The Edge March/April/May 2026

PEER PERSPECTIVE

Growth with Guardrails: How to Scale Up without Burning Out Your Team

By Jill Odom

RAPID GROWTH CAN BE EXCITING, BUT WITHOUT INTENTIONAL PLANNING and systems in place, you run the risk of eroding your company culture and your quality standards. “Don’t grow for the sake of growing,”Rick Sartori, vice president of East Coast and arbor for Monarch Landscape Companies, based in Los Angeles, California. “Be intentional. Align your client mix, your staffing and processes before you add volume. Listen to the frontline teams.”

back, or uncharacteristic mistakes are all changes they watch for. “We also monitor overtime, turnover patterns, and the overall ‘feel’ of the branch,” Snyder says. “Our managers stay close to their teams, so they often sense strain before it shows up in metrics.” Ian McCarthy, owner of Blue Claw Asso ciates, Inc., based in Osterville, Massachu setts, also recommends keeping a close eye on your team’s work hours. He says they typically work 45 to 55 hours a week in the busy season, but if they hit 60 hours a week, they know everyone is becoming maxed out. ADJUSTING CLIENT MIXES AND SERVICES One way to implement more sustainable growth is to be intentional about your client or service mix. Salsbery says this is something their company is in the process of doing right now. “We are beginning to realize that we need to focus our efforts on a specific cli ent that requires a specific level of service – and tailoring our services to meet those needs,” Salsbery says. Sweeney says once they began scaling, they focused on commercial maintenance services and will continue to do so in the future. Sartori says they are regularly evaluating their client base to ensure they are focused on accounts that align with their team, their capacity, geographic footprint and services. “In some cases, we’ve even looked at low-performing, low-margin work or work that’s maybe out of the geographic foot print that we maybe took on at some point just to build some volume,”Sartori says. “We look at is that disrupting the team’s ability to deliver on scope? We’ll look at maybe moving on from those opportunities just to protect the team and free up some capacity for more strategic type clients that they can focus on.” Snyder says when one of their branches reaches a size or geographic footprint that starts to stretch the team’s bandwidth or

EARLY WARNING SIGNS Sartori notes it’s critical to protect your culture because once burnout sets in, it’s hard to undo. Paying attention to behavioral and emotional indicators from your team members can serve as an early warning sign of burnout. “If we notice a team member who may seem more stressed, frustrated, or possessing a different tone than normal, we ask difficult questions to determine what’s going on,”says Allen Sweeney, CEO of APHIX, LLC, based in Frankfort, Kentucky. “Everyone has a life outside of APHIX and sometimes that causes stress at work, and sometimes it’s the other way around. We genuinely try to foster an environment that allows both to flourish.” Snyder says decreased engagement, gaps in communication, customer feed

Teams can become stressed when pushed to meet challenging client de mands and schedules without the proper amount of staffing. Amy Snyder, director of public relations for Ruppert Landscape, based in Laytonsville, Maryland, says rapid growth can put pressure on the team to maintain their high standards of quality while training team members. “We pride ourselves on delivering con sistent service to our customers, so when new work comes in quickly, the team feels the responsibility of keeping that promise while onboarding new employees and integrating new customers.” Austin Salsbery, branch manager for Milosi, based in Hendersonville, Tennessee, says finding the right people to continue to fill their accountability chart is one of their biggest stressors.

Photos: Monarch Landscape Companies

16 The Edge // March/April/May 2026