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Southern Botanical grows its landscaping business on word-of-mouth advertising

Posted by Southern Botanical, Inc. in Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX on Jan 12, 2010

With roots in his high school lawn care company, Southern Botanical’s Jason Craven has an eye for detail and a budding reputation.

Dallas Business Journal – December 25-31, 2009
by Chris Cyrek Staff Writer

Jason Craven describes his company as Dallas landscaping’s “best kept secret.” He wants the secret to be out. But transitioning from a boutique-style business, dependent on word-of-mouth referrals, to a recognized name in the business has been a challenge. To meet that call, Craven has assembled a team to get the word out. Developing buzz is a tricky alchemy, but Craven and his Southern Botanical team believe that recent high-profile projects are helping to get the secret out.

Jason Craven, at age 33, is the founder and president of a landscaping installation business with a 15-year track record. He has relied on a keen attention to detail and positive word of mouth to grow his business in a competitive market. “We have a 100% referral rate,” Craven says. But he knows that to keep growing, his company has to become more visible to the public.

Fortunately, he’s already come quite a ways. “All I had starting out was a lawn mower my mom had, and an idea,” Craven recounts. That idea was J.C. Services, which he ran with the help of some buddies he hired from school. He participated in his school’s work program – as a self-employed owner. “I gave myself grades,” Craven says, laughing. It resulted in, he says, the easiest A’s he had ever earned.

Shortly after graduating from high school, Craven incorporated the company into Southern Botanical, deciding to build on the positive customer appraisals of his work. “If it’s green, we do it,” Craven says. That includes a recent half-million dollar installation at the Dallas Museum of Art, among the many other high-end commercial and residential landscapes Southern Botanical installs and maintains. “We focus on high-end, high-service projects that are looking for quality as well as value, where we’re quite competitive,” Craven says. Working on high-end installations allows more room to focus on environmental conservation efforts such as storm water cisterns, an approach to landscaping that Southern Botanical has taken an interest in. According to Craven, “Most people overwater.”

Perhaps most impressively, Craven’s landscaping company has seen a 95% increase in business in the 2007-08 year. He projects the company will maintain profit levels while expanding operations despite the bust in real estate and a wheezing economy. “We’re focusing on the client base, where we’re successful, and we’re targeting the commercial market more than ever,” Craven says. He attributes growth to the fact that high-end markets don’t really cut back as much as other markets if they’re looking for quality – and to his efforts to expand the company’s public exposure. The key to Craven’s success also entails an emphasis on detail, and a focus on the people who take care of those details. “He’s got great people,” says John Eagle, President of the Board of Directors of the Dallas Museum of Art and a Southern Botanical customer. “His people take a real interest in what they’re doing.”

In addition to Southern Botanical’s work at the recently finished DMA project, the company has won numerous awards for landscaping at Eagle’s private residence. When asked what Craven and his crews bring to the table that other landscaping firms don’t, Eagle points to their “high degree of skill – a lot of their work is done by hand.” Craven notes that when working on expensive elements of a property, his workers have to be extremely careful in their work. As a result, two qualities that Craven feels are necessary, and which separate Southern Botanical from his competitors, are the craftsmanship and care taken by his employees. “We really think about our customers and try to anticipate their needs,” Craven says. “We don’t want them to have to tell us.” The key to that sort of proactive approach is in a highly trained, highly skilled workforce. “Happy employees make happy customers,” Craven says with Zen-like equanimity.

He points to numerous staff-development policies as proof of his management koan. Southern Botanical encourages continuing education, institutes a rigorous and comprehensive 52-week training program that focuses on best practices and effective safety (Craven proudly points out that his company has not had a single injury in the last three years), and pulls its recruits from agronomy-accredited schools not only here in the region, but in Mexico.

Although Craven has yet to obtain a college degree, choosing instead to focus on his business, his company places a premium on an educated work force. Southern Botanical looks for highly skilled candidates south of the border through a recruiting initiative program, and works with the U.S. visa program to bring them north. “It would be easier to find people in the U.S.,” Craven admits, “but we really can’t find that many (agronomy majors).”

Regardless of where his employees are from, Craven is looking for passion, a love of gardening and a good work ethic. “It’s hard to find all of that in an interview,” he says. His solution? Employee referrals. Bonuses and other incentives are awarded to employees who successfully refer candidates. Craven believes this approach is successful because the referring employees have to work with their candidates, and they are unlikely to refer someone who isn’t up to the job.

Ultimately, Southern Botanical’s success comes down to making things grow: flowers, trees, aquatic flora – and his business. “Being so young, it’s been kind of difficult to recruit real heavy hitters as clients,” Craven says. “But we’ve started to gain a reputation.”