Lawn Doctor

Gus Sardina has been self-employed since he was 21 years old. After moving from Havana, Cuba to Miami, Florida in the early 1960s, Sardina was eager to establish a career for himself. It wasn&rsquo;t long before he proved to be a consummate entrepreneur, building and operating businesses in a variety of industries, including finance, foodservice, and retail. Now, as Sardina enters his 60s, he&rsquo;s putting off retirement to try to open a business in another industry: lawn care.

The thread connecting all of Sardina&rsquo;s various business ventures is service. Sardina says he has always been a service-oriented entrepreneur, and he&rsquo;s selected his businesses accordingly.

&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve owned a variety of businesses, and nearly every one of them has been a service business,&rdquo; Sardina said. &ldquo;I had an insurance business for 25 years, and in that time, I built partnerships with professionals in a number of different industries. With those relationships, I found so many business opportunities. I opened franchise restaurants, a construction company, a shoe store, even a bottled water company.&rdquo;

Sardina took his first shot at retirement about a decade ago, selling his insurance company and letting a manager run the day-to-day work of a real estate business he owned. It wasn&rsquo;t long before Sardina got bored not working and decided to open up another financial-services business, this time working as a public adjuster in South Florida. Five years later, Sardina decided to slow down again. He left his public adjustment work and started spending more time on the golf course. Again, Sardina quickly became restless.

&ldquo;I was playing a lot of golf, and I just wasn&rsquo;t feeling satisfied,&rdquo; Sardina said. &ldquo;I still had the real estate businesses, but the market wasn&rsquo;t great, so I started looking for something else to do.&rdquo;

As Sardina started to consider his next business, he decided to reach out to a friend who had recently started his own business with the <a href="http://lawndoctorfranchise.com/?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=inspired-by-the-success-of-a-friend-gus-sardina-opens-his-first-lawn-doctor-2705473" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">lawn-care franchise Lawn Doctor</a>. 

&ldquo;My friend Steve had gotten into <a href="https://lawndoctor.1851franchise.com/?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=inspired-by-the-success-of-a-friend-gus-sardina-opens-his-first-lawn-doctor-2705473" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Lawn Doctor</a> about two years ago,&rdquo; Sardina said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d catch up with him at family get-togethers and learn how he and the business were doing, and I became intrigued by the Lawn Doctor model.&rdquo;

Sardina says he had always appreciated the franchise industry for its simplicity, but <a href="https://www.lawndoctor.com/miamibeach-fl/?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=inspired-by-the-success-of-a-friend-gus-sardina-opens-his-first-lawn-doctor-2705473" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Lawn Doctor</a> took that simplicity a step further than most other concepts by reducing inventory and infrastructure.

&ldquo;When I was a kid I had a boss at one of my first jobs who would say, &lsquo;keep it simple, stupid,&rsquo; and I&rsquo;ve always subscribed to that,&rdquo; Sardina said. &ldquo;If someone else is doing something, and it&rsquo;s working, follow that model. That&rsquo;s why I like franchising; the idea has been built, you just have to put a little effort into it. Lawn Doctor is not only an established business model, but it&rsquo;s one that requires very little overhead. For so many businesses, your costs are tied up in inventory and rent, but for Lawn Doctor, you can essentially run the business from your office and truck, and you don&rsquo;t have to keep a ton of product in stock, just the materials you need to service your customers.&rdquo;

After learning the basics of the Lawn Care business from his friend, Sardina and his wife got in touch with the brand&rsquo;s corporate team and attended a discovery day to find out more. Sardina says what he saw and heard at the discovery day convinced him that Lawn Doctor was a perfect business for him.

&ldquo;Everything we learned was right in line with what we were looking for,&rdquo; Sardina said. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve worked with so many businesses, and Lawn Doctor was clearly ahead of the curve in how they operate. We became really excited about getting involved.&rdquo;

Eric Martin, Lawn Doctor&rsquo;s vice president of franchise development, said Sardina&rsquo;s quick alignment with the brand is not unusual for a certain type of entrepreneur.

&ldquo;We work with a lot of prospective franchisees who have never owned a business before, and they are not sure what they are capable of,&rdquo; Martin said. &ldquo;For those candidates, you have to explain not just how the system works, but why it&rsquo;s so lucrative and what kind of lifestyle it complements. Then there are the more experienced entrepreneurs who learn a little bit about our model, and they see the value right away. Gus is in that category. He took a look at the system and he knew right away it was going to work for him.&rdquo;

The discovery day Sardina attended was in November. In January, he and his wife received their first Lawn Doctor truck. Sardina plans to be out servicing clients in the coming weeks, after his field manager makes sure he has everything he needs to start. In the meantime, Sardina is focused on building a client base.

&ldquo;When I first started in the insurance business, we did a lot of direct mail and door-to-door selling,&rdquo; Sardina said. &ldquo;Marketing has changed a lot since then, but referrals are still essential, and that&rsquo;s a part of the business I&rsquo;m very focused on. We&rsquo;re calling everyone we know in the area, trying to get the word out and asking for referrals. Once we have a bit of a network established from word-of-mouth referrals, we&rsquo;ll start bolstering our social media and SEO platforms.&rdquo;

Because Sardina&rsquo;s Lawn Doctor will service the persistently warm and sunny Miami area, he won&rsquo;t have to wait for the Spring to begin servicing clients. 

&ldquo;We&rsquo;re excited to get started right away,&rdquo; Sardina said. &ldquo;We plan to hire a technician after a few months, but for the winter, my wife and I will be on the truck servicing clients ourselves. The model seems to work best when you have at least one technician and the owner can shift their focus to sales, but we want to make sure we know the businesses inside and out before we bring anyone else on board.&rdquo;

Martin said Sardina&rsquo;s business experience will likely allow his Lawn Doctor business to grow quickly.

&ldquo;Anyone who comes to our system with a wealth of business experience is likely to do well,&rdquo; Martin said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not a very complicated machine, you just have to learn the model and apply it. Not only does Gus have the business experience to recognize the value of our operation, but he comes from a service background, which makes his especially well-suited to find new customers and more importantly, keep them.&rdquo;

Sardina says that not only has his business experience prepared him to grow an operation like Lawn Doctor quickly, it&rsquo;s also taught him to expect to get out only as much as he puts in.

&ldquo;There are no silver bullets in the business world,&rdquo; Sardina said. &ldquo;Every business requires dedication, time and hard work, but Lawn Doctor is a model that works well for me. I always say, plan your work, and work your plan. Lawn Doctor has a great plan, and we&rsquo;re excited to work it.&rdquo;

Inspired by the Success of a Friend, Gus Sardina Opens His First Lawn Doctor

1851 Franchise

After a 40-year career running businesses ranging from insurance sales to restaurants, the Cuban-born entrepreneur postponed retirement for a new venture with the lawn-care brand.

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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Design with photo of John Perry and Lawn Doctor logo

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