Doing Business, the Business Way

Gib Charles, owner of Greening-Up Landscape Maintenance, Inc., Fort Collins, Colorado, is a prototypical landscape maintenance contractor. He is successful, he has a great reputation and he has built his business by following sound business principles. But like all too many businessmen and far too many contractors, the road to the top of his profession was more winding that it had to be because, in Gib's words, "he didn't know how to run a business."

Born and raised in Normal, Illinois, Gib moved to Fort Collins in 1973 to attend Colorado State University. He never left. Attracted by the mountains, the lifestyle and cross-country skiing, Gib found a new home. After college, he worked in the mountains marking trails on his skis and later found a job at a local ski shop doing what he wanted to do most, cross country ski and talk about the sport with others. To fill in "boring" summers, he started mowing lawns.

As Gib relates, he used to mow lawns on his dad's rental properties while growing up in Normal. A $50 gift from his grandmother helped him buy his first mower in Fort Collins. A truck with 130,000 miles on it provided the transportation. The year was 1978. He had no business plan, but was still able to grow the business. Before the season ended, he needed a helper so he hired the girl he was dating.

For five years, Gib skied and mowed, in that order. Mowing gave him something to do in the summer, other than counting the days before the first snow would fall.

That changed after he married Sandy, his first employee, and after they started a family.

"It was either get serious about the maintenance business or get a full-time job" he tells. "So skiing abruptly turned into a hobby and lawn maintenance became a career."

Symbolically, that same year Greening-Up retained its first commercial property, a sorority house, and Gib bought his first mower that had a deck larger than 21 inches.

"We were proud of our first commercial property," Gib relates. "Later we found there was more to mowing commercial than pride, there was actually profit involved."

In 1983, Gib picked up a couple of condominiums and began forming relationships with property managers and board members that would eventually help steer his business away from residential and toward maintaining more condominium complexes. Today, 14 out of Greening-Up's 30 clients are condominiums and multiple-family properties. Neighborhood "greenbelts," a factory complex and two residential properties comprise the rest.

Business Savvy

The transition to becoming a serious maintenance contractor would not have been complete and maybe it wouldn't have happened at all if Gib had not joined the Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado in 1984. He attributes those early management seminars and discussions with peers to the development of important business skills. Being a psychology major in school didn't train Gib to know the difference between fixed and variable costs or to understand the mystery of return on investment.

But Gib learned. He learned how to cost out jobs, to bid and to track costs, which he considers the most valuable tool anyone in this business can have. Every question contractors raise about their business has a financial implication whether they know it or not, notes Gib. To answer those questions and to be able to budget successfully, they have to know how much they're spending - they have to track their costs - and they have to know how much they're making.

Zero Defection

If tracking is Gib's most valuable business tool, customer retention is his primary business goal. The two go hand-in-hand, since you can't track what you don't have.

Gib is proud to admit several of his first commercial accounts are still with him, including the sorority house. "Our goal is to provide such great service a customer would never want to leave us," he reports.

Like most successful companies, Gib found a niche and learned to serve it successfully. His niche, the condominium/multifamily market, has the reputation of being a difficult one to serve. Not so, says Gib. His experience has been nothing but positive.

"Maybe it is Fort Collins, maybe I'm lucky," he adds, "but this market has been good to us." Forever modest, Gib doesn't admit his success hinges in large part on plain hard work and dedication, and a 100 percent effort that helps ensure zero defection is more than a pipe dream. Gib, for example, doesn't miss condominium board meetings, many of which meet on a monthly basis. At more than a few of them, he does at least one "walk about" a year, where he actually escorts board members around the property, shows them what was done last year, points out problem areas and talks about revisions.

Interaction with board members is essential to success in this market, notes Gib. So is developing good business relationships with property managers. Even though a board will make the final decision about a contractor, the property manager is very influential. Earn their respect, adds Gib, and they will remain loyal.