Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to the Grow Show Powered by Steel. The Grow show is brought to you by Marty Grinder's Grow Group where we specialize in teaching landscaping companies how 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 of the Grow show are released weekly on Wednesdays. Remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode.
Now, here's your host, Marty Grunder.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever the case may be. This is Marty Grunder from Grunder Landscaping Co. And the Grow Group. Thanks for downloading the Grow Show Powered by Steel. Today we're joined by Emily Lindley, our event and content manager here at the Grow Group and we're going to be doing an Ask Marty episode as Emily is in the Steel studios with us today asking me a bunch of questions that we had submitted from all of you. But first, a reminder. You can get the latest edition 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 the book Winning with Accountability by Henry J. Evans. And Emily, you know, we've been referring to this book for probably, I think about 15 years now. All of our peer groups read it when they join.
And Tiffany Sergi from Landscapes by D and J in Massachusetts, she's a brand new ace in our program. Welcome Tiffany and your team. And she's doing some really neat things recently. She had a very nice post on LinkedIn talking about what an impact this book made about her thought process about the language that you use. And this is a great book, folks. Pick it up. It's about 85 pages long. You can read it in two hours.
[00:01:48] Speaker C: You.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: It will change your perspective. It's changed my perspective. Give it a shot. I think you'll really enjoy it. I know, Emily, you like the book as well. With that, welcome to the Grow Show Powered by Steel. We kind of have flipped roles here. I've given you like the host position, position A. So don't screw it up.
[00:02:05] Speaker C: I'll try.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: And you've got a bunch of questions you want to ask me and I've not seen the questions because I kind of flow better with that. So take it away here with this. Ask Marty anything.
[00:02:15] Speaker C: Yeah. So we asked our listeners, our followers, for the Grow Group to send in any questions that they had for us that we could Help them answer. We know this is the busy season for everybody. People are working hard, they're running into challenges, and anything we can do to help them is what we're here for.
[00:02:28] Speaker B: And these are fun. So fire away. I'm anxious to hear what the questions are.
[00:02:31] Speaker C: I have them organized by topic. So we're going to start out with people related questions. And our first one, the good old how are you finding and keeping people? This person asked.
They said it seems like they take two steps forward and three steps back with people. Do you have any recommendations?
[00:02:46] Speaker B: Well, first of all, I can relate.
And you know, it's interesting, Emily. My 41st year in business and I remember cycles when we had too many people but not enough work. We were trying to get the work, and now we're kind of. There was a cycle a couple years ago during COVID where we had way too much work and not enough people.
Now it's kind of more balanced.
[00:03:06] Speaker C: You hit those bullets both?
[00:03:07] Speaker B: Yeah, we've hit both. And now it's kind of balanced. We still are having a tremendous challenge finding and keeping people.
There seems to be something that has changed, and I guess I would just start with a few things. The first thing I would say is the, the best way to keep people is to make your place a great place to work.
And, you know, some of the things that we're working on here at the Grow group, that we work on with our peer groups, that we work on in the virtual learning events that we do online for our clients all over the United States and Canada.
And we talk a lot about culture and we talk about the power of making your place a great place to work. I think there's a couple things you should be thinking about in there. Number one, I would ask that you ask the question of yourself, would you want to work for you?
I know this sounds kind of goofy, but go to a quiet place, go to Panera, go to Starbucks, go to the library.
Go where you can get quiet. No music. Just get quiet. And think about if you came to work for Marty Grunder at Grunder Landscaping company, what would you want and what are some of the answers to those questions? Like, you would probably want a career path. Like you would probably want to know, if I start out here, what's the potential for that job? What could that lead to? So there needs to be a career path. You'd certainly want to know, like, what am I going to get paid? And if I excel in my job, are there any incentives? Could. Could I go forward?
I would want to know what are you having me do? What's my role here? How do I contribute to a win? Where's the company going? And how do the efforts that I put forth on a daily basis lead to a win? Maybe another thing to think about. What kind of company would you want your son or your daughter to go work at? Would you want them to work at a safe company or an unsafe company? Would you want them to work at a company where there weren't any secrets or. There are a bunch of secrets. And I think if you start whittling through some of those things, you can come up with a couple things. Now, if your answers to a lot of these questions are, oh, gosh, oh, gosh, I stink, I don't do that well, look, folks, that's normal, okay? I think a lot of entrepreneurs are probably too tough on themselves. I think as a rule, things are not as good as we think they are. But I also think we don't realize they're not as bad as we think they are either. So start asking some questions and get to work on making your place a great place to work. When we have people come to Grunder, we want them to come into a nice, clean facility.
We don't allow people to be yelled at. There's no bullying or any of that kind of stuff going on. We're very friendly. We try to hire nice people. So we could talk literally for five hours about this, but I think those are the big things that I would touch on. And maybe you're thinking, well, you missed this, or what about this? Or anything you think I missed?
[00:05:46] Speaker C: No, I think it's a broad topic. And so, you know, we. We do a lot throughout the year, content wise, that can help with that. But it's really the sum of a lot of little things, I'd say. But something you brought up while you were talking there about career paths leads pretty well into the next question. I have here somebody. They were a small company, 25 to 30 people. How do you.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Not that small, by the way?
[00:06:06] Speaker C: It's not.
[00:06:06] Speaker B: I appreciate the humility, but that's not that small.
[00:06:09] Speaker C: And how do you find creative ways to support and grow people when the positions above them are filled? I know that's a problem.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: You raise Emily. That was why we weren't growing. And I think, number one, you have to be talking about the future a lot and you have to be painting a vision. And. And that was part of our problem here, that there's three kinds of workplaces, ladies and gentlemen. You either have a raging river, which is chaos. Nobody knows what they're doing. Every day you come in, it looks like a five alarm fire. People are running, people are stressed. That's a raging river. You could also have a stagnant pond, which is smelly. There's no movement in it. And that's not what you want your workplace to be either. So we don't want a raging river on one hand and we don't want a stagnant pond on the other hand.
What we want is a babbling brook, which means movement. You know, think having your favorite beverage or in a pontoon, you're floating. It's fun, it's relaxing. That's the work environment that you want.
So I, I think that for a while there, Grunder had become a stagnant pond because when people came in, they said, well, Marty's a nice guy. Like, they do great work, but they've got 40 people. They haven't grown at all in the last five years. I mean, that guy, you know, Tim over there has been there 20 years. He's, he's 52. Like, he's not retiring. There's no growth, there's no opportunity for me. So I think you have to understand, like, if you don't want to grow, you are putting yourself at risk for people leaving. Because just like, you want to have things like, you know, full disclosure for those that don't know, you're my oldest daughter, when, you know, my wife Lisa and I have four children. Like, we wanted to send you guys to college. We've married off three of our daughters. We wanted to, you know, not have so much debt that we couldn't do. Like we had goals. Well, I think sometimes the owner doesn't realize, hey, news flash, you're.
[00:07:53] Speaker C: Everybody else has goals.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: Yes, they do. And I didn't realize that, Emily, Like, I know that sounds ignorant, but I just did it. I was in my own little world.
[00:08:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: And Mike, Rory, one of my mentors, said to me about 15 years ago over a bowl of clam chowder at Mitchell's Fish House in Cincinnati, he said, marty, the best reason to grow a company is that you have so many good people, they're pushing you and if you don't create opportunities for them, they're going to leave. And it didn't mean anything to me when he said it at first, but then having time to process it. And then one day Seth and I were talking like, here's why we're not growing. Nobody comes into our organization and sees this as a career opportunity. They see it as Just a job. A job.
They're happy here, they'll do fine. But I'm not going to stay there. Well, as you know, we flip the narrative.
[00:08:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: So I don't really know how to answer. Well, the question, like if you're at that level, like I think you gotta. What I'm trying to get you to see is like see how you might be able to grow your endeavor and create. Yes. Yes.
[00:08:54] Speaker C: Yeah. I think one thing though that you've done that, that helped a lot in changing that mindset before the growth happened was that production bonus that you rolled out. Making it possible for somebody to be a team leader, to work on a career and have the earning potential very corre. Expand beyond just what they're used to in their current role. Even if their job title isn't expanding briefly.
[00:09:15] Speaker B: The bonus is if the company does well, you do well.
[00:09:18] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:18] Speaker B: You're paid on your hours. And we won't get into all the details here, but they're a little hard to explain over. We did a lot of work on it. Like we had attorneys involved. We had an accountant's involved. We had an HR consultant involved. Vincent Seth worked on it I think for a year and a half before we rolled it out. But you're right, that has been the difference. So I think to answer the question, we'd like to try to get you to see there's goodness here and growing.
[00:09:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: And I know like myself, we're going to be somewhere around 18 million in sales this year. This is the first time in my business career the last two years that I have been able to focus on what I do best, which is business development. Prior to that I did business development, but then I had to take that hat off and put on sales hat.
[00:09:57] Speaker C: Go do your sales quotes, which put.
[00:10:00] Speaker B: Which would cause problems.
Take off my sales hat and manage a job or a relationship with a client. And you're not. You think you're helping, but you're not.
[00:10:09] Speaker C: It's more efficient when people stay on their own in their lanes and work.
[00:10:12] Speaker B: On what and so now and, and I know, I believe every human being has a superpower. Like you're super. You are multi talented. You are. You are better than I am at a multitude of things. Your superpower is writing.
[00:10:25] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:10:25] Speaker B: You are gifted.
[00:10:26] Speaker C: Well, thank you.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: You are. My superpower is connecting people. That is my superpower for sure. And when you're not able to. To spend 80% or more of your time on your superpower, like we don't need you doing accounting. You could do it.
[00:10:40] Speaker C: You don't want me doing accounting.
[00:10:42] Speaker B: You could do it. All right. You're a smart, you're a smart person. But that's not where you best the, the differentiation and the value that you bring to the grow group is in the writing of content.
Taking my thoughts, making them better, challenging me, saying, I don't think that's really what you meant there. Didn't you mean this? Oh, yeah, you're right. Thank you. So I'm able now. So that's the thing, I think, to see growth.
[00:11:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: You need to see growth as first and foremost an opportunity for you. Okay. Because it is what's in it for me. Then you got to look and say, what's in it for my team if we grow? And that's where the harmony comes in, doing all that.
[00:11:17] Speaker C: And you said a good thing there too, like positioning the what's in it for me for your team.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: Yes. You got to look at it that.
[00:11:23] Speaker C: Way and thinking through and putting it in the language and just flat out even saying, this is what's in it for you. If this happens, if you stay with the team, if you get this certification, this is what will happen.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: When we've had a family dinner or we've gone on family vacation, how many times have you heard me asking you or your two younger sisters or your younger brother, what's a workplace like? What's up in there? How could we appeal to people your age better? Because I'm challenged. I don't understand. I'm 57. I don't know what makes a 24 year old or a 30 year old rock.
And so it's been a great experience there to try to connect, because I do think you have to try to walk a day in someone else's shoes to understand them.
[00:12:02] Speaker C: Yeah. Great. Okay, our next question. This is not about me. I don't think my boss has a family member working at our company that does not do a great job. How can I approach them and talk to them about this? I'm thinking about quitting as the culture is eroding. The employee isn't mean or anything, just in over their head, and we're all compensating.
[00:12:20] Speaker B: Oh, gosh, Emily, I have seen that so many times. I don't think that's you. I'm pretty sure I don't think it is. I, I, I don't even want to know who that's from right now. Maybe later you can tell me, but that is a challenge.
And you know, in 30 years of working with the owners and Leaders of landscaping companies. I have had to, on three or four occasions, tell the owner or the owners. Some. I remember one time was a husband and wife. I had to tell them that their son. I'm going to change his name. Charlie. I'm going to make it up.
Hey, you know, Dave and Lori, that's not their names. Charlie's a really nice kid, but he's not doing a good job here.
I don't think he likes the work. I think it's affecting the rest of the team. And I think you need to sit down and see if this is really what he wants to do. And there may. You may need to separate.
And I remember one time.
It was another time other than this one, with the husband and wife. The father said, if I fire Charlie, my wife is going to kill me. And I had to say, hold on a second.
Maybe this would be good for Charlie. Maybe, you know, Charlie's not doing a good job. And. And one of the reasons he may not be doing a good job is he doesn't like it.
[00:13:31] Speaker C: Right.
[00:13:31] Speaker B: Okay. It's not. It doesn't fill up his emotional bank account. So maybe you're holding him back by making him stay here. The question was, there's an employee that's a member of the family.
I think you have to have the guts, the kahunas, the insight, the foresight, whatever you want to describe it. And you need to go and say, hey, can I talk to you about something? That's really tough to talk about, but I feel it needs to be said just in case you're not recognizing this potential problem.
I love my job here at Grunder Landscaping. I. I love it. I love working here, and that's one of the reasons I'm coming to talk to you.
But Charlie, who I know is your son, he's a super nice kid, but he's frequently frustrating the rest of the team.
He doesn't follow up well on things.
And I'm just wondering. I know you're smart, you got a lot going on, but I'm wondering if you realize that this is a problem, because I'm afraid there's some people that are going to quit. I'm not to that point yet. Or if you are, you tell them that. I mean, and you talk to them. This. This is so easy to say, but hard to do. You talk to them in the way you would want that message delivered to you.
And I know people have been critical of me using this sandwich approach. They've said, oh, that's stupid. It doesn't work.
I find that it works, Emily. And the sandwich approach is you start out with something good. So I say, Charlie's a nice kid and. Or a nice person, whatever it is, and I enjoy him, and I see flashes of talent from.
But I also see areas where he's really struggling, and it's affecting the rest of the team.
And I care about the whole team, and I care about Charlie.
And I'm wondering, do you know how bad it is?
I'm wondering if maybe there's an opportunity for more training with Charlie. I'm wondering if maybe there's a different role for Charlie.
But I do want to let you know that we can't continue like this, or there's going to be problems.
And it just seems like this is something we could work out, because I really want to help this company grow.
I just can't imagine if this person has a rational owner and you were to have that conversation with them and be heartfelt and compliment and be sincere. All right? Don't do it on a Monday morning and probably don't do it on a Friday afternoon. Figure out what time during the week is best. And then if you have to, just say, hey, this is. This is so hard for me to say to you. I wrote down all my thoughts, so I'm gonna. I'm gonna go off my outline. Nothing wrong with that either. And quite frankly, I'll say to whoever submitted this question, if you want to. If you want to submit to us, you know, your talking points, I'm happy to get on a call with you because these are tough.
[00:16:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: I mean, and. And maybe the owner sees it.
[00:16:15] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: Okay, maybe he or she doesn't. But doing nothing isn't going to work, and you don't want to quit. Now. Maybe you do want to quit, and maybe you're so strong, but I just think you try the way you'd want to be treated as, you know, Emily, you're a family member. You work at the grow group. My son, your brother, just joined us a few weeks ago.
So, I mean, we could have something like that. And if I. I'd want somebody to tell me, like, maybe.
Maybe the. The family member that's in the company is too embarrassed to raise their hand and ask for help because they think, well, my last name is Grunder. I mean, I ought to know what a. I ought to know how to sell something. I mean, God, my dad sold. Like, maybe they're afraid to. You don't know.
[00:16:55] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: But I just don't. You know, it's like you're not feeling well, and you just think you're going to get better and you don't go to the doctor. That's dumb. I don't. Doing nothing is not going to help here.
[00:17:06] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think one thing you said there, the way you said it, you know, maybe don't come to the meeting, like, listing all of your complaints about the person, because this is probably going to be a more emotional conversation for the owner than it would be if it was just any other employee. But I know you've seen it with other employees where somebody's picking up somebody else's slack, and, you know, the managers aren't always seeing that. So it could just be even saying, you know, hey, I just wanted to let you know that Charlie isn't getting this done. We've helped get it done for him, and I just wanted to make sure you're aware.
[00:17:37] Speaker B: And I think be empathetic. And I think maybe whether it's a family member, maybe it's not a family member. Maybe it's somebody that you think the owner really likes. Yeah, maybe you. You say, like, look, I. I can only imagine what you go through trying to make this company work. Like, let. Let them know you understand that this isn't easy. But I think you're right. If you just came in with a long list of what everyone does wrong, you better be prepared to be told what you're doing wrong, too. Those conversations.
I want somebody to come to me with solutions.
[00:18:05] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:05] Speaker B: Or at least an attempt at thinking through one, not just coming through and telling me I suck at everything.
[00:18:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: And offer up no constructive criticism or anything.
[00:18:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:15] Speaker C: Great.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: Great question, actually. And probably one that there's a lot of people listening right now is like, oh, my gosh, I had that situation myself, probably.
[00:18:23] Speaker C: Okay, our next question is about the H2B program. How do we get connected to the H2B program? Do you feel it's the best way to find good employees? Do you have good? The bad. This person said, thanks for all you do. I read your email every week and listen to your podcast.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: I love that. Well, thank you. I think the H2B program, ladies and gentlemen, is fabulous. I think it's one of the few things that our government does that they. It's a great program. Unfortunately, both sides of the aisle, the Democrats and the Republicans, I don't think neither one of them handle this very well.
And I think landscapers end up getting caught in the middle as a pawn.
If we did not have our H2B workers, Emily, we would have Major problems. We love them, as you know, and our American workers that are not here on a temporary work visa, they're citizens of the United States of America. They love them. They would not be able to get their work done. They would not be able to get their bonus if they didn't have these hard work.
[00:19:17] Speaker C: The year that we didn't get the HDB workers, we had almost 100% turnover in the field. For the, the other workers, it was horrendous.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I watch what these. And, and I'm not trying to be sexist. We only have H2B workers that are men.
I watch them work, the smiles on their faces, the physical effort that they put forth. We've got several H2B workers that have just thrived. They've come in here and really tried to do better and make. Make the place better and, and they were rewarded in return. So, you know, I highly recommend the program.
As far as recommending an agent, I don't have one that I would recommend. Yeah, you know, that I would say go call this one. If you want to reach out to our office, we can give you a couple more. You know, we can give you some more ideas. And maybe we should do a grow show just on the do's and don'ts of H2B, because I think we're fairly well licensed to talk about that. Yes, I think the program makes sense. It is expensive.
You have got to understand the laws and how you do things, so you don't put yourself in a legal position. There's all kinds of things. You know, we run in from time to time companies that come ask us for help in the grow group and they, they tell us things they're doing. I'm like, oh, my gosh, you can't do that with the H2B program. You're going to. If you get audited, you're going to be in trouble. So you got to be ready to play by the rules. It's not cheap.
But I think even, you know, you mentioned the company that had 25 to 30 people.
If I were them, I'd be looking at how I could get 10 H2B workers in there. You will. You will be able to stabilize a third of your workforce for the most part with those 10 H2B workers. There are definitely some do's and don'ts. Okay. You need to treat them the same way you treat the rest of your team. And I see sometimes I think companies go too far with that. Like, you're not going to take all your employees to the Grocery store. Why would you take them? Like, they got to learn how to do that on their own. That's called living. That's what this is all about.
So there's some things like that, but, yes, the program is excellent. Find a reputable company.
Don't go to your attorney who says, oh, I think I could figure it out.
Find one that specializes in H2B labor and then check the references and be.
[00:21:24] Speaker C: Very, very careful, because there are nuances to the program.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: There's a lot.
[00:21:28] Speaker C: You're always running a risk. It's a gamble every year if you're going to get your workers or not. So that's. That's always something you're risking. And every year we talk about, in the planning, and yes, you know, where I'm involved with the marketing, we talk about, okay, what's our plan B? If we don't get our workers, what are we doing? And, you know, we have to then pull out all the stops trying to recruit here, which we know is just not going to be as successful as.
[00:21:50] Speaker B: And, you know, I'll say this, and you may not like me saying this, but you also are going to have to be prepared for a little bit of negativity. Probably there's going to be people that assume you're hiring illegals.
You're not. Okay, that. I mean, I would never do anything like that. So there's that. The one thing I wanted to mention, and I want to give a shout out to nalp, the national association of Landscape Professionals, you should strongly consider joining nalp. If for nothing else, the advocacy that Andrew Bray and his team does, this program would be dead if it weren't for Andrew. And so you may even be able to reach out to NALP and have them help you with some best practices. Andrew there is very well versed in the program.
It's a wonderful program. I can't imagine if you, if you surveyed a hundred companies that use the H2B program, I would think all 100 would say they like it. Except for the uncertainty and this darn lottery that we go in every year and we're on pins and needles hoping we get the guys.
That's the. That's the downside. And hopefully the Trump administration can work with the Democrats and they figure out a permanent solution, because this is about American business. This is about getting things done that we're not going to get done. Otherwise, there's not a workforce out there to do it.
[00:23:04] Speaker C: Yep, for sure.
Okay, moving on to metrics. This person said they were inspired by GROW 2025 in Columbus.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: Thank you for coming.
[00:23:13] Speaker C: They want to share numbers with their team. After seeing how that was done, where should they start? What numbers should they share?
[00:23:18] Speaker B: That is such an easy question to answer. It's not even funny. The. You know what?
[00:23:22] Speaker C: It is the first efficiency rate.
[00:23:23] Speaker B: It is. And the efficiency rating is a budgeted hours divided by the actual hours. The reason I like that number is we all sell time.
And so whether you speak English or not, if you bid a job for 100 and it took 115, even your non English speaking team will say, no bueno, that's not any good. You don't have to be an accountant or a whiz to figure that out. Yeah, but if you bid the job for 100 and it took 95, that's Bueno. That's good.
So that is definitely in the world, according to Marty Whammy, the best number to start with is that. And that's actually where we started a long time ago at starting to bring some accountability into that and get people to understand that we've got to be managing our time wisely. And then we've gone on to indirect time and a whole host of other metrics that we follow.
I don't think we have so many metrics. I think when you measure so many things, you're measuring nothing. We've got about six critical metrics that we focus on and the efficiency rating is one of them. Yeah, and that's a great place to start.
[00:24:25] Speaker C: Important to explain to your team any metrics that you're going to share with the whole team. It's important to explain what they are and what they mean. That efficiency rating is one we really like at the Grow group because it's such an easy one to explain.
[00:24:37] Speaker B: So.
[00:24:38] Speaker C: But the explanation is almost as important, if not more so.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: I think efficiency rating and then the second one I would focus on kind of ties in with that as well. I'll give just two more. Is that okay?
[00:24:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: The second one is indirect time, on site time. You're trying to have a team be incentivized to get out of the yard in the morning, to not be wasting time, to not take the longest route to the job. So we focus on that.
And this is going to sound impossible to comprehend, folks.
Our on site time prior to January of 2020 when we went live with Aspire was 67%.
So it meant 33% of every hour was not billable. It's now 93%.
And we, we went through and we, we used the route optimization on aspire to organize routes better. We set up our trucks better. We looked at work tickets and things and inefficiencies that we had and we just went nuts on it the last five years. So there's that one, then the last one that I would focus on because at the end of the day, your best form of marketing is a job well done.
So if we have happy clients, what don't we have? We don't have callbacks. So track the callbacks as well. And I think if you start out with efficiency rating, you look at your on site time and you look at callbacks.
If you're a million dollar year contractor in Topeka, Kansas, I think that would be a great place to start those three metrics.
[00:26:03] Speaker C: Yeah, I agree. And I think the important thing there is the biggest, the biggest drop or I guess gain on efficiency was that route optimization.
[00:26:12] Speaker B: That was the biggest.
[00:26:13] Speaker C: If there was one single, it was huge in that jump that we fixed. It was that route optimization.
[00:26:18] Speaker B: And just to give a little more color on that, our slogan. What's our slogan?
[00:26:23] Speaker C: Our service is always in season.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: So it just got out of hand, folks. And what happened was if Emily wander yard mode on Wednesday and I'm her next door neighbor and I wanted my yard mode on Friday, we went into the neighborhood on two separate occasions and weren't being compensated fully for that.
So then we went to Emily and we said, hey Emily, your lawn gets mowed on Wednesday. Your neighbors gets mowed on Friday. Would you have a problem if we just moved you to Friday?
And sometimes Emily would say, I don't really like that. I don't want anybody in my yard on Friday.
Okay, well we can probably do it on Friday, I'm not sure.
But we're going to have to raise the price to mow your lawn by another 30% and I don't really want to do that. If you would agree to move to Friday, I don't have to raise the price. And what do you think? 99% of the people said, oh, that's.
[00:27:10] Speaker C: Fine, just mow it on Friday.
[00:27:11] Speaker B: Exactly. And all you had to do was have a logical argument presented. Yeah, we around. I forget it's close to 30% of that time was on bad routing.
[00:27:20] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: And we just, it got out of hand. Like the whole focus was on where service is always in season.
But we went too far with it. Yeah, okay. And we lost control of it and it eroded profitability. But it wasn't like it was a drip. You didn't see it until you started digging Deeper. The one thing I think that matters, that's. That's really important with this is when you're doing things like that, you're gradually increasing your price.
[00:27:45] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:27:46] Speaker B: Okay. And so you're not being competitive in the neighborhood now, because we're there, we could be more competitive, and the route density becomes something that we stay focused on. And we made an impact back there.
[00:27:56] Speaker C: Yeah. And you were able to avoid raising maintenance.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. We just raised them this year for.
[00:28:01] Speaker C: The first time since.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Six years.
[00:28:03] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: Six years. Five years.
[00:28:05] Speaker C: So now prices went up.
I. Sometimes we say that and people, like, think we're nuts and we're lying. We're not lying. We didn't raise prices on existing maintenance contracts, but the prices for, like, a design build job, if you were having a patio.
[00:28:18] Speaker B: No, but the labor. The labor rate on the maintenance, we were able to get far more efficient with that. And that's true.
[00:28:24] Speaker C: And so we were able to absorb some of those.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: Yes. And it made us competitive in the marketplace. And. And we were. We have always been known in Dayton, Ohio, as doing great work, but we. Our price was up there.
[00:28:36] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: So now we had great quality work, great service, and a good price.
[00:28:40] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: You can't beat us.
[00:28:41] Speaker C: Right.
[00:28:42] Speaker B: And that's where we've been able to grab market share.
[00:28:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:28:44] Speaker B: That sounds cocky and arrogant, but that's what we've done.
[00:28:47] Speaker C: Yeah. And it's worked. The next metrics question. What metrics do you review in a sales meeting with the wholesales team versus what do you review with individual salespeople?
[00:28:56] Speaker B: You know, there's really not a difference. There's so much transparency. You just left the sales.
[00:29:00] Speaker C: I did. I was in the sales meeting this morning.
[00:29:02] Speaker B: So everybody's totals, like, you know, Grant has to say, my goal for the year is a million. He's brand new to sales. My goal is a million.
[00:29:12] Speaker C: Bad example. Because his goal is zero.
[00:29:13] Speaker B: Yeah, he's brand new. Okay, Well, I. Well, we'll just say the name's Grant. But don't.
[00:29:17] Speaker C: Yeah, he's.
[00:29:18] Speaker B: That's my son's name. But don't.
[00:29:19] Speaker C: Don't.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: So Grant. So Grant has to say, my goal is a million.
I'm at 340,000. I have to sell $20,000 a week for the rest of the year to hit my goal. I mean, that. I don't think there's anything that we're not talking about in that meeting that's not going in the one on one.
The difference would be in the one on one, our sales ops Don is going to dig deeper and ask more probing questions. Like, hey, I looked at your calendar and you don't have any sales calls on it next week. How are you going to make any sales? Your goal is to have five proposals a week, and the last two weeks you've only done two. You're not doing the activities that are required to do to win.
And so that would be the difference. Like, we're not going to call anybody out in public. Right. I always say chastise in private, praise in public, but you are going to have to say your numbers. And there is some blunt talk. You saw me today in training.
[00:30:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: All right. And I don't know if you recall or not, but I said, hey, listen, I understand you're busy and there's a tendency to sit around and complain. I would encourage you not to complain. Take that energy and just go get it done. There's work out there. You can find it. Trust me, I understand. It's frustrating that somebody didn't go with you or whatever. Just shrug it off and go get to work.
[00:30:35] Speaker C: And there were definitely like a couple weeks where across the board, the whole sales team was behind on. No, but nobody hit their sales goal. They have a weekly sales goal, and there were a couple weeks where nobody had it. We did not hit the weekly goal at the team. A lot of that was probably. I mean, honestly, you could chalk it up to external factors. Those were two spring break weeks, and.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: Some of it we were reloading. You know, you're spending a week doing proposals. Somebody wasn't in town to meet. There are some things, you know, so you can't just take a bad week or two and think that that's the trend.
[00:31:06] Speaker C: Right. And it wasn't the sales meetings. Those weeks were not like, it wasn't like everybody was in trouble.
[00:31:11] Speaker B: No, that's.
[00:31:11] Speaker C: It's just. This is where we're at.
[00:31:12] Speaker B: If you're in trouble, it's going to be behind closed doors and we're going to be talking.
[00:31:16] Speaker C: Right.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: I mean, we don't. We don't mix words. I mean, it is what it is, but there's really no difference in the metrics that we share and where we go there.
[00:31:25] Speaker C: Yep. Okay. Awesome. Moving on to production related questions. This is one we get all the time. Should I buy or lease my truck?
[00:31:33] Speaker B: Well, that's funny you say that. I think you should buy them. Okay.
[00:31:37] Speaker C: Is it funny because your answer changes?
[00:31:40] Speaker B: No, I just. Whenever I am reminded of that and my very first peer group that I put together 23 years ago, we toured an H vac company outside of Philadelphia and the guy told us he bought all of his trucks, he paid cash. Then when we went behind the scenes and talked to the people, we found out that's not. That's not at all the case. So whenever somebody says that, I laugh. Sorry.
We don't lease. The only thing we lease here are copiers. There is a possibility going forward we could lease some of our snow.
[00:32:09] Speaker C: I was going to say some of the snow removal.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: Leased or the loaders are the loaders. Some of the loaders are. We have a wonderful program with John Deere. Big shout out to John Deere on the loaders. But that's a little bit different situation. There's 10 or 15 loaders that we have on lease and we have them to do our snow removal efforts, our trucks and mowers and everything else we buy. And we just have not been able. Seth, our president, is a math whiz and a finance whiz.
We have not been able to see a situation or an analysis where it made sense to. To lease those things.
The John Deere program that we did on the loaders made terrific sense. And I would highly recommend if you're in snow removal or even if you're not, you might want to look out into their program. They got a great program for that. But for the most part, we buy.
[00:32:56] Speaker C: But your answer really is. It depends.
[00:32:59] Speaker B: It is. Depends on what?
[00:33:00] Speaker C: Finance.
[00:33:00] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, five years ago I would have said we would never lease anything, but when this opportunity was presented to us from John Deere, it just didn't make sense to buy them. So what we're hoping is we'll lease these, we're going to take good care of them, and at the end of the buyout, they hopefully will be worth more than what the buyout is, and we can make money, maybe buy them and add them to the fleet or turn them in on new stuff.
So that's some tricks we've learned from being in the snow removal from other successful contractors. The other thing is a lot of our trucks, you know, like our box trucks with the lift gates and the gas tanks, and those are specialized pieces of equipment and we're going to keep them 10 to 15 years. So it just doesn't seem to make sense in how we look at things to be leasing those things and cash.
[00:33:40] Speaker C: Or financing in that same.
[00:33:43] Speaker B: That depends on where we're at. We have like a peg balance that Seth and I like to have in cash. And when we go below that, we're not going to touch that. And we'll look at financ cost of capital. The last two years been very expensive. I mean, the rates are higher. So, you know, we're financing most of our stuff, but there are things from time to time that we pay cash for. But I would say most of it's finance trying to leverage and the decision.
[00:34:08] Speaker C: There is just what rates are available, what cash you have on hand and how badly you need the piece of equipment.
[00:34:14] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:34:15] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:34:15] Speaker B: I mean, we have a. A very large loader. It was like a $225,000 loader. We didn't pay cash for that. We went to John Deere and financed that. So we bought a couple Z sprays that Toro Exmark makes. We those were, I don't know, 15,000 apiece. We paid cash for those. So we're kind of, you know, we're playing angles. I know, like Vermeer. We have Vermeer, many skid steers. They have a wonderful program out right now. 0% financing. I don't think they're going to give you a cheaper price if you don't finance it. So why would you not finance, you.
[00:34:44] Speaker C: Know, use your cash for something?
[00:34:45] Speaker B: Yeah. A lot of this is about leverage. It's about, you know, what is the cost of capital and how can I navigate those waters to make a better return overall in the business?
[00:34:53] Speaker C: Yeah. Okay, next question. What are a few things I can do to boost my team's productivity? We have to figure out how to do more with less this year.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: Any labor saving piece of equipment that you can do. I just mentioned Vermeer. Big shout out for their mini skid steers. I think every landscaper in America should be looking at that. That's a great tool.
[00:35:11] Speaker C: Unless you only do maintenance work.
[00:35:13] Speaker B: Yeah, but even if you do maintenance work, there's. Well, there's just things that come up from time to time. I mean, you're still going to do a little bit of enhancements. I think dump trailers in combo with dump trucks are a real smart way to add capacity or to allow to dump debris on one and carry your material in the other. I think those are great. The mulch mule that was invented by Todd Pugh is something that we're very fond of, a material handling piece. I think anything like that is smart. And then I'll go into technology. Obviously Aspire. We're enormous fans of what that has brought for our business. It's changed our life. We have a lot of our contractors. Most of them are smaller that run element. We Also have great respect for what they do. Element owns Greeniest, a wonderful training platform that also talks with Aspire. That's a huge, you know, when you're seeing here things like, how can we get more productivity? I think you could make an argument that training your team is probably the best way. You know, and Greenius enables us to standardize a lot of our training. We're super excited. We've got some products that, you know, we're working on with them and a partnership. So there's some things down the road with that. And then I just think there's all kinds of things you can do. Like, we have monitors down here that are recognizing people for a job well done. And you might think a monitor and a picture of a job, like, how does that improve productivity? If somebody comes in here in the morning and they feel good about themselves and they feel that somebody loves them or cares about them and recognize them for a job well done, you don't think they're going to go out of here and work better.
So I think you know the answer to that. We could probably talk for two hours on how do you make your team more productive?
Get them the vision, clarity of purpose on where we're going is very, very powerful. Get them the tools, get them the training, work with them. The folks that are producing, make investments in them. That's why it's so important to get poor performers off your team.
The poor performers on your team, you leave them around too long, they end up taking all your time when you should be devoting that time to the people that are doing the best for the company. You know, my wife and I just had a meeting with our money manager, and we very quickly talked about a couple stocks we own that are performing poorly. Get rid of them. Just go. And we focused on the good investments. I think it's the same way, like, yeah, I don't mean to be trivializing or talking down about your people, but your people are your greatest asset. So you've got to be empowering them, getting them the right tools.
We would never have anybody, for example, drive around an unsafe truck. Like, why would I do that? Right? We care about them. We want them to feel good. We want them to know we care about them. And I think the team member that knows that you really, truly care about them, I think that's the one that's most productive.
[00:37:48] Speaker C: And some things, when you send monitors to your group leaders, have a workstation with extra monitors, just helping them be more efficient when they are in the office.
Another thing and There's a great example of why this meeting is important. Your estimate estimation standardization meeting where they review any job that comes in. Are you 15 or 15% higher over.
[00:38:11] Speaker B: Budget or 15% below budget?
It's not a finger pointing hillbilly yell at each other. It's just talking logically. Why did this job come under in hours and why did it go over?
And Seth, the over part I've always talked about, but I never talked about the under hours and I never really understood why Seth want us to do that. Now I understand.
Because if you're overcharging someone, you're opening that account up to be taken by a competitor. And we don't want to do that. We want to get it where we're making our margin. And it's good for them and it's good for us.
[00:38:42] Speaker C: Right. And there was one property specifically, it was a few years ago. You guys did the maintenance contract. You do the spring cleanup every year?
[00:38:49] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:38:50] Speaker C: Two years in a row. It's under hours, does just fine. One year. It's way over hours.
Looking back, when they went to review the property, they realized the problem was that when it gets too wet, when.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: It gets too wet, you can't go around the right side of the house. You have to go around the left side of the house. The right side of the house is like 30 steps with a wheelbarrow. The left side is like 95.
[00:39:11] Speaker C: So it's taking way more time.
[00:39:13] Speaker B: It took 80 plus hours when we did it when it was wet. So it's like, news flash, make a note on that. This job is not to be done when it's wet.
[00:39:20] Speaker C: And they just move that one up.
[00:39:22] Speaker B: But so many companies, Emily, they don't learn from their mistakes and they keep repeating them. And then they don't make money.
[00:39:27] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:39:28] Speaker B: You know, and they and this going to sound arrogant, but they come in here and they're like, you guys are unbelievable. I can't believe what you do. Well, look, it's not that hard, but.
[00:39:36] Speaker C: We'Re keeping track of little things like that though. You need a system or else you.
[00:39:40] Speaker B: Got to be intentional about it. It's not. It's like my book the nine super simple steps to entrepreneurial success. The steps one needs to take to be successful in business and life. They're very easy to understand.
The implementation of them is hard. Same thing with that. It's very easy to have a recap meeting and get in the cadence of that. It's hard to stay on top of that and be. And be putting Notes in on those tickets that don't get bid that way again.
The other side that can happen is you just say, oh, we did it for 81. I got to raise the price.
[00:40:08] Speaker C: Right.
[00:40:09] Speaker B: Nobody did any analysis. She says, oh my gosh, the price went up by 30%. Forget that, I'm going to find somebody else.
[00:40:16] Speaker C: Right.
[00:40:16] Speaker B: We don't want that happening.
[00:40:17] Speaker C: Right, Right.
[00:40:18] Speaker B: The more work we can do that we can repeat and put the same crew on the next year.
Here we go.
[00:40:24] Speaker C: Yeah. And now that property is just one that if it's raining the week that they're scheduled for, we don't do it.
[00:40:29] Speaker B: And she knows why. We tell her why.
[00:40:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:40:31] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:40:32] Speaker C: Well, it also benefits them because it makes more MMOs if it's super wet. Just with the drainage situation on that property. So.
[00:40:38] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:40:39] Speaker C: Okay. The next production related question. Can you share more about making your cruise pack lunches and how else you minimize stops during the day? This kind of goes with productivity.
[00:40:49] Speaker B: It does.
There's a speedway gas station less than a mile from our office here and almost every single one of our competitors stops in that speedway.
[00:40:59] Speaker C: I've needed gas before.
[00:41:00] Speaker B: While they're all. And they're all in there and they're browsing the aisles and they're talking and they're wasting time. They're opening up their trucks to get hit, to get stolen out of. Sounds terrible. We don't do that.
[00:41:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:41:13] Speaker B: In fact, all gas stations and stuff are geofenced. An alarm goes off if you go.
[00:41:17] Speaker C: In them and you have gas tanks on.
[00:41:19] Speaker B: We have gas tanks on site.
[00:41:20] Speaker C: So that's where they're filling up.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: Yes. And our mentality here is get into work early and we'll get you home early. Okay. If we can. Now a lot of our H2B workers, as you know, they want the hours and they stay out and we fill them up with work.
[00:41:32] Speaker C: They'll take whatever overtime we can give them.
[00:41:34] Speaker B: We don't allow our team members to go out to lunch. Now if they have to use the bathroom. Look, we're not cruel. You gotta go use the bathroom, then be smart about it. But again, we're a very incentivized workforce. Like our team is incentivized to have more on site time. The more hours they work and the better the jobs perform, the more money they make. It's very clear. We have a dial. They're watching it weekly and there's quite a spirit centered around this.
So I just never been a fan of that. I understand you may not the first couple of weeks you may not like making your lunch the night before, but, Emily, I'm weird. I mean, I.
I have a little cottage cheese and a protein shake every morning for breakfast. The night before, I fill up this cup with ice. I put my can of black cherry sparkling water next to it. My cottage cheese, my protein shake. I go in there in the morning, I get it, I take it out. I lay my clothes out the night before. I'm weird. Okay. I think once you get in the groove of your team doing that, it's not that hard.
[00:42:32] Speaker C: I don't think it's something that we hear complaints about.
[00:42:35] Speaker B: Well, it's also healthier. Okay. And it's also cheaper. All right? You go out to lunch every. I mean, Chipotle. Now. I went there the other day to get a salad, and I got double chicken on the salad. It was like $23. I'm like, are you kidding me? I mean, forget it.
[00:42:48] Speaker C: Right?
[00:42:49] Speaker B: So that's why we do that. And we don't. Sometimes when we hire somebody from another company and they come here, they don't like that at first, but they usually figure it out, you know, and it just means a little bit better planning on the team members part over the weekend, get some cold cuts or have something made. And our Mexicans and El Salvadorians, you ought to see the stuff they bring in. I mean, they're like. They must be master cooks on the weekend. I don't think it all bringing it. I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:43:17] Speaker C: Okay, then this is our final question. Production related. This person. This is a specific one that what are you doing for deer and rabbit control? They spray and use systemic tablets, fencing and burlap over the winter. But it seems to be more of a concern every year for their clients.
[00:43:34] Speaker B: That's a rough one.
[00:43:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:43:35] Speaker B: You know, the thing with deer, what I've learned about deer is if they're hungry, they'll eat darn near anything. I don't have a great answer for that. You know, I don't have a great answer. My friend Kurt Upham out east has a deer repellent company that's doing really, really well. Maybe we bring him on sometime and talk about it. But that they are a challenge. I mean, I have seen them just destroy taxes. I have seen them stomp all over my gardens. You. You know, at my house. I mean, I have a herd of them.
[00:44:05] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:44:06] Speaker B: So I don't have a great answer for that. The deer are tough. I mean, God put them here, and you got to try to work around them, but they're they're tough. I probably would look up someone I also know. Save a tree is a is a large national presence franchise that we've had some experience with a lot of their locations.
Do a deer repellent. I would probably try to focus on a pro that could help you. You know, we get all into self performing our own work and trying to do everything. I don't think that's always smart. I think there are subcontractors you can rely on that can really help you save a treat. As deer repellent, we rely on all kinds of subcontractors. One of our best is Bartlett tree experts. They do an awesome job for us. If a storm is coming, guy, our local representative will say, hey, just want to let you know we're on standby if you need anything, we're there for you. Now. We do a lot of business with them and it's taken years for us to get that rapport with them. And they're awesome. But I think whether it's deer repellent, an electrician, a plumber, a mason, a concrete subcontractor, a grading subcontractor, there are a lot of avenues that you can get something resolved for your clients and.
[00:45:13] Speaker C: People with expertise beyond your own.
[00:45:15] Speaker B: Talking about expertise, Site one props us up on so many problems, it's incredible. Steve Harken Meyer, our local rep at site one is a godsend, helping us with lighting, with irrigation, with drainage, with plants, with pavers.
He was just down in our Loveland branch working with our team on some things down there. So there's a lot of companies out there that will help you get around any of these challenges. In fact, if you have a local site one branch, you may even want to ask them about deer and what they can do to help you there. I think telling your clients, no, you got to be careful of that. They might find a landscaper that tells them yes, and then you get booted out. So I think there's always value in look, we don't do that. But you're a client. Let me find some solutions for you. So they continue to come to you to look for solutions. That's what you want them to think. You want them to think they can't get what they're getting from you, from anyone else. That's where relationships people do business with people they know like and trust, and that's how you seal all those deals.
[00:46:08] Speaker C: Okay, great. Moving on to marketing.
The question was, what do you spend on marketing and what does a good marketing plan look like?
[00:46:16] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh you're asking me that? I'm not really sure.
[00:46:19] Speaker C: Ask Marty anything. So they sent the question.
[00:46:21] Speaker B: Did you do this to stump me? I don't know. Percentage wise, what we spend, is it around 1%?
[00:46:25] Speaker C: 1% is typically that.
Typically that's the benchmark we like to see for our ACE peer group members is 1%. But it can vary a lot depending on what your, your growth goals are.
[00:46:37] Speaker B: I know we're finding with our lawn care endeavor, you gotta spend a lot more on that.
[00:46:41] Speaker C: Percentage wise. Yeah.
[00:46:42] Speaker B: Ye.
[00:46:44] Speaker C: And even with the growth goals that we've had for Grunder Landscaping the past few years, we're 1% is. You know, it can feel a little.
[00:46:52] Speaker B: Tight to get what we want topic to. We're probably almost close to wrapping up. I think it's a good topic to finish on one of the things and I don't know if it was your idea, just happened naturally as you go into the sales meetings.
[00:47:04] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:47:05] Speaker B: Because you're going to the sales meetings where the front line is and you're hearing where we don't have sales or where we might have issues or where we've had success.
And you can then get in concert with that and our social media team and get a message out there that may resonate with someone to call us.
[00:47:20] Speaker C: Yep. And there's a lot of things we can do that that only cost us our time. Like organic social media. Now that's a little bit different because we do have subcontractors who help with us, but we pay them monthly. So it's not like it costs us any extra to have the social media post be about something that we know is going to be super relevant. So why wouldn't we make it relevant? Email marketing. So sending out emails to our client list, again, that's something. We have a service set up so that it's set up for us. We pay for the service but it doesn't matter whether we send one email marketing or 10 throughout the year, it's going to cost the same. It's just our time to set it up. So those are kind of the first triggers I like to try to pull when, when we know we have something one off this time of the year. It's a lot of drainage. Drainage related problems in our area are really big and we're just looking for a lot of hardscaping work. So we're, we're trying to drum up any business there and you know, patios, pavers, drainage, those are kind of the big three that I've been working on.
[00:48:15] Speaker B: Messaging around lately what a good marketing plan looks like is one that is targeted towards your sales goals. And I, and I will tell you I often see marketing from companies that I just, I don't understand.
I see a postcard sent out with a picture of a terrible looking job.
I see postcards sent out on aerations.
The money you're going to make off a narration. I don't understand how that could ever make sense.
[00:48:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:48:40] Speaker B: I think a good marketing plan is one that you're putting something on paper which is great and you're learning and you're evolving and you're going to grow and you're talking to other people that are doing marketing. You're listening to the grow show Powered by Steel, you're coming to a field trip, you're talking to Emily, but you're not just talking to Emily, you're talking to other people around the country and you're constantly working. So I think a good marketing plan would be one that's never finished.
[00:49:03] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:49:03] Speaker B: And you have a strong desire to try to get better with it.
[00:49:06] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think the other thing you have to keep in mind, and it's kind of to both these questions, the spend and the budget and the marketing plan, some marketing tactics are more expensive than others.
So use the more cost effective options for your lower price services. Right. So we've had great success with emails that are selling just mosquito control as an add on service.
Great, great success. It doesn't cost us anything to send that out and it's a relatively low cost add on for our clients. So that one's for that example. But if I was going to send it, I wouldn't send a postcard just for mosquito services because we don't make enough on that for the expense of a postcard mailing. But yeah, a good marketing plan. To your point, Marty, the only thing I'd add to what's on the sales goal is just what does your production capacity look like? Sometimes that changes. Sometimes your sales goal is this. And then maybe you have a team.
[00:49:58] Speaker B: Member completely booked on hardscaping or you.
[00:50:00] Speaker C: May, whatever Y and we've had it happen in the past where you know, maybe, maybe a key hardscaping team member, a team member with a lot of hardscaping experience leaves the company and now all of a sudden our hardscaping capacity is reduced.
[00:50:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:50:11] Speaker C: And so we need to shift and we need more landscaping work instead of hardscaping. So, so it's important to have both of those and then in mind.
[00:50:18] Speaker B: Who is your ideal client? Who do you make money off of. Who do you enjoy? Location.
[00:50:22] Speaker C: The location is really big. Yeah.
[00:50:24] Speaker B: So it's a lot of things. It's not just, you know, out here with this, throwing these messages everywhere and getting a, you know, being swayed by some guy that does a local magazine and wants to put a full page ad. I don't think those things work.
[00:50:36] Speaker C: We barely do any.
[00:50:37] Speaker B: We don't do that. We don't need that.
[00:50:38] Speaker C: Yeah, we maybe do.
[00:50:39] Speaker B: We may. We may need to do that in Cincinnati, but in Dayton, Ohio, people know who we are. Yeah, that's not going to help us. I guess I shouldn't say that's not going to help us. We have other things we know that work that we want to put more money in before we do that. That would be a better way to say it.
[00:50:52] Speaker C: And we might have just different priorities. Like this year, specifically, we're saying no to a lot more of those, like.
[00:50:58] Speaker B: Local magaz, because we gotta go down.
[00:51:00] Speaker C: To Cincinnati because we're spreading across two different locations. We just redid our website, which was expensive. So we've got some other expenses in the budget this year that were for just different priorities. It doesn't mean that those marketing tactics are necessarily bad or they aren't worth your time or money. You just have to decide what your priorities are because you can't do it all.
[00:51:17] Speaker B: It's just not going to work. You just nailed it. What are your priorities? Like, what's the goals of the business? And then how is this plan going to help us meet other people that can do this?
[00:51:27] Speaker C: Yeah, And I'll tell you too, like, we had our marketing plan. I think we finalized the marketing plan, like January, maybe 15th, and I think by February 1st, we had already changed it.
[00:51:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:36] Speaker C: So that's what happens. It's fluid. That's how.
[00:51:38] Speaker B: That's what it should do. Like you're seeing how you're doing and what adjustments you make to get it back on course.
All right, Any more questions?
[00:51:46] Speaker C: Very last one.
[00:51:46] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:51:47] Speaker C: If you want to tackle this one, I didn't have a category for this one. So, about vertical integration methods or thoughts, do you have any thoughts about somebody who maybe wants to consolidate their supply chain, find other ways to integrate to improve their cost effectiveness?
You did it a little bit with lawn care.
[00:52:02] Speaker B: With lawn care, we have.
[00:52:04] Speaker C: You brought that in house.
[00:52:05] Speaker B: We make our own soil and compost, so we do that in house.
[00:52:09] Speaker C: But beyond that, would you ever grow your own plants?
[00:52:11] Speaker B: No, no way.
[00:52:12] Speaker C: Would you ever buy your plants and keep them on site?
[00:52:16] Speaker B: No, no, we're in a hotbed. We have landscape hub, we have site one that do a wonderful job. So supplying us with that, it just wouldn't, it would never make any sense. That's not what we're good at. We used to have a mechanic. Okay. We. You could make an argument that I, with. I forget how many trucks we have now. 70 trucks. Yeah, I probably should. I, I probably financially could justify building a building and work on our stuff and work on stuff for others.
I'm a landscaper. I want to focus on that. So we got rid of the lift. We got rid of the mechanic or the mechanic got rid of us, I guess. And we didn't replace them. We just, you know, we have someone come in and wash our trucks. We, we're landscapers and we want to stay focused on that. And we're in the hotbed for nursery and all that stuff. Like it's just not a problem getting material. So.
[00:52:59] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah.
[00:53:00] Speaker B: We'll continue to make our own compost because it makes sense. In our own soil, because it makes sense. We're doing lawn care because we were subcontracting that out. We could self perform it. I don't think we'll ever be cutting down our own trees or anything like that.
We are delving more into some construction services. So I could see us maybe doing that. But you know, as far as growing stuff, I mean we want to be good at growing people and having them help us to where, you know, Seth and I have our sights set on a third branch here in a couple years. But to do that we're going to need a base to take to that third group. So. Third. Third branch office. So we're going to have to get to work here making sure we're developing those people. So we would prefer to spend our time on that than those. I just see. I'm not saying you can't do that.
[00:53:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:53:45] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:53:46] Speaker C: But we really like subcontractors.
[00:53:48] Speaker B: We do.
[00:53:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:53:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:49] Speaker C: It's just a different philosophy. I think then some companies go a different way. We don't have a problem with managing subcontractors. We enjoy working with them and it makes us able to focus on what we like and what we do best.
[00:53:59] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:54:00] Speaker C: So.
Okay. That's all I've got.
[00:54:02] Speaker B: Well, Emily, thank you.
[00:54:03] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:54:03] Speaker B: I appreciate you coming in. Those were some great questions. We hope we helped you folks. 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 would help us out a lot folks that helps more success minded landscape professionals find us. And if you really want to help us, take out your phone right now and text this edition this episode to your team or another landscape pro you know. Thanks for joining us this week on the Grow Show Powered by Steel. We'll talk to you next week.
[00:54:34] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Grow Show. A special thanks to the folks at Steele whose support makes this podcast possible and whose outdoor power equipment makes our jobs easier every day. Remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And head to growgroupinc.com to learn more about our other offerings or to find more information to help your landscaping business. We'll talk to you next week.
