Lawn Doctor Ranks No. 84 in Franchise 500

Lawn Doctor President & CEO Russel Frith is a smart businessman with as much passion for the green industry as he has for entrepreneurship. But ask him how the Holmdel, N.J.-based lawn care company has made a consistently strong showing on Enterpreneur magazine’s annual Franchise 500 and Frith will honestly tell you, “I just don’t know.”

“There are several organizations and magazines that do different industry rankings, and those companies will look at different criteria and weigh those criteria in different ways,” Frith says. “Entrepreneur usually sends out a survey that will ask for last year’s volume, the number of franchise units we have, and things of that nature – but they never tell you what their evaluation criteria are. From our perspective internally, we’re a strong company and we’ve been in business a long time, but I really don’t know the science behind the rankings.”

Still, Lawn Doctor is doing something right, considering that they’ve ranked between No. 78 and No. 89 on the Franchise 500 since 2000. At No. 84 this year, Frith credits a simple business philosophy for the company’s success.

“We view our franchisees as business partners and we try to do everything we can to enhance the value of their businesses,” he says. “The better they do, the better we do – the formula is so simple and I think a lot of people try to create more complexity than there is.”

Moreover, Frith acknowledges that among Lawn Doctors 460-plus franchises, there are differences of opinion regarding how to properly run an operation, but this can be a strengthening factor. “There’s a mutual benefit from working together and growing the business,” he says. “You’re still dealing with independent business people and there will be varying points of view. But I view this as a strength if you’re willing to listen because you have hundreds of successful business people thinking about substantially the same problems. Operators in different parts of the country may have different considerations, but when it comes to things like marketing, customer attitude, customer expectations and supply and delivery, we want to here those different points of view so we can create an operation that works well for everyone.”

According to Entrepreneur’s Web site, the magazine considers numerous pieces of empirical information in their rankings, including financial strength and stability, growth rate, size of the system, number of years in business,  start-up costs, litigation, percentage of terminations and whether the company provides financing.

“These factors are objective, quantifiable measures of a franchise operation,” the Web site states. “We do not measure subjective elements such as franchisee satisfaction or management style because these are judgements only you can make based on your own needs and experiences. All companies, regardless of size, are judged by the same criteria.”

According to the 2003 Lawn & Landscape State of the Industry Report, Lawn Doctor boasted 2002 revenue of $70 million with an expected 5-percent increase for 2003. The company’s start-up costs range from $82.9 million and $83.3 million.