Alex Fees: I’m Alex Fees on SBTV.com and joining me here now with the IFA conference in Orlando, Florida is David Mlotkiewicz. Dave, good to meet you.
David Mlotkiewicz: Good to meet you.
Alex Fees: Mlotkiewicz, that’s common spelling, Mlotkiewicz, right?
David Mlotkiewicz: Yes, very common.
Alex Fees: All right. Good deal Dave is a Lawn Doctor franchisee out of Toms River, New Jersey. So tell me how did you get involved with Lawn Doctor.
David Mlotkiewicz: I used to work for Chem Lawn, a larger one care company. It was a corporate environment.
Alex Fees: All right.
David Mlotkiewicz: And I was there in 1984 and in 1989, they were bought out and through their reorganization process in the end of the 1989, I was let go. I was given a severance package so only knowing a lawn care kind of.
Alex Fees: Right.
David Mlotkiewicz: I started to look at my opportunities from that point and I worked for a Lawn back to franchisee when I was in high school. So like, the first thing to do was talk to Lawn Doctor and see what opportunities they had and at that point, I found a resale then an existing franchise in an area that I was familiar with and we wind up buying our first franchise, the fall of ’89 and starting our company January of 1990 in franchising.
Alex Fees: And 18 years later.
David Mlotkiewicz: 18 years later, we have nine territories we own and we’re servicing just about 5000 residential lawns yearly and we’re running a dozen trucks out there so it’s a lot different than we started. But you know some of the unique things when we started this, you know, we were, I met my wife at my previous job so we were looking to start a business that would afford her the opportunity to kind of run the office out of the office to begin, you know, start raising a family and I would be the grunt, go out and do all the work and you know that was working well but then I was getting tired and I wanted to see the bigger picture.
Alex Fees: Right.
David Mlotkiewicz: So at that point we started to approach out surrounding dealers that were kind of just in the system for quite a few years, you know, to see when they were thinking about getting out, you know, our concept has been in franchise, kind of business for 40 years now.
Alex Fees: Right.
David Mlotkiewicz: So it’s been around quite a long time and through the years, we’ve just managed to buy up all of our surrounding people and kind of establish a nice business along the whole Jersey shore.
Alex Fees: Yeah, it sounds like it. You guys have just going great guns here with a.
David Mlotkiewicz: Yeah, it’s very rewarding, you know, it’s a, we’ve had a great relationship with our franchise who were one of the strongest things we have with our franchisors. It’s a partnership. It’s not us, them. You know that great work working relationship. In 18 years, you have the ups and downs with any business but the relationship we have we with our franchisor, I was on a president’s advisory council for over ten years and you know, we’ve been able to work through these new things that are thrown at business, you know, when we started, we we’re at the one right system, you know, computers are just emerging, you know.
Alex Fees: Yeah.
David Mlotkiewicz: And then after computers, we were hit with the website and to try to think about how you handle all of these different things thrown at business if you didn’t, if I didn’t have franchising behind me, I can’t even imagine how you start to think to incorporate all these new technical issues in to your business.
Alex Fees: Sure. So all of those computers, websites would have been a lot more difficult to administer without the help of a franchisor?
David Mlotkiewicz: Oh most certainly because you know, what the franchiser, what it does for us is that here she is able to go out and research this. Bring it back their office, determine what’s best for all of their business partners and then slowly incorporate it. If you had to do it as an individual business owner, it would take you away from what you’re doing in your day to day business so that’s the whole concept to franchising, you know. Let them do the light work, sharing of ideas, what works for one franchisee versus another franchisee, what not to do if it didn’t work for the he or she. So it’s a very important relationship. It’s something we value very greatly.
Alex Fees: What about IFA, how did you get involved with IFA?
David Mlotkiewicz: We’ve gotten involved in the IFA about 6 years ago. The reason that we’ve got involved with the IFA is that, you know, we value the relationship we have with our franchisor and we want to continue to protect that. You know the IFA from a franchisee stand point, I don’t want government intrusion in our business needs. I think it’s important for franchisees and small business people to go down to the hill. Let your district, congressional people know how you feel, what you’re doing down there, you know, through our impact study, we’re able to show them how many jobs we create in their. We can even show them how many jobs down to their congressional districts so this is important information that they see. When we say that you know, this is how big franchising plays in your district, this is what I’ve, this is the part that I play, you know, we have to let them know that, you know, health insurance is becoming a very big issue. You know we’re one of the few companies in lawn care that provide, you know. I provide health care for my employees, you know. We’re not just, you know, when somebody on the hill compared me Wal-Mart, you know, it’s very discouraging because you know, we do provide medical. We have 401k profit sharing so we’re trying to do just like anybody else would want.
Alex Fees: And David, tell me about your 365 club.
David Mlotkiewicz: Yeah the 365 club we established last year and it was just a way that to get people introduce to what political actions committee is for, you know. You need money when you’re in Washington to support the candidates that support your views and our political advisory council came up with this plan that a dollar a day. You know, you can invest a little as a dollar a day to represent and protect your rights in Washington for franchising.
Alex Fees: All right David, this is an opportunity for a shameless plug here. Where can people get more information about Lawn Doctor?
David Mlotkiewicz: You could go to our website at lawndoctor.com or you can call the corporate office at 1-800-631-5660.
Alex Fees: All right, good deal. He is David Mlotkiewicz, a Lawn Doctor franshisee in Toms River New Jersey. David, thanks for being here.
David Mlotkiewicz: Thank you.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services