Take me to the top: How Focal Pointe climbed the Lawn & Landscape Top 100 list

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the November 2025 print edition of Lawn & Landscape under the headline “Take me to the top."

I host a Podcast called “To the Pointe of Gratitude” that explores questions around success. What does it look like, how do you define it and what are the pitfalls?

For June’s podcast episode, I had Joel Sullivan on as my guest; he’s a great leader within a great family business — Sullivan’s Landscaping in Delaware. They do about $15 million in revenue and he shared that his company’s BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) was to be on the Lawn & Landscape Top 100 list. That was his focus, so much so, he said a football player has a higher likelihood of playing in the NFL than a landscaping company has in making the Top 100. Remarkably, he knew the exact odds of each.

Although Joel may be more passionate about that goal than most, he’s not alone in his desire to achieve Top 100 status. Since Focal Pointe broke through a couple of years ago, I have had other business owners express their admiration and seek advice for the journey. In the past, I didn’t think much about it, but since it has come up more directly recently, it made me wonder if those of us on the list know something others don’t, or did we just outlast everyone else? I think some of both may be true.

It seems to me there are three camps on the list. First, you have the legacy companies who are landscapers at heart and grew their business over time. Second, there would be the investment companies who are scaling in the landscape space. Then, you’d have the third group, which is a hybrid of the two — legacy companies that have brought on outside investment, but have still retained their brand’s unique culture.

Although Focal Pointe has made four acquisitions, I’m not going to pretend to know the secrets of smart investment companies and how they think one best drives value. They see the world through data, metrics, EBITDA and I’m more inclined to see it through a truck windshield. If you’ll accept my limited view, I’ll be happy to share the secrets I believe you need to scale your landscaping company to make the Top 100.

figure out your service offering by identifying what he calls the “Hedgehog Concept,” which is the intersection of three questions: What are you passionate about? What can you be the best in the world at? What can you make money doing?

• Once you’ve figured out your service offering, identify what about your approach to business is more compelling to customers than others who offer the same thing. What is your competitive advantage? It seems the most successful companies either figure out a way to provide a cheaper solution or a better experience than their competitors. Pick a lane, then be unreasonably inflexible in your expectations from yourself and others in dominating that lane.

• Get absolute clarity on your core purpose and core values, then build a culture around them. Hire people who are inspired by what you stand for and reward them for living the company’s values. If you imagine all your employees as a team of horses, and your business is the wagon, that team must know where they’re going and have good reason to run together. That’s accomplished through your culture, and a winning culture can easily answer, “Why would someone want to work here rather than somewhere else?” As you think about that, it’s not about Friday Funday or giving away big screen TVs. How much do you and your leaders care about others on a personal level?

, you’re in business to build a business, not fund a lifestyle. Hire one of the several good industry consultants to help you build out your budget with a 10%+ net profit and manage to the budget. Then with those profits, resist the desire to spend it on the “nice-to-haves” and stick to the “must-haves.” If what you’re spending money on isn’t strengthening your business, then you don’t want it bad enough.

• Perform work and deliver a service level that so perfectly resonates with your target market, they become your sales team. If you have a constant flow of repeat business, and those happy clients are telling their friends, you can’t help but grow.

• Find joy in serving others, and if you make a mistake, make it right. For that matter, if within reason, if the customer made the mistake — make it right. Too often, I’ll hear business owners tell me how they put a customer in their place. That’s not how you grow a business.

• If you think of yourself as deserving, or equal to, any of the Top 100 companies, which you should, then you need to behave as if you’re already there. How do you dress, speak, write and behave? What about the appearance of your fleet, yard, shop, office space or your desk? What message of professionalism are you projecting to the world? What do you expect from your teams? Are you modeling the behaviors you expect?

• Hire a leadership team to address your weaknesses while still being aligned with the company culture. Business ownership requires a lot of skills and you’re good at a few of them. Surround yourself with people who can understand you as a person, recognize your blind spots and course correct with you.

• Join a peer group. Business ownership is hard and can be lonely. It’s not fair to your loved ones or your dog to have to constantly listen to your problems every night. Get around people who really understand and have solutions. You want your friends and family to love your business and cheering you on, not resenting it.

• Be open to teaming up with another company. In 2015, the hurdle for the Top 100 club was $15.8 million and this year, it was $38.5 million. That means you’ll need to grow a very respectable 9.32% just to keep up. Focal Pointe got into the Top 100 through consistently growing around 20% per year, but we didn’t break through until we made some acquisitions. And now, it’s not just the original Focal Pointe team who is proud to be on the list. The team members of four other companies are enjoying a level of pride.

I think you want to be thoughtful in deciding if this is really how you want to define business success. If that’s your “do or die” goal, you may be at risk of making decisions that could undermine the real currency in life. Commit to the foundational things as a person — empathy, humility, honesty, work ethic, continuous improvement and family, among others. Wake up every day, motivated to walk that path head down, one foot in front of the other.

The author is founder & CEO of Focal Pointe based in St. Louis, Missouri.