From Minivan to Million-Dollar Crew: Hiring & Scaling in Landscaping

In Episode 2 of The Good Soil Strategies Podcast, my co-host Matt Penchuk of Search Strategy Marketing and I picked up right where Episode 1 left off: the reality of building a team in a service business.

Because once you move past the “just me and a mower” phase, everything changes.

It’s one thing to mow lawns yourself and keep customers happy. It’s another thing entirely to run crews, keep quality consistent, answer the phone, retain people, make payroll, bid jobs accurately, and still grow year over year without burning out. That transition is where a lot of lawn care, landscaping, and tree service companies either stall out or collapse.

I’m Anthony Hilb, owner of Anthony’s Lawn Care & Landscaping in Bloomington, Indiana. In this episode, I walked through what hiring looked like in the early days, what I’ve learned the hard way about incentives and culture, and what “smart growth” actually means when you’re juggling labor, profit, and client expectations at the same time.

The First “Real” Employee: 2016 Was The Turning Point

We had a couple part-time helpers back in 2012 and 2013, but they were short stints, people who worked a few weeks during the summer and moved on.

The first real employee came in 2016, when I decided to go full speed after taking a year-and-a-half office job break.

That year mattered because it was the first time we looked and operated like a professional outfit:

• truck and trailer
• zero-turn mower
• commercial weed eaters
• backpack blower
• better push mowers
• actual mowing volume and consistency

Before that, I was doing things like trimming with garden shears and sweeping clippings with a broom. In 2016, we finally had the equipment to mow like professionals, and I was running about 100 lawns per week with one part-time/full-time helper.

Hiring and equipment tend to grow together. If you don’t have the gear, you can’t produce at a professional pace. If you don’t have help, you can’t scale volume without destroying your body and schedule.

Equipment Growth Mirrors Team Growth

I joked about this in the episode, but it’s true: the same shift from a push broom to a backpack blower also happens with people.

Early hires often come in with low urgency, weak communication, and inconsistent effort. They might technically show up, but they’re not professional yet. And if you’re not careful, you’ll waste months trying to force someone into being something they’re not.

It took me about five years to build a team I could truly count on, not five years to hire someone, but five years to reach a point where:

• calls weren’t going to voicemail
• callbacks happened quickly
• office work was owned, not half-done
• customer service stayed consistent without me stepping in
• long-term employees cared about the work

That timeline matters. You don’t build a great team in one lucky hiring cycle. You build it by filtering, training, and eventually finding the few people who raise the bar for everyone else.

Profit Sharing And Why I’ve Always Wanted To “Cut People In On The Deal”

From early on, I believed top team members should share in the upside.

That’s shown up through higher pay than competitors for key roles, profit sharing, and referral bonuses for both employees and profitable work. Some of our top people make double what similar roles make elsewhere.

But here’s the part that surprises people.

Paying more doesn’t magically make someone better.

The Hard Truth About Paying More

When I first tested the idea that higher pay automatically equals higher performance, I thought it would work nearly every time.

It didn’t.

From my experience, that theory holds true 30–40% of the time, and with younger workers, closer to 20%.

It works best for people who already have context:

• they’ve worked for poorly run companies
• they understand what stability looks like
• they’re grateful for professionalism
• they care about doing things right

Others compare pay to completely different industries—union trades, line work, or corporate jobs—without understanding the economics of a locally owned service business.

That’s not personal. That’s just reality.

Industry Economics Still Matter

There’s a pricing ceiling in this industry, whether people like it or not.

You can’t charge $250 to mow a small residential lawn and still keep crews busy year-round. Even if a few clients go with the highest bid, you won’t have the volume to sustain a team.

So paying employees well has to be balanced with:

• realistic pricing
• steady workflow
• predictable demand
• margins that don’t put the company at risk

High pay means nothing if the business runs out of money in four months.

What Actually Works As Incentives

Some people can’t be incentivized. No amount of freedom or money will make them consistent.

For the people worth keeping, we focus on a few core things:

Transparency
I’m upfront about what the company can realistically do, where we’re growing, and what skills are worth more. Good employees appreciate honesty the same way good clients do.

Skill-Based Upside
Higher-skill work—especially hardscaping—can justify higher pay. Bigger projects with higher margins create room for sliding-scale compensation tied to difficulty and expertise.

Freedom Through Competence
When someone can follow work orders, communicate well, and execute consistently, management becomes hands-off. That autonomy is a real incentive.

Culture: Why People Stay

Our culture comes from transparency and trust.

We’re not a zero-tolerance, one-mistake-and-you’re-out company. There’s grace, as long as there’s communication and accountability. Life happens. We recognize that.

At the same time, we expect people to show up and care.

That balance, flexibility without chaos, has been one of our biggest retention advantages.

Training, Growth, And The Cost Of Learning New Services

When we started taking on larger hardscaping projects, our team knew what they were doing, but efficiency wasn’t there yet.

We didn’t charge clients more because we took longer. We treated that as the cost of adding a new service.

The same mindset applies to hiring. Training costs money. Early mistakes are part of building something bigger than a one-person operation.

Commercial Work: High Reward, Higher Risk

I’m selective with commercial clients. The best ones for us have been locally owned property management companies, because they operate more like residential clients when it comes to deposits, communication, and flexibility.

Where commercial work becomes dangerous is payment terms. Net-60, net-90, or net-180 can put you in a position where you’re floating payroll and materials for months.

We’ve turned down commercial contracts—even after deposits—because the terms created too much downside risk.

Big numbers don’t mean good business.

How We Actually Landed Commercial Accounts

Commercial wins came from:

• BNI networking (especially early on)
• inbound calls where rapport mattered
• employee referrals as we grew

BNI was powerful when we were small. Later, networking inside our own company became even more effective. With dozens of employees, referrals compound quickly.

The Balance That Protected Us

I’ve always kept a mix:

• 70–80% residential
• 20–30% commercial

That way, if a big account drops, we can replace it with volume instead of restructuring the company overnight.

No single client should ever represent more than about 20–25% of total revenue.

Referral Bonuses: For Clients And Employees

Yes, we incentivize referrals.

If the company can afford it, we’ve paid up to 50% of profits on referred work. If margins are tighter, it’s lower. The principle stays the same.

All of our best employees have come through referrals. That’s not an accident.

Hiring System: Indeed Plus A Waiting List

We use Indeed, and we keep ads live even when we aren’t hiring.

We interview for a waitlist and stay upfront about it. When we need someone, we already have a bench of candidates who know us and want to work here.

That prevents the panic cycle of being short-staffed for months.

Turnover Without Chaos

We protect the business by structuring crews as two-person teams. New hires start as a third person on a strong crew.

If they don’t work out, timelines don’t collapse. If they do, they grow into larger roles.

Early employment is a test run, not a leadership position.

Working In vs. On The Business

A lot of owners try to stop working in the business too early.

At certain stages, owner labor is still billable and necessary. You need enough revenue and profit before you can fully pay yourself for non-billable work like management and strategy.

Even now, I still step in when needed. The difference is that systems and training move faster than they used to.