Lawn and landscape business owners:
Grab a drink and let’s sit down for a heart-to-heart about money. Not play money. Not Monopoly money. I’m talking about the green fuel that keeps your family fed, your employees paid, and yes — even Fedzilla fat and happy.
Now, profits in your company can only be influenced by three levers: Price, Volume, and Cost. That’s it. That’s the whole game.
And here’s the truth you won’t hear at the coffee shop:
👉 The easiest, fastest, and lowest-risk way to improve your profit is to raise your prices.
Why Not Just Sell More?
I hear it all the time: “Tony, I’ll just sell more jobs. I’ll work harder. I’ll grow my volume.”
Well, friend, that sounds good at the bar on Friday night, but let’s get real.
When you crank up sales volume without fixing your pricing, you multiply the problems in your operations. Scheduling gets messy. Quality slips. Customers start complaining. Your employees get burned out. And worse — your thin profit margin gets spread across a bigger mess.
If your company is already struggling to turn a profit, chasing volume will bury you.
Why Not Just Cut Costs?
Cutting costs feels noble, too. The trouble is, in landscaping, labor is your biggest expense.
And let’s be honest: most of y’all are already squeezing every ounce of efficiency you can out of your crews with mowers, blowers, and trucks.
Overhead? Insurance keeps going up. Rent rarely — if ever — goes down. The power bill’s indexed to inflation. Heck, even a gallon of sweet tea at the gas station is more expensive today than last year.
So cost-cutting? That dog won’t hunt.
The Real Breakthrough: Price
That leaves us with the one lever most landscapers are too scared to pull: raising their prices.
In my Profit Builder training sessions — which I’ve been running for over a decade now — I’ve seen it over and over. Once a business owner finally understands their REAL COST of doing business, the blinders come off.
They realize the only logical step is to increase their prices. And that’s when the magic happens.
Here’s the kicker: A 5% to 10% increase in price on the right accounts can double your profit…without one more mow job or landscape install.
Don’t believe me? Let’s play with some simple math.
If you run a $1 million company and your net profit is 5%, that means you’re keeping $50,000 at the end of the year. Not terrible, but not life-changing either.
Now, raise your prices by 10%. That’s $100,000 in extra revenue. Your costs don’t change much — fuel, labor, insurance all stay about the same. Suddenly, your net profit jumps from $50,000 to $150,000.
That’s triple the money in your pocket just for finding the courage to charge what you’re worth.
But Tony, What If I Lose Customers?
Good question. And here’s the good news: You will lose customers. And that’s not a bad thing.
Some folks only care about getting the cheapest deal in town. Let ‘em go. They’ll nickel-and-dime you to death.
And here’s another critical point that I’ve seen with my own eyes and my own math over the last couple of decades. You will never have to raise prices on all of your customers. Some of your customers today ARE paying you a premium price for your services, and they don’t need a price increase.
But at the same moment, YOU are PAYING (approximately) 20% of your customers for the privilege of providing their Lawn & Landscape services. In other words, every time you go out there to provide that service, you are losing your shirt.
This small percentage of your customers probably need a bigger increase in price than the 10% increase we just talked about. And…regardless of whether they accept your price increase and stay with you or let you go, an amazing thing will happen. That 20% … the losers… give them an appropriate price increase and you will quickly double your profit.
What you’ll discover is that the right customers — the ones who appreciate your reliability, your professionalism, your clean trucks and crews — they’ll gladly pay a fair price. They want you to succeed so you can stick around and serve them for years to come.
The Courage to Act
Look, I know many landscapers are skeptical. Price increases feel risky. You’re worried about what your competitors are charging. You’re worried about what the customer might think. But in truth, it’s the lowest-risk move you can make.
Raising volume increases complications. Cutting costs is nearly impossible. But adjusting your prices — that’s a lever you can pull this week…on your very next bid…on your very next account review…or…depending on how you wrote your service agreement…your price could increase today!
The landscaper who embraces this truth — who dares to charge what their services are worth — is the one who builds a business that’s healthy, wealthy, and built to last.
So go ahead. Run the numbers. Learn your real cost of doing business. If you need help figuring it out, join me. I’ll teach you at the next Profit Builder.
Then grab hold of that price lever and give it a firm pull.
Your profit depends on it. Your company depends on it. Your employees depend on it. Your family depends on it. And I’m here to remind you one more time: raising prices is the fastest path to doubling your profits.
Keep mowin’ and growin’,
Tony “Double Profits” Bass
Workin’ Hard – Loving Landscape – Action Dude
PS – we hold just a few of these life-changing Profit Builder seminars each winter season for a small group of landscape contractors. We have recently announced the available dates for the coming 2026 season on our site here. You can go ahead and register now. Payment plans are available! If you are still hesitant, just read the 100+ testimonials on our page! This seminar will give you confidence in pricing your work moving forward, knowing that you’re covering your costs AND making a profit! Hope to see you this season!
If you’re gonna build a business that’s both healthy and wealthy—one that keeps mowin’ and growin’ year after year—you absolutely, positively must follow The Formula.
It’s simple to explain. It’s harder to live by. But it works. Every. Single. Time.
Step 1 – Price Right or Pay the Price
There’s a balancing act here, fellas and gals. You’ve got to price right for your company so every job is profitable. At the same time, you’ve got to price right for your customer so they’ll actually say “yes” and hire you.
If you miss on either side, you’re doomed. Too cheap, and you’re broke. Too high without value, and your phone stops ringing. But when you price right—profitably and competitively—you open the door to the next step.
Step 2 – Keep Your Promises to Four Critical Groups
Price right and you’ve got a shot at building trust. But trust only comes if you keep your promises—and there are four groups counting on you day and night:
- Your Customers – They expect you to do the work as promised, with quality and timeliness.
- Your Employees – They count on you to pay them what you promised, on time, every time.
- Your Vendors – They rely on you to pay for the goods and services they provided.
- The Tax Man (Fedzilla) – Like it or not, you have a responsibility to keep your word to the taxing authorities.
Fail to keep promises to any of these four, and you’ll never get to the next step. You’ll be patching holes instead of building a business.
Step 3 – Create Clients, Not Just Customers
A customer is a transaction. A client is a relationship. Big difference.
When you create clients, you’re looking out for them in ways the average contractor wouldn’t dare. You become their trusted partner, not just another low-price bidder. And let me tell you—loyal clients will feed your family for years.
The Roadmap: 18 Subsystems for Maximum Profits
Now, there’s no magic wand or secret pill here. What I’ve learned after decades in this industry is that long-term wealth comes from consistent improvement—day by day, week by week, month by month, year after year.
That’s why we’ve developed 18 profit-boosting subsystems that guide contractors down the road of building an exceptionally profitable company. They cover everything from sales to operations to financial controls.
You keep working on your business, not just in it, and you will get there.
The Good News
Anybody—yes, anybody—can become wealthy running a lawn or landscaping company if they follow The Formula:
Price Right → Keep Promises → Create Clients.
Do that, and you’ll be healthy, wealthy, clean and green… with enough flower power to last a lifetime.
To Your Success,
Tony, founder
PS – Want to take a deeper dive into each of these three functions of business and the 18 profit-boosting subsystems? Check out these articles!
