BOOSTING COLLECTIONS
“That helped us control our debt,” he says. “Instead of using profits to buy new equipment, we paid down debt.”
The company also tightened its collection procedures after a developer went bankrupt.
“When you’re fat and happy … you let a 30-day payment schedule become 60, and 60 days turns into 90 days, and all of a sudden, you’re hearing rumors about a client going bankrupt,” he explains. “Had we not been so lax about collecting money, we might not have taken as big a (financial) hit.”
As a result, Achtenhagen became more proactive and aggressive about collecting payments. These days, customers get a call if they haven’t paid up in 30 days. When payment is past 60 days overdue, the company sends out a registered letter advising the customer that Achtenhagen plans to file a notice of intent to file a lien against the customer’s property.
“We find that our good customers understand and appreciate what we’re doing,” Achtenhagen says, noting the company still works with financially troubled customers as much as possible. “It’s the bad payers that get aggravated when they receive a lien notice.”
ROUNDABOUT CAREER PATH
Running a landscaping firm was far from Achtenhagen’s mind while he was growing up on a farm in Mukwonago, helping his parents raise beef cattle and quarter horses. Instead, he yearned for a white-collar job that would take him away from the physical rigors of farm life.
“All those years on the farm, I couldn’t wait to graduate from college and wear a suit and tie and work in an air-conditioned office,” he says.
But after earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology and working in car sales for several years, Achtenhagen realized that although he loved sales and marketing, he missed working outside – especially the physical exertion required to fix, grow and build things.
So when he was about 25, Achtenhagen took a job at a lawn-maintenance business run by his brother Bart. No one in the company did landscaping work, so when existing lawn clients asked if the company could do small landscaping projects, Achtenhagen assumed responsibility for setting up meetings, developing proposals, selling the jobs and doing the installations.
“I spent four days a week cutting grass, then Fridays and Saturdays, I’d put in retaining walls,” he recalls. “Demand blossomed quickly.”
