Lawn Doctor

Harold Tamburro began working at a <a href="http://lawndoctorfranchise.com/?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=once-a-lawn-doctor-employee-harold-tamburro-now-owns-multiple-territories-2705393" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Lawn Doctor</a> in New Jersey in the late 1980s, just a couple of years after graduating from high school. A hard worker with an outgoing personality, Tamburro quickly worked his way up to a management position despite his young age. Tamburro worked at that <a href="https://lawndoctor.1851franchise.com/?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=once-a-lawn-doctor-employee-harold-tamburro-now-owns-multiple-territories-2705393" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Lawn Doctor</a> for a decade, in that time meeting owners and corporate team members from across the franchise network.

When a local Lawn Doctor owner was looking for someone he trusted to take over his business as he retired, he thought of Tamburro, who eagerly accepted the offer. Today, nearly 30 years after he was hired at Lawn Doctor, Tamburro oversees multiple territories of his own, and he has no plans of slowing down anytime soon.

&ldquo;I was really hustling back then,&rdquo; Tamburro said of his time as an employee. &ldquo;I worked through every aspect of the business. I worked with clients, learned the equipment inside and out, and managed the daily operations. By the time I was running my own operation, there wasn&rsquo;t much to learn. The only real change was I started earning a lot more money.&rdquo;

In addition to his wealth of experience with the business, Tamburro benefited from the support of his wife Tracey, who he met shortly after starting as an employee at Lawn Doctor.

&ldquo;Running your own business takes a lot of work, even if it&rsquo;s work you are familiar with, as it was for me,&rdquo; Tamburro said. &ldquo;Having Tracey to help out with sales calls and office admin was really important in that first year.&rdquo;

After Tracey graduated from college, she was able to dedicate herself full-time to the operation, working in the office hiring staff and shaping policies. That position was short-lived, however, as Tracey soon stepped back from the business to focus on raising the Tamburros&rsquo;s two young sons, Harold and Hunter.

&ldquo;One of the best things about the business is that we&rsquo;ve always been able to manage it in a way that fits with our lifestyle,&rdquo; Tamburro said. &ldquo;So when we had our kids and Tracey wanted to spend less time in the office, that wasn&rsquo;t an issue. We&rsquo;re always busy, but we can always make time to spend with our family. We take a vacation every year and we coached our kids in several different sports as they were growing up. We&rsquo;ve always been able to work the business around our personal life.&rdquo;

Tamburro&rsquo;s oldest son, Harold, is 20 now and works for his father&rsquo;s Lawn Doctor. Hunter graduates from high school this year will join the family business part-time while he pursues a business degree. The extra help is not wasted, as Tamburro&rsquo;s Lawn Doctor business now covers multiple territories throughout the New Jersey area.

Accounting for the steady growth of his business over nearly two decades, Tamburro said his success is due largely to his management style, which prioritizes team building and compassion.

&ldquo;Camaraderie among our team is essential,&rdquo; Tamburro said. &ldquo;I know what it&rsquo;s like to be on that side of the business, so I can relate to everyone I work with. I try to emphasize that we&rsquo;re a team and make everyone feel that they have some ownership over what we&rsquo;re doing. The people I work with all have different concerns in their lives, I try to be aware of that, and I ask only that they come in and do the work the right way.&rdquo;

That management strategy has paid off. Tamburro said he&rsquo;s seen very little employee turnover, and some of his team members have stuck with him since he first started the business nearly 20 years ago. That success has not gone unnoticed by Lawn Doctor&rsquo;s corporate team. Eric Martin, Lawn Doctor&rsquo;s vice president of franchise development, said Tamburro serves as a prime example of how Lawn Doctor owners can build sturdy operations through team-building.

&ldquo;Employees want to see that their leadership is invested in the business. Otherwise, why should they care?&rdquo; Martin said. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s exactly where Harold excels. &ldquo;His team knows he was on their side of the business, and they see him as a hands-on owner, not just somebody who sits in a back-office and writes their checks. Harold shares that attitude with all of our most successful leaders, the ones who build something special with our model.&rdquo;

Tamburro said he&rsquo;s committed to remaining a hands-on leader, and not just for the sake of morale. Working directly with clients and technicians is part of the job that Tamburro said he enjoys more than anything else.

&ldquo;Every day, I talk to clients, I respond to service calls, and I work with technicians to help manage their work,&rdquo; Tamburro said. &ldquo;Even after all these years, there are new issues we haven&rsquo;t run into before, a new fungus or a tricky service request. We can handle anything a client throws at us, but it&rsquo;s figuring out exactly how to deal with those things that keeps the job interesting.&rdquo;

Tamburro and his team are not left alone to find solutions for every new issue they encounter. Tamburro said he maintains strong relationships with both the corporate team and other Lawn Doctor owners in the area.

&ldquo;I speak with people from corporate often,&rdquo; Tamburro said. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a general philosophy in the franchise of open communication. I also have quarterly meetings with other franchisees in the area. Since we all have separate territories, there is no competition, and everyone is there to help each other. That&rsquo;s one of the things that has kept me with this business all these years. You won&rsquo;t find that with other businesses.&rdquo;

Tamburro said the growth of his business has been organic, and when he started, he didn&rsquo;t set out with a plan for large-scale expansion. As he approaches thirty years with Lawn Doctor, Tamburro said he&rsquo;ll continue to grow the business when and where he can.

&ldquo;Lawn Doctor has phenomenal name recognition, and if you put yourself out there and let people know that you are around and ready to service them, you are going to continue to find more and more business,&rdquo; Tamburro said. &ldquo;As the years went by, we continued to pick up new territories, one at a time. The business is primed to grow, you just have to work it.

Lawn Doctor Employee Harold Tamburro Now Owns Multiple Territories

Once a Lawn Doctor Employee, Harold Tamburro Now Owns Multiple Territories

1851 Franchise

The New Jersey native worked for a Lawn Doctor franchise for 10 years before taking over his own operation. 

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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

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