Clean slate

New Year’s resolutions are practically designed to be broken, which is why we set business goals. You don’t have to wait until the end of the calendar year to focus on the future, but this season prompts reflection and inspires us to consider what’s next.

Lawn & Landscape spoke with three owners who shared their 2016 goals and plans for implementation.

One percent better

After 21 years serving in the U.S. Air Force, Ronnie Christopher retired to civilian life and immediately transitioned into ownership of a U.S. Lawns franchise near the Robin Air Force Base in Georgia. Now, two and a half years into the venture, his business is on pace to do $250,000 in revenue in 2016, with four employees and an expanding customer base thanks to persistent, purposeful networking.

“I enjoy business, in general,” says Christopher, who also serves as an ambassador for the local chamber of commerce. “When I go to meetings, I ask other business owners, ‘What are you struggling with?’ And I listen to them, and I think about it. I try to call them or shoot them an email with ideas that may help.”

This is one of Christopher’s goals for 2016: Come up with 10 ideas per week for other business owners. “I’m a believer that if you help others grow their businesses, you’ll grow your own,” he says, adding that his 25 percent growth target for 2016 will be realized if he can keep 10 proposals out there per week.

But Christopher isn’t just looking for business growth. His goals are more holistic. “I strive to improve my life 1 percent each day,” he says. “If I can achieve this goal, then every 30 days I have become 30 percent better than I was.”

Christopher works on this quest of continual improvement by keeping a journal where he writes down ideas every day to hold himself accountable. “I also put these ideas up on my ‘action board’ in my office so I can see them daily,” he says.

He dedicates about 20 minutes each day to meditation and preparation to get ready for what is ahead so he can handle stress. And, he makes exercise a daily habit so he can prevent sickness and injuries. “I make sure that I’m taking care of myself, because if I’m not doing that, I can’t do what I’m supposed to be doing in my business,” he says.

In the evening, he reflects on the previous day. “Every day, be grateful for life, the people around you and the position you are lucky to be in,” he says.

Christopher will also focus more on training in 2016. While U.S. Lawns provides 70-plus safety training topics to review during 20-minute Monday morning tailgate sessions, Christopher says he can enhance those with his own experience.

“In the Air Force, we were taught on safety, so I can add more,” he says, adding that he’s less concerned about a time parameter on meetings than he is that everyone learns. “Making sure everyone is on the page will save me time in the long run because, if people are properly trained, they will stay safe.”

Meanwhile, Christopher continues to sharpen his knowledge and skills in the industry by turning to mentors at U.S. Lawns. “I was fortunate to come from a career field where I was around many officers and learned that leaders are readers,” he says. “And, a key to personal and professional growth is to find people who have been there, done that.”

Christopher regularly calls and emails mentors, or shoots them text messages to get quick feedback. “Making all the mistakes yourself is too expensive and takes too much time,” he says.

Finally, the practice of setting goals positions you to achieve them, Christopher says. That’s why he sets aside four days every 10 weeks as a “sabbatical” to reflect on business performance. “I think it’s imperative that you sit down and plan time to grow yourself and the business,” he says.

Build your accountability

For the last century, Lambert’s has moved its facility every 25 years. It wasn’t planned, but the company’s growth and development over the years have called for a new home every quarter century or so.

This is that year again. Paul Fields, president, says Lambert’s purchased a property and is creating a facility that will include test gardens and a state-of-the-art office environment that will lift spirits. “Right at the first of the year we should be up and running over there,” he says, noting that this new office allowed for space planning so teams can be grouped together. “That will help with internal communication, camaraderie and team work,” he says.

And this environment will serve Lambert’s well as it pursues the key 2016 goals of more growth, cultivating the quality of its customer base and recruiting high-quality employees.

All of these goals are easy to put on paper, but challenging to implement. Doing so will require buy-in from team members at all levels and accountability to carry out ideas. That’s why Lambert’s has Continuous Improvement Teams (CITs) – leadership groups of individuals who are not necessarily managers. “Those teams huddle up and come up with ideas and thoughts for best practices for improving certain areas of the business we are working on or dilemmas we are facing,” Fields says.

Recruiting is one of those areas. “That has been tough the last couple of years, between immigration laws and a shrinking labor pool,” Fields says. “We are realizing that we can’t just go out and hire someone. It takes consistent recruiting efforts to make that happen, and we’re already focused on that.”

For now, there’s a lot of brainstorming surrounding the recruiting topic. And Lambert’s is currently outsourcing some HR and recruiting needs. “Right now, we are trying to figure out how we can become more focused on recruiting internally and let that be a predominant or sole responsibility of a single individual here,” he says, adding that recruiting is one of many job roles for in-house team members.

Meanwhile, Lambert’s will also concentrate on client base quality. “We have been spending the last few months really focusing on what a key Lambert’s account looks like – the type of client, the location, the garden landscapes that we like to maintain,” Fields says.

Now, about 60-70 percent of Lambert’s book of business mirrors this ideal image. “So, we’re trying to comb that over so over the next two years we can achieve closer to 100 percent,” Fields says.

This is a brand-new initiative. For now, the company is identifying who is a perfect Lambert’s client so account managers can recognize which clients are not. Then, CITs will formulate some ideas for obtaining more of those target clients. “As we do that, we’ll shed accounts that don’t necessarily meet our mold,” Fields says.

Personally, Fields is looking forward to more time with family and a return to more landscape architecture responsibilities in the New Year. While he continues working with a number of clients from a design perspective, he’d like to do more of that. “The last few years I’ve been burning the candle at both ends, it seems, working to get the business to a point where it will allow me to (step back a bit),” Fields says.

The CITs and empowering others in the organization to “own” company goals is helping make this happen. “We have to work together as a team to achieve the goals of the company,” he says.

Launch a dream

When James Bollin decided to leave a large national lawn care firm in August 2014 to start a Bio Green location in Baltimore, he signed a one-year non-compete agreement that restricted his marketing.

After a 20-year career with the employer, working his way up to general manager and overseeing 75 employees of a branch, he had to proceed with caution with how he promoted his company.

But now, the handcuffs are off, and Bollin can get the word out with gusto. And that’s exactly what the plans to do in 2016 to hopefully triple his customer base from 100 to 300 people. If he can achieve this goal, then Bio Green will be a full-time job for him.

For now, he’s working full time as a Lowe’s assistant store manager while he grows his new business and builds the critical customer mass and revenues to secure his market position. He says 2016 will be a growth year because he can do more advertising.

“I’ll be on the road more, and I’ll be more visible,” Bollin says. And because Bollin is accustomed to planning for and tracking business development, he will dedicate time to create a marketing plan to drive sales in winter 2016 and early spring. “I truly understand the marketing piece,” he says. And he knows what customer numbers he must hit. With 300 customers, he can pay himself a salary and focus full-time on Bio Green. With 400 customers, he’ll need a part-time employee and another truck.

So 2016 is all about spreading the word about Bio Green, and creating critical customer mass. Bollin thinks the timing on starting a natural fertilization business like this will appeal to people in Montgomery County where cosmetic pesticides were recently banned starting in 2018. “Times are changing,” Bollin says. “Because Bio Green is a natural fertilizer, that’s a good selling point here in the Chesapeake Bay area.”

Customer education is necessary, and this can happen through social media marketing. Bollin started a Facebook page in August 2015, after his non-compete ended. “That felt like my debut in business,” he says. Word-of-mouth advertising was the only way people were finding out about his operation prior to using social media and Porch.com, an online referral service.

Already, Bollin is seeing momentum and fielding more customer calls. He is also working with a direct mail firm to develop targeted advertising. “The goal is to hit the ground running more aggressively in February and March before the beginning of the season,” he says.

Meanwhile, Bollin will also focus on securing minority-owned business registration for benefits like training programs, financing options and more. “That way I can be considered for bids with the massive amount of building going on here in Baltimore,” he says. “There is always room for lawn care and landscaping with those jobs, and if I can get a piece of that pie it will help me (grow) faster.”

Bollin also plans to focus more on the commercial market. At his previous employer, he was the operations manager of the commercial accounts. His network is there, and now he can talk to them about Bio Green.

With all of this, and despite of the challenges of starting a new business, Bollin is optimistic about 2016. “Putting more focus on business is what really makes me happy,” he says.