5 Ways Marketing Can Solve Your Top Landscaping Industry Challenges

Patrick McFadden • August 16, 2019

If you own a landscaping company, odds are you’re trying to grow and address certain landscaping industry challenges that come with that growth.

Get ahead of these landscaping industry challenges with the development and installation of a marketing process. 

Here’s how I’ve been able to help the owners of landscaping companies address top industry challenges: 

Retaining top talent

Keeping your best employees can be as hard as finding them. One marketing strategy to use for the retention of top talent is creating a career ladder. A career ladder is key to employee retention in any field, and this is where many lawn and landscape companies fall short. 

Often in the landscaping world, you hear “come grow with us” or “come work with us” but the visual representation is missing. A lot of your best prospective talent will need to see their career path. How does your hiring process differ from the next landscaping company?  In order to stand out and retain your best talent create a visual career ladder.

We’ve been working with a local landscaping company Green Side Up and they’ll be the first to tell you that hiring has been a real challenge. But since adding a visual career ladder poster to their hiring process, on their website, and posting it where potential and current employees can see it, there has seen a drastic increase in their retained talent.

Posting your career ladder is an important element as it’ll serve as a visual reminder and motivation for your current employees to gather the skills and training necessary for that next position. 

Too few resources

Many landscape companies operate businesses that are too lean administratively, often because there is a strong focus on simply getting the work done. However, when your marketing strategy starts to make the phone ring and increase your visibility, you may start to see emails and phone calls go unanswered, the struggle of managing your day-to-day and meeting with prospective homeowners starts to set in. 

Your resources aren’t staffed properly, but landscape requests and billing is on the rise. To stay ahead of increased phone calls one marketing strategy you can explore is hiring a phone answering service. The service picks up when you are unavailable to answer the phone so you won’t miss opportunities and prospective customers get the attention they deserve. They are also trained to schedule appointments and walk prospective customers through scheduling an initial quote and assessment visit. 

Showcase your expertise

Potential customers like to see the work that you’ve done in the past. This helps them get an idea of the quality of your work as well as the services you provide. They can more easily envision what you may be able to do for their home. Build a marketing strategy to show what you do best and make your expertise visible. 

In photos 

Encourage your team to take photos of their landscaping work and develop a system for uploading, storing and sharing these photos. Some places to share these photos are through your newsletter, website, marketing materials and social media. You can also approach this by creating strategic photo sessions with a professional photographer to capture how your company maintains a property through the change of seasons. 

Local “best landscaping” awards

Local recognition is great for business. It builds your name recognition, validates the quality of your work, and helps you reach new audiences. But, getting locally recognized doesn’t happen overnight or without a plan to make sure your work is seen and considered. Participate in any available opportunities to be voted “the best in landscaping”— don’t forget to involve your customers. 

A Happy Customer

The best marketing of all is a happy customer. Work to develop your processes and services to ensure that your customer experience generates a happy customer. A happy customer means more referrals and great online reviews available for potential customers to get a glimpse of your service. 

Focus on the best opportunities

Not every homeowner has the motivation to do something to their landscaping. Some want the monthly retainer, while others want one-time tasks completed. Through all your requests, you have to find a way to focus on the best opportunities. 

One marketing area to explore is software that integrates with your website so that online scheduling can help filter through the requests, saving you from an in-person meeting that may result in you determining that the request is out of your service area or expertise. 

Through online scheduling, your landscaping consultant can quickly determine if that request is worth pursuing. Is it a problem you can solve? Is it something you are in expert in? Is it in a neighborhood you typically service? Focus on the very best opportunities that will showcase what you do well.  Work smarter, not harder. 

Training

Growth is exciting! For a business with seasonal work, like landscaping, peak seasons are a chance to improve your brand recognition and capture new customers. It’s a busy time of year. In a time when you need as many hands as possible working to complete jobs, but have little time to interview prospective employees, bringing on new hires can be tricky.

You may consider incorporating some training components into mandatory weekly meetings. Making training available on-the-go in video format also makes it easier for staff to refer to a training video while on the job. If they have a specific question, such as “How to sharpen a blade” or “complete bed edging,” they can access the videos on their phones. This ensures that every job is undertaken in a way that’s consistent with your company training, no matter who is completing the service. 

Making training not just accessible, but mandatory as it eliminates dissatisfied customers, equipment damage, workers’ compensation claims, increased insurance premiums, and negative reviews.

Keep your business moving forward by getting ahead of these five landscape industry challenges. Just as you shop for the tools that will ensure quality landscaping, you also need to use your marketing that will ensure smooth growth. 
Want to learn more? Schedule a consultation with us so we can talk about how to do this for your business.

The Missing Layer in AI: Why Judgment, Not Just Data, Will Define the Next Era of Intelligence

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
Everyone is scaling outputs. Almost no one is scaling judgment.

Everyone Talks About AI Judgment. We Built It.

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
Ask anyone in tech where AI is headed, and they’ll tell you: “The next leap is reasoning.” “AI needs judgment.” “We need assistants that think, not just answer.” They’re right. But while everyone’s talking about it, almost no one is actually shipping it. So we did. We built Thinking OS™ —a system that doesn’t just help AI answer questions… It helps AI think like a strategist. It helps AI decide like an operator. It helps teams and platforms scale judgment, n ot just generate output. The Theory Isn’t New. The Implementation Is. The idea of layering strategic thinking and judgment into AI isn’t new in theory. The problem is, no one’s been able to implement it effectively at scale. Let’s look at the current landscape. 1. Big Tech Has the Muscle—But Not the Mind OpenAI / ChatGPT ✅ Strength: Best-in-class language generation ❌ Limitation: No built-in judgment or reasoning. You must provide the structure. Otherwise, it follows instructions, not strategy. Google DeepMind / Gemini ✅ Known for advanced decision-making (e.g., AlphaGo) ❌ But only in structured environments like games—not messy, real-world business scenarios. Anthropic (Claude), Meta (LLaMA), Microsoft Copilot ✅ Great at answering questions and following commands ❌ But they’re assistants, not advisors. They won’t reprioritize. They won’t challenge your assumptions. They don’t ask: “Is this the right move?” These tools are powerful—but they don’t think for outcomes the way a strategist or operator would. 2. Who’s Actually Building the Thinking Layer™? This is where it gets interesting—and thin. Startups and Indie Builders Some small teams are quietly: Creating custom GPTs that mimic how experts reason Layering in business context, priorities, and tradeoffs Embedding decision logic so AI can guide, not just execute But these efforts are: Highly manual Difficult to scale Fragmented and experimental Enterprise Experiments A few companies (Salesforce, HubSpot, and others) are exploring more “judgment-aware” AI copilots. These systems can: Flag inconsistencies Recommend next actions Occasionally surface priorities based on internal logic But most of it is still: In early R&D Custom-coded Unproven beyond narrow use cases That’s Why Thinking OS™ Is Different Instead of waiting for a lab to crack it, we built a modular thinking system that installs like infrastructure. Thinking OS™: Captures how real experts reason Embeds judgment into layers AI can use Deploys into tools like ChatGPT or enterprise systems Helps teams think together, consistently, at scale It’s not another assistant. It’s the missing layer that turns outputs into outcomes. So… Is This a New Innovation? Yes—in practice. Everyone says AI needs judgment. But judgment isn’t an idea. It’s a system. It requires: Persistent memory Contextual awareness Tradeoff evaluation Value-based decisions Strategy that evolves with goals Thinking OS™ delivers that. And unlike the R&D experiments in Big Tech, it’s built for: Operators Consultants Platform founders Growth-stage teams that need to scale decision quality, not just content creation If Someone Told You They’ve Built a Thinking + Judgment Layer™… They’ve built something only a handful of people in the world are even attempting. Because this isn’t just AI that speaks fluently. It’s AI that reasons, reflects , and chooses. And in a world that’s drowning in tools, judgment becomes the differentiator. That’s the OS We Built Thinking OS™ is not a prompt pack. It’s not a dashboard. It’s not a glorified chatbot. It’s a decision architecture you can license, embed, or deploy— To help your team, your platform, or your clients think better at scale. We’ve moved past content. We’re building cognition. Let’s talk.

We Found the Missing Layer AI Has Been Waiting For

By Patrick McFadden • May 2, 2025
In every era of innovation, there’s a silent bottleneck—something obvious in hindsight, but elusive until the moment it clicks. In today’s AI-driven world, that bottleneck is clear: AI has speed. It has scale. But it doesn’t have judgment . It doesn’t really think . What’s Actually Missing From AI? When experts talk about the “thinking and judgment layer” as the next leap for AI, they’re calling out a hard truth: Modern AI systems are powerful pattern machines. But they’re missing the human layer—the one that reasons, weighs tradeoffs, and makes strategic decisions in context. Let’s break that down: 1. The Thinking Layer = Reasoning with Purpose This layer doesn’t just process inputs— it structures logic. It’s the ability to: Ask the right questions before acting Break down complexity into solvable parts Adjust direction mid-course when reality changes Think beyond “what was asked” to uncover “what really matters” Today’s AI responds. But it rarely reflects. Unless told exactly what to do, it won’t work through problems the way a strategist or operator would. 2. The Judgment Layer = Decision-Making in the Gray Judgment is the ability to: Prioritize what matters most Choose between imperfect options Make decisions when there’s no clear answer Apply values, experience, and vision—not just data It’s why a founder might not pursue a lucrative deal. Why a marketer might ignore the click-through rate. Why a strategist knows when the timing isn’t right. AI doesn’t do this well. Not yet. Because judgment requires more than data—it requires discernment . Why This Is the Bottleneck Holding Back AI AI can write. It can summarize. It can automate. But it still can’t: Diagnose the real problem behind the question Evaluate tradeoffs like a founder or operator would Recommend a path based on context, constraints, and conviction AI today is still reactive. It follows instructions. But it doesn’t lead. It doesn’t guide. It doesn’t own the outcome. And for those building serious systems—whether you’re running a company, launching a platform, or leading a team—this is the wall you eventually hit. That’s Why We Built Thinking OS™ We stopped waiting for AI to learn judgment on its own. Instead, we created a system that embeds it—by design. Thinking OS™ is an installable decision layer that captures how top founders, strategists, and operators think… …and makes that thinking repeatable , scalable , and usable inside teams, tools, and platforms. It’s not a framework. It’s not a chatbot. It’s not another playbook. It’s the layer that knows how to: Think through complex decisions Apply judgment when rules don’t help Guide others —human or AI—toward strategic outcomes This Is the Missing Infrastructure Thinking OS™ isn’t just about better answers. It’s about better thinking—made operational. And that’s what’s been missing in AI, consulting, leadership development, and platform design. If you’re trying to scale expertise, install judgment, or move from tactical to strategic… You don’t need a faster AI. You need a thinking layer that knows what to do—and why. We built it. Let’s talk.
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