Building the Yardmaster platform

Mike Montenaro wholeheartedly believes he can read people almost immediately – he goes so far as to call it a sixth sense.

“When I get into a room with certain people, I can tell if I’m going to connect with them in a pretty short period of time,” says Montenaro, the CEO of Yardmaster, one of the green industry’s newest platforms that integrates four companies in the Midwest.

That sixth sense paid off when Montenaro – who was leading Yardmaster before it officially became a platform company – first met with Unity Partners, a private equity firm.

Yes, it took several meetings, but a good first impression is just the start. Still, Montenaro connected with Unity to the tune of new partnerships with Big Lakes Lawncare (Detroit), Good Guys Lawn and Landscape (Ann Arbor) and Kunco Landscape (Erie, PA).

“We met with several half-dozen or more other private equity teams, including Unity, to make our decision and Unity just stood out,” Montenaro says.

For their part, Unity’s Vice President of Investments, Brett Stoehr, also felt the connection right away. Two years ago, Unity Partners started looking to add commercial landscaping companies to its portfolio. Unity entered a discovery phase, and with help from 3PG Advisors, Stoehr found Montenaro and Kurt Kluznik, who started the company in 1971.

“As soon as I met Mike and the team, I knew it was the right fit,” Stoehr says. “Kurt had built a phenomenal business over his lifetime. Their underlying values aligned really well with ours, and then we obviously got to see the data and could tell they built a phenomenal business.”

“Mike can walk into a room and he’ll walk out with opportunities,” Kluznik adds. “(He’s got) a real strong interest in people, whether it’s a PE person or a contractor.”

Montenaro’s sixth sense might be sociability, but then there must be a seventh sense – business acumen. While he worked as Yardmaster’s chief operating officer for the last six years, the company grew 120% under his leadership. Stoehr says it quickly became obvious that Montenaro had built a strong leadership team around him.

Montenaro earned a promotion to CEO of Yardmaster in July, but he had already laid the foundation for what was to come for the platform.  

“That gave us confidence that Yardmaster was platform-ready and that Mike was the right leader,” Stoehr says.

Kluznik acknowledges the M&A process is an emotional one. After all, Kluznik has been there every step of the way as Yardmaster built its brand. But, as he started looking to head into the next chapter of his life, he enlisted Montenaro’s help finding the necessary partnership to take care of his existing team.

“It was just time,” Kluznik says. “I know the horror stories out there (about private equity), but we don’t have one. We’ve got a great company culture and great leadership team, and to put Unity and Mike together – it was just a natural fit.”

Stoehr saw Yardmaster as a natural fit, too. On the business side of it, the Yardmaster platform is strategically built around strong geographic proximity. The 300-mile footprint strengthens market density and allows cross-company help. Take, for instance, a surge snow event, where one company needs extra equipment or labor. That’s where the whole Yardmaster platform can be of assistance in relatively short order.

Of course, the linchpin behind it all is Kluznik’s brand he built at Yardmaster and Montenaro’s leadership over the last half-decade.

“We looked and said, “How many times do you get to partner with a 55-year-old brand that has a great reputation in the market?’” Stoehr says.