Young And Getting Younger: First Look

Business started off slowly for the pair, but the franchise grew and enabled Young to quit his full-time job and make lawn care his profession. Sadly, however, Lawn-a-Mat wasn’t as fortunate, and many of its franchisees stopped paying their franchise fees when the organization stopped providing service and support.

The organization folded and the partners found themselves encountering their own hard times soon after. "Essentially, I felt like I was doing all of the work," recalled Young, who ultimately bought his partner’s share in the business for $7,000 borrowed from equity in his house and life insurance policy. "That was the best $7,000 I ever spent."

There’s little chance the company will encounter similar struggles today, and its 29 employees have driven the company’s growth to the point that the half of the business is worth far more than $7,000. But an ownership transition looms on the horizon again as Young prepares to sell the business to his son and daughter-in-law.

MAKING ITS WAY. Young said his business plan in the early days resembled most contractors’ approach – " It was more about hard work and less about planning," he admitted. "We worked out of our garage before we acquired some property. Now we’ve got about half an acre under roof, which will serve us well until we reach about $3 million in sales."

Despite the company’s relative experience, Young said he could get clients by adhering to basic sales tenets. "One of the most important lessons I learned, and it’s still true today, is that when someone calls, they want service and response," he said.

Being responsive to potential customers required sacrifices for Young in terms of time away from his family while he built the business, but he said getting employees to appreciate the importance of quick reaction to customer inquiries still challenges him. "If you’re the owner, you’re motivated to deliver, but other employees aren’t motivated that same way," he said.

Early on, Lawn & Shrub focused on fertilizer and weed control applications, but some basic market research sent the company in a new direction. "I looked in the Yellow Pages and saw that few companies were offering full landscape care," Young recalled. "Those companies that were doing this work were billing customers for each service and each visit. We thought we could simplify this by providing total landscape care for the entire year and billing the customer a flat fee over the course of 10 months."

Customers responded to Young’s approach, and the business grew quickly. Plus, now the company had money coming in the door during early season. But the winter income wasn’t enough to keep Young from borrowing from the bank to survive the busy spring, so he moved all of his clients over to 10- or 12-month billing plans. "I was amazed people would write us checks for lawn care in January, but they did and we were living off their money rather than the bank’s money."

IMAGE CONSCIOUS. Young also points to the company’s commitment to doing the right thing as part of its success, and that means presenting a professional image. "We provide uniforms for employees at no charge to them, and we require they wear them," he explained, noting that uniforms consist of a button-up, short-sleeve shirt and standard trousers.

Each employee gets 11 uniforms – five to have at home, five that will be at the cleaning service and one to wear. "All of our managers wear golf shirts with our logo on them and the trousers," Young added. "And all of our trucks look alike with the logos."

On the job, Lawn & Shrub employees look good with clean equipment since the company stores it indoors every night. "Equipment spends a lot of time sitting, and there’s no reason it has to sit outside in the weather," Young explained. "That only shortens equipment life. Plus, keeping it all inside means the crews spend less time loading and unloading trucks and trailers every day. This way, they start work at 7 a.m. and they’re gone by 7:05 a.m. every day."

TRANSITION TIME. While Young isn’t ready for retirement, he’s preparing for that time. His son and daughter-in-law have committed to purchasing the business from Young and his wife, so the four focus on making a seamless transition. "We first met with our accountant last year to iron out how to get this done," Young explained. "Clients remain our top priority, but as the owner you also need to consider your income if you’re going to move away from the business. We have a company pension plan and I got on the IRA bandwagon back in the 1980s. You might be able to live off of what your company sells for, but I don’t think you want to depend on that as your only income."

The buyout is scheduled to take place over the next eight years, although Young doubts he’ll remain with the company the entire time. He has handed over the sales responsibilities and focuses his time on fine tuning efficiency. "We haven’t gotten a scorecard on the wall yet to post different crews’ performance, but we want to do that so we can measure how many hours a job sold for vs. what we estimated vs. actual payroll hours," he said. "And we need to make sure the salespeople incorporate mobilization time in our prices – we’ve even added a line item for that cost."

In addition, Young wants to pass on lessons he’s learned to his son and daughter-in-law so they’re prepared to run the company when he retires. "I convinced them to start going to various conferences because, even though they can’t learn it all in two or three days, I think people need to take some days away from the business to get more ideas every once in awhile," Young related.

His other challenge involves increased delegation and scaling back his decision-making role. "Some times I have to stand back and bite my tongue real hard because they aren’t going to do things like I’ve done them," he noted. "It’s like learning to delegate all over again. But if you’re going to try to control everything then you might as well stay small."