Special Feature
fresh air
especially during good weather. Having said that, there is something nice about working in the cold and wet and then coming home to warm up – there’s a real sense of achievement and well-being to it, although I don’t want every day to be like a damp, cold, February one!
Describe your typical day. It’s a combination of three main things: actually working on the lawns and performing one of the seven or so treatment activities we offer, generating and quoting for new business and, unfortunately, the dreaded book work associated with running a business. At the moment I probably spend fi ve hours on the lawns and directly with my customers – this has gone down a bit since we hired our fi rst full-time employee in February – 17 months after starting the business. I will then do a couple of hours a day quoting and a couple of hours a day doing admin work and preparing invoices, etc, for the next day. It’s pretty varied so the days go very quickly.
Is your work aff ected by seasonal patterns, and if so, how? Yes – mainly the weather! The grass does not grow much between November and early February, so our services are not at the front of our customer’s minds during this time of year. Other than that, it is very busy for at least 10 months of the year, with spring and autumn being the busiest periods. I worry each January whether the phone will ring at all – then we get the fi rst weekend of good weather in February and everybody starts to focus on their garden and off we go!
How has your business fared during the downturn? What downturn? We had to slow down our marketing activities in the early autumn last year because we could not cope with all the new business – we took on between 30 and 50 new customers every month between February and October 2011 and lost less than 10 during the whole year. 2012 has started in the same way, we have lost a small number of customers due to them tightening their belts but at the same time we took on 36 new customers in March. We are fi nding that our customers are deciding to spend their money on improving what they have got rather than acquiring more debt and moving house – that’s good for our business and our growth.
What are your future plans for the business?
The aim is to continue growing at a rate of an additional van on the road each year or 18 months, over the next fi ve years. By then I will be in my early 50s and thinking about doing less heavy lifting and more of the business- building and quoting. I see a dedicated team of lawn managers in place keeping to the high standards I have set in our fi rst 18 months of business. My family are involved in helping the business, and it would be excellent if my son, who is currently 18, decided to join full time and run it in the next few years. This would free me up to spend more time on the golf course and I would be able to pick and choose the amount of time I spend working on the business. Ultimately I want the value of the business to grow and become a substantial asset that will either pay me a nice
pension each year – if we decide to keep it in the family – or a large lump sum if we decide to sell and retire completely. My hope would be to keep the business and continue to have an interest in it for many years to come.
LawnHopper
Jim Pearson, 57 had a varied career in the construction industry, managing a scaff olding hire and sales company and working as national operations director for two companies, which hired out self-propelled booms and scissor lifts to construction companies. After being made redundant he realised that he had to take control of his own destiny and decided to invest in lawn treatment franchise, LawnHopper.
Why did franchising appeal to you? I was made redundant from my last company in a major cost-cutting exercise at the start of the downturn in the construction industry. Whilst I got interviews for good jobs, as soon as I told them how old I was, my age immediately became a barrier. Many companies were also stripping out tiers of management to reduce costs and this
June 2012 |
Businessfranchise.com | 27
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