Turning Winter into a Profit Engine w/ Martin Tirado (SIMA)

Intrigue Media (00:32)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth Podcast. I have a ⁓ special guest today, Martin Tirado. Thank you so much for doing this, Martin. We got the CEO and Executive Director of SIMA, Snow and Ice Management Association. Thanks for doing this, Martin. Appreciate it, man.

Martin Tirado, CAE (00:48)
Oh yeah, glad to be here Rob, thanks for having me.

Intrigue Media (00:51)
I mean, you’ve been at the helm or a part of that organization for quite some time. So you’ve seen a lot. but for the sake of the audience, can you just give them a little bit of a rundown of like,

what the association is all about and what you’ve been up to up until today and like what your kind of core focus is now.

Martin Tirado, CAE (01:09)
Yeah, absolutely. it’s the elevator speech is education resources, support for people, professionals in the snow and ice management industry. And that creates a lot of different things from certification programs to best practices training to, what we’re really kind of known for and it’s kind of funny in some ways is our annual symposium. A lot of people would even use that as like, hey, are you going to SIMA this year? Well, it’s really actually the snow and ice symposium and call it SIMA

You know, it is the one time a year though where we have the four days together where we’re kind of celebrating the successes we’ve had and also looking at the challenges we have in the industry and trying to overcome those and be better in that regard. you know, it’s creating standards. also getting involved in a number of legislative or regulatory environment programs. really it’s continuing to professionalize the industry so that it’s not just someone could just get a truck and apply.

do this work. They certainly can. There’s really very little to no barrier to entry. But that when people that are out there in the field and certainly in the worst weather conditions when everyone else really kind of public should be home or inside in some manner and you know our members were out in the field making sure that transportation lines from parking lots to service entries to entries to streets, roads and highways are accessible and safe and how do we provide the essential training to

to help companies and people do that work better.

Intrigue Media (02:33)
Yeah, safely and all in the spirit of keeping others safe. I mean, really, yeah, if we’re not taking care of this stuff, it can get out of hand and people are stuck. So, I mean, it’s like a kind of unsung heroes of the winter. So we appreciate everything that you’re doing to raise the professionals of the industry, especially for the 10 year. Like you’ve been doing it for almost 20 years.

Martin Tirado, CAE (02:55)
Yeah,

right. Yeah, exactly. Sort of date yourself, but time kind of flies when you get busy, I guess, huh?

Intrigue Media (03:01)
Well, it’s awesome though.

And to be dedicated, you know, to that for so long, it has a lot of advantages, right? Having that continuity of leadership, it’s a big deal. So how many members do you have right now in Sima

Martin Tirado, CAE (03:14)
1200 in US and Canada is um, it’s really our entire May really anywhere that’s uh, For this inclement weather winter weather is kind of like and we also aggregate more tours I think just the nature of a lot of commercial industry is towards larger urban areas Now you’re in Ontario. So like, you know in Canada, our largest member base is in Toronto, of course That’s where the largest population base is and even the US to kind of just

Intrigue Media (03:18)
Mm-hmm.

Martin Tirado, CAE (03:43)
naturally just, we’re, I will put this, it’s companies, landscaping and other outdoor services company that really kind of look at snow and ice as ⁓ as an entrepreneurial ⁓ business model and a way to be a successful business person. And typically that does happen in commercial, commercial properties in larger populated areas.

Intrigue Media (03:53)
Mm.

Yeah, that makes sense. natural also residential snow removal is a serious pain in the butt. it’s a difficult proposition. So it makes a lot of sense. as you segue into that whole approach of like, you know, people that are in the outdoor space as entrepreneurs and look at snow as a business model segues perfectly into the question of the show, which is what’s the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry?

Martin Tirado, CAE (04:08)
Yeah.

Intrigue Media (04:31)
ice industry from your perspective. And before you answer, one of the things I love about having executive directors, CEOs of associations is like the aggregated observation that you have over so many, like 1200 members. That’s, that’s a lot of businesses that employ a lot of people that earn a large portion of revenue when you put it all together versus one company.

So what do you see over the years that’s maybe evolving, but what do you see today as the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back?

Martin Tirado, CAE (05:03)
Yeah,

so I’ll break this down into kind of two things. And the first one is actually the easy one. And that’s the controllable, controllables versus the non-controllables. What we can’t control is the weather. So a growth restraint has been fluctuating weather. And the last couple of seasons, for example, and I’ve been through seeing the highs and the lows is.

Intrigue Media (05:13)
Mm-hmm.

Martin Tirado, CAE (05:26)
Low winter weather, it’s hard to just increase revenue and increase growth when it’s not snowing or there aren’t ice storms. So that though, you can’t control. So I actually consider that one the easy one. So what do you focus on is like, what can you control? And what you can’t control is do you have the systems, the people and the company, company culture and culture means a lot of different things. But to me, I always go to like, culture is like, is your

Intrigue Media (05:37)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Martin Tirado, CAE (05:54)
is your company run in an efficient and effective manner. You have the operating systems from using technology tools and resources. You have good updated equipment. They’re utilizing it to the best of its ability. And you have people that appreciate working there and are rewarded as such. If you have those, that’s where you can grow. And we have companies, ⁓ assignment member companies that are growing exponentially by thousands. ⁓

10 or more percent every year some of them are growing at least you they you see some of the social media posts are growing even faster than that and you know we the Semaphoundation conducted a profitability study this past year and one of the main data points that came out of it is the average snow and ice company their profitability is 19 % so we’re kind of showing is that you know this isn’t like a business with really small margins because it’s done in

in emergency services ⁓ manner. And when you do that, the profit margins can get pretty good if you do it appropriately and efficiently. I think the companies that are like, like I said, kind of restate myself, so I make sure it’s entirely clear. But if you have the operations and operating system, you have the people, and you have the organizational company culture, those companies are set up for growth, and they are growing.

Intrigue Media (06:53)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I mean like that, that’s a lot. And so we’re going to break this down kind of maybe each bit by bit so we can get a bit more like ⁓ tangible for folks that want to like start leaning into this stuff. But before we do that, which we’ll come back to in a minute, but because you mentioned it, I want to bring it up quick. You’ve hired a research company to, you know, essentially create a benchmark study across the industry that members of Simon get access to some people.

Martin Tirado, CAE (07:22)
Yeah, okay.

Intrigue Media (07:41)
know about it, some people love it, some people don’t know about it. What are you talking about and where can they get it?

Martin Tirado, CAE (07:47)
yeah, so it’s at sima-foundation.org. So that’s the charitable foundation of Sima and members can get it for free. Non-members, you have to pay for it. And it’s really, we ended up getting over 150 companies that responded. It was an in-depth survey. So we knew that some people, it’s easy to survey responses get low in really every industry sector. Cause you have to submit a…

a good amount of your financial data as to where are your expenses, how do you manage your equipment is at least owned, what do you have for full-time personnel versus part-time. So it has a number of different data points and it’s on that foundation website. That’s where they can get it. I’m definitely coming from the associations where we’re used to having a community and we really like to promote our community.

I’m a proponent of benchmark studies, put it that way, because you don’t.

Intrigue Media (08:37)
I love it. So

I know Stephen Wolf. I had a chance to meet him in Simon a couple years ago and actually had him on the show. And he actually asked the association if he was allowed to share some of the stuff from the benchmarks. He didn’t want to like, you know, overshare anything like that. And you guys were cool with it. And we actually promoted the whole study. But I just think it’s it’s it’s unique. We actually work with, you know, dozens of associations, like 40 or 50 of them. And I have yet to see anybody

Martin Tirado, CAE (08:41)
yeah, good. Okay, yeah.

Great.

Yeah.

Intrigue Media (09:06)
⁓ on a regular basis outside of NALP, what they do with like the economic study, the benchmarking study that helps in landscape entrepreneurs understand the space across the whole, economics of landscaping. But you guys really, and you do it, seems like annually where you’re providing like this really clear and like profound insight through this benchmark study. And so what’s the whole take from your philosophy behind that? I know you’re about to get into it. just want to T.

Martin Tirado, CAE (09:30)
Oh yeah, no exactly. When we did it in 2022, so now it’s every three years. Some of it’s year to year doesn’t change that much, it’s, how do you know you’re doing a good job or how do you compare to your peers? You don’t really know unless you go out and find out what they’re doing. And that’s the power of things like peer groups. A lot of times they share that information, but people that aren’t involved in those or you want to get a broader audience in your peer group, you go to benchmark studies. And what it does is it aggregates.

Intrigue Media (09:38)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Martin Tirado, CAE (10:00)
⁓ A number of different pieces of data from companies. In this case, it was where their income and expenses were coming from, including things like contract structures and other data point that we surveyed. And you compare it like, know, is the money I’m spending on marketing, sales and marketing, is that equivalent to what others do? I don’t know. Maybe I should be spending more, maybe less. What about insurance costs? What about equipment costs? Personnel, all those things.

Intrigue Media (10:27)
payroll as a percentage of revenue.

Martin Tirado, CAE (10:29)
Yeah, right, exactly. if, you know, that’s a way to take a look at like, hey, you know what, can I be potentially be a little more efficient and you take a look at how that peer group is doing, that larger peer group, and then, you know, helps you kind of just kind of tweak your business practices and get, you know, try to get a little bit better. What can you improve on? What needs to be, you know, analyzed or adjusted? And that’s really kind of the benefit of it. I think companies use a lot for things also like,

organizational structure, like hey, how many people should we have in the field versus regional area managers versus who are the kind of the executives or we have too many people, know, what’s the how much, you know, profit are you making on per, you know, per person, for example, and we did one in that too. And that’s on the summit foundation. It’s the workforce study, we broke down a number of different positions in the industry and found out kind of like

How much are they compensated? What kind of benefits do they get? What other resources do have access to? it work trucks? Canadians, you’re in a much better place with things like health insurance, for example. But that’s retention aspect for US companies is what your health benefits are like and even like retirement accounts, things like that. So you kind of put them all together.

Intrigue Media (11:35)
Sure, yeah,

Martin Tirado, CAE (11:47)
these benchmark studies, help compare your company and see where you can improve.

Intrigue Media (11:51)
Yeah, well, and like, mean, speaking personally, ⁓ we had hired like a, financial controller, like fractional CFO firm to try to get benchmarking for like our industry as a, marketing company. and it was really difficult to find. So, I we did it off of like a small sample set that, you know, they had some perspective, but like to be able to just download a report from you guys as a member of Saima and have 150 company benchmark like that.

I just think it’s remarkably valuable. so if you’re listening to this and you are a member, Simon-foundation.org. And if you’re not a member, well, maybe this is the time to think about becoming a member. Yeah, exactly. It pays for itself in the first click. Cause like, I mean, the study you must, I know those are tens of thousands of dollars, if not more, like hundreds, that is not an inexpensive endeavor for one company to take on. That’s all.

Martin Tirado, CAE (12:28)
Yeah, you get the report free. Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Intrigue Media (12:43)
Okay, so that was like the teaser for the association stuff we’ll talk about later. But you brought out this idea about the controllable systems, people and culture. And so I’m listening, I’m an audience person listening to the podcast. And I’m like, yeah, okay, that sounds great. Systems, people, culture, gotta have good systems, good people, good culture. My people don’t necessarily show up to work right now. I hope they do.

⁓ I don’t really have time for building systems, so they kind of just have to watch what I do and then they’ll figure it out. I got some good ones that are doing it without me. It’s great. culture seems fine. We’re good. Cultures, you know, cultures. What do mean culture? So if you were to prioritize systems, people and culture, and I’m, you know, not to say that this is going to be written in stone, but out of the three, which one do you think is the highest leverage opportunity that we need to get right? Kind of as a priority.

Martin Tirado, CAE (13:33)
So to me the overarching umbrella is culture. That’s good because the other items fall underneath the umbrella. It’s the people, the systems, the training and what resources do your people have to that. That all kind of comes into the culture. One of the things I tell, I think about too with culture a lot as well too is like, your people like to, can you tell, they like to come in every day? Do they like to do what they do or are they just doing this because hey you know there’s a

is a paycheck at the end of the week that comes in on this. Do they get along? Is there some camaraderie that is with them? Is there a healthy competitive spirit, not trying to one up somebody, but more of like how are we trying to all build each other up? I mean, it’s almost like the better the team does, everybody benefits from that. Those are kind of some of the things that kind of come into culture. I mean, how many did I like?

I’d be kind of a downer if I came into a place every day and everybody just kind of came in and got their coffee. huh? I’m gonna get out of now. Yeah, you you go, I guess we’re going to the job site if you’re in landscape and you’re in the office staff is, they just kind of, everybody’s quiet and there isn’t kind of, you you have to have like, and to me it’s like, this is where it kind of, you know,

Intrigue Media (14:34)
Yeah, and those… they exist!

Martin Tirado, CAE (14:55)
People who are leaders in companies have to create this culture of like, know, let’s create some energy together. Let’s help and support each other and talk to each other. I a speaker this past summer that one of the messages she gave was like, hey, how well do you know your people? If you don’t, go find out what it is that you need to know about them. Hey, you know, how’s their kids doing? How’s their parents doing? Spend some time kind of getting to know your people. The more you, that’s the, you know.

emotional intelligence part of being able to connect with people. So that’s what I rate as the highest, kind going back to your point. think everything kind of rolls from that kind of, that part of it. Because you’re right, okay, let’s break down the systems part of it. So some of the systems, okay, well, what’s the software that you use? What’s your tech stack? Most companies now have a tech stack because you need more than one software. You need your payroll, your HR, you need your operations efficiency. So are they efficient?

Intrigue Media (15:31)
No, no, I love that.

Martin Tirado, CAE (15:54)
they work together well? Do your people like to use them? If they hate using them, can you do it? Is there an analysis that needs to be done that maybe you’re not in the right system? There’s so many new tools out there on the software side that are making companies so much more efficient and effective that you should be utilizing some manner of that system. Even here’s another part of your tech stack is your CRM, your customer relationship management.

Intrigue Media (16:22)
Mm.

Martin Tirado, CAE (16:22)
How are your sales team being supported in that by using that kind of system and what kind of reporting comes out of it? So that’s kind of, you know what? So if you have one that people like and they use it effectively and they enjoy it and you provide training for them to use it, doesn’t that make people kind of happier and they want to think? Yeah, exactly.

Intrigue Media (16:40)
Well, it makes their job easier. It takes friction out of

the system. They’re not entering the same, you know, email address into three different places, which is like a minute thing, but still adds up over time.

Martin Tirado, CAE (16:51)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. that’s the systems like and some of the system again, in snow and ice, you need to have the things like the weather tracking, you need to have your service report tracking. That’s because that’s the liability protection. So you can kind of go and say, hey, you when you think that a property wasn’t serviced effectively, well, you know, it’s snowing an inch an hour right now. When I was there two hours ago, we have the records and software that kind of shows are doing it. Yeah, we’re going to come back out when it’s done.

But I can’t catch Snoke from falling out. We did the first service. That’s in our scope of work. And now it’s relatively clear. So you can have a retail space or office so that people can get there in a reasonable manner. It’s not just entirely neglected. And then we’re going to come back again. But you’ll be able to prove that through your software system. that’s to, again, the Achilles heel of our industry. We all know this is a slip and fall.

Intrigue Media (17:18)
Yeah.

Right.

Martin Tirado, CAE (17:45)
that kind of systems part that goes into protecting the company and the people when a slip and fall case does happen. And everybody’s susceptible to them. They always happen.

Intrigue Media (17:55)
Right. Yeah. And I mean, if you can just prove that like, you did your due diligence and you did your job the way you’re supposed to do it, then means slips and falls happen. It’s snow and ice. Like that is what it is. Like there is no way to avoid it completely, but making sure that we have records of what’s going on without having to go dig it up, bury, take pictures on a regular basis, you know, have something that takes the friction out of that system. Super helpful. This people thing though, I think is really important. This culture component. So

Martin Tirado, CAE (18:05)
Mm-hmm.

Intrigue Media (18:20)
You know, the idea of bringing energy and having crews come into work that want to be there as opposed to say, just dragging their feet, grabbing their coffee, getting in the truck and going to a job. How does something like that start? Like, let’s just say for the sake of argument, I’m running a business or someone’s listening to this running a business where people do kind of drag their feet a little bit and they show up, they get their coffee, they get in the truck, they go, I’m really busy as the owner. You know, I’m just happy they showed up and they’re getting to the job and they’re doing a decent job.

I don’t know if I got like, how do I, how do I get energy into this group? Like, how does that start?

Martin Tirado, CAE (18:54)
Yeah, know, good point. I some of it I think is offering some, it doesn’t have to be massive things, but even just some small incentives to make people have them work a little more efficiently and effectively. know, you have people that do that and they do a good job and they don’t need to have any more reinforcement. That’s fine. You know, let’s face it. It’s hard to have a company where it’s like, everybody’s a superstar at every level. just, you know, sounds great when you talk about it and a lot of times it’s unrealistic, but.

One of the things I go back to too is just like…

Jim Collins, there’s a few other people at Top of the Street, is like, who’s, know, do you have the right people on the bus, and are they doing it effectively? Effectively, it’s like, the right people in the right position that are supported correctly and have some of that training and resources, they should be doing an effective job for you. And there’s a number of different ways to kind of incentivize. Typically, it’s whether it’s financial, whether it’s maybe a little bit more, can…

Intrigue Media (19:31)
Mmm.

Martin Tirado, CAE (19:55)
If you finish this in an effective time, you go home earlier that day because you know, you know that’s that’s value to people. So this gets back into knowing your people. Hey, you know somebody you know he’s got a his his son is a on the high school football team. You know during football season he needs to leave at 3 o’clock. He wants to get to the games at 5 at that start at 5 o’clock or overtime. It is you know what? Can you do something that kind of helps that person? You know finish up or they can get there earlier and be flexible from that.

Intrigue Media (20:18)
Yeah.

Martin Tirado, CAE (20:25)
team help support whoever that is so that they can get homes and then travel or do whatever they have to do so they can go watch their son play that you know playing that game. Those are kind of some of the things you know it’s gonna be a little bit different for everybody and you need to find out what those are and help incentivize them but I know in the field if you kind of can collaborate with if you want to go more like tactical real tactical stuff there’s a lot of different things that I’ve seen of just like hey if a team does this

Intrigue Media (20:47)
Yeah. Well, that’s kind of what I’m getting to

is what’s a story or two of some people that you’ve seen do this really well. Sorry, you’re keep you’re going to go. So you’re on the right track. This is the whole this is the whole idea. You’ve seen so many companies, right?

Martin Tirado, CAE (20:52)
Yeah.

Oh yeah, some of it.

Yeah, yes, I just heard is like if you make them almost their own entrepreneur like hey you get this done and a good you’ll actually get up what I’ve seen is like you can get a little bit more. You’ll get more compensation. They get paid more because you’re more efficient, more effective. We can kind of already move on to the next the next project. The next job you know in snow and ice. One of the ones I’ve heard is. Is there so the big part of the industry is a turnover?

Intrigue Media (21:27)
yeah, massive.

Martin Tirado, CAE (21:28)
Sidewalk crews are terrible. They’re notorious for this because it sounds, yeah, I just got done yesterday snow blowing and shoveling eight inches of heavy and wet snow. And man, that was just my driveway. I was exhausted by the end of it. I can’t imagine, yeah, yeah, you go out and I’m older too. I got done with it. I’m also thinking like, this is a 20 and 30 year old’s game too. Like that’s one of the, that’s a different issue, but.

Intrigue Media (21:31)
Yeah, cause it’s tough work.

Yeah.

Right.

Martin Tirado, CAE (21:57)
But you think it sounds easy until you go out there like, I gotta go eight hours and doing some heavy lifting and shoveling. So one the things that I’ve seen, again, basic tactic from a couple of companies is retention bonus. You stay on and all the assignments that you’re given for that whole winter, we’re gonna give you more money at end of the year if you go to all of them. I’ll say, hey, you know what? It’s March, I’m kind of burned out. God, can I just get out of this one last storm? I’m tired. I don’t care anymore. You know what?

There could be two, three, $500 waiting for you because this is the 15th time you’ve been out shoveling all winter and they’re going to give you some extra cash and any other retention bonus. That’s just a real simple thing that companies can do. Make sure that people are always there and showing up, especially in the areas where you have high turnover. Shoveling sidewalk, yeah.

Intrigue Media (22:48)
Yeah, well, mean, and I

think what you’ve just articulated there too is like a reasonable, fair compensation plan that aligns with the company goals. So you’re supporting somebody and rewarding good behavior that helps the company do what they need to get done, which is show up and clear the snow. And having that consistency bonus or whatever you want to call it is such a beautifully simple model to like help reinforce the thing that you’re trying to get done. I think that stuff is often really overlooked.

And, and, you know, there’s this idea that everybody’s got to be a superstar. but there are some people that maybe just do want to come and get a paycheck. That’s okay. ⁓ and then we can make a culture around them. That’s supportive through pay compensation structures. But I’m curious from your point of view, what bright spots have you seen when it comes to, or contrasts where you see leaders of companies who bring energy to their group versus leaders that are like, you know, for the sake of contrast, yours.

who are themselves kind of dragging their feet. And what does that do to the impact of the group?

Martin Tirado, CAE (23:45)
You

Yeah, I think that sets the, you’re really setting the stage or setting the environment kind of comes from all levels, but certainly at the top, it’s got to come from that, the lead people in the company and that sets the tone for everything. And most of the companies actually see the ones that are really growing, the ones, cause you know what? I’m going to get a retention bonus if I stay on, incentive to go there. Even if I’m a driver, there’s a retention bonus. And maybe if I’m more efficient, like you look at production rates.

Intrigue Media (24:16)
Mm-hmm.

Martin Tirado, CAE (24:17)
There’s

production rates in the field as well too. Like, hey, you know what, an eight foot plow should be able to, in a four inch storm, you should be able to clear an acre in, I don’t know, say an hour or whatever it is. You should be able to do those in time. And if you can kind of show, you know, the boss or the owner of the company that you’re able to do that, at least as efficiently as industry production rates. Hey, you know, maybe there’s a little bit of an extra financial side, you know? There’s some companies out there that aren’t

Everyone’s kind of thing like I’m struggling to maintain people here. There’s some companies that aren’t It’s because they’re they’re treating their people well

Intrigue Media (24:51)
Yeah, can you tell us

a story of some, yeah, training their people, like what’s the story of somebody that you’ve seen doing a really good job and how do they approach it?

Martin Tirado, CAE (24:59)
Well, they get in touch with their community too, and they’re always recruiting. It’s, hey, you know what? It’s like, you know what? We got these two people. Can you tell me, you got a couple of friends that want to work with their hands and be outdoors and don’t mind some hard work, but that’s also very rewarding? Yeah, go talk to them and see if they’re interested. Talk to them. It’s like you turn into this effect of just a referral network.

Some companies are really good. They kind of get to know their community of, you know, it’s ethnic groups, it’s people that you go to church with, people who are on little leagues, things like schools. It’s connected with people that, you know, that people that know each other. And ⁓ if they buy into the team environment, then you become your own referral mechanism. Then people want to work for you.

And you don’t have as big of a problem as the person who’s just, you know, can you show up and we’re not going to give you any attention. We’ll give you a snow blower and go do some sidewalks and tell us how it went. Yeah.

Intrigue Media (25:49)
Yeah, big time.

Yeah, at the end. Yeah.

Well, and it’s interesting you say this too, because there is a common theme in all the most successful entrepreneurs that I’ve met, not just in landscape, but across industries where they almost identify themselves as a training company that just happens to do a certain line of work. And they put so much focus on developing their people, whether it’s soft skills, hard skills, training and development is like priority one.

Martin Tirado, CAE (26:17)
Mm-hmm.

Intrigue Media (26:25)
It seems like you’re experiencing something similar with the most successful growing companies now.

Martin Tirado, CAE (26:29)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and just here’s a good story I heard from a member company had to do with with compensation. He was telling me that yeah, he looks at what landscape and snow compensation studies provide, but he actually goes outside of that and finds other industries. He’s like, know, really good account managers and business development people, there’s like 10 other industries they can work in, insurance, construction, manufacturing.

If you want to be an account manager, that role is duplicated in many other fields. So I take a look at what the work environment is at those types of industries. And I want to have our company at the same level or better. Because people are going to leave. It just does at times. I just want to make it when they do. That’s a really hard decision. A person told me that once, and I just thought it was a great story. was like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Intrigue Media (27:24)
Love that.

It does make a lot of sense. especially when it comes to account management and business development, mean, that is relationship building and relationship maintaining more than anything else. Fair.

And so like, we don’t necessarily have to look at somebody who’s got experience. We can actually look for somebody who has it not like in the industry. So then let’s just change gears for a quick second and get back into Saima. You know, in terms of raising the professionals of the industry, there’s just no question that it’s happening. also, as from the perspective of somebody who attends, you know, 15, 20 shows a year for many years, you guys do the best job with all of your social hours.

You put people into events where there’s natural opportunities to bump into each other, play games, network, build relationships. I’d say you guys do the best. Like year over year, I’ve had the opportunity of coming, I think it’s three years now. What is the thing that people need to know about Simon that people don’t necessarily understand?

Martin Tirado, CAE (28:21)
So one thing that we, I think we get confused a lot of is the large companies think that we’re good for the small companies and the smaller companies think that, ⁓ we’re kind of just, we just represent the big, you know, huge companies. And my thought is it’s not easy, but we have a space for everybody. And I kind of named it as like, you know, it’s a community. The community is only as good as the people that are involved in it. And the more that we get involved

that’s you know your when it snows and they have they bring in their seasonal or their event people and they have a thousand people out in the field you know one time they had five people they had ten people they were small they they you know they got again they they put together the processes the people the culture I’m guessing in some manner maybe it wasn’t that thought out but they did that to get large and you know there’s also the concept too of the the bigger companies aren’t always better there’s always like you know

There’s some companies that are smaller and they want to stay that way because they’re focused on quality. We want to have high quality customers that appreciate the services because they are highly impacted. Think hospitals and health clinics, for example, or 24-7 distribution facilities like we know the ones that are really growing. We’d rather just hold on and want to those kind of service them at a super high level. And we’re not trying to be the this, you know, get our name out on billboards or whatever it is.

Intrigue Media (29:31)
Sure, yeah.

Martin Tirado, CAE (29:43)
you know, quietly do a good job and run a nice company. And when those people, like you said, when you go to a conference and you kind of outside of the educational events, you meet, you network, and you talk to other people, you just learn so much there from each other and the different things. put it this way, I think the large companies can learn a lot from the small companies, just particularly things like customer service and relationship. And the small companies can learn a lot from larger companies, I think on scaling. How do you get to the next, okay.

How am going to get from a quarter million to a million? If I get there and it’s going pretty good, how do I get?

then get to the point where you feel like you have a comfort level. But that’s where I think it’s like, don’t come with a preconceived notion of we’ve

pigeonholed into a certain field. We’re here for everybody and we think we have resources for everybody too.

Intrigue Media (30:29)
Yeah, well, I mean, you’ve niched into you are snow and ice. So, you know, it’s it’s you’re not for everybody. You’re for everybody in snow and ice. And yeah, I just think you guys have done a really good job. And as much as people ask if I’m going to Sima this year, and they mean the symposium, my answer is hopefully yes, because you guys do a really good job. So if I’m not so if I am a member, and I’m thinking, maybe I can get some more out of this membership like

What’s the best one or two ways that a current member who isn’t necessarily fully leaned in can do to get some more value out of their membership with you guys?

Martin Tirado, CAE (31:03)
Well, I take a look at either writing something in our snow business or online digital publications. We’re always looking for people to write articles. We’re always looking for speakers that are symposium. There’s some people that say public speaking and they run away as fast as they can. if you want to get out of your comfort zone and grow yourself a little bit, one way to do that is try to improve your public speaking. And you know what? If it really sounds like there’s no way at

that sounds really scary. We have ones where we panel presentations and panels are really easy. They’re almost like this kind of conversation where get three or four people on a panel. Yeah, but that’s a really easy way to kind of get your feet wet into public speaking. And then we also, we have some committees that meet on things like standards and best practices development. They’re always looking for participation on. We have one that’s just launched this year on.

Intrigue Media (31:37)
Yeah, totally.

Martin Tirado, CAE (31:53)
legislative issues. We’re trying to get one or two people from every state and province that are just going to be kind of a, you know, basically a point person on any legislative issues that’s happening in their state or province. And there’s ones out there particularly related to salt applicator and chlorides being run off into water, freshwater sources. So those are some ways that some simple ways to kind of to

take more advantage of your membership. That’s kind more like you’re getting involved. would say that one thing that’s kind of hidden, I would say, is we offer a $200 training credit for our certification program. So even if you don’t want to get it, if you have a person on your team that wants to become an advanced snow manager, which is really kind of core training for the field, you can use $200 annually of your dues. They really make your membership dues half the cost. That goes towards the cost of that.

Intrigue Media (32:42)
Plus the report.

Martin Tirado, CAE (32:44)
Yeah, plus a report and there’s a lot, you we have online trainings. Yeah, right. The reports are free. The foundation reports are all, research are all free to download.

Intrigue Media (32:46)
It’s free!

Well, I’m just saying

that the membership pays for itself pretty quick.

Martin Tirado, CAE (32:55)
Yeah, did you ever notice it’s like anything? It’s like gym memberships aren’t expensive if you go five days a week. you were heading in a New Year’s resolution, if you go five days a week for the month of the January, you don’t go to the gym for the next 11 months, you know it gets canceled. Your gym membership does. So it kind of goes back to your point. Like you got to utilize it. You got to log in, access the resources. We have some great resources to download just on

Intrigue Media (33:02)
Right. It’s a good.

Martin Tirado, CAE (33:21)
time lines they can use as a sales tool. know different best best managed practices and standards that people can use to make sure that they’re in compliance with those because that’s that helps with the liability protection like hey were you you know if you have a case that does go to court or even if it’s in pre litigation the attorneys and insurance representatives are asked hey did you follow Snow and Ice industry best management practices well we have we have the downloads for that you can kind of

do it yourself, kind of pre-packaged. The easy thing to kind of put yourself through that so that when that does happen, say, here, here’s the document. Yeah, we did this. Here’s how we comply with it. And this came from an industry organization where those best management practices, one thing that it wasn’t just like you and I sat down and, let’s crush these out and come up with some bullet points. It took some time. We had to put together a group of, was, you know,

Intrigue Media (33:55)
We did it.

Martin Tirado, CAE (34:13)
10 to 15 subject matter experts, they debated these things over the course of multiple meetings. then after it’s developed, we review those every couple of years. it’s constantly getting new input from new sources. It’s almost like it’s crowdsourced, but I take crowdsource the hard way versus technology-driven crowdsourcing is a lot of Yeah, old school crowdsourcing. Hey, you know what?

Intrigue Media (34:34)
Right, right. Old school crowdsource.

Well,

and like, just, I can’t stress how important it is for people to understand the value of that type of thing to essentially get the brightest minds or very bright minds put together in a room, facilitated, distilled, summarized, reported on, given back essentially for free if you remember. And then the training piece, can you just help people understand what training’s available for them? Cause like you get all these people that are recruiting, you know, if turnover is such an issue, some of it is, some of it isn’t.

But you need to get people technically trained on how to do some of this stuff. There’s some theoretical training, there’s on the job training, but what kind of training resources are available through Simo?

Martin Tirado, CAE (35:14)
Yeah, it’s, they’re virtual or on your own. We have our certified snow professional. That’s the highest level of certification. Advanced snow manager, which is kind of the, know, field managers, operations leaders in the field that really kind of, you know, cover some of the essential areas such as snow and ice science, know, weather, efficient operations, equipment.

And then we also have like, you know, our safety training, is a newer training, which is like sidewalk crews and then equipment operators.

That’s all just their equipment that, yeah, you know, we’re an association. We don’t put people in the equipment. They need to do that kind of at their own facility. We kind of give them, this is like the core. You need to have this foundational knowledge and information that helps you be able to be like, okay, I’m now ready to be a successful operator because I know all the different facets of what happens in a winter storm.

Intrigue Media (35:51)
Right.

Yeah, well, I mean, if you’re a tight end running a button hook and you don’t know what a button hook would get called on the field as a play, it’s hard to run it. But if you can study the playbook and then get on the field of practice, you’re going to be way further ahead, right?

Martin Tirado, CAE (36:17)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go. Yeah, good point.

Intrigue Media (36:20)
I that. All right. Well, appreciate you for doing this. If someone wants to look into Saima, what do they do? Who do they talk to?

Martin Tirado, CAE (36:28)
yeah, just go to Simon.org. I can reach out to me, really, can anybody that’s on the contact us, particularly in our membership department. We have a 24-7 chat bot too that does some automated response for questions, but if the bot can’t answer it, a person does actually respond to those questions. so sometimes if, caveat, if you do that at two in the morning, you’re not gonna get a live person. That person will come at eight a.m. We have people that are, you know, whatever.

Intrigue Media (36:51)
Yeah.

Martin Tirado, CAE (36:54)
maybe it’s 7 a.m. Eastern time or something like that but really just go to sima.org and there’s some just a number of resources there. I always direct people to go to our snow and ice resource center. It’s at sima.org and there’s a number of different articles and resources that are free so we’re not even asking you to even join yet. Go take a look at those, download them for free, read through them.

To me, if you enjoy that and you’re getting something out of it, the next step beyond that is to become a member. Because then you get so many other resources too, and the member directory, we’re just getting more more traffic, all that kind of stuff.

Intrigue Media (37:29)
Epic. And then the symposium is in June this year, where or 2026 Cincinnati.

Martin Tirado, CAE (37:33)
Cincinnati, Ohio.

Yeah, it’s always a third or fourth week of June this year. It’s the third week of June, Cincinnati, Ohio, yeah. And we and you know this. We love Canadians and we hope that Canadians and snow and ice that they love us back. But I’ll admit I’ve gone to Canada several times basically from being at working at Simon. I love going to Canada. I think I always have a good time. Fun time. They’re really very friendly people and.

Intrigue Media (37:42)
Epic.

Martin Tirado, CAE (38:01)
I always enjoyed my trips, whether it’s Ontario or I was in British Columbia last spring too and had a great time.

Intrigue Media (38:08)
Yeah, beautiful spot. Well, maybe that’s why we love the industry so much, because I find everybody in snow ice landscape, the camaraderie, the community, the openness is just it’s unparalleled. And we just want to say we appreciate you for leading the charge. Everything snow and ice for whatever 18 plus years. Martin, for all you do and serve in the industry. So thank you for doing that and everybody else for listening to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth podcast.

Martin Tirado, CAE (38:24)
Right, yeah.

Thank you.