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Ask Scott Byron why his company has been so successful over the years, and he simply says, “We go the extra mile to make customers happy.” Byron and partner Andy Otting have been making customers happy since 1982, when they started to provide design/build services for customers in and around Lake Bluff, Illinois. Today, Scott Bryon & Company, Inc., generates more than $20 million in design/build and maintenance sales annually, and neither Byron nor Otting have ever made a cold call. They have let their business do the talking, and talk it has.

After graduating from the University of Illinois with a degree in landscape architecture and working seven years for an area contractor, Bryon launched his company. He purchased a book from the Small Business Administration about how to start your own business, visited 17 banks before procuring a loan, and purchased a used truck, trailer, and backhoe. At the time, Byron recalls, he had everything — a little knowledge about running a business (emphasis on “little”) and some equipment. The only thing missing were the customers, and some flyers took care of that.

A few months later, Otting came on board with the intention of helping to grow a maintenance division. Byron explains, “We knew early on that our best advertising would be our projects, and the only way to ensure that they continued to look good was to maintain them.” He emphasizes, “Andy added that dimension to the business, and maintenance is still an important part of our service offering.”

Thinking back about the company’s evolution, Byron points to three important turning points. The first occurred four years into the business. The company grossly underbid a huge project in Chicago to the extent that the job nearly sent Byron, Otting, and their employees to the unemployment office. “If there are 20 mistakes to make in bidding a job, we made 21 of them,” Byron recalls. “In addition, Mother Nature worked against us, along with some inherent flaws in the design plan. We never went back to the client, though, to ask for an increase. Instead, we did the job to the best of our abilities.”

The difficult project had “red” written all over it, but it was also a great learning experience. It taught the owners the value of an accurate estimating system, and Byron claims that they never underbid a job again. It also imparted the value of doing good work despite experiencing on-the-job duress. The client later became one of the company’s best customers, one that provided the impetus for 20 to 30 percent growth per annum over a span of 10 years.

A second defining moment occurred a year later in 1987, when nearly every contractor in the area was chasing work that involved big housing projects and new office parks. Bryon says, “Business was booming for many of our competitors, and plant material was nearly flying out their doors to those huge commercial projects. For some reason, we decided to stay with our residential market, and the decision paid off. Within six months, the bottom dropped out of the commercial market. I guess you can say we lucked out by sticking to our knitting.”

The company reached a third crossroad in 1991 after Bryon received an executive degree from Harvard. “Going though the course taught me the value of understanding the financial side of running a business,” Bryon explains. “We immediately started to look for a general manager who later would help us create processes and systems. We also began to document everything and started to measure just how efficient our operation really was. Within the next three years, our growth nearly tripled.”

The new processes and systems gave the owners the confidence to set some fairly aggressive long-term goals. One was to “hit 20 in 20,” which meant reaching the $20 million mark in sales by the year 2000. They accomplished that and have since continued the drive upward.

“Our strategy has worked for us over the years,” says Byron. “Ninety percent of our work is still in the high-end residential market, and maintenance continues to keep our properties working for us long after they were installed.” Still, he points out that getting his arms around financial management issues, staying focused, and understanding costs were three important lessons he learned early on.

Despite the learning curve, Byron emphasizes that the formula for being successful in this business is not that complicated. “We are in a simple business,” he remarks. “All we really have to do is treat people like we want to be treated and make customers rave about us to their friends. Once we do that, we are more than half way home.” He adds, “The other half of the trip involves understanding the business of running a business.” Combine the two, and customers will come knocking on your door, especially if you go that important extra mile.

8/04

By Rod Dickens, ALCA Contributing Writer