Episode 77: Lance Ingram and Tim Lovett- Co-Founders of Waterloo Turf

In this episode of the Franchise QB Podcast, host Mike Halpern speaks with Lance Ingram and Tim Lovett, founders of Waterloo Turf, about their journey into the artificial turf business and the franchising model they have developed. 

They discuss the core values that drive their company, the growth potential of the artificial turf industry, and the support systems in place for franchise owners. The conversation highlights the importance of customer service, profitability, and effective marketing strategies for franchise success.

Takeaways

-Waterloo Turf focuses on synthetic grass installation and maintenance.
-The company aims to give customers more time for leisure activities.
-Core values include living every day like it's Saturday
-Franchise owners are referred to as team captains to emphasize leadership.
-The artificial turf industry is rapidly growing, projected to exceed $100 billion by 2028.
-Waterloo Turf offers a tiered royalty system to support franchisee profitability.
-Franchisees receive comprehensive support from an experienced team.
-Marketing strategies include personalized microsites and social media management.
-The average job size is around 1,000 square feet with a ticket size of $10,000.
-Franchise owners can operate with minimal employees, utilizing subcontractors for installations.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction 
01:11 Founders' Journey into the Turf Business
06:03 Core Values and Company Culture
10:03 Understanding the Artificial Turf Industry
15:10 Franchise Model and Operations
20:00 Franchisee Support and Profitability
25:10 Marketing Strategies for Franchise Owners
27:51 Conclusion

https://waterlooturf.com/own-a-franchise/

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Contact me and my team with any questions along the way. www.calendly.com/franchiseguy
Mike Halpern, CAFC
mike@franchiseqb.com

Transcript

0:00

This is the Franchise QB Podcast, where we empower entrepreneurs to win big in franchising. We huddle up weekly to educate our audience about the most successful small business model ever created. Franchising! Welcome to the Franchise QB podcast. I'm your host, Mike Halpern, a 20-year industry veteran and entrepreneur. My mission is for listeners to achieve their American dreams of creating wealth and independence through franchise ownership. Every week we speak with franchisees, franchisors or vendors that support the industry. Thank you for joining us and let's get started. Joining us in the huddle today are Lance Ingram, founder and co-owner and Tim Lovett, CEO and co-owner of Waterloo Turf. Welcome to the show, guys. Thanks, Mike. Good to be here. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate you having us. Absolutely. Yeah, great to have you guys on the show. So I discovered Waterloo Turf when multi-unit, multi-branded franchise expert, Brian Beers, decided to invest in your franchise system. He also signed a multi-territory franchise agreement. to bring Waterloo Turf to the Houston, Texas market, which is a huge market. That's exciting news. And I know he's gonna be launching in a couple weeks here in May, which is also exciting. So let's begin with your backgrounds. Lance, let's start with you. How did you get into the turf business? Yeah, it's kind of long story, so I'll try to keep it short-ish. So I started Waterloo Turf in 2021. And previous to that, in 2016, I'd also helped start a separate turf company. upon graduating college. So graduated in 2016 from Baylor. I'm from Austin. Didn't have a job after graduating, moved home and eventually helped start a separate turf company, helped run that for a few years. And then I got lured into the corporate world. So I kind of saw all my buddies living the corporate life, traveling, doing conferences, all that stuff I thought was cool. And so I left my previous turf role and went to the medical device space for about two years and I quickly realized that it's a lot more fun to be your own boss. And so I left the medical device job, started up Waterloo the same month, me and my wife got married and since then I've just kind of been running it. And so I ran it solo for a few years and then in the beginning of 2024 we launched out in San Antonio. about an hour or so outside of Austin. And then mid 2024 is when Tim and I actually met and started the conversation for, you know, what we could grow this into and eventually has now become Waterloo Tour franchising. It's awesome Lance, appreciate that context. And Tim, let's jump into your background. So you guys met and you have a franchising background. Tell us about how you guys connected. Yeah, Lance and I have been friends in Austin for a little bit. So we met through church originally and Lance's wife and my wife, we were just friends for a while. And after a couple of months of just hanging out together, Lance and I, we were on a double date with our wives and we were at a pub and we actually started talking to each other about what we did for work. It's the first time we've ever talked about it. Lance told me that he owned an artificial turf company and it kind of perked my ears up because my background has been more on the franchising side. I was an operations executive at a home services franchise platform. and I had been looking for a turf brand, a franchise for about a year at that point. I started asking him a bunch about his business and we started talking about franchising a little bit at that pub and just got more interested in putting a partnership together and then started working that way in coming weeks. Yeah, it's kind of funny. It's kind of funny because Tim, before he knew what I did, he wasn't responding to my text messages. And then when he found out that I'm in turf and he was interested, you know, a minute would go by and I'd get a response from him. So. You just played a hard to get. Yeah, Lance, I saved your number in my phone right after that up as it sounded. It was just a 512 number. That's awesome. Very cool. So for anyone that's listening that's just unfamiliar with what artificial turf is, tell us a little bit about the concept. Yeah, so artificial turf, as far as what Waterloo Turf does is we mainly focus on synthetic grass installation, so premium synthetic grass. And we've also recently added a maintenance program called the Fresh and Clean program as well. As far as the install side goes, essentially what we do is we go into these backyards or commercial clients and completely renovate their project space or remove what they have, whether it's gravel, sod, dirt, nothing. And then we go in and install Waterloo Turf. And our mission statement is to get your Saturdays back. And so we really, we're trying to sell more of the lifestyle of what your life could be like after you have turf installed. That's really cool. And Tim, I've heard you say you become a better person once you get turf. I like that. So what do you mean by that? So my wife and I, we just moved to a different house about two weeks ago. And so the first thing we did was we got turf installed. So I'm living this firsthand right now. When you get turf installed, you actually put down your phone and you get off of Netflix and you go. play soccer with your kids outside. You invite your friends over for a barbecue instead of just going to the latest restaurant in town. And one of the things Lance and I have seen is that a lot of times guys' wives like them a little bit more because instead of playing six hours of golf on the weekend, they just put around in the backyard for 30 minutes. So when you are able to kind of extend your house into your backyard through artificial turf, it just opens up a whole new realm of possibilities for you and your family and your friends. Yeah, no, I love that whole plays into the get your Saturdays back and you more time with family and friends makes total sense. So let's talk about the core values. You guys have three core values for your business. I'd love to hear what they are and kind of what they mean for you. Yep. So the first value is to live every day like it's Saturday. And so for us, that doesn't mean you don't work seven days out of the week. But when we show up at a house to give somebody an estimate for artificial turf. You know, we're selling get your Saturdays back. So we want the customer to pick up on that. We want them to feel our energy and we want to live that way. Like it's Saturday every day out of the week because we love what we're doing and we love being in the artificial turf industry. The second value is having a my pleasure mindset. so, you know, Lance and I, we really both look up to Chick-fil-A when it comes to customer service and you might be doing artificial turf, but really if you think about what we're doing, we're a customer service company. So we want to make sure that everybody who goes on site. into a customer's house and a customer space really views themselves with a servant mindset and having that my pleasure mentality when they're on site with a customer. And then lastly is have quality relationships and do quality work. I mean, this is day one Waterloo stuff. Lance has built the reputation of this brand off of quality installations and something that we want every franchise owner to take to heart when they're going and doing jobs for customers in their local market. Yeah, that's cool. And I know that you refer to your franchise owners as team captains, and that's unique to your concept. What's the logic behind that? Yeah, I we're looking for go-getters. We're looking for leaders that are gonna take point on the install team and then also in the bidding team and then just running their business. So we offer a discount to ex-collegiate athletes, ex-military, because we just believe in those disciplined personalities and how success usually follows them. That's really cool. So let's talk about like the service package, because when you think about like installing turf, you just think about just rolling turf. But I know there's a lot more to it. So overall, if you're like someone that's kind of considering Waterloo turf as an investment, what services do you guys provide to the end consumer? So we're going to provide them obviously with the turnkey install, but we keep our scope of work pretty focused with keeping the main thing, the main thing, which is installing turf. So we'll do. you know, some light hardscaping in addition, whether it's gravel work for an area that really doesn't get much use and maybe they're trying to save a buck. So we'll do gravel instead of turf. We'll do some paver work as well because those are just kind of a, it's a very in design right now. People like the look of them. You can also place grills or different things on top of them as well. So high foot traffic area, that's a solid option as well. In addition to now our fresh and clean program. So. We all believe that turf is maintenance free. We believe it's low maintenance. You can get, you know, good 10 to 15 years out of your turf without maintenance, but you're going to get 15 plus years of a turf that's performing well and looking good aesthetically if you do have it maintenance every so often. So that changes depending on the foot traffic and the wear and tear of the project space. But it is something that we believe is important. And now that's obviously a reason why we offer it. It makes sense. mean, if you take care of anything and you maintain it, it's going to last longer. So the fact that you have this kind of recurring revenue built in where you can come out and refresh it for the customer, that's kind of a big deal because they don't want to have to go find someone else to do that. Like they have the relationship with you. They wrote the big check to have the install done. Like they want you to come out and kind of maintain it. So that's pretty cool for franchise owners. like the industry at large, how big is the artificial turf industry? Because I don't think a lot of people know what it looks like. It's huge. It's a ginormous industry and I think most people are surprised to hear how big it is and how fast it's growing. I've seen estimates by 2028 that globally the artificial turf industry will be worth over$100 billion. That's a big industry. growth rates anywhere from 6 % to 12 % plus. uh It's tough to find anybody agreeing on the size or how quickly it's scaling, but I think what you will find is that everybody's agreeing that it's growing extremely fast. ah When you dig into it a little bit more, you'll see that there's a lot of tailwinds pushing the industry forward. One of those is consumer preferences. know, people don't want to spend time in their yards on Saturdays mowing. They'd rather be out with their friends or with their family making memories. And the other thing that you'll see is a lot of water conservation efforts being done on the legislation side to push turf forward. So in areas where water conservation is of concern, turf is the legislative answer to conserve water in a lot of areas. Yeah, that's interesting. You don't really think about the environmental impact, but it sounds like you don't have to water it. You don't have to put down chemicals. Like it's kind of a really interesting alternative to having grass. clearly this is going to play well in warm climates like the Sunbelt geographically. Like I know you guys are in Austin, San Antonio, Houston. Where are you guys targeting for your kind of initial phase of franchise growth? Yeah, so. When I was looking to franchise company in turf or brand in turf, you know, I did quite a bit of diligence in turf and surprisingly, or surprising to me at the time, the largest turf companies that I came across were located in both the Midwest and the Northeast. So turf is not just something that plays across the Southeast or the Southwest. This is a national and this is a global thing that's being driven by consumer preferences and water conservation all over. And so. For this year, we're really targeting the Sunbelt for our franchise expansion. And part of the reason we're targeting the Sunbelt primarily is because it's a true copy paste model of Austin. It's many of the same vendors, many of the same drivers, much of the same residential to commercial mix. Eventually we will move into the Midwest and the Northeast. It's a slightly more B2B business than what you'll find in the Sunbelt. for us, when we say Sunbelt, we mean California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona. and stretch that all the way across to the Carolinas down through Florida. That's a lot of geography. Yeah, I'm curious about the job size because it feels like a high ticket business. I like that you have that coupled with the recurring revenue of the maintenance. Can you touch on the job size average and the gross margins? Yeah, mean, our average job, square footage wise, is around 1,000 square feet. Our average ticket size is around $10,000 and our aim point as far as gross margin goes is around 40 % gross property. Yeah, really good numbers. So how hard is this to do? Like how complicated are the operations? Because clearly like when you get into franchising, it's no longer about how well can you run your business. It's how you can teach other people to run it like you have. So how tough is it to be a Waterloo turf owner? Yeah, I it's definitely, I wouldn't say it's the hardest thing in the world because I'm doing it. So I think that that'll help. But, ah you know, there's definitely systems in place for a reason. And so we want to make it as efficient and easy to run your business as possible. So for example, the manager I hired in San Antonio in our turf pro, our sales manager here in Austin. were both fly fishing guides prior to working for Waterloo Turf. So no turf experience, didn't come from the turf space at all, and they're both crushing it, doing really, really well. So they picked it up quickly, and I've just kind of been running on their own after about three months of training. So it's something really, we believe, if you're a grinder, you're someone that has a business mindset, willing to go. get out there and build a business, like this is something that you can definitely manage. So let's, yeah, go ahead, Tim. Yeah. I'd say one thing, Mike, on that is like, we really believe that stupid, simple scales. And so that's how we've set up this business. And if you start to get on the turf site, which we love having franchise owners come out to Austin and kind of join us on the turf site, it clears up a lot because what we're doing is, you know, we're shoveling dirt around and then we're laying carpet on the top. And so this is, it's a simple business. We don't want to say that it's easy because it's not easy. is a lot of hard work, but there's not a lot of complexity to manage on the turf site. Yeah, I appreciate that Tim. so like kind of transitioning into what the crew looks like when you launch, how many employees does a new franchise owner need? You mentioned the turf pro. I'm assuming that if they're an owner operator, they're the turf pro. If they're more semi-absentee or semi-involved, they're hiring for that role. What does it look like when you launch in both scenarios? We have three different ownership models through Waterloo Turf, and we have franchisees that are launching across all three. So number one would be the owner operator model. This requires no employees. All of our installers are subcontracted across all three models. So the owner operator is running the estimates, the sales, the project management, really the whole business. We also offer a model called the owner manager model. And so we do have a couple of franchisees launching in this model. You are the owner operator, but you're also hiring a turf pro or a field sales rep to do the same thing alongside of you. So for somebody that wants to be working in the business actively, but also wants to run a little bit of a bigger play and maybe a faster play as well, we allow that model to scale a little bit quicker. And then lastly, we do what we call a GM model. typically for the GM model, we're looking for somebody that has experience in business ownership, probably is either a full-time business owner already or a full-time investor already. and view Waterloo Turf as another asset to provide into their own portfolio. They'll hire a general manager from day one. That general manager will really act as the owner operator, what boots on the ground, going around, being a field captain, driving around in the truck, and building the business from there. Awesome. Yeah, it's kind cool that you have examples of owners that are doing all three different types so that you can kind of have other people validate with them. So that's pretty meaningful. So let's talk about your team. Who have you guys kind of surrounded yourselves with to support the franchise owners? What can an owner expect from Home Office to kind of get them off the ground? Yeah, so when we decided to launch the franchising side, one of the things that Lance and I decided on was to go and raise capital. And so we wanted to forward invest in our support infrastructure versus catch up as we grew on the franchising side. So just for more investors. In Waterloo Turf, we've got about 72 years of combined franchise experience across 13 different brands. They've been a great resource for us just as far as putting this thing together and really being strategic advisors for Lance and I. As far as our team that's actively working, we have our own in-house marketing team. We have our own in-house operations team. Our operations team has both franchise experience as well as turf experience, so you get the best of both worlds. You have some help on the franchising side as far as learning how to grow your business into a multi-unit operation. but we also have turf coaches on our team. So if you hit a sprinkler head, you can FaceTime them and they can help you cap it if you need some help, if you're not the most handy person in the world. And so we want to offer a comprehensive support from the time somebody is launching their business through their time as they grow their business into a big turf company. That's awesome. One thing I've heard that kind of stood out for me is that I know that franchise owner profitability is your top priority as a franchisor. That's not said out loud a lot, so why did you declare that and why is that so important to you guys? Yeah, I mean, can start by answering this and Tim can jump in after, but you know, when I was trying to figure out which direction I wanted to take Waterloo Turf in the of the expansion I was wanting to do. And so I was trying to figure out if I wanted to go more corporately like I had done with San Antonio originally, or if I wanted to explore the franchising route. And I didn't really know too much about franchising. So it really was kind of like a God or a day in situation where. Timmy and I happened to meet each other and become friends first and then move into this conversation of franchising. But when we first initially started talking, one of the big things that we talked about and specifically that I was focused on was like, I'm interested in this. I'm interested going down this path of franchising, but the main driver being that I want to give this lifestyle, this financial freedom, this lifestyle freedom that I've kind of helped build here in Austin and offer it to other people. If we're going to do this thing, we need to make sure that that's the focus and the driving force, kind of like our North Star, as we continue to build this thing out. So for me, that was the the big reason of honestly, why I ended up moving towards franchising, because I believe this is a faster vehicle to get this type of lifestyle to more people than it was to do it more corporately em expanding in that way. that's, that's why we did it, in my opinion, from that perspective. But Timmy, I know you probably have something to say as well. Yeah, I think it's just really important for us. was, you know, I would say from one of the first conversations Lance and I had was just something we actively talked about a lot of ideas that we had that we felt like we could bring into the space that were maybe a little bit different or, you know, somebody hadn't tried before. So a few things that we're doing to not just talk about it, but to actually be about it is we've made our territories large. So oftentimes we're about twice as large as other home services franchises on our territory size. Our royalties are tiered. So as you grow more in revenue, we tear down our royalties. So as a franchise owner does better, they will do better. And then lastly, we also put a franchisee on our board because we want that voice at the most strategic level of our company. So there's a variety of other things and how we think about it, but I think it just comes down to the belief that in franchising, you can only be as successful as your owners are. for us, we want to grow with the right people and The right people are team captains that want to build a big business. And so if we can help them and be about franchise owner profitability, we know that they'll help build a big brand that we want to make as well. Yeah. You guys are walking the walk, not just talking the talk. mean, sliding scale royalties, huge territories, like having franchisees on your board from like day one, which is crazy. And also giving discounts to people like veterans and NCAA athletes that kind of fit your culture. you're demonstrating from the outset that that's kind of your mentality and the mindset. So that's really cool. uh So let's talk about getting into the deal. Like what does item seven look like? How much will it cost to open a Waterloo turf territory? Yep. So our Item 7 is $106 to $151K. Okay. Our franchise agreement is actually pretty dynamic in a lot of ways. So one of those being a tiered royalty system, but the other thing that's dynamic is our Fresh and Clean program, so the Turf Maintenance program. So the Turf Maintenance program does require a van and a small investment in equipment, so that is baked into the item seven, but we actually allow and we even suggest that you launch this not from the outset of your business, but you launch it later on. you know, we expect that when people go and do their own modeling for their startup costs that, you know, they'll find themselves on the latter end of that scale. And Lance touched earlier on kind of gross margins, but can you share any additional item 19 financial data with us? Yep. So Lance's business combined last year between Austin and San Antonio was a little bit north of $2 million top line and did a little bit over 15% net, both with two full-time employees. So, you know, I think for owner operators, it's an interesting opportunity to look through our Item 19. We've got our full P&Ls in there so you can kind of cruise through it and be able to do any type of modeling that somebody wants and see if it's a good fit for you. Lance, you're crushing it, man. I mean, that's huge volume. And then like the fact that they're $10,000 jobs is kind of cool. You don't need a thousand clients to make this model work, right? It's like you build relationships with people. I would imagine this is like, you know, the front yard, the backyard. It's like a billboard. know, someone sees that and they want it. You know, it's like your neighbor does. You're like, wait a second. I want putting green in my backyard. I want to get my Saturdays back. Like, is that what you see in the field? You see like people in the community see it. And then all of a sudden you have, you know, other people lined up to kind of get a quote. Yeah, absolutely. The example I use all the time is, you know, turf is different than other home service goods. And the respect that say you've got new gutters put in. Mike, you're not gonna have, if your friends and family come over, they're probably not gonna see your new gutters and be like, dude, Mike, your gutters look so good, man. ah But with turf, it's gonna get noticed every single time. So it's a double edged sword for sure, where obviously it'll get noticed for the good reasons, it'll get noticed for the bad reasons based upon your installation and the quality of it. But assuming you're doing high quality work and you've got those high quality relationships with your clients, One job, we think about one job will spiderweb off into ideally 10 plus jobs as more friends and family get exposed to that yard. So yeah, it's something that word of mouth just really will carry your business in the positive direction or the negative direction based upon how you're running your business and performing. And then to add to the kind of organic grassroots stuff, like oh how do new franchise owners get appointments on the calendar. Can you touch a little bit on kind of the marketing and lead gen that you guys help owners with? know ultimately it's going to be their responsibility to kind of get in the community, build relationships, show up, do good work, kind of be a good steward of the brand. But like when they're launching, how are you guys helping them out? Yeah, so quite a few ways that we want to help owners launch. know. So we invest heavily into our brand. We believe that it's a big differentiator. for us, ah there's not another national turf brand out there right now. So we're really the first ones doing this. It's a great opportunity for somebody to be the first mover under a national brand in their local market. And so each franchisee gets their own true microsite. We've really set it up in a way uh that's cost us a lot of money, but it's also pretty operationally difficult to do. We put a lot of effort into our sites so that it's a true microsite and it will help our franchise owners to not. compete against the national site, to assume, let's say you're getting five star reviews and doing good work, you'll be able to rank towards the top of Google if you continue to invest in SEO. We also have our own in-house content team. So each franchisee will have their own local meta, Instagram and Facebook pages. We will post our creative content to their social media. And so one of the things we do is we post to our national site four times a month. We test for the best content and then we post it to the franchisees page the following month with the content that's performed the best. We also have multiple approved digital marketing agencies on our end so that franchise owners have redundancy and who can run their paid ads for them. Those digital marketing agencies will use our creative content so that they can get paid leads through whether it's Google search, LSAs or Meta as well. That's awesome. I see on Lance's hat, I love the kind of branding, the vibe, and there's an armadillo there. Is there any significance behind that armadillo? ah I mean, I could tell you the real story, I guess. I could tell you the fake one and just say it. Texas armadillo. mean, it's good. You can cut it if it's not, but I'll tell you anyways. oh I guess that's why we're recording. can edit. So the way the armadillo came about is... Back when I was in medical device sales, I would have to go out to Amarillo, or Abilene, I mean, all the time. And so there's a golf shop out there I would used to visit, and they had a really cool Armadillo logo. It was a discount golf shop. And so I got a head cover from my buddy for his birthday, and then on my bachelor party, he got that Armadillo. It's like a swinging Armadillo, like golfing. It's really cool. That's cool. uh My wife doesn't think so, but you'll find out why at the of this. anyways, he got it tattooed on his leg during my bachelor party. And I told him, when you get married, I'll do the same on yours. And I thought it would be a lot further down the road than it was. It ended up being a year later. So I ended up getting the same tattoo on my leg. And that's the only ink I have. But that was right before I started creating Waterloo Turf. And so I just loved the idea of having Kind of like a mascot for the brand more than just like, you know, what a lot of turf companies might have that's turf related, something a little bit more fun. So that's kind of how the Armadillo came about. And I just, my brother had a buddy that did some graphic design work for him and just kind of sent over an idea of what I had thought. And he kicked this back and it's been, it's been a lot of fun happening. I know it's a really cool story and. To me it shows that you're a man of integrity, you're a man of your word. You got the ink, man, you did it. Not a lot of people would hold up that end of the bargain, but I think that speaks to your credibility. I appreciate you sharing that with us. Anything else you guys want to add to the mix before we wrap up today? No, appreciate you having us on, Mike. It's been fun. it's been really great. Yeah, and I hear your story and look forward to working with you guys. And if anyone listening wants to connect with Tim and Lance to learn more about becoming a franchise owner with Waterloo Turf, contact me at FranchiseQB.com or on X @QBFranchise QB. I'll get you guys connected. Thank you so much, Tim and Lance, for taking the time to get in the huddle to discuss Waterloo Turf with us today. Thanks, Mike. uh Thank you for listening to the Franchise QB podcast where you're at the helm of your future as a franchise owner. If you enjoyed the content, please rate the show and recommend it to anyone that might be interested in franchising. Make sure to visit franchiseqb.com to subscribe to my newsletter and for an actionable playbook to go from walk-on to legend in your new business. Follow us on Twitter @QBFranchiseQB and join us every week for a new episode. See you next time. franchiseqb.com. take the next step of your journey towards wealth, independence, and franchise ownership. And remember, when working for the man gets old, you must do something bold. Thank you for listening.