 Yale Youngblood |
Chad Harris can see into the future. That’s what he told me, anyway, a few months back as we discussed the state of the industry at the OFA Short Course. Actually, Chad did most of the discussing. That’s kind of the way it works when you talk with the owner of The Garden Gates in Metairie, La., (and the primary source of our cover story on page 10).
You’ve heard the expression, “give him an inch, and he'll take a mile.” Substitute “word” and “discourse,” and you pretty much sum up a conversation with the effusive Harris. But it’s not his gift of gab that led him into this month’s main article as much as a track record that suggests Chad's money and mouth usually end up in the same place—and that place usually leads to other places wealthy people frequent.
Mowing the Competition
For the record, Harris entered The Garden Gates by way of Landscaping Trail. Like many of us, he tended neighborhood lawns as a kid, but he did it with such fervor that, by high school, he had his own landscaping business—along with dozens of contracts with commercial entities in and around the New Orleans area. “I don’t do anything halfway,” he said during our Short Course chat. “I had contracts to take care of all the Wendy’s lawns, all the McDonald’s lawns ... basically, if a New Orleans business had a lawn, I’d try to get the contract to take care of it. I made more money doing lawns than I make now.”
I’m guessing he is kidding about that. I know he wasn’t joking around when he eventually built The Garden Gates in New Orleans – and then rebuilt it after Hurricane Katrina smashed the city to pieces in 2005. The Category Five storm is the costliest hurricane on record in this country. Despite the unprecedented devastation, Harris had his retail operation back up in a year—and doing better business than ever. I would challenge you to name five places in “Nawlins” that can make the same claim, but I’m not sure they exist.
Plan B Earns an ‘A’
What Harris accomplished in the aftermath of the storm was as unconventional as it was unlikely. And it put into action a set of strategies that not only changed the way The Garden Gates “played the game,” but that stand to change the way the game is played altogether.
This month, he shares some of those in the article. I’m going to issue a “Spoiler Alert” and let you know that some of them are located a ZIP code or two from the proverbial box.
I’m also going to predict that when you finish reading the report, you’ll rethink how you do things. And, that, my own 20-20 foresight tells me, is good for anyone doing business these days.
yyoungblood@gie.net
|
