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Balancing act

This company brings in high revenue and offers employees quality of life

Featured Member
Clark Landscaping & Lawn Care
Rustburg, Virginia
Earnest Clark, owner

When Earnest Clark quit his day job in 1995 and started to operate his company full time, he had no intentions of being the biggest landscape contractor in the area. He wanted to be successful, grow some every year, and maintain a balance between work and life. On all accounts, the owner of Clark Landscaping & Lawn Care in Rustburg, Virginia, has reached his goals. The full-service landscape management company generates $1.3 million annually with eight full-time and 13 seasonal employees. In addition to his main office in Rustburg, Clark also operates a branch location some 50 miles away in Roanoke.

“If I were to attribute our success to any one move in particular, it would have to be becoming a member of ALCA [now PLANET] and networking with its members. Another move that has helped us has been working a four-day work week,” says Clark. “We have worked four 10-hour days from Day One. It has helped us in recruiting, and, frankly, it gives everyone an opportunity to lead a more balanced life. Sure, during the busy season, employees may log five or so overtime hours, but generally, we hold true to the 40-hour, four-day week.”

Clark joined PLANET’s legacy organization, ALCA, during his first full year in business and immediately started to expand his services, bringing on board lawn care, snow removal, and irrigation maintenance. He says he also started to emulate some of the group’s most successful members. On his first facility tour, he visited GroundMasters in Ohio and was “blown away” by how “tight ’n’ tidy” the business was run.

“Mike Rorie’s company is several times bigger today than it was back then,” says Clark, “but I have to think that his penchant for staying focused and keeping his operation simple attributed to his tremendous growth. My goals were not nearly as lofty as Mike’s, but seeing such a successful operation early on in my career taught me an invaluable lesson.”

On mark

When asked what that lesson was, Clark re-emphasizes the word “focus.” “This is a tough business, and my advice to anyone just getting in would be to decide what you want to be and then stick to it. We see so many company owners who want to be the ‘one-stop shop’ for everyone. That is a nice idea, but hard to implement today. If our customers want a service we can’t provide, we call in a subcontractor that we trust. This allows us to run a tight ship with fewer distractions and still help our customers.”

Clark Landscaping & Lawn Care services the commercial market, with more than 100 homeowner association (HOA), manufacturing, and municipal customers. The one common denominator that HOAs are beginning to share is hiring a property manager, Clark notes. seems that most everyone in our market is turning maintenance over to a property manager. From our perspective, this is not bad news. I believe it’s a little easier to do business with a single property manager than, for example, with an association board.”

He continues, “Since our business is a relationship business, developing a good relationship with a property manager also becomes our best marketing tool. We no longer advertise in the Yellow Pages like we used to, and we find ourselves in a position today to actually cherry pick accounts, keeping customers who appreciate our work and are willing to pay a fair price.”

It’s the way of the world in the green industry, he adds. “Companies are not raising prices, and, in competitive markets, they are actually charging less for the same service that they were providing 10 years ago, just to get the work. To be competitive, we buy productive equipment with the widest mowing decks available and find other efficiencies where we can. For years, we deployed smaller crews because they were more efficient than their larger counterparts. Because of rising fuel costs, though, we have started to consolidate crews and shorten routes.”

Stay focused

Competition, rising costs, and a tight employee market all confirm Clark’s philosophical approach to business — to stay focused and keep it simple. In some quarters, his approach may seem “old school.” His company is not heavy in middle management. In fact, in addition to being the company’s primary salesperson, he also wears the account manager hat in the Rustburg office.

His company is unusual in its snow removal pricing, too — charging by the hour instead of by the push or another approach that would guarantee him X amount of income for the winter. Says Clark, “We want to provide an honest ser vice and get reimbursed for what we do. It’s as simple as that.”

This “tight ’n’ tidy” Virginia business is honest, straightforward, and focused. By any measure, it’s a success.