Lawn Doctor

As the eighth minister in his family, Scott Tarkenton is always looking for ways to be of service to others.&nbsp;

He just never expected that calling to lead him to <a href="https://lawndoctorfranchise.com/?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=how-ordained-minister-scott-tarkenton-found-a-meaningful-family-business-with-lawn-doctor-2710834" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" style="text-decoration-line:none" target="_blank">Lawn Doctor</a>.

&ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t until training was over and I got into the field that I realized chaplain work relates very well to customer service and sales,&rdquo; said Tarkenton. &ldquo;People just want someone to talk to. Sometimes we end up standing there and talking to people about their lives during a lawn evaluation. I&rsquo;m integrated into the community and <a href="https://1851franchise.com/lawndoctor" style="text-decoration-line:none" target="_blank">Lawn Doctor</a> is really setting me up for the next big step&mdash;which is volunteering at nursing homes and hospitals.&rdquo;

During his senior year of high school, Tarkenton began spending evenings with his uncle, an ordained minister, learning how to &ldquo;preach and teach.&rdquo; After a few years, he became a youth minister in Fresno, California, where much of his family lives.

&ldquo;Eventually, my uncle said I needed to get more experience and to grow in other areas,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;So I went to Grand Junction, Colorado where my grandfather was a preacher. We had a small church there, which is where I met my wife. Sheryl walked through the church doors one day, we had her over for lunch and we got married a few months later.&rdquo;

After getting ordained by his grandfather, Tarkenton enrolled at the South Houston Bible Institute to receive a more formal education. It was there that he and Sheryl had their first child, Benjamin.&nbsp;

The young family then moved back to Fresno, where Tarkenton worked varied jobs while also working with churches up and down the California coast. They then moved to Roswell, New Mexico for a year before hearing that Tarkenton had finally gotten approval to begin &ldquo;preaching and teaching&rdquo; out on his own. Along the way, the couple also welcomed their second son, Jeremiah.

&ldquo;For so long, I wondered when I&rsquo;d be out of training and hold my first post,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I found a great church in Littlefield, Texas and spent two years there before realizing that I was a workaholic.&nbsp; My philosophy had always been to work until the sun went down and then keep working until the work was done. I didn&rsquo;t realize how much that impacted my family. We had two kids. I couldn&#39;t be a good minister while I was a half-father. I needed to be the best I could be at both.&rdquo;

So Tarkenton stopped practicing his ministry for awhile. He turned his hobby of tinkering with computers into a few stints with software companies. He even opened his own bread distribution business&mdash;and made a big splash by building a computer program to analyze sales, which ended up more than doubling the company&rsquo;s volume.

When a senior distributor became jealous of his success, Tarkenton realized that he would soon be at odds with that distributor, so he sold the company for what he&rsquo;d invested and got a job with a software company. He quickly worked his way from the bottom up, eventually serving as a supervisor for 14 years where he helped develop reporting, tracked statistics and gauged productivity.

Then, after a company-wide reorganization, Tarkenton was pushed back to managing the help desk support line. &ldquo;I learned so much working in that corporate world&mdash;about people, how managers tend to oppress our workforce and how we need to change things in order to create a comfortable work environment for everyone,&rdquo; said Tarkenton. &ldquo;One thing that really helped was that ministry background. I counseled people on both their personal and work lives. I really enjoyed doing some of those things.&rdquo;

Still, in the back of Tarkenton&rsquo;s mind, he always wondered&mdash;how could he get back to what was most important to him?

&ldquo;My passion was in returning to the ministry,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I had been a chaplain in nursing homes and hospitals and in police, fire and healthcare systems. I used to walk away thinking I was really doing God&rsquo;s work. It wasn&rsquo;t long before I realized that they helped me more than I helped them. How could I give back to the community in that way again while maintaining the level of income I needed for my family? I prayed about it for quite a while and then doors started opening.&rdquo;

Tarkenton was laid off in June 2018&mdash;17 years to the day of his first day of work at the software company. He started looking into franchising. &ldquo;I looked at four franchises before finding out about Lawn Doctor,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It seemed like a great fit. It didn&rsquo;t cost a lot to get in and there&rsquo;s no brick and mortar location. I could drive the van from property to property with my sons next to me. If I did it in a small community that had a regional hospital, I could pick up my ministry and fulfill my dream.&rdquo;

Sheryl and their four sons&mdash;Benjamin, Jeremiah, Andrew and Timothy&mdash;were nothing but supportive of Tarkenton&rsquo;s vision. &ldquo;My children said they&rsquo;d be willing to do the work with me and eventually take over so that I could work with the community as I see fit,&rdquo; he said.

After <a href="https://1851franchise.com/lawndoctor/lawn-doctor-wraps-up-q2-by-kicking-off-huge-spring-season-graduating-june-class-of-franchisees-2710470#mostRecent" style="text-decoration-line:none" target="_blank">meeting with the Lawn Doctor team</a> and mutually deciding it was a perfect fit, Tarkenton expressed what he was looking for in a territory and community. Together, they identified an opportunity in Abilene, Texas, and the Tarkentons packed up and moved there in October 2018.&nbsp;

Their Lawn Doctor business officially launched in March 2019.

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s really come full circle,&rdquo; said Tarkenton. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m going back into the ministry that I joined as a young man with the help of my family and Lawn Doctor.&rdquo;

The Abilene Lawn Doctor franchise is certainly a family affair. Ben, now 24, often helps with servicing clients; he will soon enter the business as the company&rsquo;s first full-time employee. Jeremiah, now 21, is currently in Colorado pursuing a career as a machinist while Andrew, 19, is helping out with the franchise until he returns to his training with the Navy. And Timothy, 15, has been helping since the launch.

As for Tarkenton, he plans to put in about one more year into growing his business before he starts volunteering in a local hospital and taking a couple of night classes to receive his chaplain certification.&nbsp;

&ldquo;I&rsquo;m excited to go back into the community for the first time in several years and give what God gave me to others,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp;

Tarkenton continued, explaining that the legacy he&rsquo;s building with Lawn Doctor will serve as a lasting testament to his family.

&ldquo;With Lawn Doctor, I&rsquo;m excited to see my boys pick up the mantle my wife and I started and build the business,&rdquo; Tarkenton said. &ldquo;I want to watch them become passionate about it and call it their own. I&rsquo;m giving them each a piece of the business so that it&rsquo;s not just a job to them, but a career; something they can grow and pass on to their children. As a father, I&rsquo;ve always wanted to pass something down. I&rsquo;ve never had that until now&mdash;Lawn Doctor is it.

How Ordained Minister Scott Tarkenton Found a Meaningful Family Business with Lawn Doctor

1851 Franchise

Franchising with Lawn Doctor gave the Abilene, Texas owner a path to get back into his ministry—and gave his sons a path to carrying the mantle.

This brand page has been paid for by LAWN DOCTOR. Content within this page that is paid will showcase a Sponsored icon. This means the brand has engaged 1851 FRANCHISE to write the content. Content without the Sponsored Icon is aggregated media placements the brand earned. Questions can be sent to editorial@1851franchise.com

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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;

Photo of Lawn Doctor franchisee Dominick Pennella and family

After making the switch to franchising for better work-life balance and to prioritize his family, Dominick Pennella exceeded his first-year projections by 50% in his first few months of operations.

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