Lawn Doctor

In April, Linda Barnes, her husband Gary and their son Heston opened their first <a href="http://lawndoctor.1851franchise.com/?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=why-gary-and-linda-barnes-followed-their-nephews-lead-to-open-a-lawn-doctor-2706591" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lawn Doctor </a>territory in the town of Kingwood, just outside of Houston. The opening was a long time in the making for the Barnes family, who first became aware of the lawn-care brand years ago, when Gary&rsquo;s nephew Craig opened a franchise.

&ldquo;Craig&rsquo;s father was always telling us about how well the business was doing and how we had to open our own,&rdquo; Linda said. &ldquo;But the timing just wasn&rsquo;t right.&rdquo;

Linda says she and her husband were always intrigued by the prospect, but until recently, they both maintained full-time careers, and Heston was in school. Last year, Gary retired from his career in oil and gas, Linda was winding down a second career selling educational technology&mdash;her first was teaching&mdash;and Heston finished school, got married, and became a father. Finally, the timing seemed right to open their<a href="http://lawndoctorfranchise.com/?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=why-gary-and-linda-barnes-followed-their-nephews-lead-to-open-a-lawn-doctor-2706591" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Lawn Doctor.</a>

Linda and Gary were both looking for an opportunity to continue working, now on their own terms, and they wanted to help Heston build something that he could run long after his parents retired for good.

&ldquo;My husband retired a year ago, but he is used to staying busy, and I wasn&rsquo;t quite ready to retire,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Heston has his own family&nbsp;now, and we want to help put him in a position where he has a business that he can run himself.&rdquo;

According to Linda, they didn&rsquo;t spend much time researching other business opportunities after zeroing in on <a href="https://www.lawndoctor.com/kingwood-tx/?utm_source=1851franchise.com&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=why-gary-and-linda-barnes-followed-their-nephews-lead-to-open-a-lawn-doctor-2706591" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Lawn Doctor.</a> Not only had they watched their nephew&rsquo;s operation grow into a reliable and lucrative long-term business, but everything about Lawn Doctor&rsquo;s model also seemed to fit their requirements.

&ldquo;Gary grew up on a farm, and our family has always loved working with the land. I wanted to apply my skills as a salesperson, and Heston wanted to build something that he could eventually step back from and run from a high level,&rdquo; Linda said.

Lawn Doctor checked off all of those boxes, and Linda says as soon as the family agreed they were all ready to start a business, they reached out to Craig to start the process.

&ldquo;We never truly considered any other business,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We talked for a bit to make sure we were all ready, and then immediately reached out to Craig to guide us through the process.&rdquo;

The day that they reached out to Craig, Linda says he happened to be at the Lawn Doctor annual convention, where the franchisees and the brand&rsquo;s development team had been discussing, among other things, finding opportunities to bring on new owners.

Craig put his family in touch with Eric Martin, Lawn Doctor&rsquo;s vice president of development, who invited the family out to a discovery day to learn more about the business.

&ldquo;I think Eric was surprised to see how eager we were to get started,&rdquo; Linda said. She was right. Martin says he was both surprised and delighted by the Barnes enthusiasm.

&ldquo;In a lot of ways, the Barneses are very similar to a lot of Lawn Doctor franchise partners,&rdquo; Martin said. &ldquo;We see a number of family operations with parents who want to find something they can do as they ease into retirement while helping set their kids up with something for the long-term. Early on, we find many prospective owners tend to be a bit more apprehensive, which is understandable. The decision to start a business is not something to be taken lightly and we want to be sure the right boxes have been checked before we move forward. After watching their nephew run his Lawn Doctor successfully for so many years, the Barneses knew exactly what they were in for, they were committed and didn&rsquo;t want to waste any time.&rdquo;

The Barneses attended discovery day in December and opened their Lawn Doctor a few months later, just in time for the busy spring season. Now that the family business is up and running, Linda says the only real surprise was just how much business they found right off the bat.

&ldquo;Craig&rsquo;s business grew steadily, but not nearly as fast ours is growing. I&#39;m not saying it was easy. We put in many hours and there was a huge learning curve,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Of course, when Craig opened his business, that was before marketing was done online. He was hanging flyers on doors and relying on word of mouth. Even that did very well for him, but with all of the tools that Lawn Doctor has for online and digital marketing these days, we can grow at a more rapid pace.&rdquo;

Linda says their business has picked up about a customer per day since they&rsquo;ve opened. Fortunately, she says Lawn Doctor has provided a wealth of support systems to help handle that rapid influx of business.

&ldquo;We have so much support,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We have a mentor that we selected ourselves, and I speak with her frequently. We also stay in touch with the group of new owners who we trained with. We exchange tips and practices that we are all learning as we go. Lawn Doctor also has consultants who visit us every now and then. We just had a visit from a consultant who has been in the business for 26 years, and his knowledge is just incredible. He went out in the field with Gary and Heston and was pointing out all sorts of things to make the job easier.&rdquo;

The quick growth of the Barnes&rsquo; business bodes well for the family&rsquo;s long-term plans, which Linda says includes expanding into surrounding territories as her and Gary transition into full retirement within the next few years.

&ldquo;Our original plan was to build up the business and then Gary and I retire in about three years, but we&rsquo;ve had so much business already,&rdquo; Linda said. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll eventually expand in to the surrounding territories, and I think we&rsquo;ll have a really solid long-term business for Heston to run himself much sooner than we expected.&rdquo;

Lawn Doctor Franchisees Gary & Linda Barnes

Why Gary and Linda Barnes Followed Their Nephew’s Lead to Open a Lawn Doctor

1851 Franchise

Linda, Gary and son Heston Barnes recently decided it was time to join the lawn-care franchise based on success their family has experienced

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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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