maintain our personal relationship rather than having it be a father and son business relationship so. succession is not just a ceo thing. it s absolutely critical for a company to have the mentorship of the people that have done the job before and then also the youth for the next generation. thank you everyone for joining us in 2015. it has been a great year. i know that i ve been so inspired by the entrepreneurs and small business people that i ve met over the past year and i hope that we ve been able to tell their stories in ways that have inspired you as well. we also have a treasure-trove of tips and advice from these people who are in the trenches and so i want to tell you all as you get ready for 2016, head over to our web site where we posted all of the segments from the yearment it s open forforu m openforum.com/your business. follow us on twitter@msnbcyourbiz and on facebook and instagram too. when we return in january we kick off the new year with a
right away. i ve come to rely on the technology that s available now. and yes, it happened quickly. i wanted it to get done. she found mary s company, rh drywall through home adviser, a portal to find service professionals with a good track record. i thought it was a great way to get some reputable company to come in and do a job without me having to worry if they are going to show up. on the flip side of this is mary hugman. she s a small business owner looking for a reliable customer that was ready to start a project right away. cheryl, the homeowner, used the service for free. mary, the business owner, pays for the new customer lead from home adviser. so consumers connect quickly with a contractor to get the work done. what would have taken maybe a couple days and a bunch of calls now takes a couple of minutes and mouse clicks. mary relies on the service not only for the lead but more
model that was on the shelf that you could pull off the shelf and operate during the fall. but the client wants to engage earlier. as a result, two things happened. arnie has a sales rep dedicated solely to the franchise and he usually has to hire more help in the fall. even though the number of crews no longer fluctuates. we use the employees that are on the landscaping year-round and we ll work them into the christmas part of the business. and we ll actually use the other help that will come along to help us in the fall cleanup and closing up the landscaping side. christmas decor may have taken on a more prominent role in arnie s business, but he says the original landscaping name gets top billing. we are 15, 16 years later with the christmas decor brand. a lot of people recognize our company by associating the brand with the logo on all of our vehicles and trailers they now understand that they are working with a quality company. brandon says that s the way
offers to sell the company when i joined it. and i did not want to be the one who presided over the demise of a family business with the history we have. if we had not reinthe vested we probably would have gone belly up. i was handed a process for making apple juice the old-fashioned way. on a company that is over 100 years old you get used to doing things the same way. we like to say we ve been doing it this way since 1868 and you can get stuck in a rut and not take advantage of improvements that can improve the quality of your product and reduce costs for the consumer. we used to store our juice in open redwood tanks and rubber hoses all over. and part of the system that i brought in in 1985 was dairy standard stainless steel tanks and cold filtration methods that actually improved our process, still doing it the same way that
christmas decor was started in 1986 in hopes of making the decision to run year-round easier for seasonal business owners. while anyone cannon an owner operations are the best zblixt they have trucks, trailers, most of the equipment they need, they have employees used to working outdoors. from the day it began franchising in 1996 the brand has grown. we have 270 owners and cover 375 markets in the u.s. and canada. one of the reasons arnie stayed with the company is the amount of support he gets from the home office in texas. if you have an issue, whether it be a question from a client, a product that they may request or thing likes that, you re able to pick up the phone, reach out to christmas decor and it s taken care of. owners are required to take part in seminars about safety and it makes an early investment like lights to make sure the owners have access to the supplies they need.