“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” -  Henry Ford

You didn’t go to school to become a bookkeeper or accountant and that’s not why you started your landscaping business. Yet here you are, a business owner, who needs to suddenly understand business finance.

Did you know most landscape companies fail because the owners don’t understand their numbers? It’s frustrating when you don’t know where to start and it’s normal to feel frustrated and intimidated by it. 

It’s your accountant/bookkeeper’s job to record data and relay it to you - but not necessarily to help you understand the numbers and make decisions based on them. This is where we come in. We know the numbers for our industry and what they should reflect, as well as the impact changes to the numbers will mean for the business.

Allowing us to help you with the financials takes away a lot of...

When we were in business, we worked really hard but didn't make any money. 

At the time, we didn't know what questions to ask or who to contact to help us figure out where we were going wrong. Yes, we created beautiful landscapes and had excellent staff and customer service, but we drove ourselves - and each other - crazy trying to figure out how to make the business profitable.

We know our experience is not unique. This is why we started the Nextra Network. We want to provide landscape business owners with the tools they need to create strong and profitable businesses, not just beautiful landscapes. 

The Nextra Network provides business coaching, financial services, a buyers group, and education, along with health & safety and human resources advice. It’s kind of like "business success in a box". By helping ensure these elements are taken care of, the Nextra Network allows owners to focus on what they do best, and sleep better at night knowing that the important...

"When you make a gift all about you, it's not a gift. Gifts are meant to be all about the recipient, from the timing to the personalization of the gift itself. When it's all about you and your company, it shows a lack of genuine appreciation for the recipient.”

So often in business the idea of generosity is believed to be a waste of money but John Ruhlin, author of Giftology, shares that it’s actually the opposite. During the short read you will find practical ways you can give back as an owner. John shares the do’s and don'ts of gift giving in an easy-to-understand and implement way - it takes time and effort to gift well.

Some tips:

• DO make sure the gift is not about you, the giver, but about the person receiving the gift
• DO make sure the gift is personal 
• DON’T brand the gift to your company
• DO budget how much you want to spend on gifts

Reading Giftology has made me take time to really consider the recipient and what would be special to them. This...

We’re focusing on sales this month and we want to provide you with tangible tips and tricks to help you be more successful. We’ve chosen Covert Cows & Chick-fil-A as the book of the month because we believe there are many practical things you can learn from the pages written by Steve Robinson.

Since the day they opened in 1946, Chick-fil-A has been closed Sundays to give staff a day with their families. Even when statistics indicated that Sunday was the busiest day in the fast food industry, they held to their conviction and remained very profitable. 

Their company culture is also something to note. The way franchise owners are treated, the care that is taken to properly train staff, their creative marketing and even how they chose to keep their menu small and focused strictly on chicken are all things that I found both interesting and inspiring.

We may not be in the fast food industry but I believe there is so much we can learn from them as business owners.

...