Meet Your Neighbors
Small dream grows to fulltime enterprise for Kim, Tammy BillingtonBy Don Kirkland
To Kim and Tammy Billington, the idea seemed straightforward enough: Buy a few investment homes, fix them up and use whatever profit they made to build a nest egg for their own and their children’s futures.
But eight years and a few unexpected turns of direction later, the couple’s small dream has become a thriving, fulltime business enterprise that dramatically surpasses whatever hopes they might originally have held.
Luckily, it didn’t take the Billingtons long to see their dream come true. Nor did the dream find itself confined to simply buying and renting houses.
“We were sitting and talking one night, and we realized we were paying someone else to maintain all of the properties we had acquired,” said Kim. “So we thought, ‘Why not get into that business and start pursuing it.’ That’s what has taken off like a rocket.”
Today, Billington Enterprises has become a highly visible contender in the Kyrene Corridor’s residential and commercial landscaping arena.
There are now five trucks in the company’s fleet, uniformed crews, a website and an upscale clientele that demands the kind of quality service to which the Billingtons have committed themselves.
In one week alone the company picked up five new accounts and four more over the same weekend. The appeal?
“It’s a labor of love, and our goal is making people very happy about what we do for them.”
What the company does for its clients doesn’t stop with landscaping, however. And it’s all done with an equal measure of enthusiasm.
“Whenever Tammy and I approach anything, we approach it with zeal,” said Kim. After meeting with a prospective client during the day, they often spend evenings at home brainstorming about what changes might most effectively improve the property.
Perhaps they’ll recommend more landscaping, block fences, retaining walls, maybe suggest removing existing gravel, installing fiber optic lighting, replanting trees, redoing the flower beds.
Or, a project may involve something as simple as a one-time cleanup that has been negotiated by a resident who spotted one of the Billingtons’ crews in the neighborhood.
“We have people who recognize one of our trucks and follow it until it stops. And they’ll say, ‘I don’t need anything done very large, just how much would we charge to trim some trees in the front yard.”
The results—coupled with what they say are consistently low fees—seem to have a ripple effect.
“We’re very reasonable in our pricing,” Kim said. “People like our work, and that seems to generate more business.”
Tammy handles client development, Kim oversees the residential operations and their son, Steve, 25, manages the company’s widening base of commercial accounts.
As a longtime semi-conductor executive overseeing enterprises worldwide, Kim says he knew the importance of finding the right people for the job. So, when it came to building competent work crews, Kim didn’t just grab people off the street and put them in uniforms.
“We train the people we hire by putting them to work in our smaller residential properties, where they learn about edging, fertilizing, trimming, preparing flower beds,” said Kim.
Then, when they’re ready, they can be considered for some of the larger, more complex jobs that require a higher level of skill, he said.
As to future dreams, Kim says they’ll continue building on the company’s successes and consider further expansions to the commercial-client base. That, too, Kim says, seems ready to take off like a rocket.