Photos: (Above) Yellowstone Landscape
activities to sell our services to the neighbors of our existing customer base which reduced drive time and maximized the time we spend serving customers,” Jones says. The company has also expanded in Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas. “We are constantly looking at mini- mizing drive time,” Jones says. “We typ- ically have one team member in a truck but when you consider a landscaping crew of four people in a vehicle, that’s not just one-man hour of driving. In that situation, a 20-minute drive is really an 80-minute drive.” The company gives intense focus to organizing work in such a way that minimizes travel time between stops
“Today we are very careful and strategic in targeting new clients and new locations based on where the labor force is available to us. We don’t want to stretch good talent too thin and we have to be realistic about how much labor support we have.” - Dan DeMont, vice president of Juniper Landscaping
36 The Landscape Professional //November/December 2021
in order to maximize service produc- tivity. But Jones says that there are other benefits to growing with multiple locations that are smaller and more manageable. “When you keep your span of control
narrow, and your service centers relatively small, they are just a lot easier to manage,” Jones explains. “Growth happens around each physical location a lot more aggressively and your productivity improves. But it’s not overwhelming for each service center to stay on top of the customers’ and the team members’ needs.” Massey has also maintained great control throughout their growth by “systematizing everything,” Jones says. “We joke that there are three ways of doing things here — the Massey Way, the Massey Way, or the Massey Way,” Jones says. “We’ve found ways that are proven to work so we stick with them. In my role in quality assurance, I often find that when something goes wrong, it was because standard operating procedures weren’t followed.” Jones says that his best leveling-up advice would be to write down your policies and procedures before you grow. When you do, you can replicate what you know works.
LEVELING UP THE FRANCHISE WAY: LOTS TO LEARN FROM THE FRANCHIS- ING SYSTEM Weed Man is a 50-year brand in the making and has a growth story from which plenty of lessons can be gleaned. Jennifer Lemcke, CEO of Weed Man says that being “laser-focused” on fran- chisees’ success has been the reason behind their growth. Her family first started as franchise owners in Canada, then ultimately became the franchisor. But since 2018, they’ve taken over the worldwide brand. Lemcke says that they want every decision they make to help grow the bottom line for their individual franchisees. “To do that, we’ve had to measure everything and use the metrics to fill in any gaps,” Lemcke explains. “If there were problems, we were identifying them quickly and implementing solu- tions.”
But so often, lawn and landscape business owners operate without a strong understanding of where their company stands. Lemcke says that those who want to “level up” would benefit from starting to measure all po- tential data points within the company — from leads to sales to performance. Then, companies can make better-edu- cated decisions to facilitate growth. Lemcke says the other growth message out of the Weed Man story is the benefit of having systems and processes. Once you figure out what works, define it and replicate it. From
Weed Man
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