Recently the enterprise value specialists at Cebibass had the opportunity to speak with some very successful lawn and landscape business owners about the staffing concerns of the industry.

“These guys could greatly enhance their revenues and grow their EBITDAs significantly if they could get the talent. And they were speaking of middle management talent and above,” said Tom Fochtman, Ceibass CEO. “The reality is that this is a really profitable industry, with great opportunity to make a lot of money, but younger people are not really considering it or think that it is not a viable industry for them … many misconceptions.”

According to the team at Ceibass some of those misconceptions include that you can’t earn a good income as a landscape professional (not even close to being true), that the jobs are all dirty and involve lots of physical labor (not true), that it’s a low tech industry with no career advancement opportunities (way off base), and that a college degree is wasted because you really don’t use your mind so much as you use your hands (again, not even close to reality).

“Here’s what we need to do as an industry, we need to talk it up, a lot, and speak the virtues of our great industry. We need to use webinars and testimonials and online panel discussions to get the word out – this is a wonderful industry to make the money you need to live a good life and be fulfilled,” added Tom. “For starters, go to landscapeindustrycareers.org. Get up to speed on the content. Then speak the landscape industry gospel. Do what you can to talk it up. Volunteer to speak locally and with NALP about the fruits of landscape. Take a look at some of the topics below and get started today. We need to attract the best and the brightest to our industry.”

  • What do landscape professionals do?
  • Career Paths
  • Compensation Information
  • 6 Things You Have Wrong About Careers in the Landscape Industry
  • College or On-The-Job-Training
  • Match Your Personality to a Career – take this simple test
  • Landscape Careers for STEM/STEAM students
  • Women in Landscape – 100 rewarding career pathways
  • Teaming Up With Landscape Technology