Dear Lawn or Landscape Business Owner:
This might sound weird…
But I LOVE landscapers…at least 95% of them!
Yeah…there’s the occasional liberal minded, overly sensitive, know-it-all in our industry, but they are rare. If I failed to mention the facts about real life, we wouldn’t be the credible resource we have become for the majority of growing and successful landscape companies.
Here’s why I LOVE landscapers.
First, I fell in love with the idea of being a creative and dependable landscaper for my lawn and landscape customers way back in 1987. As a landscape business owner I found great personal satisfaction in transforming landscapes. From drawing plans to building landscapes, the challenge kept me excited, energized and hungry for the next opportunity to show-off our work.
After a few years, I learned that the only way we would expand our impact in our market would be to create more landscapers! This might sound strange. But hear me out.
I discovered that my landscape company had to become a school. We had to become a company that focused on teaching employees how to be a success while landscaping and from landscaping. I had no idea that our business growth would be tied to teaching, training and encouraging others to embrace the idea of becoming a landscape professional. But that’s what happened.
Teaching and training up-and-coming landscapers inside my company became a new passion. I know the idea of teaching and training others is not fun for many landscape business owners. After all, employees come and employees go…and that can be frustrating. But I never let those challenges stop me from pursuing my goals to build a truly professional landscape company while improving professionalism in our local landscaping community.
Since I have first-hand knowledge of exactly what it takes to be a successful landscaper, I feel deeply connected to those who are making their living from landscaping. We are the same…
As we began the process of building teaching systems inside my landscaping business, I learned that many other landscapers face similar challenges: money, people, marketing.
We learned over time- sort of by accident – that teaching the skills to be a successful landscaper are much easier when you narrow the training to one discipline – like lawn maintenance or lawn care or irrigation repair. That is, it’s much easier to teach any person how to be a success if you don’t try to teach too much at any one time.
Teaching is a long game. Think about how long it took you to go through school. Most students are students for a dozen years or more. The more success we had teaching and training ordinary folks how to become dependable landscaping pros, our lawn service business grew to employ nearly 100. Other lawn business owners took notice of our success.
Next, we began working for landscapers by providing seminars, workshops and books designed to teach other landscape business owners what we had learned and how we had success growing our business.
I was reminded of the early days of teaching just this week when Courtney and Chris came to visit the Super Lawn Trucks facility. They were in town to pick up a couple of Super Lawn Trucks they had purchased from my company.
Courtney said, “I saw you speak at a CLIP User’s Conference more than 20 years ago.”
I’m thinking – wow – this landscaper has an exceptional memory! We grabbed a quick photo to preserve the moment (below).
This brings me to the next key point of why I LOVE landscapers.
Here we are – standing together – some 20+ years after our first meeting and we are still working on getting better. That is, getting better as a company and getting better as individual landscapers.
My experience continues to prove that this industry – made up of more than 100,000 landscaping companies WITH employees and more than 900,000 employees in landscaping – is an industry that continues to grow and evolve…we are getting better day-by-day.
If you want to stay energized about what you are doing, landscaping is a great place to be. Personally, I’m more encouraged about the future of the landscape industry than ever.
Which brings me to the next personal story of why I LOVE landscapers.
Landscapers who embrace education have unlimited potential.
In January of 2025, a group of landscapers met for a Profit Builder Training event.
Photo below – Profit Builder January 2025.
We began offering these events to improve the financial training for lawn and landscape business owners back in 2010. We’ve held nearly 50 of these events as of this date.
These small group events have become the source of my powerful belief that most any landscaper, given enough training and time, can create a lawn or landscape business worth seven or eight figures.
In full disclosure, I make a living as I provide landscapers education services or commercial work trucks. Yes, money is part of the reason I can say I LOVE landscapers.
But if the success stories dried up…that is…if we got paid but nothing really helpful happened for the landscapers, I’d have no real reason to continue getting up and hustling each day to help the next landscaper succeed.
There’s simply nothing more gratifying than hearing of other landscaper’s success stories…especially when you have some small part in their success.
One of my long-term clients…he first attended a workshop I held in September of 2001. We called the event, Your Business Breakthrough 2001.
He and his business partner were one of 16 companies who attended the event. He has followed his passion building his own company in Nebraska to a multimillion dollar success.
Over the years, he has continued to invest in his training and I am proud to say that my team and I have been part of that training journey.
A couple of years ago he merged his company with another mid American lawn and landscape company. It was a nice transaction and a chance for him to enjoy some of the equity he had built over the years.
I just received word that he has been named the CEO of the merged company. He will now be responsible for guiding a landscaping and lawn care firm from high eight figures to 9 figures in annual revenue.
The message he sent touched my heart and made me pause on reflect on the journey we landscapers are on…together. Here’s the text:
Hi Tony, heads up. New role as CEO starts on Monday. Didn’t want you to see it in a trade magazine! Think about the place you have in this story. Thanks for pushing us to be better and to think differently. Tell Lynn and the family hello. Peace.
I won’t share the company name or the new CEO’s name here today. My goal is just to share one more reason why I LOVE landscapers. I LOVE landscaper’s success stories!
If you have good things going on with your company…let me hear from you.
I LOVE landscaper’s success stories!
Profit greatly,
Tony Bass, founder
866-923-0027
PS – We are holding the highly rated Profit Builder Training Event next month in Atlanta. Would you like to join us? Call or text our Director of Training and Education, Tabitha Lovell at 678-943-4856.
You can register for the next Profit Builder Training Event online by clicking here.
