Landscape Management, March 2016

profit centers Design BuilD installation photo Go Green Gardeners IntegrIty Phillips business centers around a unique staffing model and environmentalism A nne Phillips is proud of her maintenance crew Theyre unmatched by her competitors attests the owner of Go Green Gardeners a design build and maintenance firm in Van Nuys Calif They seem to really care about what they do she says I dont have to worry about whether or not they really are where they say they are going to be or if they spend as much time as they said they are going to on a project They are a group of developmentally disabled adults who work for her under an arrangement with a nonprofit organization Phillips has leaned on this staffing model for about five years A couple days a week she runs a crew of three to four developmentally disabled people supervised by a job coach without a disability who drives the truck and acts as a foreman Go Green Gardeners serving almost entirely residential customers offers about 85 percent design build services The rest of the business is split among irrigation lawn care and maintenance Phillips expects to hit 500000 in revenue in 2016 Like many landscape company owners Phillips has struggled to retain a productive workforce But the former investment industry executive has been resourceful In addition to her unique maintenance crews she leans heavily on subcontractors Shes parlayed her MBA and skills she learned in her first career into her role as CEO of a small business And along the way she picked up a gig contributing to the Huffington Post A lot of the time in the landscaping business because people dont have a business background theyre missing a little bit about how you need to operate in business she says Working at the Capital Group the first thing I did out of college gave me a very good work ethic and how to behave professionally Her business motto is quite simple We make sure we do what we say were going to do for the price and time we say were going to do it LANDSCAPEMANAGEMENT NET March 2016 34 OutsOurcing mOdel Go Green Gardeners was born in 2008 as a DBA of Paradise Contained a retail garden store Phillips opened in 1998 Shes since shuttered it to focus on the landscaping business I found myself always strolling around nurseries on the weekend she says of finding her second career I thought Well where do I like to spend my free time If I could plan my work around that what would I do Thats when I started thinking I wanted to do something with plants and designs So Phillips opened the retail store Through her connections there she picked up design jobs and launched Go Green Gardeners The name is a testament to the companys environmentalism It offers the option of electric only maintenance services and uses only organic fertilizers and no pesticides Phillips says it was apparent early on that subcontracting was the best route for her design build installations anne Phillips followed her heart from banking to the landscape industry she now leverages subcontracting including a special needs crew to find success By sarah PfleDDerer newsfeed unique remote Unique Lighting Systems Light Logic Plus adds Internet access and a mobile app to the companys Light Logic Wireless control System The app lets contractors and homeowners control their lighting systems remotely CAD for ipAD Landscape caD design for iPad is now available in the Pro Landscape companion app from Drafix Software The caD component lets users measure and design the site in a scaled drawing on the tablet Users also can transfer the design to the computer SVL95 2 trACk LoADer Kubotas new compact track loader offers greater multi tasking capabilities and more powerful hydraulics than previous models Kubota says A business with a purpose Continued on page 36