REINVENT YOURSELF: The Midas Touch

A once-inconspicuous Blackberry jingles urgently in Brian Pierce’s hand, cutting him off mid-sentence. He stares at it, looking perplexed, while it rings.

“It’s 800,” he says with a furrowed brow. “What area code’s that?”
The room erupts in laughter – mom, Sandy, dad, Scott, and long-time friend, Frankie Kudlac. “It’s toll free,” Kudlac groans. “One-eight-hundred.”

Brian, 23, grins sheepishly. “It must be McCain calling me,” he says.

It’s a brief moment that belies his age, but Brian Pierce picks up instantly where he left off, and he’s once again the confident co-owner of Pierce’s Lawncare & Landscaping in Mason, Ohio. He and Kudlac, also co-owner, are startlingly self-assured.

Maybe it’s trust that comes from the sturdy net beneath them – both fathers, Scott Pierce and Frank Kudlac, are investors and consultants in the company. Maybe it’s the leadership above them. Sandy Pierce, president, and Judy Kudlac have the unique privilege of calling their sons ‘colleagues.’

Experience hasn’t hurt, either. Brian opened the business with his parents in 2003 and has been managing ever since; Frankie joined the team as co-owner in 2004. It’s a firm foundation, and profitability is the cement that locks the team in place. Pierce’s has grown 30 percent annually since its inception, and has expanded further since the team founded an affiliate, need-based business, Pierce’s Rental, servicing events with everything from tables and chairs to cornhole games. With an expansive foundation in place, the company’s strategy is simple: At every opportunity, reinvent yourself.

Building (and rebuilding) a brand
Pierce’s product is the ‘Pierce Touch’: Safely, enthusiastically and consistently meeting or exceeding customer expectations. “We take care of the customer, and through that, we gain financial strength,” Brian Pierce says.

The Pierce and Kudlac families are clearly driven to succeed in business, but none of them dreamed of a career in lawn care or landscaping. As homeowners, though, Scott and Sandy Pierce took pride in their lawn and garden. “We’d spend hours in the yard,” Sandy Pierce says. “After we’d finish Scott and I would stand back and say to ourselves, that’s the Pierce touch.”

In high school, Brian developed an interest in working outdoors. It was perfect timing: Scott was looking to branch out from his job as a successful manager in manufacturing, and he and Sandy decided to channel their entrepreneurial spirit into a business. They brainstormed together. What kind of market could they successfully reach? Could they sell pharmaceuticals? Could they work with cars? When they learned of Brian’s interest in landscaping, they saw an opportunity.

“We felt it was a good fit,” Sandy Pierce says. “Our business sense told us there was a significant opportunity for a contractor with a solid business background. Scott and I possessed just that.”

Mason borders King’s Island, a major tourist attraction in the area, and surrounding high-end residential areas were densely populated and underserved by existing landscape contractors. Careful to keep their focus narrow, the Pierces decided to target golf course communities, and they’ve been pleased with their choice. Each property is irrigated and often requires meticulous attention to detail, allowing for a variety of add-on services, including irrigation maintenance, mulching, fertilizing, weed control and grub control.

To market its offering, the team has recently put thousands of dollars into its most significant asset: the brochure. In 2007, the company hired a graphic artist to create a new look. “We asked them to reinvent us,” Scott Pierce says. “We wanted a product that was very marketable. We didn’t want to be the guys writing the generic bid form.”

What came of the design work was unexpected, Brian Pierce explains. “They went through and basically redid everything,” he says. “We didn’t ask them to redo the logo, but after they did, we liked it a lot better.”

Who comes first?
As the company made changes to its image, core values remained constant. It’s an assertion some companies might hesitate to make in front of customers, but the Pierce business model makes no qualms about putting employees at the top of the food chain. “We started with it from the beginning, and we’ve run our business by this model from day one,” Brian Pierce says. Immortalized on a wooden plaque, the Pierce’s mantra lists the company’s most valuable assets. Employees – not customers – are ranked No. 1.

“We can’t do the work without our people,” Brian Pierce says. “They’re the face of our customers. They’re the ones who are out there doing the work. They’re the most important asset we have here.”

Equipment – “It’s what makes us efficient and gets the job done right,” Brian Pierce says – and production are the next two most valuable assets of Pierce’s Lawncare & Landscaping.

“It’s all part of the lean process,” Scott Pierce says. “You can have production all day long and still get nothing done. Stay lean and be disciplined to it. Don’t talk about it and then not go out and practice it. You’ve got to walk the talk. That’s instilled in these guys.”

Without internal discipline, growth can kill you, Scott Pierce admits. “That 30 percent revenue growth is a lot,” he says. “Most companies don’t grow like that and stay profitable.”

Customer property is ranked No. 4, but the team stresses that with the right group of employees, it’s assumed that all staff is friendly, respectful of property and customer-oriented.

It’s a model that showcases the confidence of Scott, Sandy, Brian and Frankie. Scott adds: “If you’re going to be the leader, you’ve got to be miles ahead. Reinvent yourself. Do something different. Fuel for profit

It’s easy to get hung up on your toys in this business, Scott Pierce says of equipment management. For that reason, he says, a lot of operators now rely on diesel fuel.

“We say diesel’s not the way to go,” he says. “For one thing, you’re not leaning out your business. Your guys are making two separate trips to the pump. It’s also more expensive.”

Scott Pierce devised a unique solution to the increase in Pierce’s fuel costs. Unlike many small to mid-size landscaping businesses, Pierce’s doesn’t buy gasoline in bulk. Instead, the company purchases from the lowest-priced pump, and pays for fuel with a credit card that offers 5 percent cash back for large purchases. “It’s made a 3 to 5 percent difference in what we spend on fuel,” Scott Pierce says.

It’s crucial to know your fuel costs down to the penny – and brainstorm ways you can reinvent your business to build in reduced fuel costs. Another way Pierce’s has accrued huge savings is by mowing only residential communities. They’re able to visit a customer-dense neighborhood in one or two days and be available to as many as 60 of their clients in that short time. The company also turns down business that’s outside of their current route. “I’m not going to send my crew out 25 minutes from here for one lawn, when I can cut four or five close to home,” Sandy Pierce says.

“But a lot of people understand that and agree with us,” Brian Pierce adds. “They’re dealing with the same thing right now just to get to work.”

Safe & sound
Another of Pierce’s core marketing strategies is to promote the company’s safety and legal practices. With no H-2B workers on staff, either full- or part-time, the company encourages current and potential customers, through marketing materials, to compare the competition, asking: Is your landscaping company licensed to apply pesticide by the Ohio Department of Agriculture? Has the State of Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation certified this business? Does this business have a State of Ohio Vendor’s License? Do you, the customer, have a copy of your contractor’s Standard Operating Principles?

Pierce’s markets to a discerning, high-end clientele. Their customers pay a premium to receive specialized care and the Pierce’s team strives to provide personalized care.

Pierce’s has never employed H-2B workers, and they plan to continue relying on local residents and college students to man the business. Speaking on the industry as a whole, Scott Pierce is skeptical of the desperate need for H-2B workers.

“We think it’s a big excuse, H-2B,” Scott Pierce says. “It is a problem. A lot of the bigger companies are dependent on it. But they’ve priced themselves into H-2B. We have not. If you price yourselves into it, you’ve locked in. You’ve got to charge based on the employees you have.”

Maximize efficiency
Always eager to discover innovation, Brian Pierce relishes the efficient system he created for the mulching process. It’s a well-oiled machine, an assembly line that eliminates wheelbarrows and shoveling and instead uses 20-gallon Brute trash barrels and a Mini Mule mulch machine.

“Shoveling used to take all day,” Scott Pierce explains. “When you think about this industry, prices are very competitive. You think, how can you do this much, narrow it down and come out with efficiency. Efficiency is key. You’ve got to reinvent every day. The technology we were using was too slow. How do you get by it? You reinvent it. Brian came home one day and said: I have an idea.”

The crew goes through12 tractor trailer loads of mulch a season. It now takes them three or four seconds to do the work or three or four shovel loads, thanks to the conveyor belt on the Mini Mule. While the machine has had a massive impact on efficiency – by man hour alone, Brian and Scott Pierce have calculated that they work three times as fast as before – Sandy encourages the team to remain as lean as possible.

“It’s more useful than the wheelbarrow,” Brian Pierce explains. “You can’t put a wheelbarrow through a bed without running over perennials. The guys can walk through with the Brute on their shoulders, dump this and not have a big amount of mulch. We can actually go through and dump exactly what we need. We don’t have someone taking a whole day to fill up a wheelbarrow to get it back here and say, We only needed a quarter of that or a third of that. Plus, we can actually fit more in these Brutes than in the wheelbarrow.”

Scott describes walking into the office one night after work to find Sandy, Brian and Frankie going through an exercise. “They had drawn a spaghetti chart,” he says. “There was a Mini Mule and they’d drawn people, who were running. I said, ‘What are you guys doing?’ They said they were trying to trim the mulch crew by one more person. They said: ‘It’s four people right now. How do we go to three?’ And they solved it, simply by going through the process.”

Profit share
Numbers are central to the Pierce’s business, and when it comes to profitability, they draw a hard line.

“So many landscape companies operate all season long with no profit,” Scott Pierce says. “We don’t. We are a profitable company. We will walk away from work unless we make a profit.”

How much profit? Twenty-eight percent, according to Kudlac. And if you’re making much less than that, says Pierce’s management, you’re probably doing a lot of work for a little money. “Guys aren’t charging for their services,” Scott Pierce says. “It’s my biggest criticism. They’re mowing for $38 because they think they have to be competitive. You can’t say that because you’re going to be cheap, you’re going to succeed. You should charge based on what your fixed costs are, not what you think they should be.”

It’s an assertive business model that requires confidence to deliver. True to form, the team has learned to turn down jobs. Kudlac describes the aftermath of a recent commercial bid: a phone call in which the potential client, a strip mall owner, asked Pierce’s to go lower. “I said, ‘How much lower?’ He said, ‘You’re overpriced about $600.’”

Kudlac flatly refused the offer, and he explained his business philosophy to the client. “I said, ‘Just as you’re in business to make money over there, we’re in this business to make money, too,’” Kudlac says. “’We have a calculated profit margin we need to hit every time we do a job and that’s our fixed price.’” Since Kudlac turned the job down, he says the strip mall owner has fired two contractors who didn’t show up.

“I said, ‘Well, if you’d paid for good service, maybe would have gotten the service you wanted,’” Kudlac says.

Driven to maximize business efficiency, Brian Pierce says he and his father spend hours regularly poring over budgets and route sheets.
 
“That’s another thing that sets us apart from everybody else,” Brian Pierce says. “My dad and I have spent entire nights figuring out exactly what it takes to make money. We’re not going out to a property saying, ‘Hmmm, I’ll do it for this.’ We’re not the guy who goes around with his truck and trailer and says, ‘Yeah, I can cut that for 25 bucks.’ We know how much time a job is going to take and how much money we need to make for our time in order to make a profit.”

It’s a smart way to run a business, but it’s also sustainable long-term, Scott Pierce believes. “If you want to struggle, go out and play golf,” he says. “It’s a lot more fun.”