Business Spotlight: Strong Stock, Budding Branches

Walk all over the product that Larry Ryan’s company has expertly tended to, and he won’t mind. But when it comes to his employees, Ryan prides himself on not trampling them.

“It’s amazing the quality of people you can attract when you give something back to them,” says Ryan, founder of Overland Park, Kan.-based Ryan Lawn & Tree Inc. “We work very hard to have very high quality people, most with college degrees, to serve as consultants to the homeowners.”

Ryan offers his employees shares of the lawn and tree care company through an employee stock ownership plan, resulting in 90 percent of Ryan Lawn & Tree being owned by its more than 200 employees. The company employs 27 in its Springfield branch, one of six throughout Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma that handles tree pruning and lawn fertilization to irrigation systems and pest treatments.

Enter the ESOP
The ESOP is one reason Tim Crews sold his T-N-T Tree Service to Ryan in 2003, marking the company’s entry into the Springfield market.

T-N-T began in 1983 as a partnership between Crews and his brother. After buying out his brother in 1996, Crews and his wife nearly tripled the company’s revenue in six years to approach $1 million the year before he sold to Ryan.

Such rapid growth, Crews says, left him wearing far too many hats.

“Larry showed up, and I thought we were developing a friendship. Then he gave me a letter of intent,” Crews says. “After getting to know the company, it was a slam dunk. He had so many things figured out that I was shooting in the dark at.”

Crews sold T-N-T Tree Service to Ryan in 2003 for an undisclosed amount, but he acknowledges it was a bargain. “My compensation package more than made up for the low price I sold the company for,” Crews says.

That deal included a gig as branch manager for 10 years, a 25 percent share of the branch’s profit during that time and ESOP shares. Crews, now a consulting arborist for Ryan Lawn, says the ESOP is performing well. “It’s making my 401(k) look pitiful,” he says.

Ryan Lawn now serves more than 3,000 customers in the Springfield area, says Springfield Branch Manager Jim Cameron, noting roughly 95 percent of clients are residential. The branch has nearly doubled in size since 2008, pushing local revenue by roughly 10 percent annually the last few years, Cameron says. The Springfield branch is on track to gross about $3.2 million in 2013.

Cameron says commercial clients include the Springfield Cardinals, CoxHealth and the city of Springfield.

 “Springfield has been a great market for us,” says Ryan, who holds a degree in forestry from the University of Montana. “When we added irrigation to our services (in Springfield), it gave us a lot more exposure in the community. Every time you do something like that, it shows the community you’re more legitimate.”

Tree rings
Founded in 1987, Ryan Lawn & Tree serves more than 29,000 customers throughout its branches in metropolitan Kansas City and St. Louis; Tulsa, Okla.; Wichita and Lawrence, Kan.; and Springfield.

While lawn care is the top demand in the Kansas City area, Cameron says the interest in tree care is more substantial locally.

“It’s a more scenic area here in the Ozarks – a more natural landscape area – and people seem to take pride in their trees more so than their lawns,” says Cameron, who began working in the company’s Overland Park office in 2001.

Ryan says about half of business in Springfield comes from pruning and tree care, while 30 percent is attributed to lawn care. The branch has seen an uptick in calls, by nearly 200, in the last six weeks to take care of storm-damaged trees.

Before forming his multisite lawn and tree care company, which last year generated more than $23 million in revenue, Ryan worked as a franchisee in food service. While he couldn’t have predicted his circuitous route to apply his forestry degree, Ryan says the stint running a pizza shop was made to order.

“It was the best thing I ever did,” he says. “It taught me about business.”

Now, that business is showing its longevity.

“The first guy we hired full time is still with us, 24 years later,” Ryan says. “We have second-generation employees now. We get to see families grow up, watch people mature with the company – and that’s the way you want it.”[[In-content Ad]]