Team JP Landscaping would rather grow slowly and stay in business
Jonathan Idrovo runs the Jacksonville yard company he started with his father, and he picks jobs by how they use his crews’ time, not by how big they look.
Jacksonville, FL
Jonathan Idrovo has turned down projects that would have paid his company well. A large project can tie a crew to one property for six days, sometimes two weeks, with runs for material and fuel burned along the way. He would rather book work that pays well for each day a crew spends on it.
“Time is money,” he says.
Long jobs carry another cost. “Sometimes you got to go back to that project, and that’s more time wasted,” he says.
Idrovo runs Team JP Landscaping in Jacksonville, Florida, the yard and hardscape company he started with his father. That math shapes much of how he runs it, from the way he splits his crews to how far he will drive for a job. It carries over to growth, too. He wants the company to get bigger slowly.
“I’d rather grow slow, but also with some pretty strong roots,” he says.
The business was registered as a Florida limited liability company in 2012, and it is still family-owned and operated. The slogan on the company’s equipment trailer reads “Quality is our Success.”
The crew now numbers about 10 people, and Idrovo splits them in two. One group handles lawn service for the regular customers: cutting the grass, edging and trimming, keeping the flower beds free of weeds and blowing the debris off the yard. The rest handle projects. The company lays paver patios, driveways, walkways and pool decks, and it installs sod, irrigation, plants and low-voltage lighting.
He does not let the two kinds of work run together. “I try to have those two groups separated,” he says. “My lawn crew and my projects crew.”
Customers describe project work built around what was already there. One wrote that Idrovo took the time to listen to ideas and find plants and colors that suited the house. Another praised the way the crew made new materials work with the old ones. One homeowner had an old row of shrubs along a property line torn out and replaced with new viburnum.
The service list runs wider than the name suggests. Team JP does tree work, rents dumpsters from 10 to 40 yards and hauls junk. Customers have hired the crew to take down a carport on short notice, to replace a well pump and to fix a drainage problem. The carport customer wrote that Idrovo kept his word.
About 80 percent of the work is residential. The company works across greater Jacksonville and the beach towns of Atlantic, Neptune and Ponte Vedra, and as far south as St. Augustine Beach. Idrovo rarely takes work more than 100 miles from home, and only when the project is big enough to justify the trip.
Palms are a steady part of the work. One customer praised the crew’s work on 11 palm trees. Another, who hires Team JP mostly for frequent palm trimming, wrote in a Google review that the crew shows up as scheduled, works without stopping and leaves the yard clean of debris. The review ends with a tip for other homeowners: make sure to have Gatorades on hand.
The company replied that it would be sure to have the Gatorades ready.
The same reviewer wrote of working with Team JP for many years and calling no one else. Others describe four years of service, and more than six. One wrote that in three or four years, the crew had not changed.
When the schedule fills, Idrovo does not let projects stretch out. He says he can work extra hours to finish them faster, and he can bring in more people when a project is worth it. One customer wrote that a yard planned as a two-day job was done in one.
He counts return trips as lost time, but he still makes them. A woman who lives out of state wrote that she found the company to do work at her parents’ house. Idrovo came out right away, finished the job that same week and later came back to touch up a few things the family was concerned about.
Growth gets the same patience. He has watched other companies take off and then collapse. “I’ve seen companies that have grown really fast in five years, next thing you know, they go bankrupt,” he says.
“It’s not how fast you can go up,” he says. “It’s how long you can stay in business.”