How to grow a landscaping business stuck at “owner + one crew” stage
TLDR: My spouse and I run a small landscaping business that’s stable but stuck at the owner + one crew stage. We still have to work in the field daily because we haven’t been able to develop reliable crew leaders, and hiring more staff feels unmanageable. Our maintenance model works well in a dense service area but doesn’t scale easily to nearby towns, and clients mainly see us as a maintenance company rather than landscapers. We’d like to move toward higher-value work and build a business that doesn’t rely on our physical labor long-term. For those who’ve grown service businesses: how do you break past this stage and start working on the business instead of just in it?
My spouse and I run a small landscaping business that we somewhat fell into unexpectedly, and we’re looking for advice from people who have grown service businesses past this stage.
The business started informally in a neighbourhood about 20 minutes outside a nearby town. Over time, several gated communities were developed nearby, adding a few hundred homes. Many are vacation properties and many residents are snowbirds, so there’s strong demand for property maintenance.
Right now we operate with one truck / crew (2–4 people including us), and season that runs roughly March–December. We do have another truck and a few other trailers so have had short stints of running two crews.
The business is financially stable. We pay ourselves modestly, have an accountant/bookkeeper, and use QuickBooks and Jobber. However, we feel stuck at this size.
Main challenges
- We’re still on the tools every day. Most hires are entry-level and turnover is high, so we don’t have anyone who can reliably run a crew, quote jobs, train others, or solve problems independently.
- Crew leads aren’t long-term. Even when someone steps up, they still require constant support.
- Growth feels unmanageable. Hiring more staff means more work to manage, which already feels like full capacity.
- Our model relies on a dense service area. Maintenance works well in the clustered neighbourhoods we serve, but expanding into nearby towns becomes inefficient (plus there is a lot of more established competition outside our main service area).
- We’re stuck between models. Clients mostly see us as a maintenance company, but we’re not big enough to run separate maintenance and landscaping crews.
Goals/Ideas We've Thought Of
- Move toward higher-end design and installation work
- Reduce dependence on daily physical labor
- Build a business that is sustainable and potentially sellable
For context, I handle marketing (website, social media, Google reviews) and have a graphic design background. One of us also has an irrigation technician certificate, but we haven’t added irrigation services yet due to limited experience.
Each winter we plan to work on business development, but the time usually goes toward preparing for the next season.
Questions
- How do service businesses break past the “owner + one crew” stage?
- How do you develop reliable long-term crew leaders or managers?
- Is it better to scale maintenance crews or pivot toward higher-value landscaping work?
- How do you make time to work on the business when operations already take everything?
- Where do you start to work on the business?
We’re approaching middle age and don’t want to rely on physical labor forever. I’d love to build something more sustainable than just owning a job. Neither of us have "dream" careers, but owning a landscaping business wouldn't have been on the list of contenders. We want to know how to make this work and how to figure out what to do in the future whether that is with the current business or doing something completely unrelated.
If anyone has gone through this stage in a landscaping or service business, or just as a middle-aged person who still doesn't know what they want to be when they grow up, I’d really appreciate hearing what helped you gain clarity / move forward!
