The intriguing part is how he's done it. Virtually all of Aquascape's marketing involves teaching other people--and other companies--how to make money in the pond businesss. Indeed, the entire organization is set up to provide customers with whatever information, education, products, marketing materials, and technical support they need to have successful businesses of their own. Granted, Wittstock's motives are hardly altruistic--like any supplier, Aquascape stands to be a prime beneficiary of its customers' success--but the company goes to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the contractors, garden centers, and wholesalers it does business with earn a profit on ponds.
"You want to know what this is?" Wittstock asked his audience at the Pond College. "We're a franchise business without the franchise fee." More to the point, Aquascape is a franchise business without a franchise agreement. Contractors are under no legal obligation to use the Aquascape pond-building materials on which the company makes its money. While Aquascape does charge for its seminars, magazines, books, videos, and marketing materials, they are not a major profit source. But what's to stop a contractor from taking advantage of the training programs and then buying less expensive pond supplies from one of Aquascape's competitors? The answer is, nothing--or at least nothing in the form of a binding contract. Some pond-builders do, in fact, go to the seminars, buy the books and videos, use the marketing materials, and purchase the big-ticket items elsewhere. Those people are a distinct minority, however, and their defections have had no discernible impact on Aquascape's meteoric growth.
Clearly, Wittstock has figured out something about marketing in the information age, and you don't have to be in the pond business to wonder what it is.
"If you want to keep motivated employees around," Wittstock tells his seminar audience, "there's no better way than to teach them the Financials.
On a slow winter day in Raleigh, N.C., about 20 landscape contractors have gathered in a hotel conference room for a two-day course in pond-building. This particular session focuses on the importance of doing breakeven analysis and sharing the information with employees. Leading the seminar is Ed Beaulieu (pronounced buh-LOO), a zoologist turned pond-builder who is Aquascape's vice president of construction. A lean and laid-back fellow with a shaved head, a mustache, and a goatee, he takes the group through the process of calculating breakeven and explains the energizing effect that knowledge of the numbers has had on the members of his work crew.
Greg Wittstock sits quietly in the back row, listening, watching. He used to run these sessions himself, although they were different back then, focusing more on pond construction and less on the business. He did the first tour in 1996, hitting 19 cities around the country. The next year, he upped the total to 43 cities and, the year after, to 57. He was on the road for three straight months in 1998, secretly loving it while complaining mightily to his fiancée, Carla, who wanted him to stop. Once they were married, Wittstock turned the tours over to other people in the company. But he still shows up occasionally, and you can see him wrestling with the urge to jump back in.
Now, in Raleigh, he gets out of his chair and starts walking around. When he sits down again, he's in the first row. As Beaulieu finishes his presentation, Wittstock decides to challenge the audience. "I want to know how you're going to apply all this," he says. "How many of you are going to go back and share this with the people who work for you?" Three or four hands go up. Beaulieu points out that opening the books doesn't mean you have to talk about individual salaries with employees. "Yes, you can," Wittstock cuts in. "You can ask them, 'How much do you want to make?' $40,000 a year? No problem. We just have to do another $300,000 in sales....And maybe they'll start telling you ideas: 'Here's how we can cut 2% of expenses." His face is lit up. He stabs the air with his finger. "And guess what? Kaboom! They're thinking like owners!"
All eyes are riveted to him. His body is tense. He holds out his hand, palm up, fingers raised and taut, as if he's literally grabbing the attention of the people in the room. "Think about the questions you have on this...because we've done it, man! I've seen the power that it's had with our employees!"
Wittstock sits back down, and Beaulieu begins to talk about how he uses the breakeven formula with his crew. "Tell them about hiring," Wittstock says. Beaulieu explains how he and his crew use the formula to decide whether to hire additional people. "And then they vote!" says Wittstock. "The employees vote!" They can make the decision, Beaulieu says, because they know how many more ponds they'll have to build to cover the cost of an extra person.
"And what happened before?" Wittstock asks, rising from his chair again. "Every employee said, 'We're overworked. Hire somebody else.' Does hiring someone else affect their salary? It sure does, because there's only so much to go around. But did they think that way? So now, with this, do you get better buy-in? Are they complaining less? Is that valuable to you? Are motivated employees tough to find? If you want to keep motivated employees around, there's no better way than to teach them the financials. Because all of sudden you're not a crook! Everybody's part of the same team!"
Wittstock was not always so passionate about the numbers. He started out as a contractor, after all, and--like most contractors--he let someone else handle the finances. Then, in 2000, he attended a seminar given by Charles Vander Kooi, a Colorado-based consultant to the landscape industry, who spoke about the mistakes people make in estimating their costs and the trouble they can get into as a result. He gave the example of a snowplowing company charging $50 for a job that actually cost the business $60 by the time the overhead expenses were factored in.
