Roll call! Meet & introduce yourself to other Green & Exterior Service pros
If you’ve ever thought, “How are other businesses like mine handling this?” you’re in the right place! This space is for Green & Exterior Service pros to connect, compare notes, and talk shop with others who understand the day-to-day realities of running your type of business. 👋 Introduce Yourself Drop a comment and tell us: Your name Business name Industry Years in business Location (City/State/Province) Let us know if you’re joining us for LIVE networking on March 17 (more details below) The more context you share, the better connections you’ll make. 🙌 Pro tip: Search your city or state in the forum to easily find other pros in your area. 📅 Want to connect LIVE? We’re running a pilot to host virtual weekly LIVE Industry Networking starting on March 17, running until April 7. If you’d be interested in joining for the first or following sessions (don’t need to commit to all but you're welcome to join!), make sure to let us know in the comments. 🤝 Culture of this space Think of this forum board like a room full of peers who understand your world. Share what’s working. Ask real questions. Talk through challenges. The goal is to power your success and raise the standard of home service industries together. 💬 Looking for conversation starters? This space works best when conversations are industry-specific and experience-based. You might jump in with something like: “How are other [industry] pros pricing this service right now?” “Is anyone else seeing this shift in their market?” “What’s been working for you when it comes to ____?" 🤔 Why are industries grouped together? We’ve intentionally clustered similar industries to keep conversations active and relevant. These groupings reflect shared business models, operational challenges, and pricing conversations so you can learn from peers who “get it,” even if they’re not in your exact trade. If your question applies to all home service businesses, feel free to post in our broader forum boards. Pro tip: Check out the industry tags to get even more specific Looking forward to seeing this space come to life. 🚀Established Two Businesses, IT & Pokémon, Pivot to horticulture?
Hi everyone, I’m looking for guidance from people who have successfully started and grown lawn care, gardening, or outdoor service businesses. I already operate two businesses, one focused on IT and AI consultation for local small and scaling businesses, and another in the trading card and collectibles space. Even with those ventures, one of the things that brings me the most peace in life is working with plants and the outdoors. Gardening has always been one of my most relaxing and rewarding hobbies. I genuinely love cloning, grafting, rooting plants, learning how different species grow, and seeing something thrive because of patience and care. I would love to build a manageable outdoor, exterior, lawn care, or gardening service that I can grow responsibly over time. I am also very interested in training to become a Master Gardener so I can better serve my community with real knowledge and long term value, not just basic maintenance. For those of you who have built businesses in this space, what would you recommend for someone starting out? What services are the smartest to begin with? What equipment is essential versus unnecessary at first? How did you price your work, find your first customers, and keep the business manageable as you grew? I am especially interested in building something sustainable, community focused, and well run from the beginning. Any advice, lessons learned, mistakes to avoid, or encouragement would mean a lot. Thank you in advance. Tldr: have so much inherited and basic equipment as hobbiest, I should mention my entire childhood consisted of 6 am wake ups on weekends and during summer to do yard work and or mulch acres on acres for my dad/grandparents. Definitely instilled the work ethic in me... as well as freckles from sun poisoned shoulders time over haha! Respectfully sent, Joshua D. Ostrowski Tomi LLC DBA Tomi Vincent Trading Co.What’s one thing you changed in your business that actually moved the needle?
I’ve been really focused on tightening up my systems this year—everything from estimating to scheduling—and I’m starting to see how much the small stuff adds up. Curious what’s worked for you guys. Was it pricing? Hiring better people? Systems? Marketing? Looking for real answers, not the generic stuff.Industry virtual networking starting March 17
Update: Our 4-week networking pilot has wrapped. Thank you to everyone who joined! We brought pros together across industries for weekly 30-minute sessions focused on real business challenges, and the conversations delivered. There was strong participation, valuable idea-sharing, and great feedback from those who joined. 👉 The goal was simple: bring a challenge and get ideas from other pros, and that’s exactly what happened. We’re now taking what we learned and determining next steps, with plans to likely bring these back in the future. If you found these valuable, or are interested in joining future sessions, let us know in the comments and we’ll keep you posted on what’s next. Really appreciate everyone who took the time to be part of this!Looking to Partner with Local Businesses for Mutual Growth!
Hi everyone, High Trim LLC here, a tree care service based in New Port Richey, FL. We're looking to create partnerships with other local businesses to offer more comprehensive services to our customers and help each other grow. If you run a complementary service (like landscaping, lawn services, or irrigation services), lets connect! We can refer customers to each other, collaborate on marketing efforts, and create package deals that benefit our customers. Looking forward to hearing from you! Best regards, High Trim LLC (727) 514-3889Irrigation Field & Billing Workflow help!
Hello! We just hired an irrigation tech to support our commercial and residential VIP Clients. We offer a free monthly wet-check as part of that service. The issue we're having is the workflow on billing. We typically don't send a quote if the repairs are less than $500, and this is where we're looking for a clearer workflow. We'd like to send a quote to cover ourselves so I'm looking for best practice or a better way to do our workflow. Here's the current workflow Tech conducts wetchecks and completes any minor repairs. Tech marks visit complete, needs invoicing is triggered. Account manager reviews notes, job form, and issues the invoice Client calls if they weren't expecting an invoice for repairs, claiming they thought the checkup was free. This is the problem more with VIP customers than with Commercial accounts. We offer a VIP Landscape service package that includes the wet check, but repairs are billed separately. Should the tech be creating a quote in the field and then completing the repairs? What if the client isn't home? To me, it makes more sense for them to do any simple repairs (nozzles, heads, etc) while they're onsite instead of emailing a quote, driving back to the shop, and then us scheduling the repairs for another day. HELP! How do you irrigation contractors do it or what am I missing?
