When asked what has led to the success of Willamette Landscape Services, Inc., in Tualatin, Oregon, Vice President Matt Triplett, CLP, CLT, is not at loss for words. As a former English major at Oregon Statue University, that should not be a surprise. The company’s success, he explains, has hinged on “passion” and “commitment” and the owners’ desire to “do it right” and “grow intelligently.” Success, he adds, has also depended on a special symbiotic relationship between himself and co-owner Randy McManus, CLP. “Randy is thoughtful and patient, while I am energetic and competitive. In other words, Randy is the steady council and I am the producer.”
The relationship has been a good match, one that started back in 1991 when Randy and Matt both worked for Drake’s 7 Dees in Portland. When company owner, Drake Snodgrass, offered to sell the maintenance division to Randy, Randy agreed and asked Matt to be his partner. Today, Willamette Landscape Services generates $2.4 million in sales annually, primarily in commercial landscape maintenance. It does not take much to change history, though, and one more year at Oregon State was all Matt needed to launch into a career as a high school English teacher. That year never materialized, though, thanks to part-time employment. “I took a summer job as a mow jock with a fraternity brother and fell in love with the industry,” he recalls. “The weather was spectacular that year and I felt instant gratification from the work we were doing. Right then and there, I knew I would forego my last year of school to pursue a career in the green industry.”
Matt worked for two years at then Northwest Landscape Industries (NLI) before moving over to Drake’s. He participated in NLI’s in-house training program and took horticulture classes after work at a nearby community college. “I worked hard, because I had a passion for the industry and wanted to be a great supervisor and manager some day,” he says, noting that the decision later to buy a business with Randy expanded all his goals in a hurry. “Randy and I knew how to run a maintenance department because that is what we did for Drake.” We didn’t know how to run a business. We joined the Associated Landscape Contractors of America (ALCA). “Without ALCA and the relationships we formed with members, we would not be where we are today,” Matt emphasizes. He gives special credit to past ALCA President Kurt Kluznik, CCLP, for starting them on their network path, and to industry consultants Frank Ross and Kevin Kehoe for growing their business knowledge. “In the simplest terms,” says Matt, “being an ALCA member helped us broaden our vision of the industry and allowed us to model our business after successful landscape contractors."
Throughout the early years, Matt says it was his partner’s thoughtfulness and steady counsel that enabled the company to grow. Nowhere was it more evident, he adds, than when Willamette decided to settle in a niche comprised of homeowner associations (HOAs), townhomes, and condominium properties. “Not long after we purchased the company, I thought we should try to expand our niche. Randy cautioned against this, pointing out instead that we were providing a service that few other area companies were doing successfully. A competitor once told me that providing maintenance services for HOAs and condos was a ‘different reality.’ Since it was a reality we understood and actually thrived upon, Randy thought we should continue to focus on it. He was right.”
Matt continues, “We had the patience and were savvy enough to empathize with boards and associations, and we were willing to educate them and help them achieve what they wanted for their members. In essence, working with these properties fit our different personalities. I wanted to please our customers and be appreciated. Randy just wanted to take care of them and be the answer to their individual needs. “Patience is the key”, he emphasizes. “I believe to be successful in this market requires contractors to spend extra time with customers. You have to go to board and association meetings to detail what maintenance, enhancement, and irrigation solutions need to be implemented to meet their goals and to spell out how this will be accomplished.” Training doesn’t stop there, he adds. “You also have to train these customers to go through the right chain of command if they have issues. You cannot have 1,000 people with special requests flagging down crew members.”
The flip side, he notes, is a similarly vigilant training program for employees. “I became a CLT in 1993, and both Randy and I are CLPs. We also require that all our supervisory staff is certified. Needless to say, we take certification seriously. We also train our crews to understand the hierarchy associated with HOAs and condominium boards, along with the high expectations of the homeowners they represent. Working at somebody’s home requires special attention to detail. Doing that work at 100 people’s homes simultaneously requires respectfulness, awareness, and diligence. It’s a different situation than other commercial or residential work.”
Training is critical, he adds, from both perspectives. With that said, Matt thinks the business of running a successful business can be relatively straightforward. “There is no doubt that being open and honest with employees and with customers that have contributed to our company’s success,” he relates. “Being honest with ourselves has been critical, too. We try very hard to do what’s right and to make a decent margin at the same time. If we have to compromise in either area, we are often compelled to leave the job behind.”
The partners are in full agreement here, as well, which just reconfirms the synergy that fuels this growing operation.
3/05
By Rod Dickens, PLANET contributing Writer
