Will Kelly, CEO of Military Lawn Cuts, walks through his five-step landscaping workflow: trim bushes, de-weed beds, spread mulch at 2 inches, clean up debris, then walk the site with the customer. He explains why order matters after once getting a complaint when mulch mixed with bush clippings.
If you're getting into the lawn care and landscaping industry on the side, you're about to learn something that's going to save you a ton of headaches, but more importantly, make you way more money. I'm Will Kelly, the CEO and co-founder of Military Lawn Cuts. We run 3 locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with a team of almost 25 5 team members, and over the years we've learned some really expensive lessons about doing the job the right way when it comes to landscape maintenance. Today I'm going to share one of those lessons with you so you don't have to learn it the hard way like we did. Let me tell you what happened. One day my crew went out to do a job. It was a basic landscaping maintenance service. They de-weeded the flower beds, and then installed the mulch. It seemed straightforward, but the problem was that they de-weeded the beds, they put the mulch in the bed 2 inches thick. It was very, very beautiful. And the very last thing they did was trim the bushes. You know what happened when they trimmed those bushes? All of the clippings fell right into the brand new mulch they just laid. The customers saw that mess, and you know what came next? A complaint, and suddenly we were going back, redoing the work, and losing money on a job we thought was done. That experience right there taught me something critical: the order you do landscaping work matters. And if you're just getting started on the side, you don't have the luxury of giving away your time on do-overs and complaints. You need to get it right the first time, because the only way you grow from side hustle to a real business is through quality and reputation. So here's the process, and I want you to memorize this because it's going to become the foundation of every basic landscaping job you do. Step 1: Trim the bushes first. Not second, not third, first. Shape matters here. If the customers have square bushes, make them square. If they have round bushes, Make them round. The shape is the customer's expectation. Now here's where most people mess up. If those bushes are overgrown, you can't just whack them once and call it done. You need to trim them twice. Think about it like mowing an overgrown lawn. You go out there, the yard's a foot tall, and you cut it down to 3 inches. It doesn't look good yet. You've got all kinds of uneven spots and stragglers sticking up. So you do what most people do, you mow it again. Bushes are the same way. When you cut an overgrown bush down the first time, you expose the interior branches. Now stick your hand in that bush, grab the trunk or a big branch, and rigorously shake it. Shake it hard. That's going to expose the loose end straggler branches that need to come off. Then you go through with your finishing touches. Now the bush looks pristine. Step 2 is de-weeding the flower beds. And here's the thing most people get wrong. They pull the weeds that are on the top. The leaves come off, the grass snaps. You feel like you did something, but the root system is still in the ground. And guess what happens a week later? The weed or grass jumps right back up. And now you get a complaint from the customer because it looks like you didn't do anything, but yet you were just there a week ago. You have to get the root system. Use a tool, dig down, pull from the base so the whole root comes out. If you don't, that weed is going to come back, and a weed that comes back is a job that failed in the customer's eyes. Step 3: Install the mulch. Finishing touches. 2 inches thick, that is your standard. But here's where I see it done wrong over and over again. People go out there and they make these massive mounds around the base of the plants and trees. It looks dramatic. It looks like they did a lot of work, oftentimes on purpose. It's actually damaging the plant. The water and nutrients need to get down to the root system. You mound mulch 6 inches high around the base of a tree and you're essentially suffocating it. So here's what you need to do. 2 inches at the base, then taper it thinner as you get closer to the actual plant. And across the flower bed, you want it uniform and level. No hills, no valleys. It should look like somebody took a ruler and made it flat. This is where your finishing touches come in. Take a metal rake, flip it upside down, and smooth out your hills or inconsistencies inside of the mulch. This is the detailed work. This is what separates someone from doing an okay job from someone who really wants to build a great reputation. A customer sees that level of uniform mulch and they think this person is professional. Next, if any mulch spilled into the grass, pick it up. Do not leave it there. We get calls about this all the time. It doesn't take long. It takes discipline and attention to detail. Then blow off any mulch that got on the sidewalk or the edging border. Use the blower, make it pristine. Pristine is the word here. Pristine builds reputation. Reputation builds referrals. Referrals build your business. Now here's the part that most side hustlers skip, and it costs them a lot. When you finish the job, ring the doorbell, get the customer out of the house, do a walkthrough with them while you're there, show them what you did, get their approval right then and there. And here's why this matters. You You've still got all of your tools with you. If they point out something that needs adjusting or touching up, you fix it right then and there. You don't have to drive all the way back to the shop for them to send you an email later and then have to drive all the way back to their house. You're already there. You can clean it up and do it right the first time. If you skip that walkthrough and you just drive away, you're gambling. And the next day you're probably gonna get an email saying they're not happy. Now you're making two trips. Now you're spending gas, money, and wasting time. And on a side hustle, you can't afford— your profit margins are thin. Every job needs to be dialed in. So let me ask you this right now: when you go out to do a landscaping job, what's the one finishing touch you're going to make sure that you nail so the customer is blown away with their expectations? Drop it in the comments below. I want to know what part of this process you're going to obsess over? Is it the bush trimming, the de-weeding, the mulch finish? What do you think most customers cancel for or complain about? Let me know in the comments below. Here's the reality: you're just getting started. You don't have 50 clients yet or 100 clients yet. You've got maybe 5 or 10, or you're considering doing this on the side, which means every single job is a referendum on your business. Every job is either building your reputation or damaging it. There's no middle ground when you're small. So if you want to grow from a side hustle into a real profitable operation, you've got to master the fundamentals. You've got to do the basics better than anyone else. That, my friends, is how you grow a lawn and landscaping business. Thank you guys so much for watching. Hit the subscribe button if you want to grow your business or side hustle larger. Hoo-ah! Hoo-ha! Hiya! Hooyaa! Heeya! Hey-yaaa!
