Check the ground before you write the number.
Last year's revenue plus 10% is not a budget. It's a wish with columns. This worksheet builds next year's number from the hours your crews will actually have in March, then shows you what the gap costs in people, price, and overtime.
From Fire Yourself First , Issue 17: 10% More Revenue. Same Crew. Your Budget Is Planting People Who Don't Exist.
Revenue is the harvest. Hours are the ground.
A revenue number is an outcome. It's what comes up when the right amount of labor meets the right work at the right price. Budgeting from revenue is like planning next year's yield by looking at last year's harvest and adding 10%, without asking how much ground you'll plant.
In this business, the ground is labor hours. Every dollar of field revenue rides on a man-hour somebody has to show up and work. Count the people you'll have in March, take out the hours that never touch a property, price what's left by division. That's what the ground holds. Everything above it is a hire, a price change, or overtime you haven't admitted to yet.
If you don't know how many hours you'll have, you don't have a budget. You have a wish with columns.
The example loaded below is a $3.6M company with 36 people in the field and a 10% target. Replace every number with yours. The results are only as honest as your job reviews.
Take the sample. Then pull the levers.
Paid hours × utilization × revenue per billable hour, by division. Put it next to the number ownership wants. Name the gap in hours. Then close it with decisions instead of hope.
The people who will be on a truck in March, not the ones you had in August. Paid hours come from payroll, not from memory.
Utilization is the share of paid hours that land on a job. Drive time, yard time, shop work, and rain come out. Use your time records, not your hopes.
Revenue per billable man-hour, by division. If estimates haven't been corrected against actuals this year, review your ten largest jobs before you trust these.
The number ownership wants. The sample doesn't argue with it. It tells you what it costs.
Pull the four levers until the gap closes. Each one shows what it adds on its own, and each one has a price tag you can see in October.
No seed blend comes up at 100%. Close rate is germination rate. Work the new install revenue back to proposals per month, which is a number sales can manage every week.
Every lever needs an owner and a date. Hires on payroll by January. Price set before renewal letters go out. Utilization changes named by the route.
This works cleanest for self-performing companies. Subcontracted work, snow, and a brand-new division all bend the sample. None of them makes it go away; every one of those still runs on hours somebody has to work.
The sample is free. The budget that comes out of it is the work.
If the gap that came back is bigger than you expected, this is the next step. I build next year's budget with you, from hours, with every lever named and dated, before January 1 makes the decisions for you.
Not a template. Not a spreadsheet you fill in alone at the kitchen table. Two working sessions and a delivered capacity budget your ownership can argue with in October instead of discovering in July.
Who it's for: owners and GMs of self-performing landscape companies at $2M and up, writing a budget for a season that starts in March. If your job reviews didn't happen this year, that's the first session.
Count the ground. Names on trucks in March, paid hours from payroll, billable hours from job costing, ten largest jobs estimated against actual.
I build the sample by division, size the gap in hours and people, and price all four levers against your numbers.
Pull the levers together. Decide the hires, the price change, the utilization targets, and the mix. Each one gets an owner and a date.
The budget, the hiring calendar, the proposal rate for sales, and the 90-day plan to January 1. Ten business days, start to finish.
Scoped by company size and complexity. One division with clean payroll is the floor; several divisions, subcontracted work, or a year without job reviews take more build time. You get the exact number before you book the first session.
Twenty-five minutes. Bring your sample. If the gap is small, I'll tell you to close it yourself.
The budget says what the ground holds. The Gap Audit says where the margin goes.
Utilization is a lever on this page and a leak on that one. The Gap Audit measures nine places the margin goes, from your own data, in dollars. From $2,476. Half of it credits toward the Deep Dive.
Operational infrastructure for landscape companies that want to run without the owner in every decision.
Slow learner. Fast builder.
Twenty-five minutes. Audit, Deep Dive, or Interim, which fits where you are. No pitch.
© 2026 LeadScape™ Partners. All rights reserved.
Operational infrastructure for landscape companies that want to run without the owner in every decision.
Slow learner. Fast builder.
Twenty-five minutes. Deep Dive or Interim, which fits where you are. No pitch.
© 2026 LeadScape™ Partners. All rights reserved.