Denny Deakins with his wife, Dawna, and their son, Sean, run TreeHugger Complete Tree Care as a team and a family, serving the greater Des Moines area of Iowa. They started their business in 2014, became members in 2019 and earned TCIA Accreditation in March 2023.

“We had the grit, grace and dreams of most small-business owners, but we also understood that hard work alone would not be enough to get us where we envisioned ourselves and our company,” explains Dawna.

We needed help building practical procedures and policies if we were going to operate at the level that was possible for us, so the TCIA seal of Accreditation became our goal.”     – Dawna Deakins

When it came to the Accreditation process, Dawna admits that the checklist was very intimidating at first. “I had no idea how to create a business plan, for example. Like many owner-operator companies, we started with an old Asplundh forestry truck and chipper and a handful of chain saws, not a business plan,” she says with a laugh. “We had a vision, it just wasn’t on paper. So, I stared at this blank piece of paper and wondered how I would get this done. Soon, I learned to appreciate the process of Accreditation, which built structure and stability for our business, our crew and our customers.

The most difficult part of the process was answering the question, ‘Where do you want to be in five years?’

Creating a business plan and diving into the nuts and bolts of what we were doing pushed all of us into thinking more about where we were headed.”

Dawna adds that, from an operations aspect, having the structure of Accreditation in place “makes it easier for our business to grow and the crew to do their job. It has the cause and effect of accountability with policies and procedures we, as owners, can depend on and the crew appreciates. From a 401(k) plan to a boot allowance, our crew believes we support and value them.

“We were already operating well, so it (Accreditation) helped us raise the bar for ourselves and become a better company. Now we’re operating at the level we always knew was possible.”

Dawna says she hopes their story of achieving Accreditation might connect with other small-business owners who need support for their dreams.

 

“That’s the kind of community TCIA is. I knew little to nothing about managing a tree service, but I trusted that TCIA was a good place to start. When we raise the bar in arboriculture, no matter how small a business we are, we support arboriculture as the skilled trade it is.”

– Dawna Deakins

 

This member feature article is in the WHY TCIA brochure and from excerpt from an article by Patricia Chaudoin in TCI Magazine.

To see more stories from TCIA members, see our WHY TCIA brochure. 

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