Landscaping? Nope. You’re in the People Business – with Jeffrey Scott

00:00
Rob Murray
Welcome back to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth podcast. We have a returning guest, an amazing entrepreneur coach in the green industry, Jeffrey Scott. Thanks again for doing this.

00:47
Jeffrey Scott
Awesome. Glad to be here.

00:50
Rob Murray
If you haven’t had a chance to hear Jeffrey’s story, I mean, maybe go to jeffreyscott.biz. Check him out. In the last episode, he gave us Cole’s notes, where he came from, running the business and then starting into the coaching and helping, you know, entrepreneurs in Canada across USA, the whole continent, essentially.

01:09
Jeffrey Scott
Yep.

01:09
Rob Murray
So I don’t want to spend too much time on your background. I mean, I think in terms of the upper echelon of business coaches when it comes to the green industry, Jeffrey Scott’s up, there’s no question. Really appreciate what you do. And I gotta say, we, you know, we travel all across the continent as well, you know, doing talks, going to shows, and the feedback we hear around your name is just always positive. Peer groups are always giving two thumbs up and coaching with you. Two thumbs up. So anyway, just appreciate what you do, man.

01:36
Jeffrey Scott
Hey, thank you very much. Appreciate that.

01:39
Rob Murray
So, you know, I was crawling around. Maybe you could say I was stalking you a little bit, creeping you. I guess they said it on social media before we had this talk, and I was like, well, what are we going to talk about? Because the primary themes all around the primary growth constraint are what’s holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry. And we’ve talked a little bit about that last time. But something I saw on your social that I thought really hit was helping people reframe their business from being a landscape business to being a people business.

02:05
Jeffrey Scott
Yes.

02:06
Rob Murray
And every very successful, and I mean very successful, I mean somebody who is running a business, $20 million-plus with a smile on their face. So I don’t mean like they’re just killing it financially. I mean, like, they got time for family, they’re smiling, they’re pumped about what they do, they’re volunteering their time at boards, and they’re running 20 million plus. They all say they’re a training and development company. And I heard you say this maybe a couple of weeks ago. So maybe you can just break that down a little bit and help people listening understand what you meant by it.

02:39
Jeffrey Scott
So when you said 20 million plus, these examples, you meant in any industry, kind of was that.

02:46
Rob Murray
Yeah, well, but specifically on this show, there’s been three or four folks that are running $20 million plus companies happily, and they’ve said their biggest focus as a company is that they’re a training and development business and they just happen to do landscaping. And then I ran through your social a couple hours ago and you almost said it verbatim.

03:08
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah, yeah. And I don’t. And I didn’t listen to your podcast. I’ll tell you. Yeah, Giver so. Well, you know, my biggest mentor really was my dad, who was initially a great entrepreneur and creative in the landscape space. And I mentored him. You know, this is decades ago, really. And he’s. He was telling me, you’re going to love this, but by the way, he was telling me, you know, we’re not in the landscape business. We’re in the marketing business. We’re in the marketing business, and we just happen to do landscaping. For him, marketing was understanding who your clients are, figuring out what they need, developing a product and a service ethos that would really serve them, and then attracting more of those clients. So when he said marketing, he meant like with a capital M.

04:01
Jeffrey Scott
And you know, the whole branding and what kind of business are you. And so that’s.

04:07
Rob Murray
Well, and. And also designing the business for the customer. One of the things I think that maybe he’s alluding to is that I heard, you know, Warren Buffett said he’s never seen a customer-obsessed business go out of business.

04:16
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah. Oh, customer-obsessed. We used to tell the story of how we built ourselves. We started off as a pool company, and we built the. A pool like an inch off. And the engineer client noticed it, called us on it, and said, you’ve got to fix it. We were always in the business of saying yes to owning any issue. And so we’re like, okay, what do you want us to do? And he’s like, fix it. And there’s only one way to fix a gun I’d pull, and that’s an inch too shallow. And I think it was probably too shallow versus too deep, actually. I don’t really, I don’t know specifically, but. Because either could put off a client. So we ripped it out and rebuilt it, and he got excited, re-energized by the construction process, and he bought a lot of change orders.

05:06
Jeffrey Scott
And, you know, we probably broke even on the job, actually. But that is a great internal story, and the owners are crazy. If you mess up, they’re going to make you rip it out and fix it. And so, yeah, that goes a long way. And then over the years, I took that and said, you know, marketing has gotten easier, at least for me, you know, and I understand branding and marketing like, you know, our big challenge became the people challenge. And that’s, you know, right above my shoulder here. Becoming a destination company is all about that. And so then I realized, gosh, we’re really in the people business, the people development business, that we just happen to do landscaping.

05:49
Rob Murray
I couldn’t agree more. I actually think all businesses are in that business outside of people who are running, you know, six-person technology shops that are worth $2 billion. Maybe it’s a different story. But so then, when you are listening to this podcast, you know, I’m a landscape entrepreneur. Maybe I’m doing 2 million bucks a year. I’ve got a team of, let’s say, 10 or 12 folks, whatever it might be. I’m like, okay, you know, I get it. I need to be more people-oriented. I had to build an organization. What do I start to do?

06:21
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah. So I think some of the big challenges are: can you treat your employees the same way you treat your clients? Now, that’s not 100% true, but it’s conceptually very true. And so can you give them the same respect, the same focus, the same attention that you would give a client? Now, we have to be careful because while employees come first, they don’t come first. Where you are looking at the client as secondary. The client pays everybody. Yeah, it’s a bit of a balance, but I think conceptually, can you walk the talk internally on whatever you’re promoting and promising? Externally? Go ahead. Sorry.

07:14
Rob Murray
No, no, it’s cool. I just think that I mean, Southwest Airlines comes to mind when you start talking like that around, you know, Herb Kelleher, talking about how essentially the entire staff of Southwest was his customer.

07:24
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

07:25
Rob Murray
And then the relationship to the customer experience is going to be one to one correlated to the employee experience.

07:34
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

07:35
Rob Murray
And. And so, I mean, that’s really, I think, a cool concept. And when you hear it, you’re like, okay, I get that. Then it’s like, well, then how do I start doing that? And I guess maybe what you’re alluding to is the first thing is a mindset shift.

07:50
Jeffrey Scott
It is. Yeah, it really is. And treating your employees with respect. He’s one of my great clients or long-term clients. I mean, he’s a great client, too, but he’s a long-term client. Scott Hartman. And in one of our peer group meetings, I had all of our founders stand up and say what their mission was, and we sort of critiqued it. And it’s hard to have a unique mission in this industry, but he was unique. He’s like, you know, our business is built to foster and support the families working in our business. Like, everything he does is not only for the employee, but it’s for the employee and their family. And I was like, ooh, that’s unique. He explained the different things he did. Constantly focused on building better families.

08:42
Jeffrey Scott
And so, you know, your mission, your purpose, needs to have it in there somewhere. Right. You. So to start with the mindset, you gotta have it built into your purpose or your mission statement.

08:56
Rob Murray
Oh, that’s. That’s cool. Right? Because then you’ve got a North Star, and then you can build mechanisms inside the organization. Like, I kind of like where that’s going for someone from a tangible point of view. Right. We talk about the idea that core values are like the petri dish where culture lives. Because culture lives or dies, no matter what. Right. It’s always there whether you have core values or not.

09:20
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah. I’m a believer that core values should not have customer service promises in it. I think core values, by their nature should be the agreement. How employees treat each other and how.

09:35
Rob Murray
They show up every day, and their behaviors and their actions towards each other. I love that.

09:41
Jeffrey Scott
I think every company should have its own service ethos and ethic, and I think that can stand separate.

09:48
Rob Murray
So what’s a. There’s. I haven’t seen many, if any, people separate the two.

09:55
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

09:55
Rob Murray
So, do you just want to give us a bit of insight into the thinking there?

10:00
Jeffrey Scott
Well, the values could be, you know, I’m just going to make this up.

10:03
Rob Murray
But yeah, yeah.

10:04
Jeffrey Scott
Because this is a totally unscripted, unplanned podcast, there was no prep. I was not told ahead of time, which is great. And so, you know, teamwork, integrity, learning, and safety are just examples of values that you may have in your business. And I always tell people, if you’re still in the middle of developing your values, think about the employees you fired or would like to fire or are glad left your business. What were the negative attributes? Turn those into the positive, and you can.

10:42
Rob Murray
Oh, I like, you’re in my head, man.

10:46
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah. And then you can.

10:49
Rob Murray
It’s so much easier for people to identify the WTF moments. Like, why would you do that?

10:56
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

10:56
Rob Murray
And then See the opposite. I think anybody listening is a huge opportunity for developing core values.

11:04
Jeffrey Scott
And so I. I’m a big believer in customer service ethics and even standards, response times, and things like that. You know, in our company, man, we did a lot of training on customer service. How do you even answer the phone? We obsessed about, you know, good morning, Robert. How may I help you?

11:25
Rob Murray
Yeah, you can hear the smile.

11:27
Jeffrey Scott
Exactly. Pulling them in. Hug your customer. One of my clients wrote that book. I don’t know if you’ve ever read it.

11:34
Rob Murray
Hug your customer, Hug your customer.

11:37
Jeffrey Scott
And he was very successful with that. And then his second book, can you imagine what it was? Hug your Employees.

11:44
Rob Murray
Nice.

11:45
Jeffrey Scott
Because a lot of his Hug your customers was really about hugging your employees. And so he went back and wrote that book second. But I want to get back to your main question. Concrete things. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

11:58
Rob Murray
No, you’re good. I think you’re segueing back to it perfectly like this idea of the book that. Hug your customer, hug your employees, and then how can you build tangible mechanisms inside your organization that foster that type of approach with your team? Yeah. So, yeah, give her, like, what’s. Is there something that you’ve seen or that you kind of help people start to look at? When it comes to bringing this stuff.

12:20
Jeffrey Scott
To life, there is so much. I mean, I’m just going to riff here a bit. So, if I took on a client for consulting and brought them in, some of the main things I would do first are as follows: If there is a bad apple, I want that person promoted to another company.

12:42
Rob Murray
It’s really interesting you say that. There was somebody who came over who said, I really need to change the culture of my organization. We were at a trade show, whatever, and there were 16 people. And I was like, oh, what’s wrong with the culture? Like, oh, there’s some toxicity and back talk and gossip and whatever. I was like, is it the whole group, or is it like one or two people? They’re like, it’s really just one person. I was like, I don’t think you have to change the culture. I think you need to make a promotion.

13:06
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah, exactly. You can quote me on that.

13:09
Rob Murray
I love it.

13:10
Jeffrey Scott
You know, you have to clean the house a bit. When I consult with a landscape entrepreneur, and we work with companies, I mean, in our peer groups, we take smaller, but usually, you’re a little bit bigger before you do the consulting, you know, 2 million and up. And so one of the first things we want to do there is make sure they’ve Got the. That everyone’s in alignment. Oh. What I was going to say is sometimes I tell them that person should go. But often once we clean house. I’m sorry, we clean. Once we get clarity within the organization and accountability and purpose are really clear, they tend to leave on their own. Not all of them, but the people who don’t want to get on the bus stay on this clean, clear, full-of-direction bus.

14:01
Jeffrey Scott
They tend to promote themselves to another company. And so getting that clarity of purpose, getting the organization really clear who’s in charge of what, you got to fix all these things where the company is working as a organization, you know what I’m saying, Where the manager.

14:22
Rob Murray
Yeah, it’s like a sports team. Every, like, you know, a defensive left tackle knows their job. They’re responsible for making sure the quarterback doesn’t get sacked and that they have to block a runner. You know, like they’ve got some KPIs. It’s clear.

14:35
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah, yeah. So if you’re in the people business, you’re making the company really clear and organized for the people. Here’s your one boss. You don’t have two; you don’t have the manager and the owner. Right. Here are the tools you need to do your job. They’re very clear. Here’s the instructions. We’re not last minute. We’re not always being reactive, but we’re being proactive. We’re setting you up for success. And I, and I think, you know, laborers and foremen, right? That’s. You got to start there. So, we set them up for success, gave them the tools, and treated them with respect. Owners can’t run around yelling and making it a tense environment. They do, we do. It happens. But you’ve got to get on top of that and clear that all out.

15:27
Jeffrey Scott
And so really, you want to build a destination company where people want to stay and grow their career. I would advise, as a starting point for the listener that they do the. And I may have talked about this in the last podcast, but they do the nps.

15:45
Rob Murray
Yeah. Okay. Within the team.

15:47
Jeffrey Scott
Within the team. And I would do that twice a year. NPS is the net promoter score. Basically, how likely are you, Robert, to want to refer a family or friend to come work at our company? Give us 0 to 10.

16:03
Rob Murray
It’s. It’s interesting that you say we do this, and we also have these roadmap sessions with folks so we can actually see the number that they put, and we talk about it. Some of our best staff score like seven. And I’m like, what’s up with the seven? They’re like, I don’t think my friends can hack it here. I was like, oh, so it’s a good number. Like, yeah, it’s good. Don’t worry about it. Yeah, yeah.

16:32
Jeffrey Scott
So you give the score, and then you ask for, you know, what can we do to make it a 9? Or if it’s a 9, what can we do to keep it a 9? Just figuring out what’s really going on. And sometimes, it’s around one middle manager, which could be around some policies. And so there’s a lot you can do organizationally to help clean things up and get ready to be a people development company. You then have to invest in your people. Right. So what kind of training are you doing? We had, I run a private event for my clients every January. We just had it called the Executive Retreat, and we had Jeff McManus come to speak. You know that guy? There’s his book. We had him.

17:23
Rob Murray
I haven’t had a chance to read that.

17:24
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah, Training leaders into leaders, you know, it’s. It’s pretty basic. And he was one of many speakers. And now you. Not everybody can do what. What he does, but he spends an hour a week on training. And he’s got a whole university. In fact, you can go onto his website. His website is the University of Mississippi because that’s who he is. He is their head groundskeeper, I guess. He runs all the grounds, and they have a university, and all the curriculum is laid out there. And so they will train. He. It averaged out to about an hour a week in training. So, he invests in training. And 10% of that training is on leadership. 90% is technical. 10% is on. And when I say leadership, I mean all the soft skills. You know what I’m saying? Yeah, leadership, what have you?

18:23
Jeffrey Scott
So there’s the 10% rule. I love that. He didn’t call it that, but I said, oh, the 10% rule. There you go. Another speaker we had was Derek Wells, who is a longtime client, and he’s actually doing some work for us as a team member and associate in our company. He figured out it’s impossible to train people if you don’t put it in the budget and in the job cost budget. So, if you want your foreman to train his laborers on a maintenance client’s job site, he should also be accountable for his metrics every day and every week. He means the foreman. So it could be a she. So if you want them accountable for the metrics, you’ve got to put in that extra hour a week somewhere for training. Otherwise, they can’t be accountable for both.

19:20
Rob Murray
Right.

19:21
Jeffrey Scott
So you’ve got to walk the talk and build that investment into your budget, into the schedule. Should be able to see it on the calendar. And if it happens on the job, on site, it’s got to be somewhere. There got to be a Costco.

19:37
Rob Murray
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more with that. I mean, I love it, you know, and. And I think somebody might even cringe, like, well, you know, shouldn’t they just be doing the job and they can see and shadow, and it’s like, well, sure, but if you think it’s important, then it should have its own line item. Like, yeah.

19:56
Jeffrey Scott
Let me tell you how Derek got to it. And I’m gonna give. I’m gonna have him on my podcast one time. So I’m giving away some of the. The fun. Two years ago, he. After a big snowstorm when. When everybody didn’t show up, or half the people didn’t show up, he fired them. He’s like, darn it, I’m not doing this anymore.

20:18
Rob Murray
Awesome. Yeah.

20:19
Jeffrey Scott
He realized he had a bad culture across the board, and it was him. He fired them all. And he grew significantly because of that. People need to understand that firing people doesn’t shrink revenue. When you get the wrong people promoted to another company, revenue grows. But then he realized we’ve got to become a training and development company to turn this around in the spring. And then he realized my guys can’t train if I’m holding them accountable for their hours. I’ve got to build it into the budget. So he was. He forced his own hand into it. Into that recognition.

21:00
Rob Murray
I love that, man. So Bill. I mean, Bill. Training into the budget, into the job cost. Yeah, that’s.

21:10
Jeffrey Scott
Unless it’s a different cost code. Right. So it’s either in the job cost or a different cost code, but it’s still on the schedule. Some of the training happens in the office, and some of it happens.

21:20
Rob Murray
On the job, some of it happens in the windshield. It’s all good.

21:24
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah. But you should figure it out ahead of time. Like, if you go on this website, you’ll see that their Landscape University.

21:31
Rob Murray
What is the website, actually?

21:35
Jeffrey Scott
Well, it’s Ole Miss.

21:36
Rob Murray
It is Ole Miss Edu.

21:39
Jeffrey Scott
I’m pretty sure, unless I got that wrong, the University of Mississippi is Ole Miss, I think.

21:45
Rob Murray
Yeah, it is.

21:46
Jeffrey Scott
And then there’s landscape. And then there’s Landscape University. It’s on the website there somewhere.

21:52
Rob Murray
So, under the program listings, probably.

21:56
Jeffrey Scott
Well, it’s not taught through the education; it’s taught through. Suppose you want to work there doing the landscape. Sorry, that’s what I mean.

22:05
Rob Murray
So he’s okay.

22:06
Jeffrey Scott
He’s in charge of the grounds. You know, he’s the head groundskeeper, and he has to teach young kids how to do the work.

22:17
Rob Murray
I love that. So one of the things you said earlier, though, that really kind of hit me anyway, was as you start to become more people-oriented and build an organization, you got to make your company clear for your people. And I can say with a lot of certainty that a lot of folks haven’t made their company clear. And the way I hear it or see it is people saying things like I wear a lot of hats or, you know, we’re all going to be working on this thing. We’re all gonna, we’re all gonna get it over the finish line together. It’s like, yeah, all right. So, there is no one person on the hook to make sure this gets done. What do you tell folks? Or what can you say to the audience listening now if, like what?

23:09
Rob Murray
What does a clear organization look like so that people may be in contrast from where they are today?

23:13
Jeffrey Scott
Well, let’s dive into your example. So, when you start a company, the owner wears all the hats. Organization, it’s all about teamwork and the challenge or the problem. Somebody in my office says, no, don’t say problem. Stage hounds. Well, sometimes it is a problem. The problem is when you grow large, and you don’t stop that, you don’t fix that issue. You have to go from an owner-centric organizational chart, put the owner in the center, and all the lines come out from the center. Like a wheel. Spoken wheel.

23:52
Rob Murray
Yeah. Okay.

23:53
Jeffrey Scott
Or hub and spoke. You’ve got to change the org chart from looking like that to a more top-down or bottom-up, you know, hierarchy. And a lot of companies will grow pretty large without figuring that out. So, you kind of nailed one of the main issues, which is the specialization of tasks. Now, what you’re going to hear people say is we can’t afford that. We can’t afford someone to do it. Just fill in the blank, whatever it is. Right, right. You know, and I’ve worked with so many people, I’m like, what are they going to do with the other half of their day? I’m like, seriously, that day, their day is going to fill up, and then they hire that person, and then I’ll tell you. I don’t know, we can’t live without that person now.

24:37
Jeffrey Scott
And so the quicker you organize and specialize tasks, the quicker you’ll grow.

24:43
Rob Murray
And then when you look at that, you know, from the field into the office and then into leadership, where do you see as an owner trying to build an organization that is clear for people, what does the leadership team start to look like? Like if I’m at say, you know, million and a half, I’m going to two and a half, I’m going to five million. I got to start putting some leaders in place.

25:07
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

25:07
Rob Murray
How does somebody start looking at that?

25:10
Jeffrey Scott
Well, it’s a really good question. It’s an important question. You asked what the leadership team looks like. People generally start, or, you know, half the time, what I see is everybody’s on the leadership team, right? Because again, go back to that hub and spoke. The owner has everyone on the team, and there are a lot of people. I just worked with a company; he’s in the middle of making some changes. So I won’t say his name, but he grew pretty quickly up to 10 million. And his leadership team is still like a $3 million company leadership team. Everybody’s on it. And so we’re about to go through these changes, and he’s going to really hire some real management.

25:59
Jeffrey Scott
When the managers are in place, their direct reports don’t sit on the leadership team anymore, and they start to have their own meetings. So, I think a real leadership team is where you’re not necessarily talking about production in that leadership meeting. You’re talking about the company and the people and the organization, but you’re not. It’s not a scheduled meeting, and it has fewer people, the actual leaders, who are in charge of organizing everybody else. And so the quicker you get to that, the better.

26:39
Rob Murray
And so like if you have an owner that’s a more sales driven then it would be natural, I guess to have a production leader as like a first step. I’m just trying to help people see like what does that group look like and where do you want to make sure you’ve got key people holding responsibility or accountability in the organization?

27:03
Jeffrey Scott
I mean, let me just sort of give you an example. So, too many people in the leadership team could be. Well, we’ve got the office manager and the number two person in the office. We’ve got account managers, we got the two account managers, we got a production manager, we got the mechanic. And so we got, and we got, you know, myself, owner. Our salesperson, We have one other main salesperson. You know, we got like nine people on our leadership team. Like, that’s all middle management. And so, really, there should be just. I’m going to answer this in two phases. The next phase would be, well, let’s have just the office manager. Do we have division managers instead of account managers that we can have in the leadership team meeting? And we don’t need the mechanic necessarily. We don’t need account managers.

28:02
Jeffrey Scott
And then the next level might be, do we have a controller who’s overseeing the office or a head finance person? Do we have a general manager who’s overseeing the division managers? And so you’re kind of growing it up the pyramid with fewer people as you put those people in place, which is interesting.

28:22
Rob Murray
Right. It could be counterintuitive to somebody who has maybe a team of 15 or 20 with a leadership team of, say, eight or nine people to then be running a team of, say, 50 or 60 with like three or four.

28:33
Jeffrey Scott
Right.

28:34
Rob Murray
Because that’s kind of the picture you’re painting. Is that accurate?

28:36
Jeffrey Scott
It is, yeah, it is. Yeah.

28:38
Rob Murray
That’s cool.

28:38
Jeffrey Scott
Three or four or five.

28:39
Rob Murray
I mean, sure, I get that.

28:41
Jeffrey Scott
It really depends on, you know, there’s so many different landscapes. There are so many different ways to organize and grow your company. You know, what if you have two main branches, you know, you might. You might have the branch managers in the leadership meeting. It. It just depends on how things are set up. I wanted to say one other thing. You know, in theory, you have sales, you have operations, you have finance. You might have HR as a separate key role. Right. Where people. We’ve said you’re a people company, and so you might have HR on a leadership team. And so it. And you might have a general manager. So that’s four, five. You as owner. Six. You might have six people in the leadership.

29:33
Rob Murray
Yeah, that’s cool.

29:34
Jeffrey Scott
It can go in different. I’d have to look at the company and then it would be really clear for me how I would tell them to structure it.

29:42
Rob Murray
Sure. I guess you get the opportunity to see these patterns over and over again. So, depending on how they’re running the thing, you can see how to do it.

29:49
Jeffrey Scott
Help them organize it, how they’re running it, and where they’re trying to go.

29:53
Rob Murray
So one of the things. It’s. This just happened to us. And I’m not sure if this is something that you’ve heard of either. So I’m curious to get your take on this, but we got some Feedback from our organization that the leadership team kind of felt like those people at the top of the mountain in Sparta. It’s like, what’s the leadership team like? What is a leadership team doing? It created a kind of weird separation from the rest of the group.

30:16
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

30:16
Rob Murray
And so we’re like, well, that is. I like, clearly, not the intention of what we’re trying to do here. So we started getting. We bring in a guest so that the whole organization can come to see what we’re actually doing. So, you know, it’s one. One person a week, so it takes a bit of time, but yeah. Have you heard that before? Is that something people might want to consider? Taking the stigma away, or what’s my answer?

30:37
Jeffrey Scott
Can I solve your problems for you?

30:39
Rob Murray
Of course. Give her.

30:40
Jeffrey Scott
So I would have every leader on that team report to their team. Key elements that got discussed. So I would read the whole company in, you know, not all 60 minutes or 120 minutes, but I would, I’d make sure there was a weekly report.

30:58
Rob Murray
Oh, there’s a summary that goes out to everybody that attended. We could make it go to the whole company in a heartbeat. Yeah.

31:03
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah. I’m just going to riff here a little bit.

31:05
Rob Murray
Yeah, that’s cool.

31:06
Jeffrey Scott
I’d maybe make sure that the whole company was hearing from you once a week, like a little update, a Monday morning memo and you might even talk about things that got discussed. I might do a monthly all hands meeting. And so instead of kicking them out.

31:25
Rob Murray
We do that one. That’s a good one.

31:26
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah. So as long as you got transparency and they see the benefits coming out of it, then they’re going to be. And they can still have input. Then they’re going to. And it’s E. And the job got easier, then they’re gonna appreciate it.

31:43
Rob Murray
Yeah, that’s cool. I can. I’ve heard some people do like a town hall approach where maybe monthly, maybe quarterly, whatever, where it’s just like, hey, come in. Here’s the. What’s going on in the company this year? What do you want to talk about? Have you seen anybody succeed with that approach?

31:59
Jeffrey Scott
That’s like a monthly meeting, you’re saying?

32:01
Rob Murray
Yeah, sure. I mean, I’ve heard people do it quarterly, monthly, whatever.

32:05
Jeffrey Scott
Do you do? Do you have enough team-building activities and fun built-in?

32:12
Rob Murray
Debatable. I mean, I think so. But some people that are maybe a bit more social and fun may not think so, but yeah, we’re pretty fun company. It’s part of our core values, and we have a bunch of traditions related to it.

32:22
Jeffrey Scott
All right, so I think you’re doing good. You know, change is difficult until people see the benefit of it.

32:28
Rob Murray
Yeah, that’s cool. I’ve heard somebody say in the past that people have a default to change, thinking it’s going to be a loss. So, change aversion is actually loss aversion. And you have to help them see that it isn’t. I thought that was a neat way to think about things.

32:42
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

32:44
Rob Murray
So you’re growing. You got to make oh giver.

32:50
Jeffrey Scott
I’m not saying you should do this, but if you want to get radical, you could say, oh, anybody Quintender or a leadership meeting. Anytime you want, you can just come in and audit.

32:57
Rob Murray
Open door, Open door.

32:59
Jeffrey Scott
I mean, you could say that. And then I don’t think there’d be.

33:02
Rob Murray
An issue with it.

33:03
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

33:04
Rob Murray
See who shows up.

33:05
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah, no, they’re not going to show up. They’re like, yeah, you know what?

33:09
Rob Murray
Yeah, exactly. The door’s open. I don’t need to go check. That’s almost easier to manage, though.

33:15
Jeffrey Scott
Do you have glass windows where you have your meeting?

33:19
Rob Murray
It’s typically on Zoom these days because people are. When it is in person, 100% there’s glass.

33:24
Jeffrey Scott
Okay, good. You’re good.

33:28
Rob Murray
Thanks.

33:30
Jeffrey Scott
You are fun though. So how do you guys have fun? Because that’s part of being a people oriented business is if I’m gonna spend most of my waking hours at your dang company. Yeah. And these are going to be my main relationships. You got to help me build those relationships.

33:48
Rob Murray
We have. We have fun enough. We have. We’re lucky, I guess, you know, the harder work lucky you get. But we’ve got folks that help promote it. But, like recently, we had a. So we did a monthly team lunch, and the last one we did was a pajama and pizza party. So everybody’s wearing pajamas. The whole day at the office was just. This is hilarious because, you know, I don’t know, but people wear some weird pajamas.

34:12
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

34:13
Rob Murray
And you know, we do team building exercises and like team-based trivia, and we have like Gary the purple cow that gets passed around on Friday one over to the next for exemplifying a core value that week. It’s just like a stuffed cow with a mohawk. It’s pretty cool. It’s not necessarily fun, but it’s a celebration of people helping each other out. We have little awesome citations or little yellow sticky notes that say awesome citations that they give out on Monday to everybody; you know, we do overnight camping trips. I mean, if I look back at the last 12 months of the things that we’ve done, from pub nights to overnight camping to, oh, dock days, water skiing, wakeboarding, tubing.

34:56
Jeffrey Scott
You got me. I’m coming to work for you. I got you.

34:59
Rob Murray
Yeah, well, and then we don’t promote it. Like, when we recruit, we really try to say like, yes, it’s a fun environment; people can talk to people, but we don’t bring it as like a come to this cushy place. We actually try to do the opposite. The fight. We call it the fight club approach. It’s like, you probably don’t want to work here because we expect a lot from our people, and you’re going to have to grow.

35:20
Jeffrey Scott
I’m only giving you a seven in terms of referring my friends to you. So that’s good, right? It’s funny that you mentioned that because I always say that it’s a technique. Your first interview with somebody is trying to really get them excited, compelled, and wowed. Oh my God, I want to get on this train. Then, your next interview will talk them out of working for you.

35:41
Rob Murray
Cool. I love that. Yeah. Okay, so then, actually, why don’t we just go there for a quick second? You know, as a people organization, recruitment’s a big deal. Like, that’s where it’s all going to come together. Because if you bring in the wrong people, it’s going to go to. If you bring in the right people, it’s going to be amazing.

35:56
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

35:57
Rob Murray
So I’m building this people oriented company. I’m doubling down on this idea. And now I’m going to go recruit for two or three people or maybe even just one. What are some things I really need to make sure I don’t miss?

36:08
Jeffrey Scott
Well, I will tell you, my best clients have waiting lists of people to get in the door. This whole idea of it’s so hard to recruit here, we can’t find people is nonsense.

36:22
Rob Murray
It’s a leadership issue.

36:24
Jeffrey Scott
It’s. You don’t have a. You’re focused on the wrong thing. Right.

36:29
Rob Murray
100% issue.

36:30
Jeffrey Scott
It’s a peep. You don’t have this people, this destination company. And so what are people doing to get that destination company? Because you said recruiting. I want people to be knocking on my door so I can choose giving the red carpet exit. When you say goodbye to employees.

36:50
Rob Murray
Love that.

36:51
Jeffrey Scott
Making it so like, when you’re letting go of somebody, your whole messaging is to everybody who’s staying. Primarily, secondarily, it’s to the person leaving. So the red carpet exit tells everybody who’s staying is, oh my God, that guy. What a great boss we have. And the person who leaves feels respected. And unless they stole something, you know, yeah, no, I hear you did something wrong. They, and they’re told, you know when you grow up a little bit or whatever, come give us a call again. And so, and many of them do, they go out, but the grass isn’t, or they leave because they think the grass is greener. You know, you’re either being pushed, fired, or you’re leaving. You’re maybe being pushed out because you need to grow up a little bit, or you’re leaving because you think the grass is greener.

37:42
Jeffrey Scott
And so the message is a little different comparatively. And there’s specific techniques. I won’t give away all the secret.

37:48
Rob Murray
Sauce, but no, that’s cool.

37:50
Jeffrey Scott
Specific techniques to the red carpet exit. So the person who leaves is paying attention to you even when they leave, and they’re watching, and they’re listening, and they ultimately want to, they do grow up, or the grass isn’t greener, and they do want to come back. And so you have that waiting list, and then other people in the companies they go to work for, they’ve got you on their radar, like, ooh, I’m going to pay attention to that company. And so those things, along with some good social media and good communication internally from leadership and ownership throughout the company and then publicly, social media wise, which is where you come in, should help create this, you know, big sucking sound. What? Who said that? That big sucking sound. One of the presidential candidates years ago.

38:41
Jeffrey Scott
But it’ll help create this big vacuum that will have people wanting to come to work for you.

38:47
Rob Murray
That’s cool. Yeah. I mean, and to add to all of those things you mentioned, one of the things we talk about with a bunch of clients is that very few do it. We do it ourselves, but very few people do it. It’s been massively impactful for us as we’ve developed our own email database, and we like a bi-monthly newsletter to everybody who’s ever applied to our organization. And it’s like there’s a culture spotlight, there’s a team member spotlight, and there’s an event thing that’s, you know, coming up that the company’s a part of. It’s simple. And then there’s a piece that says, here’s the openings if anybody’s interested.

39:19
Rob Murray
But what’s fascinating is we’ll hear people say, you know, I’VE been leading the newsletter for a couple of years and finally when I realized I didn’t want to stay where I am, I had to call you guys.

39:28
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

39:29
Rob Murray
And I think what’s really interesting is that if you’re using things like Indeed or LinkedIn, people have to understand for a moment that you’re renting their database, and you can build your own. And if you take a five to seven-year approach with building your own applicant database, it’s amazing what can happen because if somebody applies year one, they go somewhere else, get trained for five to seven years, and see that they’ve wanted to be with you and then they come over and now you’ve got this five to seven-year industry trained individual who’s been watching you. Yeah. Now they might come with some bad habits, maybe, whatever. Anyway, I think that’s really cool.

40:02
Jeffrey Scott
Email or send out text periodically. How do you do that? How do you promote it to your landscape clients?

40:10
Rob Murray
Well, we’ll email landscape clients more than we’ll text them.

40:14
Jeffrey Scott
No, but I’m saying if I’m a landscaper and I’m listening. Well, a lot of my recruiting happens through text versus email, certainly in the front lines. And so, should they be texting every twice a month or once a month?

40:28
Rob Murray
And maybe there’s some weird regulations coming in through the phone providers right now in the US so like AT&T is starting to put in some like regulations where you have to register your SMS delivery. And it’s a bit of, it’s like the DMARC settings that came in through Gmail and Outlook Microsoft in January of last year.

40:47
Jeffrey Scott
But if these are candidates and they’ve given you permission, text, I hear you.

40:53
Rob Murray
I personally as an owner will take the risk of just doing it anyway. I’ve just been reading it and hearing people getting a little bit like, I don’t know if we can do this. I know SMS is amazing. I would put a link though to a spot where they can go see things visually. That’s all we want to engage people visually. But SMS is by far the most engaging. There’s no question. It’s like what, 90% open rate.

41:15
Jeffrey Scott
I won’t get into all of them. But there’s other seek, there’s other, there’s multiple ways to do exactly what you said. So what you’re doing with email, which is the way I would do it with my prospects and clients but you know, for a landscape company there’s ways to do it on social media where you keep people Informed. Right. I love that they stay informed. So a lot of ways to do exactly that.

41:36
Rob Murray
And so to close out quick, can you just give people a rundown on the destination company, the book, like, where can they get it, what’s the overall ethos of it and how do they buy it?

41:46
Jeffrey Scott
Yep. Quick shout out to Dave Wright. He’s up in your neck of the woods.

41:51
Rob Murray
He coined Dave.

41:52
Jeffrey Scott
Oh, yeah, he coined the phrase. He was a member. He still is a member. He’s one of my original peer group members. He left when he became the president of Landscape Ontario. Then he came back afterward. But he coined the phrase early, early on. And I wrote the book around the phrase become a destination company. You can find it on Amazon and my website. And I think the link takes you to Amazon. But there are really seven pillars for building a great company that will attract, retain, and develop great employees. And it’s not a training book at all, really. It’s about a book about people’s engagement and empowerment.

42:34
Rob Murray
Love it. And then, if somebody wants to reach out to you, what’s the best way to do it?

42:38
Jeffrey Scott
Jeffree Scott Biz. I. I’ve learned in the South that Jeffrey is spelled E, R, and Y, but that’s not how I spell it. J, E, F, F, R, E, Y Scott Biz. You can also sign up for my weekly newsletter. I. I give away as much as I can, and it’s been very helpful in building our business. We do free web. We’re doing a free webinar next week on building on sales management. We’re doing a LinkedIn Live, and we try to help the industry as much as we can because we know that a stronger industry is better for everybody, and it just gives us a place to help. And in turn, it helps. It attracts people to our peer groups and our consulting and coaching.

43:25
Rob Murray
Rising Tide raises all ships. Right?

43:27
Jeffrey Scott
Exactly.

43:27
Rob Murray
Appreciate you, man. Thanks for doing this.

43:29
Jeffrey Scott
You’re welcome. Thank you.

43:36
Rob Murray
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the I am Landscape Growth podcast. We got a returning guest, amazing entrepreneur coach in the green industry, Jeffrey Scott. Thanks again for doing this.

43:48
Jeffrey Scott
Awesome. Glad to be here.

43:50
Rob Murray
If you haven’t had a chance to hear Jeffrey’s story, I mean, maybe go jeffreyscott.biz. Check him out. In the last episode, he gave us Cole’s notes, where he came from, running the business, and then starting into the. The coaching and helping, you know, entrepreneurs, Canada, across the US, the whole continent, essentially.

44:09
Jeffrey Scott
Yep.

44:10
Rob Murray
So I don’t want to spend too much time on your background. I mean, I think in terms of the upper echelon of business coaches when it comes to green industry. Jeffrey Scott’s up there. There’s no question. Really appreciate what you do. And I have to say, we, you know, travel all across the continent as well, you know, doing talks and going to shows, and the feedback we hear around your name is just always positive. Peer groups are always giving two thumbs up and coaching with you. Two thumbs up. So anyway, just appreciate what you do, man.

44:37
Jeffrey Scott
Hey, thank you very much. Appreciate that.

44:40
Rob Murray
So, you know, as crawling around, maybe you could say I was stalking you a little bit, creeping you, I guess they say on social media before we had this talk, and I was like, well, what are we going to talk about? Because the primary themes all around the primary growth constraint are what’s holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry. And we’ve talked a little bit about that last time. But something I saw on your social that I thought really hit was helping people reframe their business from being a landscape business to being a people business.

45:06
Jeffrey Scott
Yes.

45:07
Rob Murray
And every very successful, and I mean very successful, I mean somebody who is running a business, $20 million-plus with a smile on their face. So I don’t mean like they’re just killing it financially. I mean, like, they got time for family, they’re smiling, they’re pumped about what they do, they’re volunteering their time at boards, and they’re running 20 million plus. They all say they’re a training and development company. And I, I, I heard you say this; maybe it was a couple of weeks ago. So maybe you can just break that down a little bit and help people listening understand what you meant by it.

45:40
Jeffrey Scott
So when you said 20 million plus these examples, you meant in any industry, kind of was that.

45:47
Rob Murray
Yeah, well, but specifically on this show, there have been three or four folks that are running $20 million plus companies happily, and they’ve said their biggest focus as a company is that they’re a training and development business, and they just happened to do landscaping. And then I ran through your social, you know, a couple of hours ago, and you almost said it verbatim.

46:09
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah, yeah. And I don’t. And I didn’t listen to your podcast. I’ll tell you what. Yeah, give her so. Well, you know, my biggest mentor really was my dad initially. Great entrepreneur, creative in the landscape space. And I mentored him. You know, this is decades ago, really. And he was telling me, you’re going to love this. By the way, he was telling me, you know, we’re not in the landscape business. We’re in the marketing business. We’re in the marketing business, and we just happened to do landscaping. For him, marketing was understanding who your clients are, figuring out what they need, letting you know, developing a product and a service ethos that would really serve them, and then attracting more of those clients. So when he said marketing, he meant like with a capital M.

47:02
Jeffrey Scott
And you know, the whole branding and what kind of business are you?

47:07
Rob Murray
And so that’s. And also designing the business for the customer. One of the things I think that maybe he’s alluding to is that I heard, you know, Warren Buffett said he’s never seen a customer-obsessed business go out of business.

47:17
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah. Oh, customer-obsessed 100%. We used to tell the story of how we built ourselves. We started off as a pool company, and we built a pool like an inch off. And the engineer client noticed it, called us on it, and said, you’ve got to fix it. And were always in the business of saying yes to owning any issue. And so we’re like, okay, what do you want us to do? And he’s like, fix it. And there’s only one way to fix a gun I’d pull. That’s an inch too shallow. And I think it was probably too shallow versus too deep, actually. I don’t really, I don’t know specifically, but because either could put off a client. So we ripped it out and rebuilt it, and he got excited, re-energized by the construction process, and he bought a lot of change orders.

48:07
Jeffrey Scott
And, you know, we probably broke even on the job, actually. But that is a great internal story, and the owners are crazy. If you mess up, they’re going to make you rip it out and fix it. And so that goes a long way. And then, over the years, I took that and said marketing has gotten easier, at least for me. And I understand branding and marketing. Our big challenge became the people challenge. And that’s, you know, right above my shoulder here. They have become a destination company; it is all about that. And so then I realized, gosh, we’re really in the people business, the people development business, and we just happen to do landscaping.

48:50
Rob Murray
I couldn’t agree more. I actually think all businesses are in that business outside of people that are running, you know, six-person technology shops that are worth $2 billion. Maybe it’s a different story. But so then, when you are listening to this podcast, you know, I’m a landscape entrepreneur; maybe I’m doing 2 million bucks a year. I’ve got a team of, let’s say, 10 or 12 folks, whatever it might be. I’m like, okay, you know, I get it. I need to be more people-oriented. I had to build an organization. What do I start to do?

49:22
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah. So I think some of the big challenges are, can you treat your employees the same way you treat your clients? Now, that’s not 100% true, but it’s conceptually very true. Can you give them the same respect, the same focus, the same attention that you would give a client? Now, we have to be careful because while employees come first, they don’t come first where you are looking at the client as secondary. The client pays everybody.

50:00
Rob Murray
Yeah.

50:01
Jeffrey Scott
And so it’s a bit of a balance, but I think conceptually, can you? Can you walk the talk internally on whatever you’re promoting and promising externally? And so that’s. Go ahead. Sorry.

50:15
Rob Murray
No, no, it’s cool. I just think. I mean, Southwest Airlines comes to mind when you start talking like that around, you know, Herb Keller, talking about how essentially the entire staff of Southwest was his customer.

50:25
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

50:26
Rob Murray
And then the relationship to the customer experience is going to be one to one correlated to the employee experience.

50:35
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

50:36
Rob Murray
And. And so, I mean, that’s really, I think, a cool concept. And when you hear it, you’re like, okay, I get that. Then it’s like, well, then how do I start doing that? And I guess maybe what you’re alluding to is the first thing is a mindset shift.

50:51
Jeffrey Scott
It is. Yeah. It really is. And treating your employees with respect. One of my great clients, or long-term clients, I mean, he’s a great client too, but long-term clients, Scott Hartman. And in one of our peer group meetings, I had all of our founders stand up and say what their mission was, and we sort of critiqued it. And it’s hard to have a unique mission in this industry, but he was unique. He’s like, you know, our business is built to foster and support the families working in our business. Like, everything he does is not only for the employee, but it’s for the employee and their family. And I was like, ooh, that’s unique. He explained the different things he did. Constantly focused on building better families.

51:43
Jeffrey Scott
And so, you know, your mission and purpose need to have it somewhere. Right. So, to start with the mindset, you have to have it built into your purpose or your mission statement.

51:56
Rob Murray
Oh, that’s. That’s cool. Right? Because then you’ve got a North Star. Then, you could build mechanisms inside the organization. Like, I kind of like where that’s going for someone from a tangible point of view. Right. We talk about the idea that core values are like the petri dish where culture lives. Because culture lives or dies, no matter what. Right. It’s always there whether you have core values or not.

52:21
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah. I’m a believer that core values should not have customer service promises in them. I think core values, by their nature, should be the agreement on how employees treat each other and how.

52:36
Rob Murray
They show up every day, and their behaviors and their actions towards each other. I love that.

52:41
Jeffrey Scott
I think every company should have its own service ethos and ethic, and I think that can stand separate.

52:49
Rob Murray
So then what’s a. There’s. I haven’t seen many, if any, people separate the two.

52:55
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

52:56
Rob Murray
So, do you just want to give us a bit of insight into the thinking there?

53:00
Jeffrey Scott
Well, the values could be, you know, I’m just going to make this up.

53:04
Rob Murray
But yeah, yeah.

53:05
Jeffrey Scott
Because this is a totally unscripted, unplanned podcast, there was no. I was not told ahead of time, which is great. And so the, you know, teamwork, integrity, learning, safety. These are just examples of values that you may have in your business. And I always tell people, if you’re still in the middle of developing your values, think about the employees you fired or would like to fire or are glad left your business. What were the negative attributes? Turn those into the positive, and you can.

53:43
Rob Murray
Oh, I.

53:46
Jeffrey Scott
Like.

53:46
Rob Murray
You’re in my head, man.

53:47
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah. And then you.

53:50
Rob Murray
It’s so much easier for people to identify the WTF moments. Like, why would you do that?

53:57
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

53:57
Rob Murray
And then see the opposite. Is anybody listening? That’s a huge opportunity for developing core values.

54:05
Jeffrey Scott
And so I’m a big believer in customer service ethics, standards, response times, and things like that. You know, in our company, man, we did a lot of training on customer service. How do you even answer the phone? Right. We obsessed about, you know, good morning, Robert. How may I help you?

54:27
Rob Murray
You can hear the smile.

54:28
Jeffrey Scott
Exactly. Pulling them in. Hug your customer. One of my clients wrote that book. I don’t know if you’ve ever read it.

54:35
Rob Murray
Hug your customer.

54:37
Jeffrey Scott
Hug your customer. And he was very successful with that. And then his second book, can you imagine what it was? Hug your Employees.

54:45
Rob Murray
Nice.

54:46
Jeffrey Scott
Because a lot of his Hug your customers was really about hugging your employees. And so he went back and wrote that book second. But I want to get back to your main question. Concrete things. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

54:59
Rob Murray
No, you’re good. I think you’re segueing back to it perfectly, like this idea of the book. Hug your customer. Hug your Employees. How can you build tangible mechanisms inside your organization that foster that type of approach with your team? Yeah. So, yeah, give her, like, what’s. Is there something that you’ve seen or that you kind of help people start to look at when it comes to bringing this stuff to life?

55:21
Jeffrey Scott
There is so much. I mean, I’m just going to riff here a bit. So, if I took on a client for consulting and brought them in, some of the main things I would do first are as follows: If there is a bad apple, I want that person promoted to another company.

55:43
Rob Murray
It’s really interesting you say that. There was somebody who came over who said, you know, I really need to change the culture of my organization. We were at a trade show, whatever, and there were 16 people. And I was like, oh, what’s wrong with the culture? Like, well, there’s some toxicity and, you know, back talk and gossip and whatever. I was like, you know, is it the whole group, or is it like one or two people? They’re like, it’s really just one person. I was like, I don’t think you have to change the culture. I think you need to make a promotion.

56:07
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah, exactly. You call me on that.

56:10
Rob Murray
I love it.

56:11
Jeffrey Scott
You know, you have to clean the house a bit. When I consult with a landscape entrepreneur, and we work with companies, I mean, in our peer groups, we take smaller, but usually, you’re a little bit bigger before you do the consulting, you know, 2 million and up. And so one of the first things we want to do there is make sure they’ve got the. That everyone’s in alignment. Oh, what I was going to say is sometimes I tell them that person should go. But often once we clean house. I’m sorry. Once we get clarity within the organization and accountability gets really clear in purpose, they tend to leave on their own. Not all of them, but the people who don’t want to get on the bus stay on this clean, clear, full-of-direction bus. They tend to promote themselves to another company.

57:06
Jeffrey Scott
And so getting that clarity of purpose, getting the organization really clear who’s in charge of what, you got to fix all these things. Where the company is working as a organization, you know what I’m saying? Where the manager.

57:23
Rob Murray
Yeah. Well, it’s like a sports team. Every, like, you know, a defensive left tackle knows their job. Like, they’re responsible for making sure the quarterback doesn’t get sacked, and they got to block a runner, you know, like they’ve got some KPIs. It’s clear.

57:36
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah, yeah. So if you’re in the people business, you’re making the company really clear and organized for the people. Here’s your one boss. You don’t have two. You don’t have the manager and the owner. Right. Here are the tools you need to do your job. They’re very clear. Here’s the instructions. We’re not last minute. We’re not always being reactive, but we’re being proactive. We’re setting you up for success. And I think, you know, laborers and foremen, right? That’s. You got to start there. So, we set them up for success, gave them the tools, and treated them with respect. Owners can’t run around yelling and making it a tense environment. They do, we do. It happens. But you’ve got to get on top of that and clear that all out.

58:28
Jeffrey Scott
And so really, you want to build a destination company where people want to stay and grow their career. I would advise, as a starting point for the listener that they do the. And I may have talked about this in the last podcast, but they do the nps.

58:46
Rob Murray
Yeah. Okay. Within the team.

58:48
Jeffrey Scott
Within the team. And I would do that twice a year. NPS is the net promoter score. Basically, how likely are you, Robert, to want to refer a family or friend to come work at our company? Give us 0 to 10.

59:04
Rob Murray
It’s. It’s interesting. You say we. We do this, and we also have roadmap sessions with folks so we can actually see the number that they put and talk about it. Some of our best staff score like seven. And I’m like, what’s up with the seven? They’re like, I don’t think my friends can hack it here. I was like, oh, so it’s a good number. Like, yeah, it’s good. Don’t worry about it. Yeah, yeah.

59:33
Jeffrey Scott
So you give the score and then you ask for, you know, what can we do to make it a nine? Or if it’s a nine, what can we do to keep it a nine?

59:40
Rob Murray
I love that. Just.

59:42
Jeffrey Scott
Just figuring out what’s really going on. And sometimes, it’s around one middle manager, which could be around some policies. And so there’s a lot you can do organizationally to help clean things up and get ready to be a people development company. You then have to invest in your people. Right. So what kind of training are you doing? We had. I run a private event for my clients every January. We just had it called the executive retreat, and we had Jeff McManus come speak. You know that guy? There’s his book. We had him.

01:00:24
Rob Murray
I haven’t Had a chance to read that.

01:00:25
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah. Training weeders into leaders, you know, it’s. It’s pretty basic. And he was one of many speakers. And now you. Not everybody can do what he does, but he spends an hour a week on training, and he’s got a whole university. In fact, you can go onto his website. His website is the University of Mississippi because that’s who he is. He is their head groundskeeper, I guess. He runs all the grounds, and they have a university, and the curriculum is laid out there, so they will train. He averaged out to about an hour a week in training. So he invests in training. And 10% of that training is on leadership. 90% is technical. 10% is on. And when I say leadership, I mean all the soft skills. You know what I’m saying? Yeah, leadership, what have you? So there’s the 10% rule.

01:01:26
Jeffrey Scott
I love that. He didn’t call it that, but I said, oh, the 10% rule. There you go. Another speaker we had was Derek Wells, who is a client, a longtime client, and he’s actually doing some work for us as a team member and associate in our company. He figured out it’s impossible to train people if you don’t put it in the budget and in the job cost budget. If you want your foreman to train his laborers on a maintenance client’s job site and also still be accountable for his metrics every day and every week. He, meaning the foreman. So it could be a she. So if you want them accountable for the metrics, you’ve got to put in that extra hour a week somewhere for training. Otherwise, they can’t be accountable for both.

01:02:21
Rob Murray
Right.

01:02:22
Jeffrey Scott
So you’ve got to walk the talk and build that investment into your budget, into the schedule. Should be able to see it on the calendar. And if it happens on the job on site, it’s got to be somewhere. There got to be a Costco.

01:02:37
Rob Murray
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more with that. I mean, I love it, you know, and. And I think somebody might even cringe, like, well, you know, shouldn’t they just be doing the job and they can see and shadow, and it’s like, well, sure, but if you think it’s important, then it should have its own line item.

01:02:55
Jeffrey Scott
Like, yeah, let me tell you how Derek got to it. And I’m gonna give. I’m gonna have him on my podcast one time. So I’m giving away some of the. The fun. Two years ago, he. After a big snowstorm, when everybody didn’t show up, or half the people didn’t show up. He fired them. He’s like, darn it, I’m not doing this anymore.

01:03:19
Rob Murray
Awesome. Yeah.

01:03:20
Jeffrey Scott
He realized he had a bad culture across the board, and it was him. He fired them all. And he grew significantly because of that. People need to understand that firing people doesn’t shrink revenue. When you get the wrong people promoted to another company, revenue grows. But then he realized we’ve got to become a training and development company to turn this around in the spring. And then he realized my guys can’t train if I’m holding them accountable for their hours. I’ve got to build it into the budget. So he was. He forced his own hand into it. Into that recognition.

01:04:01
Rob Murray
I love that, man. So Bill. I mean bill training is incorporated into the budget and the job cost. Yeah, that’s.

01:04:11
Jeffrey Scott
Unless it’s a different cost code. Right. So it’s either in the job cost or it’s a different cost code, but it’s still on the schedule. Some of the training happens in the office, and some of it happens.

01:04:21
Rob Murray
On the job, some of it happens in the windshield. It’s all good.

01:04:25
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah. But you should figure it out ahead of time. Like, if you go on this website, you’ll see that their Landscape University.

01:04:32
Rob Murray
What is the website actually?

01:04:36
Jeffrey Scott
Well, it’s Ole Miss.

01:04:37
Rob Murray
It is Ole Miss Edu.

01:04:39
Jeffrey Scott
I’m pretty sure, unless I got that wrong, the University of Mississippi is Ole Miss, I think.

01:04:46
Rob Murray
Yeah, it is.

01:04:47
Jeffrey Scott
And then there’s landscape, and then there’s Landscape University. It’s on the website there somewhere.

01:04:53
Rob Murray
So, under the program listings, probably.

01:04:57
Jeffrey Scott
Well, it’s not taught through the education. It’s taught through. Suppose you want to work there doing the landscape. Sorry, that’s what I mean.

01:05:06
Rob Murray
So he’s, okay.

01:05:07
Jeffrey Scott
He’s in charge of the grounds. You know, he’s the head groundskeeper, and he has to teach young kids how to do the work.

01:05:18
Rob Murray
I love that. So one of the things you said earlier, though, that really kind of hit me anyway was as you. You start to become more people-oriented when building an organization, and you’ve got to make your company clear for your people. And I can say with a lot of certainty that a lot of folks haven’t made their company clear. And the way. The way I hear it or see it is people saying things like, I wear a lot of hats or, you know, we’re. We’re all. We’re all going to be working on this thing. We’re all gonna. We’re all gonna get it over the finish line together. It’s like, yeah, all right. So, there is no one person on the hook to make sure this gets done.

01:06:04
Rob Murray
What do you tell folks or what can you say to the audience listening now if, like what does a clear organization look like so that people may be contrast from where they are today?

01:06:14
Jeffrey Scott
Well, let’s dive into your example. So you, when you start a company, the owner wears all the hats, gotta do it. Organization, it’s all about teamwork and the challenge or the problem. Somebody in my office says, no, don’t say problem, say challenge. Well, sometimes it is a problem. The problem is when you grow large, and you don’t stop that, you don’t fix that issue. You have to go from an owner-centric organizational chart, put the owner in the center, and all the lines come out from the center. Like a wheel. Spoken wheel.

01:06:53
Rob Murray
Yeah. Okay.

01:06:54
Jeffrey Scott
Or hub and spoke. You’ve got to change the org chart from looking like that to a more top-down or bottom-up, you know, hierarchy. And a lot of companies will grow pretty large without figuring that out. So, you kind of nailed one of the main issues, which is the specialization of tasks. Now, what you’re going to hear people say is we can’t afford that. We can’t afford someone to do it. Just fill in the blank, whatever it is. Right, right. You know, and I’ve worked with so many people, I’m like, what are they going to do with the other half of their day? I’m like, seriously, that day, their day is going to fill up, and then they hire that person, and they’ll tell you, I don’t know, we can’t live without that person now.

01:07:38
Jeffrey Scott
And so the quicker you organize and specialize tasks, the quicker you’ll grow.

01:07:44
Rob Murray
And then when you look at that, you know, from the field into the office and then into leadership, where do you see as an owner trying to build an organization that is clear for people, what does the leadership team start to look like? Like if I’m at, say, you know, million and a half, I’m going to two and a half. I’m going to five million. I got to start putting some leaders in place. Yeah, how does somebody start looking at that?

01:08:11
Jeffrey Scott
Well, it’s a really good question. It’s an important question. You asked what the leadership team looks like. People generally start, or, you know, half the time. What I see is everybody’s on the leadership team. Right. Because again, go back to that hub and speak. The owner has everyone on the team, and there are a lot of people. I just worked with a company that’s in the middle of making some changes, so I won’t say his name, but he grew pretty quickly up to 10 million. And his leadership team is still like a $3 million company leadership team. Everybody’s on it. And so we’re about to go through these changes, and he’s going to really hire some real management.

01:09:00
Jeffrey Scott
When the managers are in place, their direct reports don’t sit on the leadership team anymore, and they start to have their own meetings. So, I think a real leadership team is where you’re not necessarily talking about production in that leadership meeting. You’re talking about the company, the people, and the organization. But you’re not; it’s not a scheduling meeting, and it has fewer people, the actual leaders that are in charge of organizing everybody else. And so the quicker you get to that, the better.

01:09:40
Rob Murray
And so like if you have an owner that’s a more sales driven then it would be natural, I guess to have a production leader as like a first step. I’m just trying to help people see like what does that group look like and where do you want to make sure you’ve got key people holding responsibility or accountability in the organization?

01:10:04
Jeffrey Scott
I mean, let me just sort of give you an example. So too many people in the leadership team could be, well, we’ve got the office manager and the number two person in the office. We’ve got account managers, we got the two account managers, we got a production manager, we got the mechanic. And so we got, and we got, you know, myself, the owner, our salesperson, and we have one other main salesperson. You know, we got like nine people on our leadership team. Like that’s all middle management. And so, really, there should be just. I’m going to answer this in two phases. The next phase would be, well, let’s have just the office manager. And do we have division managers instead of account managers that we can have in the leadership team meeting? And we don’t need the mechanic necessarily; we don’t need account managers.

01:11:03
Jeffrey Scott
And then the next level might be do we have a controller who’s overseeing the office or a head finance person? Do we have a general manager who’s overseeing the division managers? And so you’re kind of growing it up the pyramid with fewer people as you put those people in place, which is interesting, right?

01:11:23
Rob Murray
It could be maybe counterintuitive to somebody who has maybe a team of 15 or 20 with a leadership team of say eight or nine people to then be running a team of say 50 or 60 with like three or four.

01:11:34
Jeffrey Scott
Right.

01:11:35
Rob Murray
Because that’s kind of the picture you’re painting. Is that accurate?

01:11:37
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah, it is.

01:11:38
Rob Murray
Yeah. That’s cool.

01:11:39
Jeffrey Scott
Three or four or five.

01:11:40
Rob Murray
I mean, sure, I get that.

01:11:42
Jeffrey Scott
It really depends on, you know, there’s so many different landscapes. There are so many different ways to organize and grow your company. You know what? If you have two main branches, you might. You might have the branch managers in the leadership meeting. It. It just depends on how things are set up. I wanted to say one other thing. You know, in theory, you have sales, you have operations, you have finance. You might have HR as a separate key role. Right. Where people. We’ve said you’re a people company, and so you might have HR on a leadership team. And so it. And you might have a general manager. So that’s four, five. You as owner. Six. You might have six people in the leadership.

01:12:34
Rob Murray
Yeah. That’s cool.

01:12:35
Jeffrey Scott
It can go in different. I’d have to look at the company, and then it would be really clear for me how I would tell them to structure it.

01:12:42
Rob Murray
Sure. I guess you get the opportunity to see these patterns over and over again. So, depending on how they’re running the thing, you can see how to do it.

01:12:50
Jeffrey Scott
Help them organize it, how they’re running it, and where they’re trying to go.

01:12:54
Rob Murray
So one of the things. It’s. This just happened to us, and I’m not sure if this is something that you’ve heard of either, so I’m curious to get your take on this, but we got some feedback from our organization that the leadership team kind of felt like those people at the top of the mountain in Sparta. It’s like, what’s the. What’s the leadership team like? What is the leadership team doing? It created this kind of weird separation from the rest of the group.

01:13:16
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

01:13:17
Rob Murray
And so we’re like, well, that is. I, like, clearly not the intention of what we’re trying to do here. So we started getting. We bring in a guest so that the whole organization can come see what we’re actually doing. So, you know, it’s one. One person a week, so it takes a bit of time, but.

01:13:31
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

01:13:32
Rob Murray
Have you heard that before? Is that something people might want to consider, taking the stigma away or what’s.

01:13:38
Jeffrey Scott
Can I solve your problems for you?

01:13:39
Rob Murray
Of course. Give her.

01:13:41
Jeffrey Scott
So I would have every leader on that team report to their team. Key elements that got discussed. So I would read the whole company in, you know, not all 60 minutes or 120 minutes, but I would. I’D make sure there was a weekly report.

01:13:59
Rob Murray
Oh, there’s a summary that goes out to everybody that attended. We could make it go to the whole company in a heartbeat.

01:14:03
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah, I’m just going to riff here a little bit.

01:14:06
Rob Murray
Yeah, that’s cool.

01:14:07
Jeffrey Scott
I’d maybe make sure that the whole company was hearing from you once a week, like a little update or a Monday morning memo, and you might even talk about things that got discussed. I might do a monthly all-hands meeting. And so instead of kicking them out.

01:14:26
Rob Murray
We do that one. That’s a good one.

01:14:27
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah. So as long as you got transparency and they see the benefits coming out of it, then they’re going to be and they can still have input. Then they’re going to and it’s e and the job got easier, then they’re gonna appreciate it.

01:14:44
Rob Murray
Yeah, that’s cool. I can; I’ve heard some people do a town hall approach where maybe monthly, maybe quarterly, whatever, where it’s just like, hey, come in. Here’s the. What’s going on in the company this year? What do you want to talk about? Have you seen anybody succeed with that approach?

01:15:00
Jeffrey Scott
That’s like a monthly meeting, you’re saying?

01:15:02
Rob Murray
Yeah, sure, I’ve, I mean, I’ve heard people do it quarterly, monthly, whatever.

01:15:06
Jeffrey Scott
Do you do? Do you have enough team-building activities and fun built-in?

01:15:13
Rob Murray
Debatable. I mean, I think so, but some people who are maybe a bit more social and fun may not think so. But yeah, we’re a pretty fun company. It’s part of our core values, and we have a bunch of traditions related to it.

01:15:23
Jeffrey Scott
All right, so I think you’re doing good. You know, change is difficult until people see the benefit of it.

01:15:29
Rob Murray
Yeah, that’s cool. I’ve heard somebody say in the past people have a default to change, thinking it’s going to be a loss. So, change aversion is actually loss aversion, and you have to help them see that it isn’t. I thought that was a neat way to think about things. Yeah, so you’re growing. You got to make oh giver.

01:15:51
Jeffrey Scott
I’m not saying you should do this, but if you want to get radical, you could say, oh, anybody quintend or a leadership meeting. Anytime you want, you can just come in and audit.

01:15:58
Rob Murray
Open door.

01:15:59
Jeffrey Scott
Open door. I mean, you could say that. And then I don’t think there’d be.

01:16:03
Rob Murray
An issue with it. Yeah, see who shows up.

01:16:06
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah, no, they’re not going to show up. They’re like, yeah, you know what?

01:16:09
Rob Murray
Yeah, exactly. The door’s Open. I don’t need to go check. That’s almost easier to manage though.

01:16:16
Jeffrey Scott
Do you have glass windows where you have your meeting?

01:16:20
Rob Murray
It’s typically on Zoom these days because people are, when it is in person, 100% there’s glass.

01:16:25
Jeffrey Scott
Okay, good. You’re good.

01:16:29
Rob Murray
Thanks.

01:16:31
Jeffrey Scott
You are fun though. So how do you guys have fun? Because that’s part of being a people oriented business is if I’m gonna spend most of my waking hours at your dang company. Yeah. And these are going to be my main relationships. You gotta help me build those relationships.

01:16:48
Rob Murray
I mean, we have fun enough. We have. We’re lucky, I guess. You know, the harder work, the luckier you get. But we’ve got folks that help promote it. But, like recently, we had a. So we did a monthly team lunch, and the last one we did was a pajama and pizza party. So everybody’s wearing pajamas. The whole day at the office was just. This is hilarious because, you know, I don’t know, but people wear some weird pajamas.

01:17:13
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

01:17:14
Rob Murray
And you know, we do team-building exercises and team-based trivia, and we have Gary, the purple cow who gets passed around on Fridays from one team member to the next for exemplifying a core value that week. It’s just like a stuffed cow with a mohawk. It’s pretty cool. It’s not necessarily fun, but it’s a celebration of people helping each other out. We have little awesome citations or little yellow sticky notes that say awesome citations that they give out on Monday to everybody. You know, we do overnight camping trips. I mean, if I look back at the last 12 months, I see the things that we’ve done, from pub nights to overnight camping to, oh, dock days, water skiing, wakeboarding, and tubing.

01:17:57
Jeffrey Scott
You got me. I’m coming to work for you. I got you.

01:18:00
Rob Murray
Yeah, well. And then we don’t promote it. Like when we recruit, we really try to say like, yes, it’s a fun environment; people can talk to people. But we don’t bring it as if we came to this cushy place. We actually try to do the opposite. The fight. We call it the fight club approach. It’s like, you probably don’t want to work here because we expect a lot from our people, and you’re going to have to grow.

01:18:21
Jeffrey Scott
I’m only giving you a seven in terms of referring my friends to you. So that’s good, right? It’s funny that you mentioned that because I always say that it’s a technique. Your first interview with somebody is trying to really get them excited, compelled, wowed. Oh my God, I want to get on this train. Then your next interview is talking them out of working for you.

01:18:42
Rob Murray
Cool. I love that. Yeah. Okay, so then, actually, why don’t we just go there for a quick second? You know, as a people organization, recruitment’s a big deal. Like that’s where it’s all going to come together. Because if you bring in the wrong people, it’s going to go to. If you bring in the right people, it’s going to be amazing.

01:18:56
Jeffrey Scott
Yeah.

01:18:57
Rob Murray
So, I’m building this people-oriented company. I’m doubling down on this idea, and now I’m going to go recruit for two or three people or maybe even just one. What are some things I really need to make sure I don’t miss?

01:19:09
Jeffrey Scott
Well, I will tell you, my best clients have waiting lists of people to get in the door. This whole idea of it’s so hard to recruit here, we can’t find people is nonsense.

01:19:22
Rob Murray
It’s a leadership issue.

01:19:25
Jeffrey Scott
It’s. You don’t have a; you’re focused on the wrong thing. Right.

01:19:30
Rob Murray
100% issue.

01:19:31
Jeffrey Scott
It’s a peep. You don’t have this person, this destination company. And so, what are people doing to get that destination company? Because you said recruiting, I want people to be knocking on my door so I can choose. Giving the red carpet exit when you say goodbye to employees.

01:19:51
Rob Murray
Love that.

01:19:52
Jeffrey Scott
Make it so that when you’re letting go of somebody, your whole message is to everybody who’s staying. Primarily, secondarily, it’s to the person leaving. So the red carpet exit tells everybody who’s staying, oh my God, that guy, what a great boss we have. And the person who leaves feels respected. And unless they stole something, you know, yeah, no, I hear you did something wrong. They, and they’re told, you know when you grow up a little bit or whatever, come give us a call again. And so, and many of them do, they go out. The grass isn’t. Or they’re leaving because I think the grass is greener. You know, you’re either being pushed, fired, or you’re leaving. You’re being pushed out because you need to grow up a little bit, or you’re leaving because you think the grass is greener.

01:20:43
Jeffrey Scott
And so the message is a little different comparatively. And there’s specific techniques. I won’t give away all the secret.

01:20:49
Rob Murray
Sauce, but no, that’s cool.

01:20:51
Jeffrey Scott
Specific techniques to the red carpet exit. So. So the person who leaves is paying attention to you. Even when they leave, and they’re watching, and they’re listening, and they ultimately want to, they do grow up, or the grass isn’t greener, and they do want to come back. And so you have that waiting list, and then other people in the companies they go to work for, they’ve got you on their radar, like, oh, I’m going to pay attention to that company. And so those things, along with some good social media and good communication internally from leadership and ownership throughout the company and then publicly, social media wise, which is where you come in, should help create this, you know, big sucking sound. What? Who said that? That big sucking sound? One of the presidential candidates years ago.

01:21:42
Jeffrey Scott
But it’ll help create this big vacuum that will have people wanting to come to work for you.

01:21:48
Rob Murray
That’s cool. Yeah. I mean, and to add to all of those things you mentioned, one of the things we talk about with a bunch of clients is that very few do it. We do it ourselves, but very few people do it. It’s been massively impactful for us as we’ve developed our own email database, and we like a bi-monthly newsletter to everybody who’s ever applied to our organization. And it’s like there’s a culture spotlight, there’s a team member spotlight, there’s an event thing that’s coming up, and the company’s a part of it. It’s simple. And then there’s a piece that says, here’s the openings if anybody’s interested.

01:22:20
Rob Murray
But what’s fascinating is we’ll hear people say, you know, I’ve been leading the newsletter for a couple of years, and finally, when I realized I didn’t want to stay where I am, I had to call you guys. And I think what’s really interesting is that if you’re using things like Indeed or LinkedIn, people have to understand for a moment that you’re renting their database, and you can build your own. And if you take a five to seven-year approach with building your own applicant database, it’s amazing what can happen because if somebody applies year one, they go somewhere else, get trained for five to seven years, they see that they’ve been wanting to be with you, then they come over and now you’ve got this five to seven-year industry trained individual who’s been watching you. Yeah.

01:22:59
Rob Murray
Now they might come with some bad habits, maybe, whatever. Anyway, I think that’s really cool.

01:23:03
Jeffrey Scott
Email or send out text periodically. How do you do that? How do you promote it to your landscape clients?

01:23:11
Rob Murray
Well, we’ll do email to landscape clients more than text.

01:23:15
Jeffrey Scott
No, but I’m saying if I’m a landscaper and I’m listening. Well, a lot of my recruiting happens through text versus email, certainly in the front lines, so should they be texting every twice a month or once a month?

01:23:29
Rob Murray
And maybe there’s some weird regulations coming in through the phone providers right now in the US so like AT&T is starting to put in some like, regulations where you have to register your SMS delivery and it’s a bit of, it’s like the demark settings that came in through Gmail and Outlook Microsoft in January of last year.

01:23:48
Jeffrey Scott
So. But if these are candidates and they’ve given you permission, next.

01:23:53
Rob Murray
I hear you. Personally, as an owner, I will take the risk of just doing it anyway. I’ve just been reading it and hearing people getting a little bit like; I don’t know if we can do this. I know SMS is amazing. I would put a link, though, to a spot where they can go see things visually. That’s all. We want to engage people visually, but SMS is by far the most engaging. There’s no question. What is the 90% open rate?

01:24:16
Jeffrey Scott
I won’t get into all of them. But there’s other seek, there’s other, there’s multiple ways to do exactly what you said. So what you’re doing with email, which is the way I would do it with my prospects and clients but you know, for a landscape company, there’s ways to do it on social media where you keep people informed. Right. I love that they stay informed. So lot of, a lot of ways to do exactly that.

01:24:37
Rob Murray
And so to close out quick, can you just give people a rundown on the destination company, the book, like, where can they get it, what’s the overall ethos of it and how do they buy it?

01:24:47
Jeffrey Scott
Yep. Quick shout out to Dave Wright. He’s up in your neck of the woods.

01:24:52
Rob Murray
He coined Dave.

01:24:53
Jeffrey Scott
Oh yeah, he coined the phrase. He was a member. He still is a member. He’s one of my original peer group members. He left when he became the president of Landscape Ontario. Then he came back afterward. But he coined the phrase early, early on. And I wrote the book around the phrase become a destination company. You can find it on Amazon and my website, and I think the link takes you to Amazon. But there are really seven pillars for building a great company that will attract, retain, and develop great employees. And it’s not a training book. At all, really. It’s about a book about people’s engagement and empowerment.

01:25:35
Rob Murray
Love it. And then, if somebody wants to reach out to you, what’s the best way to do it?

01:25:39
Jeffrey Scott
Jeffrey Scott Biz: I’ve learned in the South that Jeffrey is spelled E, R, and Y, but that’s not how I spell it. J, E, F, F, R E Y Scott Biz, and you can sign up for my weekly newsletter. I give away as much as I can, and it’s been very helpful in building our business. We do free web. We’re doing a free webinar next week on building on sales management. We’re doing a LinkedIn Live, and we try to help the industry as much as we can because we know that a stronger industry is better for everybody, and it just gives us a place to help. And in turn, it helps. It attracts people to our peer groups and our consulting and coaching.

01:26:26
Rob Murray
Rising Tide raises all ships, right?

01:26:27
Jeffrey Scott
Exactly.

01:26:28
Rob Murray
Appreciate you, man. Thanks for doing this.

01:26:30
Jeffrey Scott
You’re welcome. Thank you.