A crowning moment

Most everyone is familiar with the proverb “it takes a village to raise a child,” but two brothers, along with their parents, have strengthened their bond and added to their village by building a business — Royal Landscaping.

Diego and Mario Hernandez say the Phoenix, Arizona-based business is a byproduct of decades of hard work from themselves and their family even though the company wasn’t officially formed until 2018. Mario takes the helm as the company’s president and Diego serves as vice president.

“We started in August of 2018, and it was just myself and my brother,” Diego says. “We also had two guys who believed in us at the time, and we started the company with them on board as well.”

At the time, the pair was focused on doing residential maintenance and hardscape work. In February of 2019, they landed their first HOA account and by April they were servicing five HOAs.

The work continued to flow in, and by 2020 Royal Landscaping was up to 22 employees. Today, the company bolsters 68 employees and 30 trucks to service 28 HOA accounts.

“We went from $600,000 the first year to $1.2 million and then to $3 million and $3.4 million last year,” Mario says. “This year, we’re already way past last year and on track to do over $4 million.”

From humble beginnings

Both Diego and Mario say their parents have instilled a determined work ethic in them early on.

Their father, Juan Carlos Moreno, who now serves as Royal’s CEO, previously worked for another landscape company for over 20 years. When Diego and Mario were young, he encouraged them to go out and service their neighbors’ lawns.

“As far as my dad’s eyes could see down the street of the neighborhood we lived in, we would pick the weeds there,” Mario recalls. “And they would give us a nickel per root — and only if it had the root. At that time, we were saving up for Little Caesars pizza or school clothes.

“Instead of going out and playing, we were more interested in working on our neighbors’ yards,” he adds. “Our dad then got us a lawn mower so we could start mowing lawns. Eventually he taught us how to use the blower and a weed eater, too. We did that all the way through high school. We’d go up to the houses of the girls we had crushes on and we’d talk to them and ask if they wanted their yard done.”

By the time the pair graduated high school, they had about 50 residential customers. They continued providing services to those customers on the side during the weekends even after gaining full-time jobs of their own.

It was during that time that Diego found another passion away from landscaping.

“Back in the day, if you’d have asked me if I thought we’d still be doing landscaping, I probably would’ve said no,” Diego says. “I actually started working in the hotel industry at 17. I was a janitor at a Hilton and worked my way up… I was always a shy kid, but my bosses would push me to do front desk or become a manager... Eventually I was promoted to assistant general manager and was in the industry for eight years.”

Mario says he was the one who originally pushed for starting their own family business after also working for another landscaping company just like Juan Carlos.

“At one point I had the opportunity to work for another landscaping company too and we started thinking — we’re helping somebody else grow their business, so why not try it for ourselves?” Mario says.

Mario admits though that it took a while for the family to determine Royal’s business model and how they’d differentiate themselves from the hundreds of other landscaping companies in the Phoenix market.

“Originally, we wanted to be solely a tree company, but we saw the insurance was a lot and didn’t really have money for one of those trucks. And then we thought about being an installation company,” Mario recalls. “They tend to pay better, and you don’t have to deal with the customers as much because it’s one job and then on to the next.”

Eventually, after receiving input from their dad, they settled on HOA maintenance as their focus.

“What made us want to do the HOAs world was I saw that’s where the money was at,” Mario says. “We’d been doing residential and were getting paid $80 a visit or $120 maximum but these HOAs would pay you thousands of dollars, so it was just a better market.”

Taking things up a notch

With Juan Carlos’ connections, the family was able to find valued HOAs to partner with.

“Because my dad was working for another company, he was already in the HOA world,” Mario says. “That also helped us confirm this was the way to go.

“People knew my dad from the industry and managers already knew him, so that’s what really got us into it,” he adds. “We already had our foot in the door because of those relationships. Plus, there’s more money to be made.”

An added bonus the brothers found after switching to HOA work was the ease in communication with clients. There were fewer issues that seemed to just pop up.

“It turned out to be less bosses, too,” Mario notes. “When you’re doing houses, that’s 50 individual bosses you have to make happy and deal with.”

In addition to providing HOA and commercial maintenance, Royal Landscaping has been able to add on tree and irrigation divisions.

“We have five irrigation techs with their own individual service trucks, and we also have an enhancement division as well,” Mario says.

Diego and Mario say that Royal’s growth really started trending in the right direction after Juan Carlos came on board in 2019. They add that his knowledge has been invaluable.

“When our dad came on board, that was like our secret weapon,” Mario says. “His 20 years of experience and relationships were huge. He’s such a logical kind of numbers guy… he sat us down and we set up profit margins and minimums we’d charge, and we really started generating money after that.”

This focus on the financials not only grew profits but helped the company identify ideal clients and part ways with some jobs that weren’t worth it.

“About a year into my dad coming in, we had dropped about 16 communities,” Mario says. “I didn’t know better so I thought getting all these communities was great. Once you sit and do the numbers, you realize you’re spinning your wheels and wasting your time on some communities that aren’t paying anything. You could have two communities that pay you more than 16 little ones. That really skyrocketed our growth.”

And with their sights set on $4 million this year, Mario says the best advice he’d give any fledgling family-owned company is pretty straightforward.

“Just sit down and have a plan,” he says. “Know your numbers and write down real goals. If a job or a service isn’t making money don’t do it… I think about this all the time and tell my employees — we’re not running a charity. We’re running a for-profit business. Know what’s making you money and what you’re good at.”

Diego and Mario say they don’t anticipate Royal’s growth slowing down anytime soon. In fact, they are actively working to scale the company even bigger.

“Our end goal is just to get as big as God will let us,” Mario says. “We’d love to be multi-state and compete with some of the biggest companies.”

Family extends beyond blood

But to reach all these lofty goals, the brothers know they have to focus on maintaining the heart of the business — its employees and the workplace culture.

The brothers’ leadership style is simple and harkens back to a firm family belief — treat others how you’d like to be treated.

“One of the biggest things I always say is to be genuine,” Mario says. “We’ve worked with these guys before and we’ve been regular employees before, so we know how we’d want to be treated. We knew what we liked and what we didn’t and wanted to treat everyone like people.”

Mario notes it’s also easy to improve the company’s culture as he and his family are so instilled in the community and the local Hispanic culture — as are Royal’s employees.

“We have a lot of family. We speak their language here in Arizona. A lot of the workforce is Hispanic. We know what they like, their tendencies, how they like to be rewarded and how to manage them. Those things have been really key for us,” he says.

Diego says there was one major takeaway from his years in the hotel industry that he made sure to do when starting Royal.

“One thing I noticed early on is if you’re going to do something, you always have to do it,” he says. “For example, we do an Employee of the Month. We did it at my hotel I worked at for two months and then they took it away because they said it got too expensive. You could tell people were upset right away. So, when we do something here, we stick to it. That’s what everybody appreciates.”

In fact, Diego adds that over the last five years, they’ve continuously added to the Employee of the Month program.

“Now it’s not just $100 bonus, but we have a plaque, and everybody gets to see their name on there,” he says.

Royal Landscaping is also covering 75% of its employees’ medical, dental and vision insurance, along with giving them important cultural holidays off of work — something Diego and Mario say is truly appreciated.

“Happy people will bring on more happy people,” Mario adds. “Once you get to the point of 20 people, you have an established culture. They know the rules and know that we’re going to take care of them. We all eat off this table and we’re going to share the pie, but to do so we’ve all got to put in the work.”

The company also instituted $300 referral bonuses about three years ago for anyone who bring in others to join the Royal family — not just employees. New employees must work a minimum of 90 days in order for the bonus to be paid.

“They look forward to getting that money and they’re bringing on good people,” Mario says. “We have a list of people who want to come work for us, but right now we just don’t have enough work to bring everybody in.”

The brothers remember an instance where one person earned $900 for recruiting three new employees who’ve all stayed on board.

Diego adds another company goal is to continue to inspire and educate its employees — whether that’s through promoting from within or paying for continuing education courses and certifications.

“We want to continue to take care of the guys who are here with us,” Diego says. “We want to continue to give them opportunities.”

Forever faithful

Yet Diego and Mario say none of Royal’s successes would have been possible if the family wasn’t able to work together so well.

“We’re all so close,” Diego says. “Growing up, our father taught us the true meaning of work and the rewards that come with it. And our mom, Maria, has bene the fire behind the family. She’s always the one to give great input and motivate us. She puts our feet back on the ground.”

They add that it’s their parents who help them see the big picture and think long-term about the future of Royal Landscaping.

Though the brothers confess that, at first, they weren’t sure their business would be able to withstand some turbulence when they were trying to learn how to work together for real.

“A lot of people told us ‘good luck’ and said family businesses never work,” Diego recalls. “Mario and I have been working together since we were little and have struggled together since Day 1. We’ve always gone 50/50 on everything.

“Twice in the history of Royal we almost split up,” Mario says. “The biggest struggle we had there were there were just too many cooks in the kitchen, but it was so new and we didn’t know better.”

To overcome these early arguments, Diego says the brothers and their father had to sit down and figure out who was taking on what role.

“We almost always parted ways due to the lack of experience,” he says. “At the beginning, our individual roles were never really talked about or assigned… Another issue we ran into was relatively along the same lines was the feeling of who was doing more or less than one another. This went hand-in-hand with finding our roles or our place within the company. With time we found the solution to all of our internal issues was communication.”

The pair acknowledges that once everyone took on their own individualized roles, things ran much more smoothly. Nowadays, the three men try to find time to talk daily, weekly and monthly to address any issues and hold each other to the highest standards.

“The greed part is the thing that gets people, so once you eliminate that, you know you’re doing this for the betterment of your family as a whole and that allows you to overcome and struggle,” Diego says.

The Hernandez brothers say that while they try not to bring any problems from work home with them, it’s inevitable that the business is discussed off the clock.

“Although we try to avoid certain topics or events, we definitely do talk about business at home. We’re all so heavily vested and involved in it that it’s hard not to,” Diego says. “Speaking about it at home also really allows us to get our mom’s outside point of view, too…Her outside point of view has really been critical to our success as well. Although she is not entirely involved in the day-to-day decisions and activities, she plays a key role in final decision making.”

That’s why it’s not all about money for Diego and Mario. It’s about getting the opportunity to live out an ongoing family dream and show up to work every day with your favorite people by your side.

“To us, it’s fun,” Diego says. “They always told us in school to work or do something that you love so it never feels like work. It sounds cliché, but I truly do wake up in the morning and get excited to go to work.”

The author is an assistant editor with Lawn & Landscape.