🌞 Let’s Talk Summer Lawn Care & Working Through the Heat
With temperatures pushing 105°+ in many areas and August storms right around the corner, I wanted to hear how everyone is adapting. As professionals, we have two jobs: protecting ourselves and protecting our customers’ lawns. A few questions I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts on: 🌱 Newly Seeded Lawns: What are your best practices for helping new grass establish during extreme heat? Do you recommend specific watering schedules, straw blankets, starter fertilizers, or temporary mowing delays? ✂️ Low-Cut Lawns: During these hot weeks, do you raise your mowing height to help prevent heat stress and browning? How do you explain that decision to customers who still want that freshly manicured look? 🌦️ August Storm Season: How do you schedule around unpredictable rain? Do you adjust routes, mow before storms when possible, or wait until the turf has had time to dry? Any tips for avoiding rutting or damaging saturated lawns? 💧 Keeping Lawns Looking Their Best: What are your go-to techniques for maintaining healthy color and reducing stress during extreme temperatures? Have you found anything that consistently makes a noticeable difference? And finally… 👷 How are you protecting yourselves and your crews? Hydration schedules, cooling towels, shaded breaks, earlier start times, electrolyte drinks, or anything else that’s made a difference? I believe conversations like this are valuable because there’s always something we can learn from one another. Every region is different, but sharing what works can help all of us provide better service while keeping both our teams and our customers’ properties in great shape. Looking forward to hearing everyone’s experiences and picking up a few new ideas! 🌱🤝💚
How long did you work a full-time job before going all-in on your business?
I’ve been building Latiolais’ Lawn Co. on evenings and weekends while working a full-time job during the week. The business has grown a lot since I started, and I’m at the point where I’m trying to be smart about growth instead of rushing the process. For those who made the jump from side hustle to full-time business owner: What was the moment you knew it was time? Did you leave because the business could support you, or because you were missing opportunities by staying employed? Looking back, what would you have done differently? I’d love to hear some real experiences from those who’ve already been through it. Thanks in advance.
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!
From One Truck to Two Brands – Scaling a Power Washing & Lighting Business in NJ
Hey everyone—Daniel here, owner of Garden State Exterior Solutions out of New Jersey. I started with just power washing, grinding it out one job at a time. Over time, I built Bayside Power Washing into a 5-star service, and recently expanded into permanent exterior lighting with North Pole Lighting. Now I’m running two service divisions under one company, and I’m focused on scaling the right way—better systems, stronger branding, and building a team. A few things I’ve learned: Customers care more about trust and communication than just price Systems (quoting, scheduling, follow-ups) are EVERYTHING Upselling additional services (like lighting) can completely change your revenue Right now, I’m working on: Expanding across New Jersey Hiring and training reliable team members Investing in better equipment and marketing I’d love to hear from others in the space— 👉 What’s been your biggest breakthrough when scaling past the “owner/operator” phase? 👉 And if you run multiple services, how do you keep everything organized and profitable? Always looking to learn and connect 🤝
Pay for performance in Lawn Care and Landscaping - has anyone been successful?
I know this has been talked about many times, but I'm thinking about re-visiting this option. How have you structured your pay for performance when you have crews that do totally different things? For example- we have some crews that just do lawn maintenance (bi-weekly grass cutting, weed eating, etc), and other crews that do 'projects' (french drains, hardscapes, etc). And some guys that float between the different crews. My brain cannot conceive metrics that would be equitable for both groups. Would we have a different set of metrics for each type of crew? A different set for the grass cutting crew vs the projects crew? What are some examples of metrics that you have successfully used? How did you measure or track them? I think I'm just 'stuck' on how to even get started. I've looked at so many conversations on this that my brain is in overload. Can someone give me a hand here? Can I just see your metrics? Help. Please.
