Operations consulting for landscape companies
Your revenue grew.
Your profit didn’t.
That is not a sales problem. Somewhere between $1M and $3M, overhead steps up before revenue catches it, the owner becomes the constraint, and the job costing stops telling the truth. BaseCourse fixes the layer underneath, where the margin actually lives.
See what that costsWhat actually goes wrong
Overhead is invisible
You price off a markup someone picked years ago. Nobody has worked out what your indirect cost is per billable field hour, so nobody knows whether the markup covers it.
Job costing is really job tracking
You know what you spent. You still cannot say which work makes money, because labor is costed at wage instead of burdened rate and equipment time never lands on a job.
You are the second seat
You still estimate, still sell, still fix. You hired a manager once and it did not work, so now you do it yourself and the company can only grow as fast as your calendar.
Who this is for
Owners of landscape companies between $1.5M and $6M in revenue. Typically fifteen to forty employees, two to six crews, some mix of maintenance, design-build and enhancements. Usually growing. Usually not making what the growth should be producing.
If you are under $750K, the answer is sales, not systems, and you should keep your money. If you are over $10M, you need a CFO more than you need me, and I will tell you so.
Who runs it
Drew McGrail has spent thirty years in the landscape and nursery business, the last twenty of them running industry-leading landscape architecture firms in St. Louis and Boulder. He was VP of Operations for the Boulder firm and General Manager of the St. Louis one, where revenue went from $2.5M to over $8M and he finished with 40 direct reports across design, construction and maintenance.
Both companies grew through the same ceiling this work is about. He has watched it happen twice, from the inside, which is not the same as reading about it.
He still owns McGrail Landscape, a small boutique design-build practice serving a rural community hours from the nearest metro. A few clients, by choice. Which matters here: he is not a competitor sizing you up.
He owns and operates McGrail Landscape, a design-build firm, which means he was on a jobsite this week and reads a P&L that is his own.
$2.5M → $8M+ revenue40 direct reports30 years in landscape and nursery
Start with a Business Physical. Two weeks, entirely remote, and you end up holding your real overhead recovery rate, your true labor burden, and a ranked list of what to fix first.