Released: January 11, 2024
Jud Griggs, head harvester of Harvest Business Consulting Group, shares his rich, 46-year journey in the landscaping industry, discussing strategies for overcoming growth constraints through effective recruiting, training, and business acumen.
“If you give me somebody that works hard, wants to learn, and is motivated by coming to work every day, I can teach them the landscape business. It’s not like rocket science.”
– Jud Griggs
Here’s what we discuss in today’s episode:
- Introduction to Jud Griggs, highlighting his extensive background in the landscaping industry and his educational journey.
- The critical role of recruiting and building a strong team, emphasizing the challenges of finding motivated and hardworking individuals in today’s labor market.
- The importance of creating a culture of education and learning within companies, with strategies for effective training.
- Jud’s insights on understanding the fundamental business aspects of landscaping, including pricing strategies and financial literacy.
- Effective recruitment strategies, exploring avenues outside the traditional labor pool and timing for hiring key personnel.
- Discussion on setting up incentives and rewards to motivate staff, including the impact of bonuses and variable pay.
- The significance of leadership and continuous learning opportunities in fostering business growth and networking within the landscaping community.
Actionable Key Takeaways:
- Surround yourself with a strong, complementary team to enhance business operations.
- Foster a culture of education and continuous learning to keep your team up-to-date and engaged.
- Master your business fundamentals, such as pricing, cost management, and financial planning, to ensure profitability and sustainability.
- Implement innovative recruitment strategies that extend beyond the traditional labor pool.
- Develop incentive programs that align with business goals to motivate staff effectively.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- NALP (National Association of Landscape Professionals) for professional development and networking.
- Community college courses on business and landscaping to enhance knowledge and skills.
- Online platforms like Greenius for accessible and comprehensive landscaping training.
- Books and resources from industry experts like Frank Ross to deepen industry knowledge and business acumen.
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Episode Transcript
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. Welcome back to another episode of the I am Landscape Growth podcast. I have the privilege of introducing our guest today, Judd Griggs, head harvester of the Harvest business consulting group. Judd, thanks much for doing this and bringing your 46 years of green industry experience to the show.
Jud
00:49
Thanks for having me and thanks for reminding me I’m getting older at 46.
Robert
00:53
Years in the business, Judd started when he was one.
Jud
00:56
Thank you, Rob.
Robert
00:58
Thank you. Okay, so giving the audience just a quick perspective of who they’re listening to, can you just give us kind of a Cole’s notes summary of your experience in the green industry and kind of what you’re up today?
Jud
01:12
I have been in the green industry, pretty much, like I said, for 46 years. I started in Wisconsin. That’s where I was born and raised. And I went to school at University of Wisconsin, got a degree in landscape architecture and horticulture and worked there for about 20 years. And then I was dragged out of there to go down to Florida to manage a company down there in Naples, Florida, which was good. I didn’t think I’d ever leave Wisconsin, but I’m glad I did. It was a great experience. I managed a super design build company there. Then after about eleven years went to Dallas, Texas and worked with a company called Lambert’s that many of you may have heard of. It’s a hundred plus year old company. Amazing, incredible projects. Two and three and $4 million residential design build projects.
Jud
02:12
So I was managed their operations and then sales and marketing for them and then ended up here in beautiful Atlanta. I knew I wanted to get back into consulting, and Atlanta is a great place to have a home base. I can fly just about anywhere from Atlanta pretty easily with direct flights. Plus one of our daughters lives here, so that was a big dry draw here.
Robert
02:41
So are you a Braves fan?
Jud
02:44
Did you say brewers fan?
Robert
02:46
No, Braves. Atlanta Braves.
Jud
02:48
I enjoy watching them. They’re great organizations.
Robert
02:52
Yeah, they got a rock solid team these days.
Jud
02:54
They really do. But I still have Wisconsin ties. I had my heart torn out when the packers lost last weekend, but I’m still a Wisconsinite at heart.
Robert
03:06
That’s cool. Yeah, that was a tough one. Okay, so, theme of the podcast, what is the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry? Judd, take it away, man. What’s your thought?
Jud
03:19
When we talked about that, few points came to mind. People is probably the number one growth constraint. What you really want to do is surround yourself with some good people, because you can’t do it all yourself, and you want people that complement your talents and your strengths. Say, if you’re a great salesperson, find yourself a great operations person to team with, or vice versa, and then create a culture of education and learning. What I’ve always told my clients and what I’ve tried to live by is that if you give me somebody that works hard, wants to learn, and is motivated by coming to work every day, I can teach them the landscape, business landscape.
Jud
04:19
It’s not like rocket science, but I think if I find somebody with the right attitude, I will take as much time as I need to train them and teach them about the landscape industry.
Robert
04:32
Okay, so, I mean, there’s a bunch to expand upon here, and I want to hear more about how you’re seeing one of the common problems you’re seeing with people when you start to coach them. But what do you say to the large audience of people that say stuff like, there are no people available, and if there are, they have bad attitudes, they don’t work hard, they don’t even show up, and they’re definitely not motivated. There seems to be this perspective that young people aren’t willing to work, and I’m just curious what your response is to that.
Jud
05:07
Well, unfortunately, I have to agree that I’ve seen way too much of that. Doesn’t mean there aren’t people out there that you can find that are willing to work. But it seems that some of the current generations, the time off is far more important to them than money and wanting to work. It’s kind of a weird dynamic that I’ve never really seen before. Used to be, let’s get some overtime on Saturday. Who wants to work to finish this job? Now, nobody raises their hand. Whereas before, oh, yeah, I’ll work. I want the overtime, I want the money. So again, find somebody that’s motivated and wants to learn and is willing to work, and they may not be in the industry. I have found some great people.
Jud
06:01
You go out to dinner and you find a server that is just super nice person, great people, pleaser. And I’ve turned them into fabulous salespeople. So look outside the industry and look for the people that are willing, because it’s a shame that I think it stems from way back as you’re growing up. When did you have your first job, Rob?
Robert
06:34
I was probably eleven or twelve.
Jud
06:35
Yeah, same with me. I was delivering newspapers when I was twelve years old. And now most kids don’t have their first job until they’re maybe 18, maybe when they graduate from high school or college, they’re not used to working. They don’t know what work is, and they’re kind of caught off guard. That do me now I have to go out to work again tomorrow.
Robert
07:00
So what tips can you give somebody to consider when looking to recruit in this labor market?
Jud
07:13
Tips would be, again, look outside the industry. Don’t look just for landscape people.
Robert
07:19
Well, on that note, too, I’ve heard, too, housekeepers can actually be a really cool spot to recruit from because they do work hard, they’ve got disciplined work ethic, and a lot of them are sick and tired of being inside all day.
Jud
07:30
You got that right. And military, ex military, is a real good place to look.
Robert
07:37
Find disciplined folks better than that.
Jud
07:39
You got that right. They’re disciplined. They don’t like to sit behind a desk. They want to be outside doing fun work. And landscaping can be fun. So keep your horizons open and there are people out there for you.
Robert
07:55
And then other tips, though, in terms of, like, essentially what we’re saying is go stay at hotels and eat at restaurants. That’s how you go recruit. But in terms of putting a system together for recruitment and finding these people to surround yourself with, do you have any thoughts that you can leave people with in terms of a step they can take or two?
Jud
08:14
Well, when you advertise for not just the company and the position, but advertise all the great things that go around landscaping, creating something that will live beyond you. When I was in high school, to get money to go to college, I got a job at a landscape company. And I thought, well, this is cool. I get there in the morning and it’s bare ground, and by the time we leave in the afternoon and planted a whole bunch of plants and the place is looking good, I bring my girlfriend there and I say, look what we did today. Isn’t this cool? So advertise the fun parts of the job, that you’re creating something great for the environment. You’re creating long lasting beauty, and you’re maintaining the environment. So talk about things like that versus. This is a good job. It pays $12 an hour.
Jud
09:23
Whatever you’re paying, people can work at mcdonald’s for $15 an hour and a lot less trouble. A lot less easier to work than working out in the landscape.
Robert
09:36
Yeah, I love it. We had a conversation with this guy, Jim Landry. He’s from landscape, New Brunswick. I’m not sure if you’ve met him before, but really cool talking. He goes into high schools and is really just trying to build the next generation of landscapers. So he’s starting young, and he’ll ask the kids in the class, is riding your bike to school green? And they’ll put their hand up. And he said, well, actually, it’s not green. It’s less gray. And he says, is riding an electric car, your parents driving electric car to work, is that green? And that yet put their hands up. He’s like, well, it’s not green. It’s actually less gray. He said, the only real thing that’s green is planting plants, and the only industry that does that is landscaping. And very few people use that as a platform for recruitment.
Robert
10:21
And I think it’s really smart.
Jud
10:23
It really is very smart. And so look at younger generation wants to make an impact in this world. They want to leave behind a good impression. And what better way than to green up the world?
Robert
10:40
Yeah, that’s cool. And there also seems to be a bit of a trend starting. It’s at least a fad around more naturalistic environments being built by landscapers versus the last, say, 15 years, where stone has really been a primary driver of construction. So seems like a good time to start making the switch. All right, so, people, obviously very important, complimenting yourself. If you’re a good salesperson, find the operator and vice versa. Recruiting. You mentioned the culture of education and learning.
Jud
11:12
Yes.
Robert
11:13
How do you start building that? It.
Jud
11:18
Really stems from having a passion for teaching. If it’s not, you find somebody that’s a good teacher. Every week you’re doing training with your whole team, both from the office all the way down to the crew level person. You’re teaching them about what we’re doing, how to do it right. So people want to be able to learn and get better, and as they get better, they can earn more money. And there’s some people that are very satisfied just staying where they are, which is fine. But most people really want to learn. They want to get better. They want to learn how to get better. And the old days of just, okay, here’s your hat, here’s your t shirt. Get out in the field, and we’re going to work you 12 hours a day, and that’s it.
Jud
12:12
And not worry about any teaching so get motivated by being a teacher and growing people.
Robert
12:20
Yeah, that’s cool. I think this is episode almost 28 or something. And the most successful entrepreneurs actually, I think in almost any industry, but specifically in landscaping, when I ask them what’s the thing that’s your primary focus, they all say training, development, and safety. Like, it’s kind of all packaged together. And I think what you’re saying, too, is really important because young people might be unmotivated because of the crappy recruitment and environments that exist. But what I’ve seen is that young people want to learn skills and they want to know how to win the game. And I think, to your point, it’s kind of like on the culture, the leadership of a business, to build a culture where people can upskill and win the game.
Jud
13:12
You got it. It’s a good way to put it.
Robert
13:17
So what have you seen in terms of programs or teaching training cultures? What’s a tip that you could give somebody listening to this to start building that today?
Jud
13:29
You can start at a community college level? There’s some good programs out there now that teach landscaping, either for yourself if you don’t have the background, or for people you’re bringing into your company and then sponsor their learning. If it costs $200 for the course, pay the $200 when they successfully graduate from the course.
Robert
13:53
And that’s awesome because you don’t necessarily have to do it if there’s already resources around you that you can put people into. That’s awesome.
Jud
13:59
Yeah, so do that. Certainly there’s some good online teaching now. I think there’s a company called Greenius that has some really good training programs.
Robert
14:11
Yeah, we got them coming on the show next week.
Jud
14:13
Oh, how do you like that? I didn’t even know I was giving your next.
Robert
14:16
Yeah, you’re segueing it, everybody. Stay tuned. Next week, the podcast drops on February, whatever it is. Anyway. That’s cool.
Jud
14:22
So those are some good ideas, some options either. Online learning, community college, some great books out there, too. Books once in a while.
Robert
14:34
That’s really cool. And last week when I was at the leadership forum, there was somebody saying how when they hire somebody new, they get a pay bump. It’s like a buck 20 an hour or something like that. More once they’ve developed the new training material for the next person and they have to do it within the first two months.
Jud
14:55
Wow, very cool.
Robert
14:57
And the person asked the question, like, what’s the best way for someone to learn? And somebody said, have them teach. I was like, wow, that’s a really cool perspective, because you got to know what you’re talking about if you’re going to go teach it to people.
Jud
15:13
Yeah, we did that with our safety program. You mentioned safety before, which is so important. But instead of me up there every week talking about safety, and then it becomes blah, blah, blah.
Robert
15:26
Thanks, Judd.
Jud
15:27
Yeah. They tune out as soon as they hear me starting to talk. But I’d have a different form and teach a different topic every week. I give them the cheat sheet, the learning sheet, and they would have to at least read it and understand it before they talk to the group. And it did two things. Like you said, it made them learn up front. And secondly, speaking in front of people is not easy. Not easy at all. And so learning how to do that, it gives them more confidence, and you see these people grow, and it’s amazing.
Robert
16:05
That is super cool. I love that because you’re right. And you know what I find? Speaking in front of people is easy once you’re practiced. And even when we bring on people, we do a bit more zoom now, but before it would be a circle and we’d have people, we had this leader building program. Anyway, people give a takeaway, and they do it in a group environment. And at the beginning, they would be shy and shaking and stumbling, and a month and a half in, they’re just rocking and rolling. No problem. It’s just standard practice.
Jud
16:37
Just got to get past that initial freeze up.
Robert
16:40
Well, it’s awkward, right? I think it’s similar, but I remember the first time when I had little kids and I was starting to read books aloud to them in front of family and friends, and I felt, like, awkward. And now I don’t care. I’ll read a book to you in front of a group of 1000 people because it’s practiced. And I think when we don’t practice something, it can be difficult for our brain to be comfortable doing it. And I think that’s super cool. Having a foreman do a weekly training session is brilliant. All right, so people training, culture of education, what else do you see as a big issue?
Robert
17:13
Holding entrepreneurs back before, like, when you start engaging as a coach, what’s the common thing that people are doing that they shouldn’t be doing or aren’t doing that they should be doing, truly, is.
Jud
17:26
Business knowledge, understanding, running a business? I’d say probably 80% of the people that I work with, they started their company because they were mowing lawns in high school or planting things for their neighbors. And they just enjoyed it so much, they decided, well, I’m going to start my own business. And they’re very good practitioners. They’re great at mowing lawns and edging and planting and even great designers. But they can’t understand why they’re not making any money. Get to the end of the year, and there’s no money in their checkbook. And they’ve worked really hard all that time because they just don’t understand the business side of things. And that’s the challenge I mentioned. I went to the University of Wisconsin in the landscape architecture program. There are no business courses.
Robert
18:25
Isn’t that crazy?
Jud
18:26
It’s crazy. I ended up getting a dual degree in horticulture because there were opportunities to add on electives for business. And so I took business management and accounting and some really boring subjects like that. But, boy, I’m glad I did it.
Robert
18:45
Yeah, right.
Jud
18:46
Because you have to understand, if you don’t understand how a business runs and the cost of doing business, you won’t know how to set your prices. I talked to some of my clients. How are you pricing this? Well, so and so Joe’s landscaping over there, they’re charging this amount per hour. So I thought that must be about right, because they must know what they’re. So you’re right. That’s how they set their pricing. And I say, do you know what your break even point is? What’s a break even point? That’s when you cover all your cost, and from there on, you can start making a profit. Wouldn’t that be fun? And what’s your gross margin on the job? I’ve given them some very simple tools on establishing gross margin, and one company. I said, let’s start with your mulching jobs.
Jud
19:45
And he said, yeah, those are my most profitable, I think. And so went through it. He tracked his labor by hand, but he had his guys write down the labor every day and then how much his mulch was costing him. And about three weeks later, he called me. He said, jud, I feel terrible. I’m sick. Said, what’s wrong? Said, I’m losing money on every single mulch job.
Robert
20:10
Oh, shit.
Jud
20:12
Every single mulch job. Because he was charging $65 a yard for his mulch to install it. I said, well, what was that based on? Well, that’s what the competition is doing. So understand your gross margin. What’s your cash flow looks like? Are you going to be able to pay your employees next week? What’s your backlog? And do your job cost reporting? What are all those things that you need to know to run a business? And be successful. And if you don’t understand it or don’t want to understand it, find somebody again that compliments you, that you can really learn from and become a good business person.
Robert
21:02
That’s cool. So I mean, outside of hiring you, which is obviously we’re going to get to near and how people can contact you, what’s a good resource for someone to check out to start getting their business acumen growing.
Jud
21:14
Again? There’s community colleges, there are online accounting courses you can take. There’s a lot of great resources on business. And it just has to be basic business. You don’t have to get a phd in accounting to understand how to run a good business.
Robert
21:37
No, but I think that’s something important to mention, though, about doing an accounting 101 course. That’s truly the foundation of business. Understanding the debits and credits that go on behind every transaction that you’re doing as a company. And I think a lot of people don’t necessarily view accounting as like the language of business.
Jud
22:03
No, it really is. And it’s simple spreadsheet on what are your costs, what’s your revenue, what are your costs then? What’s your gross margin line and then what are all your overhead costs? How much can you afford? Can you afford to buy a truck? Maybe you have to rent something. What are the key decision makers on making that next big purchase?
Robert
22:31
Yeah.
Jud
22:34
Can you hire that person? Is that person going to help you make more money or is it going to be too much overhead and you’ll end up losing money on the deal?
Robert
22:44
So that’s a good question. We hear this a lot, especially when people are small and they’re just starting to grow their team. When do you hire somebody? Do you build capacity and then sell the capacity, or do you oversell your capacity and then find the capacity to do the job? What’s your take on know Quagmire of an issue?
Jud
23:02
That’s a huge issue, Rob. I’ve seen it both seen, and I’ve been in the position where we’ve done such a great job on marketing and sales that we’ve oversold our capacity. And it’s exciting seeing all the sales come in, but then you get a bunch of unhappy clients that, well, I thought you said you’d get here by June and here it is, middle of July and you’re still not here. Well, we’re behind. We’re behind one year. We actually lost some really good clients because of that. So we oversold our capacity. If it’s a key person that you’re looking for, to add to your team. Make sure that if you find the right person, bring them in, because key people are hard to find and don’t pass up because you don’t have the sales.
Jud
24:05
Because once they come in, hopefully they’ll help you generate the sales to be able to make it happen.
Robert
24:11
Yeah, that’s cool. We always have this thought that there’s always room for a players, right. No matter how strapped we are.
Jud
24:20
You’re right.
Robert
24:21
A players are free. I think this is one of the things I know, at least for me, building a business and for others that we’ve seen struggle with at the beginning of paying a bit of a premium for really great human, but not realize they don’t want to do it because they don’t realize that on the end they actually produce three, four times more than anybody else. How could that be possible? Well, you don’t really know until you find one because then you got an a player that contrasts everybody else. Do you do some work with folks around a players and how to identify them inside the company, how to pay them properly so they don’t leave? Because one of the big problems around people is recruiting, but another one is keeping people, right?
Jud
25:07
Yeah. If you find the right person, you want to pay them well. But I’m of the belief that they have to be able to bring something to the company, like added sales, added gross margin. What can they bring that you can pay them for? I’ll give them a good solid base salary, but give them opportunities to earn more through incentives and bonuses. If they beat gross margin levels, if they beat production levels, you got it. If they’ve taken production from $60 an hour to $65 an hour, they should be able to share in that success big time.
Robert
25:52
That’s really cool.
Jud
25:53
So that’s how I believe you keep good people and you can afford good people that way, too, because I don’t want to overpay and have them get fat and happy. This is a nice big salary. Maybe I don’t have to get out in the field today. You know what I’m talking about?
Robert
26:09
Oh, absolutely. I mean, especially once people are comfortable, then the drive to continue to push becomes difficult to find. Right. And I think sales can be pretty easy sometimes to bonus incentivize with commissions or quotas and that kind of thing, whereas operations can sometimes be a bit of a mystery for people to figure out how to provide an opportunity for variable pay. Do you have some thoughts specifically for landscape companies on how they can provide an incentive for bonus or variable pay on production?
Jud
26:44
You want to set up some measurable goals. And that means you have to have, again, a good business accounting system or a good software system. There’s a lot of good software systems out there now, but you can do it through Quickbooks easily as well. It doesn’t have to be one of the big ones like Boss or Aspire or one of those that you see advertised all the time. QuickBooks is fine for a small company and to a medium sized company, but set up measurables that, you know, a good solid budget at the beginning of your year, and then measurables that you give to the production manager, the production team. How can you beat these now? There’s ways to beat it by cutting corners, and you don’t want to do that because then you just dig yourself a hole.
Jud
27:37
I set up a production bonus plan one year to reduce our indirect overhead. Indirect overhead is time spent driving to the job load, unload, travel.
Robert
27:57
Clean up everything when you’re done.
Jud
27:59
Yeah. So all that indirect time, I said, if you can reduce that by 10%, I’m going to give you x number of dollars to do that. Some flat bonus. And they said, that’s a great idea. And surprisingly, within the first month, they had cut it like 15% and said, wow, how did we do that? And I looked into it and all they did was just reapportion their time. They took it out of, they put their load time into direct time, so they just moved their hours around.
Robert
28:34
They gamed the system.
Jud
28:36
They gamed the system. So you have to be really careful about that. But if you have a good, solid program that you can track and be able to monitor, there are some pretty easy ways to do that.
Robert
28:50
Sure. Well, if a crew is expected to do, let’s say, whatever, ten lawns a day, right? And you say you can do twelve lawns a day and keep Google reviews higher than four. So then you balance speed or efficiency with quality. I think that can be a cool way from a production perspective because speed is great until it kills. So balancing it with quality standards is definitely really important. And I find Google Reviews is a really cool way to incentivize performance and actually make people on cruise in the field become this referral source by asking for reviews. There’s one client who on a monthly basis brings a stack of, I think they’re Amazon gift cards to their monthly meeting. And for anybody who received their name in a Google review, they get one of these $25 gift cards.
Robert
29:40
And actually, last time we did the presentation this morning, and they had 221 Google reviews and just for the sake of this call, I want to see how many they have now. Yeah, 300 plus.
Jud
30:00
Wow.
Robert
30:02
And when you start to look and compare landscape companies and you’ve got somebody with 21 and you got somebody with 300, it’s just like, that’s pretty star. Yeah. Okay. That’s really cool to kind of bring this home. And I ask everybody, an author, speaker, resource that you’ve been inspired by that you think everybody should have a chance to check out. Who would you recommend?
Jud
30:32
Besides myself, of course. Besides yourself. What I did, I got really involved in NALP back when I was young. It was AlCA, associated landscape contractors of America and way up in Wisconsin when I was working, I thought we knew everything in the world and thought were just killing it, which were. We were making decent profits and doing some beautiful projects. But then I started going to these alchemies, and there were people that had been in the industry for years, and they were doing projects three times the size of ours, far more profitable than were. And they shared. They’re very sharing. Our industry is great. On sharing honestly, I think it’s one.
Robert
31:27
Of the most, if not the most cooperative industry I’ve experienced in almost 20 years.
Jud
31:33
So I was able to sit with some of the leaders of the industry and just pick their brain. And alongside learning, there’s one guy named consultant called Frank Ross. He’s not doing a lot of consulting anymore, but that’s where I learned all my business knowledge from. Frank taught me how to run a business. And you get people through ALCA or even a state association, but ask for help and don’t be afraid to ask for help. And some of my best friends are still from when I was in Alca, and I ended up becoming. I got involved in leadership. We go back to, were talking about the foreman leading the discussion. You get into leadership within the national organization. I became president back, way back in 99, I think. And what a great experience.
Jud
32:35
Learn and get to know people from all over the country. Toss. So get involved in leadership. Get involved and just talk to people, and you’ll be amazed at what you can learn and understand.
Robert
32:49
Well, you go to an association like that and say you’re a million dollar company and you’re talking to the $3 million company and the $10 million company and the $50 million company, and they’ve all been there. You don’t have to do this by yourself. I think that’s a pretty cool perspective to bring to this. Jud, so thanks for that.
Jud
33:07
Don’t make the same mistakes that I made.
Robert
33:10
Yeah, exactly. You don’t need the scars, right? You can do it without. If someone wanted to reach out to you, what kind of business are you looking for and how should they reach out?
Jud
33:24
I was brought onto the harvest group because of my design build background and residential maintenance background. I never dealt much with big commercial maintenance accounts, but most of my clients are design build residential and maintenance residential. So I work with companies. I do coaching on a monthly basis. I will come in and do what we call an assessment and really take apart their business. Look at it from eight different buckets we call it, and look at how they’re doing in all these different areas. Next week I’m going to be doing leading a strategic planning session for a company out west in Utah. So I do a lot of that as well. So I like to just use my experience and I joked about it before, don’t make the same mistakes I made. It’s true.
Jud
34:24
That’s the fun I have is I get to tell these horror stories and I’ve told one. The talk I gave last week in Idaho talked about some of my worst instances of my career and I got a lot of good laughs and people said, did that really happen? I said, yeah, that really happened. Don’t do it.
Robert
34:47
And so how should someone reach out to you if they want to connect?
Jud
34:52
Probably email is best since I’m traveling a lot. I always look respond to email within half a day and I don’t know if you’re going to put that up on the screen.
Robert
35:04
Well, it’ll be audio. I’ll put it in the podcast but you can say it. Okay.
Jud
35:08
My email is [email protected] yeah, judson at.
Robert
35:16
Harvest landscaping, sorry, harvest landscaping or landscape consulting.com [email protected] consulting.com yeah, we’ll put in the podcast so it’s in the summary and if anybody wants to reach out to Jud, send him an email. You can also check out the website, right?
Jud
35:37
Yeah, definitely check out the website. It’s the same www in front of it. Harvestlandscapeconsulting.com harvestlandscapingconsulting.com.
Robert
35:49
Thank you for doing this.
Jud
35:51
Thanks for inviting me. Really enjoyable. I could talk with you about this for next couple of hours, I think.
Robert
35:57
Yeah, well, we’ll do another one.
Jud
35:59
We’ll do another one.
Robert
36:00
Yeah, give it a couple of months and we’ll just keep coming back at it. I mean, there’s so much to talk about, right? That business acumen piece for anybody listening to this. Even you can google or YouTube accounting 101 if you want to start to get to know your numbers because it’s also difficult to manage staff if you don’t have any fundamental understanding of what it is that they’re doing. So I really appreciate you bringing that perspective and everything. The people culture of education and learning, super important. Clearly, if someone’s looking for a coach, you obviously know what you’re doing. So if you’re in a design, build, construction or residential maintenance piece, reach out to Jud, see if he can help you out and thanks for listening. Thanks Jud for doing that.
Jud
36:41
Thanks Rob. Appreciate being in front of your 2 million listeners.
Robert
36:45
Yeah, nice. Thanks. The Im landscape growth podcast is brought to you by intrigue, where passionate marketing meets predictable results for entrepreneurs. Remember to like and subscribe the podcast so you don’t miss the next episode. And if you would like to be a guest on the podcast, please visit intriguemedia.com and click on podcasts.