Andrew McCurry on Innovation and Training in Landscape Business

Robert
00:00
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the I am landscape Growth podcast, where entrepreneurs help entrepreneurs grow faster, better, and stronger in the green industry. From leadership to sales to recruiting and operational excellence. We cover the topics holding entrepreneurs back and share how to get past those bottlenecks with the best in the industry. I’m your host, Rob Murray, co founder and CEO of Intrigue, a digital marketing company focused on helping landscape companies grow. So sit back and enjoy the show. All right, well, welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the I am Landscape Growth podcast. Today I have an awesome guest, Andrew McCurry from Father Nature landscapes. Andrew, thanks for doing this today, buddy.

Andrew
00:40
You’re welcome. Glad to be here.

Robert
00:42
Like, like usual, we want to make sure the audience has a sense of who they’re listening today. So can you give folks a quick rundown of, like, what father nature landscapes is all about and kind of how you ended up running this company over the last, whatever, 1015 years?

Andrew
00:59
Yes. Father Nature landscapes is all about connecting people with the land. So. And my brother and I co run the Birmingham branch down here in Alabama, and we opened up in 2009 here in Birmingham and continue to, you know, just stay very curious about our craft, about people and the relationships they have with their outdoor spaces. And, you know, how we can kind of trick them into coming outside more often than they typically do.

Robert
01:37
Yeah, that’s cool, man. So what’s the core focus in terms of the types of clientele you work with at Father Nature? It’s mostly residential. And then just kind of give a sense of what’s the size of the business if people have an understanding of the perspective where you’re coming from.

Andrew
01:52
Okay. Again, our core focus are livable landscapes, which puts us mainly in the residential realm. Yep, we do most, we do about 80% residential, 20% commercial. And that would be on our service side and the installation side. We, our gross revenues are around $10 million. And we’ve got roughly 60 people here in Birmingham that help us do that, from furnishing ladies to floriculture team to carpentry team to irrigation team, service department and an installation department.

Robert
02:31
Awesome. And, and for people that don’t know, you have father nature as a name and a couple of other spots, not just Birmingham. So can you give people a quick understanding of, like, what that’s all about and how that came?

Andrew
02:47
We’ve really got a. People have been able to identify with our name in a very easy way. It’s easy to remember. I can remember, you know, kind of starting in Tacoma, Washington, and, you know, a pretty liberal state, but just a lot of people being very curious. Anytime we’d walk into a Home Depot or anything and then see our shirt or our credit card or our trucks, you know, just curious. You know, they were curious about the name, and some of the people that I’ve worked with in the past just wanted to either open or run their own landscape businesses, and we kind of had a thing that was working, and so instead of them trying to develop something new, they just.

Andrew
03:31
We just partnered and allowed our brand to represent them and their business because we had, you know, we had common values that we shared, and the markets did not matter as much as the values did in terms of being able to be a brand ambassador and represent that. That. That brand. So, long and short, one of. One of the businesses licenses our name down in mobile, our brand. And I’m actually still partners with Chris up in tacoma.

Robert
04:06
Very cool. All right, so the nature of this, no pun intended, podcast is all around, you know, what are the primary growth constraints holding landscape entrepreneurs back? You know, there’s. There’s a common couple answers, and. And Chris, you know, has done. Has done the show as well. He was awesome. So we’ll see if he can live up. He’s got big shoes to fill. Also only met the guy in Zoom until he did the Jays game in Toronto. Didn’t realize he’s a giant human being.

Andrew
04:35
He is. So I’ll never be able to feel his shoes. I’m not that big of a guy.

Robert
04:40
What. What do you see over the last, you know, six months, twelve months, as, like, the biggest growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry?

Andrew
04:50
I really think it’s been going on longer than this. I know roughly about six years ago, I started to see were having. Man, it was really easy to acquire new customers. It was for us down here in Birmingham. But finding people that could do the work and do it well was our challenge. And as some of the millennials started entering the workforce, we just had, as a majority, we had a lot of unskilled people coming into the industry, and we, as an industry, needed ways of ramping them up faster. So bridging the skills gap that existed between our workforce and our craft. And I felt like whoever bridged that gap the fastest was gonna win in this game. And so I spent some money developing an app that was a train. It was a game training app to help.

Andrew
06:02
It was to help bridge that gap. The premise of the game, when you learn more, you earn more. The app, I’ve taken it down off the App Store. Now, it was called Paydirt, and it was to be used as a. It was to be used as an assessment tool, but it was also to be used as a way where you could get ceus, continuing education units that would help you to acquire, to level up and have career advancement in our businesses. And I realize there’s lots of businesses a lot bigger than mine, but the majority of landscape businesses in the United States are sub a million dollars. So you needed something that could be affordable and scalable to a business that had a gross revenue of less than a million dollars.

Andrew
06:52
And this was something that you didn’t have to buy devices, you just download an app on your phone and it might be something in an interview, you allow, you know, your interviewee or your applicant to take an assessment on in the game and kind of see where they stood. Because what I found is when hiring irrigation techs, for instance, I could ask them a couple questions that let me know if they really knew how to install irrigation or not. And the same for lighting, you know, same if you started going any deeper than just greenside up on sodium. You know, there’s a lot to learn in our industry that most people don’t know. And so we. This workforce development, it has become more prevalent even over the last six years as immigration issues have still not been solved by our government.

Andrew
07:53
And, you know, here in the United States, I know you’re up in Canada, but there’s lots of undocumented workers that are filling these roles in our companies. And anyway, we needed a way to even be able to teach them. And so part of what we’ve done, I put that app idea to the side because I saw it was going to take more money than I had available, and I couldn’t raise the money from the companies I was trying to, you know, promote, like Rain Bird and Hunter and Belgard.

Andrew
08:33
I was trying to go after these companies so that as we had a training module on their particular discipline, such as paver installation, you know, you would have a Belgaard sponsored module so that they’d actually pay for the module, but it was part of a bigger thing of pulling all this, these different disciplines together so that we could show how, you know, landscapes get built in their respective, you know, their respective ways.

Robert
09:01
Very cool. So, like that. I mean, that was successful initiative, sounds like in terms of getting your team on it. And so are you still using it yourself or is it.

Andrew
09:09
No, we essentially are. And I actually did this personally because I didn’t. My brother at that point didn’t want to partner with me because it was going to be a deep pocket investment.

Robert
09:22
Yeah, no doubt.

Andrew
09:23
And so I, you know, I think I ended up putting about $55,000 into it and got a prototype built to try to use the prototype to then go pitch. And it’s one of those things that it’s like, as most of the owners or even people that are in the landscape trade know today, like, carving out time to do the important things, is that’s what’s holding us all back, because we’re not doing enough of that. And. Go ahead.

Robert
09:51
We’ll come back to that one in a second. I’ll make a note right here.

Andrew
09:54
Okay. Well, I’m just, you know, there’s. There’s only so many important things that you can, you know, tackle in any given point in time, because most of our days are filled with urgent things, and, you know, it’s. It’s the urgency that, hey, I need solder, or, hey, I got a flatter, hey, da da. You know, all these things we could go on and on. That that’s what fills, you know, the majority of the business owners day. And when you can, you know, hire someone to take care of the majority of those urgent things, it’s then that you can start working on the important things which only you know, can. Can work on. Because not everybody in my business can work on what I’m classifying as the important things, which helps take the vision and the whole company forward.

Robert
10:37
Yeah, I love it, man. So, like, we’re going to come back to that in one quick sec, just to wrap up this workforce development. It’s really interesting, because most people that, when I ask that question, what’s the primary growth constraint? They just say, there’s no. There’s no people to do the jobs. Whereas you said, no, there are. They’re just unskilled. And we have to bridge the gap between where they are as a labor market and where the industry or my business needs them. And so you’ve put a lot of focus and attention on training and development. Seemingly, it’s worked. And right now, you’ve got a crew. It’s awesome. You’ve licensed the business into a couple of different spots, mobile, Tacoma. And now, you know, you even got time to look at developing an app and pitching it.

Robert
11:19
Not to say you’re going to go do that, but it does illustrate the point of view that you think you’re getting to right now where you can carve out time once you develop your people. So in terms of somebody out there who is like, okay, I’m listening. Now I’ll find some unskilled people and then develop them. What are one or two things they can do to start building a development program, a workforce development program.

Andrew
11:47
Great. That is a great question. Kind of where we started. And, you know, you’re like, what comes first, the cart or the horse? And it’s kind of like both have to happen almost simultaneously because you still need people to fulfill your unfulfilled seats. But at the same time, this is all a matter of just reframing how people see the workforce. Right. So you’re saying. Some people say the people aren’t out there. And I say, you know, they, they are out there. We just now have to, we have to break down what we need them to know first. All right. And if we’re talking about entry level people and let’s just say entry level, we’re going to use just a number, like $15 an hour. Like, what is that person capable of?

Andrew
12:35
Well, at $15, you need to be able to, you know, show up to work on time, you know, dress appropriately, be, be kind, be curious, be coachable. And if you’re coachable and you do those things, you’re worth $15 an hour. Cause I’m gonna be able to get you to push a wheelbarrow and dig a hole and lay side, you know. So we outline what we call the father nature fundamentals and the father nature fundamentals. We break them down into 30, 60, 90, and even 365 day outlook so that we can, we have a guide and we designate our best trainer. You know, who’s our best trainer? Well, we identify that person, and all new people go to that crew. Okay?

Andrew
13:26
So as they come on, and if we have too many people at one time, then we look at who’s our second best trainer? And it keeps going on. Who’s our third best trainer? And so we’ve got about three different training teams on the install side that essentially could take a new person in and just, you’ve got a piece of paper or you could do it electronically, but we have your 1st 30 day fundamentals that they have to learn. And then at 30 days, we actually sit like, I sit down with those two people, the mentor and the mentee, and we outline. Hey, so you seem like, you know, you are proficient in these areas. And if they are, we check the box.

Andrew
14:09
If they aren’t, we just apply more time, you know, and then we’re looking at what we’re going to be looking at the next 30 days, which is looking at that 60 day father nature funding fundamental initiatives. And that’s how that outline which one of the best hires we made, which is not really a hire because she’s a subcontractor, is an HR kind of, I’m gonna say kind of HR. She’s more about what we call a people champion, where she does help with our recruiting, but she’s also helped get all this stuff on in a program. We use bamboohr to outline that program. And it’s just a platform. You don’t have to use bamboohr. You could do it in Microsoft word.

Andrew
14:59
But the easiest thing to do is just start off with like what does it, what does a guy or a gal need to know in the first 30 days they’re employed with you? It’s, it’s that easy. Part of ours happened to do with knowing Father Nature’s most commonly used plants. So we have a list of 30 plants. You need to know these. Yeah, 30 plants. Part of ours is we do some Spanish and English learning. You have to, you know, there’s some Spanish that you have to learn if you’re an english speaker. And there’s some English you have to learn if you’re a spanish speaker. That’s part of the training.

Andrew
15:37
There’s safety equipment, you know, simple things in your 1st 30 days, like how to just glue PVC, you know, how to cut it, how to glue it, how to install a light like strip wire. We come back down to, you know, how do you.

Robert
15:52
Yeah, yeah, that’s great. You know, I think sometimes people over complicate what this needs to be like. I think when you simply like this, it really becomes clear. And especially when you start to bucket it, like, you know, when you’re talking about horticulture. And here’s the most commonly used plants, you know, in terms of applications, you know, we need to use PVC and we need to use electrical. So here’s how you need to do these fundamental basics. I just think that really can help a lot of folks listening to say, hey, this is really just simple. Like, you don’t have to over engineer this thing and it can be a bunch of bullet points and checkboxes.

Robert
16:25
Like, it does not need to be, you know, paragraphs upon paragraphs of, you know, how to approach every day and what you need to do every second.

Andrew
16:35
Yes, that is so true. It is so simple. It’s just, it is making sure it gets done well.

Robert
16:42
I think that comes back to this point of like, you know, are you doing the things are you carving out the time to do the important things? And if you don’t have a training program in place, it’s going to be really difficult to build people. If we can’t build people, it can be really difficult to get out and do the important things. So you could almost argue that this is maybe the most important thing a leader needs to put time, attention and focus on to build a training program.

Andrew
17:09
I would agree with you. Yeah. If you can’t build people, you can’t.

Robert
17:12
Build a company, and then you’ll never get your time.

Andrew
17:16
No, no. And so it is a long term play? Long term play. I’ve, you know, I kind of started just making money off of yard work, you know, back in 1990, 519, 96, somewhere in that time frame. And it’s like, you know, I still work probably a 55 to 60 hours week every week. And that’s, you know, that is not uncommon for people in the green industry. But when we value our time and we have a long term view of what it’s going to take to buy back our time, because that is the most valuable thing we could do is.

Robert
17:55
Never get it back.

Andrew
17:56
Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of us, if we’re in this industry, a lot of us have young families and it’s like we need to, you know, we need to be living by our calendars so that we can actually schedule time with them. Schedule time when we’re working and when we’re not.

Robert
18:12
Okay, well, stop. Time out. Flag on the play. Tell me. Living by your calendars like this seems like an obscure topic that you threw in there, but I think it’s really powerful. So, you know, if we’re in reactive mode, very difficult to live by a calendar because we’re putting out fires and, you know, I know actually a lot of times. So I kind of look at people in a couple of different ways when it comes to calendars, people that don’t use them. So I don’t understand how they live their life. It doesn’t make any sense to me. But that’s okay. There’s people that schedule, like, you look at their calendar and it’s like, boom, nine to five, Monday to Friday, tight. Nothing else happens in their life. Just work is in their calendar. That’s it. They don’t have anything going on outside of work.

Robert
18:50
And then there are people that integrate, you know, stuff from all sections of their life and everything’s kind of laid out. And some people might argue that’s too structured, whatever. But, you know, I find that for me, anyway, that’s how I roll. So what is, what is calendars. Living by your calendar. Look, you know, what does that mean to you?

Andrew
19:06
Well, the success of a man lies in his daily agenda. All right? So what you’re putting in your calendar, it shows where your priorities are. And, you know, each and every year, things might have been different for me. I do know that, you know, I used to, on Thursday afternoons, just schedule Thursday afternoons for important work. You know, not a big block up there. I knew what important work I was working on, and it was. But it was scheduled into my day, so it’s like nothing else goes on my calendar but that work. Now I kind of schedule important work throughout my work week where I have. I’ve got little blocks of time. And batching your calendar is a great way to, I think, you know, stay focused, you know, whether it be, hey, I’m gonna. I’m gonna batch some invoices.

Andrew
20:02
I’m gonna do three invoices at one time or three proposals at once. You know, not at one time, but, you know, just having a couple hour blocks of time to be able to do things like that, and that is how I’ve been able to get some important things done is just by scheduling it, you know, in my calendar to get done, because my list of urgent things, like, you know, these little to do lists that we all have, would far outweigh the things on my important list. And when you look at it, you know, I know you kind of subscribe to the EOS train of thought, the entrepreneurial operating system, and I think it’s a great system.

Andrew
20:41
And essentially just some basics is just having some initiatives or what they call rocks and focusing on maybe one, two, or three in a set period of time. They advise, you know, putting those in a quarterly focus. And, like, if you just get one, two, or three important things done per quarter, like you are going to be building a very solid, you know, company and doing important things. And it’s. Those are the, those are the hardest things to schedule time for, though, because there is no sense of urgency. Cause they could happen or they could not happen, and nobody will ever know.

Robert
21:21
Well, that’s interesting perspective. Cause I find, you know, for myself included, and I think I’m better these days than I was, say, five or six years ago. But it’s really easy to miss a meeting with myself. But if I got it booked with somebody else, I will always show up.

Andrew
21:38
So I know the feeling. I know the feeling. And we could talk to each other in this moment and hold each other accountable just in this moment and just say, well, if we value ourselves, we will value ourselves on our calendars as well.

Robert
21:55
Well, and there’s a bunch here. I just want touch on it quickly because this is a journey that I’ve heard not only, like I said, I’ve gone through this, but a lot of people have that I’ve spoken to. And one of them is this idea that if I book time in the future that I know is important. It’s my rational, strategic self saying, I need to do that later. But when it comes time, my emotional, reactionary self says, wait a second, I got other more important things to do that need to be addressed now. I’ll do that tonight after dinner and then myself tonight after dinner. Oh, actually, you know, I need to relax and I’ll do it in the morning before work.

Robert
22:32
Well, actually, I need to, you know, that just is, there is no tomorrow, which I think is a really interesting perspective. One of the things, though, there was a hack that someone told me and shared with me was working sessions with somebody else. So we would do like a Zoom meeting in those important blocks and not speak to each other whatsoever, but just, we’re there. Are you there? Yeah, I’m here.

Andrew
22:55
All that is very convicting because, yeah, I very rarely take my computer home. I do take my iPad home most, pretty much every night, but very rarely take my computer home. And most nights when I do take it home, I don’t.

Robert
23:12
Yeah.

Andrew
23:13
But I take it home for a specific purpose. And, yes, that being at home and, like, being there is being done. And could I power through that yet? I can power through most things, but it’s like, it just generally does not happen. And so, yeah, that’s a pretty convicting thought. But the cool thing is like, you know, if you had a place where you set any goals, and we a lot. We have these quarterly meeting, I mean, I’m sorry, corporate meetings once a year with our team. And we’ve been doing it probably.

Robert
23:52
They’re corporate meetings that’s air quotes for podcast listeners because I know you have no fun on these meetings.

Andrew
23:57
No, they’re totally fun. Like, they’re totally fun. Like, there’s plenty of food, plenty of beverage. We usually hire consultants to come in and it. They’re ridiculously, like, I love them.

Robert
24:11
Yeah. So break it down. Just what that. What does that look like as a format and, like, help people understand, like, where the value comes from and why you do it that way.

Andrew
24:17
Okay. We have been doing these since 2007. I think it might have been. It was either 2007 or 2008. I can’t remember when we started, but we would go to vision cast to problem solve, to discuss budgets. I mean, I remember one of our first or second ones. We were outlining our mission statement, our core values, our core focus. Honestly, we still, we never have to go back to our values, our mission, because that’s kind of how we just, that’s how we run things. But, but, you know, our strategy and our new vision, which vision needs to stay fresh because it does change throughout, you know, the years. I mean, I, you know, I’m here, you know, how many every year since we started. And my vision is different.

Andrew
25:12
Like, I now have a fresh vision for our three year, our five year, and our ten year, where we’re going to be and what we’re going to look like. Our focus will still be the same. We specialize in livable landscapes, but how we do it and how big we are and our workforce development center that we’re going to call Father Nature university. Like, all this kind of stuff just comes into play and it is just so fun. So we typically have rented huge lake houses. We’ll have 15 to 18 people join us. We supply all the food. We have people go and kind of meal plan for us and we’re there cooking on site. Then we’ll get a consultant down. And generally, we don’t know.

Andrew
26:06
Every year we don’t do a consultant, but we get together for about three days and we’ve got an itinerary of what we’re talking about. Every hour for those three days is amazing. The type of work, important work, because there’s nothing we’re doing in there that’s urgent. You know, you gotta put your phones away. We’re here to do important work. And the important work is, you know, strategizing and, you know, laying that vision out for our people so that we can go back and just infect the whole, you know, thread of our people. And that’s, I mean, that, in a nutshell is what it looks like, and.

Robert
26:44
Everybody looks forward to doing it.

Andrew
26:47
I wouldn’t say everybody does, but the people that don’t look forward to it don’t get invited back. And it is a gift to be invited to go because, you know, it’s, you can’t invite everybody to go. You gotta, the businesses have got to run while we’re down there. But yes, the majority of the people that consistently show up year after year. Really look forward to it because it is a. You feel doted on.

Robert
27:15
Yeah, that’s cool. And, I mean, the idea of putting your phones away, we’re here to do the important work. And, like, lifting the head up, it’s like, you know, it’s like we’re working every day with our head down, getting her done day after day, lifting our head up to, like, kind of look forward, I think, is a really important practice a lot of people neglect. In our initial call for this, you know, our pre call, one of the things that kind of came out from your perspective was the secret to grow is letting go. Can you just illustrate what the heck you mean by that and help people understand, like, where they might be holding on too much?

Andrew
27:53
I see it all the time in companies that have not changed their revenues by, let’s say, more than 15% in a year. And it’s. I’ve got lots of friends in business that might ask me questions about how to do this or how to do that or whatever, but they have too much of a control thing going on to where they can’t back away from the day to day. And I’m still involved somewhat in the day to day. I’ll go lay out jobs or meet inspectors or do things like that, but I’ve got people that can do it for me. And another part of that whole letting go to grow is, well, it’s the whole that cliche. Sometimes you got to slow down to speed up, and it goes back into your workforce development or your career development.

Andrew
29:01
We do little exercises around here sometimes, like, you know, what is your unique gifting? Like, where are you? What strength do you contribute at the highest level to this group of people, this organization? And when you recognize that and then you actually recognize, what things do you do that you detest, that you really hate doing? They make you anxious, they stress you out, or it’s just not part of your unique gifting. You know, when we know those things, we can then hire people that can take those off of a lot of people’s plates. You know, it might be someone like an executive assistant, you know, that takes things off of mine and my brother’s plate. Or it could be someone like a project manager. We have some designers here, or one in particular I’m thinking of that he is.

Andrew
29:50
He’s a landscape architect, and he is amazing, but he does not like project management. So we hired him a project manager, and it is allowing him to really stay in his sweet spot.

Robert
30:05
It’s high value, too. Right. It’s really important people understand that this isn’t about just appeasing people and their wishes to do the work they want to do. It’s about identifying where the value contribution comes from and where people love to put the value in.

Andrew
30:19
That is correct. Even for these smaller companies. Laying out, what does your organization look like if you gave each one of those a job title? Not that we need titles, but remove the names Billy Bob or Carlos or whoever, and just looking them, hey, this is an installation tech, or this is an installation foreman, or this is a project manager. Laying that out is really helpful, because then you can see, like, what is the next person I need to hire to grow, or for these larger, you know, businesses, you know, what are the next three people I need to grow?

Robert
31:00
You know?

Andrew
31:01
I know. We need a mechanic. Our mechanic just recently left. We just got our new office manager, which. That is great to hold that seat, because that seat had been revolving for a little while. We need another salesperson, and we need a property manager, which is on the service side. So being able to kind of know, like, who are you recruiting for? Is. Is very strategic, you know, because you don’t just need another one body coming through the door that you don’t know where they’re gonna sit, you know, on your team.

Robert
31:36
Very cool. So one of the things that’s been kind of a common thread in the conversation is this, you know, having the time, carving the time out, building the people so that you can elevate yourself and back away from the day to day. For folks that are trying to figure out what the important thing is, you know, it can be difficult. It’s like, you know, there’s ten different things all the time. There’s, you know, we’re trying to grow. We got to payroll. We got to hire, recruit, train. We got to sell. We got to do the work. As a leader entrepreneur, how do I know what to prioritize? Like, what would you give people in terms of your experience growing the business where they should be looking to prioritize their time? What is the most important from your perspective?

Andrew
32:26
I think a fun exercise would be to brainstorm some important things, and it shouldn’t be hard for anybody to come up with ten things, like, within 30 minutes, especially once you get on the track. You know, it might be things like, hey, I need to, you know, just start off with creating some structure, organ, organization, you know, to your. Your yard space. It might be, hey, I need to. I need to paint, you know, parking lot stripes so that everybody knows and we aren’t, you know, if we’re running out of room, I need everybody to park in a certain spot. So that might be one thing, or it might be, hey, I’m going to develop or write down the things that I want someone to learn how to do in their 1st, 30 days.

Andrew
33:11
Working in my business, that would be very important work. So that just being something. And then, you know, the way to choose, you can’t do ten at once, you know, and if you don’t see how you could add another hour to your day, start with 20 minutes or 30 minutes. And that is either maybe it’s you go in a little bit earlier on a Tuesday or stay a little bit later on a Wednesday, or somehow you just carve out to do some important work during part of your lunch, which most landscapers don’t really schedule time for lunch. They just kind of eat or, you know, yeah, they plow through. But I would identify just ten areas that you could do important work in on your business. And the one that have.

Andrew
33:53
The one that I’d start on is the one that is going to provide the most return with the least amount of resistance. And that is so that you can get the ball rolling in the right way. You know, if the one that provides the most return actually has the most resistance, it means it’s going to take you the most time or the most money to get that done. And that might not be the one to start with. So I’d look at some of your lowest hanging fruit. You know, let’s get one. Let’s mark it off the list, and let’s schedule that for this Q four of 2023. And then you could easily go ahead and lay out one initiative for each quarter in 2024. And by the end of the year, you’ve. You’ve done some really good work.

Robert
34:36
Yeah. I mean, like, and, you know, to bring it into a frame of reference, that idea of, like, writing out, okay, you know, I need to hire these two people. What are the things I need to learn in the first 30 days for each of those roles versus we need to move locations, you know, like that. You know, they’re both important and they both going to bring a lot of return. But to your point, you know, trying to contrast them with the resistance piece, I think is a really important context. So what’s something important from your perspective? Like, what are you working on these days?

Andrew
35:10
We just interviewed someone to help us with our workforce development because were ready to take hours to the next level. And currently, you know, you come in Monday morning, there’s a safety meeting at 630. Might last ten or twelve minutes. You know, we go over any kind of shop talk or housekeeping, but it starts off with safety. And then Tuesday mornings is when we do. We adopted Jim Paluch’s working smarter training session and we just still call it that, even though we might. We teach on different things every week. And so the guys this morning, were, we had done breakout sessions. Everybody had identified, you know, ten areas of waste that they see within the company and they picked one to work on this quarter that they would, you know, commit to just reducing waste in the company.

Andrew
36:05
So after we wrapped that up this morning, went over just some commonly purchased supplies. And how we see it get out of hand when we see some of these supplies in the, you know, the dumpsters or trash cans around here. And it could be something as simple as a sod staple. You know, guys don’t realize that those are $0.13 apiece or a zip tie, which are $0.11 apiece. But again, when there’s accumulated supplies that we continue to purchase because they’re consumables, goes into waste. I just wanted to remind everyone what this stuff looks like because, you know, you can pull $100 out of the trash can in a minute and I don’t want to go dumpster diving for that stuff. Like, you know, what I do want to do is write y’all bonus checks.

Andrew
36:58
And the only way I’m going to do it is if you allow us a margin. So let’s stop wasting and let’s start creating margin, you know, well, and I.

Robert
37:05
Mean, it’s really cool because really what I just heard in the things that you’re working on, which are important are safety and training and people. And I think that’s something that everybody can use that lens of, like, trying to figure out where to prioritize time. We have to own the idea of it’s our job as leaders to develop our people. And I think that’s a really, really cool point. So switching gears completely, working your butt off, you know, since 2000, well, since 96, whatever, started this company, 2006, it’s been, you know, whatever, call it 1314, 1520 years, whatever. In the industry, entrepreneurs, I find a lot of times we’re talking to people, they have a hard time having like something to do outside of work. It’s just all they do, work, work.

Robert
37:54
When they’re not working, they completely shut off, but they’re not really doing anything else? Like, what are you doing as a leader to keep yourself, like, to find that joy, to, you know, to keep yourself going. Like, what’s it all. It’s. It’s got to be, all this work’s got to be worth it for a reason, you know? What kind of things is Andrew doing to make it so you can just be like, yeah, this was a good week. This is worth it.

Andrew
38:14
Okay, well, I’ll tell you about this weekend, but I’m going to start off with like, man, you got to get your heart right. If your heart right. If your heart is not right, your head’s not right. And if your head’s not right, like, there is a lot of. It’s kind of sad because there’s just, there’s been a lot of mental illness that I have heard about through, you know, I think there’s a funeral today. I went to one two weeks ago. Mental illness.

Andrew
38:44
And, you know, mental illness does not always start with spiritual illness, but I would say getting your spirit right, that is what grounds me and guides me and keeps me healthy, you know, up top so that I, you know, every morning I wake up 430 I have a quiet time, you know, where I just kind of sit, think, read, pray, get my day going. And that’s what I do for me. And it doesn’t have to take a long time, although some days, you know, I spend more time than others. Another thing that I started doing about six years ago was, like, working out again. I had let myself go and just, you know, had decent genetics and just always felt strong.

Andrew
39:30
Even though there was a 15 year period of my life, I was out of the gym, and going back to the gym has done a ton for being able to get, you know, just some of this kind of stress, a way to just get it out of me, you know, just leaning into things that are hard, leaning into things that are heavy. Really enjoyed that. And then, you know, when I look at a weekend, we just had, like, one of our first fall weekends here in Alabama, and, man, people in the south are on cloud nine when the temperature and humidity breaks. And so I started my day, you know, by going on a road ride with my son.

Andrew
40:16
I got into road cycling a couple years ago, and that is a way to trick me into doing cardio because I really hate doing cardio, but I enjoy road riding. And then I took my kids, went looking for buckeyes, so went hiking with my dog. And Buckeye season, they’re dropping right now. We have not the tree kind of buckeyes, which a lot of people up north have. We have the shrub form of buckeyes. And there’s something like, even my daughter, who does not like doing stuff like that, typically, she took her first Buckeye off of a Buckeye bush, and she just like, that is so satisfying and that’s so great. Yeah, but there’s something about the life that is contained in that nut that is, you can almost feel it.

Andrew
41:10
And, you know, when the wind’s blowing and there’s, you know, there’s a Christmas in the air, crispness, and, you know, the leaves are changing and you’re there collecting buckeyes, it’s just, you know, there’s something magical about a day like that. You know, my phone doesn’t typically ring on Saturdays, and it’s probably because I have trained people not to call me on Saturdays because I don’t answer my phone on Saturdays or Sundays. And it’s like, I just. That would have ruined the experience for me. But if your phone does ring on Saturdays and you feel like you have to answer those calls, you know, that’s your prerogative.

Andrew
41:51
But for me, the phone is kind of a little bit anxiety on the weekend, so I might put it on do not disturb and take it with me for, you know, if I need to call out or if I need to take pictures or something like that. But I, you know, protecting yourself from your phone and your emails. Like, I very rarely check emails on the weekend.

Robert
42:13
Was there a time where you used to.

Andrew
42:15
Oh, yeah. So what shifted when I started prioritizing my life over the needs of people? And I think if you don’t respect yourself enough people are never going to respect you. So you have to start by taking care of yourself and respecting yourself and valuing your time. And when you do those things, the world just tends to value you as well. If you answer your phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week, like, people do not, they don’t care about your life unless you care about your life. And so I care about my life. My life is more than just being a business owner. I’m a husband, I’m a father, I’m a friend, I’m a brother. I’m a lot of things. It is very easy to get lost in the identity of being a business owner because the business has serious needs.

Andrew
43:14
Like it needs you, no doubt about it, and you need to feed it what it needs. But you can do so Monday through Friday from whenever you work hours are.

Robert
43:24
Yeah, that’s cool. So in terms of your journey of building this business to where it’s at today, you know, as we’re wrapping up this episode, what would you recommend as a resource for people? Like, whether it’s a speaker, an author, a podcast, just a resource. Is there somebody that, you know, you kind of drawn inspiration from or some valuable insights?

Andrew
43:49
Lots.

Robert
43:52
Yeah. One or two.

Andrew
43:53
Keep it simple. I would say read Michael Gerber’s book the Emyth. I would highly recommend that there’s even an Emyth contractors that’s been co written with Tony Bass, and that is great, too. I started with the Emyth revisited Michael Gerber’s version. I did read the landscape contractor version, and Tony did a great job with him on that. And then for people, Patrick Lincioni. Lincioni is one of the best writers on just health and, you know, building teams and hiring people. And he’s a, he’s. There’s, there’s my two. I’d say I’d start with, but I could, you and I could have a several hour conversation because I am, relative to most landscapers, I’m well ready. I started reading out of college and I loved it once college was over, I guess because you kind of. I don’t know why.

Andrew
45:00
But anyway, that’s what I would leave.

Robert
45:02
That’s really cool. Yeah. So Gerber Emeth revisited and Patrick Lencioni. I mean, five dysfunctions of a team we’re reading right now as a group. It’s amazing. I think, to your point, too. It’s really cool. Both of those are parables, like, the way they write. You know, they’re all story based. So you get to, like, kind of learn the lessons with the characters as they’re going through them, which I think is a really cool way to write.

Andrew
45:24
My management team yesterday just finished the Oz principle, which is. It is a book based on Dorothy. What is it, Dorothy? The Tin man, the scarecrow, the lion, that thing.

Robert
45:36
Yeah, yeah.

Andrew
45:37
It’s a book on accountability and for larger companies. It was probably one of the best books we’ve read as a management team.

Robert
45:44
The Oz principal. I’ve even heard of that one, man.

Andrew
45:47
Phenomenal book. Phenomenal book. We’re our next book. We’re getting into customer service and hospitality with one of the hotel, you know.

Robert
45:57
Guys, but Oz principal, Ritz Carlton, ladies and gentlemen. Serving, ladies and gentlemen. That’s a really good one.

Andrew
46:04
I thought I had it on my desk here. No, it’s something about exceptional service or with us, who’s the Schultz guy. The Ritz, is it Ritz Carlton, the Schultz guy.

Robert
46:19
Yeah, it’s. There’s a couple of them, though, on the new gold standard. That’s not it. No, whatever. It’s gonna be a good one.

Andrew
46:35
Yeah, let’s try it.

Robert
46:38
I thought I could grab it right away, but it doesn’t matter. Yeah. So the focus then, is that going to be for next year into 2024 about just customer service and hospitality and, like, making that kind of more ingrained in the culture?

Andrew
46:51
Yes, that will be probably one of our first quarter initiatives, although we will start the book in two weeks. The middle management get together every two weeks for a 1 hour reading session on Mondays at 01:00 and it’s is just part of the patterns of work that we do around here.

Robert
47:10
And so do you read at the same time together, or do you discuss what you’ve read?

Andrew
47:14
Yep, we read at the same time. We give it 1 hour. We are average. We read about, you know, takes us about three minutes to read a page, so we can get about 20 pages in an hour. And generally on that book, those were kind of long, dim chapters. It took us about an hour to read a chapter in that particular book. But, man, you know, we might stop and noodle on a nugget in the middle of reading because there’s some.

Robert
47:41
Oh, it’s a good one.

Andrew
47:44
Yeah, exactly. There’s some.

Robert
47:46
Excellence wins. Excellence wins.

Andrew
47:48
That’s it. Yeah, that’s it. That’s what we’re reading next. Yeah.

Robert
47:51
Very cool. Well, again, man, thank you so much for doing this. Appreciate it.

Andrew
47:55
This is fun.

Robert
47:56

And everybody, for getting to the end here. Really appreciate you listening. So, Andrew, father nature landscapes. Stay tuned for another episode of the I am Landscape Growth podcast. Thanks, everybody. The I am landscape Growth podcast is brought to you by intrigue, where passionate marketing meets predictable results for entrepreneurs. Remember to like and subscribe the podcast so you don’t miss the next episode. And if you would like to be a guest on the podcast, please visit intriguemedia.com and click on podcasts.