Irrigation is the engine. Mowing is the machine.
An elite irrigation tech builds a recurring lawn-care book as the backbone, layers on high-margin irrigation, and hires out the routes — scaling from solo operator to a managed crew.
Services & Pricing
Priced à la carte or bundled into recurring plans. Organized by arm, with seasons and rates at the top of the Boise market. Projected year-one income noted per arm.
Total Yard Plan
Mow Plan + Sprinkler Care + seasonal add-ons (feeding, aeration, gutters). One monthly price, one relationship — the highest-value customer.
Lawn Health Program
A season-long feeding, aeration, and overseed schedule for a thick, green lawn — weed, grub, and disease control added once licensed. Billed monthly on auto-draw.
Commercial Grounds
HOAs and small commercial lots: mowing + irrigation + lot sealcoat / striping on an annual contract.
Road to $100K
How the owner nets $100K: recurring lawn-care is the backbone, irrigation is the high-margin sweetener — and the owner trains the crew into both, not just mowing, so his hours go only to the work worth the most. Year 1 replaces the city job. Year 2 is the $100K year.
Backbone: lawn care
Recurring mowing subscriptions, billed monthly. A crew runs them at volume, so the base income is steady and predictable — and it grows with every account you add.
High-ticket sale: irrigation
The big-dollar, high-margin work: repairs, installs, blowouts. Fewer jobs, far bigger tickets — and mostly the owner's own labor, so most of it drops to take-home.
Grow: the crew
Hire out the mowing so the routes grow past the owner's two hands. His time moves to irrigation and selling, where the money is.
No hires yet
LLC, insurance, printed materials. Owner sells what's actually in season — cleanups and gutters — solo, evenings and weekends.
80 blowouts · 26 Sprinkler Care members · 20 accounts secured
Owner canvasses himself; ads support what his own hours can't reach. Spring Lock-In deposits turn "prebooked" into a real number, not a maybe.
Blueprint & Bloom, then hire the crew
4 design consults booked. Production crew hired in Feb, funded by the fall war chest, ready for the 20 secured accounts going live in April.
20 → 32 accounts
Still below the ~43-account threshold. Growing, not there yet.
Crosses ~43 accounts
Not a calendar guess — the account count that sustains $75K/year. Full month-by-month build is on the First-Year Plan page.
Full-time — the $100K year
No more hour cap. Full weekdays for sales, diagnosis, and installs, on top of a client base and a trained crew already built in Year 1. ~$263K revenue → ~$115K take-home.
Who Does What
Irrigation isn't a skill the owner keeps forever — it's a skill he teaches, starting with whatever trains fastest. Every task that moves to the crew is an hour back for selling the next job.
Owner keeps — permanently
- Estimates & salesthe close is where the money is
- Complex diagnosis & system designthe calls a crew shouldn't take yet
- High-ticket installs ($3K+)worth more of his hours than anyone else's
- Hiring, training & quality controlthe crew's skill ceiling is his
- Commercial & HOA bidsbigger contracts, worth chasing personally
Trains into the crew
- Mowing, edging, trimming, blowingtrained day one
- Blowoutstrained day one — billable within days
- Spring startupstrained by winter
- Basic repairs — head & valve swapstrained by spring
- Gutters, power washing, cleanup, sealcoat preptrained day one
Team & Incentives
Pay premium, then make it a game. Attribution, competition, and clear raises keep the best people and push speed and quality.
Personal QR cards
Every crew member carries a business card with their own QR code. A scan that books a job gets credited to them — and they earn a commission on it. Every worker becomes a salesperson.
Leaderboard
A visible weekly board ranks jobs closed, route speed, and quality scores. Competition drives output; the top of the board earns bonuses.
Skill tests → raises
Each task has a speed + quality test. Pass it and earn a set bonus plus an hourly raise — a clear ladder from new hire to trained pro.
Marketing
How you reach homeowners and turn one job into a recurring account. The seasonal deals this runs live in Seasonal Offers.
- Pick 3–5 target subdivisions — mature irrigation systems, mid-to-high home value.
- Knock the $35 blowout offer Sept–Oct; book on the spot with the booking page.
- Leave a door hanger where no one answers — same offer, same deadline.
- Close on the plan at the job — pitch Sprinkler Care while you're there, and credit the $35 blowout toward their first month.
- Plant a yard sign and hand over personal QR cards — each one books the customer and credits the sale to that crew member.
Direct mail
Postcards carry the same blowout offer to homes you can't reach on foot — a QR code and phone number to book without a knock.
Paid social
Geo-targeted Facebook and Instagram ads to Boise, Meridian, and Eagle homeowners; retarget anyone who visits the booking page.
Google Business Profile
Set it up week one and ask every happy customer for a review — “sprinkler repair near me” is how the high-ticket calls find you.
Referrals
Every happy member is a channel — the Good Neighbor Referral credits both sides and turns route density into more route density.
Seasonal Offers
The deals that fill each season and open a recurring relationship — a lead for fall, winter, and spring, plus a referral running year-round.
Beat the Freeze
A discounted blowout that prebooks spring lawn care. To get the deal they sign an annual plan on auto-draw — so the cheap blowout locks in a whole season instead of a one-off, and they can't take the deal and walk.
Spring Lock-In
The actual reservation behind a "prebooked" spring Mow Plan — a small deposit, not a verbal maybe. Reserves their April start date and this year's price, credited straight to their first bill. Forfeited if they cancel without 2 weeks' notice, so a prebooked account count means something.
Blueprint & Bloom
A custom irrigation plan drafted at a discounted rate in the slow months. Book the spring build and the plan's full regular price — not the discounted rate they paid — credits toward the install. Fills the winter trough and books the spring pipeline.
Sprinkler Health Check
A mapped, 100-point Sprinkler Health Score — 50 pts effectiveness (coverage, pressure, head condition) and 50 pts efficiency (overspray, scheduling, water waste) — with a one-page report, zone map, and prioritized fix list showing estimated water savings. Puts the owner on the property, where his diagnosis turns into repair work.
Good Neighbor Referral
Every customer who refers a neighbor gets account credit, and the new neighbor gets a discount on their first service. Route density that grows itself.
First-Year Plan
From zero in August through the first full mowing season — the city job stays on until the account count says otherwise, not a fixed calendar date.
Solo — evenings and weekends only
No hires. LLC, insurance, GBP, booking page, printed materials ordered (door hangers, yard signs, QR cards) — the $5K startup spend. Mowing season is nearly over, so the sell is what's actually in season: yard cleanups and gutter cleaning, walked door-to-door on weekends. Land: 5 cleanup/gutter jobs × $200 avg = $1,000. 15 households give verbal interest for the fall blowout — no money down yet, not counted as accounts. Revenue $1.0K · Cost $5.0K · Net −$4.0K.
Blowout season opens, still solo
Owner knocks doors himself, evenings + weekends, working the Aug interest list plus new blocks. Paid social ads start running (~$300/mo) to catch inbound calls outside his hours. Land: 25 blowouts × $60 = $1,500. 8 sign the Sprinkler Care Plan on the spot (32% close, annual auto-draft — a real signed contract). 3 more cleanup jobs = $600. Revenue $2.2K · Cost $0.5K (ads/materials) · Net +$1.7K.
Peak solo blitz
Full weekend + evening push through the target subdivisions. First Spring Lock-In deposits collected — the actual reservation behind a "prebooked" account, not a verbal maybe. Land: 35 blowouts × $60 = $2,100. 11 more Sprinkler Care signups (19 cumulative). 10 households pay the $25 Spring Lock-In deposit. 8 backflow tests × $125 = $1,000. Revenue $3.5K · Cost $0.6K · Net +$2.9K.
Bank & convert
Last blowouts before frost, door hangers on no-answers. Land: 20 more blowouts (80 total for the season) × $60 = $1,200. 7 more Sprinkler Care (26 cumulative). 10 more Spring Lock-In deposits (20 accounts secured, $500 total held as credit). 7 backflow tests = $875. Revenue $2.7K · Cost $0.4K · Net +$2.3K.
Fall total: 80 blowouts · 26 Sprinkler Care members (signed, auto-draft) · 20 accounts secured with a $25 deposit each — worth ~$38.5K in mowing revenue once April hits, not counting referrals still to come.
Blueprint & Bloom opens
No canvassing — no work, no wage. Selling motion shifts to phone/text outreach to the 26-member base, offering a discounted winter design session that credits toward a spring install. Land: 1 consult ($150), 1 repair call ($220). Revenue $1.2K · Cost $0.2K · Net +$1.0K.
Blueprint & Bloom continues
Land: 2 more consults (3 cumulative). Revenue $1.3K · Cost $0.2K · Net +$1.1K.
Hire the production crew
1 more consult closes (4 cumulative — the spring install pipeline, worth ~$16K at $4K avg). Hire and train the mowing/repair crew now, funded by the fall war chest, so they're ready when the 20 secured accounts go live in April. Revenue $1.2K · Cost $0.6K · Net +$0.6K.
Spring startups
Crew runs startups for the 20 secured + 26 Sprinkler Care accounts. Sprinkler Health Check ($39) launches as the spring lead engine. Revenue $3.8K · Cost $2.5K · Net +$1.3K.
Mowing goes live
The 20 secured accounts start — deposits credited to their first bill. Land: 3 more via referrals (23 accounts). Revenue $7.9K · Cost $3.5K · Net +$4.4K.
Referral flywheel starting
Land: 27 accounts. Revenue $8.9K · Cost $3.7K · Net +$5.2K.
Still below the threshold
Land: 32 accounts — 11 short of the ~43 needed. Revenue $10.9K · Cost $4.3K · Net +$6.6K. Not a quit signal yet.
Closing in
Land: 37 accounts — still short. Revenue $16.8K · Cost $5.0K · Net +$11.8K.
Possible transition window opens
Land: 42 accounts — one shy of the line. Revenue $13.4K · Cost $4.8K · Net +$8.6K. If referrals are running ahead of plan, this is where quitting starts becoming real — not yet confirmed.
Crosses ~43 accounts
Land: 45 accounts. Revenue $14.9K · Cost $5.2K · Net +$9.7K. This is the number, not July — the account count that sustains $75K/year is what says go, and it lands here if the season runs to plan.
Season closes out, full-time from here
Land: 46 accounts. Revenue $15.8K · Cost $4.6K · Net +$11.2K. Year 2 starts full-time — no more evening/weekend ceiling.
Initial Investment
Two pools of starting capital: $8K for the business itself, and the second mower ($8K) already secured separately. Fall canvassing is solo — no hire, no wage risk — so the $8K covers setup and the season's ads. The mower money sits ready for the production hire in February.