Bridging the Gap Between Vision and Budget: Alex Zalewski on Transparent Pricing, Team Culture, and More

00:00
Rob Murray
Hi everyone, and welcome to the IM 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 everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the I Am Landscape Growth podcast. Today, I have an awesome guest, Alex Zalewski. Thank you so much for doing this, Alex.

00:45
Alex Zalewski
Thanks for having me.

00:48
Rob Murray
Alex is one of the co-owners of Infinite Possibilities Landscapes and Design and really interested to dig in on some of the perspectives you shared earlier before we started recording on these. You know, what’s the growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry? But for the sake of the audience, can you give us a coles note summary of kind of like how you ended up doing what you’re up to and kind of what’s the core focus of the business today?

01:11
Alex Zalewski
Sure, yeah. I mean, my grandfather came to Canada in 58 and started a landscaping company, Park Lane Nurseries, up in Gormley. It actually started farther down in the city when it wasn’t a city yet. But he moved up north to Gormley and ran a very successful business in the early 2000s. My mom and aunts were running the company and I basically started working there as a summer job and was one of the few people actually doing installs. I started there, learned from someone who had a lot of experience and was running crews for some time, went back to university, and during that time, I started doing sales, shadowing my mom doing sales, and I mean that led to me working at Park Lane for many years.

02:05
Alex Zalewski
They transitioned the business up north to Aurelia, and it’s still there now, but I really preferred living in the city, so I ended up moving, leaving Park Lane and kind of freelance design for a while down in the city. I started working for this guy, Keith Bailey, who was running Infinite Possibilities. He was the founder, and he was actually trained by my grandfather in the 80s. So awesome was trained by my grandfather. Park Lane left and moved down to the city, started Infinite Possibilities and he’s a, he was a one man show. He ran his whole business from his smartphone. He was computer illiterate and he had me doing most of his design and sales after a couple of years.

02:46
Alex Zalewski
My cousin Rob, who also started at Park Lane and then left to start his own thing, doing maintenance and construction, started doing a bunch of his installs. So he was subcontracting to Rob and using me for admin and, design and sales. And after doing that for a few years, I think it was like three or four years we were doing that together, and Rob and I purchased the business from him just before COVID, probably. I think it was like November before COVID that we closed the company, and then Covid hit. It was quite a wild ride over the last four or five years, and it’s been a challenge but pretty exciting.

03:30
Rob Murray
Awesome. And then, what’s the core business now in terms of Infinite Possibilities? Like, what do you specialize in and go after?

03:35
Alex Zalewski
I define it as bespoke residential landscape design build. Right. We do have a maintenance department. We’re very proud of our maintenance department.

03:43
Rob Murray
Now.

03:43
Alex Zalewski
It took us a while to get it there, but now it’s basically just as we finish a construction project. Clients are very excited about having us maintain it. That’s awesome. We have some new leads come in every now and then, but the maintenance department right now is growing steadily. It’s still only about 10% of our business.

04:01
Rob Murray
Yeah. Okay. Awesome. I think it’s still great, though. There are so many design-build companies that don’t maintain the properties when they’re done. I don’t understand why. I think it’s a natural extension to create really good recurring revenue. Anyway. That’s amazing. Size of the business. Ish.

04:13
Alex Zalewski
Right now we do between 2 and 3 million in sales. Peak season, we have about 30 employees.

04:20
Rob Murray
Amazing. Awesome. All right, cool. So that frames the perspective in terms of what infinite possibilities are up to, and then we segue into the primary theme or theme of the podcast. What’s the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry from your perspective, Alex?

04:39
Alex Zalewski
I think that there are two sides to this. Right. My cousin and business partner, Rob, is in operations and finance, and I’m in sales and design. And, you know, we both have our own opinions about what’s the biggest thing holding us back. I would say from my perspective, from design and sales, it’s definitely managing client expectations around rising costs through Covid, through inflation, through interest rates. It’s been quite a challenge. Like at the start, during COVID, it was a very exciting time for most people in the construction industry, where people were willing to pay anything to get the work done, and we just couldn’t do all the work. Yeah. Now, things are a little different. It’s definitely a little different. Things are, you know, generally 30 to 40% more than they think it’s going to be. And it’s a big gap. It’s a huge gap.

05:32
Alex Zalewski
It’s the difference between getting your outdoor kitchen and not getting your outdoor kitchen. Right, Right. And, like, really, that’s what it comes down to is we offer really good quality, really good service, and we’re able to adapt our projects to meet a client’s budget. But if they come to us with a wish list, that’s $200,000 and they’ve only got $120,000 budget, we’re pretty far apart. It takes a lot of handholding to get someone over the line there, and we lose projects to that. You know, I would say 50% of the projects that we don’t take over the finish line or because of that. That inconsistency.

06:10
Rob Murray
Yeah. And then the 50, the other 50, you do get over the finish line. And so this. This issue is not uncommon, especially in the last, say, 12, 18 months, more so than, say, you know, 2021, 2022. So what. What kind of things have you been doing? Working with prospects and potential customers to try to close that gap and make it more clear as quickly as possible to improve that whole situation and get more sales over the finish line?

06:37
Alex Zalewski
I think one of the bigger things we’ve done to just manage expectations is as we redesigned our website, which was a big thing. SEO, Google, AdWords, bringing in the right kind of clients and stuff like that. But I think one of the big things was our portfolio page. We added the value of the project and the year it was completed to each project in our portfolio. So people have an idea of what they’re getting into when they’re looking at a project and the scope and the kind of framework of a budget for them. Another thing we do is I really hate having to give out numbers at a first meeting. I regularly end up having to, no matter what. But overestimating at that point can help a lot. And we also do, like, before we present numbers, we present budgets.

07:23
Alex Zalewski
So we show people, you know, a range of cost for individual line items and go through what makes up that range. So we can give them a bit of an opportunity to turn dials up and down on their projects where they see value, and that gives them a little more control over where they’re spending, like where they’re investing in their backyard. For sure, that helps them at least get, like, we get a really good sense of where they see value so that when we come back after that meeting, we focused on that, and, like, we’ve cut some other stuff, but we know that wasn’t their priority, so we’re a little closer to the finish line at that point.

07:58
Rob Murray
Oh, that’s so cool. Okay, I want to break this down, though, because there’s kind of like three things you meant or you mentioned there, and I think the first one was so simple and clear. But a lot of people haven’t come around yet about the idea of having, like, some range of pricing on your website. Like, a lot of folks don’t necessarily want to do that. They think they’re going to scare people off. There’s a lot more research these days around consumers being much more educated than they have been even five years ago. And there’s a push towards more transparency. And I think companies like you are starting to feel the reward or the impact of that by being upfront with people. So that way, when they do inquire, they have a decent expectation of what a project is going to look like.

08:43
Rob Murray
What would you say to folks that are either not ready to put pricing on their site or what has it been like since you’ve done that?

08:52
Alex Zalewski
I mean, it’s definitely helped a little bit. We only finished our website in June or something like that this year, so it’s really hard to know exactly what impact it’s had so far. But, I mean, I’ve got steps I want to take even further where people can, like, calculate based on a deck and a patio, and a water feature of this size will be about this much, so they can get really clear on what they’re thinking about before they even need to reach out to us. Awesome. I think that if you can sit down with a pretty clear idea of what someone’s project is going to cost at the start of the meeting, they’re going to be way more receptive to that number. The problem is getting there without some kind of accurate design and throwing numbers around.

09:37
Alex Zalewski
150 to $200,000, give or take, has definitely come back to bite me. Right. So I definitely lean towards giving more information up front about projects that are already done, that we know how much they cost, and then as we move forward, we give them ranges of prices to show them where they can increase and decrease costs throughout the project.

09:56
Rob Murray
Well, and that was one of the things I thought was neat that you mentioned around budgets and priorities. So instead of, like, getting into the actual dollar amount, you’re using, like, ranges and trying to really figure out what is the most important aspect of this build project for your customer. What are some tips for folks that are out there in the sales environment in terms of like, how to get to those priorities, like, what are you saying and how do those conversations go?

10:20
Alex Zalewski
I, I think, you know, when you first sit down with someone, and you say, you know, tell me a bit about what you’re looking to do, I think it’s really important to take note of the first few things they talk about because that’s clearly their priorities. I think that another thing is just, you know when we’re putting. After we’ve gone through a design consultation and provided them with a concept of a project, before we build that high, low budget document I was talking about, we actually estimate the whole project as it sits. Right.

10:50
Alex Zalewski
We build out a whole quote for the project and then we take those numbers and we turn them into ranges so that we can show them that, like, we made some selections in terms of materials and units and that kind of stuff, but there is still opportunities for revision that we can change and make that thing cost a little less. And that thing you want the higher end version of, we can make that work, right?

11:13
Rob Murray
Yeah. Cool. So then when you’re coming back to these folks with these budgets, when you go through this consultation process, like, are you charging for designs at this point or are you still like, how does that work?

11:25
Alex Zalewski
We do charge for design work and we keep track of that and make sure that our design costs cover the costs of doing design work. And I do an initial consultation of, you know, 30 to 45 minutes, and that’s a no charge consultation. But my goal at that meeting is to sign them up for a design contract.

11:45
Rob Murray
And what are you selling designs for roughly?

11:48
Alex Zalewski
Normally, we’re selling them for about $3,000. Yeah.

11:51
Rob Murray
Okay, great.

11:52
Alex Zalewski
Sometimes like we’ll do a bit of a discount deal where, you know, a $2,000 retainer, thousand dollars waived if they do construction with us, that kind of thing. Just to keep them, you know, hooked through the process. Yeah. And you know, if they want to take our design and shop it around, then it’s the full $3,000. And we’ve covered our costs on that. So we’re comfortable, right? Yeah. The whole process, it is like a five to six week process and it does take some time and we do charge for it, for sure.

12:23
Rob Murray
Yeah. And I love the fact that you do. And really I’m asking these questions so that the people that don’t that are listening start to understand, you know, the impact of making that happen. So, a couple quick questions on this piece, and this is just for the audience at large, that will be Listening to these episodes because I know some people struggle with the idea because they’re not charging currently and they’re doing a bunch of work for free that goes nowhere. They want to charge to do it, but they’re in between their ears, you know, not quite certain are these customers going to complain or whatever. What do you say to those folks?

12:58
Rob Murray
Like, when you bring up the idea of paying for design work, and someone’s like, oh, I would never do that, or does everybody say, okay, like, are there some customers that are just like, I know, I’m good, thank you. And you’re like, okay, great, no problem. Like, I don’t necessarily want to be doing this for free. Like, how does that dynamic play out?

13:19
Alex Zalewski
I think what it comes down to is I, we mentioned the cost of designs. If they say, oh, well, I’ve. I’ve got people offering to do design work for free, then I say, you know, go ahead and use them. You know, let us know if you want us to quote the construction. Right. I let them know that, like, in my mind, projects always turn out better if the person with the vision that created the design is managing the installation. So, like, that’s just like I normally tell people that, like, if you should keep shopping around until you find a firm that you’re comfortable doing both, rather than getting designed from someone and a cheap landscape from someone else, I think that’s, that’s probably a mistake.

14:03
Alex Zalewski
Like, you’re going to end up with, you’re not going to end up with the project that you think you are if you do that. And there will be plenty of things that you don’t see when they’re installed that are going to lead to, you know, repairs being needed much sooner. Yeah, right. Like, go ahead. Anything we do in our climate is going to fail eventually. Right, Right. That’s just the nature of living in an environment that gets from positive 40 to negative 40 every year. Right. So, like, having said that, you can design projects that are guaranteed to last for 10 years, you can design projects that will fail this winter. Right. And, like, that is totally the client’s prerogative.

14:46
Alex Zalewski
The problem is that educating clients on that can be really hard to do without feeling like you’re sounding arrogant or, you know, saying bad things about your competition, quote, unquote. Like, I definitely don’t do any of that. I just say, find a company you’re comfortable with. Know that the value you get out of our design work is going to be there. Right. Like you’re going to see a Lot of value in our process.

15:10
Rob Murray
Well, and regardless of that, letting somebody know that the best approach is to find a firm that will do both. Because then it’s like a scene like they have the build in mind as they’re designing the work. And there’s no way there’s 100% clarity in a design on what goes in behind everything because you’re just seeing the surface. Literally, I think that’s really cool perspective that a lot of people can take away from this. And then what do you say to folks that are like having a hard time because they think customers are going to balk at paying for design?

15:46
Alex Zalewski
Some customers will. I mean, if you can get, let’s say, let’s say you have ten clients that are coming to you, right? 10 customers, and you’ve got an opportunity to sell even only three of those designs at $3,000. Those three clients that paid $3,000 for their design are going to be way more invested than ten who didn’t.

16:12
Rob Murray
Like, literally.

16:13
Alex Zalewski
Because they, literally, they’ve got skin in the game. They want to see this through. Right. I feel like when someone’s about to spend a hundred thousand dollars on a landscape, the $3,000 on design, that 3% is totally worth it. And they can see that. And at least the clients that we want to work with can see that. Right.

16:31
Rob Murray
And I think that’s the kicker.

16:32
Alex Zalewski
Yeah, definitely. Like if someone doesn’t care about design, if someone’s saying, I just want a square 10 by 10 deck, you know, I could quote a ten by 10 deck for you, no problem. I’ll like spray it on the ground and say, this will be the deck and we won’t charge for design. It’ll just be a ten by 10 deck. And it’s this much. That’s a different kind of client. Right. And like, we can definitely service those clients too. It’s just when you’re talking about when you’re talking to a high-end landscape design-build firm, it seems silly not to take advantage of that design skill. And so if you’re talking to a client who says, I don’t want to design, I just want a new patio.

17:10
Alex Zalewski
If you can look at their pictures or their property and see that it’s flat, you don’t really need to do grades. It’s just going to slope away from the house of 2% and you’re going to show them a picture of Brussels block in a catalog and sign them up, you know, like, so be it. But that’s not our bread and butter. Right. I would say that kind of work takes up like 10 or 20% of our time. And that’s honestly more like what we would term specialty services, where our maintenance team can probably do some of that work. Right. They just want, like a tree installed or they want their deck board replaced or something. And we can do that kind of stuff with a different kind of budget, a different kind of system.

17:52
Alex Zalewski
But our goal is to get those residential design build leads that see value in the art of design.

18:00
Rob Murray
Yeah, that’s cool. I appreciate that a lot. And I think to your point, the people that are willing to invest in the process are usually better customers because they value your time, they’re curious what you come up with, they think you’re a professional, they’re paying you as such. And so the dynamic of the relationship is better out of the gate. So you can let the people that want free designs go to your competition and see how they can deal with them.

18:23
Alex Zalewski
Right, Exactly. Yeah.

18:25
Rob Murray
And then you mentioned also high quotes initial conversations. Kind of like this idea of extreme anchoring, when someone’s like, how much is it going to be? And you say, what’s going to be 300 grand or something like that, and you go really high. You kind of mentioned that in one of the things that you do in terms of creating expectations. Can you break that down quickly?

18:41
Alex Zalewski
Yeah, I mean, I want to try and maintain that high anchor for sure. When you initially talk to someone, you say, you know, all the things you talked about here could be as much as $300,000. But, you know, there are ways to bring it down. Right. And your goal is to get them over the finish line so that you can actually start that design process and start the budgeting process, because then you can show them where value is being spent, like where the budget is going in order to get to that 300,000. And maybe they don’t need all of those things. Right?

19:16
Rob Murray
Yeah. That’s cool. And that’s simple. You did say there’s two parts of this idea around the growth constraint. One, around this design and sales aspect and getting clear expectations and customers over the finish line. And then there’s also another piece that is more kind of impacting. Rob, so what’s that other growth constraint you’re referring to?

19:39
Alex Zalewski
I mean, it’s about people, right? It’s about the people on your staff and training them and making sure they’re staying productive and motivated and retaining them over the winter. You know, this year was a pretty big milestone for Us, it was the first year when we started our season, we didn’t have to hire anyone. And that’s like, I’ve been doing this, if you count what I was doing at Park Lane for more than 20 years. And we had never been in that position ever in any respect. We always had to hire some people. Having said that, it’s been a process of finding ways to add value to our team that makes them feel like we actually care. Right. Rather than just like a bigger dollar value, which, you know, we try and I mean, we pay everyone a living wage and that’s to start.

20:35
Alex Zalewski
And from there, we are very willing to compensate rock stars for being rock stars. Right? Sure. Having said that, you know, we have adopted a bunch of things. One thing that we did early on was started feeding all of our crews hot lunches. So we have a cater. We have a caterer who brings fresh frozen meals to the job sites. Each job site has a fridge and a microwave in the tool shed. And so every day they throw their lunch in the microwave and they’ve got a hot lunch. We also actually expanded that offering to offer our team breakfasts. They can, they can get the frozen breakfasts to bring home, cook them in the morning, eat them on the way to the job, and it skips them having to stop for fast food. Yeah.

21:29
Rob Murray
Well, then you’re fueling your team with, like, good food.

21:32
Alex Zalewski
It’s a, it’s a massive benefit. I think there’s very few other companies doing something like this. And I think that, you know, even just from a productivity side on our sand, like, people don’t leave the job site for an hour, right. Like to go and get their McDonald’s and then come back and like, it’s just so much better in a bunch of ways.

21:53
Rob Murray
And they love it. I was assuming they do.

21:56
Alex Zalewski
And the fact that it’s a healthy lunch, it’s healthy food, it’s not McDonald’s Subway every day, Right.

22:05
Rob Murray
Carb loaded. Definitely makes it drain 2:00.

22:10
Alex Zalewski
So there’s that. That’s something we’ve been doing. It’s not cheap. And we’ve been doing it every year, even when we’re struggling, because we think that it does provide a bunch of value. Another thing is just around culture, right, we started, we came up with the term ripple as our acronym for, like, how we can point at people and say, that’s ripple. And it’s respect, integrity, professionalism, positivity, leadership and excellence. And we want to be able to call out our team for being Ripple and we give out awards. So another thing we do is every long weekend, the Friday before the long weekend, we end, we have a half day and everyone goes to a park and we have our caterer show up with a barbecue and we have a barbecue. We have a, you know, a culture building session, safety talk.

23:04
Alex Zalewski
And we also hand out awards, Ripple Awards to everyone. And those Ripple awards are actually voted on by the whole team.

23:11
Rob Murray
Oh, dude, that’s so good.

23:15
Alex Zalewski
Google form that everyone gets, it’s all anonymous and they ask you to vote on who’s most Ripple, who’s most mvp, who’s been super outstanding this month, whatever. So that’s like that kind of thing. I mean, I hope it helps. It’s really hard to know as the owner whether or not these things are actually making a difference.

23:33
Rob Murray
That helps.

23:35
Alex Zalewski
Yeah.

23:36
Rob Murray
And I want, I want to break, I want to break down quickly. Why though? For people listening. And this is something where I find a lot of organizations fall short. So leadership team will put a bunch of strategic effort into, you know, coming up with core values and how they’re going to shape culture and spend a lot of time crafting very specific words and sentences that try to, you know, exemplify or demonstrate, you know, the way they want everybody to live and behave on a day to day basis. But then it kind of ends there. Every once in a while it’s spoken about, it’s presented, but very few actually live it on a regular basis.

24:17
Rob Murray
One of the things I think is cool about this and so one of the things we talk about, because I find core values in culture become a little bit synonymous and so, but they’re a little bit different. And so one of the things we talk about with a lot of our clients is that culture happens regardless, you know, whether it’s intentional or not. There’s a culture inside a workplace, in any group of people, actually there’s a culture where even in your families, you know, in our friend groups, there’s a culture and you know, is it a culture of accountability and professionalism, leadership and excellence, or is it a culture of, you know, tardiness and, you know, whimsical aloofness, whatever it might be. But core values are things that we are like traditions and routines and behaviors, I think when done properly.

24:59
Rob Murray
And one of the things I think you’ve done a really cool job with by making it on this like long weekend. Not only is it a routine and A tradition, but it’s also peer to peer. And so people are being exposed to this idea of Ripple, and they’re thinking, is someone ripple on an ongoing basis. And I would expect if you were to leave for a year, those Ripple Awards would still happen.

25:24
Alex Zalewski
Yeah, yeah. I think another big component to this. Like, we’ve been refining our, like, mission vision, and we think that Ripple speaks to this. But basically what we came up with is, you know, we always do the right thing. That’s like the super simple guiding star. Everyone in the company, if they can’t get a hold of someone to get answer or they don’t know what the right thing to do is, just do the right thing. What is the right thing to do? Right. Like, you find a boulder and it’s in the wrong spot, or you discover that the wood under the boards you’re taking up is rotten or whatever. Even with our clients, we tell them that’s what we do. Right. So.

26:09
Alex Zalewski
So the point is that as soon as we notice there’s a problem that needs more effort than we originally talked about with our client or something like that, we’re just going to say, you know, do it. Get. Get it fixed. Right. And tell the sales rep. The sales rep goes and talks to the client and says, we found this problem, we’re fixing it. It’s going to cost us about this much. Like, if you think it’s fair for us to charge that, we’re going to add it to our invoice. We just know it was the right thing to do to fix it. Right?

26:35
Rob Murray
Yeah. That’s awesome.

26:36
Alex Zalewski
And that makes it super simple all over the company, right? You’re at the yard and you’re deciding what to do with this stuff. What’s the right thing to do with it? It’s not dump it on the floor behind your truck and drive away. It’s put it where it’s supposed to go. Right. And I think that, like, every letter in Ripple speaks right back to that. In, in. That’s the point, right?

26:59
Rob Murray
Yeah. I mean. And did I get it right? Respect, integrity, professionalism, leadership and excellence.

27:04
Alex Zalewski
Positivity’s in there, too. Two pieces.

27:06
Rob Murray
There’s. Okay, so it’s not Ripple. No. That’s great. I. I honestly think so many people miss this. And you guys have done a great job nailing it. That’s super cool. So then you’ve got this idea of, you know, putting effort towards your team so that they feel welcomed and appreciated. You’re training them, you’re Doing safety talks, you’re doing recognition, hot lunch breaks. Break.

27:29
Alex Zalewski
We also do one other thing I was just going to mention hot lunches and breakfast. That the one other thing I was going to say is like every year, at the start of every year, at the end of every year and anytime throughout, Rob and I sit down with everyone in the company and have one one where it’s kind of like a review where we are doing the review thing but we’re also asking questions regularly around like what autonomy looks like for them. How can we bring value outside of money to them and their family. What’s the most frustrating thing that you’ve dealt with in the last. Since we talked? What’s the most positive thing? Like how are you, how can we play to your strengths? Like when are you in flow state?

28:09
Alex Zalewski
What can we do to make you there more like actively getting involved in every single person and trying to know them and their lives and like make their lives better for being here.

28:20
Rob Murray
It’s epic, man. I’m not sure if anybody shared the 19 questions survey that we do.

28:30
Alex Zalewski
No.

28:31
Rob Murray
Anyway, it’s extremely similar to what you just mentioned. I’ll share it with you afterwards and if anything, maybe in this podcast I’ll put a link to a, a duplicatable form so if anybody wants to grab it, they can use it for their own teams. But it’s, it’s asking those questions like, you know, in the last 90 days, what’s something that you’re proud of? What’s something the company can do to better? I think I love one of the questions you just said though about like, you know, what’s something that’s been frustrating, that’s been or a pain in your ass in the last whatever, you know, time. Because I think if you ask somebody specifically what’s something that sucks, they’ll answer. Or if you like ask how is it going? People might glaze over things.

29:12
Rob Murray
So I mean between one one attention and trying to help people better, bringing value to them and their families, feeding them properly and healthy, you know, this recognition and these routines around your core values, I mean that sounds pretty epic. And it doesn’t sound like as much as the food costs money, a lot of this other stuff is just a matter of the way you operate. It’s a, it’s a little bit extra time maybe, but an overall cost to do these ripple awards like that doesn’t seem like it’s going to be crazy.

29:41
Alex Zalewski
No, I mean the barbecues in general with all like we probably spend between 50 and $100,000 on food and barbecues and awards and stuff. It’s not. It. Yeah. And that’s nothing. It’s a pretty big part of our overhead budget, but it’s nothing. And, and it does, like I said, I don’t. We have to keep doing it. It feels like one of those things that you just can’t not do even in hard times. So that’s how we see it is like it’s part of like our offering to our team. Right.

30:14
Rob Murray
And then, and so from that perspective, like our what’s your turnover look, like, what are people saying about wanting to work there? Like, what is the team’s perspective on all this stuff?

30:24
Alex Zalewski
I mean, again, it’s hard to know as the owner, right? You can have as many of these meetings or you ask your 19 questions. One of the questions I, I ask every time is we really like having you around. What would keep you coming back? Right. And like you, almost unanimously, the response to that question is, I really like being here. You’re doing all the right things. I’m not gonna go anywhere. Despite that, we definitely do have people leave occasionally. Right. But having said that, like I said that, this year was the first year where we had zero turnover. Right. We had no need to hire anyone this spring. Every spring, we also do like a week long training where we get everyone together and go through our ripple and culture, as well as training on tools equipment and process.

31:14
Alex Zalewski
But yeah, this year was the first year where the winter training, there were no new faces. It was all the same team again. There were a couple of people that had left and didn’t come back. But we didn’t need to rehire this spring.

31:28
Rob Murray
Right.

31:28
Alex Zalewski
And having said that, we’re always hiring. We always have job posts up, we’re always doing interviews. We’re always looking for another rock star. Right, Right.

31:36
Rob Murray
Well, that’s the best time to be looking. You don’t necessarily need somebody, right?

31:39
Alex Zalewski
Exactly, exactly. And that’s.

31:42
Rob Murray
What did you do over the winter when you’re not doing snow to keep the crew together?

31:47
Alex Zalewski
We have tons of stuff to do over the winter. Most of the crew, basically what we say is we give them the option like, do you want a holiday winter or do you want to keep working? We have a small snow route, Like a small snow route. It’s enough for one, maybe two people to be busy on a snow day. But we also have a wood shop where we’re doing prep work for the next season. This year, I think we’re going to start building fancy lattices for projects. We also do a ton of R and D, so anyone that’s on salary, we have a leadership task list that’s 30 or 40 items long at the end of a winter. And we’ve cleared off everything we finished.

32:29
Alex Zalewski
And then at the start of the winter season, we sit down with that team, we go through that spreadsheet, we add a bunch of new stuff, we reprioritize it all, we reassign it all, and we basically just say like, we’re going to have a meeting every couple of weeks to talk about where you’re at and answer any questions. But our goal is to have everything that’s assigned done by the end of February. We kind of give people, you know, full autonomy to work however they want over the winter. And we sit down every couple weeks, and we say, how far have you gotten? What are you struggling with? What do you need help with? What should we add? What should we change? But it’s a, it’s a different vibe in the winter for sure.

33:06
Rob Murray
Yeah, it’s like a sword sharpening exercise. Like you’re trying to get yourself ready for the next year.

33:10
Alex Zalewski
R and D stuff that, like, like. What’s a good example? Right now, we’re trying to get B Corp certified.

33:16
Rob Murray
Oh, epic.

33:18
Alex Zalewski
And that’s like a ton of work. Like it’s a big job, and it’s the kind of thing that, like, were looking at it last March and February, March I was digging into it. We did our first ranking or whatever. We looked at all the things we need to do, and we made a list of those things, and they’re on the leadership task list. Right. We’re not going to even think about trying to execute that stuff in the middle of a season. Right. We’re going to wait until the end of our season. We’re slowing down. We put the list of all the things that are going to get us B Corp certification. We decide what’s most important, most valuable. Those get ranked higher. And then we just like, who wants to do these things right?

33:57
Alex Zalewski
And we give people the opportunity to put up their hand.

33:59
Rob Murray
Right. It’s awesome. B Corp is a beast. And for all people that are listening to this, can you just give a quick summary of what B Corp is and why you’re curious and becoming certified?

34:13
Alex Zalewski
I think yeah, so google it. There’s some good videos. But basically putting people and planet above profits is like a really simple way to say It. Right. And the B Corp certification allows you to put a stamp on your branding that says, like, we’re actually doing this stuff. Right. Like, we’ve not only built the systems and we’re tracking it, but we’ve been audited and we do that regularly. Right.

34:38
Rob Murray
It’s awesome.

34:40
Alex Zalewski
I think that’s probably the easiest way to describe it. And I would say that I think.

34:43
Rob Murray
It’s a great way to describe it.

34:45
Alex Zalewski
It’s so not designed for a small construction firm. It’s designed for, like, Google, you know like a massive corporation trying to do the thing. Like, it’s so hard to justify. For example, we need to talk to everyone in our supply chains about their waste management practices and get them to improve. It’s like, are you crazy? Do you want me to go to Beaver Valley or Permacon and tell them to improve their environmental practices? Like, yeah, I mean, I get why you’re asking people to do that, but I don’t think we have the kind of clout you think we do. You know, like, anyway, that’s like, only one thing, right? There’s a. There’s a dozen things like that on there.

35:29
Rob Murray
Well, a lot of governance and policies that need to be, you know, formalized and that kind of stuff, especially for a small company that you wouldn’t necessarily normally have anyway. I just think it’s super cool that you’re doing it and anybody who hasn’t heard of it because a lot of people haven’t. Google B Corp and check what it’s all about because I think it’s a. It’s a big task to take on and speaks volumes to the character. Leadership over infinite possibilities. For Alex, you, and Rob, as we wrap up a question, I ask everybody kind of near the end in terms of inspiration from, you know, authors, leaders, speakers. Like, where? Where have you had some?

36:05
Alex Zalewski
Oh, man.

36:06
Rob Murray
Impact?

36:07
Alex Zalewski
I am an avid reader. I read like 50 or 60 books a year, and it’s hard to know specifically which ones are influencing me at any given time, but I would say that Doing Good Better. The concepts of effective altruism are very strong for me. I would say that, you know, Frank Lloyd Wright is probably my favorite architect. Awesome, awesome theory behind all of his work around, just like marrying what you’re doing into the landscape. And yeah, I think, you know, there’s. There’s so much to go out there and read and learn about. And like I said, I feel like every time I’m making a decision, there’s like half a dozen things that are coming to me. From all the books I’ve read, things like Built to Last and Small Giants. And I. I could.

37:05
Alex Zalewski
I could list things all day, but, yeah, I would say that, like, right now, in the last three or four years, I would say Doing Good Better. There’s a book called the Precipice that’s about, like, how much we can do to really change our future. Like, we’re sitting on this knife’s edge of, like, things going really well or things going not so well for our species.

37:28
Rob Murray
We’re going to find out a little bit about that next week, I think.

37:30
Alex Zalewski
And I think that’s the big thing, right? It is like, I think all of this really is. Everything is connected. Right. And so when you’re talking about running a small business with 20 to 30 employees, you can do a lot of good there and change the culture of your organization and your community by just trying to do the right thing in every instance. Right.

37:52
Rob Murray
I love that. Doing Good Better. I haven’t read that one. I’m gonna check that out. Put it on my list right away. Thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. I think a lot of people are gonna get a lot of value when it comes to how you can engage your team a little differently with a little bit of, like, creativity and the expectation setting and the sales process. I think it’s a big deal. So, thank you, Alex, for doing this. Really appreciate it.

38:12
Alex Zalewski
Thanks, Robert. I appreciate the opportunity.

38:15
Rob Murray
All right. See, everybody. Thanks for listening to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth podcast.