Success stories

What was your career background prior to starting your Zones business?

I worked in the software industry.  Helping develop an Online booking tool for the corporate travel market.  When I left the industry I was an Engineering Manager of a development team.

What attracted you to Zones as a business opportunity?

Good backend systems and support documentation through each of the stages

What is the market opportunity?

Zones is a great opportunity to help elevate the landscaping industry and transform the way people approach their outdoor living spaces and the investment they are making into improving their lifestyle. 

What is the biggest challenge running this type of business?

Finding the right trades and subcontractors that you can trust and work with.  As well as understanding the industry, compliance and building supplier relationships.

What is your best advice to run a great Zones business?

Value your worth and the service you provide.  Don't be afraid to walk away from a project, scope and materials can be negotiated but not the quality of the finished product.  Don't get caught in a race to the bottom.

Who is the ideal Zones owner?

Anyone with passion and drive.  If you have a sales background I think it gives you a bit of a head start especially building the relationship with the customer and helping with the conversions.

Why is the Zones model so compelling for customers?

It sets you apart from other landscaping companies and lends itself to that design and build concept that people are already familiar with when building a home or doing any renovations.

What do you think of Zones' marketing, and what are the most effective techniques you’ve used to find new customers?

In general the website is great and there is a lot of information that one can share in your personal social media profile/s.  With the current climate we are in and the changes in our marketing suppliers/strategy it is a challenge.  We haven't quite found the most effective technique yet.

What is it like working with clients?

It is rewarding and sometimes frustrating especially when you run into issues like the weather problems of recent and trying to navigate through them.  You are helping people bring their dream to reality and it's awesome when it all comes together.

What were key hires for you as you started building out your team?

Our project manager and landscape designer.

Any advice for the start-up phase?

There is a lot that is covered during induction. Take the time to get things set up I.e. directories, get familiar with the support system(LMS) before the leads are turned on.  

Any areas for improvement?

There are always areas to improve on as a business so having regular retrospectives is a good way to identify these.  The training at head office is great but for us we felt that more time should be spent around the working drawings and costing stage. Marketing is another area that needs to be covered in more detail. 

Would you do it again?

Yes

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Why did you join Zones?

So as an expat family we wanted to settle down before the kids started high school. So we moved from Sydney back to New Zealand and for many reasons, but the kids school was the main one and I was looking for a business opportunity. So being back in the workforce was very important for me and to have my own business was also important because I previously had my own business and didn't really think that I wanted to work for employer. Working from home, just gives you that time management that you can actually plan your own day the way you want.

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What was your previous role before joining Zones?

I am a registered nurse. I did my four-year qualification at the University of South Africa and my practice at the Military Hospital, the flagship of South Africa. I think the military force helped me to practice time management, discipline and respect and treat everybody equal. Then afterwards, I started my own business, in occupational health. It actually helped me with financial business management, and my team structure. I then had my own interior design business and that again helped me to get that perfect attention to detail and probably helped me to be totally obsessed about quality.

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What types of local marketing activities do you do?

So Paid online through Google and Facebook is the easy way of creating a lot of leads that the people are looking for something outdoors. We do home shows annually, and leaflet drops is important especially where your projects are. Putting out leaflets in the same street or that area and to actually put your name out and develop  relationships I think is a very important part of that as well as a local business group. I'm part of a BNI group, which helps me not only meet great trades, but also get leads. The most important for me is our after photos. These are very important with the creation of case studies, to visually show clients our past projects really helps with lead generation and getting a project across the line.

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Have you had leads from referrals or repeat customers?

I have certainly had leads from referrals or repeat customers. It's actually creating a warmer lead because of people see the quality of our work. So I had for instance a client, where we did the full backyard and the side of the property and then they've asked us to do the office block as well. So referrals does work. It creates warmer leads and certainly help you as a franchise owner.

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How do customers respond to the Zones Process?

Our five step process is really clear for our clients. It helps them with the scope of work. It also helps with the budget indication and what the cost is for the project, plus  helps us to visualize the outcome of the project before the project even starts.

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Is there any other advice you would like to give to potential franchisees?

Please follow the five-step process. It's there for a reason, make sure that you're always representing the brand at all times and build strong relationships. Make sure that you go and see every single lead, doesn't matter how small it is, you never know. If it's going to be a bigger scope of works and create a medium or large build eventually and make sure that you mix your small medium and large projects in your pipeline so that it helps you with cash flow because most of the large projects tight time needs building consent and require engineer drawings. So I've make sure that I have that small and medium projects in between.

Why did you join Zones? 

Well, I guess my brother, Matt, and I were looking for a business. We discussed a few options, and I had just sold my own business, which was a transport company. We were distributors, but we couldn't set our prices. So we were looking for a business that we had control over so we could decide what we sold things for, and landscaping was something that always interested us. We'd come from a building background. Both of us have had a bit of a hands-on interest in building and construction. So landscape was definitely something we were keen on, and Zones sort of offered us the opportunity to get in and get started in that industry.

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What's it like starting out as a Zones franchisee?

When Matt and I started as the first franchisees, we managed to get a job pretty early on, which was through a friend, but we followed the process of the design to build, so that went quite well and was great. We were really lucky, in that we both had contacts in the construction industry, so we had a big network of people we were going to use. We've managed to keep using a lot of them, and we still have a lot of them on board- friends and people that we use. Our suppliers have been great; we use Central Landscapes, and there's a lot of gruff tradesmen out there who have just been able to go and talk to the people behind the counter. They now tend to send our business cards out to people who come in and are looking to have landscaping done. So it's actually another way of finding some businesses using your suppliers as referrals as well. So that's worked really well for us.

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What is your opinion of Zones’ Marketing?

Zones is offering us the ability to get out to everybody, especially first through digital marketing, I think. We noticed before, while we were looking for a business, that you don't need to have your phone number written on your car or anything like that. Basically, everyone's first point of contact is going to be the website now. So that's really important now that Gareth does an amazing job with that. The content they've got on there really draws people in, which is ideally what everyone wants, as some of those pictures are in the case studies on the website. They've got the magazine that we take to all the clients as well, so when we go to a meeting, we're taking the magazine, and we're giving something away for free right away, so you broaden the relationship with the client. All the case studies- we probably haven't been as good as we should be. We would love to get more photos out there and stuff like that, but we overcommit to work sometimes, and we get a bit bogged down. But the stuff that everybody else is doing at Head Office sort of makes up for it, but it is something we want to work on in the future. But yeah, it's been awesome so far.

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How did you find your sub-trades and build your team?

We've got a team of four now- all subcontractors who work for us pretty much full time. We've got a lot of other guys we use quite frequently in terms of decks, retaining, and paving, but probably the toughest thing for us is finding the right people to come in and take some of the load off us. There's certain positions that we’re after- some independent people who don't mind pushing a wheelbarrow all day. They are not the easiest to find, but we try to make sure that we’re good employers, and if we can find an easier way to do things for our employees or subcontractors, we will do it, in terms of using a machine instead of making them hand-dig something. No-one wants to be in mud all day or anything like that, so if we're all after the same goal of getting the job done efficiently and the end goal looks as good as possible, then we're going to try and find the easiest way that everyone's happy to do it and that's also cost effective.

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Do sub-trades like working with Zones? 

We've got about three or four main subcontractors that we use. Consistently, we have a digger, a driver, a deck builder, and a concrete layer, and we make sure that we pay them on time. We've got questions answered before they ask them. So we try to think through what problems they might have. So a lot of the time, those subtrades that are concrete layers might be trying to get hold of a client to ask, “Where do you want your drainage?” but we've already tried to preempt a lot of those things so they can just get in and do the work, so it tends to work pretty well for them. We've established our standards; they're happy with that, and we’re cut from the same cloth. We enjoy working together, and we just want to get the job done.

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Is there any advice you'd give to a potential franchisee?

I do remember when I started, I would stew over a four-line email for about half an hour, just worrying about what the customer might think, and this isn’t in a bad way, but I do think I've got past that. Now I know how to approach customers and try to make a judgement early on about a customer, what they're after, and what they want. So it is just not worrying about those little things sometimes and just getting in there and doing it.

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Would you recommend becoming a Zones franchisee?

Yes, I think Zones has been a great franchise system in the three years we’ve been with them. We've obviously gone up and up from year one, which has been great. If what you're after is a franchise where you're in control and you're setting your prices, without too many restraints from head office but still having the support of them, then yeah, it's a great business to get into.

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