Michael Ackerman was your typical 11-year-old boy. He wanted to make some money to buy a pair of shoes so he traveled door-to-door with his bike and lawn mower asking neighbors if he could cut their grass. But unlike most young boys, once Ackerman made enough money to get his shoes, he continued cutting grass.
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He spent his youth mowing lawns in the hopes of one day becoming a full-service lawn and landscape contractor. With the help of his dad and the rest of his family, his two man crew has grown and prospered into Wichita, Kan.-based Michael’s Complete Lawn Care.
Blast from the past. When his business expanded outside the neighborhood during his teenage year Ackerman’s father jumped on board, driving Ackerman, who was not of driving age, to jobs and also becoming a licensed commercial applicator.
“I would come home from school and load up the 16-foot trailer and as soon as my dad got home we were off mowing five to seven lawns a night,” Ackerman says.
This all changed the summer after he turned 16. He could work 10 hours a day and didn’t have to wait for dad to come home from work. Ackerman made some changes, including a bigger shop and hiring his high school buddy Brett Prater, who is currently director of operations, to join him on his business endeavors.
When Lawn & Landscape spoke to Ackerman in 2000 (click here for related article), Michael’s Complete Lawn Care was in its second year of operation and Ackerman was in his fifth year as a business professional. His mowing client base was close to 50 lawns with an additional 40 customers who he provided with his five-step lawn fertilization program. This Midwest company, which only made $600 to $700 a week its first year, made an estimated $35,000 in sales in 2000.
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His equipment line during this time consisted of one Snapper 21-inch walk behind, two Walker mowers, two RedMax trimmers, 2 ECHO handheld blowers, a LESCO trimmer, a LESCO blower, and sprayers and spreaders for the fertilization services.
Flash forward. Today, Ackerman has been in the industry for 12 years and Michael’s Complete Lawn care is in its ninth year of official operation. He estimates his revenue for 2007 to be between $1.5 and $2 million.
He credits this increase to the company’s advertising, especially the online estimator feature on its Web site, which was up and running starting March 1. The feature allows customers to pick a lawn size and estimate your price.
“We added the online estimator last winter and 2 to 10 people view it a day,” Ackerman says.
Michael’s Complete Lawn Care is now truly a family business. His dad is the VP of corporation and the irrigation division manager, his mom is the office manager and company controller and his wife Natalie is the company scheduler.
“Around 90 percent of the time we never have any issues,” Ackerman says. “But the benefit of working with family is getting to see them everyday and having people you trust around you,” he says.
His client base has grown leaps and bounds in the past seven years. “Our client base includes 150 residential, 50 to 75 commercial and 10 large patio owner associations,” Ackerman says. “Of my original 15 to 20 clients 50 to 60 percent of them are still with me,” he adds
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Adding more clients means adding to his fleet of equipment which currently consists of 14 trucks, four Walker mowers, four 61-inch side discharge Grasshoppers, six 21-inch Snapper push mowers, one 48-inch Snapper walk behind, 20 RedMax string trimmers, four stick edgers and eight backpack blowers from RedMax and STIHL.
This original father-son crew has grown to an average of 20 employees who make up two to three residential mowing crews, two chemical fertilization crews, one landscape maintenance crew and two irrigation maintenance crews.
Hiring more employees means Ackerman is no longer out in the field, which gives him the time to focus on the business side of the company. A typical day for him involves coming in later in the morning, working on estimates and big accounts, talking and meeting with customers and at the end of the day meeting with his managers.
“For me, at this point in business my time is worth more in the office than out mowing,” Ackerman says.
This attitude is what keeps him from worrying about growing in the future. He knows the company will continue to grow, but his goal is to try not to grow too quickly. He has seen companies grow too fast without a structured set up and they have ended up in debt. His future goals also include increasing customer satisfaction and retention and finding and retaining quality people.
The one thing that hasn’t changed over the years is Ackerman’s company policy which is “do it right the first time, quality is number one and if you treat customers right, they will treat us right,” Ackerman says.