Landscape Management, May 2014

20 PHOTO LAWN CURE OF SOUTHERN INDIANA ILLUSTRATION ISTOCK COM BEE67 Part of Hawkinss background at DHL was training and development and he brought that perspective to Lawn Cure revising safety training on road training and redeveloping the compensation structure for lawn care technicians Part of managing people is understanding culture and Hawkins was sensitive to this truth I knew from day one I couldnt go in like a bull in a china shop he says To learn the business at a faster rate and earn the respect of the companys production employees Hawkins became one of them for his first six months on the job I came in every day in uniform loaded up my truck and went out to spray he says I was coming in off the street having never sprayed a lawn in my life Doing this made me be next to the technicians every day For one thing he learned their jobs arent easy Hawkins revamped their pay scale tying incentives to productivity to benefit the employees and the company They can work more hit their targets and get additional pay and time off he says Additionally with some of his engineering and transportation knowledge from DHL Hawkins improved route efficiency by 25 percent in terms of how much in dollar volume each technician sprays per day The savings came from condensing routes and letting go of some business that was too far out of a newly defined service area The changes have yielded good results Lawn Cure which will do more than 17 million in annual revenue this year was already a successful firm when Hawkins took the reins he says Still it has seen double digit growth over each of the last five years Whats important is weve kept it a family business but weve put some corporate structure in place he says CUSTOMER SERVICE SMARTS In 2003 when Nick Shaw opened his Lawn Doctor franchise in Griffith Ind he was surprised how quickly he could translate his information technology IT and retail backgrounds to his newfound career caring for turf Shaw started his career in retail first at Sears and then at Kmart He later put to use the IT skills he picked up at his college work study job as a campus Apple support technician when he landed a dream role in 2001 as one of the first Apple Store geniuses before the establishments employees were given that moniker Apple was looking for nerdy Apple tech support people who also knew about retail so it was a perfect fit he says After a temporary training period in California and a stint opening two of the original five Apple Store locations Shaw was back living in Indiana working for the coolest company in the world but his job was in Schaumburg Ill a 70 mile one way commute The job was awesome the people were awesome but it was retail which he says he was sick of and the drive was getting to him When an opportunity for a corporate IT position arose he took that job for a short time before pursuing owning his own business By 2003 he bought into Lawn Doctor NEW DIRECTION continued from page 17 Q WHATS DIFFERENT ABOUT YOUR GREEN INDUSTRY ROLE COMPARED TO YOUR FIRST CAREER When I was in the corporate world for many of those years I had a staff of people to assist me and do a lot of the work The scale is very different here Now as a business owner youve got to be prepared to do everything Bruce Ward It took me some time to adjust from a multibillion dollar corporation to a small family oriented business Everything there was go go go and very structured Were a little more laid back here It was different but I think it made me take a couple steps back and put things in perspective Patrick Hawkins A lot of the fixes we did in IT were Its old so throw it away and replace it We dont do that with a lawn We take lawns that are a wreck and turn them into something beautiful Nick Shaw PATRICK HAWKINS President General Manager Lawn Cure of Southern Indiana Sellersburg Ind Former DHL Express senior manager of contract relations LANDSCAPEMANAGEMENT NET MAY 2014