Transforming Landscaping Businesses with Strategic Coaching: Warren Coughlin

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, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the I am Landscape Growth podcast. Today I have the honor and privilege of introducing Warren Coughlin to the show. Thank you so much, Warren, for doing this.

Warren
00:41
Yeah, my pleasure. Great to be here.

Robert
00:43
In a minute, Warren is going to help us understand a bit more about how helps folks. But in my experience, Warren is probably one of the smartest business coaches I’ve ever met, with genuine passion for helping passionate entrepreneurs grow their businesses so they don’t have to be sitting there playing whack a mole all day. and at some point, you’re gonna tell us what that means. But it. It also is about building an organization that, you know, can run without them, have some more fun, make more money, that type of thing. So, Warren, thanks. Thanks for doing this.

Warren
01:10
My pleasure. Looking forward to it.

Robert
01:12
Cool. So, can you just give us a quick Coles note summary, kind of like how you ended up into this coaching environment you’re in, where your passion for entrepreneurship came from, and, like, you know, just a crash course on what brought you where you are now.

Warren
01:24
Sure, I’ll do a crash course, but it’s kind of weird. In my case, the bio actually starts at birth, because I was supposed to die. I was given zero chance of survival. I was the second person in history to live through this weird congenital defect. And when I discovered that, it kind of stirred in me this desire to do something with this gift that wasn’t supposed to have. So I pursued a whole bunch of different paths, and I’ve got this weird, eclectic background. I’m a recovering lawyer, pursuit of justice, maybe going to politics someday. I was a college professor, you know, molding young minds. I was a serial entrepreneur. I was an actor and theater director, you know, the transformative power of art and all of that. And it was really an entrepreneurship that it sang to me.

Warren
02:06
I actually believe that entrepreneurship is one of the most powerful forces for positive social change. It’s where we can really have an impact. And so then when I got into that, then I sort of realized, you, a lot of entrepreneurs get into it because they’re forced into it by circumstance or they have some personal passion or they got some technical skill, but not because they studied business. So they’ve actually left a lot of money on the table, a lot of stress. So they don’t actually achieve the success. They want to be able to have those impacts that make the world a better place. And so that’s what got me into business. Coaching was, here’s an opportunity to actually help entrepreneurs do it better. And I believe that if entrepreneurs succeed, then we all succeed.

Robert
02:46
Okay, so first of all, I couldn’t agree more. At entry, we talked about this idea that we have this obsession, a healthy obsession for helping entrepreneurs be entrepreneurially successful. So I really appreciate that because they’re the backbones. They’re the ones that put their houses on the lines, you know, hire folks, support the, you know, charities, soccer teams, whatever, and actually make the difference in the world they want to see, not just say it, you know, they’re not sitting on the sidelines. So that resonates big time with me. Warren, thanks for saying that.

Warren
03:14
There’s a line in the play rent is one. A great line that I always reference. And it says, the opposite of war is not peace, it is creation. Or. So the opposite of. Yeah, the opposite of war is not peace. It is creation. Beautiful, because war is destruction, and creation is its antithesis. And that’s what entrepreneurs do, is they create. Right? They create solutions, they create ideas, they create businesses, they create opportunities. So they are the actual, the antidote to the negative stuff.

Robert
03:42
I love it. So tell us, what’s whack a mole mean?

Warren
03:45
Whack a mole is that game and affair where you’re just sitting there with a mallet waiting for something to pop up and then hitting it. And so in entrepreneurship, what that is you’re always reacting to something else. It’s like, I don’t know what’s going to pop up or where, but I’m ready just to smack it. And so you’re responding to polishing my whacker. Yeah, I’m just like this all the time. And it keeps you from actually thinking about what you want to do and where you want to go. If you’re just always waiting for something to pop up that you need to deal with, you’re never going to be dealing with the things that you want to deal with. And so it actually keeps you from being strategic and proactive and in control.

Robert
04:23
Cool. So, I mean, there’s obviously a ton of layers to how you become proactive, but were going touch on, like, two topics within that massive spectrum of whatever we want to talk about when it comes to business leadership and everything between the first one you mentioned, you know, and especially, you know, with audience here being a bunch of folks in the landscape industry, green industry. And the whole focus of this podcast is to help people break through growth constraints they’re experiencing within their business as leaders and entrepreneurs. And you have a passion for this idea on high performance teams, whether it’s creating a culture of high performance, whether it’s sinking training, investing resources into developing people, everything around this idea of high performance.

Robert
05:10
So you just give us a quick understanding from your point of view, what does a high performance team or culture look like? And then we’ll get into, like, how people can start making it happen.

Warren
05:19
Sure. So let’s actually distinguish it from what it’s not. Because when people talk about culture a lot. Right. But it gets often misunderstood. And there’s a distinction between a high performance culture and a nice culture. And a lot of people have bought into the idea of building a nice culture. Right. We have the foosball table. We have barbecues on Friday afternoon. We give people massages or whatever. And there’s nothing wrong with those things.

Robert
05:43
You know, unless you like to get things done.

Warren
05:46
Yeah. So a high performance culture is more like. Like a high performance team. Pick your sport, right. It’s like people who play at a really high level, and a high performance culture is one that, yes. Provides things to the. To the team that they. They benefit. Good pay, good job, good working conditions, all that kind of stuff. Maybe the massage and foosball table. But there’s also a high level of expectation. You know, people perform when there’s an expectation of them. And the interesting thing is, like, high performers like to play with high performers. Nobody likes to be on the Golden State warriors.

Robert
06:24
Right. Everybody wants to be the Golden State warrior because all the best people go there.

Warren
06:27
Yeah. Nobody wants to be on the court with somebody who’s a slacker. Right. It makes the game not fun. And that’s the point that gets missed. A lot of people always think about this as just, you know, it’s about driving money and all that. But it’s actually, we’re all in this because we want to make our lives better. The people that work for you are in it because they want to make their lives better. So high performers want to play the game with other high performers because it’s just more fun.

Robert
06:50
Yeah.

Warren
06:51
And so that’s what I mean by a high performance culture. It’s like, people who want to do great work, deliver a great experience for clients, are challenged, you know, like to push themselves a little bit and like, yeah, like to. Like to participate in the rewards of having done an excellent job. They like to win.

Robert
07:08
That’s cool. So then what does somebody do, like, you know, staffing being this constraint within landscape industry, people talking about it for years. It intensified the last two or three. We’ll see if it, you know, eases up. But it’s still a thing, whether it’s recruiting new folks or growing people so that they stay for a long period of time, you know, developing leaders that you don’t have to be doing everything day to day. Where does someone start if they want to go down this journey of a high performance culture?

Warren
07:34
The first thing is to be analytical about it, is to define what that means for you. High performance differs by organization. Some organizations, if they’re all about speed, then high performance is going to be about how you work at quality with speed. Others are going to be more around the experience that customers have or about creativity or something like that. You got to define for yourself what high performance looks like. I grew up not sure. People, if your audience, I’m older than your average bear.

Robert
08:03
I don’t know about that. You’re good.

Warren
08:05
You’re good. I grew up in Edmonton during the heyday of the Edmonton Oilers hockey team, when Wayne Gretzky was there. And, you know, they built a system centered around this guy Gretzky, but it was an offensive juggernaut, right? And so they actually got rid of really high quality players, but who just didn’t fit that system. And so really defining for yourself what that distinction and what that high performances look like will help you then recruit the right people. So that’s the first step, is first defining it, and then you’ve got to recruit to that piece and be very explicit about what kind of folks you want. And now that’s where it’s hard, right? Especially when there’s a shrinking labor market or a constraint in labor market. So you have to recruit really thoughtfully, carefully put people through their paces.

Warren
08:58
But that can be challenging because I’ve had clients who said, I found somebody great. We’re going to do the third interview, and they got a job with somebody else. So one of the things is to actually have a recruitment process that accelerates that. One of the things I have all my clients do in recruitment is to do group interviews. So you take all your top candidates and you bring them in at once instead of scheduling. I’m busy because I got a bunch of work. So I’m seeing Bob on Monday at three and somebody else on Thursday at five. And then I can’t really remember because there were four days in between, so I got to bring them back again the next week and by that time the people are bored and they’ve gone on to another job.

Warren
09:37
Whereas if you can screen people, like with ten minute phone interviews first, then bring just your top candidates in for a, you know, 1 hour, one and a half hour group interview, you’re going to know within that hour and a half who the top performers are.

Robert
09:51
Yeah. Okay.

Warren
09:52
Help you to accelerate your recruitment.

Robert
09:54
When it comes to the recruitment process, you know, some folks have got it dialed in terms of steady flow of applications here and there and they’ve got candidates to work from. But if someone is like, not in a position where they’ve got candidate flow, do you have any recommendations on how they can kick up that recruitment process, that getting people through the, you know, the front door to start?

Warren
10:13
Yeah, there’s, you know, I’m going to sound like, you know, Entrepreneur magazine. Here’s the three keys to recruitment. Like, there’s nothing good magazine.

Robert
10:21
Man, it’s all good.

Warren
10:22
Yeah, there’s nothing new. Like, it’s doing the work. So the first thing is to cast your net wide. Like, what most people do is they don’t want to get inundated by resumes, and so they actually recruit narrowly because they’re so busy, they don’t want to have to review 150 resumes. So the first thing is you got to cast your net as wide as possible. So how do you do that? You know, advertising, indeed. Put things up on LinkedIn. Ask your current staff for recommendations to others. Give them the job descriptions and ad distribute it to their networks. Give them some incentives to help do that. Go on social media.

Robert
10:55
Can you give us an example of a referral incentive that you’ve seen in one of your clients businesses?

Warren
11:00
There can be different versions. I’ve seen cash incentives. I’ve seen time off incentives. I’ve seen use of equipment or truck kind of incentive dinner out with your spouse. Like, it’s a lot of incentives. People, again, get lazy on the incentive piece. They just think, I’m going to do one thing that I think will work, but you need to know who your team is. Like, if you have a, I don’t know, let’s say you got a crew of people who, you know, they’re all into baseball, say yes. You know, give them tickets to a major league game or something. If they bring the successful person, and the successful candidate gets to go with them.

Robert
11:37
Yeah. So intrigue. We. We give three grand away for a successful candidate coming on board, and.

Warren
11:43
Yeah, that’s great.

Robert
11:44
It’s $500 for them joining the team. Then it’s $1,500 if they make it six months, and then the extra thousand if they make it a year.

Warren
11:52
Yep. Now there’s, again, you look at your culture. There was this really, this isn’t a business context, but it’s about psychology. There was this really interesting experiment done in. I’m going to get it wrong, it’s either Norway or Denmark. And they were trying to figure out where to put nuclear waste, and they went, you know, because everyone gets powered by nuclear energy. Nuclear energy produces waste. Where do you put it? And so they actually went to this one region of the country and said, just as a matter of civic responsibility and paying back, would you be willing to have a waste facility in your community or in your area? And something like 60% of the votes, voters said yes. They went to another part of the country, and they actually offered an incentive.

Warren
12:35
And what happened was people actually went, well, is it worth it? So the people who accepted were actually way less. So one of the things that’s interesting is if you can build a high performance culture, one of the things that happens is, again, people want to play with high performers. If you say, hey, we’re looking for high performers, we don’t want to bring anybody in here who’s going to bring us down. Who do you know? They’ll actually look because they want to bring on the team somebody that they really like. All right, so then we offer is a good one. Like, I’m not in any way knocking.

Robert
13:06
No, no, that’s fine.

Warren
13:06
But it’s knowing who your team is and saying, what’s the thing that’s going to inspire them. Sometimes paying people off, for lack of a better term, they do a calculation, right? And they say, is my relationship with that person worth the money that I’m going to get? And maybe not, either way.

Robert
13:24
So recruiting with a wide net is important. So then you’ve got your team in there. You mentioned the idea of having to sift through 150 resumes. Do you have any tips for folks when they’re looking at intakes, on how they can streamline their approach? They’re not having to look at 150 resumes because resumes are all bunch of sales sheets.

Warren
13:43
Yep. So there’s a couple of tools. So now I’ll give you the downside of it. Like, some people say we lose candidates doing this because we make them do work. But one of the ways to just get rid of the tire kickers is you actually make somebody do something before you even look at their resume. So I’ve used an application form that’s really simple, but it just asks some really interesting questions that reveal something about the person. But the basic point is they actually have to do something to get further in. There’s also a tool called talent sorter, which actually, you can actually qualify the kind of personal, the personal qualities that you’re looking for. People actually answer a survey, and you can set the level that says, I want only to see people who match 80% of what I’m looking for.

Warren
14:25
And you’ll only be served up the resumes of those that meet that qualification. So either of those conditions will screen out all the tire kickers. So you’ll then reduce the number of resumes you have to.

Robert
14:37
And what kind of work or do you make someone do in that application? Just to give an example so people understand what you mean?

Warren
14:42
Well, it’s just filling it out and sending it in. Like, tire kickers won’t even do that. So the questions, it’s just a two page application form. For instance, it’ll say something like, tell me about your favorite supervisor. Why were they your favorite supervisor? That tells you how they like to be managed.

Robert
14:57
Sure. That’s cool.

Warren
14:57
Tell me. Tell me about the funniest thing that’s ever happened to you at work. There’s some anecdotal research. This isn’t statistically validated, but anecdotally, people who actually describe something that happened to them tend to be higher performers than someone who describes something that’s funny that happened to someone else.

Robert
15:14
Oh, that’s cool.

Warren
15:16
Yeah.

Robert
15:16
Yeah. Cause they got their good in their own skin to make fun of themselves and share it. I saw somebody trip and fall, and it was like three stooges, and I laughed my ass off. I mean, not to say it’s not funny, but that’s a neat anecdotal of perspective. Okay, so you’ve got your people in there. You’ve defined your team. What are some of the key things people need to look for in terms of, like, things they need to be doing on a day to day basis as a leader to create that high performance culture, the high performance team.

Warren
15:43
One piece is to really make sure you’ve got clear values that drive the organization. And by that, I don’t mean values that hang on a wall. And we talk about once a year. But in all performance based discussions, recognition based conversations, they tie back to the values. And those values have clear behavioral expectations. So one of my clients in landscaping, for instance, the first behavior under their value is we show up on time. And that’s like, no kidding. No fooling. Your second day on the job if you’re two minutes late. There’s a conversation about that. This is who we are, and there’s no anger, there’s no discipline about it. It’s just a constant conversation about, this is who we are and how we behave.

Robert
16:27
Yeah. And if you’re late seven times in 30 days, then you’re not like us, and that’s okay. So you can go be late somewhere else.

Warren
16:33
Yeah, go be an a performer somewhere else, because you’re not an a performer for us.

Robert
16:37
Yeah.

Warren
16:38
Right. So values translate into standards. And maybe, you know, for people who feel values, language is too touchy feely. The other way of talking about it is standards. Right. What are our standards here? And you have to adhere to them.

Robert
16:51
So keep going. No, no, please.

Warren
16:56
The hard piece, right. When you’re in a tight labor market, is, oh, my God, if I give this, you know, I have to have this performance conversation with someone. They might quit on me. And so then people hold back, and then they allow this stuff to happen. But here’s the rule. Good performers lead because bad performers are allowed to stay. Because I don’t want to play on a team with crappy people. If the crappy people are allowed to stay, I’m going to go look somewhere else. So you’re better off making sure you hold people to those standards, even if it means losing some people than you are indulging it. And the other trick of this is people actually. Most people actually like to be held to a higher standard, and they can actually show what they’re capable of, and it’s recognized.

Warren
17:44
That’s the second piece. This isn’t all about giving people shit. It’s actually recognizing them when they do excellent, when they achieve excellence. If you think about who your average laborer is, they probably haven’t. I’m being somewhat stereotypical, but as a general characterization, they’re not people who get lots of praise during their school years for high academic performance and all that kind of stuff. And so when you’re the leader who actually calls them out for excellence, this is, like a big freaking deal, Jeff.

Robert
18:15
Yeah, that’s cool. So.

Warren
18:17
And you got to think about it from the life experience. I had a client once where he had this. She was like, oh, they’re not going to care what I think. She was this really humble leader, you know? And I went, are you kidding me? Right, right. When she said this person walked by her office, this young guy who looked after their it, and I said, are you kidding? And I knew something he’d done just the day before. I said, if you go out there and say to him, you know, you saved our bacon when you did that, and that helped us preserve some clients, and you did a great job. I appreciate, you know what that guy’s going to do. He’s a 22 year old kid.

Warren
18:45
He’s going to go home and he’s going to phone his mom and he’s going to say, mom, do you know what the boss said to me today? And she’s going to go, oh, dear, I am so proud of you. That’s the real life impact of being a great leader, right? It isn’t just, oh, I did a good job. That person is going to have something they’re going to be able to talk about in the relationships with other people that matter. They’re going to raise their esteem. You give somebody that gift, yeah, it’s cool. They’re gonna be loyal to you.

Robert
19:13
It was a neat bit. It was his name, Marshall. Cameras. First name, big coach. What’s his name?

Warren
19:22
Oh, I know what you mean. Sorry.

Robert
19:26
Marshall Goldsmith. That’s it?

Warren
19:28
Yes.

Robert
19:28
Anyway, he talks about the brag call where you call somebody in the evening. Like, when do you ever get a call from your boss in the evening? It’s good news, right? So you wait till, whatever, 07:00 730, and you call somebody up on their cell phone and you just say, hey, I just want to call and let you know that I was bragging about you to somebody else today because of this x, y and z thing you did. I just want to let you know I really appreciate it. That’s it. Have a great night like that. That goes a long way into your point. You know, that stuff makes people, if.

Warren
19:56
You have a leader, if you’re big enough that you have a leadership team, one of the things you should do in your leadership meetings is have conversations about who’s doing a great job. Because then even if you received it from your direct boss, if somebody else from the organization comes over and says, hey, I heard you did this amazing thing, or, you know, the client was really happy what you did, then it’s like people are talking about me behind my back for good things.

Robert
20:16
Yeah. Yeah. And what they create pronoia.

Warren
20:19
Yeah.

Robert
20:20
Who’s all talking good about me? Right. That’s really cool. So going back to this idea of core values and standards. So, you know, core values, some people that there’s arguments, you know, 3457, you know, eight’s too many, ten’s way too many, whatever. When it comes to standards, is it the same? Like, you know, how do those two kind of play together if you. Or are they fully synonymous? It’s just the way that you position it.

Warren
20:39
Yeah, I think they’re kind of synonymous. The value is the articulation, and then the standards are the behaviors. So you need to have both of them. So under. Under a value, you may have three or four standards. Right, right. And so there’s sort of a cascading thing. You might have three to five values, but then you’re going to have really specific behaviors under each of them, and then those are the things that you really talk about.

Robert
21:02
Yeah, that’s cool, though. I mean, can you give us. Can you just give us an example of a client that you have or experience that has got a core value and a standard associated to it?

Warren
21:11
Pretty much all of them. You know, it’s like being on time, having return times, cleanliness of a truck, maintenance of materials, making sure there’s certain clients I have that the foreman will have a script when they arrive on site the first time, you know, making sure you deliver.

Robert
21:32
Oh, cool. So the customer experience is consistent.

Warren
21:34
Yeah, very cool.

Robert
21:36
All right, so then what’s. What’s one last thing maybe, like a hidden gem around high performance culture that you can give somebody a bit of a tidbit on? Like, maybe they’re. They’re on the journey. They’ve been there. They’re close. They’re, you know, they’re.

Warren
21:47
They’re.

Robert
21:48
They feel like they’re close. Like, what’s one thing maybe out of your bag of tricks over years of experience helping entrepreneurs that people might not think of? When it comes to high performance teams.

Warren
22:00
The one that comes first to mind is sort of a negative one. But a lot of people do is to fire on culture. Like, let everybody know that this person, even if they were good, like, someone might be. Like, they might be technically good, but they were poisonous to the culture. They’re gone. And that lets everybody know, because, again, culture gets too many people talk about it in these really touchy feely terms, but when you actually can tie it to know, this is about performance, this is about result. Like, that thing endangered a client relationship that thing endangered another person’s safety, for instance. Those are things we don’t tolerate. I guess that’s another thing. In this industry, putting safety first is a really big deal.

Warren
22:49
I don’t know if there’s a story about, there’s an aluminum company, so this isn’t landscaping, but it was a publicly traded company. They brought in a new CEO and there was lots of labor strife and the stock value was down. And he came in and everyone thought he was going to start firing people and changing the marketing and the product mix. First thing he did was create safety initiatives.

Robert
23:10
Yeah, productivity went through the roof.

Warren
23:13
Stock value actually crashed for a while, but then the performance of the business started to skyrocket and the workers actually built a statue of the guy out of the aluminum. And it was because he demonstrated to them that he cared about their well being.

Robert
23:28
Yeah, that’s cool.

Warren
23:29
And that if you want to build a high performance culture, yes. Have the vision and the values and all that kind of stuff, but show them that you care about who they are and that will be transformative.

Robert
23:41
That’s. It’s cool you say that too, because, you know, we’re, maybe this is the 10th episode or something like that, and talking to associations across Canada and the US and asking about, like, you know, the bright spot. Members in their associations, like, who’s really kicking butt? What are they doing? And it’s all been two things, safety and training. Leaders that focus on safety and training build teams that want to crush.

Warren
24:09
Now focus on safety. Can I do just one little bit on that?

Robert
24:13
Yeah. Yeah.

Warren
24:14
So one of the things, and this is part of culture. Again, culture isn’t just values. Culture is actually the systems, the incentives and the signals that reveal the values. So I had a client that this was the case. Their number one value was safety. But guess how project managers were bonused on hitting production targets, right? The foreman. The only sheets they had to put in were production target sheets. So their incentives and their systems communicated to everybody that productivity was the number one value, even though their stated value was safety and the stated value was true, they actually had a worker die on the job. And so the owner of the business was passionate about safety. But it’s not enough just to say that and talk about it.

Warren
24:58
If people get incentives that are different from what you’re saying is important, people will follow the incentive. And so you’ve got to really look to make sure your systems and your bonusing structure and all that kind of stuff supports the values that you say are important.

Robert
25:12
Yeah, that’s cool, man. All right, so we’ve got high performance teams, and then the other thing you want to mention was around this idea of customer obsession, customer experience, and kind of being like customer obsessed. So first of all, like, what does that even mean? Like, everybody’s got customers. We’re all focused on them. That’s what the company does every day. We serve customers. What is like a customer obsession or customer experience obsession look like? What does that mean?

Warren
25:37
It means looking at everything you do through the customer’s eyes. A lot of people. And the reason it’s so important is particularly in tougher economic times, where there’s a competitive landscape, customers are going to choose on a few different criteria. It’s either quality or price or something else. Your customer experience is the thing that’s going to distinguish you from everyone else. And really simply, if you get on an airplane and the food tray is broken, you’re not nervous just because the food tray is broken.

Robert
26:12
Right.

Warren
26:14
You’re nervous because what else isn’t being looked after?

Robert
26:17
Yeah.

Warren
26:17
Right. Yeah.

Robert
26:18
If you walk into a restaurant and see a dirty bathroom, you think the kitchen’s gross.

Warren
26:21
Yeah, exactly. So if you have a crew who shows up ten minutes late and let’s say you serve a high end market, they’re used to having certain performance standards and the work they do, and what are they going to think? Oh, this is just like all those other crappy contractors I’ve dealt with in my life who I can’t rely on because they’re late. So your first experience, the one that out of the gate, you just destroyed your credibility. Yeah. And so then what? Then you’re pushing people. So I may as well just decide on price then.

Robert
26:54
Well, and it could even to your point, start from like the initial inquiry.

Warren
26:57
Right.

Robert
26:57
Like how long does it take to get back to somebody when they’re asking for your service to begin with?

Warren
27:02
Yeah. And do you show up, you know, do you show up on time for the first 1st meeting with them? Do you get the proposal back to them? Are your drawings accurate? Like all that stuff communicates things to the customer. And so when your customer obsessed. And for most people in this industry, there’s a certain percentage of business that comes through your marketing and a certain percentage that comes from referrals.

Robert
27:25
Sure.

Warren
27:26
Referrals are always cheaper.

Robert
27:28
Oh, yeah.

Warren
27:28
And so the more you can get referrals, the better. So your customer experience isn’t just a customer experience thing, it is a marketing investment. Right. Because you’re creating a competitive distinction. And if people kind of go, wow, these people are different from everybody else. So what does different mean? And it doesn’t have to be expensive, right? It can be super simple things like, I’ve got clients who will, the day before the job starts, send an email with photos and bios of the people who are going to be on the job site.

Robert
28:02
Yeah, perfect, right?

Warren
28:04
Like, how does that cost you anything? No, you spend a little bit of time, you know, getting that stuff designed by folks like you. Right? And it gets sent over. Nice. So when these big burly guys show up at the door and the spouse is there.

Robert
28:16
And there’s Liz.

Warren
28:17
Yeah, yeah. You know, how’s your kid? Right? And they show up on time. And then there’s a script that tells me exactly what’s going to happen over the course of the day. You know, at the end of the day, they take two minutes to say, this is the status of the job, and tomorrow we’re going to be back at this time to do this. Then when my spouse comes home at the end of the day, I can say exactly what’s happening, what the progress is. It’s just a little crap like that.

Robert
28:42
And it was one client we had, and they implemented putting a Lindt chocolate on the doorstep with a note of the kind of status update. And when we’re going to come back, like, what’s our next arrival date? And, like, the pictures on social media alone of people being like, check out this landscape company and what they’re doing with us. Like, every day at the end of their day, they drop a Lindt chocolate with a note about when they’re coming back and what just got what happened. And it’s like three sentences, you know, like, it is not, you know. Yeah. A big, huge anything and a little lint chocolate. Right?

Warren
29:18
I had a moving company that the thing, that’s the one investment he did was, you know, they always lay runners down when they do it. Laid a red carpet down at the front.

Robert
29:27
Perfect.

Warren
29:28
Like, again, it doesn’t cost anymore.

Robert
29:30
No.

Warren
29:31
Just do something that distinguishes you so that people then talk about it. And the last thing I’ll say is, how you finish is really important, you know, like. And a lot of people. What’s that?

Robert
29:43
Sorry, nothing. I’ll just make it fun. Story my life, Warren. Anyway, go ahead.

Warren
29:51
I won’t go there. Yeah, that the last thing, the last experience they have, you know, we always want to rush off to the next job. Let’s get it finished up so we can move on to the next job.

Robert
30:02
Finish the day, whatever.

Warren
30:03
I remember again, just like the story I told about the kid in the. In the workforce, you got to think about the experience of the customer. What happens after you leave? Hey, Mary. How was the. I knew you were getting your yard done. How did it go? What’s the last thing that happened? Really great, actually. You know, before the crew left, they did this. They cleaned everything up. Everything looks great, and they gave us blah, whatever blah happens to be for you. If the last experience they have is amazing, any. So the first experience has to be great. The last experience has to be great. The stuff in the middle will be forgiven if both those things are done. If the longest stuff in the middle isn’t too.

Robert
30:45
Yeah, no, that’s cool. Well, and I mean, like, versus someone being, like, you know, talking to neighbor, and they’re like, what? Are they done? Like, I’m not sure, actually. If they’re finished. I think they’re finished. I’m not sure. Like, you know. You know, because they just left.

Warren
30:56
Yeah.

Robert
30:57
One little customer interaction can go a long way. So then.

Warren
31:02
Sorry. Go ahead.

Robert
31:03
No, please. For large, go well.

Warren
31:05
For larger things, there’s an initiative. I’m not sure if you guys have done this kind of thing in the past, but actually, when. If it’s a big job now, this costs a little bit of money, but in terms of getting referrals, you could host the pool opening party for your customer. You know, pay to have it catered, you know.

Robert
31:25
Oh, yeah.

Warren
31:26
All their friends over. Right. And it’s on you. We’re just so proud. You know, the work we did, the design you chose is so excellent. This is just one of our showcase jobs. We’re so thrilled with it. We’d like to have this event for you. And then, you know, you have some business cards out on the tables, and everybody who comes to the party knows you.

Robert
31:45
And that might go well. Yeah, that might go well. And I heard that neighbors have similar budgets typically when.

Warren
31:54
Yeah.

Robert
31:54
In the neighborhood. So hosting a pool party for a pool company is a really badass idea. Warren, I think that’s a nugget anybody from listening to this can take into consideration. Or even a backyard party, backyard barbecue, whatever it might be. So quick one to wrap up and giving somebody, like, a full takeaway on this customer experience obsession. How do I figure out where to spend my time? Do you have any tips on how we can, like, get an idea of where customers are being interacted with and what we can start doing with it? How do you start that?

Warren
32:28
So it’s called customer experience journey. Mapping. So basically what you do is you take a piece of paper out and you just identify every single touch point that customer has with your company from the moment they see your Google Ad through to the completion of the job. And at every one of those spots, you sort of list what the experience is like for them. Like, is it consistent? Is it inconsistent? Like, you got to be really self critical on this. You know, sometimes we’re late, sometimes we’re not. Our papers are kind of tattered or they’re clean, whatever. Like, go through every piece of it. And then you have to circle the ones that I call magic. Magical moments. Right. The ones that are really determinative for the client, the ones that really influence them.

Robert
33:11
Cool.

Warren
33:11
And then, like, the first day on.

Robert
33:13
Site as an example.

Warren
33:14
Yeah, yeah. You know, and then you gather your team, or smart folks like you, and say, then we brainstorm. How could we make this experience better and aligned with the brand? If you say your brand is all about excellence or your brand is all about communication, or you’re all, your brand is all about creativity, what are you going to do to bring it to that magic moment, to reinforce that brand? And you got to just let your brain go wild. Yeah. You know, and you’ll come. You will absolutely come up with stuff.

Robert
33:45
Yeah. Well, I love it, too, because it’s already happening. So you’re not asking, what should we do? You’re asking, how can we make it better.

Warren
33:49
Yeah.

Robert
33:50
Which is a lot of fun, especially to get your team involved. Right. Which is another great way to get people engaged. Yeah.

Warren
33:55
And then the last piece of it is to ask if there are any other touch points we could have. Like maybe there’s a communication piece. Right.

Robert
34:05
Like, make it all better.

Warren
34:06
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe there’s just, gee, we find people get a little in around here. We start to get a lot of inquiries about when the job is going to happen. So that’s telling us that we need a communication piece in there to give an update on the job.

Robert
34:20
Yeah, that’s cool. And it’s common, it’s consistent, which is cool, too, because then you get people brainstorming within your group environment, engaging them on a high performance team, which circles back to this whole idea around creating a culture of high performance, having people use their brains to make the business better. Because I think one of the coolest things I’ve heard around, as a leader, it’s not our job to have all the answers. It’s our job to ask the right questions. Right. And get the. Get our people, you know, using their brains. And so we can help demonstrate through our actions that we care about what they think and how they believe the business should operate.

Warren
34:54
Frontline people have so much wisdom and insight.

Robert
34:57
They’re the closest to it all.

Warren
34:58
Oh, yeah.

Robert
35:00
Okay, so one resource that you would share with folks like author, book, speaker, podcast that you think, you know, as an entrepreneur leader, they should, you know, tap into what would one resource be.

Warren
35:12
My favorite podcast? It’s not purely entrepreneurial, but it’s called the Knowledge Project. The knowledge all about how people think and how they make decisions. He’s got really smart people. And so if you want to think about decision making, and it’s not always about business, but often it is. But then also these really successful people and how they take those same values and disciplines and apply it in their personal lives as well as their business lives, I find it just a fascinating podcast.

Robert
35:40
The knowledge project.

Warren
35:41
Yeah.

Robert
35:42
All right, dude. Well, thanks, man, for sharing your insights on high performance teams and cultures and the idea around this, like building a business center, like centered around the customer experience. I think that can go a really long way for folks. If someone wants to get in touch with you, Warren, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Warren
35:59
Best spot is my website, warrencoughlin.com. Coughlin is spelled coughlin.com dot.

Robert
36:06
Very cool, man. And we’ll have put in the summary for sure anywhere we post this thing. Thanks everybody for getting through this awesome podcast of Warren. Really appreciate all the people listening. Warren, thank you again for doing this, my man.

Warren
36:17
Thank you.

Robert
36:19

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