Business Education

Now Might be an Opportune Time to Expand Your Business — Here’s Why

Any experienced financial advisor will tell his or her clients to buy when the market experiences a downturn. “Everything is on sale,” is the old adage, and for good reason. If an investor rides the roller coaster, he or she will make up any “paper losses” only to add real gains later on. Business owners know this but are often too afraid to take the risk. Then, later regret not seizing the opportunity.

Why Economic Downturns Create Opportunity

Most economic downturns hurt a variety of industries. By the same token, that creates opportunities for those unaffected, and even those who are. Here’s an example. A construction business will probably suffer during an economic downturn as more people will attempt to go the DIY route. But, once the homeowner gets in over his or her head, they’ll need a professional.

Entrepreneurs are often reluctant to spend money to make acquisitions, expand capacity or open new markets during an economic downturn. However, downturns can be an ideal time to invest in your business. Every recession creates opportunities for innovative entrepreneurs. And inaction doesn’t mean safety in uncertain times. Rather than simply hope things will get better, you should act to improve your operations and position yourself for growth when the economy recovers.
—Business Development Bank of Canada

The contractor who continues to aggressively market their services will likely be the one to benefit. Because their competition will likely cut back on advertising and maybe even layoff crew, the construction firm that remains publicly out front will reap the rewards of strategic marketing. Meanwhile, those who pulled back will only continue to shrink.

3 Reasons Now is the Time to Expand Your Business

Even though just about everyone knows that a bear market presents opportunity, a good percentage will err on the side of caution, rather than taking a risk. So, it’s important to know the rewards that favor those who seize the opportunity. Here are three reasons now the time to expand your business:

Commercial real estate is slow. Because of the nature of this economic downturn, commercial real estate is in a slump. That means you can use the circumstances to your advantage and negotiate a favorable deal. With a little bit of swagger and confidence, and a keen eye on opportunity, it’s possible to negotiate aggressively and score a real win.
Remote work costs less than on-site. It’s no secret that remote workers cost substantially less than on-site employees. This is a great way to expand your workforce while getting a substantial discount and expand your business as a result. This also allows you to streamline your processes to get more productivity without paying more for it.
There’s a larger pool of talent available. When the economy slides, many talented individuals become unemployed. That means, if you’re discerning enough, you can put their advanced skill sets to work for your business. What’s more, motivated and successful individuals will most likely come to you, while lackluster individuals and people who aren’t ambitious won’t.

What other suggestions do you have for expanding a business? Please share your thoughts and experiences by commenting and giving others some ideas!

Interested in learning more about business? Then just visit Waters Business Consulting Group.

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The Business Behind the Beautiful Landscapes

July 1, 2026 No Comments

Why great operations create great profits A beautifully maintained commercial property is easy to spot. Clean lines, healthy turf, well-kept plant material, crisp edges, seasonal color. The kind of outdoor space that leaves a strong first impression on tenants, customers, employees, and anyone else who walks through it. What’s much harder to see is the business behind that landscape. Behind every well-maintained property sits a whole operating system of people, equipment, schedules, production standards, estimating, purchasing, customer communication, quality control, and financial discipline, all working together (or not) out of view. When those pieces work together, you get more than a beautiful landscape. You get a profitable business. At Waters Business Consulting Group, we’ve seen this pattern over and over: a landscape company doing genuinely exceptional field work, with satisfied customers and growing revenue, and margins that stay stubbornly thin anyway. The problem usually isn’t the quality of the landscape. It’s the quality of the business behind it. Great landscapes are built on great operations Commercial landscaping is an operational business through and through. Every single day involves hundreds of small decisions about labor, equipment, routing, materials, weather, and changing conditions in the field, and one missed detail can ripple further than you’d expect. A bad estimate can put a contract behind before the first crew even shows up. A poorly planned route quietly burns labor and fuel. A piece of equipment going down can throw off an entire day’s schedule. Inconsistent production standards mean rework, and weak communication turns a minor customer concern into a retention problem. These all look like operational issues on the surface. Underneath, they’re financial ones. The companies that consistently perform well understand that operational excellence isn’t separate from profitability. It’s one of the main things driving it. The cost that hides in plain sight Most operational inefficiency doesn’t show up as one big expense you can point to. It builds up quietly. Ten minutes of unproductive time on one crew doesn’t sound like much, but multiply that across dozens of employees, several crews, hundreds of service days, and a full year, and it adds up to real money. The same goes for excessive travel time, poorly sequenced work, labor assumptions that were wrong from the start, unplanned overtime, equipment downtime, wasted material, rework, unclear expectations, and inconsistent quality control. The tricky part is that most companies don’t have the visibility to actually measure any of this. They know a division missed its margin target, but not why. They watch labor costs rise without being able to say which crews or properties or habits are actually driving it. The best operators make the invisible visible. They build systems that show leadership exactly where time, labor, equipment, and money are going, and whether that spending is actually producing results. Profitability starts at the estimate A lot of a job’s profitability gets locked in before a single crew shows up. You can have great people and strong field leadership, but if a contract was priced wrong, operations is stuck trying to make an unprofitable job work anyway. Good estimating takes more than labor hours plus a margin. It means really understanding production rates, labor and equipment costs, material costs, how complex the property actually is, travel and mobilization, seasonal swings, overhead, risk, and what the customer expects. The best companies don’t stop once the estimate is submitted. They go back and check it against what actually happened: did the job take the expected hours, were the production assumptions right, did materials or equipment cost more than planned, did scope creep eat into margin, and which types of estimates keep performing well versus which ones keep losing money. That feedback loop is what sharpens pricing over time and stops the same mistake from repeating itself job after job. Estimating isn’t really a sales function. It’s the first step of operational planning. Labor productivity is a real competitive edge Labor is one of the biggest, messiest costs in commercial landscaping. The companies that consistently win don’t just watch payroll totals. They understand how labor actually converts into finished work, tracking things like labor hours per property, production rates by service, revenue per labor hour, crew productivity, overtime trends, rework, and schedule adherence. The point was never to push people to work faster without regard for quality or safety. It’s to give crews clear expectations, the right resources, and as few unnecessary obstacles as possible. When employees know what success looks like and managers actually have reliable data, productivity tends to take care of itself. Scheduling is a profit lever, not an admin task It’s easy to treat scheduling as busywork, but it’s actually one of the biggest financial levers a landscape company has. How crews, equipment, and properties get scheduled affects labor utilization, travel time, fuel costs, overtime, equipment availability, and how the customer experiences the work. Bad scheduling hides costs everywhere. A crew burns too much time driving between stops. A piece of equipment sits idle. Work gets pushed until it needs overtime to finish. One customer request throws off an already tight route. Good scheduling weighs property locations, service frequency, crew skill, equipment needs, seasonal workload, and weather, not just to fill the calendar, but to actually deploy people and machines in the most productive way possible. Equipment has to earn its keep Equipment is essential to this business, and it’s also expensive. Buying, financing, maintaining, hauling, repairing, and eventually replacing it eats up serious capital. The strongest companies treat their fleet like a strategic asset, watching utilization, operating costs, maintenance needs, downtime, replacement timing, and return on investment, not just fuel and repair bills. They also understand what a broken-down mower or truck really costs. It’s rarely just the repair. It’s the whole crew’s productivity for the day, plus whatever it takes to catch back up: rescheduling, overtime, a rental, extra labor. Preventive maintenance and real equipment planning protect both productivity and the bottom line. Quality control is a financial issue, not just a service

What are the Pros and Cons of Giving Small Business Employees Holiday Bonuses

December 12, 2019 No Comments

Small business employee holiday bonuses have their advantages and disadvantages. As with most kinds of incentives, it creates different scenarios that small business owners should be aware of before introducing them. As any entrepreneur knows, there are upsides and downsides to just about everything. So, let’s take a quick look at the most common pros and cons of giving small business employee holiday bonuses. Small Business Employee Holiday Bonus Cons We’ll start with the disadvantages. First, it creates unrealistic expectations. For instance, if you have a stellar year and profits are high, it’s only natural to want to reward your people. But this sets up an expectation for the following year, even if it’s a very poor one. Also, bonuses sometimes fosters unhealthy competition. In other words, it will cause some employees to up their game substantially, even at the expense of their teammates. Also, one person might exceed expectations so much, his or her performance could cost you a hefty tax bill. Your small business can’t operate successfully without the help of your employees, which is why it’s important to maintain a happy, focused workforce. Of course, giving your hardworking employees a bonus or raise can decrease turnover and boost staff morale, but these monetary rewards can easily take a toll on your business’s bottom line. —Intuit QuickBooks Speaking of taxes, giving out bonuses creates new tax implications for your small business. Of course, that’s not your employees’ problem but it will certainly cause you to think twice. Lastly, another downside of bonuses –specifically performance-based models — is the fact it might marginalize and/or demoralize those who aren’t eligible or simply do not perform as well as top producers. Small Business Employee Holiday Bonus Pros Now, let’s look at the benefits of giving small business employees holiday bonuses. Bonuses incentivize employees. On the flip side, overall employee performance will notably increase — probably enough to substantially benefit the company’s bottom line. Of course, that’s a terrific win-win scenario and one you’ll definitely strive to repeat as many times as possible. Bonuses help retain key staff. Bonuses are also a great retention tool, particularly for performance-based models. It helps to give employees more control over their earnings and hence, take ownership in the company. Plus, that extra earning power reiterates the fundamental attractiveness of the company itself. Bonuses instill responsibility. Bonuses are a powerful motivator, so much, individuals will likely take on more responsibility, even to the point of tackling tasks not in their job descriptions. For instance, a salesperson who personally picks up and delivers one or more orders when other team members are struggling to keep up or falling behind. What other pros and cons about giving employee bonuses would you add? Please share your thoughts and experiences by commenting! Interested in learning more about business? Then just visit Waters Business Consulting Group.

I can’t Afford to give My Employees Christmas Bonuses this Year, What can I Do Instead?

December 10, 2021 No Comments

This year, a good number of businesses will continue to face the very unenviable position of not being able to afford employees’ holiday bonuses. For a sizable percentage of companies, it became an inescapable reality last year, obviously, due to the large-scale shutdowns across the country and overseas. While many businesses have recovered and regained a sense of normalcy, a significant portion still struggle. This means having to make hard choices when it comes to expenses that are not part of the business’s day-to-day operations. Fortunately, there are some alternatives to giving employees cash. Turn a Negative Situation into a Positive One When the economy or an industry takes a downturn, most entrepreneurs will take a good hard look at their books to determine exactly where they stand. Some make the mistake of cutting back too deeply, becoming too lean to fully operate, and only prolonging a bad set of circumstances. However, others embrace it as an opportunity to eliminate redundancies, reduce extra expenses, and put their resources where they most matter. A holiday bonus is a traditional gift given to employees by employers each year as a big ‘thank you.’ Many managers and business owners want to give their hard-working employees a bonus at the end of the year. The unfortunate truth is that many cannot afford it in today’s economy. As a result, many companies have had to get creative by offering their employees something enticing that is not a cash bonus. —Optimum Employer Solutions The latter strategy is obviously more effective because it makes the company more efficient. This type of audit should be done regularly since it’s so very easy to become blissfully ignorant of what’s actually happening with the business’ finances. Company owners who enjoy a nice regular profit line are typically the ones blindsided most when things change and go in the wrong direction. Regardless, if you really can’t afford holiday bonuses this year, be honest and upfront with your team members. This way, they will understand the gravity of the situation and be grateful for whatever you decide on as a substitute. Employee Bonus Alternatives Before you panic, be sure to know the exact numbers. The situation might not be as dire as you think. Although, if it isn’t truly feasible to give your employees holiday bonuses this year, here are some great alternatives: Extra paid time off. What’s wonderful about this alternative is that employees will appreciate this just as much as bonuses. People like extra time off when they don’t have to forfeit anything and this will not cost the business anything directly out of pocket. Incremental pay raises. Another option is to schedule incremental pay raises for every quarter over the next year. If possible, start this in the immediate future and your employees will feel appreciated and valued. Better benefit packages. Yet another alternative to giving out bonuses is to give your employees better benefits which they can always use. Look into better health insurance, dental insurance, and other benefits What other employee bonus alternatives would you suggest? Please take a moment to share your thoughts and experiences so others can benefit from your input! Interested in learning more about business? Then just visit Waters Business Consulting Group.

Now Might be an Opportune Time to Expand Your Business — Here’s Why

Why Economic Downturns Create Opportunity

3 Reasons Now is the Time to Expand Your Business

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The Business Behind the Beautiful Landscapes

What are the Pros and Cons of Giving Small Business Employees Holiday Bonuses

I can’t Afford to give My Employees Christmas Bonuses this Year, What can I Do Instead?

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