business idea at a time!

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How You’re Sabotaging Your Own Business

May 16, 2017 No Comments

You put a lot into your business and have a commitment to make it grow. It’s likely that you want to do more than provide for your family, you probably would like to leave a legacy, and, feel the satisfaction of accomplishment. However, what’s holding your company back from its potential isn’t necessarily sinister, uncontrollable, outside forces–it’s you who is the culprit. That might sound strange, but it’s a reality that plagues many organizations, from the mom and pop brick and mortar, to software as a service, to large community companies. While you’re busy being busy and worrying about this and that, you’re likely missing some behaviors and practices you personally do to sabotage your own business. Sure, you know about your propensity to push yourself and try to keep a sound balance between work and home life, but, there are other ways you could be causing harm. How You’re Sabotaging Your Own Business Entrepreneurs have a dedication to an idea, and ironically, it’s that commitment which can cloud judgment, or, cause myopia–not seeing the bigger picture. There’s more to building a business than recruiting the right people, networking, and delivering a good level of service, along with the products or a services you offer or provide. Success begins with you, and, while you might have the drive to make it a worthwhile venture, you might also be impeding growth. Most entrepreneurs have the drive and desire to succeed. It’s what we grow up learning and what we want from an early age. But many of us have also been adversely wired by negative experiences in ways that sabotage or hinder our chances of personal and business success. The good news is that we can rewire ourselves in ways that not only neutralize our negative programming, but also put us on an even stronger path to success. —Forbes Most business owners understand that the right pricing, marketing, and brand building are crucial factors for success. What goes largely unnoticed is certain behaviors and practices that can inflict real damage, some of which can be long lasting. So, if you’re doing one of these things, identify them, and settle on a fix. Over-promising. It’s easy to give-in to pleasing your customers, and, doing so is laudable. However, when you over-promise, you run the very real risk of coming-up short. That’s a bad place to be and finding a way out of such a situation won’t be simple. Micromanaging. When you have every member of your organization under your thumb, you are sending a message that says you believe them to be incompetent. What’s more, you’re indirectly telling them they are only a tool, not an asset to your company. Not delegating. It’s one thing to micromanage, but it’s not the same as not delegating. You can be hands-off and not delegate, which can create chaos and decrease efficiency, as well as output. You ought to delegate to streamline your organization and make it work better. Keeping dead weight on staff. When you keep toxic team members on-board, you are sending a bad signal to others. What’s more, that particular person can project a negative image to your customers and to the outside world. Not setting achievable goals. You’ve probably heard the Zig Ziglar quote, “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” That’s certainly true, and, it’s just as true of setting goals that aren’t realistic. Set workable goals, reach them, and then repeat. Another way you can easily sabotage your own business is to take things personally. There will be setbacks, even outright failures, and, you’ll lose good people along the way. Don’t take things personally because you’ll make emotional decisions, not sound ones. [shareaholic app=”follow_buttons” id=”26833294″]

How to Deal with a Client Who Keeps Breaking their Promises

September 3, 2020 No Comments

What do you do with a client who keeps breaking their promises? It’s certainly not an easy problem to solve. And, even more difficult when you come to the realization you’re a bigger part of the issue than you originally thought. As is the case with so many complicated circumstances, you probably share a good amount of fault. That isn’t to excuse the promise-breaker. But, it does serve as a reminder that it takes two people to take responsibility. About Promise-Breaking Clients It’s a more common phenomenon that you might believe. Not that it’s justified or even reasonably expected. However, clients have many reasons why — yes, some are excuses — for not following through with their word. It could be something beyond their control. Or, just a change of heart (and perhaps, circumstances). It’s an old rule of life that we teach people how to treat us. Yet often we can struggle when it comes to managing accountability and calling people on broken promises. It just feels like less stress to say nothing; even to just do it ourselves. But here’s the deal: when you decide not to call someone on their broken promise and ill-managed commitment, you’re, albeit inadvertently, being part of the problem. —Forbes.com Regardless of how often it happens, it does happen. So, that’s something you should be prepared for, because eventually, you’ll run into it. Usually, it’s not out of malice or selfishness, but rather, unrealistic expectations. When it does happen, you should know how to respond. How to Deal with a Client Who Keeps Breaking their Promises There’s an old saying in the real estate sales industry, “Buyers are liars.” It comes from a modicum of truth, but is obviously more of an exaggeration. Although, it does point out how people tend to embellish or overstate their resources and intentions. If you have a client who doesn’t always follow through on his or her promises, try these suggestions: Remind them. The first time won’t be the last. So, let him or her know what you expected and that you’ll expect them to deliver in the future. You don’t have to be rude, just stern but kind. If you show you’re willing to call them out, he or she will be less likely to do the same again. Don’t make up for them. It’s tempting to pick up the slack yourself but that rewards their behavior by avoiding consequences. After all, you value your reputation and take pride in your work. So, you make up for the short fall. But, this will only backfire. You’re only teaching him or her you’re always there to make things right. So, they don’t have to worry about it. That will only lead to more trouble. Don’t stay vulnerable. This is the most difficult, though it’s sometimes unavoidable. If it happens more than once and you don’t say anything, expect it to keep happening. Conversely, if you let them know you’re not going to tolerate his or her behavior, you can help break the cycle. What other suggestions do you have for dealing with a client who breaks their promises? Please share your thoughts and experiences by commenting! Interested in learning more about business? Then just visit Waters Business Consulting Group.

Why High-Performing Landscape Companies Grow with Waters

July 9, 2026 No Comments

A strategic framework for consistent turnarounds, stronger profitability, and lasting business value In commercial landscaping, ambition is rarely the thing missing. Most of the companies we meet have deep customer relationships, capable crews, and a real commitment to quality. They got to where they are through persistence and hard-earned expertise. But as these businesses grow, that same growth starts exposing cracks in how the business actually operates. Scale creates complexity. The processes that worked fine at $5 million in revenue start to buckle at $15 million. A leadership structure built for one branch gets stretched thin across three or four. Informal communication that used to be fine now causes real friction. Labor costs start outpacing revenue. Margins get harder to predict. And at some point, the owner realizes every new contract is adding more weight on their shoulders instead of more freedom. Chasing more volume at that stage doesn’t fix anything. What the business actually needs is better design. Waters Business Consulting Group partners with commercial landscape leaders to find what’s actually limiting their performance, then build the systems, leadership, and financial visibility it takes to turn a reactive company into one that can scale on purpose. We’re not just trying to make the company bigger. We’re trying to build something more resilient, more profitable, and valuable enough that it doesn’t fall apart the moment the owner steps away. That’s the kind of institutional strength that brings landscape companies to Waters in the first place. The WBCG framework: building stability from the inside out Real improvement never comes from one initiative bolted onto an otherwise unchanged business. An aggressive sales push can’t fix operations that are already broken. A beautiful financial report means nothing if no manager is actually held to it. Hiring more people just adds more complexity if nobody’s roles are clearly defined. Lasting change has to touch every part of the business at once. Our framework works across six areas that all reinforce each other: diagnosing the business honestly, building financial visibility, tightening operational discipline, creating real leadership accountability, aligning growth with profitability, and building lasting enterprise value. Strengthen these together, and you get a business that performs the same way twice, reliably, instead of getting lucky once. 1. Diagnose before you prescribe anything Every struggling business shows the same symptoms: margins eroding, turnover climbing, cash getting tight, an owner who can’t get out of daily emergencies long enough to lead. Treating any one of those symptoms on its own almost never fixes the underlying problem. A profit problem is often really a pricing problem, or a production-control problem, or the wrong mix of customers. What looks like a hiring crisis is often just unclear management roles wearing a different costume. We start by taking a genuinely close look at the economics and the org structure to find where performance is actually leaking out, across financial performance, gross margins by service and customer, how accurate the estimating really is, labor efficiency, leadership capacity, the sales pipeline, and how dependent the business is on the owner. The point isn’t to produce a thick report. It’s clarity, so leadership can stop reacting to whatever’s on fire today and start fixing what’s actually broken underneath. 2. Build financial visibility you can actually act on A financial report tells you where the business has been. It doesn’t tell you where it’s headed, and by the time it lands on your desk, the month it describes is already over. The companies that perform best treat their financials as a steering wheel, not a rearview mirror. They connect what happened at month-end back to the decisions made on a job site that week, which means they catch a bad trend while it’s still small instead of after it’s compounded for two quarters. We help teams build visibility into the numbers that actually move performance: gross margin by service line, crew productivity, equipment utilization, overhead trends, pipeline quality, and cash flow. Once an owner understands the true economics of the business, they stop managing crisis to crisis and start leading. 3. Build systems, not heroics Landscaping is genuinely complicated to run well. Labor, equipment, schedules, and materials all have to line up, usually while the weather refuses to cooperate and customers expect more every year. The companies that consistently perform don’t lean on a handful of superstar employees to hold the whole operation together. They build systems: disciplined pricing and estimating, real production planning, tight equipment and purchasing controls, consistent quality checks, and reporting that actually gets used. Strong systems cut down on the variation between one crew’s work and another’s, and they let a company grow its revenue without a matching spike in stress. 4. Invest in leadership and real accountability A business can’t outgrow the capacity of its leaders. A lot of owners hit a ceiling simply because they’re still the one making every operational, financial, and personnel decision, no matter how big the company gets. We help build real leadership depth by clarifying roles and actually handing off authority, not just responsibility. Every manager should know exactly which results are theirs, how success gets measured, when to escalate a problem, and how much authority they actually have to make a call. When managers are genuinely empowered and genuinely accountable, the owner finally gets time back for strategy instead of spending every day putting out fires that shouldn’t have reached their desk in the first place. 5. Chase profit, not just activity Growth only matters if it produces profit. Too many landscape companies chase revenue that ends up costing more in cash and leadership time than it’s worth. We help teams evaluate opportunities on strategic fit and long-term value, not just top-line size, which usually means putting resources behind the highest-margin customer segments, contracts that fit inside actual operational capacity, and markets that support healthy cash flow rather than draining it. Real business health takes the discipline to turn down the wrong work so there’s room to do the right work

Steps to Starting a Successful Side Business

Steps to Starting a Successful Side Business

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Related Posts

How You’re Sabotaging Your Own Business

How to Deal with a Client Who Keeps Breaking their Promises

Why High-Performing Landscape Companies Grow with Waters

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