From Engineering to Landscaping COO: Recurring Revenue, Smart Hiring & Systems That Scale

Aisha Massengill: Running the business. I mean, it might be a small business, but I mean having the systems in place and procedures like a big business because just because you're small in size doesn't mean that you can't run it like a big business, and you just need to have the structure in there to be able to grow. Welcome to Do Small Business Like a Big Boss, where we explore the real stories, hard-earned lessons, and game-changing strategies. Of entrepreneurs who've moved beyond the side hustle and built businesses that scale with confidence. This show is proudly sponsored by Project Icon. I'm your host, Aisha Jorge Massingil, your small business legal guy. Let's dive in. All right, bosses, welcome to the latest edition of Do Small Business Like a Big Boss. Today, our guest is Doug Bonnell, owner of True North Landscaping. True North helps you navigate your outdoor projects so you can spend time doing what matters most. Welcome, Doug. Thank you very much for having me, Aisha. Thrilled to have you. Doug, tell us about True North. What's the company all about? So True North landscaping's been around for this is our eleventh season. And we try to focus on being a high end, ⁓ high end residential. design build and maintenance company. So we try to ⁓ deal with the high end people in our area and offer them solutions for pretty much anything that they would want to have done outside at their property. So ⁓ for the folks listening and watching, you all should head over to True North's website because some of the photos are magnificent. And if I had a big nice house, I definitely would want to have them take care of it because it it's beautiful. But you didn't start your career in the landscaping business, is that right? That's correct. Yeah. I went to after high school I went to Western Michigan University and got my degree in engineering. So after graduating college, I worked as a engineer in the automotive industry for s I think six years. ⁓ doing a lot of product design and product development. For a couple different things, ⁓ engineered glass, and then I also did car door handles. So did that for six years, and then one day out of the blue, my dad called me up and said he was thinking about selling the company and he didn't think I would be interested, but he would have regretted if he did didn't offer up the opportunity to me. So me and my wife talked about it and made the decision to leave. Well, she continued her job. I put in my two-month notice with my company. I knew they were gonna have a hard time replacing me and we moved our family up to Traver City. So it was exciting. It was a good opportunity to get back to Traverse City. Not a ton of good job opportunities up here, so this was kind of our our chance. So we jumped at it. So that presents an interesting decision making. And it's something actually that a lot of my listeners have to face leaving basically a corporate type job and then making a decision to go into an entrepreneurial business. What were some of the factors that you and your wife considered as you thought about do I take over this family business or do I stay where I am as an engineer? Yeah. 'Cause it's a tough decision because you're that's something you know and you're used to and comfortable with. I think it really was the like the opportunity to be your own boss and really can dictate how you want your future to look. I mean, 'cause As an entrepreneur and business owner, I mean, your role is what you make it. So, I mean, you can be as involved or as little involved as you want. I mean, both can be successful, but obviously you have to have a lot of things in place if you don't want to be involved. So, ⁓ yeah, it was it's really the opportunity to and also to continue on the legacy that my parents had started. I mean, that was really cool to be able to do as well as that along with getting back to An area in Michigan that I mean is we're lucky to live here and lucky to be able to raise our family and have a good career. That's really I think made us decide to make the move. And as I understand it, both your mom and your dad founded the company. Did you feel a certain amount of pressure in agreeing to take over the family business given what the two of them have built? No, they Wow, okay. They 'Cause like I said, he didn't think I would wanna do it because we both had good jobs and we're doing doing well in Grand Rapids area and he's done the job. He knows the amount of work that goes into it. And I grew up cutting grass and doing things for other landscaping companies and so I knew kind of what the job would be. So I'd it's not easy for sure. It's everybody thinks that owning a company and being the boss is great and it's so easy, but it's definitely not it's nice. It's definitely not easy. Yeah. So tell me about that because I my understanding is that there was a period of time where you were doing a lot of work still in the business, taking on a lot of different roles. Tell me about some of the things that you did and why you made the decision to be so hands-on. Yeah, so when I because I've been back with True North for five years. So I came on as the COO And my first job was taking over the maintenance division, which had kind of always been neglected a little bit because it's not as fancy or flashy of a division. I mean, you're cutting grass, you're ⁓ just maintaining things where the install side is what people see more, the big beautiful patios, retaining walls, and it's just definitely the flashier division. So my goal was to try to grow the maintenance division. Because that's that's kind of what keeps the lights on. I mean, if the economy does slow down, the design build's gonna be a thing that slows down. But that maintenance and having that recurring revenue is very important. So we didn't want to be too heavy into the design build and too reliant on that. So that was one of the things I was pushing to do was grow our maintenance division, which over the past five years we've Doubled it and we're still trying to push that and keep adding crews to get closer to 50-50 maintenance with design build. That's that's the goal. But throughout the five years I've been here, it's as in a small business, I move around a lot. So we hired an account manager who kind of took over what I was doing with the maintenance division. So I started helping more with the design build side of the business, doing a little bit of everything and purchasing and quoting a lot of quoting consultations, helping with designs. I'd say at this point I've pretty much been in about every position in the company. The newest one since we've taken over as owners in the past year was really keeping an eye on the books and numbers and working with our third party CFO to really get the numbers in front of us and looking at that on a weekly basis to just track our financial performance. That's that's the area I had probably the least knowledge or background in. So that's why we went with the the fractional CFO, just because they have that expertise that I knew I was lacking in ⁓ QuickBooks. I can navigate it, but I'm not an expert. Yeah. Yeah. It it makes my head spin. It's supposed to be the thing that makes it easier for you, but it looks like the writing from the matrix. It just, I don't know, when I see it, it just looks like, okay, I'm just gonna let my stuff my CPA is like attached to my QuickBooks. So, you know, I just finish my taxes. I'm like, you just go do the thing that you do. ⁓ but you mentioned something really interesting and I think important for folks. You talked about the importance of understanding the recurring revenue and what are the pieces of your business that help sustain you and what parts of parts of your business can fluctuate, right? Like Is that something that your dad taught you? You learned through just the experience of running the business. How did you come to that conclusion? Yeah, when I came on that was it was my goal and also it was my parents' goal. They knew that recurring revenue is extremely important. And actually, like if you're looking to sell the company or so that's I mean, that's a big piece of it. How much recurring revenue do you have? Because the design build you have to go out and sell every year. And that's a lot of work that goes into making those sales. Right. With recurring revenue. I mean, we probably probably a ninety-five percent renewal rate. Wow. And I mean, more often than not, we end up letting customers go for whatever reason. Our areas there's not a there's a lot of peep a lot of competition, I guess, in this area, but I think there's more work than there is. people to do the work really. So it's it's not it's not really a challenge to get people to re- sign up with you because they need somebody to do the work. Yeah. But yeah, that and growing the recurring revenue, like in not just cutting more grass, but doing other services that are recurring. Like irrigation we've brought internal. We used to subcontract that, but we were able to hire somebody, so now we do All of our own like startups and shutdowns. Along the way, we also purchased a ⁓ fertilization company. Mm. It was Green Team Lawn Care, so that's kind of like a D B A of True North landscaping, which that was a pretty solid business. And again, that's I think it's pr about a thousand customers or something, but that again is just recurring business that you don't have to go out and sell. It's it's a simple here's the contract, do you want to do it or not? Not Yeah. A lot easier to come across and it's things that it's a service that people need. Yeah, some people might eliminate the service if economy takes a downturn, but with our customer base, I think it's something that if if you have a large home and it's not your first primary home, you're not gonna be up here cutting your grass once a week. So you you actually mentioned some kind of interesting strategic decisions in your business. ⁓ first I heard you say because the expertise wasn't in-house, you got a fractional CFO. But then you talked about expanding through acquisition. And then I'm assuming you all have employees. So how do you decide when you're gonna go external, when you're going to acquire the piece, and when you're gonna bring something in-house? Yeah, really I think it comes down to availability. ⁓ maybe we've had in the past, we've had a CFO, we've had like a controller position and The CFO kinda came as happenstance because they are very integrated with the software that we use. So they are familiar with our software and it was a need that we had. We used to have our CPA like clothes months and QuickBooks for us, but they're a CPA firm. They're not a CFO. Whereas these guys, that's all they do. They are just CF fractional CFOs. They work with pretty much only landscaping companies. So it's exactly what they do and it was a very good fit for us. And it's something that I strictly deal with, whereas for the irrigation side of things, it's kind of messes with your business if you have to subcontract that because we'd run into situations where we're doing a job, we want to put plants in the ground, but you can't put plants in the ground if you don't have wa a way to water it and you're not in control of the subcontractors. I mean, it's they get to it when they can get to it. So Right. The other piece of that is knowing you can keep that person busy. So with the irrigation, we knew we could employ somebody full time and keep them busy, get that work to fall on our schedule when we want it done. So that I mean it kind of streamlined our design build process, being able to bring that in. One of the things that I always think about when I see well, actually I think of two things when I see landscape companies. One is it seems to be ton of competition. I mean it just there's so many companies. And then the second piece is how do you all deal with the slow time? I mean, spring, summer, I would imagine you're going like gangbusters, but what do you all pivot to in the winter? Yeah, it's it's funny, landscaping seems like one of the only industries that for the most part, that the co there is a lot of competition, but we all talk to each other. Like I don't I don't think many un other industries do that. And I think it's just because like I was saying, where there's enough work for everybody up here. You might as well be friendly. All text owners of other companies in the area and we have good relationships. ⁓ but that's I think something that's a little little unique to the landscaping industry. But what you brought up is not unique to any of us. It's issue that we talk about all the time, the slow time, which is right now, ⁓ for us. Starting to get ramped back up as the snow goes away. ⁓ at least in our area, you really only have two options. It's either lay off your employees for the winter and pack it up and come back in the spring, or you do snow removal, which is what we do. And we also actually try to keep our construction jobs going through the winter, ⁓ which only works out if we have a mild winter. Yeah. Like right now we have four jobs in progress. that have kind of came to a standstill because like in January we plowed snow every day except for four days in the whole month. Wow. Yeah. It's always with having the fluctuating winter winters, it's nothing's set in stone. You really just need to be flexible and do what you can. I mean, kind of plan for both. Plan for a lot of snow and plan for no snow. So like we set up pool right before Christmas. It was snowing like crazy and we had a crane out there setting a pool. Wow. And the the reason we stick with and do snow removal is because it it allows us to employ our people all year long. So you don't risk losing them. And if you ask most people snow removal is nobody's favorite thing, but it does bring in some money and it keeps our people busy and keeps us going. Allows us to make sure our employees stick with us because I mean that that's our business is our employees without having our employees w we're nothing. So I don't I don't install any patios. How many employees do you all have? We're right around fifty and then we bounce up a little bit above that. So like mid fies probably in the middle of the summer. That's a good size, good amount of employees to make sure that they have steady work summer and winter. Exactly. Yeah, that's we've been trying to grow the snow removal but also like Like I said, keep in mind you have good winners and you have bad winners and so not to take on too much work that we are making our guys work sixty hours in the s in the winter 'cause it is nice to have a little bit of a downtime and get that break, but obviously you can't take all winter off, so I think People enjoy having right around forty hours. So we try to try to get enough work to make that happen. I've always been curious, especially because here in the mid-Atlantic we've had a rough winter. How do the snow removal companies prioritize who they plow first? Is it just luck? For us, it's usually we do we're all pretty much all commercial. We only do two residential ones. ⁓ and for us we start with basically when the people are gonna start showing up. So we'll talk with like the ⁓ the managers and be like, okay, when do your employees start showing up? So we start there and get the employee area clear and kind of work our way out of that. And then a lot of times once you get one place like partially done, people will shift over to the next one. But it's really all about trying to get it right there before the people start showing up. So generally means we're starting at like three o'clock in the morning. Yeah. Amazing. Well thank you for that. ⁓ these are these are the things that float around in my brain about how how things work. Like I I've shared with other folks that a show that I enjoy is like how this works, like how did this how do you make these things? Like what's the behind the scenes story? So when I see the trucks, I'm like, man, how do they they've been here for several hours now. Like who is not getting done? while they're in our community. Earlier though, you mentioned just how challenging and difficult, you know, it can be being a business owner. What are some of the biggest challenges that you find on a day to day basis in terms of being a business owner? I think one of the my hardest things personally for me was trying to find that work life balance. ⁓ and not working eighty hours a week because You also have to take care yourself and your family, right? You can't the the business can't be the only thing in your life. for me that was one thing I had to figure out and kind of the th you can only kinda what I tell myself is you can only do so much in a day. Mm-hmm. I mean, get the things there's obviously things that need to be done, but I mean only do so much in a day. It'll be there tomorrow and really prioritizing having a good keeping track of things to make sure you're meeting your deadlines, getting what needs to be done. And the other thing that I think helps me with that is when I leave work I try to leave work there. Mm because otherwise if you never can turn it off, it's just becomes draining on you. It's like you dread coming into work. Whereas if you actually go home and you get to take a break and hang out with the family and talk about things that are not work related it kind of refreshes you when you get back in there. ⁓ so that was one of the harder things for me was figuring out how to make a home life and work life balance, which I think I've gotten better at this year. And then one of the other things, which pretty much everybody else is in the same boat, but just getting labor in the door for us has been a big challenge. We live in a market where it's a lot of it's kind of a vacation place. A lot of people's second homes are up here. A while a volcano a lot of very expensive homes, so finding employees up here can be difficult because there's not a lot of affordable housing options. So we I mean, we have people driving an hour and a half to work every day. Yeah. So it's like people are making a large commute and we're trying to pay people as well as we can. It's it's just a challenge to like we're going through right now, how many people do we need to hire for the spring and it's it seems like it's an every year thing. struggling to find employees. And it seems like you have an added challenge 'cause isn't your wife in the business as well? Yep. She does she's kinda like the office manager role, does a lot of A P, AR, overseas, like the HR. I I dabble in it, but just in the fact of trying to make sure we're getting the good employees in. Yeah. So she's she works from like nine to three 'cause she gets the kids off to school and then picks them up from school. So But yeah, she's very involved as well. So how do you all carve out time for each other when you're working on the business and navigating the kids and how do you all have that balance? She definitely takes the lead with that. I'm with the kids and home. I think that's where my leaving work at work has kind of helped improve that. And we try not to really talk about work at home together either unless it's something serious that we don't want to talk about at work. But when we're out of work and at home, we rarely talk about work 'cause I think if if you start talking about at work at home, it's I don't know, like you said, you carve out time for yourselves. We want time for ourselves, not to just feel like you're working when you're at home. Yeah. Yeah. So shifting a little bit to back to the the nuts and bolts of the business, what maybe are a couple of common mistakes that homeowners make when they're hiring landscaping companies? I think one of the doing their research And like looking for reviews and I think talking to multiple people is a good idea because there are some contractors who don't always do things the right way and aren't transparent. And your reputation up in our area is basically everything because it's a very small town. If you're from like and you live in our in Traverse City, most of the time you know who the people are that are reputable and who aren't, but it This is your second home, you don't really know. So I think definitely doing your research because a lot of what we do is on the waterfront, which means you have to have permits. And so there's companies out there who won't pull permits and they might get away with it, you might not. So that's that's definitely one thing do your research. Look at s look at Google reviews, check out their social media and just see what the company's about. What are their core values? Do they have core values? Do they take care of their employees? I mean, the other thing that homeowners don't really think about, but it's probably the most important and it's one of the first things I look at when you go to somebody's property is drainage. Cause it's something that's overlooked. It's usually under the ground. You don't really see it. But with our elevation changes we have here, because it's fairly hilly, making sure you have proper grading. And d dealing with water so you don't get water into somebody's basement or washouts and things like that. That's kind of your f first thing you should look at because it once you're midway through a project, you're not gonna go back and address drainage. Right. And it's not very fun to talk about either. No, my my brother actually does some drainage work more in cities and stuff, so he'll tell me about that all the time. And water can be undefeated. The water's gotta have some place to go. Yeah, it's gotta have some place to go. So what now that you're five years in running everything, what are some of the things that keep you motivated to continue day in, day out? I think the biggest thing is trying to grow the company and get more opportunities for our employees. I heard another podcast, somebody it was this was their goal was too. They kinda went around and asked their employees what their goals were and then they turned it into their goal. Like my goal is to make Jeff be able to buy a house and pay him enough money that he's able to afford it. So that's why I wanna grow the company is to give people more opportunities and keep becoming more professional because landscaping has had a knack for not being a profession and That's kind of our area's goal is to make people see that this is a profession. You can make money doing this. You can make a living on this. So that's why I want to grow so we can have more account managers and more project managers and have people move up through the company and keep people here because if people don't see an opportunity to grow, a lot of times they'll leave. So that's with growth. You open up more positions and gives More people, room to advance. Let's talk about that a little bit though, 'cause you just triggered for me, you know, kind of like a kid starts out raking leaves, then they maybe get to take their parents' lawnmower and they work the neighborhood. So sometimes I think you think about it as like amateurs doing it and then you might see someone with a pickup truck, but you've built a fifty employee person business. What are some of the systems or things that you've put in place to run it as a business and not like how I might think of let me hire the neighbor kid to do my lawn. Yeah. So I mean we have a full office staff. Like we who are currently hiring an architect, but we typically have an architect on staff. Mm I mean, who does two scale prints. We have an HR coordinator who handles all HR tasks, we have benefits, we have PTO vacation, all that stuff. And that's to attract employees and try to take care of our employees. One of the other big things for us was bringing in some technology. Like we use the software called Aspire, which is one of the top or top two, depending on who you ask, software f in the landscaping industry, which was a huge investment for us. And it continues to be as software does, but it really helps you kind of go to the next level with being able to have all your information in one place. It's where our employees clock in and out of. It's how we it's where we quote. It's where we store our customer information and property information. It's how we send invoices. It has a customer portal if you choose to use it. Having all that information in one area has been like a game changer for us. It's allowed us to 'Cause before, I mean, we had a different software, but the amount of paper we had in our office, it was dri it drove me nuts. As an engineer before everything was like digital, it's all through your email. Coming here was kinda like, Whoa, what's going on with all these folders? Yeah. So having that's software and it has job like job cost accurate job costing in there and estimating so you can Be on a job, finish a job, and immediately know whether you made money on the job or not. It's it does our scheduling, it's got equipment tracking info in there. So it I think embracing software was one of the big things that kinda allows you to grow. ⁓ if you had advice for an up and coming entrepreneur or small business owner about how to navigate this path that you have, what would that be? I'd say you really need to kind of depending what the business is you're looking to get into, I think you need to really get out there and meet people who are doing it because I think it can be intimidating, but nine times out of ten, people will open up to you and share what they're doing, what's worked, what's not worked, get a group of peers that have done it, seen the things you're trying to do, gone through it and figured it out. Because a lot of times people like that are looking to give back and help somebody out who needs help. So don't be afraid to ask questions and reach out to people because most of the time people are gonna be willing to help you. All right. I'm gonna get you out of here on the last couple of things. Yeah. First one is when you hear do small business like a big boss, what does that mean to you? To me, that means running the business. I mean, it might be a small business, but I mean having the systems in place and procedures like a big business because just because you're small in size doesn't mean that you can't run it like a big business and just need to have the structure in there to be able to grow. Cool. And Doug, where can people find you if they want to look you up? So I am on LinkedIn. I think it's just Doug Bonnell on there. ⁓ yeah, feel free to shoot me a message or you can go to our website and there's an info at that goes to my wife that she will Promptly forward to me. All right. Cool. Well, thank you so much for your time today and sharing your stories being so open. I really appreciate it. I appreciate the invite on. Thank you. All right, bosses. That's all we have for today. Just remember build the dream messy, build the dream scared, but just don't build it small. We'll see you next time. Thank you.