How do I get into plant broker business? any risk?

Just skim from both ends, charge as much as you think you can get away with, and watch the business just flow in! Be sure to have a "no returns" policy and charge a lot for delivery.

where do you find the time ?

You have to find something and stick to it. By now you have to see that knowing how to arrange plants is just the tip of the iceberg as a designer. The hard part is all of the things that you found out since you started. The money is not in the plans it is in completing the whole project. Yes, you can get subs, but you still have work in selecting them, getting them to do what you intended, cost control, schedule control, and all that jazz if you expect to contribute something to the project that is valued by the person writing the checks.

If you are finding it a struggle to get people to want to pay you to actively design and oversee a project, why would you think that you are going to find people to pay you to do their plant shopping. You have to realize that people want the least amount of layers between them and getting their work done. If they can, they want one person that will be in control and only one person who they have to communicate with and hold responsible.

Almost all of the money in a project is in marking up materials and marking up labor. But, the people who make everything come together (general contractors, designers like Mich, etc,) use that money as their paycheck. If someone else is draining that money in a project, there will be no money for the contractor to make, no contractor, then no landscape to be built. In other words, there is no significant market for someone to isolate the task of plant shopping for the marked up price.

Your plight is a great example to others who want to enter the green industry without realizing that being good at pieces and parts of the process does not translate into entitlement to the benefits of putting it all together. No one is willing to pay significant money for things that are easy to do and/or are services offered by many diffeent sources. It is not hard to find an individual who can weed, who can mow a lawn, who can draw a planting plan, who can go to a nursery with a plant list and come back with plants,.... But, what is harder to find is someone that can put everything together in an organized manner, with little stress to the client, and in a timely fashion. That is valued which makes it valuable.

If a homeowner wants to hire a designer for a plan, then an excavator to grade the site, then masons to build the hardscape, then a plant shopper to get the plants, and then laborers to plant and clean up, they are acting as the general contractor and should not be shelling out the cash that such a contractor would otherwise be earning. That is to say that even a DIY homeowner has no incentive to pay a lot for such bits and pieces services.

People are often paying a landscape contractor %50 per hour for each of his laborers. None of them would hire the individual laborer for $50 per hour. Then why do they pay the contractor that money? BECAUSE HE IS MANAGING THE WHOLE DARN PROJECT AND IT IS WORTH IT!

So many people in other fields think if they can plant flowers like the laborer that the contractor bills out at $50, then they should be able to give up their job and start planting flowers for $50 per hour. It simply does not work that way.

You either have to learn how to do the whole package and gain a reputation for putting that package together, or come to the realization that there is little more than wages to be earned in what you are trying to do.

Value is determined by the consumer. Recognize what they value, learn how to deliver it, start to deliver it at prices that people are willing to pay (even if it is little more than wages), and then up the price as your value is set by the market. There is no short cut.

Calif...for a number of months you have posted and have been given constructive criticism and quite often, invaluable advice. Laag's comments in the quote above is about as succinct as you can get.

Spinning your wheels and trying to have too many brands in the fire will only do 2 things....wear out the bearings and get the iron hot. Not much more. As a neophyte in all this Im learning a number of things....and all geared to one vocation. Your wanting the money fast without establishing your credibility. You won't the referals your desiring if you cannot assure clients that you have something of value to offer.

Listen to what these people have been trying to give you.

My 2 cents...for what it's worth
Neil

All of these reasonable desires are attainable but they require an investment of time .

Time to prove oneself to the general public that you have gained their trust via years of successful completed projects.
Time to establish a reputation that you know what you are doing.
Time to learn the ropes of the business as well as the time to educate oneself to the Process of Design.
Time to hone your skills for the many different hats that one wears in this field.

Most all of Calijoys posts lament over how s/he can make quick money without any long term time investment.

We repeatedly read about a new career direction every few months because the money did not appear either in quantity or quickly enough. Also there are continual laments of the lack of respect from his/her client.
To me it seems blatantly obvious that the real reason for this continued disappointment is that there is no 'sticking power' and that s/he desires immediate gratification without the prerequisite time investment to learn the ropes of the process and the business.

I believe that once you accept the fact that to succeed in this industry that it takes steadfast perseverance and dedication , and that this is not a big buck in the bank buisness .
Most people get into this industry because they love what it does for them and are willing to sacrafice for it. ( READ the thread," Did anyone really think it was going to be easy " for a reality check. )

Immediate gratification is something that doesn't normally happen in this business.

-Audric

I'd like to echo what landscapeappeal said. I just started my own interior landscaping company this summer, and it is going very well (knock on wood). I have had a rather erratic career path and a broad education, but I'm finding that almost all of my past experiences are incredibly helpful and relevant to what I'm doing today. Examples:

Plant hobbyist - trial and error learning of proper plant culture and selecting appropriate plants for the environment

Computer hobbyist - taught myself how to make a website and use new, complex software

Bachelor's degree in economics - supply and demand; how general condition of the economy affects businesses

Banking - warning signs of pending small business failure; how to get good credit; how to sell

Child care - kids WILL destroy plants indoors if they are bored/unsupervised

Mystery shopper - excellent customer service is valuable but rarely found

Nursery employee - learning the retail nursery industry, learning more about ornamental horticulture, networking with locals in the business

Interior landscaping technician - OK, this one should be obvious...

Pesticide and insect courses I'm currently taking to get my license - I thought they'd be boring, but I'm learning a lot of helpful stuff.

I prefer to think of my life as having not so much a "career path" as a "career zigzag" or "career web"! And I'm rarely bored.

There are companies that have a team of staff dedicated to just to call the nurseries on a daily basis to get updated information on their inventory. Master nurserymen to make sure that plants are coming in healthy and well taken care of, a fleet of trucks to deliver all the plants and back haul the plant material for the following days' inventory, and laborers to make it all happen. Because of all of this, they can drive volume which in turn gives them premium discounts. BTW, the profit margins are low...

This provides value to both the growers and the landscape contractor community. Just knowing a lot of nurseries will not be enough. There are substantial risks because if you try to build up an infrastructure like what I have described (heavy, substantial monetary & time investment), but don't have the clientele to service, then your return on investment will take time to happen...and that's if you know what you are doing to cover all aspects of a business (which most people don't).

If you do it on a small scale, what value are you going to provide? If you do provide the value, is the profitability of your business model going to meet your expectations? What sort of return were you looking for? If you are looking to be high profitable quickly, then this will not happen.

As everybody here has said, it is an organic process that takes TIME to build up a successful business (any business). Of course things are different if money is not an issue...

FYI... I consult for these types of companies so I am pretty confident that I am not speaking out of turn...

HTH's,

Joe