BEST OF THE WEB: Growth Gone Wild

Landscape companies don’t come with owner’s manuals.
 
Achieving success and managing solid growth is what every entrepreneur strives for when they hang up the sign that states “Open for Business.”
 
Landscape Contractor Jamie Bush posted to the Lawn & Landscape Online Message board whether the only measure of success was managing a big fat landscape company. Is it possible for a company to survive and compete in the green industry without aggressive growth, or is a stagnant company – one maintaining little to zero annual growth – merely a dying company? “Can a company set a sales goal and maintain it successfully, or is this a recipe for disaster,” posts the president of Jamie’s Lawn Service in Plano, Texas.
 
Many contractors questioned whether size was the ultimate goal of the landscape business owner, or whether simply being better than one’s competition created enough opportunities to support or maintain an existing sales base.
 
And a number of other contractors weighed in that they didn’t believe growth was critical to survival. For example, if a landscape contractor’s sales remain constant, his skilled and reliable employees can be retained and he is satisfied with the annual revenue level, then that company could be defined as “successful.”
 
If an account is lost, replace it. Employees leave, replace them. Regardless, doing what it takes to find and maintain a sweet spot is the essence of zero growth.
 
Others, though, posted they prefer to regulate their companies’ growth between active and non-active economic periods.
 
Instead of increasing in size and capacity, growth can focus on getting better and increasing client retention, posts Aaron Smith, owner of S&D Lawn Service in Essex Junction, Vt. “Setting yourself apart from the competition is what will save you from having to sell all of the time,” Smith says. “Besides, if the business is not incredibly profitable then who wants to run $6 million in headaches?”
 
With regard to employees, Chad Stern, owner of Mowing & More in Chevy Chase, Md. posts business growth and getting bigger provide attractive opportunities for workers. “If a company stagnates it is hard to create new opportunities for employees,” he says. “As a company grows crew foremen can be promoted to production managers or account managers.”
 
The notion that a stagnant company is a failing company is unfounded, posts Andrew Aksar, president of Outdoor Finishes in Walkersville, Md.
 
“My company has been stagnant for the last 10 years,” Aksar says. “I have no true desire to grow. I have not grown. And actually, we’re doing rather well.”
 
Contractor Kelly Tohill agrees. He, too, has not “grown” in several years and does not desire to expand the parameters of his landscape business in the foreseeable future, posts the owner of Atlanta-based Tohill Landscape Management. “What I do is try to get better accounts worth more money and get rid of the less profitable ones,” Tohill says. “I am running a smooth operating machine at this point. It has been all about setting up procedures that help us do the same thing everywhere I go.
 
“This has worked for me,” he adds. “And I’m happy and get to do pretty much what I want. You boys can have it. I don’t care about having a huge company. Work less, I say. You’re going to look back and say I should have done more things.”
 
If a landscape contractor isn’t growing through revenue, doesn’t he still grow in other areas of his business that positively impact the bottom line, asks Bill Smallwood, owner of W.I. Smallwood Landscaping in Salem, N.H. “If you are able to increase productivity or efficiency, thus reducing the cost of doing business, you are growing,” Smallwood posts. “If you are able to get better pricing on materials through negotiations, you again are growing.”
 
Some contractors argue that a landscape firm in zero-growth mode isn’t necessarily a stagnant or dying company. For example, a contractor focused on servicing 200 accounts may make more money on those clients than a large-sized landscape firm tending 1,000 customers simply from having to deal with less day-to-day headaches.
 
“I fired and lost a good deal of customers this year,” posts Matthew Schattner, owner of Mat’z Snow & Lawn in Kansasville, Wis. “But I replaced them in a nearly equal dollar amount of work. The new ones are all far closer than what I got rid of. So, did my business actually shrink? Yes, but I’m far more profitable.”