GrassRoots Turf Founder Uses Decades Of Experience to Perfect The Lawn Care Model

There is a reason the independent neighborhood lawn care business is the start of many entrepreneurial journeys. Success rarely depends on things outside of an owner's control, but rather on how effectively one can apply standard operating procedures and a customer-first mentality. For Josh Wise, who has spent his career in the industry, those early lessons were built directly into the foundation of GrassRoots Turf, the emerging lawn care franchise, turning it into a standout brand in the home services sector.

For Wise, the advantages of a mobile lawn care business model are clear.

“One thing I love about this business, and home service brands in general, is that it’s not retail,” Wise said. “You’re not stuck if they redo the road and nobody comes to your store anymore; you can go to where your customers are.”

This flexibility makes lawn care franchises an attractive choice for both first-time owners and seasoned franchisees looking to diversify. Wise has noticed throughout his years in the industry that owners can navigate shifting market conditions with ease much more easily, especially since they're not committed to a single brick-and-mortar location.

“As things change in an economy, you pivot, change and send your trucks to different areas,” Wise said. “This business is easy to scale and grow alongside changes in the economy.”

With 23 franchise units active across six states and a high-performing corporate location that serves as a testing ground for improvements, rapid expansion could have easily been the priority. However, Wise and his leadership team are intentionally focused on long-term sustainability over quick numbers.

“During the first couple of years of franchising, we actually did quite a few units, and then we pumped the brakes for a minute so we could build the internal foundation,” Wise said.

That foundation is now the operational engine of the brand. GrassRoots Turf provides franchisees with an in-house marketing department, a centralized call center that fields leads seven days a week and a dedicated technology team that keeps operations running smoothly.

“Having that foundation allows us to start to scale and look for the next 40 to 50 franchise locations,” Wise said.

As the brand prepares for its next growth phase, Wise remains selective about candidates. While the business model can accommodate semi-absentee owners with strong management, the fastest-scaling locations belong to fully engaged owner-operators. Wise takes a personal role in vetting every candidate, prioritizing cultural alignment and personal values over business experience.

“I can teach you how to run a business and do lawn care, but I cannot teach you how to have good character or how to take care of your people so your people take care of your customers,” Wise said. “That is the big thing.”

Wise joined 1851 Franchise Publisher Nick Powills on a recent episode of the “Meet the Franchise” podcast where they discussed how Grassroots Turf is investing heavily in the foundations that make entrepreneurs in lawn care successful. A transcript of his interview with Powills has been provided below. It has been edited for brevity, clarity and style.

Nick Powills: What were your expectations when you franchised, and how is it going?

Josh Wise: Okay, good. Well, currently we are sitting at 23 franchise units that are up and running across six states, and we have got one corporate location. It was important to me to have a corporate operation that I am managing where I can test things to make sure that we are always trying to find ways to improve our systems, policies, and processes toward our customers, and then roll that out to the franchisees once we have tested the models.

When I first got into franchising, my thought was, "Okay, we will start locally or in the Atlanta area, and just kind of build out around us." Our second franchise was in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I realized, "Okay, I have got to figure out real quickly how you support somebody in another state right out the gate."

The most successful franchise location that we have got to date is our Charlotte market. There is a really great gentleman up there who owns that market. Outside of that, we have been predominantly in the Southeast. We are focused on Eastern and Central Time zones as far as expansion, keeping things on our side of the continental United States so that we can make sure we support our franchisees and be there for them if they need us.

Powills: Go back to when you decided to franchise the business. Has it met your expectations? Are you disappointed in the growth? What is going on in the mind of the franchisor?

Wise: I have actually been really pleased with the growth. We are very selective with our franchisees and who we bring into the system. There are a lot of things that we are looking for. We are not here to just be the largest; we are here to be the best in the market, so we want to make sure that we bring on the right-minded individuals to run a Grassroots location. I don't want to grow to the point that we are scaling so fast that we lose touch with who we are as a franchisor, or where our systems are not built to be able to support the franchisees.

It is really important to make sure that we are scaling at a level where we can support them and help them through things. During the first couple of years of franchising, we actually did quite a few units, and then we pumped the brakes for a minute so we could build the internal foundation.

Now, we have a technology team on board with us, and we are building out an in-house marketing department. We have what we call our customer solution center, so all inbound calls for all of our locations route through our central call center here, and we handle the customers' questions. If they are asking for estimates, we do a lot of the sales in-house. Having that foundation allows us to start to scale and look for the next 40 to 50 franchise locations.

Powills: Think of a franchisee who is not following the system. If you put this person in your mind, what should you have done differently in the sales process to have fished them out, and who is the persona that you don't want?

Wise: Semi-absentee owners can work well in this business as long as they have the capital and somebody in management put in place for them. But the owner needs to be able to jump in. Somebody looking to invest in the business but not be in the day-to-day operations is probably not the right fit for us. We have a couple of semi-absentee owners who do well, but the owners who are fully engaged in the day-to-day operations of the business are scaling faster than someone who has two or three different businesses and is trying to do everything.

We really have a good group, and I just trust my gut. I get involved with every single franchisee before they come on board and spend time getting to know them. I don't even talk about the business as much as I talk about their family, who they are, and whether they will fit with our company culture. To me, that is the most important thing. I can teach you how to run a business and do lawn care, but I cannot teach you how to have good character or how to take care of your people so your people take care of your customers. That is the big thing.

Powills: Kudos to you for being able to have that guardrail. There are plenty of franchisors who would say that line, but when that check showed up for the franchise fee, even though they knew in their gut it wasn't the right fit, they took the check because the money is large enough to make a difference.

It is so fundamental when you talk about the owner-operator, or if you are going to be semi-absentee, recruiting someone in. Look at Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A's model was genius. They basically got general managers to think that they are franchisees by paying next to nothing to be handed a Chick-fil-A. You can't scale into other businesses, and you have nothing to sell at the end of it, but you're a Chick-fil-A franchisee. The magic of that is it created the owner-operator because then it is Josh's or Nick's Chick-fil-A, and you make sure everything is aligned with getting to know the employee's family, ensuring they are a culture fit, and making sure they align. What you talked about is great business, but sometimes it is hard to say no.

Wise: Absolutely. Sometimes when you feel like it isn't going to be the right fit, you try to talk yourself back into why it could work. I have had a market where I really wanted to open, but when the hair on the back of your neck starts to stand up, you just tell yourself it is right to walk away from it. I got into the franchising side to take this baby of mine that I started back in 2002 and really grow it into a national brand, but it is not about building it in five or ten years and then exiting. I am looking at this for another 20 to 30 years easily, and I want to make sure that it is done the right way.

Powills: There is something interesting about the pressure of being a national brand when you franchise. Ninety-nine percent of franchisors, under truth serum, would say they are not happy with their growth. When the franchise consultant says, "I'll do your FDD and ops manual, and you'll have a billion locations in the next five years," they drink the Kool-Aid. If they only have 20, they are deeply disappointed.

There is a false pressure regarding what national growth is. The reality is you could have two franchisees and feel great about it. You don't have to have that pressure to grow, especially when you have a corporate unit that is kicking off cash flow, too.

Wise: If you would have come to me back in 2019 when we started the franchise, I would not have thought we would be in seven states. We have a location in Texas coming on board that is in the process of training and opening up for the spring. My thought back then was that we were going to go slow for the first five to seven years and get everything structured right so that the support systems were there first.

I am pleased with where we are at. We had an opportunity to open in Hawaii during our second year into franchising, and I said no because how am I going to support somebody in Hawaii when I don't want to spend the cash to go out there to do everything required? We have turned away West Coast business. It goes back to trusting your gut, focusing on the areas you know you can support, and doing it the right way with the right people. Those people are going to validate, and then it will scale from there easily.

Powills: What's your average unit volume?

Wise: Our highest is about 1.6 million, and our average is around 800,000.

Powills: We'll take the 800,000. Now, if you don't have that foundation in play, what do you think the average unit volume is?

Wise: If you look at the average unit volume of engaged, full-time owners and take out your semi-absentees, that number goes up. If you put your semi-absentee owners in, it drives the numbers down. In your first couple of years, it really depends on location and individual ability. We try to make sure each of our territories is a fairly large size with a lot of business.

I get asked a lot when talking to interested people, "There seems to be a lot of competition in my area. I'm not sure if this is good." I say, "Would you rather open a business where nobody is offering your service?" It probably wouldn't work well there. Competition is good in a market. It validates the service and validates the market you are looking at.

Powills: My viewpoint on your 800,000 is based on the infrastructure you put behind the franchisee. Franchisees are not strictly entrepreneurs; they are entrepreneurial. An entrepreneur is the creator, while an entrepreneurial person dreams about building wealth for their family but needs a system they can buy into and follow.

If I break down the 800,000, your support mechanism might be worth $200,000 in annual sales. Of the remaining 600,000, 300,000 is the person getting out to build relationships in the community, and 300,000 is the brand. Most franchisors miss that you make money on the royalty, so you are incentivized to give more support to keep pushing that average up because that is how everyone makes money.

Since Charlotte was your second franchisee and your first outside your home market. What was magical about their persona that made them so successful?

Wise: What made that gentleman magical is that he has a finance background. He knows his numbers, and as a business owner, you have to manage from the numbers rather than just from emotions. That is usually where a lot of business owners get in trouble. He is not afraid to test things, think outside of the box, and bring new ideas into the system.

He provides great validation for new markets. People ask, "You guys are in the South, and I'm looking at opening up in Michigan." In Michigan, you are still treating lawns, fertilizing grass, and killing weeds; the process and procedures are the same. Charlotte brings validation that in a brand new market where Grassroots was not known, they are now our largest franchise location. It speaks to what we do as a brand and how we can market, advertise, and scale for franchisees.

Powills: The gap between good and great performance often comes down to misaligned expectations or not having a full grip on the numbers. Winning comes down to whether the buyer is willing to follow the system you put in place.

Wise: It is about following the system, listening to what we tell you, and trusting the tried-and-true process. If someone is barely scraping together money for the initial startup and doesn't have a penny left over, I tell them to hold off a little longer and build cash reserves. In almost any business, you have to have an emergency fund available for the "what ifs."

One thing I love about this business and home service brands in general is that it is not retail. You are not stuck if they redo the road and nobody comes to your store anymore; you can go to where your customers are. Back in 2002 and 2003, when I first started the company, I serviced certain neighborhoods that I don't go to anymore because they became rentals. As things change in an economy, you pivot, change, and send your trucks to different areas. This business is easy to scale and grow alongside changes in the economy.

Powills: Do most of your franchisees understand that scale?

Wise: Yes. We sit down with them to help them understand. We have some franchisees who want multi-units, while others want to reach $1 million to $1.5 million in revenue with a few trucks on the road and be happy without going to the next level of service managers and six-plus trucks. We figure out their goals and aspirations.

We sit down constantly to look at what next year looks like, what is needed for marketing to scale, and whether they have the capital to get the next truck. Some companies can grow themselves out of business if they grow too fast because scaling takes a lot of cash. You have to do things within reason.

Powills: What's a bad day for you?

Wise: A bad day for me would be my leadership team not showing up, forcing me to wear all the hats again. I don't have a lot of bad days. Even when it rains and everyone gets a day off, it is quiet and nice.

The way we have our billing model set up, everything is on a monthly recurring credit card charge. If a first-year owner-operator takes a week off for a family vacation and the truck sits in a warehouse, it does not change his income because customers are on auto-pay rather than billed at the time of service.

If customers call needing anything, our in-house team handles inbound calls. If a customer calls for an estimate, we use satellite imagery at the office. I can pull up a property in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and sell lawn care for the owner out there. We try to limit the bad days.

We had a bad day where a fairly new franchisee's truck was involved in an accident. When you have one truck, an auto accident can put you out of business. When his truck went into the body shop, we sent one of ours down. I always keep a spare truck at the office so we can send it to anyone who needs it.

Powills: What is the dream now?

Wise: We are looking to put more fuel on the fire. The reason we are bringing our marketing in-house and building out a team is to maximize the dollars franchisees are spending. Instead of using third-party companies, we can do a better job in-house with someone working on lawn care 40 hours a week. We are focusing on driving unit growth and the economics of each unit.

Secondly, we are looking to scale into more states in the Eastern and Central Time zones. We work with an answering service that handles nights and weekends so that when we are closed, live operators take messages. It is important to me that no call goes missed so we can capture all incoming leads. Franchisees spend a lot of money to market their businesses, and they rely on my team to deliver.

Powills: I appreciate you sharing your story, Josh. Keep up the good work, and thanks for doing this.

Wise: Absolutely. Thanks for having me today.

Watch the full episode above or on YouTube.