Building a company that keeps growing when you step away is not a fantasy. It is a set of choices about focus, systems, and trust. We’re distilling practical takeaways from the journey of Thibaut Holl and Perth Landscaping Group as shared in a recent In The Trenches Podcast episode.
Founders and Small-to-Mid Business Owners will learn the essentials for clearing a path to a business that runs on rails, not on late nights. You will see how Scalable Business Systems beat hustle, how simplifying creates profit, and how to hand decision making to managers without losing control.
From Fifty Dollars to First Hires: The Early Pattern of Momentum
The start was scrappy and honest. Thibaut landed in Perth with about fifty dollars and a strong desire to work. Early jobs came from classifieds, then a bigger ask arrived. Someone wanted a retaining wall. He said yes, learned overnight, delivered, and moved to the next challenge. That loop built confidence and a customer base.
What to copy from those first years is not the chaos. It is the rhythm of learning fast and moving toward higher value work. The signal was simple. Clients kept asking for irrigation and the margins were better. Saying yes to everything helped at first, then the real gains came from saying yes to the right thing.
Early steps you can mirror:
- Use small jobs to validate a service line without big overheads.
- Track margin by service from day one and rank them.
- Say yes to stretch work, then document exactly how you delivered it.
- Move your time to the line with the strongest margin and repeatable demand.
Focus Beats Complexity, Every Time
As the business grew, complexity crept in. The team stood up multiple brands and lines at once. On paper it made sense. In practice it diluted attention and confused management. The turn came with a simple call. Close or sell the non-core lines and focus on irrigation where the business had a real advantage. That single decision reduced headaches and lifted results.
For Founders and Small-to-Mid Business Owners, this is the first hard lesson. Complexity hides waste. Focus exposes value. Scalable Business Systems are easier to design when there is one clear product or service, one primary customer journey, and one operating rhythm. If your calendar is full and your margin is thin, you do not need more offers. You need fewer, better ones.
How to apply focus:
- Pick a single hero service based on margin and demand.
- Write a one-page playbook for that service. Scope, price guardrails, timeline, deliverables.
- Remove or pause offers that distract from the hero service.
- Rebuild your website and sales scripts around the one thing you do best.
Put the Business Under Management
The next step was lifestyle. Twelve-hour days and seven-day weeks forced a choice. Keep grinding or put the business under management. They chose management, defined roles, and handed real authority to leaders. The goal was clear. Make the company work without the founders present.
This is where Scalable Business Systems move from theory to practice. Systems are not software. Systems are agreements. Who decides what, by when, using which numbers. For Founders and Small-to-Mid Business Owners, the mindset shift is large but doable. You are not abdicating. You are designing how decisions get made without you.
Core elements of an under-management model:
- A simple org chart with clear lines of ownership.
- Weekly scorecards that report on sales, operations, cash, and quality.
- Decision rights written down, so managers do not wait for permission.
- A monthly leadership meeting that reviews numbers, risks, and improvements.
- A founder time cap. For example, ten hours a week at first, then five, then three.
Hire Managers and Let Them Manage
Hiring managers is not the finish line. It is the start of a new discipline. Thibaut and his wife found that hovering blocked progress. When they stepped away for a period, leaders stepped up. That distance allowed the team to take real ownership.
Letting go is a skill. Identity and control are tied to founder pride, and that can stall good leaders. A useful test is simple. If you had to leave for four weeks, what would break. Fix that with training, checklists, and decision rights before you go.
Practical guardrails:
- Write a manager’s charter. Scope, KPIs, authority, and constraints.
- Agree on a simple escalation ladder for issues that exceed authority.
- Replace approval queues with clear thresholds. For example, credit notes up to a set amount.
- Reward outcomes and learning, not constant availability.
Simplify Your Stack and Your Workflows
Early on, the business stitched together multiple tools and workflows. The founders understood the web of connections. New managers did not. Complexity slowed the team and created avoidable mistakes. The fix was to reduce the number of systems and standardise how work flowed end to end.
Where to simplify first:
- One job management platform, not three.
- One source of truth for customer data.
- One intake form for all new jobs with mandatory fields for scope and pricing.
- One scheduling rule set that balances utilisation and service levels.
- One template library for quotes, scopes, and invoices.
Learn Enough Before You Outsource
A painful marketing contract taught another lesson. If you do not understand the basics, you cannot judge the work. Thibaut adopted a personal rule. Learn about eighty percent of a function before outsourcing. That does not mean mastering it. It means knowing the main levers and the difference between quality and noise.
A simple approach that works:
- Spend a week learning the fundamentals of the function.
- Draft your own brief and success metrics.
- Invite proposals that address your metrics and real constraints.
- Ask for examples with numbers, not vague claims.
- Review fortnightly against agreed KPIs and cut fast if fit is poor.
This is where Lessons from Landscaping Business Podcast style insights meet daily execution. You reduce risk by knowing enough to ask good questions. You do not need to become a full-time specialist to run Scalable Business Systems. You need working knowledge and clear measures.
Trust, Humility, and Asking for Help
There is also a human layer. Many founders grow up with an idea of strength that rejects asking for help. That story can keep you stuck. Thibaut was open about that inner drag. The change came from seeing the cost of doing it all and the benefits of sharing the load. The lesson travels well. Strong leaders ask better questions, create space for others, and keep their ego out of daily operations.
For Founders and Small-to-Mid Business Owners, this is not soft advice. It is operational truth. People do their best work when they have room to act and clear goals to hit. You cannot measure that if you are doing their tasks for them.
Metrics That Show the Business Is Thriving Without You
You get what you measure. Set a small set of numbers that prove the model.
Scorecard essentials:
- Lead to quote time and quote to win rate.
- Average job margin and on-time completion rate.
- Rework rate and customer satisfaction score.
- Cash collection days and cash buffer in weeks.
- Percentage of jobs delivered without founder involvement.
When these numbers hold or improve as your hours drop, the system is working.
Common Pitfalls and Practical Fixes
You will hit speed bumps. Most are predictable and fixable.
Watch for these and adjust fast:
- Too many offers. Fix by pruning. One hero service wins.
- Vague delegation. Fix by writing decision rights with dollar limits and examples.
- Software sprawl. Fix by consolidating and naming a single owner for each tool.
- Manager in title only. Fix by giving targets and real authority, then coach weekly.
- Founder drift. Fix by calendar blocks that protect manager decision cycles.
- No feedback loop. Fix by running a monthly review of numbers, issues, and improvements.
These are repeatable corrections that keep your Scalable Business Systems healthy.
Final Word: Build a Company, Not a Cage
A business that thrives without you is not built on heroic effort. It is built on clear offers, simple systems, capable managers, and a founder who chooses design over control. For Founders and Small-to-Mid Business Owners, this is liberating. You can set direction, hold standards, and still have a life. Use the 90-day blueprint, keep your scorecard tight, and treat each improvement as a step toward freedom.
