10 minute read
Green Worx teenage business owner learns on the fl y
Green Worx teenage business owner learns on the fly
Hard lessons built success
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Photo courtesy Green Worx Landscaping
By Lyn Dean
At age 18, RJ Duarte has been a green industry entrepreneur for just over 10 years. Duarte, founder and CEO at Green Worx, LLC, and former president, Owen Johnson, officially named the business and incorporated in 2015, making it a “real business.” Both were in high school. Duarte graduated high school May 2018, less than a year ago and is now at Green Worx full-time.
Back in the day
By middle school, Duarte had more landscape maintenance work than he could handle himself, which is when Owen Johnson started working with Duarte after school, on weekends and during the summer. Once in high school, Duarte understood more about the skills and education he needed to help develop the business.
“I knew what I wanted to learn for Green Worx,” he says. “I took engineering, shop and manufacturing classes in high school. Fortunately, I was able to communicate effectively with my teachers. They were supportive of my course selections that backed plans for the business I was already running.” Duarte notes that not all students can do what he did. It took a lot of work and ongoing communication to prove he was trustworthy and convince the teachers to believe in what he and Johnson were doing. Johnson, who attended a different high school, had a much harder time getting teacher support for the leniency he wanted to work on Green Worx.
In 2015, Green Worx’s digital presence began when Duarte and Johnson used their skills to create the company’s first website. Though Johnson has left his position as president, he continues to do all of Green Worx’s digital marketing/advertising including videos, photography and writing.
By 2017, with the help of some media coverage and a lot of hard work and sweat, the company was earning revenue in the six figures.
The killer experience
Green Worx’s customer base in the foothills of Golden was built by word-of-mouth. Duarte says he’s “not here to get rich” from his clients, but he does want to give customers a “killer experience.”
“We don’t want to be ‘the same.’ We do extra little things that help people. We do even if we don’t do the work,” says Duarte. His mission is to help the customers, no matter who does the actual work. He picks up business cards from other contractors including plumbers, electricians and other landscape contractors. “I’ve referred customers to other landscape contractors if we can’t do the work.” Or he will help clients find a plumber if they need one. He says these little details have helped grow his business. He wants his customers to experience “100 percent satisfaction.”
Bumpy ride
During high school, Duarte didn’t get much sleep—not for the usual reasons parents
Design/Build is now 80% ofthe business.
may point to, but because he had mowing jobs before school at 4 a.m. Then, after a full day of school, he and others on his team worked until dark. And finally, there’s the inevitable homework.
Also, being young meant institutions like banks and insurance companies didn’t want to take the risk. And the young men knew little about managing money. Fortunately, Anita Johnson, Owen Johnson’s mother, stepped in as chief financial officer (CFO) and financial adviser. Anita owns her own company, HydroGeoLogica, Inc. In what little time she could spare outside of running her own company and being a parent, she helped manage the explosive growth and administrative challenges that came with it.
After winning some awards and gaining media attention, Green Worx tripled in size in 2016 over the previous year, and “the phones wouldn’t stop ringing.” Over the next two years, growth rates have been similarly high.
“Without Anita’s help, we would have gone out of business before we were out of high school,” says Duarte. “She taught us— not did it for us—financial tracking software, how to do payroll, manage bills and other behind-the-scenes activities.” Duarte says these were not things he could learn in high school and is grateful for Anita’s help growing and maintaining Green Worx.
“My original approach was to build slowly into full landscaping,” says Duarte. “But that didn’t happen! Faster than expected, over the past two years we’ve gone from 80 percent maintenance to 80 percent design/build.”
Recruiting and training
“Of course, when we grew quickly, I had to find people. I drew from my high school,” says Duarte. “I wanted people who were willing to work hard without complaining. In my school of about 1,200 students, I only found 8-12 who became a solid labor base.”
“When expanding from landscape maintenance, we started with irrigation system installation to get our feet wet. Then we moved to excavation, grading and drainage,” says RJ. “I listen to what customers want and give it to them. It was a super big learning experience. I learned fast to see the gaps and what I needed on the team.”
He estimates more than three quarters of what the company does is easy to learn. As a crew leader on irrigation projects, Duarte says he could teach the crew—the handful of willing high school students—the skills and knowledge for proper installation.
From mowing lawns to design/build
Duarte says his experiences since age 4, when accompanying his father on construction projects, were his early introduction to understanding projects from start to fi nish. He also learned from his father the value of fi nding people who can “do it,” meaning he or his company doesn’t have to know how to do everything. His takeaway is to fi nd the right people or contractors and let them use their skills.
Since summer 2016, after a media-prompted growth spurt, Duarte’s dad, Rob Duarte, has been employed full time as Green Worx foreman. Rob applied his years of experience in construction and landscaping, while RJ Duarte continued to pick up skills in school. Having Rob on the team allowed the company to take on more complex landscape construction projects as the business transitioned to design/build. Keep in mind: at this milestone, RJ still had two more years of high school to complete.
Now with his father—and later his brother—and some high school students as employees, he has a small reliable workforce base. During the busy summer months, Green Worx has had four crews—one each for maintenance and irrigation and two for install. Yet Duarte is challenged, like most landscape owners, with fi nding more workers.
Lessons continue
“All the lessons have been hard and I have learned them as I go,” says Duarte. “When something is broken, it needs to be fi xed to make it right. That’s a big one.” He admits that hard lessons are the ones he learns from most. The importance of managing money and investing is another big lesson.
Behind the scenes, Duarte feels glued to the desk. He loves “being in the fi eld and driving trucks, and now I drive the desk!”
What’s in the future? He wants the company to “grow big” and wants quality work and great customer experience to be core values. As the company continues to grow, he looks forward to connecting with others in the industry and taking advantage of programs offered through industry organizations like ALCC. | CG
Equipment spending –repair or replace?
Pros explain how they handle aging equipment
Colorado Green asked landscape professionals, “When equipment begins to break down, do you prefer to repair or replace?” The responses, and reasons behind them, were varied. In fact, the decision may be different over the life cycle of the company. Business owners make decisions and adjust processes based on the size and resources of their organization as well as current market conditions. Labor shortages, lower interest rates for large purchases... all of it can affect where funds are spent. As Phil Steinhauer, Designscapes Colorado, Centennial, points
By Cherie Courtade
out, “money is going to spent one way or another.... Businesses have to decide where they would rather spend it.”
“We have recently spent a great deal of time looking into the useful life of equipment and comparing repair costs to replacement costs,” explains Steinhauer. “We have found that most machines and vehicles reach a certain point in their life where the cost of repairing them outweighs the cost of replacing them. This year we are using our data to make better decisions on repairing or replacing across our entire fleet.”
For companies that do not have the staff or resources to work on large equipment, repairs may only be an option for small equipment. Large items can only be replaced if staff do not have the tools or the skills to repair them.
In order to save money on repairs, Ryan Spinharney, Ecoscape Environmental Design, Boulder, recommends checking with the manufacturer. “We will check to see if there are any recalls or warranty as well and send the equipment into a certified dealer or repair shop if need be.”
Those in favor of replacing equipment
often cited having equipment out-of-use as a factor that increases the costs. “Sometimes the down time costs more than the repairs,” says Tim Emick, Timberline Landscaping, Inc., Colorado Springs.
For some, preventing the breakdown in the first place means not having to face the dilemma often. “Depends on the situation and the age of the equipment,” said Kent Kinsey, Misty Mountain Sprinkler Systems, Montrose. “Constant breakdowns cost a lot of downtime, but the cost of new equipment replacement… may not be affordable. A good maintenance program curtails a lot of breakdowns. If you treat your equipment right, inspect on a regular basis, and use high quality replacement parts and fluids you can keep things running for a long time.”
Eric Schultz, Schultz Industries, Inc.,
Golden, has mechanics on staff to maintain and repair equipment. “We have however moved to a model of revolving equipment every 4-5 years, and it has just about eliminated repairs and downtime.” They’ve also needed fewer mechanics on staff as a result, which can be important in light of the current labor shortage.
But for Marie Peacock, Gardenz, Lakewood it’s not easy to throw away a tool or
piece of equipment. It’s about more than just money. “In my mind, repairing is much more sustainable, both environmentally and financially. There’s no sense in throwing something away just because it doesn’t work right anymore. Once it gets too old and too beyond repair, then I replace tools. But as long as I can repair them, I do.” | CG
Navigating the healthcare labyrinth
Can the effort pay off in recruitment and retention?
By Kevin Wood
AS almost everyone has experienced in recent years, the cost of healthcare and health insurance continues to rise. Whether buying coverage for yourself and your family or as an employer trying to offer your employees benefit options, you are probably feeling the pinch of expensive health insurance costs. It is helpful to understand some fundamentals around how healthcare works, why costs continue to rise, and why offering benefits can create a competitive advantage.
How healthcare plans work
Let’s look at the two most common types of carrier networks and how insurance plans are constructed. Health Maintenance Organizations (HMO) provide care only at their facilities, while Preferred Provider Organizations (PPO) allow for any participating doctors to be included in the network of care, offering the consumer more options. Your plan is built with a deductible amount; that is the amount for which you are responsible before your insurance starts paying. Copays count toward your out-of-pocket max, but not toward your deductible. After you hit your deductible, you will have a coinsurance split where you pay a percentage, and your insurance pays the remainder of the bill. A common coinsurance is 20% liability to the consumer and 80% to the insurance company. This coinsurance split continues until you meet your out-of-pocket max, at which point insurance pays 100% of the bill. For a useful list of healthcare terms, please visit www.healthcare.gov/glossary/.
