[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to the Grow show, brought to you by Mardi Grinder's Grow Group, where we specialize in helping landscaping companies to clarify their platform, grow their people, build their processes, and realize profits. Everything we teach is grounded in real experience. Our team is actively involved in the day to day operations of Southwest Ohio's Grunder Landscaping Company.
New episodes are released weekly on Wednesdays. Remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Now, here's your host, Marty Grunder.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: Whatever the case may be.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: This is Marty Grunder from Grunder Landscaping Co. And the Grow Group. Thanks for downloading the Grow show podcast. Today's episode is the keynote I delivered at GROW 2025 in Columbus that I have received, quite frankly, awesome feedback on. Always nice to get. But first, a reminder. You can get the latest episodes of the Grow show delivered to your phone, tablet or computer by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts or Watch us on YouTube for an enhanced learning experience.
The Grow show is the greatest thing since my Grow Group clients, folks, over 1100 of them, many of them have been working with us for 15 years or more or at Grow coming up this week. And I'm grateful for each and every one of you. All right? They provide an audience for us to do everything with and quite frankly, we'd be nothing without them, without you. And yes, we are good at what we do and we have helped all of them. But many of you who are listening right now, folks, we've helped you grow your business, but it's this community that's special. You've done it. You've done it by getting involved, by taking ideas that I've shared with you and making them better. And hey, I get the ideas from all of you as well. It's a ying and a yang that, that works beautifully.
So there's only so much teaching we can do, folks. Most of the teaching comes from the networking and the friendships that develop in the Grow community. And I am forever grateful for that. Now on to this week's edition of the Grow Show. Today's episode. Folks, it's a little different than what you're used to hearing here on the Grow show, and I want to set that expectation right up front. What you're about to hear is the opening keynote from GROW 2025. Like I said, recorded live last February in Columbus, Ohio. At the time, we were coming into a new year a year ago with a lot of uncertainty and a lot of opportunity.
And if we're being honest, a lot of noise coming at us as business owners and leaders.
And recently I listened to this talk again and then I listened to it a second time. And ladies and gentlemen, I couldn't help but think, man, this message is just as applicable today, if not more so for the year ahead of us right now. So the old saying, the more things change, the more they stay the same. I think it's very obvious with this episode that you're about to listen to.
So for those of you who weren't able to catch us in Columbus last year, I want to share this with you here on the podcast. You're going to hear it exactly as it was, delivered live from on the stage with real energy, real stories and real takeaways meant for owners, leaders and decision makers in our industry.
And one quick note before we jump in, our team is in the final preparations of GROW 2026. This week it's going to be in Dallas, Texas. If you're listening to this and thinking, I probably should be there, you know what? You're probably right. And it's not too late. You can get a last minute flight, you can get a hotel, and you can
[email protected] backslash grow hyphen 2026 or just google grow group and then grow 2026. You'll find it. We're everywhere.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: All right, let's go the stage.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: Please welcome the stage, the founder and CEO of the Grow Group, Marty Grunder. You been burned.
I want to hear you.
Wow.
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever the case may be.
We're glad you're here, folks.
Catch my breath here a second. Almost 57 don't have the lungs they used to have.
It's great to see nearly a thousand landscape pros with us here today in Columbus, Ohio. If you do me a favor, we have a sold out room. If you could please slide in like they say in church so we can get some more people seated, I'd be very grateful. Can you help me out?
Good, good, good customers. Thank you very much.
We're all here this week in Columbus with a common goal, and that is to grow. Anybody else want to grow?
Yeah.
Grow means a lot of things to different people. I've learned that in my quest here in business, my 41st year in business, which is really, really hard to believe.
And you know what that means, don't you?
I'm old.
Yes, I'm old. And if you're here with us, folks, it means a couple things.
Number one, you value investing in yourself. And my team at the Grow Group, we Appreciate and acknowledge what you're doing here, not only in your hard earned money that is being spent, but in the time.
Because really, if we're going to be honest, anybody can spend money taking time to be here with us and network and get better and let your hair down and show and share your vulnerabilities is a sure way to improve your business. We find that out weekly in our peer groups which have grown into this amazing community. Many of them. If you're in one of our peer groups, let me hear from you.
Yeah, it's a great brother and sisterhood that we have going on there. And it's amazing what goes on in the sharing.
And then for those of you that are here that your owner sent you or is here with you, that shows that they value you. And we always say at Grunder Landscaping and at the Grow Group that training is an investment, not an expense. How many of you continue to have trouble finding and keeping people? Let me see your hands.
You're doing a lot of good today.
Because I personally think the best way that you can grow a team is by making an investment in them.
By sending them to something like this is way more than training. This is an experience. And this isn't me saying this. This is what our clients say after they go through Grow, that this was a life changing experience. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but that's what can happen when you get around other risk taking peers and you let your hair down and you talk about what you're trying to do.
And we see this in the peer groups all the time. But I think there's something very cathartic, therapeutic, if you will, by talking to people about your problems and then you start to find out that you don't have some strange, incurable disease, that tons of people have the same challenges and we're all in this fight together. And that's what Grow is all about.
In my 41 years of business, I've also found out that growth isn't linear. Seth, our president, who's here, if you get a chance, I encourage you to talk to Seth. He's been an instrumental part of my personal and professional growth the last 12 years that we've been running together.
The last five years, Seth has really been running our company. We've had some incredible growth in a large part to what he's been able to do. Build upon the foundation that I built and take it to another level. And we often have discussions with our leadership team about how growth isn't linear. It's not just like Straight line happen that way.
And it's not easy.
And I often joke when I'm being talked to that I'm a 40 year overnight success story or I'll have somebody come up to me and say, you know, I just can't believe what all you do and what all you've accomplished. And I'm kind of like, I sheepishly but honestly say, you know, I have been doing this 41 years. I mean, for God's sakes, I should have some of this figured out. I'm probably not that smart. I'm probably kind of stupid actually. That took me this long. Right.
So it took a lot of work for me to get to where we are today and many, many mistakes to get to where we are today as well.
You name a mistake, I've done it. My brother, who you're going to learn a little bit more about in a little bit here, was hired and fired a record 47 times.
Yep. It eventually I finally didn't hire him back.
There's been all kinds of trials and tribulations I've been through. There's been days when I go to leave our office and hasn't happened in a while in large part to Seth and helping us get organized. But I would go to take my truck out the driveway and I would say to myself, what am I doing? Like, why am I struggling with this?
You know, we were stuck at four and a half million dollars for a long, long time.
Probably about 11 years. We turned that number in and I had a lot of awesome, well intentioned people on my team.
They were nice folks, but they didn't want to grow. They didn't want to come to an event like this. They didn't want to participate in the things we had going on at the grow group. Not because they were bad people, they just didn't want to grow.
And my hope is that all of you here want to grow. And if you don't want to grow by the time you're done and you're around this community that we've created, growth becomes something that you really want to do.
And I think sometimes growth is misunderstood. It doesn't necessarily mean more sales.
I would hope it means more profits.
But if you're at a certain level and you're happy with that and growth means that you spend less time at the office and you hand the ball off to other members of your team and allow them to take the ball and run with it, that's growth.
The fact that maybe callbacks went down, there's so many things that we can work on that are associated with growth. We look at them and in every case, when I look at the situation of myself growing and getting better, it started out when I realized we could make money doing what I love doing anyways, making the yard look good. When I was a 14 year old boy and as we were preparing for this and can show you some fun things, I started my company in 1984 and my little brother was my first hire. You can see him, he's the good looking one on the right. I'm not sure why I wore a necktie that day, but somebody needed to show me how to tie a tie.
There was a story in the Dayton Daily News and if you look very closely it says 1989. And the most humorous line of all of them is there where I'm quoted as saying, once I turned 16 and got my license, my mom didn't have to drive us to all the jobs.
Anybody relate like I had a lot of drive. I wanted to grow back then I didn't have any sense of what that meant or how we go. So. So I did what most smart enterprising entrepreneurs do. I faked it until I made it.
My mom, God bless her, my mom passed away during grow six years ago. Hard to believe many of you probably remember that.
My mom was an awesome woman.
Just sorry for repeating some funny stories. But she was so good at self deprecating humor. It was amazing. And self deprecating humor is a leadership trait, ladies and gentlemen. The ability for you to get up in front of your team and make fun of yourself in front of them. That's not a way of putting yourself down, that's a way of putting yourself up. You're showing yourself as a human. You're almost telling your team it's okay to make mistakes. Just don't make the same mistakes a few times.
My mom's most favorite story I have to share with you about my mom was she really wanted to learn how to play golf. So she went to Rolandia, which was this little pitch and putt course in Dayton, Ohio. And she went there with her friend Sherry. They wanted to learn how to play golf because my stepdad played golf. My mom surmised, well, it looks so easy, them hitting this little white ball. Surely I can figure that out.
My dad was an incredible athlete. My mom had no athletic ability. Zero. Okay?
So my mom goes and they're playing golf at this place. And she comes up to the seventh hole at Rolandia Golf Course and she sees two rakes outside the sand Traps.
So she picks him up, and she says to her friend Sherry, she says, will you look at that? Marty hates it when his crew leaves tools on job sites. He tells me that all the time.
She picks up the two rakes, puts them in her cart, drives on the hole eight.
Yeah. She gets to hole eight, she sees another rake. She says, sherry, this is unbelievable. Do these guys know where any of their tools are? She puts it in the golf cart.
She gets to hole number nine. She finds two more rakes in the sand trap. She puts those in the cart.
Then she proudly travels up to the clubhouse with her great findings. She goes in and gets the pro. The pro comes outside and she said, just want to let you know your workers left these all over the course, and I'm returning them to you. And what has to be the best comeback ever known to man, he says to her, thanks, lady. We wondered where they were.
My mom came home, we were visiting her, and she's like, you're not gonna believe what I did, Marty. She goes, you're definitely gonna want to use this story in one of your talks. I said, well, Mom, I mean, you have given me some world class material already. Remember when you ordered lunch from the Wendy's trash can and it wasn't the microphone and they went in and they told you you were ordering from the trash can, not the mic. Oh, yeah, this one's way better than that.
She proceeds to tell me the story, and I say, mom, are you kidding me?
And apparently my stepdad, this was the first time he was hearing this story now, too. And he says, how will I ever be able to go back there and golf again?
I said, well, Tom, I'm going there. He goes, well, you're going to be embarrassed, too. I said, no, my mom's last name is Graham. They don't know she's my mother.
I learned so much from my mom about that, about just if you've done something, it's okay point fun at yourself. And when you do things like that, you're getting other people that want to be around you. And if you want to grow your company, what do you need?
We got to have people that like being around you. We gotta have people around that see you as an authentic leader, as somebody that I would want to work with.
And at the time, back then, we thought making it meant getting to a million dollars in revenue and being profitable.
Now today, a million dollars based on 1984, 85, 86 numbers is probably more like $2 million today.
So, like a million? Was this all Elusive number that we were chasing this thing that we wanted to do. Just like maybe you all have a number in here. And I'm just framing this out as we get started in grow on a Monday here in Columbus, Ohio.
I want you to frame yourself in the right spot about what grow means. It's not just about the sales and profits. There's other things that go into that. There's a lot of things that go into that. In fact, one of the things I'll tell you that sometimes if you focus more on the activities that lead to profitability, profitability will fix itself. Itself. Instead of just being so focused on profitability, we overlook stuff. Let me give you an example.
If I go into your company and I see good profits, but you've got bald tires on your trucks, safety chains aren't on the trailers, there's no training or anything, are we really growing?
Is that really a company that people are going to want to get into and get behind? That's going to catch up to you at some point. So growth means a lot.
And this little chart up here on the screen kind of shows what I thought making it would look like. I thought it was a ton of work and that once you got to a million, that was kind of like where you took a deep breath and you've made it and it's time to go on to something else. Like, once I get there, it's going to be so much easier.
Now for you, maybe that's million. I was talking with someone this morning. They were talking about $5 million. And they didn't have a great year last year, but they know why it didn't work out. They're working on it again this year. That's what it's all about.
It's about getting better, blow by blow, step by step, the work required.
And at the time, what making it look like to me was number one, having an office on Far Hills Avenue in a main thoroughfare through Dayton, Ohio. Young people will not even be able to relate to this, what I'm about to tell you. And it'll really show how old I am. Old people will be like, oh, I remember.
Well, years ago, folks, we didn't have the Internet. We didn't have social media, no web pages, anything like that. We mailed quotes in the mail. And the mail was this little guy comes around in a red, white and blue truck and he picks things up. Anybody know what that is?
It's a little different today.
And if you had an address on a busy street in Dayton, Ohio, back in the late 80s and early 90s. It was a sign of significance. It meant you were relevant.
And so I saw an ad in the paper that said they had office suites. And I replied to it and I went and I rented this office that you see right up there in that little eave right there. My office was up there and it was above Elsa's Mexican restaurant, which is still there today.
Our stationary smelled like tortilla chips.
But the biggest issue was people thought I was the town drunk. Because my truck was parked outside of Elsa's Cantina from six in the morning through most of the day and then back at night after my classes at the University of Dayton, to get caught up on work.
Most of the tests and exams that I studied for at the University of Dayton and got a D in for Dayton, that studying went on in that office as well. And we thought we made it. Like we had 6250, Suite B.
That was my office and I thought I made it.
We were able to pay ourselves a fair wage. We were comfortable.
I lived down on the campus of the University of Dayton on a street called Kefaber street, in a ghetto house. They're still there today. They smell worse than they did when I was there.
I drank Michelob.
My friends drank Jobell and Der Duchler. De Good beer is what it said on the outside of the can. But I drank Michelob.
I bought my first new dump truck in 1987.
I parked it in my mom and dad's driveway on the little baby farm they had about 20 minutes from the University of Dayton.
And when I bought it, I was really proud. I backed it into the turning space. It was red at the time. We put our sign over it. All of our trucks are Greek green now. I propped the bed up in the air because that's what you do if you're a sophisticated redneck.
And by the time I got down to my home at the University of Dayton on campus, the message machine was blinking. It was my mom. She left me a message and she said, I don't know where you got this dump truck. It's not real funny. You need to focus on your schoolwork or you're gonna end up a diesel mechanic just like your cousin Chris. I can't believe she said that. I mean, what the heck's wrong with a diesel mechanic, first of all, alright? And mom's saying this. And she said, you can take that thing back. It's not funny. I know you're on academic probation down there. You got to get focused on your schoolwork.
So I promptly called my mom back and I said, I can't take the truck back. I lost the receipt.
And she said this, and I swear to God, some of the stuff I embellish a little bit. This is the honest to God's truth. She said, are you dealing drugs?
Oh, I am not dealing drugs. Now, the statutes of limitations.
Vince is an attorney now, Esquire. Vince, I checked this with him before I came up on stage. So I can tell you this now. I wasn't paying taxes, okay?
But I wasn't dealing drugs.
My mom said, where did you get that money? How much was that dump truck? I said, $12,500. She said, Where? How did you pay for that? I said, I put $7,500 cash down. And I got a loan from the Bellbrook Community Bank.
Well, who signed for the loan? Did we sign for Mom? No, you didn't sign for it? I signed it. John Gloyd, the bank president, took a chance on me and helped me with the loan for the truck.
And I said, mom, just to let you know, I got another $30,000 in my savings account.
And she was like, what?
Where is this coming? Mom, I'm working from sun up to sundown. I mean, how can you not grasp what we're doing? We're growing.
Just make sure you get a college education, okay? My mom was a schoolteacher. My dad was a civil engineer. They had no idea what I was doing or what we could turn it into.
And I was very comfortable. I loved my work. I really did. I loved it.
And part of the business became my personality, like it is today. If you asked me what I really wanted to do, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. And I would have made it except for one small thing. You know what that was?
I wasn't any good.
And I thought about becoming a play by play announcer. And I dreamt of doing that. And I went out to Ohio University. My mom drove me out there to tour their school of broadcast journalism. It was a bunch of winding roads.
And when we got out to Ohio University, I opened the car door and threw up. So that didn't look too good. I went around to the school and I liked it and everything, but when we got in the car and drove back to Dayton, I threw up again when we got home, and I said, I'm not going to ou. I'm going to the University of Dayton and I'm going to pursue a degree in business. And that's what we did. And we were doing great work and we enjoyed it, it was amazing. It was fun. I loved it when I would go into carry out and get a drink and somebody would ask me what my company was and I'd get to tell them that story. And I started speaking to young people as this successful entrepreneur that was running this what would become, by the time I was a senior at the University of Dayton, a half a million dollar a year business.
And that's where my speaking career blossomed. In fact, it's really cool.
The lady that got me into professional speaking, Bonnie Baker, is in the back of the room. She came up to see me and she's the reason today that I'm a professional speaker. Bonnie had an awesome syndicated show called Bright Ideas for Business, and it was syndicated across the country.
And Bonnie and I were friends. She was an anchor at the local news station and she saw me doing a couple things speaking, and she said, you're a natural.
I have a low budget cable TV show. I need someone to interview people. And I went to this thing called Success in Cincinnati and I got to interview in person Zig Ziglar, Dan Kennedy and Tom Hopkins, who are incredible professional speakers and sell. And I saw them doing this stuff and I said, well, I think I can do this.
And turns out that I probably can.
And making it was about revenue goals early on for us and a really simple reason. We needed the money. My mom and dad didn't have any money. We lived in a small little ranch. Our grandmother lived with us. I shared a bedroom with my brother and my sister.
And there was a lot of pressure on us to go to college, but it was like, you're going to go to college, but there wasn't any money in our family to pay for our school. My folks got divorced when I was 21 years old. And most of their fights, sadly, were about money.
I'm not going to stand up here and tell you that. Because of that, I said to myself, I would never do this. No, I can't lie to you. I can't tell you that.
It was just I really got into providing for myself. And I will tell you today that aside from my marriage to Lisa 32 years in July, can you imagine putting up with me for 32 years?
I mean, that's a lot, folks. That's a whole lot.
And my four children, the greatest accomplishment that I consider is paying for my college education. It really meant something to me and I think that matters today.
We have a lot of young people in our peer groups that have young children. Whenever I'm asked, I try to Share some parenting advice.
I tried to hold back on it with my own kids because I had a lot more than, you know, as they were growing up than I did when I was small. And you want to do more for your kids, but at the end of the day, I think you want your kids to earn it. And that's what's important. And that's what's important about what it's doing here today.
Looking back, folks, my idea of making it has really changed.
It's changed a lot.
First and foremost on my list is I want to make sure that I have time to spend with my family.
My four children, my three oldest daughters are all married. My two oldest daughters each have kids. We have two grandchildren. My wife and I are having a blast.
I spend a lot of time traveling, and I spend a lot of time walking by myself. And I have time to think about this stuff.
And the sad but true tale is my life is more than half over now. Don't feel sorry for me. I'm just trying to be pragmatic, because most people don't live to be 112, okay? So that's just the math of it. And I think about what I want to do and what I want to become. We spent a lot of time thinking through this event, like, what do we want to have all of you walk out of here when you're done on Wednesday?
What do we want to change? Do you do that? Do you take time to think about yourself and where you want to go and how you want to be remembered and the things you want to accomplish?
You know, there's. I've been on a long journey with a lot to share, and we're going to share a lot of it.
And as we were going, you know, it was all about the people and things that we saw. And we said, you know, if we add snow removal services, we won't have to do winter layoffs anymore. That was a big decision that we made.
We've grown our snow removal services tremendously thanks to Seth pushing us into it and showing us how to do it and manage it.
And, yeah, we've had some challenges. We've learned just like everything else, but we're running right at it, and we're learning a lot. Can we sponsor some of our H2B folks for permanent citizenship?
You know, all these things that you see on the screen here are things that, with the prior leadership team that I had with me, I don't think we ever would have gotten there. They just. They didn't want to grow. They didn't want to get outside of their comfort zone. And I wasn't leading them in the right way. I wasn't painting the right example. I wasn't doing the things that I needed to be doing.
And one of the things that I learned and I learned this is probably the biggest lesson that I've learned from Seth.
I used to think that if somebody didn't show some initiative or show some personal motivation for doing something, that that was it.
Like you're not going to get them to do something. And what I've learned from Seth is some people don't understand that and they're afraid to try things. And so you got to work with them and sometimes you got to give them a fairly significant project and see how they do.
Or sometimes you gotta go to them and say, listen, I want you to come up here with me on the leadership team. I think you're capable of doing this and I want to see you do it.
And I never did that. Like, I thought somebody had to show me something first before I then went and asked them. And that's not how people work. And I realize that now.
And we could talk for three hours here about the limiting beliefs that I had and things that I saw and passing judgment and looking at things. And I'm just glad I learned the lesson. You know, not if I learned the lesson, but, you know, the period of when, I mean, it would have been a lot better had I learned it when I was 35 and I didn't. So our hope with GROW and the other things that we do at the GROW group, that you can learn from our mistakes and that you can move forward.
And if you take a moment and think about this, all the small business in this room have a tremendous impact.
This is amazing, folks, what we're able to do.
We are moving the needle forward together with all of you in this room. There is no question in my mind the ideas and the things that we're doing, the work that we're doing in our peer groups, the work with our. The GROW show, our great idea. You folks are a wonderful audience for us to take those ideas out and then practice them and share them.
And the way this is working, we may go work with the owner and a leadership team of a landscaping company and we may show them how we schedule work. We use Aspire, the industry specific software, One of our sponsors, we use that to schedule work. And we go and we show another company, they take the idea, we go back there to make another visit, or they come into one of our Peer groups, and they show something that we're doing with scheduling work that we weren't doing. Vince will say in our leadership team meeting, well, this company's doing this. Seth will hear Vince and say, well, tell me more about that. And Seth will say, that's a great idea. Can you show me that? And then we'll go and implement that. Then we take that idea out onto our speaking appearances, our teaching platforms, our peer groups, and we share it. And another company implements it and moves it forward.
It's just a nonstop, continual improvement thanks to all of you working together and the things that we can do.
And I know there's things to worry about. The two most important people in every business that is represented in this room are your team and your clients.
And if you're not out talking to your clients, you're missing out, because they are the ones that ultimately decide whether you're going to grow or not. If they're happy and they want to refer you, they want to keep doing business with you. And then your team talking to them, and we don't spend enough time with that.
And that just makes such a difference.
All of us here, folks, are impacting our team members and their families.
I was talking with an entrepreneur the other day. He has 200 employees. I asked him what he wanted to do with his business. He said he's not sure. He said he gets a call almost every week, two or three calls a week, he said, from private equity that wants to buy him. And he said, I just don't know that I want to do that. Because it's not just the 200 people that we employ that it affects. It's all of our vendors. It's all the family of our employees. Like, I'm not ready to quit. I love what I'm doing. I don't feel like I've realized my utmost potential.
So think about that. Think about the communities that we impact and the things that the profitability of your company enables you to do, the people that you can help.
That's what makes a difference.
You know, my mom didn't care whether we did 5 million, 10 million, 100 million. She cared about how many people we were helping. And whenever we'd help, or maybe there was something in the press or she'd hear it at church, she'd call me and say, God bless you for helping others. That's the Marty Grunder that I like. Thank you.
And you'll find that even with my own kids, and it's not that my generation didn't want to Help or weren't nice people. It's just there's a lot more.
There seems to be a lot more interest in giving back from the younger generation. Or maybe our style was a little bit different.
But I know of a lot of kids that, you know, I never went on a mission trip. We never did that. I went to a private Catholic high school that my mom and dad borrowed money to send us to. I found out later and took, like, 12 years to pay back loans for high school.
Not recommended, by the way.
And all those things that mattered, like, that we can impact things tremendously.
And at the end of the day, where I see the issue here is on that fourth bullet point. And I want to plead with you, please, to focus on your team, not yourself.
I remember 20 years ago, we had a Christmas party, and we had it at Yankee Trace Golf Course, which was around the corner from our office.
I got the nicest thing on the menu, filet mignon.
I bought Frank Mariani, my landscaper buddy from Chicago, a plane ticket to come down and speak to my team. I told everybody it was, you know, dress up, wear a coat, wear a tie. Santa Claus is going to come, bring your kids. Santa Claus is going to give you everything, give you a nice present.
And during the entire event, I had a little quartet playing strings. I mean, it was just a really classy, really nice evening. I thought it was awesome. Frank gave a nice speech. We told him he had 10 minutes. He took three hours.
If you know Frank, that's kind of true.
And when it was done, it was just like, nobody enjoyed it. Nobody at all.
And I remember going home with my wife. It was a chilly night. I had my suit on. And I said, it just didn't seem like anybody had fun. And my wife was nice. She said, well, I don't know. I think they did. I mean, Marty, you're a lot like. I don't know what you're expecting from them, but maybe they did.
And so the next day, when I came in the office, we had an employee named Amanda. She now has a landscaping company in Dayton. I see her once in a while. Real nice young lady.
And I had a good rapport with her. And I said, hey, Amanda. I said, did you like the party last night? She's like, yeah, Marty, it was fun. That was really nice what you did.
I said, it just didn't seem like it went over that well. And she's like, yeah, I know. I know you meant well. And I said, well, can you help me? Like, I don't. I don't understand. Like we had a really nice meal, you know, I had Santa Claus come in and give everybody something.
What was the deal? She's like, well, you probably like going to parties like that and you and your wife. And she said, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be disrespectful to you, but you probably have a suit and your wife has a nice dress. Like my husband and I didn't have any nice clothes. We had to go out and buy nice clothes for us and our kids and we don't really have enough money for that.
And I said, oh. And she said, and yeah, the dinner was good, but you know, our palates maybe aren't as sophisticated as yours. She said, I think pizza would have been fine. She said, I think you could have taken us all bowling and fed us pizza and given us all what you spent on that party, a cash bonus. And I think everybody would have enjoyed that.
And right when she said that, I just remember like the hair stand up on the back of my neck and I remember like I messed up. Who did I throw the party for?
Myself.
And had there been social media, then what would I have done?
Shown a picture of everything we did. A zoom in on the filet mignon and a zoom in on all of us in our fancy clothes.
And that might have made me happy, but I made that party about myself.
The success that we have attained in the last three years, going from 5 million to 15 million, our goal this year is 17 and a half million. We will be a 30 million dollar a year company by 2030. I don't tell you that to brag. I tell you that to put it out there so you can watch us. Because we're going to go put our best foot forward and we're going to do that.
And a big part of that is this focusing on our team, not ourselves.
We, we changed our mission statement from what it was before to creating opportunities for our team to grow and succeed by enhancing the beauty and value of every client's property while exceeding their expectations every step of the way. The first sentence there. Creating opportunities for our team to grow and succeed. That is our focus.
That's our focus.
We are creating opportunities. And do you know how impactful it is when we have our monthly grow meeting and we bring someone up and we talk to them about their new position and the team gets to hear about how they got promoted.
It's not about Seth, it's not about Marty, it's not about Dalton, it's not about Brian. It's not about dawn that are here from our leadership team.
It's about the team.
And it's funny. Business is a lot like golf. You grab that club real hard and you swing harder and the ball doesn't go anywhere. You hold the club like a bird and you swing it real easy. And it's amazing how far the ball goes. Since I learned that, I'm hitting my five iron 30 yards longer than I did before and I don't swing near as hard. It's just. It's like bizarre. And business is the same way, like when we try hard, when we push, when we, you know. And there's a time for pushing, believe me. But when we make it about ourselves, we lose. We're making the industry better together, folks. This is astonishing. The combined revenue of all the companies in here. We're not talking to manufacturers or the sponsors, we're talking about the landscape companies in this room right now is $2.1 billion.
If we all leave here on Wednesday with our head on straight, with new ideas going back, making it about the team, not about others.
Have fun. Look for ways to have fun.
The work you do day in and day out matters, ladies and gentlemen.
A rising tide raises all boats.
When we grow, whether that's in revenue skills or just in our mindset, it benefits everyone around us.
And that's the mentality that you need to have here the next three days as we kick this wonderful event off.
There's so many breakout sessions here. Split up amongst your teams. Have some fun, Go in there, show your vulnerability.
For God's sakes, the only way you're going to get in trouble with me here today is if you go to dinner by yourself. Do not do that. This is a warm, caring community here that wants to help you. I don't care how big or small your business is. I've already encountered three real small landscapers that are in here. Evan and Logan are two of them from Ohio that I spoke to this morning. They're in the audience right now. You know what? You can learn a lot from them.
I got a buddy that's a very successful landscaper. I'm not going to share his name because I don't want to embarrass him, but he was in a peer group with all these huge companies, many of ones you would know.
And on the third year he was in it, he quit.
I'm going to change his name to protect his identity. I said, george, why in the world would you quit? That group, like, those guys are the icons of the Industry.
He's like, I know, Marty. They were nice and it was fun.
But, you know, we go to a meeting and they're talking about their captives and their vacation houses and their investments and all the other things they're doing. He's like, we weren't talking about landscaping anymore. He's like, I want to talk about where you park in the truck and how are you maximizing that? How are you interacting with your people? How are you keeping those hourly workers and not rehiring them every year? What are you doing? He said, we weren't talking about any of that stuff.
So it's important to talk to little guys and gals, too, because those day to day struggles that they have, there's probably some secrets in there for you that you can take from.
Because your growth goals may be different from mine this year. And that's awesome. That's okay. Whatever your goals are, have goals and go for them.
Maybe you joined us this week to find ways to better manage your time so you can spend more time with your family.
Look for ideas so you and your team can work together with less stress. Doesn't that sound fun?
Stress is caused because you're out of control and you don't know what's going on. Get control of your business here this week, folks. Get ideas to improve team morale or your culture.
And remember, culture. The first four letters of the word culture are what?
[00:37:01] Speaker B: Cult?
Yeah.
[00:37:03] Speaker A: Grape Kool Aid and Spam Sandwiches are okay here and there. Young people are like what old people are like. That's funny.
Yesterday, while I was in Mass, my wife has been telling me, when the Gospel comes up in Mass, please pay attention to it. So she sends me this little thing from Bishop Barron before church every Sunday now. And I read it and I am paying more attention.
And yesterday, as I'm sitting there in the pew, this was from the excerpt of the Gospel yesterday.
Give to everyone who asks of you and from the one who takes what is yours. Do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.
And I was like, wow, like, that's a good message for tomorrow. That's a good message for all of us to leave here with.
We have so much great education here, folks. Over the next three days to help you prepare for whatever the year has in store for you, whatever challenge, whatever success, whatever thing you have.
There's a session here to help you.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: All right, folks, welcome back. I hope you enjoyed listening to that conversation as much as I enjoyed delivering it. It's always amazing for me to go out on stage and see all those people that have joined us at Grow to Get Better Together. I hope you enjoyed that live talk. I know it's a little different than the content you used to hearing from us, but I truly believe the message holds up and it matters right now. If you're headed to Dallas next week, safe travels. Make sure you pack your stuff. Looks like the weather's going to be pretty good. I can't wait to see you in person. And again, if you're still on the fence, we'd love to have you join us. Until next time, let me remind you that growth isn't accidental, it's intentional. Okay, that's going to do it for this week's edition of the Grow Show. If you haven't done so already, subscribe to the Grow show and if you can give it a rating or share a comment that helps more success minded landscape professionals find us. And if you really want to help us share this episode with your team or any landscape pro you know, take out your phone right now, this thing right here, and text it to a friend. It'll help them grow their business and you'll help us get more subscribers. Thanks for joining us on the Grow Show. We'll talk to you next week.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Grow Show. Remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode and visit growgroupinc.com for more resources to help you out landscaping company succeed. We'll talk to you next week.
