Our Level Up series shares the strategies that help landscape and lawn care companies get to the next level.
At Blue Marble Landscape, based in Mesa, Arizona, large-scale HOAs are their bread and butter.
Not only do they provide a wide range of services to this commercial property type, including landscape and turf management, water management, tree care, weed control and enhancements, but they also excel at retaining these HOA clients long-term.
Brodey Mann, vice president of Blue Marble, says their clients are renewing their contracts every year anywhere from seven to 15 years.
“That means we’ve seen different board presidents, boards, property management companies, you name it, but they’ve stayed with us,” Mann says.
Mann says that their clients love their accessibility, transparency and communication. He also credits founder Dennis Lynch for being hands-on and available to their client base. Many of their HOA board presidents have Lynch’s direct number.
“They know they can reach him if there’s an issue,” Mann says. “They know that we stand by what we say because one of the things that’s different about Blue Marble is that the length of the contracts that we have with these clients are 7, 10, 12 years, which is unheard of.”
Mann says his definition of success for the company is to have a community that people are proud to live in and have people visit them at.
The business earned $10.1 million in annual revenue last year and is tracking north of that this year. Mann says they have an ideal company size but they haven’t reached it yet.
“It’s whatever we can get to that stays sustainable, where we don’t sacrifice what our key pillars are as a company,” Mann says. “We have something in mind that we aim for every day.”
Lynch never wants the company to be bought out or become part of a conglomerate.
“Our goal is to continue to be the largest and oldest owner-operated company in Arizona,” Mann says.
Growing the Business
Lynch founded the company in 2010 after working for various other landscape companies. After gaining the necessary experience, Lynch launched the business with a friend, a former co-worker, and one truck.
“He pretty much did it all, and then he felt he knew enough and he saw how he could do things a little bit differently that he felt empowered enough to start his own company,” Mann says.
For the last 10 years, Blue Marble has been growing at a rate of three to eight percent every year. They did have a period of significant growth after the recession in 2009.
“We were in a position where we were small enough that we didn’t have overhead that was going to kill us,” Mann says. “We weren’t overleveraged financially, but we had the capacity and the financial reserves and the financial wherewithal to grow and accept business. It was getting freed up from some of the other people who weren’t in such an advantageous position.”
Mann says their general landscape maintenance is their most popular service, but they have made some strong headway in their arbor division. They have an in-house arborist with whom clients love consulting.
“We’ve gotten a very strong reputation for a lot of the quality and affordable work we do around tree work,” Mann says. “We actually get quite a bit of work that isn’t from contracts that are ours. So, they have their full maintenance contract with another company, but they reach out to us to do some work with trees.”
As the company has grown, Mann says their services haven’t changed but they are executing them on bigger scale.
“We’re doing a lot more large-scale installs, large irrigation jobs, jobs we didn’t get in the past, but now we have the experience, we’re comfortable with them and we’ve grown into that,” Mann says.
While Blue Marble isn’t looking to be acquired, Mann says they are always on the lookout for certain acquisitions, like buying a small hardscaping operation.
Keys to Success
Mann says their success as a company is thanks to their relationship building, delivering on their promises and client retention.
Blue Marble sees their HOAs as partners, not just customers. They also collaborate with their vendors, property management companies and builders.
Mann says following through on their word has also been huge.
“Anyone can make a good pitch and get the business but then not lose it,” Mann says.
They feature an emergency phone number on their website, which each month a different member of the leadership team is responsible for answering. Mann says this ensures clients can always reach a live person.
He says keeping their promises is what allows them to have a strong client retention rate.
“I think that client retention is the most overlooked metric in our industry because everything else is always something better and there’s always somebody else out there that needs a bid,” Mann says. “I think client retention is a huge, huge metric that needs to be focused on.”
He says their client retention rate has shifted dramatically over the last two years, so they are now retaining over 85% of their clients. Mann says this is because of their emphasis on the partnership and communication with customers.
“I have a survey that goes out every single month to the property managers to ask them how we’re executing on the metrics that are important to me, like timeliness of response, willingness to attend board meetings, the things that matter to them,” Mann says. “Turnaround on work order requests and things like that. Then I have a separate survey that’s very much more along the lines of the quantitative aspect ‘How’s your property looking?’ ‘What needs work?’ and a one to five rating scale.”
With this real-time feedback, Mann says he is always in the know. He’s alerted if there’s an issue they need to fix and knows when they’re doing well.
Mann says they joined NALP last year as he appreciated the wide variety of offerings from the association.
“From benchmarking, NALP has been huge, because it really gives you an idea of the tiers, frankly, of landscaping companies there are nationally, and where you are, and I’m not just talking revenue,” Mann says.
Strong Company Culture
Unlike other landscape companies, Mann says hiring laborers hasn’t been a challenge for them, rather it’s been finding leaders who can help them execute their vision.
“I can get the people to do work, but now I need another manager so I’m trying to get them from another company when they know how valuable they are or finding somebody within to develop,” Mann says. “That’s the biggest challenge is that leadership direction because the higher up you go in the funnel of an organization, the fewer there are just floating around. It’s never a labor challenge. It’s always a leadership challenge from my standpoint.”
Blue Marble currently has 110 employees on staff year-round, and they also take advantage of the H-2B program. Mann says in the four years of using the program they’ve always received their visas.
“I think it’s because the amount that we ask for is reasonable,” Mann says. “We don’t look for them to supplement. We look for them to assist.”
This year, they requested 30 H-2B workers. He says it also helps getting H-2B workers from a variety of different countries.
Recruiting-wise, Mann says they use a multitude of methods depending on the skills sets they are hiring for. They have hiring signs at their main office and get a lot of walk-in traffic.
“From a straight day labor standpoint, it’s not incredibly difficult,” Mann says. “When we’re looking for more specialized employees, whether that be your irrigation techs, your tree climbers, enhancement construction guys, it’s a lot of word of mouth.”
They also offer incentives depending on who they are looking to hire. Blue Marble offers referral bonuses to all their employees based on who they bring in.
Mann says he prefers to hire a combination of individuals with industry experience and those who are new to the industry as he likes the ability to grow long-term employees.
“There’s nothing that I like better than hiring someone who’s 18 to 22 and I start getting feedback, like, ‘Hey, this person might be a great foreman. We should start working on developing them,’” Mann says.
Mann says the number one way they retain their staff is through paying the team fairly and having transparent conversations with them when they request a raise.
He says they are also very flexible with their employees and treat them like family.
“I know a lot of people say that, but I mean it truly,” Mann says. “Our controller has guys that will come in and they’re saying, ‘Hey, it’s kind of tight at home. Can you give me a $200 advance on my paycheck?’ We do that all the time because, number one, I know these guys. Number two, I trust them and number three, if heaven forbid, I’m ever in that situation, I’d want the same done for me.”
Other benefits include 401(k) matching, health, dental and vision insurance, paid time off, and recently, they added in a tuition reimbursement program.
“Tuition would be for them getting an associate or bachelor’s in whatever they want to do,” Mann says. “We don’t restrict them on that. If they tell me their biggest desires to teach history and then coach football, I’m like, ‘Okay. I just want you to get an education and enjoy doing it.’”
Mann says his team also appreciates that the company makes time for them to pursue NALP certifications.
“I know that our field supervisors have greatly appreciated the online training courses that are offered,” Mann says. “They really love being able to just brush up or learn new skills.”
Mann says they maintain their culture by continuing what they were doing when they only had 10 employees, which includes appreciation days, cookouts, Christmas parties and Christmas bonuses.
He says the visibility and interaction at his level and above also enhances the culture.
“I’ll come out of my office at the end of the day and talk to a foreman about a property I know is struggling,” Mann says. “They’re like, ‘Why does he know this kind of thing?’”
Mann says he sets the pace at the organization and everyone follows suit.
“You really know you have a culture when you go away and it stays running the way it does,” Mann says. “If I go on vacation, I don’t come back to 30,000 complaints or things like that.”
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