Episode Overview

Two of the company's biggest mowers broke down the day the rain finally stopped.

Two weeks of nonstop downpours had already left customers wondering why their lawns weren't getting cut. Then the equipment failed, right when there was finally a chance to catch up.

Brittany Burgess had spent years in the trades before she and her husband, Chris, launched a landscaping company with a close friend. Four months in, that friend was sidelined by a medical emergency, leaving just the two of them to run it.

"I adore my husband so much. I would do anything for him just about."

They split roles the way they'd split their household — Chris in the field, Burgess in the office, running the business on Crew Control to keep the trucks moving.

Then came the storm season that broke them. Torrential rain, dead mowers, crews catching up on overgrown lawns by hand while customers threatened to walk.

"It just got to this point where it felt impossible and I just started to question, 'Why are we even doing this? Is this good for us? Do we want this?'"

Chris asked her directly. She said no — fast enough that it surprised her.

"We realized, oh, both of us are holding on for the other person without actually wanting it ourselves."

Closing the business meant confronting what they owed the employees who depended on them.

"You have an obligation to your employees, but if it has to fail, for whatever reason, they're gonna be okay. They really are."

Every employee who left landed somewhere better — higher pay, work they actually wanted.

Burgess doesn't call the venture a loss. Chris has a line for it.

"People pay this much for a master's degree, so I'm just gonna consider it like a master's degree."

What survived the business was the marriage — and a clearer set of rules for running one.

"Define those roles. Put it down on paper. Who owns what?"

Brittany Burgess recently joined Amanda Salvatore on the "Toolbox for the Trades" podcast to discuss:

• [4:00] Early challenges that led to the breaking point of a couple-owned landscaping company 

• [13:11] Dealing with the immediate fallout of shuttering a business and breaking the news to employees

• [19:34] Why correctly identifying roles and responsibilities is essential to a family business’s survival

Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:

• ServiceTitan

To hear more stories from the trades, subscribe to Toolbox for the Trades on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or here.

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