Work Together, Make It Better

“I hooked up with her through some pro bono work the company was doing with a women’s housing project that I knew about through my schooling,” Edsell-Vetter says. “When it was time for me to graduate, she said, ‘Hey, would you like to keep working here? I’m sure you can learn about horticulture and figure out ways to bring that to bear on improving people’s lives.’”

That appeal to what Edsell-Vetter calls “the save-the-world person in me” worked, and today she says a lot of what she refers to as “the squishy soft skills” she learned in divinity school are helping ease the transition from Michaels’ more-traditional management style to being a group of equals running a business together.

Click photo to enlargeOf course, it helps that Michaels has been very deliberate about the transition. Edsell-Vetter says it’s been in the works for at least seven years, and over that time Michaels has spent a lot of time training the key components of the switch, including Edsell-Vetter and Aguilar.

“She’s built a management team that really works well together,” Edsell-Vetter says. “She’s worked with Geovani on working with the designers, which is a huge part of our customer base, and then she’s worked with me on the business pieces, the sales and marketing, budgeting and finance, all those things.”

FAMILY CLIENTELE

Although A Yard & A Half may be a little atypical in its setup, in many ways its customer base is about what you’d expect in a New England urban area: residential, with many smaller lots.

“That’s where hardscape comes in as a really important part of the business,” says Edsell-Vetter. “When you have a small lot you have to make it as functional as possible and get every bit of space out of it that you can. We do a lot of retaining walls and raised patios, anything to help people get usable space.”

At the same time, the company also services some of the Boston area’s more suburban communities, such as Newton, Lexington and Wellesley where the yards are bigger.

Regardless of the locale, Edsell-Vetter says the typical client is someone with a family.

“Many of them are young and growing families, often with two incomes and very busy parents who are looking for help with being able to spend time outside with the family and enjoy their space,” she says. “Often times, the woman is the decision-maker.”

That, in turn, gives A Yard & A Half a leg up on its competition, Edsell-Vetter believes. Often times, those women will talk about how they selected the company because it’s a woman-owned firm or woman-run.