If you ever meet Jim Webb, owner of Valley Landscape Services Inc. in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, just remember one thing — don’t call him a cowboy. “I ain’t no cowboy,” explains the southern California transplant. “I’m a California boy who just lives around cowboys.” As a matter of fact, the closest he comes to anything out of the Old West is his practice of being a straight shooter with his employees and customers. “I believe in being honest in my business,” relates Webb, “and it hasn’t done me wrong yet.”
His story in the landscaping business goes back to when he was in his early 20s in Huntington Beach, California, and decided that he could make some money mowing neighbors’ yards. It was then that Webb began to pick up on the business of customer service and being proud of his work. However, in the mid 1980s, he was feeling the need for a change of pace.
After visiting his sister in Jackson a few times, he thought it would be a good idea to move there. “I was not happy with my lifestyle in California, and I felt the easygoing pace of Jackson gave me an opportunity to do something different.”
Webb did do something altogether different from the landscape industry when he moved to Jackson; he took on jobs in the hospitality industry, finding steady work in restaurants and at local ski resorts. All the while, he knew that he could make a landscape maintenance business work. “With all of the high-profile properties being built and absentee owners (residents who live in one place for only a portion of the year) in Jackson, I knew that there was a real need,” recalls Webb. “I thought I could make a go of offering lawn care to these people.”
As he slowly worked his way into the hospitality business and began to gain people’s trust, he found that the industry was changing. He would need to go full-time in the lawn care business as soon as he could. “When I was a ticket checker supervisor, the ski resort was sold to new owners,” explains Webb. “When the new management wanted to send everyone to ‘charm school,’ I knew it was time to get serious about lawn care.”
Professional Lawn Care Pioneer
After deciding to move forward with the landscaping business as his only source of income, Webb figured that he needed to have some better equipment. Over the next few years, he bought six Toro 44-inch Pro Line walk-behinds, and grew his business to three crews. All the while, he was careful to be a good student. “As we grew, I tried to learn as much about the lawn care business as I could. One of my focuses was on specialized fertilization programs.”
Valley Landscape Services began to deliver not only good customer service, but it was beginning to be known for its ability to resurrect neglected yards and make existing ones look beautiful. Although Webb credits a Salt Lake City friend for most of his fertilizer education, he describes his knowledge base as “not rocket science.” In addition, the only reason his customers allowed him to customize their fertilizer applications was because they trusted him, he points out. “From day one, my customers have believed what I say, and that has made it easier to introduce new ideas and technologies to them.”
This was the same trust that Webb himself had to exercise one day in 1996 when one of his customers, Hank Becks, who originates from Florida, told him that he should try this “little yellow mower” he was familiar with called the Walker. “I owe a lot of credit to Hank,” admits Webb. “When he introduced me to Walkers, I was a little skeptical, but they have changed my business.”
After purchasing four Walkers, Valley Landscape Services went from running three crews of two people to two crews of two people with two Walkers on each crew. The company now runs six Walkers on three crews with two backups.“Today, we have 271 accounts and mow 191 of them each week, for a total of 72 acres,” explains Webb. “Without the Walkers, there is no way that we could be as efficient as we are or get the jobs done as well as we do.”
Webb recently introduced another efficiency to his company, the Klipping King grass trailer. This self-contained dumping system allows operators to dump catcher loads directly into a box that rides up the side of the trailer and dumps into the raised-side trailer bed. “I am not sure what we ever did without one of these trailers,” tells Webb. “But I can tell you that we will never again be without one.”
Currently, Valley Landscaping runs just one of the Klipping King trailers. But Webb says he would like to eventually have one for each crew.
Taming The Wild West
Operating a business in the high-profile tourist town of Jackson Hole requires a balancing act between offering an attractive work environment for employees and maintaining accounts at the level that customers have come to expect. Valley Landscape Services has grown to be one of the largest landscape maintenance companies in this city of 20,000. Webb credits the company’s success to carefully monitoring its image with four forms of advertising. “Our trucks, our employees, our customers and our work does our advertising for us,” says Webb. And to hear him tell it, there is little margin for error in this small town. “Jackson is small and everyone talks. So if you make a mistake and don’t make it right, the bad news will travel fast.”
This balancing act is even more challenging since the company subcontracts all tree, irrigation, gardening and landscape installation work. “I have to be very careful to hire good subs,” tells Webb. “The reality of the whole thing is that our name is on the line every time a sub pulls up to one of my accounts.”
The company relies on two longtime employees, Walt Omlor and Scott Wiley, to help monitor day-today operations. In turn, Webb has decided to offer snowplowing services this coming winter to be able to keep these two employees on all year long. “Each has made strong commitments to me, and both are getting married,” he explains. “So, I know that they are serious about having stability in their lives. They have helped bring that same stability to the business.”
Many other Valley Landscape employees are drawn from the hospitality industry in Jackson. A few them will work at one of the local ski resorts in the winter and then come back for the remainder of the year.
Riding His Range
According to Webb, one of his biggest rewards today is that his business is now at the point where he can supervise the work being done by his crews. That gives him the ability to show up at a customer’s house and perform additional work or extra work, making them feel that Valley Landscape is really interested in the overall condition of their property. He describes most of the work as part of the job, but he is careful to point out that when additional work of a larger scope needs to be done on a customer’s property, they never doubt his suggestion or question his bills. They have grown to trust him.
“It’s a real simple formula,” relates Webb. “My customers have trusted me all along, and I have never given them any reason to question this trust. So, when they give me overall responsibility, they know and believe that I have their best interest in mind.”
What does the future hold for Valley Landscape Services? Webb says he intends to keep doing what is working — being honest and open with his employees and customers. From a planning standpoint, he says that he would like to learn more about tree and shrub care, and be able to add that to Valley’s repertoire of in-house services.
So, if you ever make it to Jackson Hole and meet this misplaced surfer, it will be easy to see that honesty is his lariat, fairness and sincerity are his six shooters, and integrity is his 10-gallon hat.
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