Building projects for your customers and building a successful company are two COMPLETELY different activities. 

We define a successful business as one you can sell for value or operate without you and still give you a six-digit income. Meaning you are not selling and running jobs every day but managing those that do.

We have done just that at Pacific Outdoor Living, a landscape design-build company started with four men and a pickup truck in 1999 that grosses over 16 million a year and operates without me.

Throughout our journey as a company, we have made every mistake in the book. But, we persisted, became experts in the trade, and came out on the other side.  We have built a machine that successful gets leads, sells and profitably delivers landscape projects to delighted customers

We have take those system and procedures and arranged them in such as way so others can use them to build a profitable machine for themselves.

Running the day-to-day marketing, estimating, selling, installing jobs, handling warranties and all your customer’s needs, not building your company.

Building a company is the action of putting an organization, systems, procedures and people in place to perform all the functions in your stead.  To do this, you must build a smoothly running machine.  Contractors spend their time operating a faulty machine and very little time correcting or building a machine that runs smoothly.  A machine is an apparatus using or applying mechanical power and having several parts, each with a definite function and together performing a particular task.  The parts are your people, the definite functions are in their job descriptions or hats, the particular task is the end result of that function, be it an estimate or a sale or a completed job. The mechanical power is the owner’s drive.

Any construction project takes time and effort to build. A $100,000 project takes over a thousand hours of design, planning, and construction time. A million-dollar project will take over ten thousand hours.

One has to realize that he must invest time to build a a machine. . It’s such a simple fact; if you spent no or very little time building a house, you get no house.  If you spend no or very little time in building a business, you get no business.

The number of hours it takes to build your machine is hard to define, but the time spent on effective projects to building one’s business is directly proportional to that business’s success. 

You operate a faulty machine all day, and at night, you repair it. If you have enough time to upgrade it with new parts.  If you have more time you build a new model! If you are lazy or lack drive all you to is oil it on occasion.

The key is then time working on effective programs.  As with any construction project one must do the correct actions in the right sequence. This is where a good plan comes into play.  You can develop a good plan on your own or find someone who has codified what they have done to succeed and follow it.