Lawn Doctor

Chris Faller has always worked close to the ground. The North Dakota native grew up on a sheep research farm, where he worked from 8 years old until he left for college at North Dakota State University. Faller graduated with a degree in animal science and moved south to manage South Dakota State University&rsquo;s research farm. After a few years, he received an offer to work for the Iowa Department of Agriculture, where he worked until he moved to Illinois for his wife&rsquo;s job. In Illinois, Faller found a job with a large manufacturing company. Even there, in his first job outside of the farming industry, he was overseeing the production of tractor equipment.

For all his experience in farming and agriculture, it wasn&rsquo;t until Faller and his wife purchased their first house and he had a yard to maintain that he saw a gap in the industry.

&ldquo;I was trying to put together the lawn, but it was a big job, and I wanted help,&rdquo; Faller said. &ldquo;I looked around, and I ended up hiring the biggest lawn-care company around. They didn&rsquo;t know what they were doing, it was a mess. I fired them and went with the second largest company, but they were just as bad. Eventually I found a much smaller company and finally got some proper help.&rdquo;

Faller, who had experience seeding and maintaining grass, knew that the job could be harder than it seemed, but he never expected to find so much trouble finding capable professionals.

&ldquo;I was very surprised by the experience,&rdquo; Faller said. Unfortunately, it turned out not to be a fluke. Not long after he got his first lawn fixed up, his wife was recruited by a company in Cincinnati, so they sold their house and moved. Again, Faller found himself with a fixer-upper of a yard, and again, he struggled to find capable help.

&ldquo;Maybe I didn&rsquo;t learn from my mistakes, but I hired a big company again, and they couldn&rsquo;t get the job done. Then I hired a smaller company, and they weren&rsquo;t getting it done either.&rdquo;

At that point, Faller gave up on finding outside help and decided to finish the lawn himself.

&ldquo;I had found some work with a contractor, so I was getting more experience with lawn care,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;So, I took care of the lawn myself.&rdquo;

The experience of doing what the professionals couldn&rsquo;t and fixing up his lawn by himself was satisfying and encouraging for Faller, who was not feeling satisfied or encouraged with his contracting work.

&ldquo;I was getting tired of contracting, and I decided that after my current job was finished, I&rsquo;d quit,&rdquo; said Faller. &ldquo;So my wife and I began looking for the next thing.&rdquo;

Faller&rsquo;s wife, Ginnie, received a degree in Animal Science along with an MBA from Penn State University, and serves as a Small Business Development Advisor. She recommended he look into franchising, reasoning that he&rsquo;d be happiest if he found something he could run himself, but was an already proven model. She found a website that helps match franchisors with prospective franchisees, and she signed her husband up.

&ldquo;I put together a profile, and a couple of days later I got a call from a consultant,&rdquo; Faller said. &ldquo;We discussed my skillsets and my interests, and after a couple more days, he got back to me with a list of four companies he thought might work for me.&rdquo;

One of the four companies Faller was recommended was <a href="http://lawndoctorfranchise.com/?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=cincinnati-lawn-doctor-franchisee-chris-faller-reflects-on-four-years-with-the-brand-2704904" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Lawn Doctor</a>, and as he researched each company, the lawn-care brand quickly began to stand out.

&ldquo;By this point, I&rsquo;d had plenty of experience with lawn care, and I knew firsthand the difficulty in finding reliable help for residential lawn services,&rdquo; Faller said. &ldquo;Besides that, the investment requirement was much more reasonable than the other concepts I looked at; it looked like something I could manage.&rdquo;

After deciding to focus on <a href="https://lawndoctor.1851franchise.com/?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=cincinnati-lawn-doctor-franchisee-chris-faller-reflects-on-four-years-with-the-brand-2704904" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Lawn Doctor</a>, Faller got in touch with the franchise&rsquo;s development team to learn more about the background of the company and the day-to-day operations. Impressed with Faller&rsquo;s background and resume, Lawn Doctor invited him out to attend Discover Day, a semi-regular event at which franchisee prospects can meet with the corporate executive team to learn about the brand. But while Faller was interested in learning more about Lawn Doctor, he found himself with cold feet about making a commitment.

&ldquo;I kept putting off going to a Discover&nbsp;Day. I was nervous about putting the time and effort in and then finding out there wasn&rsquo;t much to it. So, they kept calling me out, and I kept putting it off.&rdquo;

Eventually, Faller gave in and attended a Discover Day, and any hesitation about joining the brand quickly disappeared.

&ldquo;I was so impressed by every detail,&rdquo; Faller said. &ldquo;It was clear to me that every consideration was oriented around supporting the owners. In my career in both corporate and college settings, I&rsquo;d seen so many elaborate corporate facilities, and you wonder what these places are spending all their money on and what their priorities are. At Lawn Doctor, everything was focused, they weren&rsquo;t trying to put on a big show to impress anyone, they were just working very closely with every owner, whether they had been there for 16 days or 16 years.&rdquo;

Then Faller visited Lawn Doctor&rsquo;s manufacturing facilities, where a growing respect for the brand turned into adoration.

&ldquo;That&rsquo;s where I fell in love with Lawn Doctor. I&rsquo;d heard about all this proprietary equipment, and I assumed they had good but fairly standard equipment with their branding on it. I was wrong. I was amazed by the machinery they had. I still am. The equipment is so simple to use and so effective. All you have to do is teach a technician how to steer, and the machines do the rest.&rdquo;

After receiving corporate approval and joining the Lawn Doctor system, Faller began working with Lawn Doctor&rsquo;s support coaches on how to best optimize his own operations with the brand.

&ldquo;I had done some earlier projections, and I realized that in my area, it&rsquo;d be most profitable and manageable to service three territories, so I invested in three right off the bat. That&rsquo;s certainly not for everyone, but for me, it made sense. After I was up and running, I attended my first Lawn Doctor convention, and I was hearing from a lot of other owners that the best thing they did to grow their business early on was to hire technicians, so I hired some help, and we quickly started to grow.&rdquo;

Four years later, Faller&rsquo;s business has continued to grow, and he hasn&#39;t had any problem managing that growth with a small team of technicians.

&ldquo;We went from 0 to 200 customers pretty quickly. It was just a couple of us running the day-to-day, but we never felt stretched too thin. The equipment is so reliable that it makes every service a one-man job. With our machines, one person can easily service 300 plus customers. Typically, you do about six to eight applications per customer, per year, so if you schedule those applications out correctly, you can manage a huge customer base without much help.&rdquo;

After a long career moving from industry to industry and city to city, Faller feels at home with Lawn Doctor, and he doesn&rsquo;t plan to move on from the business anytime soon.

&ldquo;I fully envision myself running this business through my 70s. It&rsquo;s not just a young person&rsquo;s game, though it is nice to have that energy around. I&rsquo;ve seeded grass for years, either for farming or in my own yards, so I knew the work involved before I found Lawn Doctor. I just never imagined how easily and effectively it could be done with the right equipment, not to mention the training, marketing, and support programs Lawn Doctor provides. Even after four years in business, I&rsquo;m still blown away by what we can do.&rdquo;

Cincinnati Lawn Doctor Franchisee Chris Faller Reflects on Four Years with the Brand

1851 Franchise

After multiple disappointments trying to find good lawn-care help, Chris Faller took matters into his own hands

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For&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominick-pennella-9918a448/">Dominick Pennella</a>, the journey to becoming a franchise owner with&nbsp;<a href="http://lawndoctorfranchise.com">Lawn Doctor</a>, the 700-plus-unit national lawn care franchise, has unique ties back to his childhood and family. Growing up in Brooklyn in a traditional Italian family, Pennella was involved in the family landscaping business from a young age. He also saw just how important family was. As he approached adulthood, he wanted to explore other paths, which led him to the Navy“I was the baby of three kids. The family culture was already set; landscaping was the thing, and we were Italians who lived in Brooklyn,” Pennella said. “I just felt like there was so much more world to see. I’m appreciating all of these things now, in hindsight, but as an 18-year-old, I just wanted to get going. So I joined the military, and it was the scariest thing I ever did.”<h2>The Military to Corporate Transition</h2>For Pennella, the military was a way to fast-track personal growth, in a way, allowing him to explore what it would mean to go out on his own. It meant leaving his hometown and taking on the adventure without familial backing.He spent about four years in the Navy, working on submarines and doing things like monitoring nuclear reactors through a keyhole. In addition to meeting new people and seeing new places, his time in the Navy set Pennella up with a technical foundation that would define his corporate journey.This military background and technical proficiency opened doors for Pennella as he transitioned to civilian life. He was hired as a field service engineer for a biomedical company before even completing a college degree, but he was already looking toward the “next rung” of the ladder.“I was looking up at the next rung. I thought, ‘I can do that, and to do that, I would need an education directly in management,’” he said. “I decided to sign up for distance learning and see if I could work full-time and go to school at the same time. I did that for about five years. My master’s was in business management.”As he continued to climb the corporate ladder, Pennella returned to lessons he learned in his early landscaping years.“Whether you're showing up to someone's home to take care of a lawn or whether you're showing up to a hospital mid-surgery to take care of a blood gas instrument, the end result is still the same,” he said. “You still have to deal with people who are discontent. They don’t like the current situation, and they need to believe in you. You need to convey a plan, communicate throughout that process and close the loop at the end.”“Regardless of the perceived severity of what you’re fixing, any type of field service is similar,” he continued. “When I worked for my father as a landscaper, it was the exact same thing. A different product, but the exact same customer-facing experience. They want to know what you can do for them. ‘I’m in this situation. How can you help me? And can I contact you if I need anything?’ If you answer all those questions, they're happy. It was the same thing in medical device field service. So, I did well by literally copying the same tenets my father taught me.”Throughout his corporate career, Pennella’s approach earned him and his teams multiple awards and widespread recognition. But as he advanced, it also began to demand more from Pennella in terms of travel. When these requirements began to overshadow his family time, he knew it was time for a change.“I was successful, but my family is so important to me, and they were not more than 20% of my week in any given week in that life,” he said. “I knew it was time for a change.”Today, Pennella says that decision was fueled by the people who matter most — his wife of 14 years, Maria, who is also his partner in running the business, and their two daughters, Dora (11) and Gigi (7). He describes them as his daily inspiration and the driving force behind his decision to build something that would allow him to be present, ambitious and rooted at home all at once.“I didn’t even think of landscaping again, because that was what my dad did,” he continued. “I did electronics in the Navy, and that was my thing. But my father and I, one thing we have in common is the love of family. He couldn’t wait to get home and spend time with us when I was young, and I share that same view.”So, when he first began searching for his next opportunity, Pennella was looking for other roles in the same industry. He wanted to stick with “his thing,” just in a capacity that would require less travel and allow for more family time. After realizing that, at his level of seniority, any new role would be more of the same, he went to step two: franchises.<h2>Identifying Lawn Doctor: The Return to the Lawn Care Business</h2>“There are about a billion franchises for anything you could possibly think of, so how do you choose one?” he said. “I ended up finding some really great people — some franchise brokers. I took the Zorakle Assessment, and two days later, they called and said, ‘Hey, have you ever heard of&nbsp;<a href="https://1851franchise.com/lawndoctor/info">Lawn Doctor</a>?’”At this point, Pennella had not mentioned Lawn Doctor to the brokers, but he remembered it from childhood. He saw the green thumb logo and vehicles in the community and, as a child, asked his father how the business model worked since he never saw them cutting anyone’s lawn. At the time, his father explained that fertilization was one of the more profitable services in the lawn care space, but the conversation stopped there.So, when Pennella was presented with the Lawn Doctor franchise opportunity decades later, it almost felt meant to be.“When I started doing some research, I realized it might be the perfect fit. It tied in with my nostalgia, my culture, my history, my skill sets — everything,” he said. “And again, it’s field service. It wasn’t a straight line, and I don’t know where I would be if it wasn’t for the folks who guided me in the selection process. But when they said ‘Lawn Doctor,’ I thought, ‘Are you kidding me? I used to joke about comparing Lawn Doctor to the type of work I did in my father’s business.’ And here I am, the owner of a Lawn Doctor franchise! And I couldn’t be happier with the choice.”<h2>Building Momentum Through a Culture of Collaboration</h2>As Pennella launched&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lawndoctor.com/naples-fl/">Lawn Doctor of Naples-LaBelle-Marco Island</a>, he applied a sophisticated management lens to a local service model. This approach has already yielded impressive results, driving Pennella to blow his first-year projections out of the water within a couple of months. By focusing on communication and personal outreach, including knocking on clients’ doors himself, he was able to build trust and set the business up for an amazing first year.“It’s a simple, scalable model, and it sets you up to make your money back in a fairly short time frame,” he said. “It’s a great choice for a calculated risk-taker.”In addition to his own analytical lens, Pennella’s success has been driven by the support of the entire franchise system. Previously accustomed to a “dog-eat-dog” atmosphere in corporate America, Pennella was pleasantly surprised by the collaborative nature of the Lawn Doctor system. While he has worked diligently to educate himself on all facets of the business, he realized that, with the franchise system behind him, he didn’t have to absorb all of the information immediately and completely.“In the corporate world, everyone is looking for their own win. Here, a rising tide floats all ships,” he said. “I have at least five other owners and a dedicated mentor that I can call any time for any reason, and they’ll have an answer. I’m not scared to take on things I might not be an expert on yet because I have the backup to help me find those answers if needed.”&nbsp;Pennella is quick to credit those who have walked beside him during this first year. He highlights&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottspitz/">Scott Spitz</a> of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lawndoctor.com/lakeworth-fl/lawn-care-in-west-palm-beach/">West Palm Beach</a>, who has served as a dedicated mentor, providing the institutional knowledge that only a veteran owner can offer. He also expresses deep gratitude for the ongoing support from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafael-valle-a92584103/">Ralph Valle</a> in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lawndoctor.com/jacksonville-fl/lawn-care-in-jacksonville/">Jacksonville</a> and the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lawndoctor.com/fortmyers-fl/home/">Duffy family in Fort Myers</a>, whose insights helped him navigate the nuances of the Florida market, illustrating just how valuable it is to be a part of the Lawn Doctor system, which functions as a true team.As he prepares for continued growth, Pennella recognizes that there will be additional learning and growth opportunities as a Lawn Doctor owner, but he’s ready for them, and he encourages others in a similar position to consider taking the leap, as well.“If you are willing to learn agronomy and work closely with the franchisor, this can change your life,” he said. “It gave me the one thing I couldn’t find in the corporate world: the ability to put my family first without sacrificing my ambition. It’s the best decision I’ve ever made.”To find out more information on costs to buy this franchise, please visit&nbsp;<a href="https://1851franchise.com/lawndoctor">https://1851franchise.com/lawndoctor.</a>&nbsp;

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