As a Walker Mower user and reader of Walker Talk magazine, you’ve lived the story and read about others who’ve done the same. Chances are you started out mowing lawns very early in life. Your first customers were your neighbors. Obtaining a driver’s license allowed you to branch out of the neighborhood while in high school, and later, after graduation, you may have immediately hung your own shingle. If not, maybe college called, or you tried your hand at another career and even worked for another contractor prior to starting your own company.
After hiring a friend or two to help grow the business and landing a few higher-end residential properties, a customer, possibly a company president, asks you to maintain his commercial property. You do, and others follow, with requests to provide additional services. Your company begins to target commercial accounts that want, or even demand, full service. You take on more employees, buy some construction-type equipment and vehicles, and add new crews.
A bigger facility is in your future and you may even be considering adding a satellite or branch location. While the road has opened up new growth opportunities, it has also raised more than a few obstacles. The most successful Walker Mower users take advantage of the former while learning quickly how to surmount challenges.
Growing Pains
Twelve years ago, Michael’s Complete Lawn Care in Wichita, Kansas (Walker Talk 39), was generating roughly $400,000 in sales annually with a couple of mowing crews and four or five people. Today, owner Michael Ackerman sends out five mowing crews, along with two landscaping crews, enhancement crews, and lawn care crews.
He identifies four growth levels that have come, each with its own unique set of challenges. “Before we reached $1 million in sales, several friends were on my payroll,” he relates. “Now I have just one. As we grew, it became more difficult to retain friends in a business environment.”
After reaching the $1 million plateau, systems and cash flow become more important, Ackerman adds, along with the need to delegate responsibilities. “At the $2 million to $3 million levels, more regulations followed, and insurance costs skyrocketed with more equipment, more employees and more exposure.
“I found it necessary to have formal safety and training programs in place,” he adds, noting that employees are now required to become certified before operating specific equipment.
To help delegate responsibility, Ackerman created division-level managers and recently added a sales manager. His father, who joined the company in 2001, maintains the facility and equipment.
Possibly a function of growth, Ackerman found that productivity levels, especially among maintenance crews, were not keeping pace with budget demands. He implemented a new system last July, paying crew members per job instead of per hour. So far, so good, he says.
Pain Relief
Foothills Landscape Maintenance in Windsor, Colorado (Walker Talk 35), offered maintenance service only to residential customers for the first three or four years it was in business. Over the next 10 years, partners Nate Caldwell and Shane McCoy orchestrated a move into the commercial market, grew employee rolls to more than 60, and added a myriad of services, not to mention opening a new branch and later selling it.
“As you grow, you get more headaches; it’s that simple,” says Caldwell. “One big one for most contractors is spring cash flow, but by far our biggest one is labor. As the economy improves it becomes more difficult to retain good employees.”
Last year, he noted that his company filed an average of 2 to 2.5 W2 forms per position, which put pressure on both growth and training. Safety takes an even higher priority with employee turnover, and with 30 trucks on the road every day, accidents can happen. “Company-wide safety meetings and safety policies have become mandatory,” Caldwell emphasizes.
As he points out, there’s no easy and direct way to solve the labor dilemma. It slowed what had been a healthy double-digit growth and likely was partially the impetus for selling a three-year-old branch location in Cheyenne, Wyoming. “As companies grow, I believe owners naturally learn to lean more on suppliers, too,” Caldwell adds. “They can help in many ways by delivering supplies directly to a site, delivering parts, and so forth. The key is to treat them as partners and avoid beating them up on price.”
Jason Fawcett was 20 years old when he appeared in Walker Talk 26. At the time, he wore two hats: one as a professional firefighter and the other as owner of Elizabeth River Lawn & Landscape in Suffolk, Virginia. His small, two-crew company has grown more than ten-fold since then, and the now former firefighter operates three locations.
Speaking from experience, he says the root of all evil is growing too fast. “As you evolve, you need to manage growth,” Fawcett emphasizes. “Saying ‘no’ isn’t a bad thing.” His company has transitioned from maintaining all residential properties to providing full-service landscape management to commercial establishments.
He notes two challenges associated with growing fast: equipment expenditures and travel time. To contain equipment costs, his company recently instituted two shifts: one from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and the other from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. Two small satellite locations can be managed efficiently, and they cut down average travel time from 45 to 25 minutes.
Opportunities Abound
Although working primarily in the commercial market, Fawcett says he still does some work for homeowners and, more recently, created a golf course division to manage an 18-hole course near his office. “It’s kind of exciting,” he adds. “We manage the entire course, from providing turf care and maintaining the fairways, to setting cups and mowing the greens.” He has also started a consulting business, the Fawcett Consulting Group.
The other two contractors have also found opportunities in slightly different areas. Foothills, for example, now provides an erosion control service and manages ponds to control algae. The latter allows the partners to take advantage of their degrees in fish and wildlife biology.
To broaden its full-service offering, Michael’s Complete Lawn Care has added parking lot sweeping. More recently, the company moved to a new location where it shares space with another landscape contractor. “The move gives us a better location and more room,” says Ackerman. “We also rent equipment from one another and subcontract a few services. Our company provides lawn care service for them while they perform our irrigation installation.”
It’s not uncommon for Walker users to start the same way and face many of the same challenges as they evolve. Every company is unique, though. At some point, successful companies surmount the challenges, assume the personality and strengths of their owners, and take advantage of new market opportunities.
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