Jack Lutzel skipped over residential and jumped right into commercial snow services. Okay, maybe that’s a bit of hyperbole, but as a junior high school student he started clearing the walkways and storefronts at a small strip mall that his aunt owned across the street from his house. That experience and exposure got him more business — the non-paying kind — from his close-knit family who lived on the same street in the coastal beach community of Westerly, RI.
“Of course, I had to do my mom’s house too, because if I didn’t…” Lutzel laughs. “Then there was my great uncle, who was next door. And my cousin was next to us on the other side.” Soon, he was the designated family lawn mower, and a career was born. “As soon as the seasonal people knew there was a lawn kid in town, it just took off. I had the whole block at one point,” he recalls.
In 2012, when he was in high school, Lutzel founded Clean Cut Landscaping, and purchased a riding mower to help him mow lawns more efficiently. He recruited his younger brother and various friends to help him on his route. “From there, it just grew and grew and grew,” he explains.
His parents were skeptical that this work would turn into a profession and insisted he go to college. “I went to one semester of community college and I hated it,” Lutzel explains. Instead, he jumped into the green and white industries for real. “I knew I could make a living. My plan was to work down at the beach houses, where people put a lot of money into their landscapes, and run this big high-end residential landscaping business. Snow was never really going to be a huge part of the business.”
Lutzel has indeed made a living, but his path has been much different than he imagined. Snow, it turns out, changed everything.
In winter 2013, Lutzel’s grandmother loaned him the money to buy a plow to try to make extra money. “It was brand new, and I was all excited,” he recalls. He admits that he didn’t really know anything about running a plow, which wouldn’t have been such a problem if he had a chance to start learning slowly. But Mother Nature had other plans.
Superstorm Nemo struck New England in February, where blizzard conditions piled up nearly three feet of snow in places along the Rhode Island coast.
Lutzel scrambled into action. “My stepdad actually went out with me and taught me how to plow. I just literally learned through trial by fire,” he says. “I had a couple small parking lots and a bunch of driveways, and it just kept snowing.”
After the blizzard ended, the cleanup continued for another week. “We were renting Kubota tractors from Home Depot to haul snow out of people’s yards and out of these parking lots. It was just me and my one employee at the time, who still works for me today,” says Lutzel, who remembers the wad of cash he accumulated during that storm — easily enough to pay off the loan on the new plow. But more important, he says, “was that I learned a lot about snow during that one storm.”
The rest of that winter featured a series of smaller snow events that gave him a chance to learn even more. “It wasn’t a lot of snow, but I could see, there’s money in this.”
After that first chaotic season, Lutzel started taking on more driveways and random small commercial properties, but admits “I still really had no idea what I was doing.” He would charge $50 to plow a driveway or $1,000 a season for a commercial account and think he was doing great (“I thought I was a rock star!”), only to realize later that the price was far too low. And when people started asking about salting, he said “yes” first and figured it out later.
“I ordered a ton of salt and had it dumped in my back yard, and then would just shovel it into my truck,” Lutzel recalls. “Then I would get on a site and use a little fertilizer spreader to apply it. I’m sure people used to laugh when they would see that; I know I laugh when I remember those days.”
By 2016, Lutzel says, “I was beginning to think there was more to this industry, and I decided to venture out a little bit.” He attended his first industry conference. “Initially I was attracted by all the equipment on display, wondering what cool thing I could buy that would help me make more money. But then I started listening to the speakers; these were guys who owned their own companies, and they talked about how they got started, and how they had grown. And it just made me realize that there was much more going on in snow than I could see in my small town.”
While at the event, he met Michael Merrill, owner of North Country Snow and Ice Management, based in Glens Falls, NY. “I was young, and he helped me see that the industry is much bigger than what I thought it was, and that I could have a dream,” says Lutzel. “Afterwards, Michael worked with me as a consultant for a solid year, and he showed me all the opportunities that were out there.”
Merrill also introduced Lutzel to Bob Young, CSP, President/CEO of K.E.Y. Property Services, Inc. in Palmer, MA, who became another influential mentor. “Bob is one of those guys who I could just call up after a bad day to talk about it, and he wouldn’t sugarcoat it; if it was something that was my fault, he’d tell me, and then we’d talk about what to do to fix it. Sometimes you just can’t connect with anybody else on those levels within your own company, so it’s nice to have an outsider looking in. Michael and Bob really made me second guess some of my plans and made me a better person.”
With guidance from these mentors, Lutzel decided to both rethink the business model and rebrand Clean Cut Landscaping to Coastal Companies. The goal wasn’t simply to come up with a new name, but to recalibrate away from residential to focus on the commercial/industrial market. About three years ago, Coastal Companies added facilities service, including concrete, asphalt, signage, and building repairs.
These days, the company has grown far from the confines of the small community where it started. It now covers all of Rhode Island, southeastern Massachusetts, southeastern Connecticut, and clients throughout New England who need help with projects.
Coastal Companies’ entire focus is to make life easier for its clients. Offering a wide range of services provides one-stop-shopping convenience for commercial and industrial property owners. “We’re almost like a property management company,” says Lutzel.
He’s found that this total service approach not only helps attract clients but also helps when it comes to pricing. “If we’re a little more expensive, I can say, ‘this is my value add to you.’ When you’re making their life easier, it makes them not want to say goodbye to you for someone who is just a little cheaper. If they have a problem, they call us. We take care of it.”
“We may have someone who is cutting grass, but we have to pull them off to go help one of the facility guys on a project,” says Lutzel. He notes that while working for Coastal, one employee has attained his commercial operator’s license and hoisting license; been trained on construction equipment; and done painting and carpentry. “These are all lifelong skills,” he says.
When hiring, he looks for people with a can-do attitude. “We hire a lot of people who have experience doing one thing, but we find that they do a lot of other things,” says Lutzel. “Tap into your team and ask them what they have the ability to do, what they want to do, and what they want to learn.”
He’s found that targeting potential employees who have grown up on farms, or attended high school vocational education programs, are great ways to find employees who have both a work ethic and the ability to do many different jobs. And he is fully committed to helping his employees flourish.
A new business advisor recently asked Lutzel what he really wanted to get out of Coastal Companies. Was it status, money or the ability to retire? Lutzel realized that what he really wanted was “to grow a business where people can develop themselves.”
“I feel like we owe it to these people who come in every day and work [hard]for us that they can do better professionally; where they can grow into new roles. And if they come to a point where they supersede their role and they need to move on, that’s awesome. I feel if they are able to grow, then I’ve served a good purpose.”
Coastal Companies thrives with youthful exuberance
The Coastal Companies team leans toward the young side, led by owner Jack Lutzel, 28 — “I think other younger people might just gravitate toward me,” he guesses.
Recently, he’s noticed more younger people taking on key roles in the industry. “On the snow side, I’ve noticed that the older guys are starting to retire, and a lot of new young blood is starting to take over, which is awesome.”
That said, he believes this new generation of leaders must work to improve the snow industry’s appeal to the next generation of employees, especially given the current labor market.
“I tell my staff, when we interview somebody, they’re not pitching themselves to us, we need to be selling to them why they should want to come work for us.” Part of Coastal’s pitch is a 4-day, 10-hour work week; new, well-maintained and safe equipment; and paid training.
The company’s culture embraces technology and a youthful energy that has helped the company grow and retain team members.
For example, Client Relations Specialist Meghan Geer has the kind of can-do attitude that pervades the company.
“She and I were friends in high school. About five years ago she came in during a big snowstorm and said she wanted to shovel. I thought she was joking, because she had been working as a dental assistant. But she said she wanted to do it, and she whipped that crew into shape,” he says. Since then, she’s learned the industry, how to operate equipment, and rocks sales. “She’s always reaching out to people; and some of those contacts take literally years before you sign your first job, but that’s what she does.”
On the team side, Marketing, Recruitment and Retention Director Jilian Geer handles the company’s social media, coordinates hiring, and focuses on keeping the company’s employees in the fold. “We reach out, talk to them, ask them, ‘What can we do better?’ ” Lutzel says. “It’s important to celebrate their birthdays and ‘work-aversaries’. That small stuff is really important.”
Lutzel also notes the industry has turned toward technology more than ever, and Coastal is no exception. Meghan and Jilian are both “tech whizzes,” he says, which is great since it’s increasingly playing a role in the company’s operations.
He emphasizes the importance of clear and frequent communication, particularly in an industry with unpredictable work hours. For the younger generation, that’s where technology can help.
Coastal Companies utilizes emails and text messages to notify employees of storm updates. “We try to do it 48 hours, 24 hours and 12 hours in advance, just to let them know how things are looking.” Even if snow never develops, keep everyone updated, Lutzel emphasizes: “You can never over communicate. Let them know continuously. They are moving their schedules around for us, so we need to do what we can to accommodate them.”
Patrick White has covered the landscape and snow and ice management industries for a variety of magazines for over 25 years. He is based in Vermont. Contact him at pwhite@meadowridgemedia.com.