Marshall Badeaux grew up in the tree care industry, the son of a company owner. What makes his story different than most legacy stories is that the company owner and primary tree climber was his mother, Betsy.
“She started climbing in the early ’80s, when I was an infant,” Badeaux recalls. “My dad had passed away (cancer), so she was a widow. She was living in a small country town in North Carolina, and she had to make a living and pay the bills. A local electric utility company was the only company around that was hiring at the time.”
A line-clearance job opened up, and Betsy daringly pursued it. While it was not customary to hire females for climbing positions in the ’80s, the supervisor who interviewed her decided he was going to give her a shot. “The supervisor ultimately became a close friend of my mother’s and supported her career,” Badeaux says.
That supervisor wasn’t just complying with proper hiring practices, he also made a good hire, bringing a natural climber into the industry.
Betsy Badeaux was an athletic and proficient climber who went on to own her own tree service for nearly three decades. She started Lake Norman Arbor Services in North Carolina, a small company focused on residential work. Marshall Badeaux describes her as someone who read a book each day and was “brilliant” at the science of arboriculture.
“As a small child, I was free labor for mom. I’d drag branches, rake yards and do whatever was needed. I grew up working for her, and absorbed everything she would teach me,” says Badeaux, 39, who now owns an expanding tree business in South Carolina. “She taught me how to climb and perform tree work methodically and efficiently,” he recalls. Betsy had a tree-preservation mindset, he says, which ultimately led to the focus of Badeaux’s own company.
Focus on professionalism
At age 18, he left his mom’s employ and struck out for Colorado, where he worked in tree care for several years, primarily as a climber and crew leader. He bounced around the industry and ultimately landed in Charleston, South Carolina, where he founded his own company in July 2012.
He learned some lessons along the way.
“Most small tree care companies are ill-equipped,” Badeaux says, adding that he put his emphasis on safety and professionalism when opening a company of his own. “A lot of times, tree care companies are started by an individual who isn’t necessarily prepared to be the owner of a company.”
He explains that the monetary return for tree services can be enticing. However, the operating costs are usually not fully accounted for beforehand. Badeaux says he feels professionally obligated to provide up-to-date equipment, to use science-backed arboricultural practices and to further his knowledge base and that of those he employs.
“I think Tad Jacobs (president of Treemasters in San Rafael, California, and current member of TCIA’s Board of Directors) said it best. ‘With a business, you’re either growing or dying, and you’ve really got to be growing,’” Badeaux says, reiterating Jacobs’ wisdom.
“You’ve got to be looking at what’s next, what’s next to improve,” he says. “You can’t really get to the point where you say, ‘This is where we want to be. Let’s stay here.’ To me, that thought process doesn’t lead to sustainable business practices.”
These days, Badeaux proudly operates Charleston Tree Experts, an accredited, 9-year TCIA member company that runs five tree care crews, two plant-health-care crews and an auxiliary crew. Primarily tree-preservation focused, the company services residential, commercial and municipal entities, and employs 26 people.
Badeaux carries a resume full of credentials. He’s one of six ISA Board Certified Master Arborists (BCMAs) and one of two American Society of Consulting Arborists (ASCA) Registered Consulting Arborists (RCAs) in the state of South Carolina. He’s EHAP certified and holds his ISA Tree and Plant Appraisal Qualification (TPAQ) and Tree Risk Assessment Qualification (TRAQ) credentials, plus more than a dozen other tree-industry credentials.
He climbs less these days. Instead, he’s focused on running the business, building a team, supporting the professional progression of others and making waves of change in the industry.
“As the company started growing, I brought on a great individual, Ash Connelly, our business development manager, a couple of years ago,” Badeaux says. Following the guidepost set by the supervisor-turned-family-friend who hired his mother, Badeaux gave Connelly a shot despite her having no prior tree-industry experience.
“She was a 12-year paralegal and really brought professionalism into the company, with policies and procedures. With her, we’ve introduced a lot of women into the company. As a matter of fact, aside from me, our entire management staff are women, which you really don’t see in arboriculture that much.”
Learning a lesson
His company growth has not been completely smooth. He had an adventure turn into a misadventure in 2017 when – after successfully responding to a hurricane in Charleston the year before – he took a crew to Puerto Rico to clean up after Hurricane Maria.
As he explains it, “The light bulb went off that, ‘Hey, these people were severely impacted, they can use a lot of help, there’s a lot of opportunity for us here,’” recalls Badeaux, who packed up a crew, shipped his trucks and equipment and arrived before the power or running water were turned on. In fact, they arrived too soon.
“I went in blind,” he says. “I got our trucks into port and couldn’t get them out for the first two weeks. There’s a lot of legal red tape.”
Companies were allowed to perform work with a FEMA contract in place, or if they agreed to perform some work pro bono. Badeaux was eager to do that but was unable to connect with anyone. Eventually, he found Christian Torres, now the ISA’s Southern Chapter director for Puerto Rico and the USVI. At the time, Torres was director of Puerto Rico’s Luis Munoz Marin Foundation (FLMM), an arboretum with dozens of endangered trees that was hit hard by the hurricane.
“Christian kept asking for help, but he was low on the FEMA list,” compared to the municipalities and other entities, says Badeaux, who eventually made the connection. “We worked for about two weeks cleaning up the property. We hired a bunch of locals and put them on the payroll. We used the TCIA Ground Operations Specialist workbook, English and Spanish versions, as our training guide for the new recruits. We took the crew members through the procedures of working safely with the equipment and best arboricultural practices. At the end of the two weeks, we got the facility back to the point where the arboretum could be reopened.”
From there, the company was awarded a FEMA contract in San Juan, where they worked for a couple of months.
“It was an amazing experience, as well as a costly one,” says Badeaux, who left the island “almost broke,” but having learned a good lesson. The company now carefully weighs the pros and cons before accepting any tree work outside of its service area.
Growth and innovation
Back in Charleston, he continues to focus on growth and innovation. He’s developed and is beta testing a new tree-inventory software called TreeHub.
“We do our scheduling, estimating, invoicing, routing and reporting – all of that – through TreeHub,” says Badeaux. He explains that his software also connects with other software such as QuickBooks, Google Calendar, SendGrid, Stripe and Twilio.
He’s not sure when TreeHub will be ready to bring to market but estimates it will be a year or two. “Every time I think it’s about ready, I think of more I want to do with it,” he says.
In developing the new technology, he is fulfilling a childhood dream.
“When I was a little kid on my mom’s job sites, I used to envision being able to mark trees on a map, see them on a computer screen and have all their data and service records,” Badeaux says. “What’s been done to the tree year after year? What’s the treatment plan? And so much more. Being able to have a record and to regard and care for trees as a physician would for a patient. That’s a dream I’ve had since I was a kid.”
