A company’s brand identity is usually something outward-facing— a tool mostly used to communicate to clients and prospects. It’s telling that emi landscape owner Bob Marks, CSP, ASM, has "The emi Way"—a three-pillar value system—in large letters on the wall behind his desk. It’s there to remind him and everyone inside the company that emi’s identity starts with them.

Marks grew up with emi, literally. His stepfather, Ed Wigfield, started the company on the outskirts of Allentown, PA, in 1983, the year Marks was born. "Once I was old enough to do any kind of work, I was working," he recalls. "In the winter, my mom (Cindy Wigfield) and I were the only shovelers in the company."

When Marks turned 16, he became a sidewalk team leader and recruited his friends. "It was an easy sell because we’d be out all night working together, which was fun, and then we’d have an excuse to skip school the next day."

After graduating from high school, Marks went to Universal Technical Institute in Houston, TX, to become an auto mechanic. From there he was accepted into Audi’s manufacturer’s training program, which happened to be based in Allentown. So, he was back working at emi. "I went to the Audi program from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., and then worked from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. plowing snow, or whatever else had to be done."

After completing the Audi training, Marks joined a dealership in the Washington, D.C. area, where he worked for almost five years. Around the four-year mark, Ed broke his hand when working on a piece of equipment. Some months later, as that hand was healing, he broke his other arm. "So, he’s got one arm he can’t use at all, and his other hand is 60% of what it’s supposed to be," Marks recalls. "I called work and told them I needed to take a week’s vacation and then drove home to help out. I always joke that I was literally his right-hand man."

Marks helped guide the crews through the spring landscape season, and when he was home for a visit that summer, Ed and Cindy proposed that he join the company full time and start to learn the business, which he did in 2009.

Growing pains

At the time Marks returned, emi had become a commercial-only, but still relatively small, operation. While the idea was that "someday" he would take over the company, the timeline "was very vague," Marks relates. For four years, he learned every aspect of the business. The company began to grow, building a larger shop in 2013 and expanding to 10 to 15 year-round employees. "All of a sudden we had overhead that, honestly, was tough to cover at our size," he acknowledges.

While he was still in the field about 90% of the time, and still maintaining the company’s vehicles and equipment at night, Marks set out to really sell emi and continue to grow the company. "We had a couple of clients that were also growing. We had to grow with them, or we were going to lose them. So we were in a weird spot: either we had to grow or we had to get smaller."

Marks flourished in the sales role. New accounts came and the company added industrial properties to the portfolio. That meant larger equipment and more people. But it also revealed some internal cracks. "I felt like we were growing the company, and I loved it," says Marks. "But we didn’t plan to grow so big that quickly."

By 2020, in the midst of Covid, Marks came to an inflection point. "I had become the face of the company. I said ‘we need a plan for the future so we can be succesful.’ I needed a light at the end of the tunnel because I felt like I was just treading water."

A purchase agreement at fair market value was worked out and Marks officially took over in 2021. His mother remains the company’s CFO. Marks credits his stepfather with instilling a work ethic in him but says the two simply had different approaches to running the business: "Ed was very good at operations, and I always say that I couldn’t have accomplished what Ed did. I don’t think I had that entrepreneurial grit to start a company from nothing. But then as we grew, I think that’s where my skill sets came in, to manage people and kind of put more pieces together. We had just gotten too big for one owner to manage everything by themselves."

The emi Way

Today, emi has grown to 60 year-round employees (and about 120 crew members, plus subcontractors, during snow events) and is approaching the $10 million revenue mark.

Having good people has allowed the company to grow successfully, he emphasizes: "And we’ll always continue to grow, as long as we find good people and good clients willing to pay us so that we can pay our people."

Marks says that when the company really started to expand, he read "Traction" by Gino Wickman. One question the book poses to business leaders is: What are the three things you do that your competitors can’t do all three of? That question led to the creation of "The emi Way."

People first. "This is not unique, but we make it a priority to take care of our people really well," Marks explains. "I learned early on that hiring is difficult, so when we find the right people, we’re going to go over and above to keep them. We may not be the biggest in our region, but we try to be the best. And you can’t do that if you’re retraining 70% of your workforce every year."

Part of retaining employees comes down to pay, but it’s also about making sure there are opportunities for them to build a career, taking care of them on the job and being respectful of their time.

"It’s just a lot of little things," Marks says.

When calling in seasonal workers for storm events, the company operates under the 48-24-12 rule. This gives an initial notice 48 hours in advance that a storm is forecasted; a more specific update 24 hours in advance, and then even more updated information 12 hours out. "This helps people organize their lives a little bit better, and for us, it has eliminated some excuses that they weren’t prepared," says Marks.

Once employees are actually called in, the company pays them, even if the snow event is delayed or never materializes. "We always pay a minimum of four hours; that’s to recognize what it took for them to get here when we asked them to."

Another sign of respect and retention booster: emi pays for 100% of health insurance costs once an employee has been with the company for three years. "We feel like they’re part of the team; part of the family, so we’re going to cover that," says Marks.

All of these "little things" have led to increased tenure, with more reaching 5, 10, 15 years of service. "It’s not all about material things, but there’s a lot of new cars in our parking lot, and we’ve had a lot of people who have started families and bought homes and all those things. We want to be the champion for the blue-collar worker," says Marks. "I’ve done all these things; I understand what it means to work in 20° weather, all night long."

And Marks emphasizes that the philosophy of "putting people first" extends to its clients and vendors: "We don’t switch vendors very quickly. We don’t nickel and dime our vendors—if we feel like they’re giving us an honest price and they give us the service that we’re looking for, we want to continue working with them."

And if a client needs a favor, "we drop everything and get on it," says Marks. One example came when President Biden visited the headquarters of Mack Trucks, an emi client. "We had 48 hours’ notice, and they gave us a laundry list of stuff to get ready, and we put the whole company there to make it happen," he recalls.

Fanatical attention to detail. The emi Way’s inclusion of the word "fanatical" when discussing attention to details is a sign of how seriously the company takes getting the little things right. This is what people notice, says Marks, who cautions his crews against doing "just a 90% job."

The attention to detail starts and ends at the company’s shop. "When our teams leave here, they have a whole procedure to know what needs to be on the truck. When they get on the job site, they have site maps with descriptions of the problem areas. And when they come back, there’s a whole end-of-shift procedure. Attention to detail isn’t just the work we do—we try to focus on it at every step along the way."

Marks uses the analogy of "broken windows policing," where even smaller issues are corrected, because it sets a standard and helps prevent larger problems.

Employee trainings include the bigger things—safety, equipment operation, etc.—but also the small things. "For example, we talk about dealing with the ‘no man’s land’ area along the curbs that meet a sidewalk," says Marks. "We don’t want people wondering: is that the plow truck’s responsibility, or is it the sidewalk team’s responsibility? When it’s more than one person’s responsibility, it’s nobody’s responsibility. A client can get out of their car in a clean parking lot, and there’s a clean sidewalk, but if they’ve got to walk through two feet of snow to get to the clean sidewalk, it doesn’t matter. It might as well not have been done at all."

We do what we say we are going to do, no excuses. This component of The emi Way can be difficult—and sometimes expensive—to live up to. But it’s essential, Marks says. "Whatever we agree to, whether we’re going to make money or lose money, that’s what we agreed to, and we’re going to follow through every time."

For example, the company has clients that never close. "It doesn’t matter how much snow we get. We had 27 inches in 24 hours once and roads were closed, but they were still moving trailers. So, our people kept their properties running."

On the company’s end, it means continually investing in the right equipment so that the job can get done, no excuses. After last season, the company’s fleet of heavy equipment (48 units in all) was starting to age, so emi replaced 80% of this equipment over the summer. "Our oldest piece of heavy equipment will now only be three years old," Marks says.

At the same time, it nearly doubled its fleet of hydraulic wing plows by purchasing 17 new units. "And we connect these plows with the Storm Vision system that measures and maximizes our efficiency. So now we can produce and scrape cleaner and faster," he notes.

While these purchases are a major financial investment, they’re critical to being able to serve clients the way the company promises. And Marks shares news about these investments with clients and prospects, so that they see the investment emi is making to be prepared to service their sites.

Sometimes walking the walk and staying true to the company’s promises and identity also means having hard discussions with clients. "We fired a client last year because they wanted to decline service before the first real snowstorm in three years, and we had dedicated equipment and dedicated personnel to their site," Marks says. "There’s no way I could look at our team, who put in all this effort to be ready to handle this huge warehouse, and then let this happen. I told them, ‘This client doesn’t respect what we do, and therefore they’re not the right client for us.’ It was a difficult decision to make. I didn’t want to give up that revenue but as a leader of the company, I set very high expectations for everyone in the company. And then how can I talk the talk and then not walk the walk?"

Flying the flag

 

Look up in the emi landscape shop and you’ll see a variety of flags hanging, representing the nationalities of the company’s crew members. emi landscape owner Bob Marks admits he was surprised by the overwhelmingly positive reaction to this small gesture. "I guess I shouldn’t have been, but people really loved it. A lot of our team members are first generation in the US, and sometimes it’s easy to forget that. We all spend a lot of time at work, and they’re far away from their home, so this is just a way to make it feel a little bit more like home."

Wall of fame celebrates team achievements

  

Investing in continuing education has helped emi landscape build a more knowledgeable team to better serve its clients. Most notably, this includes SIMA’s ASM (Advanced Snow Manager) and CSP (Certified Snow Professional) designations. "I think the certifications are a big deal," says owner Bob Marks, CSP, ASM. "We’re up to 25 or 30 employee certifications. I think this legitimizes people’s careers."

The company shows off these credentials at its headquarters. "Here’s this certification that not many people have, and we’re willing to invest and we pay for them to earn it," says Marks. "We choose seven or eight people a year who we think have earned the opportunity."

While the goal was originally to improve the teams’ skills and performance, Marks says that a side benefit has been reduced turnover. "I think we were up to 20 people who had the ASM designation before we lost a single ASM-certified employee."

Patrick White has covered the landscape and snow and ice management industries for over 25 years. Contact him at pwhite@meadowridgemedia.com.