Passion for Details

Jay Townsend combines his talent for business with a love of the outdoors.

By Jenny Agee-Aldrich

In his mid-twenties, Jay Townsend went from crunching numbers as an accountant to digging in the dirt and creating his own landscaping company. It wasn’t a huge transition, according to Townsend.

Jay Townsend developed his business savvy in an office and his green thumb in the field.

“Part of being successful in the accounting profession is seeing the details and understanding their value,” he says. “This attention to detail carries over into the landscaping business where the details remain important, from producing finely tuned projects to having strong communications with clients, to generating accurate job-work papers, to invoicing and, finally, to profitability.”

He has parlayed his business sense and love of the outdoors into a thriving business. Today, J.W. Townsend, Inc., based in Charlottesville, Virginia, grosses $3.5 million annually, employs more than 50 people and is a steward of the community. About 60 percent of their work is installation and 40 percent is fine gardening and landscape maintenance.

Early Years

Unlike many of his professional peers, Townsend didn’t start out in the landscaping business as a teenager mowing lawns. But fishing, hunting and working on a farm taught him to enjoy the outdoors and working with his hands.

He studied accounting at Virginia Tech “because it would lead to a stable, professional job,” and worked for a CPA firm for four years. But the work wasn’t satisfying. He craved independence and wanted to be outdoors. Townsend decided the landscape industry fit the bill, but he knew he needed to map out a plan.

Key to the success of J.W. Townsend, Inc. has been the ability to retain many of its early clients during its 28 years in business.

So, he went back to his college stomping ground in Blacksburg and spoke to two professors in the horticulture program, asking if he should return to get another degree. “They did not recommend I return to school; on the contrary, they recommended I get field experience by going to work for a contractor or grower,” he says.

“I took a job with a local nursery in Charlottesville as a laborer. I was this 25-year-old, chubby accountant,” he says with a laugh. He stayed there for a year, learning the industry, and then went on to start J.W. Townsend, Inc. with one person and one truck.

“I didn’t have questions on the business side of things. But I needed to learn the horticulture. I took night classes and also learned the hard way, by making mistakes,” he says.

More than half of the company’s work is installation projects such as this water feature.

In particular, he learned valuable lessons from two early missteps. If he had the opportunity to do it all over again, first, Townsend says he would recognize the value of good people earlier and improve his recruiting and selection processes. “At that time, I wasn’t looking for managers. I was looking for employees,” he says.

Second, he says he would buy equipment sooner to take some of the physical pressure off of his employees. He knows first-hand about the physical strain of the business. In 1990, he injured his back on a job. “It forced me into the office, where I am probably most valuable anyway,” he says.