Chris Senske is the acquisition ambassador for the Senske Family of Companies. He started out in the industry at a young age, working for his father, Bill. After his father had built up Senske Services’ reputation, he passed the reins to Chris in the 1980s. Over the years, Senske grew the Kennewick, Washington-based business to include branches all the way to Provo, Utah, and Denver, Colorado. In 2022, he finalized a deal with private equity firm GTCR. Now known as Senske Family of Companies, their portfolio includes 10 additional brands and serves customers in 16 states and Canada.
What was your biggest challenge when you took over the business from your father in the 80s?
Even though I had grown up in the business, I was challenged immediately with what I should be doing as a leader. My father needed to have major surgery just as I graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in chemistry with an emphasis on math and biochemistry, when he asked me to come fill in for him. I thought I was going to graduate school, but I accepted the offer to help out because I needed money and I wanted to get married. The five-dollar-per-hour pay rate seemed like a huge increase over the $1.80 I was earning washing test tubes in the OBGYN lab at University Hospital.
I had no clue what I should be doing as a leader of four or five employees and running a business. I was tasked with making sure all the work got done, bills paid, receivables collected, and then making a strategic plan for the next several years. My biggest challenge was trying to learn how to manage. I studied all the industry journals to learn what others were doing. Weeds, Trees & Turf (now Landscape Management), Lawn Care Industry magazine (now Lawn & Landscape), as well as other rags, became my bible to learn from.
What was a major lesson you learned while leading the company?
There are so many lessons learned over a 52-year career, it’s hard to nail down specific ones. I think the most important lesson that was actually the hardest to learn was to focus on our great competency. It was so easy to be distracted by chasing dollars, doing something that we had no expertise in.
In the 70s, during the energy crisis, there were significant subsidies and a drive to upgrade insulation in homes. It looked like pretty easy money! Then next up, we were distracted with landscape maintenance, and that spawned design and bid build landscaping. All those $100,000 to $300,000 build contracts we were missing out on were going to make us a fortune. Not so much on any of these projects. I left those businesses behind and went back to focusing on lawn care. When we did, we were profitable and growing year after year. The lesson: focus on your core competencies.
How would you describe your leadership style?
I think my style is to gain consensus, make a decision and delegate the execution of the project. I’ve always found it easy to delegate. I am more of the creative idea generator, the starter but not the closer that follows through to the end. I would like to find a champion who will build on the idea and execute a successful completion of a project with consultation along the way. The common theme at Senske was you will get enough rope, but you will need to ask questions along the way, so you don’t hang yourself.
The creative part is probably why I took on marketing as my responsibility. Again, coming up with the outline of a plan, a creative idea, then passing it off to an expert who could execute it to a successful conclusion, really defines my style.
I would not say I was a good strategic planner, but allowing others to take the reins and execute allowed me to have strategic ideas to make the business grow.
There have been plenty of ideas that my team would laugh at the absurdity or roll their eyes at, and even come to call the process ‘Chris throwing a grenade.’
If you are going to have a multi-branch operation, you have to be able to delegate with confidence that your team will execute.
What advice would you give to others trying to grow a successful business?
Focus and focus with discipline. But don’t put on the blinders. To make the business grow, you need to have creative ideas on new offerings, new ways to market the business and new ways to look at the customer experience that don’t stray too far from core competencies.
Don’t get greedy. What I mean is don’t extract excess cash from the business because your spouse wants the new Porsche. Growth takes cash! Our business is not very attractive to bankers to loan operating capital as a smaller operation. They want to see products on the shelf that can be collateralized, not a projected revenue stream on a spreadsheet that is difficult for them to monetize – at least for a banker.
During one of our early growth spurts, I needed money to buy 13 application rigs, about $600,000. The banker looked at my financial statement and said, “You are bankrupt!” because we had no “inventory,” only a couple million dollars of projected business on the books. He didn’t get our business. I got another banker who ‘got’ the business and we had a nice relationship for the next 30 years.
Finally, for Senske, the most difficult advice to follow (because we were headquartered in a small community of about 150,000 people in the remote desert of Washington state) is to hire the best people you can afford – at least ones you will be able to afford in the near future as the business grows into their capabilities. This is a lesson I actually learned watching and listening to my good friend Matt Jesson of Green Lawn Fertilizing. Ultimately, we were able to attract great team members who were open to a different lifestyle. We were selling the outdoor and quality of life opportunities in the beautiful Northwest.
What’s a strongly held belief you’ve changed your mind on over the years?
The belief that I can do it all myself has changed to I need great people around me who are not just better at the task, but experts needed to be a successful organization.
How do you define success today compared to when you first took over the company?
I originally defined success as just getting a new customer, getting through the day and getting my scheduled work done. We talked about the “$300 day” as the gold standard for a very productive day. That is equivalent to about $2,000 in today’s dollars.
Now I feel that success is watching a team member grow in their position or advance to a new position. I take great pride in seeing their families grow up, all the activities they do – the sports they and their families show images of on our company social media site – all the things that they are interested in.
Success is more about our teammates’ success in life.
How did you come to the decision to partner with GTCR?
There were multiple reasons we selected GTCR. Of course, most important was the money they brought to the table. But almost as important was after interviewing all the suitors and listening to their stories, evaluating their style and listening to their vision for the next step, GTCR leaders had the people we wanted to work with. Their methods of developing leaders in their organization and sponsoring them to build platforms of great value made it an intriguing proposition to go with them. They had a previous lawn care company as one of their projects in the 90s. Barefoot Grass was sponsored by GTCR and eventually sold to ServiceMaster. I felt we could have the same or better outcome given the state of the industry today.
What has it been like moving to the acquisition ambassador role for Senske Family of Companies?
When we had our company meeting to announce the participation of GTCR, during my presentation, someone asked what I was going to do. I responded that I would be part of the board of the new Senske and a kind of acquisitions ambassador, talking to other companies and looking for growth opportunities. That term stuck and I adopted it as my title.
I really am doing similar things I did for the five years prior to the sale. I participate in association meetings, committees and trade show visits, learning about other companies and what they are doing to grow. I really try to represent Senske as a potential partner for other companies’ future plans. I love the continued engagement with the business and the industry I have spent my entire life working in. Would I like to be more engaged in the business? Sure! But Catie, my wife, has different plans for our next couple of decades.
What advice would you give to others looking to preserve the legacy of their company but pass on the reins?
Most important is to come up with a succession plan on what is right for you and your family to transition. Unfortunately, we all get older and will need to make those kinds of decisions – how we gracefully move on. Whether it is a plan to transfer ownership to a family member, an employee or sell to another company or individual. It has to be right for you. At Senske, we try in most cases to keep all the leadership who want to continue to work and we preserve the brand in their markets when possible. That is why we are called Senske Family of Companies.
We had an eight-year plan that the Senske leadership team and I had developed at the end of which I would be 80 and need to make a change. That was about a year before we as a team decided it was the right time to sell. With the private equity activity that was just starting and the multiples being offered, that eight-year plan was cut to 18 months! We really hadn’t done all we needed to do to get the company right for sale, but we felt we had to strike while the iron was hot!
Don’t try to do a sale or succession plan on your own. Hire experts who will be able to advise you along the journey.
What are you most proud of when you look back at your career and the company’s journey?
I am most proud of the development of the people in the Senske Lawn and Tree Care family and that together we built an organization that could have a lasting future.
How do you see consolidation shaping the future of the industry, and what role do you see Senske playing in that?
I think it is a wonderful development. As companies are acquired, the sponsors are adding support and structure that, as individuals, we could not afford to do. I had wanted to add a fleet manager to our company for at least five years but just couldn’t pull the trigger on that hire due to the perceived overhead expense it would add. What was the first thing that the new leadership did? They added a fleet manager!
The consolidation is good for developing a more professional industry and one that can have more of an impact on how we are perceived by consumers and by regulators. We can invest more into advocacy than what smaller companies can do.
What changes would you like to see in the industry?
I am very excited about autonomous vehicles and the potential to eliminate the most dangerous part of our work – driving. I believe it would add significantly to productivity, safety and the work or job quality. That is coming sooner than later.
I would like to see every company, large and small, play a larger role in industry advocacy. Every company should be concerned about what their local, state and federal governments are doing that impacts their business. Whether it is labor and compensation rules, safety regulations or potentially limiting the products we use, every company needs to be involved in advocating for their industry.
NALP’s Advocacy Ambassador Program helps companies to do just that. “The Advocacy Ambassador Program aims to build a strong, nationwide network of advocates — providing members with valuable opportunities to connect with policymakers, engage with industry peers, and proactively represent our profession when key issues arise in state legislatures.” And it is so simple to get started.
It is because of my involvement in associations, working on committees and volunteering to advocate for my industry that I built relationships all across the country. Those relationships were instrumental in my long-term success. Networking, learning about how others were building their businesses and processes, paid dividends on the investment I made in advocating for the industry. Every company should do the same.
This article was published in the January/February issue of the magazine. To read more stories from The Edge magazine, click here to subscribe to the digital edition.
