Cody Kuebler started mowing neighbors' lawns at 11 for around $25 a job. By 25, he had turned that childhood side hustle into CLK Landscape Construction, a landscaping company that reached $4.5 million in sales last year.
The business did not scale in a straight line. Kuebler hired friends so he could take on more customers, expanded into snow removal, and later bought riding lawn mowers with wagons attached. He set up the company as a limited liability company in March 2020, just as the pandemic was getting underway.
That timing mattered. Over the next two years, sales ballooned nearly ninefold to around $730,000. Kuebler said the pandemic kept people home and looking at their lawns, and that the landscaping market boomed.
Growth also forced harder capital decisions. As he took on larger jobs, Kuebler needed heavier equipment. He said a skid loader cost about $80,000, and he needed a loan. At 19, he said many salespeople did not take him seriously. Eventually, he found a dealer willing to back him.
Today, his business has nine skid loaders and two mini skid loaders, plus 18 trucks, 12 trailers, 2 tractors, and a mini excavator. He said the equipment is worth about $2.5 million, with some owned and some leased.
Kuebler also learned the cost of moving too fast. In 2022, he shifted from serving homeowners to residential and commercial builders. That brought underbidding, missed deadlines, lost customers, a drainage mistake that required a job to be redone, and equipment breakdowns that cut into profits.
Even so, the numbers kept climbing: $1.1 million in sales in 2023, $3.2 million in 2024, and $4.5 million last year. Kuebler said he works from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., six days a week, and pays himself a $100,000 annual salary, plus a bonus that can increase total compensation by 80% to 100%, depending on net results.
The other advantage is family alignment. Kuebler's father, who gave him his first new mower, now works for him as operations manager.
Founders who get this right move faster because they treat early revenue as fuel, not fantasy. Kuebler's story is not about a lucky break; it is about compounding small wins, buying equipment only when the pipeline can support it, and accepting that growth comes with failure, pressure, and long hours.
