Job Spotlight with Steve Gillum, owner of LawnWorks of Columbus
It was a decade ago that Steve Gillum sold Total Flight Aviation Services, his airplane fueling and maintenance company at Columbus Airport.
He had spent 15 years of his life running the business that put him around one of his passions -- flying aircraft -- that he had cultivated while serving in the U.S. Air Force in the 1980s.
The West Virginia native -- raised much of his life in Michigan -- then found himself wondering what direction he should go. He knew operating a business was the best route for him, which eventually led him to launch a lawn maintenance company.
"I lived out in Harris County at the time and I had 10 acres," he said. "What happened is I was getting an awful lot of enjoyment out of Saturday, mowing the grass, getting everything trimmed up, and then sitting back with a Coke and smelling the grass. So when I found myself basically unemployed, I said, what's my second favorite thing to do (aside from flying)? And that's what I came up with."
Today, Gillum is 55 and LawnWorks of Columbus is about six years old. And the Columbus resident is no absentee owner. He's on the job each and every day, directing a couple of crews toward a residential or commercial job, while also spending plenty of time himself on a $12,000 riding mower, getting the job done in the Columbus area and -- starting this year -- in Phenix City.
The Ledger-Enquirer visited with Gillum recently as he was putting the finishing touches on the home of an elderly resident in the Britt David area of the city. He discussed his job, the competitive nature of lawn care, and the one thing people should not do to their lawns. This interview is edited for length and clarity.
So you enjoyed cutting grass and wanted to make that a full-time vocation?
Yes. I never went into it as part-time. From day one I wanted something full-time. I like running a company, first of all. And I wanted to have it totally inclusive. We can come and mow the grass. We're licensed to spray in Georgia and Alabama, to spray weeds and ornamentals. We can do landscaping and French drains. I want to be able to do everything and we're working toward that. I still don't have the license to spray mosquitoes. We'll probably have that by the middle of April.
I presume weather plays a major role in how your day goes?
That little mist we had just a minute ago, that's really nothing, especially in the summer when it dries almost immediately. But normally when you have rain, it's a gully washer and then it's over with. Or it can drizzle all day. Long story short, we can work in the rain. We prefer not to because it doesn't cut near as good. But if we have to, we can.
That's our biggest challenge. I hear everybody saying they can't find anybody to hire; they can't find dependable people. I don't have that problem. I do very well with hiring people. My biggest problem is if it rains today, then I've got twice as much to do tomorrow.
As for spraying for weeds and things, we like to have about five hours of no rain after we spray.
How competitive is this industry? And how do you stand out?
There's a million guys out here cutting grass. Some of them are licensed. Most of them are not.
But we try to be better than anybody else. This year we put something in Money Mailer. Before that we did direct mail. So we do mailouts ... Word of mouth is still the biggest thing. (This customer will) tell other ladies who go to her church, and things like that. Neighbors see us out there, that's another thing. And I don't know why guys are running around out there without names on their trucks. That's crazy. One of the biggest landscaping jobs we ever did was from a guy who was moving and wanted his yard all spruced up, his pool taken down and filled in, probably a $5,000 job. And he saw the name on my truck and stopped me at a gas station and got one of my cards. It was a good deal for us and a good deal for him.
So you can work from sun up to sundown?
In the summertime, it probably will be. We try not to work Saturdays. That's a makeup day if we didn't get to somebody during the week for whatever reason. Usually, it's because of rain, equipment breaking down, or something like that. We don't work on Sunday. I guess I can count on one hand the times we've worked that day. We go to church on Sunday.
And we usually get started about 7 o'clock. We all meet up at Lowe's and take off. This year we just started using a computer program. We always try to hit a certain part of town. But invariably someone calls and wants us to go over here or there. We end up getting a little disorganized sometimes, which doesn't hurt the customer, but it costs us time.
So we're trying this new program that tells us where to go. If there's a variable, we put that in the computer, and it basically says: That's great. Go do it. But you're going to be closer tomorrow. That should help our bottom line, of course, and it should help our time (management). I'm real anxious. I hope that program does everything that we think it will.
Getting everything computerized is very nice, the accounting, the scheduling, the maintenance.
What else does your job encompass?
This is a $12,000 machine, and it has to run six or seven hours a day. So we have to keep track of the maintenance. The oil has to get changed once a month. The blades get sharpened every week. That's usually a Saturday thing. The push mowers, the weed-eaters, we trade that stuff through about every two years, so we hardly ever have any maintenance on that.
Do you actually work until it's dark?
A lot of times. In fact, this (riding mower) here will get headlights this summer. There were a few times last year when I had one of those big giant spotlights and I was mowing, trying to hold the controls and get that last little bit in. So, yeah, it does happen.
The four of us can comfortably handle about 100 customers, and last year we did 60. What we're doing this year, to round that out and get us to the maximum number, which of course is maximum profits, is we've decided to do a special where if we are mowing your grass, we'll give you the weed control free ... The chemicals are not the most expensive part. It's the getting it there, and we're already there, so we've already cut some of the costs.
Are you usually bone-tired at the end of the day?
Yeah. On those days that we work pretty much to 6 or 7 o'clock, I go home and take a shower and sit down in front of the TV.
But we will get caught up with the pace after a few weeks, and I'll still be able to go out to the movies or something. But it can catch up with you.
What's the most rewarding aspect of your job?
Standing back and looking at a finished yard. My grandfather told me one time: You know who has the best job? It's a ditch digger, because at the end of the day he can look back and say, yep, I dug that ditch straight.
You know, when you're in management at a big company -- like when I was at Total Flight -- I can make a big decision today in which the results might not come about for months or maybe years, and it may or may not have been a good decision. So I like it when I can make a decision and see the results right away. It keeps it simple. It's low stress. It's a great job. And I love being around the people. I really enjoy it.
How about the thick humidity during the hot summer?
I've gotten used to that ... As you can see, I'm very light skinned, so I'm all for suntan lotion, SPF as high as I can get. Now what we will do, usually in August, is when it gets to around 96, we'll stop working. There's no sense in having a stroke out here.
I keep an eye on it. If it's too hot for me, the younger guys are probably able to go on, but there's no sense in it. So maybe at 2 o'clock, when it gets up to 94 or 95, we'll stop and find a shady spot, and when it gets about 4 o'clock, we'll get back to work. I'm just not going to push people and kill them.
What's the toughest job you've tackled?
People that have rental property ... when it comes up for rent, a lot of times they'll call us in to clean it up, straighten out the yard, cut the bushes, cut down trees, whatever. That usually gets pretty involved. In the beginning, I never charged enough for that. But I've learned that it's expensive.
One of the things we really try to do is keep the costs down, because we want these (customers) to stay with us. You know that old saying, it's a whole lot easier to keep a customer than find a new one. Well, we'll try our best to keep the costs down for somebody. I have bid a lot of those jobs way too low ... But we're going to finish the job and take the loss. We're always going to finish it.
You're a bit of a bulldog by nature?
I always say I'll beat my head against the wall until it moves, no matter how bad it hurts my head. (laughs) That's sometimes not a good thing.
What's the one tip you can give people for their lawn, something they shouldn't do or ignore? A colleague once told me to not mulch Bermuda grass; pick up the clippings so it can breathe.
I would say that you shouldn't cut too much at one time. You're only supposed to cut about a quarter. So if the grass is three inches, you really shouldn't even cut an inch. But so many people, of course, want to get the best bang for their dollar and what happens is it yellows out the grass.
You're scalping it?
Yeah. If you cut anything more than half, it's not nearly as good at absorbing water. Of course, if you can afford a sprinkler system, that's the best thing in the world. But cutting too much at one time is probably the worst thing you can do.
It seems everyone has Bermuda grass. What about other types, like Zoysia?
Zoysia's a good grass. My favorite is St. Augustine, but unfortunately most people here don't use it. That's mostly down in the Florida area. Fresh-cut St. Augustine, to me, is just gorgeous and it doesn't die out in the winter; it stays green. But people around here use the other two.
Do you have the proverbial busy season and then things slack off noticeably?
Usually, right around the 15th of November, people like this lady here, I'm doing the last cut at that time, and it's more about running over it and collecting the leaves than it is cutting.
Then we've got customers who keep us almost the whole year, and January and February with them is a lot about cleaning up, straightening up. They may want a little landscaping done or something like that. That's why I try to line up pressure washing jobs (in January or February).
It sounds like you have to be very savvy to survive in this business?
We're putting customer service first ... There's a whole lot of people out there cutting grass and not making money. They just don't know it. And, of course, having a little bit of business experience from the past helps everything out.
If you're running a business, you've got to look at the business side, the money side. Then you've got to look at: Do I enjoy doing it? But if you're not making any money at it, maybe you should find something else to do. And it's real hard to make money. I don't know how some of these guys do it.
Bio
Name: Steve Gillum
Age: 55
Hometown: French Creek, W.Va.
Current residence: Columbus
Education: 1978 graduate of Huron High School in New Boston (Romulus), Mich.; earned bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from University of Michigan in 1982; earned associate degree in aviation management from Gulf Coast State College in Panama City, Fla., in 1987
Previous jobs: Served five years in U.S. Air Force, holding various flight positions; former owner of Total Flight Aviation Services at Columbus Airport (sold to Jack Pezold a decade ago)
Family: 8-year-old daughter Katelyn
Leisure time: Enjoys riding his motorcycle and scuba diving
This story was originally published March 14, 2015 at 5:56 PM with the headline "Job Spotlight with Steve Gillum, owner of LawnWorks of Columbus."