Sep 25, 2026 · 1 hr 4 min · 14 segments
What does it really take to go all in on a landscape business? **Dean Ricci** started mowing lawns at just 10 years old, pulling his mower behind a bicycle with a homemade trailer built by his dad…
Dean RicciGuest
Andy HumphreyHost
There it makes me n- Because you offer so many different services and as a full, uh, full scale, or I don't know what the word is, um, full scope, you offer everything 'cause a, a, a new build might need every service.
I'm gonna assume that some parts of your business, some services are going to be more profitable with a higher gross margin and maybe less hours than others.
And so how do you as a business decide, "Hey, you know, we, we, we should keep doing it all," or, "Maybe we should do more of this high dollar profit division and then sub out the other one," or how do you decide what to do if some are more profitable than others and not just chase the money?
We, we look at several factors, okay? One, we look at the talent level of our workers, our work, uh, our workforce.
Obviously, the more talented workforce you have, the more high-end, difficult, high profitable work you can do.
Um, but that also, like on these, I'll say something that's gonna contradict with what I just said.
On some of these very large, complicated landscape jobs, we make a little less money margin-wise than what we would do on, let's say, uh, a two to three-day job.
You know, a million-dollar job is a million-dollar job, and if I did, did 43 points on that, that's $430,000 that I probably wouldn't have made, uh, if, you know, we didn't sell that.
... having to set up, set up new projects, build, build new clients, close new clients.
The whole setup and takedown of a project, having to repeat that costs time and energy versus just load, go, and then be done over a long time.
If we have less management time or less selling time on something, you could take a little less.
There it makes me n- Because you offer so many different services and as a full, uh, full scale, or I don't know what the word is, um, full scope, you offer everything 'cause a, a, a new build might need every service.
I'm gonna assume that some parts of your business, some services are going to be more profitable with a higher gross margin and maybe less hours than others.
And so how do you as a business decide, "Hey, you know, we, we, we should keep doing it all," or, "Maybe we should do more of this high dollar profit division and then sub out the other one," or how do you decide what to do if some are more profitable than others and not just chase the money?
We, we look at several factors, okay? One, we look at the talent level of our workers, our work, uh, our workforce.
Obviously, the more talented workforce you have, the more high-end, difficult, high profitable work you can do.
Um, but that also, like on these, I'll say something that's gonna contradict with what I just said.
On some of these very large, complicated landscape jobs, we make a little less money margin-wise than what we would do on, let's say, uh, a two to three-day job.
You know, a million-dollar job is a million-dollar job, and if I did, did 43 points on that, that's $430,000 that I probably wouldn't have made, uh, if, you know, we didn't sell that.
... having to set up, set up new projects, build, build new clients, close new clients.
The whole setup and takedown of a project, having to repeat that costs time and energy versus just load, go, and then be done over a long time.
If we have less management time or less selling time on something, you could take a little less.
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