Should a Landscaper Go to College? What Should They Study?

Hey, everyone, it's Mike Andes and you're listening to Landscape Business course podcast. Today we're going to be talking to Sean, who is a student and is currently thinking about switching from a horticultural degree over to a business degree. We're going to talk about the implications of that and what he can do to set himself up for success after school. So, you know, really a lot of attention for the younger entrepreneurs out there, students or even parents that are trying to groom their children towards this industry. Before we get into today's show, though, a big, big thank you. Today's sponsor, they've renewed their sponsorship with the program. I want to thank Jobber. If you haven't already, go to getjobber.com im andes a n D E S that's my last name. We were at Gie met the Jobber crew. They're a fantastic group of individuals. That software is definitely improving and the user interface is so simple. I love Jobber simply because it is so easy to use service. Autopi and other CRMs are more complicated, greater for business, big, big businesses and automations and things like that. But Jobber is just so simple, whether it be the mobile app, the user interface on the desktop, and really allows you to look super professional in front of your customers and thereby charge more by raising that perceived value. So I highly recommend you go check it out, make yourself more professional, be able to charge what you're worth. Go to getjobber.com im andy's and get that free trial. So without any further delay, let's go ahead and hop on the phone. We're going to be talking to Sean. Sean actually left a.

Question on the Facebook group. Landscape business course. Facebook group. So if you're not a part of the group, make sure you join. You can ask questions there. But let's go ahead and get him on the phone as he is currently in Philadelphia and is looking to switch from horticulture into a business degree. And let's see how that goes. Here we go.

Hello.

Hey, is this Sean?

Yes, it is. I'm Mike.

How you doing, man?

I'm doing good. How about yourself?

Very good, very good. Where are you from exactly?

Basically, Philadelphia suburbs.

Okay, very cool.

So we're on the other side. We're opposite side of the country.

Got it. So it's, I guess it's what, one o' clock in the afternoon there?

Yeah, it's like 1:15 right now.

Cool. All right. Yeah, so I'd seen your, your thing on Facebook and I kind of thought it might be good if you know, if I called you and it'd be good for other people to hear it too, because a lot of landscapers are getting in the industry around the time of college, high school, stuff like that. So just kind of, maybe just if you could just kind of rephrase your question and kind of say what you had said on the Facebook group and we can kind of go from there.

Okay.

So basically.

Struggling to comprehend, you know, the. The purpose of the horticulture degree and applying it to my business.

A lot of the information that I'm being taught isn't making me a good business owner, it's making me a good employee. And I'm, you know, eventually, when I get to the point where I'm taking myself out of the field, all the information that I paid for is now going to become irrelevant to my business.

So in that horticulture degree, are you learning about horticulture, like, when you say you're getting ready to be good employee, are they basically teaching, you know, about dealing with an employer and all that sort of thing?

No, it's like it's. It's completely. So basically what it is is it's a horticulture associates with a business option.

Got it.

So that's the title of the program. So when I applied for it, I assumed, well, you know, I'll learn some basics about business, you know, how to establish myself, how to deal with employees, that kind of thing. And it's. It's kind of the exact opposite. They're teaching me the information that will make me desirable to a business, not run one. You know what I mean?

Totally. Are you learning quite a bit, though, about horticulture and, like, the. The plants and like, sort of your climate and things like that?

The program itself is great. Yeah, I'm learning a lot right now. I'm in a general botany course, and it's a lot about dissecting the plants and looking at them under the microscope, which is great and all, but how do I really sell that information to a client? You know what I mean? Most homeowners aren't going to be wondering about the vascular structure of the grass is in their yard.

Right? Totally. So what's your thoughts like? Are you thinking. I think in the question you had mentioned possibly switching to like a business major, or are you thinking, like, not go to school at all? Like, what's your. Where's your head at?

Right now? I'm looking at an entrepreneurship certification. You know, just a couple classes to kind of get my feet wet and then kind of go from there. But definitely if I was to continue school, it would be for an associate's business.

Okay, and.

How long have you, like, how much longer are you in the horticultural program supposed to be?

So this is my first semester out of four, so it'll be another year and a half if I was to stick with the whole program.

Okay, and are you definitely going to stay in school like you're gonna finish something? Is that kind of what the idea is right now?

It is, but. But I mean, things could change. I could blow up next, you know, when springtime comes and realize and start learning this all on my own.

Are you already, Are you already running a business, Sean, or you just kind of, you know, that's what you want to do?

This is my first year. It's not, you know, I found your course, I believe in like July. And that's kind of when I started becoming actively involved and obsessed about business. Really. Before, it was just kind of way to like, I don't know, pay for college or whatever.

For sure.

I didn't really see a long term thing for.

But you're, you're. This podcast has definitely opened my eyes a lot.

What, what are you kind of leaning towards then? Kind of like switching to the business major or, you know, finishing the associates in business only. Is that kind of what you're thinking?

Yeah, yeah.

And joining the business program. What sort of the thing you want to get out of that?

Just kind of like. Like when I think about the business aspect of my business, I know absolutely nothing.

Okay.

So I am not expecting to know everything but a foundation that I can, you know, I know what to research more.

You know what I mean? Just to give me the tools to kind of have a foundation to build on myself. Because the Internet is really a great resource. You just have to know what to look for, right?

Yeah. And sometimes even too, with having a business degree, honestly, it's less about what you learn. It's also just the confidence you get because you have a piece of paper and you know that like, you aren't intimidated by certain words in accounting or in finance. And so it gives you a lot of confidence too, in general.

Exactly, exactly. And there was a comment on my post of someone who went and got a bachelor's in business and said it didn't really, didn't really help him that much. And I was just curious as if he, when he was getting his degree, if he already had in mind his business. Because since I have my business now, I feel like all the classes I'll take in the future I'll somehow automatically learn to apply them to what exactly I'm doing.

Yeah, and like, I think where he was probably coming from too. So like I did, I did my MBA too. And so in that sort of a course, you'll feel the same way. You're, you'll feel like you're literally being groomed to be an executive or like a banker. However, if you're going to more of an entrepreneurship program, usually those are leaned more towards small business finance, small business marketing, things like that. And traditionally I've seen those programs be better for small businesses. But again, like what you said is if you have an idea for your business going into a program, the amount that you get out of it is so much more. Like when I did my mba, I was doing Augusta. I just started Augusta. And so do I attribute much of the decisions I made to my MBA program? Not a whole lot, but it definitely gave me confidence, right. So that when I am now talking to bankers or like, you know, accountants, I know what to say. And so it definitely, like, if you're going to choose, like if you're gonna stay in school, like, if that's, if that decision has already been made, then I would say, you know the business. If you know you're gonna run a business and you already are thinking that the horror cultural stuff is over the top, because you're right. Like I think you mentioned on your, on your post, on your question on the Facebook group was like, you can pretty much YouTube 90% of what you need to know for customers, right? Like, even the vascular, even the botany and the vascular structure of grass, like, you can look that up on YouTube and get a comprehensive understanding within 10 minutes that 99.99% of the population does not have. And so, and if, so if you feel like that's a selling point, you can pretty much get that on YouTube. And so I feel like if you did the business option, you're going to get the confidence. Maybe not necessarily technical skills. Like, don't go into it thinking that they're going to teach you how to like, create a marketing plan. It's going to blow away your business or like revolutionize anything. But it does give you confidence. And that's the one thing I don't really talk a lot about when it comes to education. I'm usually like, hey, go figure it out. But it does give you confidence. And for you, who kind of probably knows a lot about the, the horticultural side already, like, you got that side down. Where your handicap will be is in the business Side, but it will definitely not tell you how to run a small business. Like almost for positive. It's just going to give you a lot of confidence, which is really good.

Right. And the other thing with that is that that confidence is transferable into, you know, another business. Because here in Pennsylvania we only do landscaping, you know, eight months out of the year. And those other four months really doesn't snow that much. So we have to keep the guys busy. I'm thinking of other options like power pressure washing or, you know, something like that, where a horticulture degree is going to have zero value to something like that. And I feel like at least the confidence in business will help me to go out and start whatever else I need to to keep the guys busy or whatever.

Yeah. And if you look at most the landscape businesses that are successful, if you look at the owners, they traditionally don't have a horticultural degree. Most of them do have more of a business background, whether it be running other businesses or some sort of education in that field. But like, for example, like, we have Austin join. He joined the franchise. He's from North Carolina, and he just finished his horticultural degree. And so he's basically using the franchise as a way to compensate for the lack of business knowledge and marketing and things like that. But like, you know, he would probably be someone that would be good for you to talk to. Cause, like, he actually finished the horticultural degree. And the thing is, if you're not even sure you're gonna stay in the industry. Like, if you're not even sure or even though like four months out of the year you want to do something else, you know, the business is going to be more universal. Right. Like, if you want to do lawn care landscaping for maybe five, 10 years, but then go do something else, like the business degree, that informational transfer, whereas your horticultural stuff literally gets flushed out the door. Right. So. So in your case, I would probably say, like, switching over to the business side is probably going to be long term better for you if you know that. Like, okay, number one, you know, the stuff I'm learning is not super necessary to run the landscaping business. And I don't even know if I'm gonna be in the landscaping business forever. That's probably what I would lean towards.

Perfect. Perfect. Thank you. I mean, yeah, it's just, it's. It took me a few weeks to like, get this epiphany moment where I just, I felt. Had this weird feeling in my stomach. You know, every time I went to the class, I felt like I was wasting my Time wasting my, my money. And I was just like, it was keeping me up at night, literally. How can I apply this information to make money or to grow my business? And it just wasn't happening. Yeah.

And you will feel like that at times, even in the business side of things, because they are grooming you to be an executive. And so what I took away from, like, my MBA stuff is actually mostly to do with like, leadership and then literally terminology of like, accounting and financings. But honestly, same thing, like, I could have learned those same things by reading a bunch of books like that I was. Would have found more enjoyable. And I could have learned a lot of the technical stuff literally by online things. Right. So I wouldn't say that, like, when you go to business school, everything's gonna be applicable because, like, I'd say half to 80% of it's gonna be like, for a Fortune 500 business, you're gonna talk about like 10Ks and like financial reports that are in the billions. Like, those are not gonna help you. But it does give you a lot of confidence. And, and so for someone like yourself, that probably feels really strong on the horticultural side and the botany and all that sort of thing, to have that business background, even if you don't even use it, it gives you a lot of confidence. And so I think that'd probably be a good. Like, what are you doing right now in terms of your existing business? You have a few customers that you kind of do on the weekends.

Yeah, just the weekends. It's just residential, you know, And I was. Before I found your course, I was one of those believers that thought that there's no money to create residential.

Yeah.

You know, if you're gonna make money, because that's the company as I worked for, that's all they had. They had these big commercial clients. And I'm like, well, how am I going to grow a business doing a 35 cut? And then I realized there's all these aspects to business that, you know, standardizing route density, all this kind of stuff that, you know, is completely unrelated to horticulture that allows you to tap into this market that's really doesn't have anyone interested in it.

Yeah. And like, even the things that you do learn, you'll learn in the business school side of things. Sometimes it doesn't. It fails to kind of convert over to lawn care, landscaping, or like, small business. But you can come, you can pair it with other information. So, for example, you know, even the course, like, that would be a great pairing between, like, what you learn in business school to the actual industry and kind of like make the ties between the two or like the conference or even the stuff you listen to the podcast, you can be like, okay, I heard about that accounting metric in business school from a Fortune 500 level, but now this is kind of how I can apply it in my business. And so.

I think if you do that when you come out of school with the business side of the degree, you, you're gonna be a lot more confident to scale the business instead of being really wrapped up in quality. Quality. It's great to be involved in quality. But I find a lot of horticulturalists and people that go to school around biology and things like that and then come into this industry, they're so wrapped up in the science of the plants they're planting, they forget the profit margins on those plants. And so the companies who worry about the profit margins are the ones who traditionally win in the industry. Right. And so I think for you, I would definitely say the business side, if that's already what you're leaning to and you, like, you're losing sleep over the stuff you're learning in horticultural, go for business. Just don't think that you're going to be able to apply everything, like, literally half of it, you're going to be like, this is not apply to me, but it's just, you got to get to the degree. Right. But I think you'll probably get 50% instead of 5% usage out of the information you learn compared to the horticultural stuff.

Right. And, you know, I'll have the ability to take that 50% and then, like you said, a certain accounting method. And then I can look up, I can literally type into YouTube. How can I apply this to a small business? And I can get certain, like, some specific videos that, you know, might. Might bump me up to 65% and then 70%, you know what I mean? And build on that for free. I just need the foundation.

Yeah. And I think too, what I really recommend for anyone going in business school is that they do have some sort of side hustle or business that they're running, because you can apply stuff immediately and test it out. So, like, I would take stuff that I'm learning about, like, you know, as massive, you know, multinational conglomerate, and say, okay, like, how if I could take that and use it in my business, what would I do? And then you can go test it out. Right. And so I would definitely, as you're running your business degree, try to figure out your business in general. Just try scaling it, whether that Be figuring out some sort of pay for performance system so you can have someone working while you're at school, or it's like you double down on the weekends and have another guy with you or whatever it is. But if you can actually get a couple employees, actually start achieving some sort of a scale in the business, as if you got a year and a half, two years of your business degree left, I'd highly recommend you try to figure out, especially going into next spring, like, how do you actually make this a viable business? So when you come out of the educational world, you're not even tempted to go in a job, right? Because a lot of times when you'll come out of school with a business degree, now you're out of the kind of educational world and everyone else is getting a job. I find a lot of people get sucked into that when really their passion isn't there, but it's because they haven't built anything to jump to. And so I'd really be pushing you as you're going through the business school stuff, make sure you're able to apply stuff to your business. And then when you jump and like, when you're done the school thing, like you want to be where it's like, I just can't wait till the last semester's done. I just want to get over and so I can build this thing for real. And I'd really, you know, see what you can do to kind of try to scale it while you're still in school.

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Thanks, man. I really appreciate it.

Cool, Sean, we'll stay in touch. And I appreciate their question on the group.

All right, sounds good. Thanks, Mike. Looking forward to hearing the episode.

Take care, brother. Bye.

Bye.

Hey, everyone. So that was Sean. I hope that kind of helped. Maybe some of the students out there, people are in college or high school that might be thinking about business or horticulture or what should you study or if you should study at all for some people. For Sean, he had already made the decision, like, I'm going to school. It's a decision of what degree I'm going to take. For some entrepreneurs, it's a question, should I go to school at all? And that would be when I'd start getting in the numbers of his business more. I'd be asking what his goals are for the business. But for someone like Sean that might not even be in landscaping for five, 10, maybe years, like, just having a holder cultural degree is gonna be very, very small, whereas the business degree will be somewhat transferable. The ideas and information are somewhat more universal to other industries. And so I would push him in that direction. But someone like Austin from Greenville, North Carolina, he joined the franchise and he just finished his horticultural degree. And so he's using the franchise as kind of a way to supplement the marketing and the business side and the accounting, all that sort of thing. Having that. That being said, having a horticultural degree is actually really, really useful. I want to just kind of like balance this out. If you're able to explain in depth the biology to someone of a plant or even the structure of walls, like, if you go into more design build stuff, it's very, very valuable. You can also brag about it and use it as a marketing tool. Like, if you're in an area and there's 50 other landscapers, you might be the only one that has a horticultural degree. And that should be plastered everywhere. It should be on your front page, it should be on your trucks that you're a certified horticulturalist. Immediately, the value perception to the customer goes up and the type of customer you can tap into is going to be willing to pay more. And so it's definitely not something you should just like, oh, it's not worth anything. There's definitely value to even having that piece of paper as a horticulturalist that allows you to charge more and increase the perceived value to the customer. And it's definitely something you'd want to use in your marketing. So hopefully that helps someone out. Today, I'd love for you guys to join us at the conference. We can talk more about these sort of things in depth and answer your questions. Just go to landscapebusinesscourse.com conference. I look forward to seeing you there and have a great day.