Bill Wert is a restless sort, but he and his wife, Debbie, say they have found home in Tallahassee and are putting down roots.
What is extraordinary about Wert's entrepreneurship is that he is taking on local TruGreen Chemlawn operations in the wake of poor performance and a telemarketing sales approach he says left many cold to his company's services.
That was then, this is now, he said.
From the time it was established until earlier this year, TruGreen has been a corporate operation, owned by TruGreen Chemlawn and managed by the company's hired managers.
"Tallahassee was always a smaller store for them," Wert said.
Last year, the Tallahassee operation posted $1 million in produced revenue. While the number was somewhat consistent with past operations, it still made Tallahassee one of the smallest in the system. In contrast, the operation Wert lead in southwest Florida had a volume of more than 12 times the Tallahassee total.
"As a smaller operation, Tallahassee was often used at the training ground for younger, newer managers," he said.
Their inexperience showed on the bottom line.
Finally, TruGreen lost patience and decided to license the operation to a private franchisee, if they could find one. They did in the person of Wert.
"I had done this many times in my career," he said, "go into screwed up operations and fix them."
And after 20 years in the lawn care business and six hurricanes in two years down south, he figured it was time to move on.
"I usually get restless after a couple of years and start looking for the next opportunity," he said.
Now he owns the place and says he's staying put.
Wert and his wife took over the local operation April 1, just a bit too late to really put together an effective sales effort for the 2006 lawn care season. Still, his attention to customer service, personal management and customer contact have kept the business operating near its previous level of activity.
"Customer service is what it's all about," he said.
So what does it feel like to emerge from the corporate world to become your own boss?
Great, he said. First, he loves the work. Second, in the event he needs to do his own lawn, he can take a couple of hours to do that without feeling guilty about it.
And he feels that having a local owner is the best option for TruGreen's area clients. He personally watches over the care of customers' lawns, trees and shrubs and fire ant control in a way none of the hired managers ever could or would do, And he has 20 years experience, beating by at least a decade any of the previous managers in Tallahassee.
He has nothing but praise for the executives at TruGreen. Despite the fact he was one of their most successful managers, they came to him with this opportunity he said. Then, at a critical time in negotiating the funding of the deal, he needed emergency heart surgery. That placed everything on hold. Not only did they wait, but his TruGreen employee health benefit paid his medical bills, and TruGreen granted him the time off he needed for recuperation.
"This is a great company," he said, "and we are here to stay in Tallahassee."
