Building a Landscape Business with a Foundation in Architecture: Kristopher Dabner

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. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the I am Landscape Growth podcast. Today we have the privilege of having Christopher Dabner on the show. Christopher, thank you so much for doing this.

Kristopher
00:41
My pleasure.

Robert
00:43
Christopher’s founder, president of the Greensman out of Kansas City, Missouri. The topics today are going to be a lot around relationships, you know, whether it’s with yourself or with your team. So I’m looking forward to getting through that background in architecture, you know, leading the company from a one person show to, you know, 30 plus when you’re fully cranking. Thanks for doing this, man. I really appreciate it.

Kristopher
01:09
I’m happy to be here.

Robert
01:11
So can you just give the audience that’s listening right now a quick little kind of introduction, like, you know, where did you come from over the last couple of years and how did you get up to, you know, running this business right now? And then what, you know, what do you guys are focused on? So let’s give us a quick little background so we can understand some of the perspectives of where it’s coming from.

Kristopher
01:25
Okay. Well, I went to architecture school and building architecture, I was interested in that in high school, but was always a gardener, so always garden with my grandfather, my father. I had my first own, my own little vegetable patch when I was about eight years old. Gourds and zinnias and all that stuff. I went to architecture school. I loved studying architecture and design. I worked for architects to put myself through college and realized by the time I was done that I didn’t really want to go sit in an office all day. And after a brief stint in tv and film as an art director, I decided to. That was sort of back and forth with gardening for people. Literally just gardening. The guy in a pickup truck with the shovel situation.

Kristopher
02:23
I decided to move back to Kansas City and open up, see what I could do with a landscape company.

Robert
02:32
Awesome.

Kristopher
02:32
I thought maybe I would have to go back and get a degree in landscape architecture or something else, but that never was necessary. So what we do at the Greensman is we are, we do mostly high end residential design. So. And we do design, installation and maintenance.

Robert
02:53
Cool.

Kristopher
02:53
So we will design anything outdoors. Swimming pools, patios, outdoor fireplaces, screen porches. I often recommend turning doors into windows into doors, and doors into windows. And, you know, I get a little bit involved in the architecture of the.

Robert
03:11
House as well, but, well, it’s a unique expertise. Right. To be able to have that background and be able to see projects from that lens. Like, not a lot of folks have that kind of education when they’re getting into this type of business.

Kristopher
03:22
Yeah.

Robert
03:23
Yeah.

Kristopher
03:23
I mean, it served me very well, and it gives me, I think, a different way to look at the landscape from really an architecture standpoint. And how can we design a garden that is appropriate for the style of the house? And, you know, my goal, we work on a lot of older homes, and when we’re working on an older home, my goal is to build something that looks like it was always there or, you know, had very cool. It was really, you know, that’s steeped in the. Whatever the style and the tradition of the house is. Or if they’re, you know, some people don’t care about that and they want something, then we do something totally modern, contemporary, a total departure, you know, so that it’s, you know, so it’s either.

Robert
04:13
Juxtapositioned or fully integrated.

Kristopher
04:15
Exactly. Because to me, there’s nothing worse than a near miss.

Robert
04:19
Right.

Kristopher
04:19
There’s nothing worse than a near miss. So. So that’s a. That’s our design. And then we install everything we design, either with our in house crews or with subcontractors. We use subcontractors for things like brick masonry, stonework, swimming pools, you know, electricians, plumbers, all that.

Robert
04:37
Sure.

Kristopher
04:39
And then we have a full service maintenance department that does everything from mowing, trimming, weeding, seasonal color, holiday decor, you know, you name it, party prep, whatever it is.

Robert
04:53
Very cool.

Kristopher
04:54
Yeah.

Robert
04:54
So the world has been changing under our feet. You know, the last three years has been a bit of a wild roller coaster ride. We’ve kind of gone from, if you could show up and do the job, you get the job. And now we’re starting to see it shift a little bit, you know, starting to get a bit more competitive. You know, that kind of demand release was kind of unprecedented to see that many people, like, initiate jobs like that. Right. So what. What are you seeing right now as the primary growth constraint? And, I mean, we see common ones, but what do you see as the most important thing that people need to focus on when trying to grow this. This landscaping business in the green industry?

Kristopher
05:29
Well, I think it’s employees, it’s labor. You know, it’s getting the labor done. Whether it’s trying to hire a designer, trying to hire an irrigation tech, trying to hire, you know, a foreman, somebody who knows, you know, what they’re doing, somebody who has some construction experience. You know, I. We would hire five people today if we could get. If we could get qualified people. I mean, we’re constantly bringing in people and training them up and, you know, we have an okay time finding laborers, but finding somebody who really knows and who really knows the industry and treats the industry as a profession.

Robert
06:14
Right, right. Well, that is almost an industry wide issue. Right. Like that perspective of the profession and the professionalism. One of the things I find fascinating. I mean, this is just an aside, but like every once in a while we’ll speak at a group of, like, you know, whatever, 5600 landscapers. And you look in across the audience and you just say to yourself, like, these are the people that shape the way that our world looks. You know, like our outdoor environment is literally the responsibility of this group of 600 people. Plus. Plus. Plus.

Kristopher
06:40
Yeah.

Robert
06:41
And for some reason, it doesn’t get that type of position in people’s minds. And I just think that’s obviously something we all need to work on because it is amazing. And one of the things I thought was really interesting, there was a gentleman I talked to from New Brunswick out in Canada, and he was saying the green industry is the only real green industry. And he talks to high school kids and to try to, like, get them interested in becoming part of this whole thing. And he said to them, you know, is riding an electric car to school green? And they all put their hand up. Yes. Yes, it is. He said, well, no, it’s just less gray. You know, is riding your bike to school green? Of course it is. He’s like, no, it’s just less gray.

Robert
07:20
The green industry is the only thing when you’re planting.

Kristopher
07:22
Yeah.

Robert
07:23
You’re making a difference.

Kristopher
07:24
Yeah. We were just having a conversation this morning with a new client in town who, it’s a big municipal organization and they’re very interested in their carbon footprint and how can they get to carbon neutral, and, you know, what can they do? And part of it is, you know, they have a huge campus and they have a lot of trees that are in decline that are going to have to come out and they need to start replacing them. And, you know, they want to start replacing them if they can, before they have to take some of them out, you know. And what does that look like, and how do they do that? And. And, you know, how do they have more landscape beds as opposed to lawn so that they’re not using as much water and so they’re not using as much chemicals?

Kristopher
08:05
Yeah, you’re totally right that, you know, it is a. You know, it is the green. It is. We are the stewards of the earth.

Robert
08:12
Well, and I think that’s.

Kristopher
08:13
We’re working for Mother Nature.

Robert
08:15
Yeah, exactly. And, like, a lot of people don’t necessarily leverage that platform to recruit folks into the space. So what are you doing right now when it comes to staff? Because, like, it’s. It’s not just finding the people. It’s also keeping folks right. I know, I know. A big focus for you over the years has been around this idea of building a strong culture so that you can, you know, have a team that excels when they’re out in the field and when they’re supporting each other. So what are you doing around that type of, you know, area of the business to make it work?

Kristopher
08:43
Well, so there’s several things. One, we are about an hour and a half from the unit from Kansas State University, which is in Manhattan, Kansas, and they have a horticulture department. And they have a landscape design degree as part of their horticulture department. Yeah. They also have a landscape architecture degree as part of the architecture school. So you can kind of get both the landscape design degree as part of the School of horticulture, which is in part of the school of Ag. So it’s a little bit of the redheaded stepchild of the ag school, but it’s still there, and it’s going. So we go out there several times a year. I’ve spoken to some of the classes about design because they have a couple of design classes that they have to take. So I’ve gone out there and done that.

Kristopher
09:37
We go out, always sponsor the NCLC landscape team. I’ve been to that a couple of times when it’s been sort of geographically accessible.

Robert
09:50
Yeah. Okay.

Kristopher
09:51
And then we have a lot of K state grads, and so we’re constantly going out there. We have a K state intern, at least one. Last year, we had two. So we’re trying to really develop that relationship. And we have the interns, and then they have to go back as part of their internship. They have to do a presentation on what was their experience? What did they, you know, what did they learn? What did they get to do? And so that’s been helpful in kids hearing that they came to the Greensman and they had a really good experience. So. Yeah, and we so, and a lot of companies do this. This is no big deal, but, you know, we send them through a couple of weeks, at least two weeks in each department.

Kristopher
10:36
So seasonal color maintenance installation and irrigation and in the design department, and they are literally working in the field. We are paint. It is a paid internship. They’re paid just like any other employee. And they are out there working. They are putting together irrigation systems. They are building walls. They are building patios. You know, some people have talked about going on internships where they kind of just watched and looked. You know, they didn’t really. I mean, we. We have the opportunity. Yeah, we have the opportunity for them to really. I mean, they’re dirty at the end of the day.

Robert
11:12
Right.

Kristopher
11:13
And some of them have real. Have already had experience, and some of them have no experience. So that has been really our most helpful thing as far as getting new people in.

Robert
11:26
Yeah. Well, I think one of the big things people need to understand, though, is that you’re out there actually doing the work. Like, you’re talking to these kids, you’re getting out to the schools. Like, it’s not just about putting ads online and hoping that people start walking through the door. Right, right.

Kristopher
11:38
We have relationships with the professors, and, you know, we do everything that we can to engage the. The entire school and, frankly, would do more. I mean, it’s an hour and a half away. We can go out there for the day and come back if we need to.

Robert
11:51
Yeah, that’s cool.

Kristopher
11:52
Yeah. So that’s been very helpful. We. So our business is really built on relationships, and it’s built on word of mouth and it’s built on culture. So we, you know, almost everybody that’s come, that works for us has come here through some other connection, you know, some other student at k state, some other person. You know, we’ve had clients who’ve recommended to their children or their friends, children that are interested in the industry. You know, our staff is a lot of, you know, our head guys bring in their friends to work with their team. One of the things I love about our guys is that they bring in people sometimes, and then they tell us to fire them a couple weeks later because they don’t work hard enough.

Kristopher
12:52
You know, they’re not, you know, we’re very fortunate that we have guys that really believe in us and believe in what they do, and they’re proud of their work. And so they know they want to bring on people and they want to work with people who can work and you know, they don’t want to, you know, they don’t want to bring in somebody who’s just dead weight.

Robert
13:11
Yes. I mean, that says a lot, though. But the culture kind of what you were saying before about, like, so first of all, there’s a standard of expectations that everybody’s bought into, and then there’s also this, like, remarkable transparency and willingness to speak about it up front. Like, there aren’t a lot of organizations where you’ve got somebody, you know, maybe a foreman or mid level manager or manager being like, I know I brought this person in, but they gotta go, like, to have that type of open dialogue. So, like, what are you doing as a leader in organization? To build a culture of, like, a standard of excellence in terms of discipline and rigorous, but then also this openness and the way people to be able to communicate and feel safe, to be.

Kristopher
13:46
Able to do so well, I like to think. I like to think that I have an open door policy. I’m out on the job sites. I’m out there. If we’ve got a job that needs to get done and I need to go get behind a wheelbarrow to get it done, I do. So I am not the guy in the office that never comes out. You know, I. Not that I do it often, sure.

Robert
14:10
But you will lead by example if need be.

Kristopher
14:12
But if I. If I need to, I do that. We have manager meetings. So every other week on usually Tuesday or Wednesday, all of the managers, there’s eight of us, we get together and we have lunch. We talk. Usually the first 20 minutes is about what everybody’s doing in their personal life, and then another hour of just, like, what’s going on? What do we need to be thinking about? What do we, you know, what materials do we need? What’s the next season coming up? Do we need to start thinking about snow removal? Do we need to start thinking about holiday decor? So that’s the managers. And then they go down to their people and have meetings of what needs to happen in the department, what’s going on.

Kristopher
14:58
We try to give them the information they need fiscally so that we can say, okay, your department is meeting its goals or it’s behind its goals or it’s ahead of its goals. Here’s, you know, here’s what you can do. Here’s. Here’s where you need to be. So we do a lot of that sort of transparency of just everybody talking about stuff, and there’s nothing that’s off limits.

Robert
15:22
Yeah, that’s cool.

Kristopher
15:23
We can talk about anything I’m not trying to hide anything from anyone. And then just as an organization, every four to six weeks we have a barbecue and I go out and I buy all the groceries and I go get Carne asada and tostadas and all the stuff. And the guys take off from their second job so that they can be there on a Friday afternoon. And we get off at 233 o’clock and we start the grill up and, you know, we’re there till seven or 08:00 at night just barbecuing and, you know, having fun. So. And that’s everybody. I mean that’s the office manager, it’s the designer department, it’s everyone. We’re all.

Robert
16:08
How often, how often do you do that?

Kristopher
16:10
In the summertime? We try to do it once a month. Yeah. I mean, usually ends up being about every six weeks.

Robert
16:15
Sure. That’s okay. I mean, I mean you’re in your prime season of getting it all happening, right. So. But, you know, taking the time though, that’s a huge thing that you’re doing for everybody. Providing and, you know, food goes a long way. I don’t care who you are.

Kristopher
16:26
Oh, yeah.

Robert
16:27
And bringing everybody together like, I mean that’s a pretty simple piece to execute, but a lot of people don’t necessarily want to take the time to do it.

Kristopher
16:33
Yeah. Well, we have a really fabulous office manager and she loves to celebrate everything. So she knows everybody’s birthday, she knows everybody’s hire date. You know, everything is acknowledged. We have donuts more often than we don’t have donuts. You know, it’s a good thing.

Robert
16:50
You’re burning calories like crazy in 100 degrees.

Kristopher
16:53
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I said our insurance company is going to wonder why we all have diabetes in a couple.

Robert
17:03
So, but, okay, so you’re highlighting a couple of things though, right? So first of all, you mentioned relationships being a big thing and what’s, you know, turning into word of mouth not only for customers but for employees but also in, you know, in the notes before the call, were talking about this idea of relationships. It’s like it’s customers, its staff and vendors and having relationships, you know, focused and woven through all three stakeholders. So can you just speak a little bit to that philosophy? Like what makes you think that way?

Kristopher
17:30
Well, so I will say that I come from a long line of volunteers and sort of people who, like, I remember as a kid volunteering with my dad for different things. My grandmother, both sets of my grandparents were involved in all kinds of organizations. So when I started my business, the first thing I did was go out and start volunteering for organizations that I believed in. And I met people at those organizations, and when they found out that I did landscaping, they’re like, oh, I need help landscaping. You know, we’re simpatico.

Robert
18:09
Yeah.

Kristopher
18:09
So, you know, and so between that and then just giving people really good customer service and getting to know them and, you know, and their referrals and, you know, now we’re. This is 29 years I’ve been in business. So I’ve got 29 years worth of referrals going on.

Robert
18:29
Right.

Kristopher
18:30
So, as far as. So I remember, I had been in business for maybe five years, and I decided to have a holiday party, and I invited my friends, my. My college friends, my. My new friends. I invited my family. I invited my clients. They all came to my house at Christmas.

Robert
18:56
Yeah.

Kristopher
18:56
And it was an open house, and people were in and out, and everybody got to know each other. Everybody got to meet my grandparents. Everybody got to meet my dad. Very cool. And so I have clients that were at that party 25 years ago, and they’re still asking, you know, how’s your dad doing? What’s going. You know? So I think getting connected with people in a really personal way, not just as an invoice, you know, not just as a bill, but as. As a real person. And if I have a client that is working on a fundraiser and they need a donation, if I can do it, I will. I’ll donate something to them. Trying to find out.

Kristopher
19:47
Part of our design process is an hour long consultation, and I would say half of it is talking about the project, the design of the project that we need, what they want. The other half of the project is, what do you do? What’s important to you? How many people come to your house? Do you have kids? What do they do? What sports are they in? Finding out, really getting a connection with people so that you’re more than just a vendor to them.

Robert
20:17
Yeah, I love that.

Kristopher
20:18
And then on the other side with my vendors, again, I’ve been doing this for 29 years. I go out and I see my vendors. If I’m in the neighborhood of a shop where I know somebody, I will stop and say hello. Not just to go in and get something, but just to say, hey, how’s it going? It’s hot. It’s hot. How are you guys doing? How’s your staffing going? What’s happening? I think if you just start treating people that way, then when I need to call in a favor or help.

Robert
20:53
Whatever.

Kristopher
20:54
Or help. Then it’s. No, it’s. They’re like, yes, of course.

Robert
20:57
Yeah.

Kristopher
20:58
So, so that, to me.

Robert
21:00
So wait a second. You’re talking about the idea of being humanistic with people. It seems like. Like it’s crazy, though. We’ve gotten to a spot where it’s like we’re detached and everything’s automated and digitized and invoiced and.

Kristopher
21:14
Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, you can. You could potentially have a client that you never actually meet. You could just. They could get, you know, they could find you online. They could make a request. You could go do the work. You could send them an invoice. You could never. You could actually never meet them. So the other reason why I told that story about that party is that in that party, I realized everybody knew everybody I, and everybody knew me, and they could all compare notes. Right? So. So I couldn’t be an asshole at work. You know, I couldn’t be an asshole at work. And then. And then have my clients think that I was like, they’re all going to talk.

Robert
21:59
Yeah.

Kristopher
22:00
You know, I mean, I had employees there. I had clients there. I had every. They’re all talking. Right. So you need to be the same person all the time. And if you can be yourself all the time or the majority of the time, you know, you can. You can get to as authentic as you can. That’s when people believe in you. That’s when people want to work with you. That’s when people trust that they can come and.

Robert
22:23
And they know that from you.

Kristopher
22:25
Yeah.

Robert
22:25
You’re consistent. That’s going to your point. You can create that safe place for people to speak up.

Kristopher
22:30
Yeah. And they can say, hey, this is. This is happening. We need to take care of this. Oh, you know, I backed into a tree. I did. Whatever. You know, if. If they know that you’re not, you know, the hothead in the office or, you know, whatever.

Robert
22:45
Yeah, that’s cool. So then, okay, switching gears, this idea of being. Getting paid what you’re worth.

Kristopher
22:51
Yes.

Robert
22:53
Yeah. Tell me more about it, because there’s a couple of pieces I want touch on, but just like, yeah, tell me about that. And where’s it come from when you mentioned it?

Kristopher
22:59
Well, in Kansas City, when I started 25 years ago, it was, there were maybe two people in the entire city that were charging for designs. Like, everybody. It was just, that was just something that you had to do. You just gave away your design to get the job. And a group of us, and I was one of them, was just like, I can’t do this for free, and I’m not willing to do this for free. I have a degree in architecture. I have two guys that work for me that have degrees in landscape architecture. All of my staff is, they’re degreed professionals. So we’re not, this is not, and anyway, so there’s value to what we have and our design is worth something. And we, so we charge $100 as a consultation fee to come out and talk to you.

Kristopher
23:51
If you are not willing to spend $100 for us to come out and talk to you about your project says a lot. You need to go. There are other companies that will come out and do that for free. We won’t. So it, number one, it’s setting a value. It’s, we’re also, and this is something that a client, one of my employees, ten years ago, said, she’s like, I will do consultations from seven in the morning till six at night, Monday through Friday, not on the weekends. And if you, if it is not important enough for you to go into work a little bit late or come, you know, come home a little bit early for this project, if you’re more important than me and my time, because I have plans at night, I have plans on the weekend.

Kristopher
24:39
Why should I have to work when it’s convenient for you? If we’re a real profession, you don’t go to your lawyer on Sunday afternoon.

Robert
24:49
Well, you might be. You’re paying a lot.

Kristopher
24:50
Yeah, exactly. You’re paying a lot more. So. Yeah, so. And we also, we give people the design and then that is theirs. They can do it themselves. They can have their neighbor do it. They can hire our competition to do it. But what design is a whole bunch of ideas. Right. It’s a whole bunch of brain power.

Robert
25:12
Yeah. It’s the creative thinking. It’s like, it’s real. A lot of value comes from.

Kristopher
25:16
Yeah, yeah. That they don’t have. They don’t, most of them don’t have the ability to do. That’s why they’re hiring us.

Robert
25:23
Yeah.

Kristopher
25:23
So, so we, and we treat that, you know, we give them really nice drawings. We, we do, like when they get something, we’ve had people say, we’re gonna frame this.

Robert
25:34
Yeah. So how much do you typically charge for design?

Kristopher
25:39
That will depend. We have charged, though.

Robert
25:42
Bell curve.

Kristopher
25:42
Like big, small, I mean, like a small little job in a, you know, little, let’s call it curb appeal. Job on the front yard is going to be three, $400.

Robert
25:53
Sure.

Kristopher
25:53
We have done big estates that have been 8000, 10,000, 12,000.

Robert
25:58
So what, three grand down average? Something like that, yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. And when did you start doing the $100 consultation fee?

Kristopher
26:09
15 years ago, 20 years ago?

Robert
26:12
Did anybody balk at it that you bought them to?

Kristopher
26:16
Very few people do. Very, very few. And again, it, if they’re going to balk at that, then, you know, I.

Robert
26:24
Just want to make sure everybody listening to this is like, no one balked at it. Not anybody that you wanted to anyway are the ones you don’t necessarily want to be working with anyway.

Kristopher
26:33
Right. You know, when people say, so, when we say we have a $100 design fee, people will say, well, I talked to three other companies and they didn’t have design fees. I’m like, great, you should use them. You know, and those are the people that I call tire kickers. Right. I don’t want tire kickers. And our clients that come to us have been referred to us, or if they haven’t been directly referred, they have seen our trucks, our logos.

Robert
27:02
They’ve already seen familiarity.

Kristopher
27:04
Yes. And so when they come to us, they know they want us. They’re, they’re talking to us and us alone. They’re not talking to three other companies as well.

Robert
27:14
That’s cool.

Kristopher
27:15
Yeah.

Robert
27:16
Okay. So then you look at this idea of open door policies and even just as simple a thing as bringing people together on a Fridays and having a barbecue to build a team that actually care about each other. You look at engaging with local universities and programs to get kids and students involved in their business and charging for your designs, which is really simple, especially when you put it the way you put it’s just like this is value. The people that aren’t charging for designs, if you’re listening to this and you’re not charting for designs, please, for the love of everybody, stop. In terms of like, over like 30 years running a business, entrepreneur, leadership, all the things like that.

Robert
27:52
Is there a resource, book, author, podcast, video, something that you’ve, you kind of draw off of or that you’d recommend for someone else to check out?

Kristopher
28:01
Oh, well, so I never took a business class I in college or in school at all. Right. But I got involved in some entrepreneurial fast track programs, some business plan writing programs. There’s a foundation in Kansas City called the Kaufman foundation.

Robert
28:24
Cool.

Kristopher
28:25
K a u f f m a n foundation. They do stuff worldwide. They’re huge entrepreneurs, very supportive of that. They have a whole bunch of different classes and I just started taking those things. So awesome. You know, I read good to great. I read do you matter? I read blueprint to a billion. I read mindset, the e myth revisited. You know, I’ve read all of those. And I took a lot of classes where we read books. I also was involved in a, what was called a CEO’s roundtable. And it was a very cool program where there were twelve different CEO’s. We came together once a month. The first 2 hours we had some lesson about something. Somebody came in, the lawyer and marketing person, somebody came in, talked about something. The second half we all brought a problem.

Kristopher
29:26
We said what our problem was. Everybody else gave us advice.

Robert
29:29
Yeah, that’s cool.

Kristopher
29:30
Then we had lunch and left. And then I was part of a book club, honestly, a business book club where we read a lot of those books. So, you know, all of that was self taught for me.

Robert
29:42
Yeah. I mean, I think that the value though, of ongoing lifelong learning, you know, a peer group of people that are in similar positions, were they industry peers or was it positional peers? They were cross industry.

Kristopher
29:53
Very cross industry. I was the only landscaper. There was one other person who was kind of vaguely in the construction industry.

Robert
29:59
Yeah.

Kristopher
29:59
But, you know, but it’s so interesting, right, because it’s hard for you to solve your problem, but I can help you solve your problem. Oh, yeah. Because I’m not attached to your problem. I’m attached to my problem.

Robert
30:12
Right.

Kristopher
30:13
So that’s always been, I’ve always loved that sort of stuff. And the other thing about business is business can be just as creative as anything else. So there is no one way to do business. There is no one way to run your business. There’s, you know, you need to do what’s best for you. You need to do what works for you and your clients. You know, for the longest time, I never had a contract and I had a business. You know, one of the guys who was running, who was mentoring, this thing was like, you’ve got to get a contract. And I was like, I’m like, we shake hands. Like that works in Kansas City. In Kansas City, that works. Now that might not work everywhere, but here. It was fine.

Kristopher
31:00
I felt like if I went with this big document and said, you need to sign.

Robert
31:04
Right? They’d be like, what’s going on?

Kristopher
31:05
Yeah, exactly.

Robert
31:06
But Christopher, what happened?

Kristopher
31:08
Yeah, I thought were friends.

Robert
31:10
Yeah.

Kristopher
31:10
And not that you, and not that you shouldn’t be serious, and not that not it is, you know, you have to be professional and everything, but there is no one way. I had some people at different times try to tell me, well, you have to do this or you have to do that. No, you don’t. I mean, you should look at it. You should look at it and say, should I do that or not? Is that going to work for me or not?

Robert
31:36
That’s cool. Yeah. It’s almost like one of the most creative endeavors, the building of a business itself.

Kristopher
31:44
Right.

Robert
31:45
If you let it be. And I just really appreciate that perspective. That’s a lot of people, I think, don’t hear that very often.

Kristopher
31:51
Yeah, well, you know, if you think so, I do not have kids. I’m single. I’ve never had kids. I’ve never been married. I don’t know what any of that’s like. I can imagine that. Running a business, growing. Growing. They call it growing a business. Right. Like growing a child. I mean, you know, it’s going to grow over time. It’s going to change and develop. You have to change and develop with it. You, you know, something might happen in my business that doesn’t happen in yours. You’ve got to roll with those punches. You’ve got to figure all that out. That. So again, it’s, you know, it’s not just, oh, to start a business, you do blah, blah.

Kristopher
32:33
And then this is going to happen at year two, and this is going to happen at year five, and this is going to happen at year ten. No, it’s evolving.

Robert
32:41
Right? And it’s evolving. Yeah. That’s cool.

Kristopher
32:43
And then what’s going on in the market? How is that affecting you? You know, the great recession, 911, COVID, you know, I mean, who knows, right? Yeah. Who knows? Like, for us, and I think for most people in this industry, COVID was amazing.

Robert
32:58
It was crazy.

Kristopher
33:00
It was crazy. You know, it made having an outdoor space critical. Right. The. The thing before, the person before that I think made gardening important was Martha Stewart. Do you remember when Martha Stewart living and everything, you know, I mean, she made it. She made it critical that if you were living a good life, yeah, you.

Robert
33:27
Had a nice space.

Kristopher
33:28
You had a nice space, you had a nice house, and you had a nice garden.

Robert
33:32
Yeah.

Kristopher
33:32
You know, and so you just never know where those, you know, what are going to be catalysts, the catalysts that are going to change everything.

Robert
33:41
Well, who knows what the next one’s going to be, man? I really appreciate you taking the time to do this with us. Christopher, thank you so much.

Kristopher
33:45
Absolutely. It was great.

Robert
33:47
Thanks, everybody, for listening. Another awesome I am landscape growth podcast with Christopher Davner. Thanks so much for doing this again.

Kristopher
33:56
Absolutely.

Robert
33:57

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.