New Hampshire beauty: Aspire protects profits on every job for Stephens Landscaping

When Stephens Landscaping started its operation in the lakes area of central New Hampshire, it had modest numbers: 10 employees and maybe $1 million in revenue.

The business, after all, began with a lawnmower and two guys cutting lawns.

“Right now, we’re about 105 employees, and we’ll be doing $20 million,” Managing Partner Mark Stephens said recently.

Growth has been strong and sustained. The reasons are varied. Start with location. The area is dotted with year-round and vacation homes, many on the banks of Lake Winnipesaukee and in the midst of that special New England blend of lake, mountains, and foliage.

Then, consider the quality Stephens brings to its work. A brief perusal of the Stephens portfolio shows its eye-popping work, with detailed landscaping, hardscape and striking design elements.

Detail matters in a place where many residents know each other. So, too, does company culture.

“I think the fact that at 30 years old, I can step away from a business and know that it's in good hands and it's running smoothly, and the employees feel the same way, I think that's amazing,” Stephens said.

Most of the credit goes to the Stephens brothers and their team. But Stephens quickly adds that a good part of the company’s growth and success has come because of its switch in 2019 to Aspire, the all-in-one landscaping and commercial cleaning software.

“Implementing Aspire was a lot of work, but if you follow what your implementation team says, you will be set up for success,” Stephens said. You absolutely will.”

For Stephens, results came quickly. Within four years of turning to Aspire, Stephens had doubled revenues.

“It's definitely helped us scale, and scale in an organized way,” Stephens said.

Stephens now is about 50-50 between design/build and maintenance, with 90% of maintenance and 95% of design/build in residential. The commercial work is more small-and-charming New England commercial. In an industry where margins can be tight and tough to maintain, growth averages 20% to 25% annually.

It’s a long way from when Mark and his brother John started the company in 2007. They spent three years taking lawnmowers from property to property to mow lawns. Three years later, they started hiring employees – and given the small-town vibe of the area, they pretty much knew everyone they hired.

“Fast forward to probably 2014, we started to hire people other than family, and I got out of the field a little bit and started focusing on the business itself,” Mark said. “And that was when we started to implement our first software.”

Mark moved toward handling the business end, John the design-and-build side. The software they chose initially fit the business’s needs – to a point.

“I was looking for software that would really do a lot more for us as we continued to scale,” he said. “We started to bring a lot more people in house where I wasn't doing all the office work, and we wanted to make sure that we had good procedures in place and that we had a software that was robust.”

In 2018, Stephens was approached by Aspire, and the more Mark studied, the more he realized what it could bring. He convinced the leadership team that Aspire was worth the effort and dove in.

“Fast forward to now,” he said. “We live by the software, swear by the software. It’s kept us aligned.”

A business that was between $8 million and $9 million pre-Aspire expects to be at $20 million in 2024, with a short-term goal of $30 million to $33 million by 2030 and a long-term goal of $100 million. At that point, Stephens would even consider satellite offices to extend its reach–and potential.

“We feel more comfortable than ever to run satellite offices because we have Aspire,” he said.

The internal insights and visibility provided by Aspire were key, with clarity in job costing a big plus. Aspire’s attention to detail even showed Stephens what jobs were not paying.

“It was amazing to realize jobs you think you're making money on that you're not making money on,” he said. “It was amazing to realize that we had places that we were not even breaking even. And then we had places we were doing really great.”

Mark estimates that before Aspire, the business was leaving 15% in gross margins on the table, margins that are now part of the business.

“Obviously, net profit margin followed that,” he said.

The improved data strengthened the business for present and long-haul growth.

“We know to the T on every person's lawn that we're mowing exactly how much we're making on it,” he said. “There's so many checks and balances, like approving people's time before you do payroll. We make sure everything has purchase receipts, so it has to be assigned to a job or inventory. We balance our inventory at the end of each month, so I know and trust our numbers and the data in Aspire.

“I think that's key.”

Aspire allows Stephens to track incidents and to recognize good work. Bonuses are awarded based on the over/under of materials and hours.

“All the data Aspire has helps us make much more educated decisions throughout the company,” he said.

And it’s all done in a matter of minutes.

“Minutes versus never; we didn't have that insight before,” he said. We knew things were going well at the end of the year, but we didn't know Mrs. Smith's or Mr. Smith's team was 30% faster than this other crew. So yeah, we have a lot of insight now into everything.”

Stephens’s average landscape install is from $500,000 up to $2 million. Before Aspire, once a job was booked, there rarely were changes. Aspire changed that as well.

“We rarely did change orders because it was hard to track them,” Stephens said. “We never exercised any of the clauses in our contract, like a surcharge for materials if they went over on cost. Because again, we didn't have a good way to do any job costing.

“Now we can do all those things.”

Stephens does not give the move to Aspire a second thought.

“I think people who were with us before absolutely love (Aspire),’’ Mark said. “Everyone's aligned, everyone knows our procedures, everyone knows when they're in line to take on the next step of a job or situation, whether it's an estimate, a lead, or whatever.

“They couldn't imagine their life without Aspire. We always say that Aspire is the main brain of our company because we don't just use it as CRM software. We really do use it for every single thing in our company.”

Image credit: Stephens Landscaping