Blossoming opportunities

Paul Rizzuto spent decades in the corporate world, but when his company asked him to relocate, he knew it was time for a change.

The Florida native decided instead to start a landscaping company with his son, Austin Smith.

“My son, who is 33, has always been doing landscaping From right when he was out of school, he’s owned his own small company,” Rizzuto says. “But he’s always been a one-man band. He said to me one day, ‘Why don’t we do this together?’”

And that’s how Orange Blossom Lawn Care was born.

“This was April 2019 when we put it all together,” Rizzuto says. “We sat down, came up with a name and thought about what the business model would be and how we’d structure it. We wanted to do residential work and keep it in a small area. Maybe a 10-mile radius.”

By 2021 the company reached $205,000 in revenue. The following year they grew by 49% and surpassed $400,000 in revenue.

Nowadays, Rizzuto says the company is growing by leaps and bounds. He predicts they will break the $1 million barrier by the end of 2024.

“As of today, we’ve acquired three other small companies and are sitting with about 240 accounts,” he says. “We are the service providers for Costco and Buc-ee’s — which are huge clients of ours that multi-million-dollar companies had before us. We ended up taking the business from those places because of what we do and how we do it.”

Rizzuto also attributes their success to the thriving area of St. Johns, Florida, where the company is based.

Back to the beginning

But Orange Blossom hasn’t always been budding with opportunities. Rizzuto says he remembers the early days fondly when he and his son were out pounding the pavement trying to drum up new business.

“On May 10, 2019, just the two of us with our printed business cards, we picked neighborhoods we thought would do good for us and we just started driving around. We parked and put cards in door jams or handed them out to homeowners and we did that for five days the first week,” he recalls. “The first week we had two phone calls. And then it began to grow. At first, we had enough accounts to fill half of Monday and then we’d start handing out more cards — and then we had enough accounts to fill Monday and part of Tuesday.”

Fairly quickly though, Rizzuto and Smith were able to fill up their week with plenty of jobs.

“I was out doing the work with my son every day,” Rizzuto adds. “It was just the two of us and it got to the point where he and I were doing like 24 accounts a day, five days a week.”

Though not in the field as much now, with a small team of 12 employees, Rizzuto says his clients still receive personalized service from him — something he says makes a big difference.

“When you called to get a quote, you got my direct phone,” he says. “It’s still like that today. All my customers know me and email me. Even though we now have a customer service department and email addresses and all that… quite honestly my customers know that if they ask me a question, they get an answer straight from me.”

Radius revising

As Orange Blossom was gaining momentum, Rizzuto admits it was tempting to expand or even take on any and all clients who called — but he says sticking to his guns, and the company’s 10-mile radius, was the best way to start their upward growth.

He suggests other fledgling companies do the same.

“Control your area. The best thing we did was limit the area we were going to go in,” Rizzuto says. “That’s really hard when you’re starting out because we got calls outside of our zone and you’re eager to take on revenue… so you immediately want to take on everything. We never did that.”

That waiting worked off and after about a year of grinding away, Rizzuto says the hard work really started to pay off.

“Initially we were purely residential, but about a year into it, I went to do a residential quote and the gentleman asked if we did commercial accounts. I told him we didn’t have any, but we would do them,” Rizzuto recalls. “He told me he was the general manager for a waste management company…he didn’t like who he had out there, and I gave him a competitive bid to take it on.

“I figured I’d bid and if they take it, I’d begin to fill in the area in between,” he adds.

Rizzuto says he didn’t feel bad about not sticking to the status quo and says the company was well-established enough to take on the task of a large-scale commercial account.

“For us, our residential accounts were anywhere from $135 to $150 a month and we had this three-tier price range based on size,” he explains. “But here’s an account that’s going to pay us $1,000 a month. We knew we needed to branch out…Once that happened, we started to just open ourselves up to some other things.”

From there, Rizzuto says he found himself constantly bidding against several multi-million-dollar national companies at every turn.

Despite the tough competition, Rizzuto says it was his persistence that paid off the most when Orange Blossom garnered its first Costco account.

“Costco opened up, and I contacted them right when they opened,” he says. “They told me they were under contract for the first year but to contact them when the year was up. I maintained contact with them through emails that were never answered. And then one day the general manager answered the phone and said, ‘Your follow-up is incredible. Give me a quote.’”

Once again, the company was up against some hefty competition.

“We bid against them and won the job,” Rizzuto says.

During this time, Orange Blossom’s new headquarters was also blooming. Which has been a godsend, according to Rizzuto, as the company’s radius is expanding.

“Initially I had an office in my house, and I rented two different storage facilities and rented parking spots and garages to keep equipment and supplies and park our trucks and trailers,” Rizzuto says. “Now we’ve moved into a facility in St. Augustine, and we have a 3,600-square-foot warehouse and an office.

“From our new headquarters we’ve expanded a bit,” he adds. “The big change has been once we took on Buc-ee’s in Daytona, we now picked up three condo associations along St. Augustine beach. When all is said and done — we’ll probably have a 60-mile radius headed south, and probably only about 20 miles headed north. We haven’t gone any further north than when we first started.”

Unanticipated acquisitions

Not only has been getting some high-profile commercial accounts been a game-changer for Orange Blossom, but so has a recent series of acquisitions.

Rizzuto says acquiring the maintenance divisions of three area companies has also given the company a much-needed boost.

“In 2022, I bought out a company that was lawn care and irrigation — but they were moving solely to irrigation,” he says. “They had some residential, but more importantly, some good HOA clients and large church campuses, so I bought some of their equipment and I bought their accounts. That supplemented us and from there we’ve continued to grow.”

“We sat down, came up with a name and thought about what the business model would be and how we’d structure it. We wanted to do residential work and keep it in a small area. Maybe a 10-mile radius.”

— Paul Rizzuto, president and director, Orange Blossom Lawn Care

Even now, Rizzuto says that company still handles irrigation on some of Orange Blossom’s biggest accounts to this day.

“I basically outsource the artisan trades like irrigation,” he says. “They make sure it’s all right and good. I want those relationships to morph and stay relevant. So now they do all the irrigation at all my big accounts like Buc-ee’s and Costco. They bill me monthly for preventative maintenance and it’s billed into my contract with the client.”

Rizzuto says he isn’t out there hunting for companies to acquire. He adds that having good relationships with others in the industry has helped tremendously.

“With the first one, I got to know them at a home show where we both had tables looking to drum up new business,” he says. “I met the son of the owner and then a year later they contacted me out of nowhere to see if I’d be interested in buying accounts when they go out of the maintenance business.”

And whether it’s at a home show or at the gas station, Rizzuto says these connections are critical.

“(The second acquisition) was just a guy I got to know in the mornings when we were gassing up,” he says. “All the crews seemed to go to the same gas station. Everybody would get their coffee and donuts and we’d say hello to each other and talk about the business… then one day he reached out to my son and said he was looking to sell at least half his company.”

Just recently, Orange Blossom marked its third acquisition.

“I finalized buying the remaining accounts of a company,” he says. “I bought six large commercial accounts from them and about 18 to 20 residential accounts… It was someone that my son used to work for 10 years ago. He maintained contact with him. They own a spray company that does fertilization and pest control… I got to know him and built him into my quote for larger clients because we don’t do those services.”

Rizzuto says those acquisitions have filled in the density in St. Augustine. Now, he has his sights on everything between St. Augustine and Daytona.

What he wish he knew then

But all this growth wasn’t without its hardships.

According to Rizzuto, the company’s biggest struggle has always been a common plight — labor.

“Especially during the COVID times and coming out of that,” he says, “it was incredibly hard to find people to reply to ads and show up for interviews. People would accept the job and then not even show up the day they were supposed to be starting. People would show up and say, ‘This is too hard’ or “I’m too hot’ and leave in the middle of the day. We had at least two years’ worth of difficulties.”

Though the company’s labor issues aren’t as hard-pressed now.

“Luckily, my son had friends and had been doing this a long time, so we had several people who were consist with us,” he says. “We always had enough of a core to get the work done. We also picked up three or four guys last year who have stayed with us and then picked up a few new ones in the last month. They are doing very well. I feel like we’ve turned a corner on that problem.”

Another challenge Orange Blossom faced early on was having equipment spread out and stored off-site in different places.

“It made maintenance and upkeep very difficult,” he says. “If you don’t keep up with the maintenance of your equipment, you experience failures on the job and at the worst possible moments. We had a lot of trouble with that.”

Another piece of advice Rizzuto has for new businesses is to keep equipment maintenance top of mind.

“If something breaks down or something goes wrong, and you don’t show up for two or three days — that’s the reason I got calls in this business,” Rizzuto adds. “Even when you’re small, you have to have the equipment to back you up. If equipment goes down — you’re down. You cannot work.”

Rizzuto notes it hasn’t always been easy and running a successful company takes sacrifice. It was so much sacrifice that Rizzuto only recently started earning a salary from the company.

“Luckily, we had enough working capital that if we needed things done, we got it done,” he says. “I didn’t draw a salary from the company, so any money that the company had coming in was always turned back in to upgrade and add things.

“I switched the company from an LLC to an S Corp effective Jan. 1, 2024,” Rizzuto adds. “At that point I started drawing a salary.”

Additionally, Rizzuto says it can be the smallest of things that sets a company like Orange Blossom apart from the competition.

“The personal involvement in the beginning… I can’t tell you how many customers are amazed by that,” he says. “I know that’s what frustrated me as a consumer, so I knew if I was going to do this, I was going to be accessible and be the responsible person making sure people got what they asked for.”

And what they were asking for was world-class service, Rizzuto notes.

“It’s about showing up on time. Showing up clean — with neat equipment, neat shirts and a clean appearance,” he says. “You also have to do the work you said you were going to do. Those simple things are what propelled us.”

The author is an associate editor with Lawn & Landscape magazine.