The More Margin People™
Two margins decide whether any of this was worth it. You have only been told one.
Operating profit margin is what you see on your income statement. Life margin is what is left — the time and energy available for what you choose.
At The Herring Group, we are The More Margin People. Our people fill the CFO seat, the Chief Financial Officer role, in landscape companies and increase both margins using our proprietary process, the Path to 12%.
In our work, profit margin and life margin rise together because the same decisions create both.
Why It's Hard
What you built grew faster than you did.
It started small.
One yard became ten. Ten became a route. A route became a crew, then a truck, a loan, a business.
Then you looked up.
You were not just working in the business. You were responsible for all of it: the people, the payroll, the decisions no one else could make.
Nobody hired you into the CFO seat.
You backed into it, the same way you backed into every seat you occupy. Now the pricing and the numbers land on you at night, once the real work is done.
Your instincts ran out of room.
More crews, more accounts, more moving parts than one person's judgment can hold. Your managers cannot take the weight. They do not have your instincts.
You need a person. Your people need data. You have been both.
Nobody tells you when your price is too low.
The customer who walks tells you when it is too high. A job won at a loss looks exactly like a job won at a profit, until the year closes.
Growing raised the cost of being wrong.
A bad guess used to cost you a Saturday. Now it costs a crew, a season, a line of credit. Your margin for error got smaller as the company got bigger.
Your people are missing data, not capability.
When confronted with a decision, they defer to you, or they guess. Either way, you pay in life margin and profit margin.
The margin nobody measures is yours.
Life margin is the time your company no longer requires from you. Right now, nothing about your week is a choice.
Two out of three landscape companies earn less than ten percent.
%
of landscape companies run operating profit margins below 10%
%
average margin for that 65%, per our benchmark report
%
average margin for the 35% running above 10%
If you are lacking in margin, you are in good company.
But the distance between 3.4% and 13.9% is not talent, and it is not market. It is four disciplines the second group runs on purpose.
The Solution
We are The More Margin People.
The solution starts with a person, not data
Our experienced financial leaders learn your goals, your people, and your business, then customize the Path to 12% to your unique situation — just like a full-time CFO.
We are not here to just hand you another report. Using our proprietary process, the Path to 12%, we customize a solution that increases three things at once:
Operating profit margin
For the company.
Life margin
For you and your leadership team.
Autonomy
For the people who work for you.
Most owners expect to focus on profit
These are not three separate goals. We walk alongside you to do the work of building a sound business strategy, encouraging courageous pricing, delivering accurate reporting, and creating powerful incentive plans. The three outcomes are produced by the same work, taking you out of every decision and giving you your evenings back.
Even Private Equity Already Agrees
Look at what private equity does first.
Financial leaders — CFOs — change reality. Look at one of the first hires a private equity-backed landscape company makes: a Chief Financial Officer. They know what you need.
%
Operating profit margin.
Not a good month. Not just during good snow years. Twelve percent at the bottom of the income statement, consistently — in a company that does not need you in every decision to hold it there.
The Path to 12% is a six-step process customized for you and your company. We know it works, roughly how long it takes, and where it usually breaks, so we can fit it to your unique situation.
STEP 01
Align the Numbers
STEP 02
Manage Labor Hours
Scoreboards and psychology.
STEP 03
Produce the Profit Model
Competitive awareness to price with courage.
STEP 04
Manage the Portfolio
Renewals, selectivity, and new opportunities.
STEP 05
Refine the Business Model
Incentive plans and sales conversion rates.
STEP 06
Build the Budget
Proactive plan and accountability.
How We Help
We know where to focus.
01 · Pricing
You cannot outwork a bad price.
Most companies find out they underbid a season after they have already worked it. We fix what you charge before you spend another year proving it was wrong.
02 · Operational Reporting
A report about January that arrives in March is history, not management.
Inaccurate data is cast aside. We know landscape software and how to get clean data, so you get accurate numbers while there is still time to act, in a form your operations people understand.
03 · Business Strategy
What to chase, what to fix, and what to stop doing.
Revenue growth without profitability is a treadmill: you work hard and go nowhere.
04 · Incentive Plans
People want to do good work. They need to know their score.
We start with reporting first, because people cannot win a game they cannot see the score of. Once that is normal, we design incentive plans that reward winning — more profit for the company, more life margin for you, more autonomy for the team.
Why It Works
You know your numbers. And we know the numbers for 70+ companies
70+ landscape companies
We have worked with over 150 landscape businesses over the years. At any given time, we see real time numbers for 70+ companies — how they price, what they pay, and how they perform.
No single company sees this
Not even a CFO on payroll. It is why companies with a full-time CFO still bring us in.
In Their Words
What that looks like from the client's seat.
“Within five minutes, she [my Financial Leadership Partner] took me from a freak-out moment when I had to fire my VP immediately, to a fully built-out plan on how to move forward and who to call.”
“It's a really saturated market. We have to have our margin really dialed in, and that's what they've been able to help us do.”
“We've been able to grow the business because we now know how to price and budget.”
“Thank you for helping [my husband] get things in order so one day we can enjoy this life.”
“Three years ago, I was pretty burned out. I felt lonely. Now I have someone to talk to about the things only I carry.”
Lives restored.
We did not build this firm just to increase your profitability. We also want to improve the lives of people. We want owners and executives to be able to choose how they spend their time. We want employees to experience the joys of autonomy, winning, and being a part of something bigger than themselves.
You have come too far to guess your way through what comes next.
Let us be your guide.
