It's not uncommon for landscape companies to add snow services to boost revenue. For Landmark Landscapes, in Sheboygan Falls, WI, becoming a four-season business was about much more than increasing income—it was a key component in helping the company completely transform itself.
Co-owners (and brothers) Joe and Jesse Majerus grew up in the business. "Our parents started the company in 1990," explains Joe Majerus. "I was 6 or 7 years old, and they literally cleaned out our toy room—that became the home office and Landmark Landscapes was born."
The brothers worked in the business while they were growing up before each left for college—Jesse for urban forestry and soil science, Joe for landscape architecture. Upon graduation, they realized they had a passion for the family business and a shared desire to grow it into something more.
"My mom and dad had run the business for a couple of decades as a kind of a mom-and-pop company — the standard owner/operator-type setup. They really did it out of a passion for horticulture and landscape and customer service," Joe says. "It became evident that we had very different ambitions than our parents. We thought there was a pretty good opportunity for growth. So, we worked out a way to buy them out."
For the majority of Landmark Landscape’s first two decades, there was little if any snow work. "Maybe one truck and an open-cab tractor," Joe says. "It was just a way to keep summer customers happy—to not have to say ‘no’ to the best maintenance clients."
When Joe and Jesse took formal ownership in February 2015, they realized that to build the kind of company they wanted, many things would need to change; and snow would need to be a vital part of a year round enterprise.
Adding snow services for clients dovetailed well into the company’s service offerings given the Wisconsin climate. Today, Landmark’s snow business is about 60% commercial and 40% residential. "We sort of fortuitously started to look at the snow operations as a way to not only really step up the service that a lot of our clients were receiving, but also really provide that opportunity for our own team to lead meaningful lives 12 months a year. We wanted to build something bigger—not just a business, but a business that would be truly impactful for our teammates, our employees, our community, and our families."
To achieve their vision for the company, they knew they had to get it right when hiring a team to make it happen.
"We knew we would need to focus on hiring the best people that we could put on our team to give our clients the best experience. And we knew that these high-quality people would expect more. The best people want to be productive; they don’t want to get laid off, to have to collect unemployment. They want year-round employment, because they’re trying to grow their own families."
But hiring the right people wasn’t going to be enough—they had to give them the latitude to make decisions and manage their own role or aspect in the business. That’s not always an easy thing for company owners to do.
"I remember the first year we bought the business, I went to a conference. And at that point, I didn’t realize that I was a businessperson. I thought that I was a landscaper," Joe says. "At the conference there was a breakout session on having salespeople. And I remember thinking ‘there’s no way that anyone could ever sell for my company.’ Now we have seven salespeople who all report to a sales manager. And the sales manager reports to a general manager and the general manager reports to me."
Joe says part of what helped him turn over responsibilities to others was keeping in mind that he made mistakes himself: "So this idea that, if I’m there, it’s just going to be perfect —that is crazy. I screwed up all the time. It’s okay to make mistakes; you have to own it, you have to fix it. But, if you’re the only guy that’s allowed to make mistakes in your company, you’re never going to be much."
Giving your team the freedom to work independently also helps with long-term retention. Joe cites Operations Manager Joe Sell, CSP, ASM, as an example of how trusting capable employees pays off. "With the talent that he has, if he didn’t have the latitude within a system like the one that Jesse and I have built, he’d have been gone. You can spend all the time and resources to bring those people in, but if they don’t have the ability to continue to develop themselves, and your business, you’re going to lose them."
Joe also points to General Manager Ryan Price as someone who has come on board and driven the company’s success. Price is responsible for integrating administration, operations and sales … making sure everything is running together. Sometimes that includes integrating very different ideas from the owners. "Jesse and I are very different. But Ryan is that third party who figures out how to integrate everything and make it all work. He’s the glue."
Instituting EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) helped Joe and Jesse become comfortable in letting go of the reins a bit. Defining and communicating everyone’s roles eliminated uncertainty of what everyone needed to be doing.
"I attribute a lot of our success to that, because as we were gaining really good people and focusing on paying and recruiting and trying to get the best people we could, it would all be for naught if they don’t know what the expectation is," Joe says.
So, has adding snow services and hiring the best people resulted in the hoped-for growth? "In the past seven years, we’ve grown the business by about 1,000% in terms of revenue, and we’ve gone from seven employees to 70," Joe reports. "It’s an insane amount of growth."
Joe and Jesse are now mostly removed from the company’s day-to-day operations. "Our roles are almost 100% strategy at this point," Joe says. While they are co-CEOs, Joe says he’s "the experience guy" that focuses on client and team experience and working on systems to improve those experiences.
He acknowledges that with some 70 employees, the level of compliance and transparency and communication required can be "a bit mind-boggling," and that he and Jesse are only able to focus on these big-picture issues because they have handed over the daily business details to others.
Joe says the result is a spiral of success: "The general quality of service that we’re giving our clients just keeps getting better. The more people we have, the more experts we can bring on, the better our services get. And the better our services get, the more profitable we are."
After years of exponential growth, the plan for the coming year is to scale back the growth rate a bit. "We’re planning on 18% growth this year," Joe says, a comparatively modest but still strong target. "And for the first time in a while we’re not planning to add double-digit numbers of employees, which is nice."
The company opened a satellite location in Green Lake, WI, in 2023, and there were "definitely some lessons learned" during the first year of its operation, so smoothing out those systems will also be a priority this year, Joe says.
While the company is stepping back from the more aggressive growth trajectory in the short-term, the brothers have their sights set on the long-term. "We want to be a leader in the snow industry, not just in Sheboygan or Wisconsin, but in the country," he says. "We want to be in that conversation. And that’s where we’re moving."
A well-trained and well-equipped snow division
When Joe and Jesse Majerus bought Landmark Landscapes, a primary growth goal was to dramatically expand the company’s snow operations. That meant right sizing the company’s fleet and team and establishing systems to guide the snow division. Joe Sell, CSP, ASM joined Landmark Landscapes in 2017 and quickly became an integral part of the operations team—he was promoted to operations manager a few years later.
"When I started, the snow fleet consisted of one salt truck, two plows and a couple of skid steers," Sell recalls.
Only a handful of employees worked during the winter, and, even with only a small number of winter clients to serve, Sell said the bare-bones staff made for hectic operations. "The crew was just fixing stuff on their own, and breakdowns were common," he notes. "I had a mechanical background, so I helped to initiate a preventive maintenance program, where those types of breakdowns can largely be eliminated."
Trained and equipped
Landmark’s snow operations teams are broken into five regions, and training for the 35 or so people who work in snow begins in the fall, when the company’s landscape work starts to slow down. "We do an hour every week with the whole team. We start out with the basic stuff, and then get into topics like our tracking," says Sell.
By November, the crews do two in-the-field dry runs, along with a 4-hour hands-on session at the shop. "This year we broke into five groups," Sell explains. "Some people work with skid steers, some people are on trucks, some people focus on walkways, etc. Then everyone rotates." Sell feels it’s important that all employees have a sense of every aspect of the winter operations, even if it involves learning about equipment that they may not end up using. "It’s a nice way to get everyone crosstrained, and we find out what things different people are most comfortable doing," he says.
The snow fleet has grown in number and capability as well.
Trucks, which Sell has been working to standardize, are now equipped with V-plows; skid steers and wheel loaders have been switched to winged box plows, which Sell says have improved efficiency. And to improve both efficiency and quality, Landmark is increasingly utilizing active-edge plows.
Whenever possible, the company’s landscape equipment is put to use in the winter as well. For example, instead of clearing sidewalks with specialized machines, Landmark equips its mowers and mini skids with snowplows. "We try to use everything we already have across our assets," notes Sell.
That said, when equipment is needed to improve quality or efficiency, it’s purchased. "For the cost of a few extra pieces of equipment, we can maintain a really high-end workforce yearround, which makes the company more profitable, because we’re not retraining people after they’ve been laid off and potentially leave," explains co-owner Joe Majerus. "And that gives our clients a more consistent experience."
Community centered
Jesse and Joe Majerus have made it a mission of Landmark Landscapes to help make their community better. This includes financial donations, service projects to renovate landscapes for a variety of non-profit organizations, and support for conservation work. It also includes the creation of a philanthropic fund that’s directed by employees. "If they have something near and dear to their heart, we have an internal system that allows them to basically apply for a company grant. We call it our Art Through Ecology Committee, and we dole out funds based on their submissions," Joe explains.
"We didn’t want it to be funding just things that Jesse and I are interested in. The team is bigger than us. And the company only exists because of the people that we have. We wanted to make sure that our team members are able to fully engage with the things that are important to them."
The art of snow removal
Look at the back of a Landmark Landscapes truck and you’ll see the words "Art Through Ecology" — a nod to the company’s full motto: "Art through ecology for vibrant communities." "That’s the reason behind our company’s entire existence," explains co-owner Joe Majerus. "For us, it means working to create something beautiful so that the local communities can thrive."
From an operations standpoint, "it speaks to our creative abilities to see vision and beauty in the landscape, and couple that with the environment," adds Operations Manager Joe Sell, CSP, ASM. While that comes through in the company’s landscape work—say a stunning landscape on Lake Michigan exactly tailored to that setting—it also is applied to the company’s winter work, Sell emphasizes: "For me, there is definitely art in our snow service, and we emphasize that in our trainings. The curbs are left clean, the tops are neat and tidy, everything’s melting off. There’s art in the extra pass taken to clean up any windrows left from the plow edge. That’s what we do. And I think liquids help with that, ecologically and because you’re getting a better scrape and end product. Everything just looks neat."
Equipment and training video
Operations Manager Joe Sell, CSP, ASM instituted a preventive maintenance program that has helped cut down on breakdowns. Watch the video here to learn more.
Patrick White has covered the landscape and snow and ice management industries for a variety of magazines for over 25 years. He is based in Vermont. Contact him at pwhite@meadowridgemedia.com.