Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to the Grow Show. Powered by Stihl. On the Grow show, we share ideas, tips, tactics and insights to help you grow your landscaping business. Based on our team's 40 years of experience running a landscaping company and working with other owners and their teams to do the same, new episodes are released weekly on Wednesdays. Here's your host, Marty Grunder.
[00:00:23] 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 Stihl. Today we're going to talk to Greg Cole from Cole Landscaping outside of Boston. I know you're going to love Greg's attitude and his story, 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 my new granddaughter, Harlow Vivian, who was born a couple weeks ago. I just got back from meeting her for the first time. She's adorable and is healthy. My daughter Katie is going to be a great mother and my son in law Ty, a great father. I am so blessed. I'm fortunate to have the super team I have here at Grunder Landscaping Company, led by our president, Seth Flum, which enables me and my wife to be able to spend a ton of time in the coming years in the great state of Connecticut where they live. God bless Harlow Vivian. May you grow up to be a great landscaper. Amongst other things. Now on to this week's edition of the Grow Show. Folks, the Grow show is designed to help you grow your business so you can spend time away from it. So let's pay attention today, my friend, Greg Cole. Greg, welcome to the Grow Show.
[00:01:42] Speaker C: Hey, Marty, Great to be here. Super excited. I love your podcast and everything you do for the industry. And something I didn't know. Congratulations on your granddaughter. That is awesome.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: So. So that's two grandchildren. And you know what that means, Greg.
[00:01:55] Speaker C: What does that mean?
[00:01:56] Speaker B: That means I'm old. So hopefully I've been trying to reverse the aging process. It's not really working too well, so I'll just keep trying.
[00:02:05] Speaker C: We're still waiting.
[00:02:07] Speaker B: I hear you. So you're outside of Boston. You are what I would define as a thriving member of one of our peer groups.
[00:02:16] Speaker C: Yes, we are.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got in the landscaping business. Tell us about your family. Tell us about how you got to this point with coal landscape.
[00:02:25] Speaker C: Well, it's funny. I went to school for carpentry. I soon realized that I didn't like it. When I graduated high school, I went to a trade school and I went out and started working for a landscape company. Couple companies in. I started running two crews doing some estimating and I asked for a raise. So I got 50 cents and now you're going to know how old I am because I got $10.50 total with no overtime and no benefits.
I left then and I started my own company in 1991.
Currently I got right now we have three children. My oldest is 32 and he works in IT. My middle daughter is 30, she works in financial and my daughter is in High Point University right now as a freshman.
[00:03:16] Speaker B: So great school.
I love that place.
[00:03:20] Speaker C: Yep. And I'm married to my wife for 11 years right now, Barbara. And she's the better half of me.
[00:03:28] Speaker B: I understand. Tell us a little bit more about Coal Landscaping. Your business mix, your sales volume, how many employees, trucks. Just give us a little bit of a feel for the scope. I know we've got some great pictures of your facility and so forth. We're sharing on the YouTube version here on the grow show powered by Stihl. But give us a little bit better understanding of your your size here and what you're up to.
[00:03:52] Speaker C: Right now we're about 60 maintenance, 30% construction, 10% snow.
We're at peak. We're about 65 people. We're just under 10 million and we've got, I don't know, 50, 55, 57 trucks, 30, 30ish loaders. Might have more, might have less. And about 70 trailers. That's on mix and we're just under 10 million. We're trying to break the ceiling and.
[00:04:20] Speaker B: I know a lot of our clients in the Boston area have been lamenting the lack of snow there. I guess the past couple of years. Huh.
[00:04:26] Speaker C: Oh, it's last year we had about 16 inches. The year before we had 11, which.
[00:04:33] Speaker B: Is just crazy for Boston.
[00:04:35] Speaker C: I know Our average is 45 to 50 depending on.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And so has that affected the market out there? Like have some people gotten out of it? Are they still holding true? Like if this goes back to normal, which you know, I'm relatively new to the snow. We're in it a big way now. But I know a lot of the smart contractors go by law of averages over a five year span.
If a big one comes, is it going to be good for you? You're going to be okay?
[00:05:02] Speaker C: Yeah, we're going to be fine. We're Seeing a lot of companies, the smaller guys going out, they just can't compete on the insurance and they just, they just can't have the insur.
And we see a lot of nationals coming in. But the nationals are quality, I'm just gonna say, is not there. Yeah, I understand companies like us that do high quality, good amount of volume, can service better than the Nationals.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: Right. What are some of the challenges you've gone through to get to coal here today?
[00:05:35] Speaker C: A lot. My biggest challenge was in 1997. I grew the business to about a million dollars that year. I know the exact name of the client location I took the job on. I ended bid by about 50, 60,000, and then I got burned by the client for 80,000.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Oh, no, Craig. So how did you overcome that?
[00:05:56] Speaker C: So we were 250,000 in debt in 97 and in today's volume, and that's got to be half a million or more.
I sought out a mentor and, you know, obviously the peer groups and things like that really weren't around back then. And a good friend, a mutual friend of both of us. Richard Gottschuk, super guy.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: What a great man. Yes.
[00:06:19] Speaker C: You think about salt of the earth people. And yes, he just won.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: And his. His wife, his kids.
[00:06:24] Speaker C: Oh, yeah.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: He is such a nice person. And he shout out to Rich. He's probably listening.
[00:06:29] Speaker C: He's gonna listen.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:32] Speaker C: And he took me under his wing for about three years as a mentorship. And 26 years later, we're best friends. We probably talk three or four times a week.
[00:06:43] Speaker B: Oh, that's awesome. I knew you were friends. I didn't know you were that close. That's a great story.
[00:06:48] Speaker C: Yeah.
And there's so many other things. I mean, we're trying to make the transition right now to get 85% recurring revenue. So 85% snow and maintenance and 15% construction.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: Why.
[00:07:05] Speaker C: Construction? There's a lot of risk, and if we don't manage it perfectly, the risk kind of gets away from you.
I love the maintenance model. It's just recurring. It's recession proof. It's easy to manage. Obviously the margins aren't there as construction, but it's just easier manage and scale. And if we're going to where we want to go in the next 10 years, we need to be 80, 85% maintenance.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: Right, exactly. And you well know, and I know you're not. You don't have thoughts of getting out yet, but if we're trying to, you know, the best premise an owner of a landscaping company can always take, I don't see how you can debate me on this is to set the thing up to sell. Not, not necessarily because you want to sell, but that's when you realize the utmost potential. You know, if you think about how the business gets its utmost potential, it's one that can run without heavily heavy involvement from the owner and the maintenance. The model is just so much easier to train it, to train team members and to slot to, to get over those ebbs and flows with the budgeting. You go and take on a million dollar construction job and you need to buy $50,000 worth of specialized equipment and you know, here we go. So, yeah, that's a, that's a good strategy. I want to go back to the, the issue that you had in 97. What did you learn from being in debt $250,000 and making a mistake? Because I think back to many mistakes I made. Unfortunately, Greg, when I was young, I don't think I let those mistakes ferment properly. And I made the same mistakes again. What did you learn permanently from that? What did you learn from Rich?
[00:08:46] Speaker C: Well, we had no job costing. We didn't know any of our hours. That was number one. We had no estimating software. We were doing it on pen and paper and whiteboards that, you know, obviously I still miss the whiteboards. I think we all do.
And just making sure we're pricing right and knowing our numbers. And Rick was or is a numbers person and it was all about profit, G and A overhead, direct costs, and I never knew any of that. And he taught me all of that. And I give him a lot of kudos because without him I probably wouldn't be where I am.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: Yeah. God bless Rick. That's. That's fantastic. That's just. So when you bid the job, you just guessed. You really didn't have any. You were just kind of guessing. Playing Russian roulette per se.
[00:09:32] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
I know in your peer group because I, you know, I hear what goes on in them. I know you've had a lot of personal changes that you've made in your life that have made you a better person and a better leader at Coal Landscaping.
I have seen it and I. Oh, it's amazing. And I wanted you in one of our peer groups for probably three or four, maybe five years before we finally got you to join. I remember meeting you for the first time. I enjoyed your company. I liked what you had to say. And for some reason you were hesitant to join, which is common. People don't, they don't. For whatever reason, they don't understand the peer group. They, they erroneously think I got to get a bunch of stuff fixed before I go into the group. What, what are the changes that happen? Because to me you seem like a completely different person. You're still a nice, friendly guy. It's not that, but I just see a different focus from you in the last five years. Can you talk to us about that?
[00:10:35] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean I've had so much personal growth over the last five years and really started with you at Grow 2020.
Adam from, I think was done right out of St. Louis and somebody else, very awesome man and great company by the way, challenged themselves to what's called a 75 hard challenge.
That night I was just like, what is that? And I was up all night researching it. And two days later I started the process which if anybody doesn't know, it's two workouts a day, a gallon of water a day, 10 pages of a self improvement book, no alcohol, no cheat meals every day for 75 days. It took me 120 days to complete it. So it tells you that when I failed myself, I failed myself at day 51. That was really transforming my body and my mind. Then from there I just started running and it took me six months to run one mile.
I was 104 pounds heavier back then.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: 104 pounds, folks. No zempic, no other artificial means or whatever you want to call it. It was just running and working out. Right.
So what did, as you saw those 104 pounds melt away, what did that do to you mentally, physically, financially? How did this change your life?
[00:12:03] Speaker C: Well, mentally it puts you in a different state of mind to say, I've run four miles this morning, I've worked out a second time tonight. So it's taken two hours in the morning or an hour at night and you're using two or three hours extra a day that you don't think you have. And when you schedule yourself properly, you understand you have plenty of time and it's just how you manage your day. And from there I just was very clear. I wasn't foggy. My staff noticed it and I was just happier all around.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: When you say you know you have the time, elaborate on that a little bit. What do you mean? I think I understand, but I think there's a great, maybe underlying lesson here around time management. And you know, what was the why to this? Just tell us about how you, you know, you made the comment there, you don't think you have the time, but you do. What do you mean? Tell Us, Tell us what you learned there.
[00:13:01] Speaker C: So everybody, and this is going to sound very raw, right? Everybody has excuses. Hey, I couldn't get to it.
I was doing this.
I planned my day. I only got 10% of my day done. When you're diligent and you are disciplined to run your day, when you run your day, even if you get 75, 80% of your day done, that's 50, 60% more than you would normally do it. And you find a way, it's no different than you with your new granddaughter. You find a way to go see the family, spend time with them and just be present someplace other than your desk or other than wasting time.
[00:13:42] Speaker B: So well said. And you know what? It makes me think about Greg. And we've talked about this, we've taught it at grow. I think you and I have talked about this because I remember I hadn't seen you for like six months and I can't remember what event we were at. And I came up and I said, what in the world happened to you? And it wasn't just the physical, like you had less weight on you. It was also just your energy level and your spunk and everything was so much different. I think the clarity of purpose can be so powerful that if we have a why and we know why we're doing something. I want to go see my granddaughter in Connecticut. She's an hour and a half flight away into New York City and then a 40 minute drive. It's not insurmountable. I can do that. I can be organized, I can work and get there. I know I can. You're absolutely right. You can't make excuses and say they're too far. I want to go see my granddaughter. I want to go see my daughter. I want to go see my son in law, my golf buddy. I love hanging with them. So you're right. When that stuff gets clear, it does make a difference, doesn't it?
[00:14:45] Speaker C: It does, but you have to write it down. And everybody says that, write it down, write your goals on paper. One note. However you take notes, it is just so true. When you put it down on paper, you commit to it and there's a level of accountability there.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: And so you still do that. You still write that down. Is there something you do every day? Is it a day out of the week? Tell us a little bit about how you stay on this because that's not easy.
[00:15:08] Speaker C: I have a tracker on my phone and I have about 16 different points that I track every day. And some days I complete 40% and some days I complete 100%.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: What are some of the things on the phone? Tell us.
[00:15:23] Speaker C: Well, eating. Right.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:15:25] Speaker C: Working out. I still work out every morning for an hour and a half.
Drinking a gallon of water a day. I still do reading 10 pages every day. It might not be 10 pages, it might be seven. But it's something to better myself.
Spending time with my family is one of them.
Mentoring somebody at work every day.
So what I try to do is help somebody out that they didn't think they needed help with or they're struggling with something every day.
[00:15:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:58] Speaker C: And moving the business in a positive direction daily.
[00:16:01] Speaker B: And is this an app you're using or you just have it on your notes? It's just a checklist.
[00:16:05] Speaker C: It's an app that I'm using. It's called Habit Tracker.
[00:16:08] Speaker B: Habit Tracker. I've seen it.
[00:16:10] Speaker C: Yeah, Very good.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: I do a similar thing. Like I, I use OneNote and I have a check in. I have things I do every day I have that I check off. I have things I do every week. In fact, Full disclosure, Inside Baseball. Vince is actually helping me with my duties for each company because my role has kind of changed a little bit. I'm actually more in a mentorship And a true CEO's role, or maybe not even a CEO, to be honest with you anymore. Greg. More of a mentoring role. And I struggled with that. Like I'm overstating my value if I thought I had to be here every day. But I also know I have a lot to help, I have a lot to offer and I have a lot of ways I can help. But if I'm not intentional about it, it seems like your days just kind of get away from you. The 10 minute conversation with the vendor that stops by turns into 45 minutes. And you do that twice a day and there goes an hour and a half. You know, it's not easy to lose the time. And my wife is still in Connecticut. I'm by myself and I did a list over the weekend on every day of what I wanted to get done. And last night I got home at 4:30, I walked five miles, I lifted weights, I went and had a healthy dinner by myself. And I got home and I'm like, I'm tired. And I looked and I had all these little honeydew things that I had to do. Change light bulbs, fix something on my wife's car that I think it was like those. I had to switch the license plate tag on. I had to take the COVID off, put the tag on. It was all These things, and there was about seven of them, and I got about three into them, and I'm like, darn it, I am checking off this list tonight. I am getting it. And I got. I got it all done. I got into bed at 9:30 right from doing them all, and I went right to sleep. I. It was. But I woke up this morning with this. Like, it sounds kind of silly and trivial, but a sense of accomplishment. Is that kind of what you go through?
[00:17:59] Speaker C: It is. It's motivating, you know? Yeah. I'm a. I'm a high D personality, so I love to check things off my list. And when I can hit that check button, I hear that little ding. Oh, my gosh. It's a good feeling. And then when I look back at yesterday and I see it completed like you did, it's just. It's energizing.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. And it sounds so silly. I hope our listeners here on the Grow show today. Powered By Stihl, we've got Greg Cole from Cole Landscaping with us. I hope you'll try some of these things. It sounds a little bit weird like. Like Greg and I are geeks. I'm older than Greg, but we're not. Yeah, we're not geeks, man. This. This stuff works. And as I listen to you, it's just kind of more, quite frankly, motivation for me that I hear you're doing all this, your great attitude and everything.
Where does that come from? I know things kind of change, but, you know, I didn't know you 20 years ago, so I don't know, like, was this good attitude always in you and the business and the extra weight kind of drug you down and now you're back or. Where did all this come from? Talk to us a little bit about that.
[00:18:58] Speaker C: I know you just. You're a technician and trying to run a business and you work in, you know, 12, 14 hours a day. You stop at McDonald's, Wendy's, wherever you. Wherever your hangout is. And. And you just. You don't eat right, you don't plan right, and next thing you know, you're getting mad with your employees because things aren't going right and you're micromanaging them, and you just get to a point in your life and you just say there has to be a better way. And that happened for me in 2018. And in 2018, I made a commitment to myself to change my life and change my business. And I feel that I've accomplished probably about 60% of what I want to right now. And I'm Always evolving. I love. I never liked change before, and I absolutely love change right now. And I love watching my people grow. And that gives me such energy to see somebody come in off the street that's never sold landscape before, and then he sells a million dollars his first year. It's just. It's amazing to watch that growth. Right.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: I can relate to what you're doing. I mean, you know, you drink sugary drinks, you eat fast food because you don't think you have time to make something healthy and carry it with you in your truck. And you put five pounds on a year and ten pounds, ten years later, you got fifty pounds on. It's not hard at all. You know, July or June 1st, I weighed in at 213 pounds. I'm at 193 now. I'm trying like heck when I jump up on Stage @GROW. February 24th, 25th, 26th, Columbus, Ohio, to weigh in at 189. I haven't weighed 189 since I was probably 32 years old, so. And I'm motivated. This is actually. This is very cathartic for me to listen to you, so thank you so much.
[00:20:49] Speaker C: More energy now, don't you?
[00:20:51] Speaker B: I do have more energy. I've always had energy. But, I mean, I really feel good now. I do. It's like. And that is motivation enough to stray away from the glazed donut or the, you know, the cheeseburger and all that stuff. It does. Again, it gets back to a similar premise in business, that when you're focused on who your ideal client is and who that ideal team member to serve that ideal client, when you focus on the right things, it's amazing how the other things in your business and the parallels in life, they just kind of work out.
[00:21:21] Speaker C: Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: You seem to have another ace or a local business person visit you every week. You're an open book.
You are. And it's awesome when I see you sharing because I follow you on social media and Vince has told me numerous times how fond he is of you and how open you are to sharing. You have little guys come see you, big guys come see you, members from your peer group come see you.
What is this philosophy all about? What do you get out of it? I mean, I know what you get out of it, but I want everyone to hear this.
[00:21:58] Speaker C: I think as you get older, you want to give back.
And I've taken a lot through my career with help with other people, and. And I just feel that it's time for myself to Give back. And I, I enjoy seeing people come visit us and we visit them.
ACE has meant I'm going to need a three I think Marty, is that right? Yeah.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: Three or four. Maybe four.
[00:22:21] Speaker C: Greg might be aces. Meant so much to me. And, and you know Ross and Kevin from Oasis down in Atlanta. David Amigo from G and G and Charlotte, Tony from Angelo's and Baton Rouge and all my other ACE members.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: Well, you got a great group. Those are, those are nice gentlemen that are family oriented and funny and aggressive and all the boxes.
[00:22:45] Speaker C: Yeah. And they just want to grow and they've, they've brought me to a whole new level business. And personally, I mean my daughter wouldn't be going to High Point. Opposable. David Amigo.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:22:57] Speaker C: And I've just learned so much. So I wanted to take that environment and bring it down a little more intimate. And what we do is we have people come up and see us. Usually on a Sunday. We spend a day together personally. We'll be out and we went out to Boston. They tour our facility.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:16] Speaker C: And they do the morning rollout. They watch the stretch and flex. They see everything that happens in the morning. We do town halls all day with all my key members of my staff and departments. And then we go out to dinner as a team together that night.
And then the next day they come in, we do a start, stop, keep and they're out the door. They're out the door by 11am so.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Very, very similar to what our peer group meetings are.
[00:23:40] Speaker C: And in that intimacy that we have, I've learned so much. Even from the smaller one, one and a half million dollar companies that are with us.
I've learned just so much.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: What do you learn from the small guys? Because I have a perspective I want to share, but I want to hear what you have to say about that. Why would you have somebody that has a company a fifth the size of yours come in?
[00:24:05] Speaker C: So fifth the size of us. So we just had somebody that told us is about a little over a million and they had this whole pressure washer set up at their facility. They showed us there was in a locked gate, hot gun. All the crews had to do was pull it out and watch their trucks. We, we adopted that now.
[00:24:21] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:24:22] Speaker C: I've learned that from, from a $1.1 million company.
The guys over at Summit Landscaping in Texas.
[00:24:30] Speaker B: I took it great boys.
[00:24:31] Speaker C: Yeah. I took their career ladder and I called them up and were you willing to share that? And they're like, yeah, I'll send it to you.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: They were host to grow in 2023, I believe.
[00:24:43] Speaker C: I think you're right.
[00:24:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Great boys. You know, it's funny. So I have a friend. I don't want to say his name because he's a. He's a big. He's a big hitter, you know, and he was in a peer group with huge companies. Like, I think his company at 40 million was the smallest one in the group. And. And he quit the group. And I said, ben, why, why did you. I changed his name, by the way. It's not Ben. I said, ben, why did you quit the group? He's like, I mean, the guys were nice and it was a fun social hour. And we talk about captives and their retirements and exit strategies. He goes, but they didn't, they didn't know anything about what was going on out in the field. He's like, I just couldn't. I couldn't take it anymore. Like, I gotta. I gotta find out what's going on, where the tire hits the road. And I said, well, Ben, what do you mean? He goes, well, where do you make and lose the most money? I said, well, in the field. He goes, yeah, exactly. I want to know what kind of mower you're running. I want to know your truck setup, I want to know your trailer setup. I want to know, are you using robotics? Are you doing this, you're doing that. He goes, I don't want to lose touch with the business. Like, it's landscaping, okay? He's like, we're not running an investment bank here. And gosh, when he said that, Greg, I was like, wow. First of all, to humble yourself, to realize you can learn from the small person. You can. There are things that when you get to be your size or my size, you take for granted. And that's dangerous. It is so good to talk to smaller companies. First of all, most of them have a ton of enthusiasm and to see what they're struggling with in.
[00:26:19] Speaker C: Most new companies are tech heavy because they get it.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: That's another good point. Right?
[00:26:24] Speaker C: I'm learning from that.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Where do you see Coal Landscaping five years from now? And how specifically are you helping the team get to that point?
[00:26:36] Speaker C: So right now we just reset our 10 year target because we are an EOS company on Trimble operating systems.
And everybody has to set their goal and their BHAG. We set out as a 25 mil by 2034.
[00:26:54] Speaker B: You can do it.
[00:26:55] Speaker C: We're gonna do it. Hands down, we're gonna do it. We have the facility to do it. We. We're looking at a satellite facility right now.
So we will get there. What am I doing to help my team get there?
I'm more in the background making sure the kits are all done and our estimating software correctly. I'm looking at high level numbers with my integrator.
She's very numbers driven. And we meet for two hours every week and just really dive into the company and then I can share that through EOS with my teams. And we have I think about 13 or 14 teams within Cole right now. And then we share that information with what's called headlines.
So all my teams are synced together and we all talk the same language, we have the same meeting cadence.
So that way if we go into an equipment meeting or a leadership meeting, it's all the same agenda. So I try to systematize every single.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: Thing we do that makes sense. You just mentioned technology.
You're younger than me, but I bet when you started. Well, no, but that's okay. We're close. I bet you didn't start with technology.
How does technology play a role in coal today?
[00:28:12] Speaker C: So I'm going to back up. My first software was 1998.
It was a Windows based program, pointed to DOS.
[00:28:22] Speaker B: Oh geez.
[00:28:23] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:24] Speaker C: So we would lose so much information. We ran that up until and through 2018 and I knew I needed to make a change in my business. That was the year that I was making all my changes and I sought out three different companies for software and we ended up going with what we felt was the most popular. I think we both use it. Aspire software.
[00:28:45] Speaker B: Yep. Great product.
[00:28:47] Speaker C: We've been on the Aspire platform now for five years. And after year one we just started rocking and rolling with tech.
Everything was tech before 2019. My biggest tech was email and a program that would crash every few hours.
And we just scaled tech and that's how we grew. So it doesn't matter to us in yourself if it's a half a million dollar job or a $5,000 job. I can write it in Columbus, Ohio or I can write it in Boston. It doesn't matter. Clients know the difference.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: Right. Well, you've done a nice job with that. What advice would you give the 25 year old version of yourself? Like if you could go back?
Yeah, we all like to go back when we. My, my late great aunt passed away in 1986, but she used to always tell me she was very instrumental and helped me get my business started. She was quite an entrepreneur. She used to say, marty, you know, hindsight, that's Good stuff. And I just, I love that it's, you know, of course hindsight's good stuff, but it's, when we look back, it's amazing how smart we are, huh?
[00:29:55] Speaker C: It's amazing what we used to do compared to what we do today.
[00:29:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
What would you tell the 25 year old version of Greg Cole?
[00:30:03] Speaker C: I mean, it's going to sound, I don't know how it's going to sound, but you know, if I was to tell myself back 25 years ago, what was my vision for the company? What was my, was my big hat, my B hag, my big hairy, audacious goal, it might have been 1 million back then, it might have been 2 million, just whatever it was. And if they had social media back then, don't go on social media and be jealous of what Company X is doing down the street. Set your goal and compete with yourself every day. Don't compete with anybody else.
[00:30:37] Speaker B: That is leadership gold right there, folks. And it is easy to do. I go on LinkedIn, I see companies far larger than ours doing things and I've learned to say good for them.
I can't do that yet. I still have a ways to go. I still gotta go, and that's what drives me. But you're so right to tune that out. What else?
[00:31:01] Speaker C: I mean, when you beat your goal, celebrate it. I was so guilty of not celebrating the wins and that affected my team and my culture. I am huge on culture and Cole.
And if you don't hit your goal, you as the owner, whoever set the goal with your team, take responsibility.
And really I use that anger inside me to drive success.
So I take the negativity and I turn into a positive and just push as hard as I can. And I think that's the biggest thing that people miss is, hey, if I miss your goal, it's okay, we all learn. But take that, Miss, Take that loss and learn from it and use it to drive you forward.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: When you say you're big into culture, what do you mean by that? Give us some background on what you mean by that.
[00:31:51] Speaker C: We spend a lot of money on employee extras and what I mean by that is just not the everyday stuff, the Dunkin Donuts, the pizzas, things like that. We do a ton of training, we go to grow, we go to all the other shows that we have portfolio to go to, but we also. I am out there almost every morning giving high fives. I don't direct anybody. I think they changed all the codes on the Lotus so I can't drive them Anymore.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:32:20] Speaker C: But I'm just there to give high fives and ask them how their day was, talk about their family.
We do circle checks every morning. So every single truck that goes out of here, electronic system that we tag every single truck and we do a circle check on it. We also do stretch and flex in the morning. It was something we. It took us a long time to adopt, but when we adopted it, oh, my God, what a game changer.
[00:32:46] Speaker B: How so?
[00:32:49] Speaker C: So when you get up in the morning and you come to work and somebody just hands you whatever, a tablet paper, whatever you do when you're out the door, there's no sense of culture there. We get everybody together. We have soccer balls flying everywhere. We have some footballs flying everywhere in our garage.
Everybody's laughing, having a good time. Then somebody leads the stretch and they're playing their favorite music. And you have 65 guys on the ground doing push ups in the garage. Some guys can do them, some guys can't. You get these wacky stretches that people do, and everybody's laughing and having an unbelievable time. And to start your day that way, and you go out the door, how better to start your day in a positive mood?
[00:33:32] Speaker B: Yeah, we, we found the same thing, Greg. We started doing a stretch and flex during COVID in, right when we started implementing aspire in the first quarter of 2020. And we won't ever go back. The camaraderie, the positive peer pressure for coming to the circle on time. The ability that maybe the day before somebody got hurt lifting a tree the wrong way, we address it immediately. Maybe we got two compliments came in. We read them, maybe we got a complaint. We don't put anybody on the spot, but we say, hey, we got a complaint yesterday that we didn't blow off the back decks at this hoa. Just want to remind everybody, like, that's very expensive to send somebody out there. We can't be doing that. Let's, let's make sure we're slowing down. It's just a, it's a great seven minutes that we spend there that it's very expensive because in our circle, we have as many as 90 people in the circle. And I'm looking out there and it's cha ching, cha ching, cha Ching. But it just seems like it's sharpening the saw type perspective that makes the day go better.
[00:34:41] Speaker C: I will tell you our injury rate, any accident rates in our vehicles, our client satisfaction has gone up.
I can't exactly measure it 100%, but I know it's gone up. And we have a positive culture. And that's what it comes down to.
[00:34:59] Speaker B: Yeah, right. Well, a lot to learn. I always like to joke that the first four letters of the word culture are cult. And there can be, you know, there can be good cults too, you know, so. All right, I want to. We're getting ready to finish this up. You do some pretty cool things about how you give back. Talk to us a little bit about how you give back.
[00:35:21] Speaker C: Personally, I've run Boston twice and a good friend.
[00:35:27] Speaker B: Boston Marathon.
[00:35:28] Speaker C: Yep. Boston Marathon twice.
I was very fortunate to run. I ran last year in 2023. I raised. Raised 32,000 for mental health. Mental health is very near and dear to my heart.
And this year I was very fortunate to run with my 18 year old daughter.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: And I saw the pictures, they were awesome.
[00:35:50] Speaker C: To realize how old you are is to run with a 18 year old young lady.
[00:35:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:35:58] Speaker C: And we raised 38,000 this year for mental health together.
I'm heavily involved. I'm going to be back involved this year with a Boston Marathon. It's just a great community. I love the people. I love the camaraderie there.
I've learned a lot from them personally as my business.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: What have you learned?
[00:36:21] Speaker C: When I first met my coach, he had me run around the track three for three miles. And his first words out of his mouth were, there's people that aren't able to run. And you are be extremely grateful for what you can do in your life.
And I never understood that. And I started meeting Team Hoyt and a lady that's run like seven marathons and seven days on seven continents. And just the people you meet, it makes you grateful for. We have personally, there's people out there that can't walk, they can't feed themselves and they're happy.
If I turned around and said to myself, if I couldn't feed myself, would I be happy? I'd say no. But these people were happier than I am. And I took so much positive energy away from that and very fortunate to what I have in my business and my family.
[00:37:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think all those. There's, you know, one of my buddies is sending his teenage daughter on a mission trip by herself and he was talking about why he was doing it and he wants her to see another side and he's excited for how her perspective may. What it will be when she comes back. I think they all fall into the category of what you're talking about when you look at someone.
I flew back from New York City Sunday afternoon and There was a gentleman on my flight that was in a wheelchair and they had to take him on, pick him up out of the chair, put him in there. He was saying hello to everybody that came on the plane. You know, I looked at him there dragging those legs around and I'm like, gosh, I need to, I need to make sure that I'm staying positive too here. So.
[00:38:08] Speaker C: And we worry about, we worry about the, you know, the crew that comes in 10 minutes late and you get so aggravated, right? You know you're going to blow a gasket and you start thinking about what you just learned personally and you're like, that's nothing.
[00:38:21] Speaker B: Yeah. But I think, Greg, it's easy to fall into that trap if you don't have a checklist or something in front of you that can, you know, reorient your compass or whatever keeping you on the same path. I like to every day just type something in my one note that I'm grateful for now. I got so much right now that I'm grateful for. When you have a granddaughter come into the world and you see everyone's okay and, and you, you see what a blessing it is and, and you know, it's, it's, it is a, it is a life changing moment when you have a child. It's a life changing moment when you have a grandchild. It's a life changing moment when you see someone struggling and you realize you don't have it that bad. I mean, those are all things, I think that are good experiences for us.
[00:39:09] Speaker C: I would fully agree.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Really enjoyed having you on here today. Earlier you mentioned you're going to send some folks to grow. I know this is self serving, but I think it's important because there's a lot of people listening to the Grow show, Powered by Stihl. Greg, they don't, they don't really know what Grow is. And you know, we've been doing it 30 years. We'll have a thousand landscapers with us in Columbus again February 24th. 25th. 26th. Can you tell everyone why you keep coming back?
[00:39:36] Speaker C: I love grow. The environment. There's, you know, 900, a thousand different contractors, people there that are just true professionals.
They just want to grow, they want to learn and that, and for some reason our industry, we love sharing information and that's just, that's great.
So when I go to grow, I'm talking to people. I may make half my classes and then I'm talking and networking and learning as much as I possibly can and for my staff to come with me they see a different side of the industry.
And everybody that I brought, we brought five people last year or four people last year. We're the five this year when we come back, they have to do a presentation to my whole company of what they learned. And always they learn something. They always learn something.
[00:40:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, we're going to keep working hard on that. I want to thank you. You have sent me probably two of the coolest videos I've gotten in the last year. One was of your ACE group at your house, in your backyard in the pool, blasting my favorite song, grunderstruck by acdc. No, I won't. But that was a great video. And then the other one that was so flattering was the video you sent me of your leadership team watching the Grow show Powered by Stihl up on your big screen TV in your conference center. I. I appreciate you sharing. I appreciate everything you've done for me. You've become a great friend. Of course, the Grow Group is a capitalistic endeavor. We do this to make money.
But the main reason we do it is to impact lives. And you are helping us impact lives by putting your story out today. You're helping us impact lives by being an important member of a peer group. You're helping us impact lives by having people that we don't even know come to your facility and teach them and help them get better. You mentioned earlier here that our industry is a sharing one. It is. It's amazing. And God bless you, Greg Cole, you're a good egg.
[00:41:45] Speaker C: Same to you. And I just love what you're doing for the industry and just keep it up because what you've done with Grow and what you've done with the ACE Network is there's nothing out there like it. And thank you for everything you do. That means so much to me to be part of your world and this community.
[00:42:01] Speaker B: Well, you're a good man. I appreciate you very much. So you have a good rest of your day and keep working on that checklist and don't run too fast and don't lift too much.
[00:42:14] Speaker C: I appreciate it. Thank you, Marty.
[00:42:15] Speaker B: All right, folks, that's going to do it for this week's edition of the Grow show Powered by Stihl. 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 your phone out right now and text it to them. Thanks for joining us on the Grow Show Powered by Stihl this week. We'll see you next week. And don't forget to check out GROW 2025 in Columbus, Ohio, 2-24-2526. We do expect a complete sellout for this one, folks, so go sign up right now while it's fresh in your mind. Have a great day.
[00:42:57] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Grow Show. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And head to growgroupinc.com for more information and resources to grow your landscaping business. A special thanks to the folks at Stihl who support support makes this podcast possible, and whose reliable handheld power equipment makes our jobs easier daily. We'll talk to you next week.
