© Jon Arman
Last time we checked in:
Heather and Jeremy Dirksen updated their fleet and replaced old non-profitable clients with new profitable ones. Overall, things were going well and Freedom Lawn & Landscapes continues to make good progress.
Latest update:
Heather and Jeremy Dirksen are operating Freedom on a big piece of land with a big shop, a small garage and a cabin that was about 1,200 square feet that they were using for an office. Since they didn’t need that much space, they moved their office to the garage, and have rented the cabin out saving about $1,500 a month.
“It was way more for what we needed for an office, but for its location, and for the garage that we got and the big shop, it was a good price,” Heather says.
Freedom also had a safety inspection performed after hearing how it helped a company that had a fatality.
“They were able to go back and show that he had done an inspection, they passed the inspection, and that they had done everything within their power to train the employees to prevent accidents like that that happened,” Heather says.
But it’s not all sunshine at Freedom – one of their oldest spray trucks broke down and Jeremy isn’t confident it’d be worth the cost to fix it, which means they may have to purchase another one.
“We haven’t decided a number. I mean, if it’s a couple grand, we might fix it, but if it’s any more than that, we probably won’t,” he says.
Bill and Ed’s take:
The company is in a great spot and heading in the right direction, but Bill and Ed would like to see Jeremy continue to delegate field work so he can work on bigger picture items.
“The problem is he gets swallowed up by it and it takes all his time up,” Ed says. “As he grows, he has to grow out of that. Then I’d like to see him run the operational part of it, but not be required to work in it. By next year he should be there.”
