Scott Grams: Solving Labor Shortages and Middle Management Challenges in Landscaping

Robert (00:02.126)
Hi everybody, welcome back to another episode of the I Am Landscape Growth Podcast. I have an awesome and amazing guest with a really cool perspective on the industry, Scott Grahams, Executive Director of the Illinois Landscape and Contractors Association. Scott, thank you so much for being a part of this.

Scott Grams (00:20.405)
Thanks for having me. And we were actually the Illinois Landscape Contractors Association until February of this past year. And then we rebranded now to be called Landscape Illinois, which might sound familiar because we definitely stole it from Landscape Ontario with their permission. But we like the new cadence.

Robert (00:36.322)
Well, and I did hear about this rebranding and I’m brutal creature of habit. just read your LinkedIn profile. So I’ll have to… That’s okay. I sent you a connection request before this, so it’ll give you an opportunity to go in there and check it out. So thank you again for Landscape Illinois. There’s actually some strategic pieces to that. Maybe we can touch on near the end so people understand the difference and why you guys went down that route.

Scott Grams (00:45.825)
I gotta change my LinkedIn profile obviously.

Robert (01:06.062)
But for the sake of the listeners, can you give us like a two minute Coles notes? I mean, you’re talking 17, 18 years involved in the association. You’ve been in the industry for quite some time. So help people understand kind of where did Scott come from and like, what are you kind of focused on right now?

Scott Grams (01:20.353)
Sure, real brief summary of my career. have been with Landscape Illinois slash Illinois Landscape Contractors Association since June of 2008. Prior to that, I was actually with a national organization. I have a trade association background, so a national organization for people that did computer mapping, GIS systems, remote sensing, things like that. And prior to that, I did legislative affairs for the Illinois Road and Transportation Builders Association.

So that’s really what I wanted to get back to was that state organization that, especially within the construction trade within Illinois. And so when the opportunity came up with the aforementioned Illinois Landscape Contractors Association as executive director, I interviewed, got the job and I’ve been there ever since. I love it.

Robert (02:06.286)
amazing. And so like help people understand like what does that even mean to be the executive director of a state landscape association? Like what what are you kind of dabbling in and like what’s kind of like one of your core focuses? I know you guys just did the three-year strategic planning so we don’t need to get into like you know tell everybody what’s about to happen but what are you kind of dabbling in and where’s your core focus?

Scott Grams (02:25.889)
Sure. I love trade association management. I think it’s really interesting to see an industry and committed volunteers come together with paid staff and sort of chart a strategic direction for an organization to just really try to sort of raise all boats. you know, by starting with just landscape contractors, and of course, lot of our members were also then suppliers to the industry.

A lot of our work was on training and education for landscape professionals. And then we, of course, do a lot of legislative affairs, a lot of regulatory issues. We’re very active in Springfield. The interesting dynamic we have in the United States versus like Canada is that we’re all individual organizations. We work closely with our national partners like American Hort and NALP, but for the most part, we’re all kind of our own fiefdom. And so that for that reason,

It’s really kind of up to us what we do every year. And we have both full-time staff members outside the Chicagoland area, as well as a remote staff member who works out in Springfield. And we just try to bring value to landscape professionals in every corner of the state. And yeah, we’re realizing quickly with the rebrand and with trying to reach out to more of our statewide markets that it’s a big state.

Robert (03:47.234)
Right, okay cool. So as being an executive director in, I would say one of the most engaged associations in the states, like we’ve had an opportunity to come to some of your events and talk to members and people are, know, speak very highly of your experience there. You have a pretty unique perspective of the industry, you know, knowing all these different members, being there for such a tenure, ups and downs that come along with it.

What do you see in terms of the theme of this show of what’s the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry today?

Scott Grams (04:23.125)
That’s a great question. I would have said for 15 of my 17 years, probably it was labor. It was frontline labor and not being able to find enough people at the lowest levels to actually do the technical work needed for landscape companies. That has since shifted, I think, during COVID for a couple of reasons. One is that just we’ve had

rampant runaway demand. I think that’s been felt all across North America really. And then the second piece is that I think that COVID drove salaries up, it drove overtime up. And so it sort of flushed a lot of people who had left the landscape industry at the labor level or the crew leader level back into the industry because we were paying more. And so, know, labor just used to always be that constraint. Now I feel like it’s a little bit of a shift.

Demand is cooling a bit since COVID, which is natural. I mean, I think the economies are kind of regressing to the mean, but I do think that it’s the middle management tier, which I think is causing a big problem within a lot of organizations. It’s holding on to good people below the C-suite executive level and above the supervisor level, that account manager, sales manager, design sales person.

is the hardest, I think, group to kind of find. And those are in the highest demand. And we actually just released our salary survey data. We do a salary survey internally every two years. Those were the biggest spikes we saw in salaries. We’re at that middle management tier. We’re talking about 14 to 15, all the way up to 20 % increases over that two-year span, where we had seen those increases at the frontline labor level before.

Robert (06:05.795)
an all-in-an effort at some level to keep these people or get them in the door because they’re hard to find. So then go for it.

Scott Grams (06:12.799)
Yep. Yeah.

No, I was just going to add one more thing to that. And I would say to private equity and how much it’s come into the landscape space over the course of past three or four years, that I think has been infusing a lot of additional capital into our industry and pulling middle managers out of maybe, you know, an independently owned landscape company into now a larger private equity owned group. So that, think there’s more money within the middle management tier sector for salaries.

but it also is creating high, high demand and pulling people. So you see a lot of portability among the manager class.

Robert (06:51.906)
Right, so they’re going from one place to the next for maybe a better opportunity, maybe more money, or whatever it might be, career development. So it’s interesting you bring this up, right, because this is not necessarily a common topic of recruiting and retaining, specifically middle management. We’ve definitely heard people talk about the idea of people in general, or the idea of recruitment and training and retention in general, but I love how you’ve really focused in on this, I would say, trend that’s happening right now.

from your experience and being able to work with all these different members, if we were to like kind of polarize some stories without having to name names or if you want to feel free, but like is there a couple of examples where you see people doing a really good job and like what is it that they’re doing to make it more attractive to get these types of folks not only in but staying in the organization?

Scott Grams (07:43.658)
Yeah, I mean, you sometimes have to even take a step back and just look at the overall demographics of who’s going to be in the middle management tier. It’s typically going to be younger professionals or it’s going to be professionals maybe between 35 and 50 and all the way, of course, all the way down to 25. And so those levels of professionals are very overtaxed in their personal lives. So they’re looking for flexibility. They’re looking for work at home opportunities. They’re looking for more robust benefits on top of, of course, salaries.

So I think it’s really working with the middle manager class to just determine what suite of benefits along with potentially increases in salary are gonna be enough to hold onto them. I think though another issue we see and we hear it all the time is burnout within that class. Being an account manager for especially like a homeowner association, a landscape company, those homeowners associations or commercial properties, it’s stressful.

You know, you’re, dealing with a lot of upset people all the time. You’re dealing with, I would say a relatively disloyal customer base. and also, you know, a lot of evening hours, you got to go to meetings, you got to meet with property owners, you’re getting screamed at by residents because you know, they back to skid steer over their bushes. I think a lot of that burnout happens around like this August, September timeframe, in the industry. And again,

middle managers, it’s portability. If they’re not happy, they’re going to go somewhere else where you don’t always see that in the upper levels of management in a lot of these companies.

Robert (09:14.712)
Right, okay cool. And so then in terms of practices to help with this stuff, is there a company or two that you’ve been able to see or talk to that’s like, they’ve got a pretty cool approach and there’s some things specifically they’re doing. Like the idea of flexibility and work at home to help like be a bit more of a, you

It’s super cool, but is there anybody that’s just kind of like nailing it?

Scott Grams (09:42.782)
there’s a lot of companies, I think that do a really good job with their organizational culture and retention. a lot of that, think I wish there was a better word for it, but some of the time, sometimes it’s just like vibes. It’s just, it’s check-in, it’s check-ins with people throughout the season. It’s finding out how they’re doing. It’s giving them the flexibility that they asked for. I think oftentimes it’s doing things, team building and camaraderie.

Robert (09:54.872)
Right?

Scott Grams (10:07.329)
It’s building a stronger link between the crew level all the way up to upper management and sort of linking that together, whether that means doing company picnics, means toolbox talks, team building in the morning that gets everyone together. I think it’s just making people feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves. And I will say another piece of it and not to plug the association, but I do think our young professionals… Thank you. How much time we got?

Robert (10:30.67)
Feel free, feel free to plug the association, it’s all good. Yeah.

Scott Grams (10:36.671)
The art, have a young professionals network that started about six or seven years ago and their events are capped at, have to be 35 and under to attend. And I think when we first launched the group, we thought they were going to be very like, we just want to meet online and we’re just going to do everything virtually. And like, they’re actually like one of the most postmodern groups we have. Like they love getting together and building those professional networks, which I think sometimes is overlooked and rare when you’re younger.

You start to value it as you get older, but I think the quicker you can build a professional network under the age of 35, the longer we have a chance as an industry to hold onto you. Because again, we’re not just competing with other companies. When you’re 33 years old and you’re really good at managing accounts, you could really go into almost any sales job in the country. And so I think we sometimes worry about losing those people to other industries.

Robert (11:27.864)
Sure. Yeah.

Scott Grams (11:33.75)
that might be able to offer higher salaries and more robust benefits. So, you know, I, I think that I do think a lot of people come into this industry because they love it. They love the work that’s being done and they can kind of manage the up and downs of the two parts of the season that we have in the spring. then kind of this, this like late fall, or I’m sorry, like early fall period, but you know, getting them through those cycles when as a young professional, you have a rip cord to say, I’m no longer happy here. I want to get out.

I think that’s when you sometimes have to lean into your employer and you have to lean into your network.

Robert (12:05.55)
Yeah, and so I mean, it’s really interesting you say that, because like not only network for, you say employees or staff or people that are members of teams, but also the actual owners, entrepreneurs, there’s been this really interesting, and I mean, probably not, you know, an aha moment specifically for you, Scott, because you understand this probably better than most, but.

We see it, when we talk to all our customers, have like whatever, just over 100 landscape clients we work with and the correlation to involvement in an association and their level of success is like one to one. We really see it, people that are members are usually doing pretty well, people that are engaged members on committees, they’re doing usually better, people that are on boards or leading or helping lead state or national associations are like,

They’re just, you know, green the crop type of folks. Not all the time, but they get there. And I think it’s largely in part to what you’ve said. Like they surround themselves with other people. They surround themselves with people that have been where they want to go. And there’s this uncanny openness within the landscape industry to share. Even if it’s like a competitor who may or may not bid on similar work, people are still opening up their books and sharing what’s working and what’s not.

Can you just talk a little bit about what you see in terms of engagement with the association as a member and the success and what makes this industry so open?

Scott Grams (13:33.154)
That’s an excellent question. And one that I think that I’ve been thinking about for almost my entire career with Landscape Illinois is like, why this industry? Why do they share so much? And I have a theory and to your point about like the successful companies tend to be part of their organizations. Like, I don’t know if that’s correlation without causation or it’s, it is causation. Like I do agree. It seems like people that let someone else make the mistake for them.

and then learn about that before they make it themselves is very valuable. I think when it comes to the culture of sharing and why we see it most prominently in the landscape industry is I feel that this is, yes, a lot of companies compete on price, but this is not necessarily a commoditized industry because you have so many different.

Robert (14:05.208)
Yeah.

Scott Grams (14:23.755)
cost levels, have companies that sell exclusively to upper income, you have people that will do mow and blow on a quarter acre lawn and all points in between, you have very different strategies, approaches to the design build process. And so I think when you start to look at the more commoditized parts of the industry, whether it’s lawn care or possibly irrigation or others, that’s when you start to see less sharing. But I think on the design build side, especially,

When it comes to landscape companies, even when it comes sometimes to growers, there’s a lot of sharing across companies because they don’t necessarily view each other as threats. It’s like, I always make the comparison to restaurants. Like you have your high-end fine dining all the way down to a food truck and all points in between. And yes, they’re all technically serving food or they’re all technically serving landscaping, but they’re serving it in entirely different ways.

and they’re serving at entirely different price points. And it’s really up to just matching it with the consumer. So not every company, not every restaurant is a threat to one another.

Robert (15:25.677)
Yeah.

Robert (15:29.614)
That’s a really cool analogy. I’ve never heard it framed that way. And I completely agree. Even when we’re working with folks, we have exclusivity agreements. But if somebody’s doing a luxury design build versus relatively affordable lawn maintenance, they are not competitive companies, to your point. So then when you see people engaging in networks, whether it’s the unprofessional network with the association or whether it’s people that are like,

they start to engage as landscape entrepreneurs, what are some of the things that you see in terms of where the value is created for them? What are some of the things that really start to make a tick for them of yes, being part of the association is valuable? And then on the flip side of that, it’s like what are a lot of people missing that is just sitting in front of them that they can take advantage of, but maybe they either ignore it or don’t know about

Scott Grams (16:19.457)
Yeah. Um, we, launched about actually about 10 years ago, we started to launch what we call demographic groups. And so the first demographic group that got launched was our women’s networking group. Um, and it is just taken off like a rocket. We, do an annual committee of the year because we have 24 standing committees. They, they’re getting nominated all the time. They’ve won it twice. It’s like the big, like best picture for.

landscape Illinois committee. So they get all excited and we do a big thing at our annual party every year. but they’re, they’re just fantastic just because they know how to lock in because they have that shared demographic trade of women in the landscape industry. And, know, this has been a male populated industry for a long, long time. and they’re trying to sort of just change the conversation when it comes to that because of that success, you know, we’ve launched now in owners and managers demographic group.

We launched a young professionals demographic group, and now we’re looking at possibly launching that middle, mid tier professionals. basically 35 to 55 after they age out of the young professionals group. And, that’s where we’re seeing a lot of energy. It’s like people, yes, they want to connect on the larger scale of, we all do the same thing, but they’re also looking to connect on a more granular scale where it’s like someone who’s, you know,

61 years old and they’ve owned their company for 38 years, they’re going to have a much different take on this industry and what it means to be successful than someone who’s going to be 27. And I love the mindset that like, you know, the 27 year olds should care just as much about the company as the person who owns it, but come on, like, like that’s, that’s unrealistic. And I think that they need to sometimes talk with people that are

that are walking and talking and doing what they’re doing at that same age level and the constraints of their personal lives and everything else that’s going on versus like being told with a finger in there, you know, being finger wagged by someone who owns a company and has been doing this for 50 years and has survived four different recessions, you know, so it’s just a different mindset. So we’re trying to figure out where to thin slice the industry so that people find more of that connection because…

Scott Grams (18:28.181)
just having a big trade show isn’t good enough, but having all these smaller groups meet up at that big trade show, that’s where you start to see the magic happen.

Robert (18:35.842)
Very cool. So that’s obviously something that’s hitting, you know, as you guys are developing these programs and finding ways to bring more segmentation, to bring people together, essentially, like how can we bucket you so the common problems, challenges and opportunities have a chance to be addressed from different perspectives within the group. And then what’s like one thing that’s inside the association that you see is like, if you just wish people were just like, just you, like this right here, we did the thing, like just come do the thing. It’s like, but people maybe ignore it.

Scott Grams (19:06.977)
Oh man. Yeah. I would say, I mean, just like membership in general of just being tied in, you know, I can’t imagine. I take so much. I get so much from my counterparts through, we have a group called the nursery and landscape association executives. So it’s my counterpart in all the 50 states, as well as the provinces in Canada. And it is like a lifeline.

I mean, just to be able to reach out to one of my colleagues and ask a question about something we’re dealing with, whether it’s like we’re thinking about installing a new CRM. I’ve got a hotel contract that needs to be looked at. What are you guys doing about pesticide regs? I mean, all this, but just like knowing that there’s a bigger world out there than just your own company and the walls of your own company, like seeing what people have tried and failed, I think is so valuable. just like, just getting in the door and just getting

Robert (19:54.542)
massive.

Scott Grams (19:57.25)
tied into that information pipeline. mean, at the end of the day, I think in association, we are really just kind of like information brokers. We just take information from one side of the industry and we try to plug it into the other side of the industry. Just keep moving things around. Like we’re not these experts that know everything. You we have to rely on these volunteers that come in. We sometimes find them within Illinois. We sometimes find them all across the country to come in.

And then I will say like some of the stuff that we do, especially like our Spanish language training, you know, we have a very high demographic of Spanish speakers and Latinos, especially within the Chicagoland area. You know, we have actually a very successful crew leader training, which is all the soft skills that people need to become a manager, you know, to actually go from the crew level to take that next step up and manage their peers, which is extremely.

difficult in the Latino culture is to like rise above your peers and to feel comfortable doing that. And so we’ve had a very successful crew leader training program for a long time. Now it’s actually licensed in other States just because I think these were things that were missing about how to get someone to actually get the confidence they need to step in. There’s so many good people at that crew level, crew level.

Robert (21:01.87)
Amazing.

Scott Grams (21:14.395)
level and then trying to get them to vault up not only then to become crew leaders but then of course to become supervisors, potentially become managers, to potentially one day maybe become you know executives or owners of their own businesses.

Robert (21:24.876)
Yeah, it’s amazing. so then when you look at, kind of talked a little bit about it with regard to regulations, pesticides. know, lobbying isn’t the sexiest topic. And I raised like, but it’s massively important. And I don’t think there’s anybody out there doing this like the associations are. So what are some of the common…

What’s the focus right now? What are you guys all working on? What’s the thing that we need to deal with the most right now?

Scott Grams (21:58.508)
You know, it’s really interesting because unfortunately, when you start talking about lawmaking and regulations and legislation, you naturally start talking about politics. And I’ve been doing lobbying for a long time and those are two different worlds. know, there’s the politics stuff that everybody likes to get upset about and tweet about and follow on the news and doom scroll. That has very little to do with the lawmaking side, especially at the state level.

and so, you know, I actually prefer state politics over federal politics because in Washington, it seems like stuff is happening all the time and nothing is really happening. I mean, they pass two to three major bills a year and that’s about it. And I mean, it’s, it’s either going to be some type of omnibus bill, a debt ceiling bill, you know, they don’t even pass a farm bill. Like it’s just, it’s so hard to move legislation because of political gridlock, but the state level.

Robert (22:39.79)
Right.

Scott Grams (22:55.925)
Stuff is happening all the time. And if we don’t have a lobbyist, I’m a lobbyist, we also have a contracted lobbyist. We also have an employee that works out of Springfield. If we’re not stepping up for this industry, nobody is. We’re going to get absolutely rolled. The biggest, I would say the biggest issue, the one we see the most amount of legislation proposed every year is always going to be on the lawn care side, the pesticide side. And so thankfully Illinois is still an agricultural state.

Robert (23:09.036)
Yeah.

Scott Grams (23:25.567)
So we do have like a cooler temperature when it comes to talking about these things. A lot of those bills get assigned to more favorable committees than for example, environmental committees. But if we’re not active, yeah, it would be really rough. The soft spot for us though, and something we’re seeing more and more about is ordinance level. Local government now passing bills that are very unfavorable to our industry.

We just don’t have the framework in place as an organization to lobby effectively in 7,000 Illinois cities. And that’s a very difficult environment. like almost sometimes, and also we’re not very respected when you go to the municipal level. So if someone’s thinking about passing a gas powered leaf blower ban.

They don’t want to hear from the trade association. They want to hear from constituents. They want to hear from people who live or work in the city. They don’t even want to hear from companies that just do work in the city if their base of operations isn’t in the city. And so that’s become a very challenging regulatory environment for us. But I would say the state level and the one thing that we’ve done more than investing in legislator relationships.

is actually investing in our relationships with the agencies. So the Department of Natural Resources, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Public Health, the agencies that regulate our industry, they typically have staff and leadership who understands our industry better than a lawmaker in Springfield. And I feel like we’ve leveraged those relationships more to work on the rules side of legislation versus just like spreading money around Springfield and trying to, you know, go to different golf outings and shake hands.

Robert (25:09.314)
Right, that’s cool. I think this is just, it’s worth it just to touch on a little bit more and to know anybody listening to this, like if it cringes you to think about having to go lobby and try to deal with regulators and these different departments and municipalities and state level regulation, that is kind of like a huge thank you to you, Scott, and your team. This is part of the purpose of the association is to go to bat for the

you know, the whole industry, landscape entrepreneurs, this is just not where they’ll spend their time, right? Like this is, they’re like lobbying, they’re like, it’s like, thank you, keep it up. But I often find it’s kind of like veiled, like people don’t quite understand what’s involved and like what’s a priority. So if you were to take a minute just to share like, you know, what is the type of change or lack thereof you guys are looking to create over the next year or so, what is it that’s being worked on?

Scott Grams (26:06.963)
Yeah, I mean, so we have a regulatory and legislative committee that meets every single Monday for a 30 minute phone call during the legislative season, which takes about four to five months. And so every Monday we all jump on a call. We look at the bills that are coming up for a hearing that week in Springfield and we just decide what our positions are, how we’re going to develop talking points, what information we’re giving to our lobbyists. So like, it’s a lot of work. And I totally agree with what you’re saying.

Your average rank and file members like go get them. and they don’t. So, and, and I will say there’s, there’s no, sometimes people don’t understand the near misses, you know, it’s like, you only think of the impact. when something comes and smashes into the industry and changes everything, it’s like, well, either, didn’t you do something about that? But like, there are probably three dozen near impacts every single legislative session that we’re able to, eventually get stopped. And yeah. And so it’s like, we just kind of like.

Robert (26:38.359)
Yeah.

Robert (27:01.262)
Right.

Scott Grams (27:04.801)
steer it away or it doesn’t make it finally into law. And, you know, I always ask people like, how many, how many bills do you think are proposed every year in Springfield? And they’re like, Oh, don’t know, 500. It’s like, there’s sometimes six to 7,000 bills that are proposed every year. And, and we have to read through every single one of those. And we have to find out what the threat level is. And we have to, you know, the ones that are some of course, never make it off the starting line, but there’s a lot that get really, really far down the road.

Robert (27:20.014)
Jesus.

Scott Grams (27:32.636)
And we have to be very pragmatic and we’re not, we’re not bomb throwers. We don’t come in there with just this like partisan bent, you know, we have to like, we know the stuff that’s live ammo and we have to deal with it. And so we, we do it, we do a publication bi-weekly called the political landscape. And it all it is, is like, we just try to take everything that’s going on and sum it up for the lives of a busy professional and put it into one email and be like, you don’t have to follow everything. Just read this, you know, just, just read like.

Robert (28:00.641)
Yeah, that’s cool.

Scott Grams (28:02.539)
these five paragraphs and you’ll be, you’ll get a better understanding as to what’s going on. And we try to do low state, local and federal. I don’t think I’ve been doing this long enough to know that I can’t make somebody care about politics or lawmaking or the regulatory process, but I’m hopeful that I can at least make people appreciate the work we do and be grateful when we do it, because it is a lot of effort and it’s not just me.

It’s a lot of really good people working on this to make sure that we’re advocating for the industry. Cause if we’re not doing it, nobody is.

Robert (28:37.838)
Nobody is and that’s kind of why I just wanted to give you the space a little bit to help people understand it and sign up for that publication for sure. It’s statewide, nationwide. However, you did say something that’s kind of segwayed me into a quick topic before we kind of wrap up here.

And so you think about all those bills and all the different, you know, synthesis of information that you and your team need to do, you know, that kind of clicks light bulbs, like that sounds like a really good use case for AI to be able to like sift and like understand risk. And so like that kind of makes me wonder like, how do we, A, are you as an association starting to adopt? And then what are you doing to help folks in membership learn more about different use cases and how they can leverage this, you know, revolution of technology.

Scott Grams (29:21.577)
Yeah. mean, it, it, it’s amazing how fast it’s all happening in the AI space. And I mean, just four or five years ago, it was like, we’re just noodling around with chat GPT to come up with like, give me a clever marketing slogan for this program. And now it’s like taking entire sets of minutes and it’s taking like we use perplexity a lot, which is a really good AI platform for deep dives into regulations laws.

So we can put in, know, normally if I wanted to like research, like, one call laws across the United States, I mean, that would take me hours of research. now by like using perplexity, it’s like, you know, give me the States that have favorable war laws when it comes to white lining, you know, it’s all this uninterested spits it out and gives it all to me. And that’s just saving us tons and tons of time. And so we, as an association, you know, we, we were like, we can’t be the ones.

dragon butt on AI. Like we’ve got to be the ones out there sort of like trying to show people how this can save them time. Cause right now, as you know, you’ve worked alongside this industry long enough. Time is such a precious commodity in a seasonal industry. And when you’re in May and you’ve got to spend two hours writing a watering plan that you could easily pull out of AI in 30 seconds. Why aren’t you doing it? I think the threat we see, I think the threat contractors see

Robert (30:31.802)
yeah.

Scott Grams (30:45.939)
Is it, it going to take jobs? And of course, I think for the most part, is it going to take design jobs? But I don’t think we’re there yet. but that’s probably the only like soft spot I would see within a landscape industry. think automation will also be the other side of that coin, but like I I’m, encouraging as many landscape companies, any green industry business to

to lean more heavily into AI. A, it’s not going away. B, you’re going to be shocked when you look back 18 months later at how much you’re actually utilizing it and then see how much time it’s saving you. And it’s never going to replace the work you do. It’s not going to replace the entire landscape industry, but it’s going to replace the work you don’t like to do or you don’t have time to do. So by all means, go after it.

Robert (31:37.346)
Yeah, I think it’s a well positioned frame. One thing we’ve definitely seen for certain, as much as it might not take jobs, a landscaper using AI will beat the crap out of a landscaper not. And one of the things we talk a lot about is responsiveness in all customer communication at all levels, whether it’s residential or…

commercial, whether it’s a giant proposal for you know multi facility, you multi location facility or if it’s you know just one house being able to turn stuff around. We’ve even started to use like in-field AI for people so that as they’re talking to people it’s summarizing the conversations and building emails that get sent when they leave the property.

so that the customer is fully engaged every step of the way super quickly. It’s the thing we hear all the time is like, I’ll send you an email tonight, but I don’t send it for two days. And so there’s just massive ways to optimize this. And for anybody listening, there’s also this RILA, it’s like R-I-I-L-A, or R-I-L-L-A, anyway. But it’s like in-field sales coaching.

So it’s a really, really simple piece of hardware and you can program it so it’s like these are the questions that need to get answered. Here’s the timelines you want. Here’s the listening percentage you’re looking for. And then as a sales manager or as an entrepreneur, I don’t necessarily have to be on all the ride-alongs to see how well people are doing once they’ve been trained up. And these are just like tiny use cases to your point too of like, you know, research and water.

plants, you know, just the use cases are countless. And, you know, we’re just seeing people’s building their muscles around these use cases and they become more and more every single day. But we don’t get there unless we start using it. So I think what you said about like, just give it a dabble, you know, whether it’s perplexity or chatcha BT, which I think personally are the two best tools to start using, can be really, really impactful. And if we don’t, the gap is just going to get really big.

Robert (33:42.132)
and it’s gonna get really really fast. So is there any opportunity for AI education with the association coming up or?

Scott Grams (33:49.802)
Yeah. mean, we’re already doing it at a number of our trade shows. it’s like trying to get people to like stop thinking this is like the future, like the far off future. Like this isn’t like putting men on Mars. Like this is something that like it’s a tool you should be utilizing right now. And what you said about customer communication, I could not agree more. You know, even from a personal level as a landscape consumer having, you know, a landscape maintenance firm.

and having design build projects done in the past and also doing other construction around my home with other trades, the communication I think you get from sometimes other construction trades is just superior. And I love this industry, but I do think that’s probably the weakest link is the communication with the client, with the customer, because everyone’s very, very busy and they get to the end of a 12, 13 hour day in May and they don’t have time to send out that project timeline chart to the customer.

They don’t have time to update them or have the crew leader update the homeowner on what was done that day or what’s going to be done tomorrow. And I think if you can utilize AI just to give that like little update to the consumer, it’s gold. And especially in a referral based business. like, I, I agree with you. If, a company just sat down and said, we’re just going to simply use AI for one purpose. And that purpose is going to be improved customer communication. They would get so much further down the road.

Robert (35:00.247)
It is.

Scott Grams (35:15.199)
The only thing I think that is probably potentially constraining the wider widespread adoption of AI is so many companies right now are implementing business management systems. You know, whether that’s like Aspire, Boston Tegra, LMN, et cetera, that I think is like all the technological bandwidth they have like right now. And they’re trying to figure out like what to eat, what they’re either going to implement. They’ve implemented how they’re using the data. And then we’re like, we’ll get the AI.

AI is next. But I think that’s the only reason just because we’ve seen just like that’s almost become the biggest topic of conversation in the halls of all of our events is like, what business management system are you using? But I do think AI is hiding right behind that wall. Like once they plow through that, then there’s going to be much more widespread AI adoption. But absolutely right now, like anything that someone can say, this is how we brought AI into our business. And this is how we use it to save time and money.

You got something there.

Robert (36:15.022)
Well, and like, not only will these platforms bring AI into them, but even today, you know, we’re seeing opportunities for people to export data, summarize tables, put it in a ChachiPT and give me, and literally just say, give me this so-what information from this table. And it spits out like relatively valuable conclusions of profitability per customer, per crew, whatever.

But to your point, you can’t get that unless you have that system in place and that is a core focus, which is kind of like one of the things just really leveling up the professionalism across the industry. And we started working with landscapers, call it 2018, and I had no idea how young these market leaders are. Like Aspire and L &M haven’t been these legacy systems that were invented in like the 90s. Like they came around the last 12, 15 years. It’s not a long time. So it makes sense that people are just coming around and getting it going because

It’s really interesting actually. So we’ve done talks for landscape associations for years, maybe seven years, something like that. And we always ask questions about like, you heard of Seth Godin or Simon Sinek or Jim Collins or John T. Maxwell and you just really high level business folks. When I first asked the question, was crickets. And in this last, say six to eight months of doing shows, it’s like more than a half.

Like the professionalism of this industry is really ramping up and it’s just cool to see. So we’re kind of running out of time so I don’t want to keep you forever but I do want to ask a couple questions. One is what’s one thing you want the world to know about or at least the state of Illinois to know about when it comes to what’s going on with the association?

Scott Grams (37:53.248)
Yeah. Now that we rebranded as Landscape Illinois, we represent every segment of the landscape industry. We were, as I mentioned before, primarily a contractor organization for many, many years. In the last eight years, we’ve unified with organizations that represent lawn care, irrigation, sustainable landscaping, freelance landscape design. And then finally, the big merger that we had just a few years ago, we brought Kelly Schmidt.

who used to be the executive director of the Illinois Green Industry Association, retail garden centers, statewide contractors and nursery growers. So like we’re everything now. And so, which is exciting, but then you also have to be everything, which means we have a wider breadth of regulation we track. We have to have more programs. We have to have more statewide operations, but like it used to be like, you can either…

Uh, join us, you could join all these independent, these smaller organizations. You could join the green industry association. Like now it’s like you’re either joining landscape, Illinois or you’re choosing not to and good luck to you. And so, you know, that’s really exciting, but at the same time it has, uh, we have a much larger mission than we ever had before, which is, um, that’s why I think like strategic planning and visioning is so important to, making sure that we accomplish that. Don’t leave anybody out in the cold.

Robert (39:16.502)
Yeah, it’s cool. I also think it made it more accessible to be able to just have one association to go to and that becomes like the hub of all information, all people, all network. I think it was a really, really smart play for you guys to bring that all together. Obviously it’ll come with its challenges and unintended consequences, which you’ll all learn about. But then last thing, a resource that has given you some sort of inspiration or a-ha moment that you’d want to share with folks. I can hear it in your vocabulary.

referencing a bunch of different lessons you’ve learned along the way. What would be something that you would recommend a landscape owner or anybody in the green industry to check out like a book, a speaker, whatever it might be.

Scott Grams (39:57.826)
boy, what a great question. I love the book, Unreasonable Hospitality. I’ve always, which is about sort of the fine dining restaurant world and just this idea that you are going to almost like people are just like their jaws are going to hit the floor. Yes, they’re paying a lot of money to eat at your restaurant, but it’s because you’re doing all these little touches, the research that what goes into every single client.

that would come through the doors of these fine dining establishments and they would like know their birthday. They would know their food allergies, like all this stuff and the personalization of that process. like, just when you think you’ve been hospitable, go another, go another 10 miles, like just blow them away. and then I’m, I’m a big, Malcolm Gladwell. love Gladwell. I love his podcast. I love all of his books. and

He has a really interesting concept about how to change culture in the new revenge of the tipping point and how tokenism like becoming a statewide organization, we’ve had to filter in statewide professionals, people that are not in the Chicagoland area now into our committees, into our board structure. And if you just add one, nothing’s going to change. You really have to get to kind of that sweet spot of a 20 to 25%.

So if you have a board of 12, you got to consider having three people that represent that, or you’re not going to change your culture. And I think that was really interesting to us as we try to figure out it’s not just adding like the one Latino board member. And then all of a sudden you can speak to all Latinos. You really, if you want to make sure you’re matching culture, whether it’s, we want to get a rural urban culture. want to get Latinos and American and a native board American culture.

you’ve got to make sure you’re hitting those ratios because if you’re just doing one person, you’re just asking too much of that one person.

Robert (41:47.374)
They’re kind of on the, love it man. That’s super cool insight. Unreasonable hospitality, I had the opportunity of reading it recently. I think it fits the landscape business perfectly, especially for anybody who believes word of mouth is the primary driver of their business. This is a way to really elevate.

and Malcolm Gladwell, appreciate the shout out, North of the Porter, he’s a straffing boy. Also just like a really engaging person to listen to, so yeah, his podcast is awesome, thin slice, he never do reference before too. He definitely has a really cool way of understanding the research and making it like, you know, practical and usable. So again, Scott, thank you so much for doing this. If I want to become a member of Landscape Illinois,

Scott Grams (42:06.64)
you

Scott Grams (42:27.199)
You go to landscapeillinois.org. If you’re a creature of habit and you still go to ilca.net, we will redirect you to our new brand of landscapeillinois.org and we’d to have you.

Robert (42:37.67)
Thanks so much for doing this and everybody for listening to another episode of the High End Landscape Growth Podcast.