Build Leaders, Not Bottlenecks: Derek Wells & Sean Baxter, Jeffrey Scott Group

Rob Murray (00:30): Hi everybody, welcome back to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth Podcast. sometimes I say it too much, but this time is for real. This is definitely a unique interview. Two epic entrepreneurs, business coaches, and dads. never have I met somebody on this podcast that has four kids run their business to a point where they don’t need them in their day to day and started to be a coach. Now, today I have two of those same people at the same time.

Let’s go. Derek Wells, Wells Lawn Care & Landscaping, and we got Sean Baxter, Lawn & Landscape Solutions, both coaches with Jeffrey Scott and Jeffrey Scott group. Pumped to have you guys. Thanks for doing this.

Sean Baxter (01:06): Thanks for having us.

Derek Wells (01:06): Thanks, man. Happy to be on here. We can turn this into a parenting podcast, I guess, if that’s the way this is going. That’s right. You

Rob Murray (01:11): Well, I mean sales, marketing, leadership, parenting, like it all blends.

Sean Baxter (01:15): Okay.

Derek Wells (01:16): know, there’s a lot of lessons in parenting that tie into business, so.

Rob Murray (01:20): Absolutely.

it’s interesting

Sean Baxter (01:21): This is true.

Rob Murray (01:23): it’s interesting you say that too. I’ve been following Chase Hughes recently. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of this guy, like ex Navy SEAL like information operative. It’s super cool content. and he was talking about using statements to elicit information from spies, prospects, children.

and I had the

Derek Wells (01:39): Yes.

Rob Murray (01:39): opportunity in the last couple of days to use it at a conference, which was really helpful to get conversation going, but then also last night with my kiddo. So I think what you’re saying is absolutely dead on. let’s give the audience a bit of context outside of YouTube being epic in my intro. Derek, why don’t you give us a little rundown of the business that you are actually still quote unquote running, because I know you’re also out of it in a lot of ways, and what your kind of core focus is these days and kind of where where it all started.

Derek Wells (02:04): Sure. okay. So I’m on Wells Lawn Care & Landscaping. we’re out of Bloomington, Indiana, so South Central Indiana. been in business with that company for about twenty years now. you know, we’re mostly a maintenance company. We actually went through a phase where we were trying to do a lot and be everything to all people and pulled that back and about twenty eighteen we focused heavily on maintenance and now we’re kind of in that phase where we have a really great maintenance base where adding back in some construction and some enhancement work as well into that. So you know my core focus these days, We’re bouncing around a lot, right? It’s like you mentioned family, you mentioned the business, you mentioned the coaching, consulting. so I think for me one of my personal values is just giving back and supporting others. And so that’s where this coaching consulting side really fills my cup because it’s one thing to own a business and develop the people that you have on that team and it’s another to support them in their journey as well.

Rob Murray (03:00): Yeah, well it’s almost like multiplying the impact through the teams of the entrepreneurs you’re supporting. It’s pretty epic, man.

Derek Wells (03:05): Yeah, absolutely.

Rob Murray (03:08): cool. And I really love the idea of you know being stretched by being everything to all people and getting focused. So we’ll have to come back to that one in a second. And then Sean,

Derek Wells (03:15): Sure.

Rob Murray (03:16): Sean, same question, business you’re running, how you kind of started the whole thing, and what your core focus is these days.

Sean Baxter (03:21): Well, I’m old, so how I started it might be a long story, but

Rob Murray (03:25): Calls notes, calls notes.

Sean Baxter (03:27): I’m in Kansas City. we cover a good part of the south side of the metro. we’re a residential design and build firm and we do maintain. something unique about our company is we build pools. And you know, for a Midwest landscape contractor to have that in house, that’s that’s rare. so we have kind of the gamut of large construction and maintenance all under one roof. been at it twenty six years.

Have a fully functioning leadership team. I’ve been coaching with Jeffrey for the last four years and been in a peer group before that for 13. So been a longtime contributor in the community. The mission of my landscape business is that we build people. As much as we build landscapes, we’re actually focused on building people. So when I had the opportunity to coach, I saw it as an opportunity to take the people building that we determined is the most important.

mission in our landscape contracting business and apply it and help others and and as you said multiply. So that’s kind of been what I’ve been focused on over the last four years.

Rob Murray (04:32): man. And Derek too, you were a member in a peer group too before you

Derek Wells (04:34): Yeah.

Rob Murray (04:35): and how long were you part of the group?

Derek Wells (04:37): Yeah, so we’re talking offline a little bit about this, but yeah, I did a roadmap session with Jeffrey, which is kind of our version of like a annual planning retreat. And I did that, gosh, I’m trying to remember how many years it was eight or nine years ago. and after that I jumped into the peer group. You know, we run a peer group model, which is high vulnerability, high level of sharing, high level of accountability. And I was a member of that.

on the membership side for several years and then started working with the rest of these awesome people on our team about three years ago or two years ago and then started jumping fully into the executive coach level group peer group facilitation and have been doing that for about two years now.

Rob Murray (05:17): Epic. I was saying this to Derek, Sean before you got on, but I I said every single client we have that is either a part or has been a part of a Jeffrey Scott peer group or program is probably our best and slash most successful clients.

outside of one. Sorry. we did all we could and sometimes it just doesn’t work. and it really is a testament to the quality of the group. You know, being at the summit, the summer summit was awesome and I think I said it on stage, it’s just it’s rare to be in a room full of like the average sophistication of an entrepreneur is next level and it’s just a testament to what you guys have experienced and what you’re helping people with and I really appreciate it.

Derek Wells (05:55): Thanks, man. Yeah, we love hearing that.

Rob Murray (05:57): Well and and there’s so there’s two things. Like I’m running two podcasts at the same time right now. So I’m gonna kind of go back and forth, but maybe you can both feed off of the question that I give each of you, if that’s cool. And then we’re gonna get into the main question. But Derek, you mentioned something that I really, thought is important for people to hear a bit more about. because we spend a lot of time working with people on focus, positioning, or niche.

And

Derek Wells (06:17): Mm-hmm.

Rob Murray (06:18): however you want to describe it. a lot of times people get a little bit scared. They’re like, Well, if I get too focused, then I’m gonna miss out on like, Bob over here wants to do this irrigation project for like thirty six grand, even though we don’t do irrigation, but I think we could do it. And so he’s got money and but then they get stretched and operations becomes you know not very predictable. Anyway, what was it that you were going through that made you decide to focus and really like build out what I would consider

Derek Wells (06:44): okay. if we’re talking about me as a through Wells Lawn Care several years ago, I think for that situation, Jack of all trades, master of none type concept, right? Like we were doing a lot and we realized a few things we weren’t very good at, right? And so we had to get really focused on, all right, we did a deep dive and like what are we good at? And we were very successful at maintenance, we were great at communication, we were great at route work.

had very efficient, operation in that regard. And so that’s where we need to sit. And so we went all in in that in that respect. but I mean you could even carry that forward. I think with business ownership, I think a lot of owners try to be all things to their people too, right? And so when you

Rob Murray (07:22): Mm.

Derek Wells (07:23): start spreading yourself that thin, let me take it back a little bit. There’s a book out there called The One Thing, right? And

Rob Murray (07:29): Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Derek Wells (07:30): they say to be the most successful, like you almost need to give that one thing, like four hours of your day. and they did case studies with like very successful violinists and that’s what they said it took to be to operate at that professional level. So if you as an owner splitting your time between twenty things every single day, none of them are gonna get to that level of professionalism that you are probably desiring or that your company even needs from you. So

Rob Murray (07:52): That’s cool. Well, I think I’m in the book they were talking about how Stephen King spends the first four hours of every morning writing. And then somebody

Derek Wells (07:58): Yeah.

Rob Murray (07:58): from the crowd that was like, Yeah, but he’s Stephen King. Of course you can spend four hours writing. And then the guy was like, Is he Stephen King and can do it? Or is he Stephen King because he did that practice? Yeah,

Derek Wells (08:06): Yes. That’s the point. Mm-hmm.

Sean Baxter (08:07): Mm-hmm.

Rob Murray (08:10): I love that. And yeah, I always say the Bruce Lee line, right? It’s like I fear not the man that practices ten thousand kicks, I fear the man that practices one kick ten thousand times.

Derek Wells (08:20): Yeah, right.

Rob Murray (08:22): And so well, I’m gonna come back to this idea because I find

Derek Wells (08:24): Okay.

Rob Murray (08:24): it it’s a it’s a slippery and tricky thought for folks to get that focused. there’s sometimes there’s questions of like, am I focusing on the right thing? How do I figure out what the right thing is to focus on? I’d love to get some take on that. before we do though, Sean, you mentioned this idea of people building.

The most successful companies that I’ve met across my career, not just landscape, but across industry, have this sense of training development people as a core focus of any business really, and they just happen to be in a business that does a thing, but really

Sean Baxter (08:52): Mm-hmm.

Rob Murray (08:53): they’re in the business of building, training, and developing people. What was it that kind of, you know, got that light bulb going for you and how does it come to life in terms of the way you guys have built your business?

Sean Baxter (09:04): Well, personally, you know, when I was a youngster, I was a knucklehead and was really headed nowhere pretty fast. And the landscape industry, really saved me and kind of got me going in the right direction, gave me a career trajectory and just I started when I was very, very young. I started when I was nineteen years old. And prior to that I’d worked at a garden center, which is where I learned horticulture and work ethic and customer service etiquettes and you know, really kind of grew up. And so I felt like the industry had really saved my life. and you know, went about building a business and sort of thinking about scaling and growing and had a solid decade where that’s was kind of my focus. And honestly, I was sitting in church one day and our pastor had a little video presentation with an auction company. I’m gonna tie this back. I know this is sounding like it’s a squirrel, but it’s not a squirrel.

Rob Murray (09:58): It’s all good. I give her, give her, give her.

Sean Baxter (10:01): So so so the this auctioneer is a commercial auctioneer. He auctions off businesses, right? Some because of bankruptcy, some because of death, some because of just whatever. But in this short video, he talked about how, in a matter of four days, they could auction off any business of any size. And the hair on the back of my neck kind of stood up. I was in my mid-30s.

I had little kids, I had worked, and I’d kind of put my ladder on the building I was climbing of building size and scale and profitability and you know traditional path, right? And I realized in that moment that everything I built literally could be liquidated in four days. And

Rob Murray (10:44): In four minutes. Four days, four days.

Derek Wells (10:45): Four days. Yeah.

Sean Baxter (10:47): I thought to myself, well, I’m really kind of putting my focus, my life’s work in the wrong direction. And I started thinking about what the industry had done for me personally.

And I thought, well, I should be doing this for anyone who comes to work for us. Like we should be focused on how you get someone with no skills to enter in the business, stay in the business, and create a legitimate career for themselves. And it’s what the trades need overall, anyways.

Rob Murray (11:15): Hundred percent.

Sean Baxter (11:17): so I just really shifted my focus hard from that point forward about being intentional on being an organization that not only keeps its people, but is only hiring from the bottom. because

Rob Murray (11:27): Hold on a second. No. Landscaping is an industry plagued with turnover. People don’t want to stay. They move for a dollar. There’s no loyalty. What are you talking about, Sean?

Sean Baxter (11:40): Yeah, well, you know, intentional culture matters and people stay where they feel they are taken care of, where they’re heard, where they have an opportunity to pull themselves up. Nobody wants to be overpromoted, nobody wants to be overlooked. So if if you can

Derek Wells (11:54): Yeah.

Sean Baxter (11:56): give people a means of pulling themselves up where they legitimately did it for themselves, and all you’re doing is sort of shepherding them through that and giving them a safe place to be.

They’ll stay forever.

Rob Murray (12:08): buddy. can you give us one quick example of how that comes to life in a day to day? Like what what is

Sean Baxter (12:13): Like in our company?

Rob Murray (12:14): Yeah, like if I’m listening to this as an owner being like, I do want to do that, but I just don’t know what to do or how to start.

Sean Baxter (12:22): Hm. Well, you know, clarity is kindness. So I think one one place is we use radical candor about where someone’s strengths and abilities are.

we’re not hiding from like here’s the skill set of the job you want and here’s where you’re at. And so that delta is what we need to be working on. Let’s set about a plan for the next you know year or two for you to be able to get to that crew lead position. In the meantime, here’s what you need to work on, here’s what be looking for. it could be as simple as having time dedicated in your budget for training. You know, so often in this business we hire somebody.

And best case scenario they get a day of onboarding and they have to sign the handbook and maybe they do some video training and then we’re like, All right, here you go. my version of that is when we hire somebody, maybe up to six months, their time doesn’t count against the job hours. So that foreman has a real reason to pour into them. so

Rob Murray (13:19): Ooh, that is a magical mechanism.

Sean Baxter (13:23): So that that’s you know that’s a tangible you know if you have radical candor, if you’re giving, allowing space without results being expected for training, and then clarity, right? So this is the positions we have, this is what’s open today, and this is what will be open in one to three years. People can see for themselves where those next opportunities might lie.

Rob Murray (13:46): yeah, that’s sweet. And I also love the idea that it’s like it’s not three months. Like development takes

Sean Baxter (13:53): Takes time.

Rob Murray (13:54): time. And overestimate what can be done or underestimate what can be done in like two years. I think that’s awesome. All

Sean Baxter (14:02): Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Murray (14:03): right. So, I’m gonna come back to this focus question after we get to the main question of the day. But I maybe we can play I mean you guys kinda know what we’re gonna ask, right? What’s the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry? and so I’d just be curious to just get both of you to answer quick and then we’ll kinda dig into it if that’s possible. So Derek, what’s your take on that?

Derek Wells (14:25): Meh, okay, so you you posed that to us and I think I even said, All right, what else you got? ‘Cause I was trying to see if we had more content that I could kind of prep for but then I you know, I started unpacking it and and I think I think it’s challenging to answer that because I almost want to challenge your question a little bit to say there’s one because it’s like I think as business owners the responsibility is to put your efforts, your one thing on what that current constraint is. And then once you solve that constraint, it opens up a new constraint, right? And so there’s kind of this cycle where you’re kind of working through stuff. But if I had to like pull it back and say, All right, well what’s what’s the one that I see the most of,

Rob Murray (15:01): Yeah.

Derek Wells (15:02): I would say it’s capacity and not capacity in terms of like number of people because we can always pull on more staff but sometimes more staff can cause more problems for an owner but it’s it’s capacity of like leadership and

Rob Murray (15:17): Ooh.

Derek Wells (15:17): let’s just not even say the owner because like often owners will say I’m the bottleneck, right? Sure.

Rob Murray (15:21): Sure.

Derek Wells (15:21): Right that’s an easy thing to say.

I’m gonna say all carry let’s cascade it down one more step. This lines up with Sean’s point, like the danger of over promoting somebody or promoting someone too soon. We find your best tech, your best field worker, we need a manager. Well they they’re producing the highest of anybody else, so they gotta be the manager. Let’s pull them up.

We haven’t

Rob Murray (15:40): Yeah.

Derek Wells (15:40): given them the time to develop their leadership capacity to be able to then develop the people.

And so that’s a lot of times as owners,

Rob Murray (15:46): Love that answer.

Derek Wells (15:48): yeah, you’re called to also develop your people, just like Sean said. And so if you keep being the person that solves everybody’s problems and you’re doing your twenty things instead of your one thing, let’s get our people on board so they’re effective leaders and let’s let those leaders manage the people below them and help pull them up. And so that’s why I would say is the number one constraint that I see that is plaguing the majority of companies in our industry.

Rob Murray (16:12): Yeah, that’s badass, man. Okay, Sean Giver.

Sean Baxter (16:15): it’s easy for me. It’s it’s clear as day. Systems and processes. I mean w you

Rob Murray (16:22): Systems and processes.

Sean Baxter (16:24): know, the the constraint is whether or not the business can repeatedly execute without an owner having to hold everything together. That that is that is the constraint that I see over and over and over again. And I think a lot of companies confuse growth with revenue

Rob Murray (16:45): Mm.

Sean Baxter (16:45): when from my perspective the real constraint i like revenue is the outcome. Growth is increasing the capability of the organization.

And and those are two very different things and I think people conflate those two like all the time. And to me, it’s like, yeah, the revenue will happen once you have your systems and processes together and there’s clarity in the organization of what what we can do and what we need to do next. And those those couple of things to me is what comes up in coaching and when we do those roadmaps and we’re kind of getting getting into what’s what’s the one thing that that’s always the one thing.

Rob Murray (17:24): Well, I I think it’s really cool because and we’ve seen this time and time again in in in our own business, the more we focused on getting bigger, the harder it got and the worse we were, and the more we focused on getting better, the faster we grew.

Derek Wells (17:38): Yeah. Isn’t that ironic, right?

So this is good. I just did a I wrapped up a roadmap yesterday with a client and they were super aggressive on wanting to grow, right? Like, you know, it’s easy for a visionary, right? Like let’s look at that 10-year vision and let’s see how quickly we can scale up to that. And so we pulled it back and said, All right, I’m gonna have you draw on this board, write down everything that’s gonna allow you to grow by twenty to thirty percent next year. So we have this long list. All right, now on this I want you to write down everything that’s gonna get your profit up to twenty, maybe thirty percent. Let’s try that, write down that list. All right, where are the ones that that are match on both sides and then let’s put our efforts on that. Now we

Rob Murray (18:13): Ooh, great exercise.

Derek Wells (18:16): figured out like what our focus is gonna be. Because it’s really easy to add new service lines, you know, a whole list of this other stuff, but if that’s gonna come at a cost to our margin, like that’s not where we need to be putting our efforts at.

Rob Murray (18:29): Beautifully simple exercise. I I can imagine for the person that you ran it, it was pretty eye opening. Yeah. Like lightning bolt.

Derek Wells (18:35): Yeah. It’s like, all right, we’re gonna work on getting our profit and the ship stabilized before we keep going after all this shiny stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Murray (18:41): I love that.

And then one of the things I hear a lot though is you know, systems and processes from feedback I’ve heard from posts is like, you know, and we we we ask people like, Do you have a sales process? And they go, Yeah. I’m like, Great, can you send it to me? And they’re like, Wow

Sean Baxter (18:58): Ha ha ha.

Rob Murray (18:59): And I’m like, well, I so we have this thing. It’s like a process isn’t a process until it’s written down, stage one. And then a system can’t be anything unless everybody understands the process that makes the system run. But I still have people saying that they run systems and processes, when some might say there aren’t. And and so what what does that look like for someone and you know, y y we’ve seen and ourselves included, you built processes for something that didn’t really matter, and then three months later the process was outdated and no one used it. And so it was like this exercise of futility and a waste of energy. When someone’s looking at getting their head right on systems and processes, what’s one of the first things they gotta think about, Sean, like in terms of where where that comes and rubber hits the road.

Sean Baxter (19:45): Well, I mean, opening statement, if if your systems only work when the owner or the manager is watching, then you don’t have a system, you just have a really demanding job, right? Like that’s

Rob Murray (20:00): Right.

Sean Baxter (20:00): not that’s not that’s not how it goes. So I think you have to take, you know, stage one, which is easy to do this day and age, with Claude and Chat GPT, is you know, you take your problem that you’re having with any core process and you kind of map out what the steps might look like. That’s

Rob Murray (20:19): Mm-hmm.

Sean Baxter (20:20): what you said was that stage one, right? We have a written plan for how this should go every time without fail. Stage two is that accountability stage, which I think is what you’re alluding to is everybody loses it in in stage two. So in my world these days, there are many different platforms for making sure that these happen. You know, Microsoft Teams has a planner that you can take those SOPs and map out actual steps that have to be acknowledged and it’s visible to the team, right? So transparency over who does what and at what point in the process is the first level of accountability if you’re you know working as a group. a lot of our companies we’re kind of EOS fans in the Jeffrey Scott world, and so a lot of our companies are using EOS platforms.

for their meetings where meetings can be recorded. To-dos are recorded, right? Actions are recorded. So you’re just rising, you’re you’re lifting up accountability throughout the entire organization. Which

Rob Murray (21:25): Yeah, like visibility creates accountability.

Sean Baxter (21:27): Visibility counts yeah a hundred percent. And and if you don’t have an atmosphere or a culture where you’re cool with everything being out there and being transparent, then for sure you’re gonna lose accountability and it’s gonna make it even harder to reinforce. I think clarity to the process, which means you have to train. You have to train upstream and downstream so that people understand why they have to follow these steps and how it affects the next person down. probably the biggest issue.

that we encounter is people have software light. So they’re in a platform, pick a flavor. I’m not gonna name one. Doesn’t really matter to me who you’re using, but whomever you use, most companies are like 20% in, maybe 30%

Rob Murray (22:09): That’s probably good.

Sean Baxter (22:10): in. And and those are the

Derek Wells (22:12): Very good.

Sean Baxter (22:13): ones that are like actually better than most.

If if you got a hundred percent in and you changed your processes to follow the software instead of having ten shadow systems

Rob Murray (22:21): Whoa, whoa, whoa.

No no. I run a unique business and I need to make the software adapt to the way I run my business.

Sean Baxter (22:31): You’re you’re gonna struggle to grow. That’s that’s the bottleneck. That’s the problem with with processes. Like you at some point you have to change what you’ve done. You know, one one thing that in working with companies and in the peer group community, every 20% of growth, your systems and processes are outdated. You gotta update them, you gotta change them.

And you can’t just take a system off the shelf and call it good, right? You gotta you gotta be willing to adapt. Even when you’re following your software of choices po policies and procedures, you’re gonna have to change on the back end who you’re, you know, who’s doing what. in my own company recently we got to a size where we have a centralized purchaser for our design and build business. Well, you know, in the past project managers did the purchasing, now we’re purchasers doing the purchasing, right?

Imagine that. we have greenhouses and inventory, right? So the whole the whole purchasing part of our of our business changed

Rob Murray (23:27): Workflow. Mm-hmm.

Sean Baxter (23:30): in in a year’s time. I’m still using the software as it’s intended to be used, but who is responsible for what changed with growth? so I think I think, you know, yes, having a written policy or procedure is is is important.

And then stage two is do you have a mechanism that is transparent enough that people know if their coworker had done the step before them or after them? That’s super important. And then lastly, you’ve got to change your entire culture around accountability, which to me means that as a leader, you also have to be accountable to the platforms you’re using and you gotta use them.

Rob Murray (24:10): dude, we just built a sales AI coach with Claude and all our recordings and I ran my first discovery call in a while and I got a seventy-one and I was like, shut

Sean Baxter (24:18): Ha ha ha.

Rob Murray (24:19): And it gave me the feedback right away and I was like, book me another one. I gotta get a ninety plus. but I I and I think to your point though, we I we’re we’re blessed. We have a pretty strong culture for accountability, but we also like as leaders like are all like l we want it. It’s like how do we win and do this together? ‘Cause I don’t wanna sit there and, you know, be the classic do what I say, not as I do. Anyway, I think that’s epic.

Derek Wells (24:40): Yeah.

Rob Murray (24:41): Derek, you were chopping at a bit to add to that.

Derek Wells (24:43): Yeah, you saw that. Okay. So Sean said something we were talking about like is who is owning what, right? And we’re talking about accountability. And I think this kind of ties into what I was saying with like leadership capacities. So often like we pull someone into a new role or or you know, whatever it is, we’ve elevated somebody or we’ve created a new process and we’ve like delegated this to them. But having someone be a responsible person isn’t true delegation, right? So like if you’re familiar with like a racy chart, you know, you have these sections where it’s like who’s the responsible person that does the task, who’s the accountable person that owns it, who’s the person needs to be consulted, and then who’s the person that’s just informed, you know, maybe after the fact.

So often owners will delegate, say, well, they own this, but yet the owner’s still the accountable person to it. And if we’re handing off something to somebody, they have to shift to that accountable seat, right? Otherwise we’re always gonna be, owners always gonna be involved.

Rob Murray (25:33): Mm.

Derek Wells (25:33): So when Sean said like, all right, who’s owning this? It’s not just like it’s not just saying, hey, you’re gonna start doing this, but I need you to actually be the accountable person to it, which might mean, since you’re living in, you might need to change your own process, right? So the people that are actually doing it might, you know, do a better job at coming up with this as long as we’re training and leading them to do so.

Rob Murray (25:52): Love that. That’s okay, so coming back to what so first of all, leadership capacity is probably an episode in itself. maybe a couple books probably, right? And but but

Derek Wells (25:59): you could we could riff on that for another hour or two if we wanted. Yeah. There’s there’s a few out there.

Rob Murray (26:04): But I but I think it’s a really cool perspective that a lot of people haven’t shared on this show specifically because a lot of folks people they start with their they tell stories about themselves, which is also why it’s so cool to have folks like you that are in multiple businesses, like you coach across the industry, not just in your own. And so as much as an entrepreneur or a leader needs to focus on building their leadership capacity, absolutely, because then only then can you be a leader worth following. But then the next step of building leadership capacity with your folks I think is probably something that hasn’t been talked about a lot. And so you’re even just what you said right now with that responsibility delegation and the racy chart and the accountability component. Let’s say you do have somebody though that you have leadership potential. What’s one or two things you see? And this question for both of you, but we’ll start with Derek, around how you tangibly build leadership capacity in somebody who is willing but not necessarily at the stage yet they they need to build it up. What’s some of the kind of things that you would you’d recommend for folks to look at trying

Derek Wells (27:06): so how do we build up their leadership capacity, right? So like we’re kinda working on professional development, right? And so in the same ways that you know a leader needs to make sure that they are handing off stuff to others, you know, their people need to learn how to hand off stuff to their people. Okay, so one of the big concepts I always come back to is like this c idea of like leading with questions. You know, I think that’s a really powerful tool. So owners, managers may be complaining that I’m solving the problems for everybody or this person might be great but then they start bringing stuff to me they keep bringing stuff to me and it’s because we haven’t taught them or ourselves how to like effectively lead with questions right so if someone’s bringing me a lot of problems you know the quick question is like all right what is the problem here for you right I’m trying to figure out like what is it that they are dealing with not all these things but this one thing and then what do you see as a solution to that problem?

Right? And if they don’t lock on to what maybe you think the solution is, you can ask other leading questions like, all right, and what else? Give me something else, and then and what else? And that what else question is really powerful because it allows them to ex you know, explore all the options. and then you can kind of say, All right, and why? Right? ‘Cause they’re like now you’re learning how this person is thinking, which is great, right? And cause so then like our job is to kind of keep those guardrails up to help train them to be thinking in the way that we want them to be thinking. We want to empower them and equip and so if you can do that for your people and then your people know how to do that for their people, now you s you are doing exactly what Sean was talking about and this whole organization is doing an effective job of lifting people up and you have an open culture that is now you have you know, you’re pushing up as well, which is a great spot, Dean.

Rob Murray (28:42): Yeah, well I mean and first of all, I appreciate that ’cause that is a very actionable, you know, four step process on coaching your team. You know, what problem are you facing with? What solutions do you see possible? What else, what else, what else, and why?

Derek Wells (28:55): Yeah.

Rob Murray (28:56): I don’t think that’s too crazy to give a practice shot, you know, like come back to minute thirty-one and, you know, listen, Derek, give you a bit of a master class on how you can start your leadership coaching. I mean, I’m having a hard time getting all the notes down, but I’ll make sure I do.

that’s sweet dude. super tangible and I think it’s it’ll probably difficult for folks when they start. Like that’s a muscle that has to get built. And like I guess it’s like you know if you have a choice as a leader, is do you want to build the muscle and go work out the coaching muscle, right?

Derek Wells (29:22): Yeah.

So you guys do this a little bit on your side because you were giving you guys have a lot of data that talks about like thirty percent of calls go unanswered, right? Like that’s roughly you guys have thousands and thousands.

Rob Murray (29:35): F F F my F my life, dude.

Derek Wells (29:37): Right, yes. And so your

Sean Baxter (29:37): Ha ha ha.

Derek Wells (29:39): job as a marketing company, like you’re doing all this marketing, right? And so if you’re kicking all these leads to people, all of a sudden it’s not it doesn’t become a marketing problem. There’s a problem on the other side, right? And so like you guys have done a really good job of recognizing what’s downstream from that. And then now

Rob Murray (29:54): Mm.

Derek Wells (29:55): as a marketing company, you’re not just providing leads, right? We are now training our customers on how to handle those leads, right? So like you’ve you’ve seen a second process, a second system that’s broken.

And then you dove into that, exposed it, and then you’re helping people solve that problem. So that’s what effective leadership is, right, in some ways. Like it’s not just delegating something to somebody, but that’s gonna create another bottleneck for them. So how does that person now recognize that and how can they fix that downstream?

Rob Murray (30:21): Yeah, I love it.

Sean Baxter (30:21): By the way, Rob, I heard you say that at the summit and I went back to my team that following Monday morning and we got a phone answering service to cover nights and weekends and we got our answer rate back to ninety. So

Rob Murray (30:36): Let’s go. And also, you know, for the theme of the show, taking so learning is a new behavior in the same situation. And so many people will listen to this stuff and then do little if nothing. And you’re talking two-day turnaround increased answer rate to ninety percent plus. The the ROI on that activity is ridiculous. Anyway, I appreciate you, man. That’s great and thank you for sharing it.

okay, so then going back to this leadership capacity, Sean, what do you see as a complement to what Derek shared, as an opportunity to have someone start building their leadership capacity with their team?

Sean Baxter (31:10): Yeah, so when we recognize that someone has the capabilities to go farther than their current station.

it’s really probably more about who they are as a person and less about what skills they have in the field. so for us, you know, somebody has to be humble, they’ve got to be coachable, right? You you remember to little league sports, if we’re all dads, so you can see it on your kids’ teams or maybe with your kids. The kids who take feedback and do something with it or hustle off the side to get the ball or or show up to practice on time, right? These are like pretty basic skills. Well, when I’m looking for leaders in our business, I’m I’m first of all, I’m looking for people that show up. are they accountable to themselves in their current job? are they asking questions? Are they curious? Are they taking on more responsibility? These are the kinds of things that we’re looking for. I could care less if someone is the best at cutting in a paper patio. I could care less if someone someone’s a better excavator operator than the next guy. Because those skills are great and I need them. But most of the time, those people like to stay in a skilled trade. The leadership element are those who are willing to stand up and say, I got it, I’m responsible, I can go talk to the client, or I can go talk to the vendor, or I made the mistake. It was me who did that. I want to get better. It was it was my fault. So that’s kind of what we’re looking for. What we do with that person.

Rob Murray (32:40): It’s like Yeah.

Sean Baxter (32:42): And to develop those skills is take it a step further. So the first thing that we try to do, especially if like second guy in a crew kind of moving up to a crew lead, that’s probably the first leadership position in in our company. We’re looking for people who will say something like, That does sound like a big problem, Jose. Why don’t you come up with two solutions to that problem and get back to me and I’ll help you choose the right one? You know, can they take responsibility to overcome whatever the issue is? The delivery didn’t show up, or we screwed up, we used the wrong product, whatever the problem is, can they take accountability for that?

come up with a solution and then you know as a middle manager’s responsibility can can they foster that behavior? Can they get it to a point where now we’re not even coming with the problem, we just came with the solution. That’s that’s kind

Rob Murray (33:32): Yeah.

Sean Baxter (33:32): of step one.

Rob Murray (33:33): Well and I love the fact too, ’cause some people are like, you know, okay, you let me know what you wanna do. go you’ll figure it out. Like so they’re like they okay, thanks for the problem, you come up with solutions. But I love what you said, it was super subtle. It’s like come up with two solutions, come back and I’ll help you pick one. So you’re not leaving them completely on their own to start with. You’re there to say, I’m I’m gonna push you a little bit, but I’m gonna support you too.

Sean Baxter (33:54): Yep. Yep.

Rob Murray (33:55): I I think that’s beautiful. So that was level one. Was there a second one follow up that you wanted to bring? Yeah.

Sean Baxter (34:00): Yeah, so that’s level one. I think level two is okay, now we’ve got a crew lead position and someone who’s taking responsibility for day-to-day decisions. the next level of leadership training is can they start developing the people below them?

Because there’s no way you’re going to be an effective project manager or production manager or division manager on up if you cannot develop people below you. So that means that instead of just trying to hit man hours and trying to be our top-rated crew, you’re actually pausing and helping the young man who’s just joined our team and whose hours aren’t counting against your job to learn how to properly cut in a paver patio. Or you’re giving them a little grief when they’re late to work and the whole crew got held up, right? You’re taking the time to be a mentor leader. we do this by having our crew lead positions do their own one-on-ones with their crew, and we’re really, really big on check-ins and one-on-ones, and that is you know, for the employees’ benefit, right? It’s not for the manager’s benefit. How are you? What’s new? What’s going on? Is there something I can do to make your experience better? Is there anything preventing you?

Rob Murray (35:12): Yeah.

Sean Baxter (35:12): From getting to that next level, let me know that’s my job, right? So servant leadership is what we’re looking for as an organization. It’s something that I teach on when anytime I’m in a consulting engagement, I’m working on servant leadership within an organization and trying to get people to kind of wrap their heads around what that means. You know, your job as a leader is to remove the barriers from the people that you’re leading. That’s your actual job. And if you don’t recognize that, you’re you’re probably gonna have a hard time growing your leadership.

So

Rob Murray (35:41): it’s and it’s fascinating because sales and marketing I believe are on the same principles. Like sales is meant to serve and solve. You know, marketing if we educate and help. I think with leadership we’re here to build people. I think if we can take that approach across all things, life gets a bit more fun and a little easier. And people are a bit more rewarded from it. Anyway, I think it’s awesome.

Derek Wells (36:01): Yeah. It does get fun. And and Sean, I like how you you brought up the radical candor again, tied in with servant leadership. You know, so often, like when someone is stepping is newly into a leadership role or they haven’t experienced the need to be open and transparent. It’s like the radical candor section. So those that are listening, like if you’re not familiar with the concept of radical candor, just quit look it up real quick. Look at the matrix that they show, because there’s four quadrants there. And the radical candor hangs out on the quadrant where people are willing to care deeply and then challenge directly. And that’s when you get change. Like that’s what drives change. So the area where most new leaders fall into is like, I have to challenge people, right? And they fall into this obnoxious aggression quadrant.

They they’re basically not showing their team that they care. If you’re just challenging people all the time, like production guys are so guilty of this, right? Most a lot of new production managers are obnoxious aggressors sometimes, right? And like they don’t recognize like those things that Sean said, like checking in with your people, like letting you know like you care deeply about them. You wanna see them develop. When someone knows like if someone’s invested in me, man, I’m gonna be listening to their advice ’cause I know they care about how I succeed.

Rob Murray (37:08): Yeah, and they’ll run through walls together with you.

Derek Wells (37:10): Totally.

Yeah, ’cause I know you got my back and when you’re challenging me, I know it’s it’s for my betterment, right? And then the other section that sometimes I’ll say maybe owners fall into is the section where yes they care deeply, but they aren’t willing to just challenge directly. And then that’s that ruinous empathy, right? Like I care deeply about people, I love

Rob Murray (37:26): Right. Passive aggressive

Derek Wells (37:27): my employees, but man, I’m just not afraid. I’ll complain to my coach or I’ll complain to everyone I’m talking to about this person isn’t doing their job. It’s like, do they know? Have you shared that with them? Have you like

Sean Baxter (37:36): Right.

Derek Wells (37:36): how are we pulling them up, right? You’re not and it’s ruined his sympathy in that area.

Rob Murray (37:38): Yeah.

Sean Baxter (37:38): Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Murray (37:41): Do wanna add to that Sean? I didn’t want to get in the way.

Sean Baxter (37:43): No, I’m I just agree. I mean it’s it’s about loving people good, which it doesn’t

Derek Wells (37:46): Yeah.

Sean Baxter (37:46): always come off as nice, right? It’s like sometimes you could you could nice someone to death and and never give them the truth and that’s a problem.

Rob Murray (37:53): Well well, I think one of the things you said earlier though is the kicker to it all is that clarity is kindness. ‘Cause like I can say you’re not doing a good job and if I leave it at that, that’s kind of a bullshit, you know, interaction. But I’m like, hey, you know, when this happens and this is the result, this isn’t good. When this happens and this is the result, that’s good. And right now we have a bit of a gap that we want to close. And I think that’s where a lot of people just like they they’re so close.

Because they know that person can do better. I also think that there’s and I’d love to get both of your takes on this one. A lot of times when there’s like good staff in the organization, an owner can feel like it’s difficult to give them straight goods on how to do something differently because they’re not necessarily sure themselves if their way is the right way. And I see it happen so many times where it’s like, bud, you built this business. You have a very clear idea on customer service, you have a very clear idea of what you want to do with this company.

You have a clear method of how you want to work as a group, but you’re just you’re holding back from just giving people the straight goods about why you do things the way you do and how you what you expect. And so you got all these folks doing things a little bit differently, they’re not clear. Do you see that showing up in people and it takes them some time to like own that space for themselves? And then what happens when they do in terms of how their team responds?

Sean Baxter (39:05): I mean that’s the lack of having a a process, right? It’s like this is the way we’ve done it, tribal knowledge. So

Rob Murray (39:13): Mm.

Sean Baxter (39:14): now I’m a little leery to lead with it, but if it’s this is the way we do it, actual process, then you can be a lot more resolute in what you expect.

Rob Murray (39:23): Legit.

Derek Wells (39:24): Yeah. And and I think it’s it’s it’s creating a culture where, you know, openness and transparency is accepted and and rewarded, right? Like yeah, my team gives me some feedback time and it’s hard to hear. But like how often are owners like

Rob Murray (39:37): The hardest.

Derek Wells (39:38): Yeah, right? But if you got a p bunch of people that are working for you that aren’t willing to challenge upstream, like you’re gonna have a problem, right? ‘Cause you’re gonna be hanging up here in the silo and the people that boots on the ground for you, so to speak, that are seeing the real problems, they’re like, Well we gotta do it because that’s what we’re hearing and they’re not willing to say like, Hey, we got a problem down here and I think most of them the owners would love to hear that stuff and receive that feedback.

So you gotta also, you have to train your culture that like we will challenge people, right? And we love when it’s you know, when sometimes there’s a little bit of tension, like healthy tissue’s good, right? And with that go both ways.

Rob Murray (40:10): Yeah. Yeah, well it brings out our best, right?

Derek Wells (40:14): Absolutely, yeah.

Rob Murray (40:15): I do an anonymous survey once a year. it stings. And but but but

Derek Wells (40:20): Do you get your three sixty in?

Rob Murray (40:21): I get the whole company to give like what am I doing well, what am I not doing well? Did I approve on the last thing you said I sucked at? anyway, there’s a couple

Derek Wells (40:23): Yep. Right. Yep.

Rob Murray (40:27): pieces to it, but it’s all anonymous and it’s in a sheet, so I get to read it at night and take my second to take a breath and

Sean Baxter (40:32): Ha ha ha.

Rob Murray (40:35): my initial reactions when I first started doing it’s like, these people don’t get it. And I was like, maybe I yeah, their perception’s my reality. Anyway, I couldn’t agree more though.

And I think it’s probably the single biggest mechanism that’s helped me grow, is getting the feedback. And once you see consistency from fifteen, twenty people and they’re all saying something similar, you’re like, Meh, if everybody meets an A-hole, you know, maybe

Derek Wells (40:53): Might be some truth in it.

Rob Murray (40:55): you’re the A-hole. Anyway.

Sean Baxter (40:56): That’s part of our roadmap process, by the way, Rob. That’s that’s one of the we do we

Derek Wells (40:59): Yeah.

Sean Baxter (41:00): do confidential feedback that just goes back to us. and we come to their roadmap meeting armed with that. So it really helps us to see the the playing field.

Rob Murray (41:07): That’s that’s so good.

Derek Wells (41:07): Yeah.

Yeah.

But man, it’s so helpful. Yeah.

Rob Murray (41:11): I love that. Yeah, well I mean you gotta deal with the harsh brew reality of the situation and then move forward, right? Like if you’re if you’re in a you know palace on your own. Anyway, we all get it. Okay. I’m almost out of time, but there was something that you said at the beginning, Derek, I wanted to come back to which was this idea of like you gotta focus on the one thing, not only as a business but as a leader. And one of the things we’ve seen and I experienced personally growing the company and working with others was like deciding what to focus on was like, you know, who should know? I think I’ve got clarity on it now, but I’d love to get your take on it ’cause you alluded to the bottlenecks and constraints and I’m just curious what you would say to somebody who’s like, I do want to have more focus in my day, but I don’t know where to focus.

Derek Wells (41:52): That’s a good good question. So and I think this ties into where where I wanted to challenge the question earlier on. I’m like, well there’s not you know, the constraint changes and I think that’s what it is, is you gotta give yourself some thinking time, right?

There’s a book by Keith Cunningham called The Road Less Stupid. And you know, he made hundreds of millions of dollars and then when the real estate you know bubble burst, he went down to absolute zero. And through that journey, he said he got the the best education, right? It cost a couple hundred million dollars. But he

Rob Murray (42:22): Ha ha ha.

Derek Wells (42:23): through that journey he realized like he was making stupid decisions because he wasn’t giving himself enough thinking time. Like he had a meeting with a billionaire or something like this, someone ultra high net wealth.

And during that meeting, something came up and the that person looked to their assistant and said, hey, put this in my notes for my thinking time coming up, right? And so that he was like, that that’s the key to that person’s success is they were giving them the white space to try and do that strategic, visionary, strap plan, whatever it is to map out their future. And so, you know, I think step one is just gonna be helping you give yourself that white space to figure out what the problem is that you’re trying solve, right? And once you figure out what that constraint is, right?

Like if we talked a lot about leadership, maybe leadership’s a constraint. Well once we solve that, then maybe there’s a we got a great team, maybe now sales is our constraint. So we’re gonna put all of our efforts that sales gonna be on one thing. I’ve solved the sales problem. Now that pushes it to production, right? Now production’s

Rob Murray (43:15): Yeah, yeah.

Derek Wells (43:16): my constraint. Right? So you see how this journey kinda goes around and that’s where you figure out what that one thing is for you and that’s where you go full throttle and put all your energy into that.

Rob Murray (43:26): Love that. John

Sean Baxter (43:27): Well, I think if you’re tying back to the beginning of the conversation, we were talking about the focus of of services. I made a decision. I have a unique background in that I had no focus in the first fifteen years. We d we did commercial work, we did builder track homework. I started in high end residential and ultimately I came back to residential.

I’m sort of annoyed with the term high end residential these days because in most markets, unless you’re, you know, somewhere New York City or LA, it’s probably pretty small and most of us do just residential work is probably a more apt term for that. you’re not gonna get very big if you if you’re focused

Derek Wells (44:07): It sounds sexier though.

Sean Baxter (44:10): on one percent of your city’s population, right? So for

Rob Murray (44:13): And that everybody’s going after.

Sean Baxter (44:15): yeah, exactly. So for me, it you know and I’m biased because I run a company that does soup to nuts, construction to maintenance, but our focus is the customer. It’s the customer that we serve. We only serve property owners directly that where they sleep as a is a way to define that, right? At their home.

Rob Murray (44:31): Yeah, no, but I mean that’s clear.

Sean Baxter (44:33): and and that provides some clarity to our team about who our who our core client is and what we’re serving. Now we want to do everything on that property.

so that that’s one way that you could have a niche and still serve a a wide variety of of services.

Rob Murray (44:50): Absolutely.

Sean Baxter (44:51): I think as a leader, if if I were gonna narrow down you know what to focus on, and again I’m biased because I’m in the coaching world, but you know, being a really great landscaper is awesome if you want to be a foreman forever.

Or if you want to be a really kick-ass project manager. But if you wanna own a business that scales, you gotta focus on leadership and being a business owner and understanding your financials. If you don’t know how to budget and then drive a team through leadership to hit a budget and you don’t understand the financial mechanisms of the company that you’re owning.

It’s gonna be really hard to be very successful and and not be in the day-to-day and and scale, you know, beyond that point. So if if I were gonna pick one thing, I think most owners in the landscape industry would have to get a lot stronger at their command of of actually being a business person. You know, how how good are you at that CEO role? Do you do you actually understand your profit and loss? Do you actually understand your balance sheet? Do you do you

Rob Murray (45:57): Yeah.

Sean Baxter (45:57): understand the decisions that you’re making and how they affect so few people spend enough time in that area. It’s easy to go back to being a landscaper. It’s hard to, you know, kind of self-teach yourself how to run a company as a CEO. And that that that sounds really silly when you’re at a million or you’re at two million and you’re running directly running MoCrews or whatever, but I promise you, you won’t get to ten if you don’t understand how to read financials and you don’t understand how to budget. So you know, as an organization, we spend a lot of time with our clients teaching them how to budget and how to read their financial statements, how to understand how to appropriately price their services. that helps them to decide what their focus might be. You know, wow, we really lose money every time we do this. So that to me, that’s that’s

Rob Murray (46:40): Ha ha ha.

Derek Wells (46:40): Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sean Baxter (46:42): kind of the one thing. We every year we do a financial master class to help teach people.

Rob Murray (46:46): I was gonna say you’re segueing perfectly at the end of this. So

Derek Wells (46:48): Yeah.

Rob Murray (46:48): so give us a quick little detail with the financial master class. I don’t mean to interrupt. Go for it, Sean.

Sean Baxter (46:52): So thanks for catching that. so you know every year we do financial master class. This is our attempt at educating beyond just our, you know, core group of clients, but to the landscape community at large. how first of all compare your financials against those in our community, right? every year we’ll get, I don’t know, 300 companies, and then we can break them into segments, one to five, five to ten, ten plus, maintenance heavy, construction heavy, irrigation only.

Rob Murray (47:20): it’s epic. It’s epic.

Derek Wells (47:21): Mm-hmm.

Sean Baxter (47:23): I’ve been told we have the cleanest numbers of anybody doing this. Jeffrey’s been doing this a long time. This year, Mitch has put in a ton of work to incorporate AI to make it easier to participate in this study to begin with. And we’ve broken up our two day session. First day is going to be more training, so this could be good for people in your administrative staff, really anyone in the organization that you want to gain some awareness of how to read a profit and loss and how to understand by demand.

Vision where you stack up against 300 other businesses. Day two is going to be for our pros, people who already understand all the basics, and now we’re gonna go a lot deeper. we’re gonna touch on balance sheet items and still in a comparison mode, but get a lot deeper. So we’ve we’ve really made some improvements to this over the years and with feedback from our clients on how we could better serve them. but it’s a really great way to get your feet wet, understand.

And financials. it’s definitely for me personally, where I changed from being a landscape contractor to being a business owner was mastering

Rob Murray (48:25): Yeah.

Sean Baxter (48:26): the understanding of my financials. And so that’s my one thing, and a little plug for our team’s attempt at you know teaching as many people as we can. Correct?

Rob Murray (48:36): And it’s January sixth, seventh, twenty twenty seven, I think.

So we we g Jeffrey’s caught up is I think a site, right? Yeah.

Sean Baxter (48:43): It’s all virtual, it’s on our website now. maybe you could drop a link.

Rob Murray (48:47): Yeah, well well for sure.

Derek Wells (48:48): Yeah.

Rob Murray (48:48): We’re gonna put the link in. Absolutely, and we’ll be talking about it because it’s a huge one. And I think if you’re listening to this and you hear that and you go, ugh, you have to tend. And if you hear that and and you

Derek Wells (48:56): There’s a there’s your first filter.

Rob Murray (48:58): know what I mean though? Cause like I don’t know of you guys but

Sean Baxter (48:58): Yeah.

Rob Murray (49:00): working out, we were doing these fitness classes, whatever, many years ago, and we had to do inchworms where you essentially like, you know, you crawl out on your hands and then you have to crawl back and you crawl out on your hands, you gotta go across the room. I hated them. My shoulders were weak and I just hated it. And so like you can’t get strong if you’ve got that weak spot. And if it and if I was like, I have to do these inchworms because it’s clearly exposing a weakness I have in my physical fitness. And I think there’s just so many times where people avoid the things that hurt or they don’t like and it just kinda holds them back. Derek anything you wanna add to the financial master class piece or

Derek Wells (49:30): sure, yeah, so I mean yeah, definitely both critical for like the educational aspect of it. Then you got the benchmarking aspect of it. well

Rob Murray (49:36): Which is huge, especially ’cause it’s all landscape specific.

Derek Wells (49:39): right. Yeah, like how often do you get a chance to look at hundreds of other companies?

These numbers and do a deep dive down to like how much are they paying a mechanic,

Rob Murray (49:46): Okay.

Derek Wells (49:48): right? Like as a percentage of the overall revenue, right? there’s a lot of like granular detail you can pull from this too. But when Sean was speaking about us bringing AI into it, you know, it’s different like cause yes, you can take a sheet and you can throw it in AI and have it do all the data analysis for you.

But with this model like being trained deeply on all of this content here, like you can ask a much deeper question, which is what’s gonna be really cool to it, right? So like could be like, all right, if I hire this manager at this salary, what kind of gross margin do I need to support that, right? Like it

Rob Murray (50:17): Yeah.

Derek Wells (50:18): can give you like real life qu you know, real questions that if you’re not comfortable looking at financials, that’s gonna unlock a lot of power for you, right? Like if I raise my wages by five percent, how does that affect my pricing? Like, I mean, t tons of great stuff that could come from this and just really help a company game changing, right? You know, stuff that stuff that like people have

Rob Murray (50:34): That’s game changing. The amount of time that would take s

Derek Wells (50:39): fractional CFOs to do their monthly reporting and they can ask these deeper questions with them.

Rob Murray (50:43): Yeah, look out boys. That’s gonna be a tough gig f five years from now. Anyway, I appreciate

Derek Wells (50:48): Yeah.

Rob Murray (50:49): you guys. This is amazing. I’d love to do it again together or individually and appreciate all of you for listening to this episode. I think I could have done it for like the rest of the day. you guys are awesome. Thank you for doing it.

Derek Wells (51:00): Rob, it’s great to be on here, man. Thank you. Appreciate all you guys do as well.

Sean Baxter (51:02): Yeah, thank you. Yep.