As summer approaches, warm weather seasonal businesses are getting ready for a strong start to their busiest time of the year. We talked to Bryan Quinn, owner of One Nature LLC, a landscape and environmental consulting company and a certified B-Corporation, to get his perspective on the keys to building and maintaining success with seasonal and cyclical businesses.
With his Beacon, NY-based business growing by at least 50% year-over-year for the last five years, Bryan has learned valuable lessons that can help others, too. He spoke with us about One Nature and how its mission fuels growth, and shared the following tips and advice for seasonal businesses that can benefit others, too.
Have a clear mission and focus on it
No matter what your business is or what season you’re in, clearly define your business’s mission and ensure that you’re supporting that mission throughout the year. Having a clear mission creates brand loyalty, which is one of the surest ways to attract repeat clients and generate new business, including via word-of-mouth and social media recommendations.
“Our company aims to help address the global environmental crisis at the landscaping level,” Bryan explains. “In the U.S. alone, hundreds of billions of dollars are spent each year in areas that impact the environment, like landscaping, forestry and timbering, even construction projects. If all that was done with ecological integrity, it would go a long way toward fixing environmental and social justice problems.”
When One Nature launched in 2008, Bryan knew he wanted to achieve Certified B-Corporation designation which sets rigorous certification standards for social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency.
“The process for getting certified as a B-Corp forces you to pay attention to how you make decisions on a whole new level, and that reinforces our mission and branding,” Bryan continues.
Create additional revenue streams for the busy season and use slower months for planning
One Nature started simply as a landscape consulting business. Today, that’s still core to the company’s work and it carries the business year-round, but Bryan’s also developed other facets that boost revenue spring through fall. These include a nursery (for plants used in One Nature projects, as well as for sale to the public) and how-to workshops to build clientele and hardscape construction (the non-plant parts of landscaping, such as building walkways and walls).
As Bryan says, “Winter’s almost all about consulting, making investments in equipment and plant materials and advertising for seasonal workers. In spring, we hire and train our workers and implement construction jobs. Summers are busy with plant maintenance and nursery operations, and fall is more peak capacity, when we’re finishing projects, planting trees and winding down nursery operations.”
He also uses winter for direct marketing, searching for like-minded clients and helping them envision ways that One Nature can help them. In addition, One Nature uses social media, especially Instagram, to share the company’s project portfolio. They also use Facebook to promote events, like workshops at the nursery, and Houzz as a platform for testimonials and customer reviews.
Staffing is tough—so find good people and give them great opportunities
Bryan admits that seasonal staffing is the toughest challenge in his business—and statistics show that seasonal-employee turnover tends to be high.
So, what’s his strategy to overcome that? “I try to find great people and build positions around them. For example, we’ll often hire recent college grads in environmental fields. While they’ll help with plantings and construction, they may also do sales, writing, design, plant consulting, botanical surveys and things like that, too, depending on their interests and skills. Staff training is peer-to-peer, so they’ll work directly with the other three full-time, year-round staff or me.”
Bryan also pays well to get the best team together each year and, depending on their availability, he keeps his seasonal team on board until winter arrives. Then, he shuts down the studio for a while so that everyone can take much-deserved time off.
Use loans strategically or you’ll always use seasonal revenues to catch up, rather than grow
If seasonal or cyclical business owners don’t properly prepare for slower times, money gets tight quickly. When that happens, by the time in-season sales roll around, much of the revenue generated is spent trying to catch up on past bills, rather than to drive growth.
Bryan’s learned that strategically using loans is a wise investment in business growth. For example, through a referral from his bank, Bryan got an Pursuit loan that has helped him hire staff, buy equipment and consolidate higher-rate debt.
“Pursuit’s terms were great and the loan’s amortized over 10 years instead of the typical five years, meaning that the payments are really manageable. And having funds available to cover our day-to-day expenses and larger purchases means that I can reinvest the ‘busy season’ higher revenues back into the business,” he says.
He also says that paying the lowest interest rates he can on everything, including loans and equipment purchases, really adds up to significant savings.
Plan for three to five years out
While many business owners tend to view their operations in terms of “in season” or “off season,” owners of the most successful “seasonal” businesses often don’t consider their businesses seasonal at all—they just see different areas of focus during different times of the year, and they plan more broadly and longer-term.
“Don’t just consider the next fiscal year—look at next three to five years, because otherwise you won’t plan properly, you won’t be prepared,” explains Bryan. “Instead, you’ll only chase your tail and never grow your business. You have to look years ahead and make sure that when you’re on the beach somewhere all winter, you’ve already nailed your plans.”
Importantly, Bryan shared the following advice for seasonal business owners: “Have a solid base to grow from. It can be as minimal as you want it to be but have your foundation. Ask yourself, ‘What’s at the core that could survive if everything else fell apart? How could you build your business back up?’ Then, whatever risks you take regarding loans and growth, ensure that they don’t impact that foundation.”
It’s excellent insight from someone whose company demonstrates that “seasonal” businesses can be both profit-oriented and principled, every day and all year long.
