Three illustrated guides for running a landscaping business: licenses, agreements, what an hour really costs, taxes, crews and safety; getting customers, pricing and routes; and the lawn, plant and install work you sell. One idea a page, each one drawn.
Real pages from all three guides. One idea a page, drawn.
The Landscaping Business, Selling and Running the Work, and Lawns, Plants and Installs. 164 pages, one idea each.
The idea, the picture, the costly mistake and one line to remember. Read it in a minute.
Phone-sized PDFs for the truck or the trailer, yours to keep. Nothing to cancel.
You know how to cut grass. Nobody taught you the business.
Most of the money a new landscaper loses is lost before the mower starts: a price set from the wage, a handshake deal, a winter with no cash. Every one of them has a page, and every page names the mistake.
Where new landscapers lose money:
A drawing is easier to check between properties than a paragraph. That's why every page in the kit has one, and one line to keep.
Every page has the same parts, so you always know where to look. Here is Book 1, page 16, Scope: say exactly what you do, with its lines quoted from the guide.
Write down what one visit includes and what it doesn't, so extra work is never a surprise to either of you.
A client texts: can you pull the weeds in the front bed? You reply with a price. They say yes, and it goes on the next invoice.
Doing “just a little” bed weeding for free every week. By July the client thinks it's part of the price.
Write what's in, and write what's out.
Quoted word for word from Book 1, page 16, Scope: say exactly what you do. Every page carries these parts plus the drawing, and where a rule changes from state to state, a "Varies by state" note that says so.
Set up, protect and pay the business, one idea a page. Seven parts: Starting out, Insurance and bonds, Agreements, Money, Taxes, People, and Safety. Start with what you charge for an hour.
Get customers, price the work and run crews and routes through the year, in the same layout.
The field knowledge a business owner sells and stands behind, from the soil up.
Total value: $95
One-time payment. No subscription. Keep the files forever.
Digital guides (PDF), in English. We email your library link right after purchase, and you can download the files again anytime. Plus sales tax where applicable.
Landscaper Made Simple is an independent guide for people running a landscaping business. It explains rules in plain words and is not legal, tax or accounting advice. It is not affiliated with any licensing board or government agency.
You've run a crew for someone else, or mowed on the side, and now the route is under your name. Book 1 opens with the setup, the licenses and the agreement, so the first season starts on paper that holds up.
The route is full and the bank account isn't. What an hour really costs, overhead, markup and margin, routes and the off-season each get a page, with the numbers worked on one example rate you can check against your own.
Mulch, cleanups, planting, irrigation, a patio. Book 3 covers the work itself, from the soil test to the paver base, and Book 2 shows how to measure it, price it and fit it into the route.
No gimmicks. Public federal rules, university extension guidance and standard landscaping practice, drawn clearly, with the source named on the page where it matters.
The federal pages follow the EPA's pesticide applicator rule, OSHA, the IRS and the U.S. Department of Labor; the lawn and plant pages follow land-grant university extension publications. Every page was checked against its named sources before release, and where a page leans on a rule, the page names it.
Pesticide and contractor licenses, sales tax on services and workers' comp rules change from state to state. Those pages say "Varies by state," show labelled example states, and point you to where your state's rule lives. No example is passed off as the rule everywhere.
The money pages work one example rate all the way through, so you can see where each number comes from and swap in your own costs, rates and prices. The examples are examples, not a price list for your market.
Not affiliated with or endorsed by the EPA, OSHA, the U.S. Department of Labor, the IRS, any state department of agriculture, any state licensing board or any university extension service. We answer to the person running the route.
Use the kit for 7 days. If it isn't for you, email us and you get 100% of your money back. No fine print, no hassle.
Right after purchase we email you a link to your library, where you download all three guides as PDFs. You can come back and download them again anytime.
One-time payment of $27. No subscription, no recurring charges, and nothing to cancel. All three guides are yours to keep.
Every state. The guides teach what works the same way everywhere: pricing, agreements, crews, taxes and safety. Where a rule changes by state, like a pesticide or contractor license or sales tax on services, the page says so, shows labelled examples, and tells you where to look up yours. Lawn and plant pages name the region an example fits.
Anyone running a lawn care or landscaping business, or about to start one: solo mowers, crew leads going out on their own, side businesses turning full time, and owners growing from one crew to three.
No. Landscaper Made Simple is an independent guide for people running a landscaping business. It explains rules in plain words and is not legal, tax or accounting advice. It is not affiliated with any licensing board or government agency. The guides explain the rules in plain words and drawings, so you know what to ask.
No. The kit is complete on its own.
At checkout there is one optional add-on, The Landscape Pricing Workbook: your labor-hour rate worked out with blanks for your own numbers, then real jobs priced step by step (a weekly mow, a commercial site, a cleanup, a mulch job, sod, a patio, a wall and snow), plus blank sheets to copy. It's $9, unticked, and you can skip it.
Both. The pages are portrait and phone-sized, so you can check one in the truck between properties, and the PDFs print if you want a page on the shop wall.
We don't promise that, and we'd be wary of anyone who does. The guides show you how each piece works and the mistake that costs money, with the numbers worked on example rates. What you charge and how you run the route is still your call.
Email us within 7 days of purchase and we'll refund 100% of your money. Details on the refund policy page.
No. Landscaper Made Simple is an independent guide built on public rules and extension guidance, which are named on the page where they are used. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the EPA, OSHA, the U.S. Department of Labor, the IRS, any state department of agriculture, any state licensing board or any university extension service.
Spotted an error, or a rule that works differently in your state or region? Email [email protected]. A real person reads every message, and fixes go into the next version.
Every season teaches you something about the business side, and the expensive lessons come with a bill. You don't need another forum thread or another price copied from down the street. You need the page for this decision, with the idea drawn and the mistake named.