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.
[00:00:24] 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 with another episode of the Grow Group Grow Show Powered by Stihl. This week we're going to talk about what you should be focused on at this time of year and what you should not be focused on. 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 gamification of health. I have this Garmin watch if you're watching on YouTube. I'm holding it up right now. I have an oura ring and I gotta tell you, these two little silly little pieces of technology have helped me, number one, sleep better and get more steps in There is coincides there with me losing quite a bit of weight here in the last nine months. I'm trying to do 75,000 steps a week and I've been able to do that each of the last six weeks and I hope there's no end in sight to it. I have grown to really enjoy walking. I do a little bit of running mixed in with the walking. I, I actually listen to the Grow Show. I listen to tons of other podcasts. The learning leader is another one I highly recommend. So there's a lot out there. So if you want to get in better shape. Walking is exercise, folks. Try something that monitors your step count. I think you'll enjoy it. Okay, so on to this week's edition of the Grow Show. Each year at Grunder Landscaping Co. We have a theme that we rally around. It's a saying or a word that we feel best describes what we need to focus on for the year. And most of them are the inspiration of our president, Seth Flum. He's quite the thinker, folks, and actually quite creative. This year our focus is on the word focus, F O C U S. And we're going to show you right now a picture of the banner that's hanging in our warehouse. And it's our whole focus is focus. So on this edition of the Grow Show, Powered by Stihl I wanted to tell you what you should be focused on right now and what you should not be focused on. And remember, I have a little bit of a license to be able to do this, folks. I've been doing this 41 years now, and I have come to understand and know what's right and wrong to focus on. I've made more mistakes than all of you combined, and in those mistakes have been great lessons. In fact, it's in the mistakes that I have learned the most. Okay. Those mistakes have been great learning opportunities. So I'd like to start today with what you should be focused on and then morph into a little bit of what you should not be focused on and then just kind of wrap a bow around this and hopefully help you this week. So here's three things I think you should be focused on right now. Getting work sold. Ladies and gentlemen, nothing matters more. All right? Covid is over. The leverage that the contractor had is not quite as strong there. There's tons of work out there, but you're gonna have to go hustle, and nothing happens till someone sells something. Go back to one of the prior episodes where we share some sales wisdom. It's a great one, but you got to be focused this time of year on what matters most in everything. Nothing matters more than sales right now, folks. Okay, sure. You can tell me. What about the team? Of course your team's important, but if you don't have any work, you don't need a team. Okay. More on the team in the next one. Right now, you've got to sell. You have to know who your ideal client is. You got to know what a good lead is and what a bad lead is, and you got to screen them. All right? What's work you can do now, and what's work you could push off to winter? It is a juggling act. It really is. I had one of my best clients call me last week. He wants to do a pool in 2026, and he wanted to meet. Well, old Marty would have tried to meet with him right away, because, you know, speed kills. We got to get the sale. We got to go get it. But the reality is, that's 2026, and I'm not going to sell him a pool right now. And I've got other bigger things I got to work on right now, like providing sales training to my team. I'm still going on a couple calls. Not that many, but I'm doing a ton of business development.
I'm doing a ton of meetings. I'm doing a ton of coffees, even though I don't drink coffee. Doing a ton of lunches, some dinners, some visits, some stopping by and seeing people. I'm on the phone, I'm sending notes. I'm doing a whole lot of stuff like that. Okay, so when a week in the spring goes to that. All right, where you can do a job that I can do in the next 90 days or even in 2025, I got to do that this week. That other stuff, 2026, I couldn't do it. So I responded to him immediately. I sent him an email with a series of questions that we have prospects fill out, and I told him to have him and his wife assemble the links and the pictures of the pools they like. And I set an appointment for Tuesday morning when he's home, when he's not working for next month. All right. He was elated with that. I got it all set up. It's a 2026 job. We'll start looking at it in around May or so. We'll probably have a design to them in June where maybe, maybe, maybe have a contract in July or August. We find it takes at least 90 days on a big complex job like that to get things close. It takes a while, and by the time we get everything else, it could even be five or six months. We'll get it. I'll stay on it. But the work that I can do right now in the year 2025, that's what I have to follow up on. Okay, Real, real fast. I also followed up with this prospect with an email with a whole slew of photos, pools that we've done, some things that he could look at, you know, have that all ready and ready to go with that. So it got a good touch on them. And instead of getting into that project, I secured what I could on that. And I spent my time meeting with an executive at a local business about 13 buildings in their portfolio. Came to find out we have a ton in common. We really hit it off. And while I don't know that I'm going to get all their business, I did some good. So had I gone on the other lead? I don't get to spend time with this one. And I just think that's a big part of here. You gotta sell work and you gotta realize what's a good lead right now and what's not. I also worked on several proposals with one of our sales pros in training that needs to learn how to talk to prospects and clients on how the sell work. We closed about $90,000 worth of work together, which is good. It helped them get started. It was a good use of my time. So at the end of the day, what I want you to understand here is there's a delicate juggling act that goes on, but at the end of the day, you got to spend your time on the things that matter most. And booking up this year is what you need to do. We have found in an analysis of our sales that we sell 50% of all of our work in a year right now, in this 90 days in the spring. So stay focused on sales right now and try to diplomatically push the other things off, but stay focused. Stay focused. Focus. F O C U S All right, so we want you to make sales. Number two. Focus has to be on getting work done.
Be all in on this, folks. And I mean all in. I've always been an intense guy when it comes to getting work done. I don't have patience or a liking for those who don't work hard. It's spring. We're all busy. All right? I don't like to hear somebody tell me how busy they are. I try not to tell people how busy I am because I think everybody's busy. And I just don't see what you gain by talking like that. It's spring, we're all busy. And all of our teams, our systems, our equipment, our vendors and the like, they're all pushed to the max. They go from being half asleep to some degree if you don't have snow to, you know, 24, 7. Now is not the time to talk to the sale, to talk to the ice melt sales representatives. By the way, why do they call on you now? It just doesn't make any sense. But I digress. Now's not the time to try out new mowers. You should have done that last fall when you had time. Not now. Now's not the time to do a meeting with the whole team and. And hold them all back for an hour about the 401k program or health insurance or quite frankly, anything else that isn't focused on doing work. You are in the run as my pal and mentor. Mike Rory from Ground Systems in Cincinnati, Ohio, would often tell Seth and I he's an incredibly focused and successful landscaper in Cincinnati, Ohio. He's also a great golfing buddy of mine, and he kicks my ass at golf. I have never, ever beat him, and I probably never will. But I digress. What Mike Rory means is, let your men and women work. Don't bother them. Pick your battles. Right now, the Trucks might be dirty right now. The properties may not look their absolute best right now with all the spring rains and everything. But get the work done. Don't get hung up so much on little things that really don't matter. If they're making you mad, sleep on them at night. More times than not, when I sleep on it, I get up the next day. I'm not near as upset about it. I process it, I find out there was a valid reason why we did something or there really wasn't a valid reason for me to be that upset. All right? So be mindful, sell the work, do the work done, and then number three. And I think we all from time to time are guilty of not focusing on this. But. But take care of your team. All right? Another plug. Go to the episode I recently recorded on Blue Skies. I give you all sorts of tips on how to deal with stress. I've gotten tremendous feedback from it. Thank you. Whether you think it's the case or not, folks, stress is real. It's there. Yes, it's often blown out of proportion. I understand. But that's often because your team doesn't have the knowledge and the experience that you do at dealing with it. We all think things are often times better than what they are. And we also often think things are way worse than what they are. This time of year, we tend to think they're way worse than what they are. And I think it's very important that you put it in its proper perspective. It's probably somewhere in between.
It's a heck of a lot easier for me to call on four types of type A personality entrepreneurs about their landscaping, who are demanding, pushy, hard to get a hold of than it is for your 26 year old sales pro in training who doesn't even own a house yet and is learning what life is all about. You think it's easy? Okay. You don't realize it's not easy for your team. Our teams are overwhelmed by things like that. Think back to when you were 26. You weren't a very good salesperson either. There were a lot of things that you just weren't good at at all. I know I wasn't at 26. I have a baby girl. Her name is Emily. She works here at the Grow group. You see her all the time. I. I had to take care of her. A growing business, a new building that I'm emanating from today that I could barely afford, and a new house. I looked great. In fact, my new house looked awesome on the inside because I landscaped the bajeebis out of it, But Lisa and I hardly had any furniture inside because we had no money. No money and not a whole lot of knowledge. I was learning how to run this business.
So walk a day in the shoes of your team. Relate. Have some empathy. I hate to tell you this. When I was in my 20s, I don't even think I know what the word empathy meant, but I have come to understand through my work here as an entrepreneur that you got to sell work, that you got to get the work done, and you got to walk a day in the shoes of your people. Those are really the things you ought to be focused on, folks. And when we're focusing on things like that, that's being a great leader. A leader knows if everything is important, nothing is important. So you got to have a focus, and you got to be constantly making sure the most important things are being watched, worked on, and analyzed. And that's tough. So let's talk about three things just to kind of shake you up a little bit here. And I mentioned one of them a little bit, that you should not be focused on. Number one, looking at new equipment, new products, systems, and the like. I get that. That's fun. I get that. That's exciting, all right? And I get that you could say, but it might help the team of the three things I said that you should be focused on, and it might help you get work done, I suppose. But we got to be careful with that, okay? Two things happen when you go and look at new equipment, products and systems and things like that right now. Number one, you're not selling. Okay. And two, you're giving your entire team license to take their eye off the ball of selling work and performing work. So don't do it. Number two, pet peeves.
And this has been very difficult for me. I'm showing some vulnerability here, folks. I'm 57 years old. I use a digital to do list. It's on OneNote. It's on my phone, my iPad, any. Any computer I have that I log into Microsoft Office. I take notes digitally. And to be blunt, it drives me crazy to see people taking notes by hand. I just. I. Once you learn how to do this digitally, I truly do not understand why in the world you would do that with a pen and a paper if you had one note and that wonderful tool. But people do. And while I will train my team to use digital note taking, and I will tell you unequivocally, it's the best way to do it now is not the Time to break old habits. Our top salesperson here does a magnificent job. He. He does not use OneNote. He uses a journal and three by five cards. I am not going to tell him he has to use OneNote. If he finally sees it as a tool that will save him time and help him be more organized, that would be great. But who am I to tell him to start doing that when he's our top salesperson? And he's our top salesperson by far, folks, his system is working. That's stupid for me to go impose my will upon him, even though I really truly believe one note is better. Don't do things that like that right now. Don't be so worried about how somebody gets to a number. Be worried about the fact that they're getting to a number. Seth always says 1 +8 is 9. 4 +5 is 9. 3 +6 is 9. 2 +7 is 9. Just get the 9. Don't be worried about that. And that's something. When I was a young leader, I tried to impart my will way too much on people and it turns them off and it takes their mind off what they should be focused on. And then the last thing I want you to focus on and you got to be able to run a filter when Marty Grunder's teaching you because there's some things here that may be a little bit hard for you to comprehend at times. And Vince always tells me this and I'm not always the greatest at being relatable to you. I hope this relates well. Don't be so focused on every little complaint you hear. You're going to hear them now. It's spring. Be pragmatic about it. We had an employee here, he's no longer here. He said that Aspire was stupid, it was a waste of time and we ought to just do things by paper because that's what everybody likes. That was one person. Five years ago we were implementing Aspire. We have men and women here now that will tell you Aspire was the greatest labor saving thing that we ever could have added to our company. And it's thrust us forward. But we tend to focus on the one negative comment instead of the 19 people that like it. It's just human nature, so don't let all these complaints bother you. We had another person that used to work here. Every month we have a 45 minute to an hour company wide meeting. We call it grow. And we go in there and we share updates on everything. We communicate at a very, very high level. We had an employee that didn't know I was listening. Said, you know, Marty and Seth talk all the time about indirect time and saving time that grow meaning is the dumbest thing in the world. Nobody cares about any of that stuff. It's just stupid. We ought to go to work. We shouldn't be sitting there listening to them talk. I overheard him saying that. I couldn't believe it. All right. Did it make me mad? At first it made me mad. But the more I thought about it was, that guy has no business working here. All right? And eventually he just like a month later self selected himself out of the organization, which was great. If he thought that taking an hour for us to sharpen our saw and get better together by sharing information is dumb, then I'm sorry, this sounds terrible. He's dumb. Okay. But again, we let one thing like that bother us. Maybe you have 90 great reviews and one client is mad because the grass seed that you planted last year didn't come up this spring. They don't call you. They just post a bunch of pictures and say, grunder Landscaping sucks. Here's my backyard. It happens to us. We go, we try to make it right. It bothers me. I'm not going to lie to you. But I've come to learn that I can't let that wreck my day. Now, it still should bother you. I think if it doesn't bother you, there's something wrong. But we got to be careful about how bad we let it bother us. And we got to think pragmatically and to give a little pitch. This is where our ACE groups, our peer groups really help each other. Because when you don't have anybody to share this beyond your family, which that's not always the greatest idea, to go home and start complaining to your family, man, if you got a buddy you can call and say, hey, can I just tell you we just got this review on Google last night and they said we suck and everything else. And your friend from your ACE group might say, hey, happened to us last week. Don't worry about it. Go reply on the review that you're sorry, they're unhappy you're sending someone out to take a look at it and you promise you will fix it and maybe they'll take the review down for you. You've gotten them to take a review down? Yeah, I've gotten people to do that. Okay, well, I'm really glad I talked to you. We tend to go through all these things on our own and there's really no reason for that. Folks at the end of the day. I want to remind you something that Vince Torchia, my wonderful partner here at the Grow Group, often says when he's facilitating an ace group. He's told me this. He says, remember, as the leader goes, so goes the team, so goes the company. It's really hard to argue with that, folks. People imitate what they see the most of when you are a leader, all right? When you focus on selling work, when you focus on getting work done, when you focus on walking a day in the shoes of your team, great things are going to happen, okay? So go sell work, go get work done and take care of your team this busy season. You, your team and your wallet will be glad you did. Okay, so 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 and if you really want to help us, take your phone out right now and share this episode with a team, a landscape pro, a friend, one of your coworkers, someone that might benefit from it. Thanks for joining us this week on the Grow Show. We'll see you next week.
[00:18:31] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Grow Show. A special thanks to the folks at Stihl 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.
