Unlocking Success: Jeffrey Scott on Leadership & Growth

00:00
Rob: 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, 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.
Alright, everybody, welcome back to another episode of the I Am Landscape Growth Podcast. Today I have an amazing guest, Jeffrey Scott. Jeffrey, thank you so much for doing this.

00:41
Jeffrey: You’re most welcome. Thanks for having me.

00:43
Rob: When it comes to the green industry, I don’t think there’s very many people that have the depth and breadth of knowledge and experience that you have. So I’m just pumped for the audience to be able to have you on the show and kind of sharing. So thank you again for doing this. In looking at your background and seeing kind of where you come from, and even just before we started the interview, you’re kind of born into the industry with Glengate. And for the folks that don’t necessarily know you as well as others, can you give us a quick Cole’s Notes summary of how you ended up in the green industry and where you are right now with Jeffrey Scott Consulting and the peer groups?

01:22
Jeffrey: So my grandfather started a company called Scott Pools. He originally started off pumping cesspools and doing small gardening. This was a typical immigrant story. Before World War II, he went off to the war. He came back, and my grandmother saved every army check that he mailed home. So she did all the cesspool pumping with a couple of employees and my dad and my uncle. And she saved that money so that when he got home—he was totally shut up in the Battle of the Bulge, which is in the Ardennes, which I think is Belgium or France. I think it’s Belgium. And so he had to convalesce for like a year in New York City. And that’s when they were doing all the big construction with the big equipment.

02:18
Jeffrey: And my grandfather saw these huge—well, huge for back then—these huge backhoes. He got totally turned on. And then when he finally got home, he learned that my grandmother had saved all his money. So he used that money to buy the biggest equipment he could and move himself into the construction and pool business ultimately. So Scott Pools, which my uncle then took over, and my dad moved down county—that was to a whole other county in Connecticut—and started a spin-off called Scott Aquascapes, I believe it was called. Then he decided to branch out and kind of break away and start his own company. First, he called it the Joe Scott Pool Company. But then—now I’m really telling you some backstage stuff here—

03:20
Jeffrey: My uncle sued my dad because he owned the trademark on our last name. My dad had the logo already designed, and he had to match a name to the logo. It had some rolling hills in it, and it had a gate. So he came up with the name Glengate, and that’s how that was born. And I worked in that since I was a young kid, going to college every summer. And then finally, when I graduated college, I decided to go to Europe. I’m very curious—that’s a big driver. I think it’s my success today, but back then it meant, “Hey, we’re going to go to Europe.” It was sort of a little down economy when it came to getting jobs. I studied chemical engineering. I thought I was going to leave the landscape industry, and then there weren’t that many jobs.

04:15
Jeffrey: So I went to Europe, and I ended up living there for seven years. I got my MBA and did consulting in corporations in different countries. And then I finally came back to the States, went to work for my dad and my family, and there was a lot of family in that little business. I became CEO after a few years. But ultimately, my brothers, my dad, and I are much better off as family than as working partners.

04:48
Rob: Yeah, no doubt.

04:50
Jeffrey: And so I said, “You know, I’m going to get out of this.” And I have a great professional background. So my wife and I were talking, and we’re like, “I should go back into consulting. The green industry needs consulting.” And long story short, that’s why I went into consulting. And it wasn’t a straight line. If we had a beer here, I would tell you the meandering way I got to where I am with my newest business—just like everybody else’s pivots.

05:24
Rob: Sure.

05:25
Jeffrey: But that’s the long and the short of it. And now we’ve got our consulting company. It’s really a coaching company. Yes, we do consulting, but we do an awful lot of coaching, peer groups, one-on-one. And I’ve coached in one way or another about 350 companies. That’s in Canada and the US. I lived in Holland—okay, little sidebar. So I lived in Holland for a few years, went to school there, my wife is Dutch. And of course, if you’re up in the Ontario market—the landscape industry is run by the Dutch.

06:05
Rob: Yeah, it is.

06:06
Jeffrey: So I sort of feel like I’m part Canadian, part Dutch. The Dutch connection.

06:12
Rob: As long as you like tulips, it’s a very good connection, right?

06:15
Jeffrey: Yeah.

06:16
Rob: Okay, so that just speaks again, like I said at the very beginning, about the history of being in the business and having your brain wired around what works and what doesn’t. The scar tissue that comes along with being there in a family business and being CEO. But the tenure—one quick piece, just curious to get your take on it and more of a point of interest than anything else—what would you say about the professionalism and sophistication of your average landscape entrepreneur today versus when you started consulting in the space?

06:46
Jeffrey: Oh, I love that. I thought you were going to ask me something different. Well, I’ll answer the question in my head and your question. Much more sophisticated. There’s more information out there for people to grow quicker. There’s more young graduates of finance—I did lawn mowing to get myself through finance school or business school, and I decided to stick with that industry. Yeah, in a way, you could say the opposite, however—that there’s fewer tradespeople running landscape companies and more professionals. Sort of a trade-off, if you will.

07:31
Rob: Yeah, yeah. It’s interesting. I think we did our first talk for a landscape group seven years ago, and we usually pull the audience around some of the resources that we bring—things like Jim Collins, Simon Sinek, whatever. It was crickets. We asked people if they’d heard of these people, and last year, it was like more than 70% of these rooms had not only heard but had brought them into their leadership teams or somehow exposed their company to these principles and ideas, which I just thought was really cool. So, I mean, obviously, you’re experiencing that. So the point of—wait, did you answer the question that was in your head?

08:08
Jeffrey: No.

08:08
Rob: Okay. What was that?

08:10
Jeffrey: Who’s more sophisticated—the pool industry or the landscape industry?

08:15
Rob: Alright, let’s hear it.

08:16
Jeffrey: And so the reason I—my dad, when he left my uncle, he left also because he wanted to start up a full landscape company. My dad was the founding member of—what is it? The APLD, which is the professional landscape design association. So he was a founding member of the APLD, and he just loved design and landscape and not just the concrete pool. So you might wonder why I’m not consulting with pool companies, since I’m—if you go way back, that’s where I’m from. But the pool industry is a generation or two behind the landscape industry, so it’s much more pleasurable working with landscape companies. Any landscaper listening who has used a pool company as a sub already knows what I’m talking about.

09:15
Rob: Fair enough. We’ll leave it at that. Which is, obviously, then there’s maybe a niche that can be opened up for a consultant or consultancy within the pool industry. Alright, nature of the podcast—what is the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry? I ask you that question. I mean, I have asked everybody on the show that question. We hear all sorts of different answers. We hear some of the similar ones, and whether they’re real or not—debatable. But what’s your take today in the climate that we’re in? What is the primary growth constraint?

09:46
Jeffrey: You know, it is different for different people. In the last two days, I’ve led two peer group meetings and have discussed in depth with, gosh, 30 landscape companies. And I have their numbers. So I’ve got their P&Ls, and I’ve got their pain points, and I’m going to talk about that. But second, let me go in general. So, in general, I think it’s the knowledge, confidence, and attitude of the entrepreneur.

10:22
Rob: Yes, man.

10:23
Jeffrey: It’s all between the ears—what is possible, not knowing? And, you know, nobody quite knows. Not everybody’s born with the confidence to see the future—like the guy who started Chat GPT, right?

10:38
Rob: Sure.

10:39
Jeffrey: You read about him, you’re like, “Oh my God, that guy’s a…” And that guy is an anomaly, like Elon Musk, but where they’re just born with this preternatural confidence. But for most, it’s that self-confidence and the vision to think ten times your size, five times your size. So that’s the biggest obstacle—the confidence. And then I think surrounding yourself with people that can share that vision of what—you know, “You could be ten times the size, really. You could have—you only have to work three days a week if you want to when we get there.” Really? Is that possible? So having mentors like me or whomever to help you identify your goal and say, “No, it is possible.”

11:32
Rob: Yeah, that’s cool. I mean, and it’s the cliché, right? The man who says he can and the man who says he can’t are both right. And so that mindset of what is possible—I haven’t heard anybody say it like that. There have been a couple of folks I would say that are wiser than their years who just came on the show and really spoke to this idea that it’s everything between the ears of the entrepreneur or the leader first. And what I like about what you’ve just articulated is the fact that it’s also about surrounding yourself with other people who see it, too. So it’s like, first is me, then it’s we.

12:08
Rob: So if we look at this in general, before we get into this idea of today’s times and this peer group of 30 professionals, entrepreneurs that you just spoke with, if somebody is predisposed to the idea of 10x and seeing the future, maybe this question doesn’t apply. But for someone who has maybe grappled with the idea of, like, “I want to be bigger, I’m not sure if I can do it,” what do they do? Or what can they start doing to make it more tangible in their own mind so it could become a reality?

12:40
Jeffrey: You know, besides joining one of my peer groups, right? You’re not looking for that answer.

12:44
Rob: You’re like, no, I know, but peer groups is an answer, and we’re going to get there. So seeing other people who have done it makes it real.

12:50
Jeffrey: You’ve got to get—say, from one to ten million, right? You’ve got to be willing to let go and trust other people, which means you need the systems so that you’re not micromanaging. You’ve got to surround yourself with great people. And sometimes it’s get one good person. And then once you have one, you can have two, and once you have two, then you can have three or four. And do not be cheap when you’re doing that. Don’t try to save $2 an hour, $5 an hour, $10 an hour. Great people will make you money. Bad or cheap people will cost you money. If you want to make—what’s that?

13:34
Rob: Yo, keep going. I’m just going to add to that in a quick second.

13:37
Jeffrey: So if you want to make money, get the right person. The P&L will work itself out.

13:43
Rob: A-players are free because they pay for themselves. They make the money.

13:48
Jeffrey: There you go.

13:48
Rob: Right? That’s the idea. And so when you look at attracting or paying somebody—maybe you’ve got somebody on your team currently who you see as a bright spot, or you’re looking for somebody to come in and be a bright spot. And average pay is X. Is there any kind of benchmarking to pay a little bit more? And is there an idea of what that little bit more is?

14:14
Jeffrey: Yeah, I mean, I could throw out a number, but let me give a realistic answer or a real answer. Pay ranges are different in every part of the country.

14:30
Rob: Sure, that’s true, that’s fair.

14:31
Jeffrey: They really are. That’s the one thing—when someone says, “What should I pay for this guy?” I’m like, first off, you need to know your market better than I might know your market.

14:40
Rob: Sure.

14:41
Jeffrey: Getting past that, I can help that person work through it, but you really need to know your market and how tight it is for you to be paying top of the market. You need to know what your market is.

14:54
Rob: Right. And if you say average plus 10%, plus 20%, whatever it might be—

15:01
Jeffrey: I mean, I was thinking 20%, but that’s such a pat answer. You really have to know a little bit more about your own market, Joe.

15:07
Rob: No, that’s cool. But I think it just gives some people a bit of an idea to start with. A lot of these ideas that people will speak to are a little bit more conceptual than say something like 20% as a starting point. And it might not be the right answer, but at least it gives something tangible.

15:21
Jeffrey: So then I will say you can throw money at somebody and still get the wrong—

15:25
Rob: No doubt. Yeah. Money doesn’t cure all problems.

15:29
Jeffrey: Well, right. It’s not the—you know, it’s like chicken and egg. No, you don’t just spend more money—you’re automatically in a better spot. It’s that you need to hire better people, and don’t let the money get in the way.

15:44
Rob: So then let’s get to that for a quick second. Whether—and look internally. So let’s say I’m looking for somebody as a bright spot. I’m not sure if I’ve got somebody—maybe I do. Maybe my trust factor isn’t as high as I need it to be in order to let go of things.

15:57
Jeffrey: It’s not.

15:58
Rob: So then what do I look for in somebody? That’s an indicator that, “Okay, cool, there’s somebody I can let go of things to.”

16:07
Jeffrey: Yeah. By the way, I’ve measured trust literally on personality profiles along with other attributes. And the entrepreneurs, on average, their lowest score in personality profiles is trust. Literally, it’s a big issue. I mean, listen, you know it when you see it, right? You know what a great person looks like. So you have to be willing to hire—not for what you need today, but “Wow, with the right people, I could really be growing. And then in three years, I could be here.” So hire today the person you need to help you run what the company will look like in three years.

16:51
Rob: Love it. And then going to this idea of what the company looks like in three years and back to this idea of knowledge, confidence, and an attitude to plan for three years or five or ten. And someone who’s been maybe looking down in front of them, footstep, footstep—they need to lift their head up to plan for three years. What is a good starting point for how to do that? Some people get caught up like, “Who knows what’s going to happen in the world?” And three years from now—how could I plan that far out? And I’m not suggesting that’s true for people, but if someone were thinking that way, how can you get them through that a little bit?

17:26
Jeffrey: Yeah, it’s hard to do your own planning. It just is, is, is—you’re inside the jar. You can’t see what the outside of the label looks like because you can only look at the label from the inside.

17:41
Rob: That’s a cool perspective.

17:43
Jeffrey: It’s really hard. I would say that you’ve got to have that faith in yourself. Of course, you don’t know what’s going to happen, so don’t let that stop you from just coming up with your plan. You can always change your plan. In fact, you will. And if you start building a team, you involve them in the planning and let them be honest with you on what’s possible and what’s not. But either way, they’re going to help you achieve your dream. And don’t be afraid of failure. If anything, be afraid of success because—meaning you get the team involved, and you’re more than likely going to hit your goals, in which case, you better be ready to keep planning forward.

18:26
Rob: That’s cool. One thing that we found for ourselves as an organization and also working with a couple of others—doing the planning the first time was actually the hardest because all the boxes were empty. And then once we started re-evaluating what we had put in place, we were like, “Okay, that’s wrong, but now this is more right. It’s still wrong, but it’s more right.” And I think people get stuck on that a little bit. You know, it’s a daunting task to fill in what a three-year picture is going to look like in detail.

18:59
Jeffrey: I wanted to add something. When you’re looking for these players, look outside the industry. It is so hard to find the right people inside the industry. And sometimes you spend so much time untraining them of bad habits. But look outside the industry—there’s a wealth of talent out in the blue world. Get past the green into the blue world, and there’s a wealth of talent out there.

19:26
Rob: Trey, is there a story or two of an industry where someone’s found success? Is there any common pattern that you’ve seen over time?

19:34
Jeffrey: Well, not common patterns except the overarching pattern of, you know, “Take out the blinders. Look out into the big world.” I love telling this one story. One of my clients had some health issues, so I’m like, “We need to get you a COO.” He was about $5 million, and he said no. For two, three, four years, the guy was going to cost a lot of money, maybe $150,000 more with bonuses and stuff. And he finally said yes. We got the person—he came from, I think, manufacturing, a much larger company. And what’s the difference between an expense and an investment? An investment takes years to pay off; an expense, in theory, you pay for it that year. This addition to his payroll paid for itself in the first year. In the first year, he made more money than he’d ever made.

20:35
Jeffrey: So get help with the recruiting. You know, we brought in a specialty recruiter—I bring them to all my clients—and it’s all doable. It’s all possible. At some point, I’ll tell you about some of the real issues I’m hearing today.

20:52
Rob: Well, yeah, I was going to say, let’s just segue into it because, I mean, we talk about the general piece, it’s mindset and letting go and trust, broad stroke. But you mentioned this idea of speaking to these folks and having your ear to the ground. So what is the kind of word on the street right now that you’re hearing in terms of the primary growth constraint?

21:13
Jeffrey: The primary? That keeps making me think of Star Trek when you say that—the prime objective.

21:20
Rob: Nice.

21:21
Jeffrey: So everybody has their own primary growth constraint. Clearly, right now, on average, lead flow is less than it was last year. Not for everybody, but for many people, that is the primary—what was it—primary growth constraint. Yeah. So I ran two different peer groups. For one of them, that was a big issue, and we benchmarked everybody’s lead flow and sales for the past two quarters. What marketing is actually working, what’s not? And everyone has a little bit of a different story. The commonality was, yeah, lead flows are down, whether they’re down 5% or 50%. For some, that happened last year. There are a few markets, but for more, it was this year. And so people seem to be—the people issues—I mean, it is an issue. I think it’s going to lighten up if the market continues to soften.

22:31
Jeffrey: And this is all post-pandemic, right? So during the pandemic, it was harder to hire people. So I think things are going to get easier because we’re long past that. I think lead flow and selling is getting harder. We forgot what business as usual was.

22:48
Rob: We got complacent—sending proposals to people without even talking to them, running things up, thinking that you’re going to get the job because you can do the job. You know, all these things have gotten more competitive.

23:00
Jeffrey: So that means companies got lazy, inefficient, and so now they need to work harder, get more efficient, use better technology to get efficient. You’ve got to really be on the cutting edge of that. So that’s one common growth constraint. I’ve worked with a lot of companies to build this, what I’ve trademarked as Destination Company. Become a Destination Company.

23:25
Rob: Sure.

23:25
Jeffrey: Yeah, it’s my trademark. I wrote the book ten years ago, and it’s been fairly successful. So we’ve helped quite a few companies grow past that so that they can keep growing and attracting people. People—for some companies, capital is a constraint. “I’m growing, I’m growing. Now I really need to get serious about capex, and so I’m able to grow. I’ve got the people, I’ve got the leads, got the reputation.” And for companies that maybe paused on the capex, they now have catch-up to do, so that’s going to be a growth constraint for some.

24:11
Rob: But do you find the supply chain though, for capital equipment and expenditures, is available now? I know two years ago, it would be tough to get trucks or equipment or heavy machinery, whatever. It seems like things are rolling normal-ish.

24:24
Jeffrey: Steven, yeah, they are. Interest rates are higher. I will tell you, with interest rates being so high, we are seeing, especially in the commercial world, HOAs—they have to pay more insurance, so now they want to do less work. Now there’s less enhancements. So not only is it business as usual, but these high interest rates are having an impact. I’m sorry, high interest rates and high insurance costs are having an impact. So there’s always a new issue or constraint. I’ve been investing in the stock market for years, since I was a kid, and there’s always one issue that would drive the market up or down. It’s not always interest rates; sometimes it’s something else. And so you can’t just assume that it’s business as usual, or you can’t just assume, “Oh, I’ve seen this cycle before.”

25:17
Jeffrey: No, every cycle is going to be a little bit different.

25:20
Rob: Yeah.

25:22
Jeffrey: Insurance and interest rates.

25:24
Rob: Right. That’s cool. And usually when you break one constraint, another one shows up. So if you break your people constraint, and I want to get to this idea of the Destination Company, then all of a sudden your lead flow isn’t where you need it to be, and all of a sudden you’re staffed up, but you don’t necessarily have the work to support it, or your runway of work is getting shorter. You know, you have to break another constraint. So let’s go back quickly to this Destination Company. You know, we work with people becoming like an employer of choice—so similar. Not to say it’s the same, but similar. What do you see as top one or two things companies are doing that are Destination Companies that other ones aren’t?

26:02
Jeffrey: Yeah. When I wrote my book and I finally got one of my clients to read it, he’s like, “Okay, I read your book, and it’s really about how to build a great company, isn’t it?” I’m like, “Yeah, bingo.” So it’s not just a gimmick? It’s not a gimmick.

26:18
Rob: No, no.

26:18
Jeffrey: Of course it’s not. I’m talking to this—my client, if he’s listening—my client from eight years ago, when I finally got him to read it. So it’s not a gimmick. It’s not about just better recruiting, although that helps. So if you’re a Destination Company, you’re very transparent. You’ve shaken off the low-trust gene, and you have flipped it on its head. And you run a very transparent organization where your employees can give you feedback as well as you can share information with them. And you’re willing to take that feedback—to poke the holes in your bucket. Before you start adding new recruiting sources to fill the employee bucket, you’ve got to fill the holes in that bucket.

27:12
Jeffrey: I’m doing a little segue here. A lot of talk about the NPS—Net Promoter Score, you know, for clients. But you should do it for your employees, and that’s what you should be measuring and constantly fixing and improving—is that internal the ENPS and your culture, from your employees’ perspective?

27:35
Rob: I mean, I love it in a big way. I’m a huge believer in this, and I wish everybody would do it more because then everybody would be probably happier in everything that they do, whether it’s at work or at home, from all the staff that would be impacted by organizations being run that way. It’s interesting though, too, because I find in really high-performance cultures, ENPS will go down because people don’t think their peers can hack it, which is funny and cool. And by down, I mean it goes from like 80 to 70. So it’s like, it’s still extremely high—it’s like world-class stuff. But one of the things I was curious about—there’s a Gallup poll, Gallup International—they did this poll, this organizational health check. There are twelve questions.

28:22
Rob: I don’t know if you’ve heard of this survey. What we found, anyway—we used to do the survey not anonymously, but then we decided to do it anonymously, which seems a bit counterintuitive that you need anonymous feedback for better feedback, but I think you do. I think people are willing to share more when it’s anonymous. But it was a game changer in terms of finding the holes in the organization with feedback. And it stung a little bit at the beginning, but I think if more people could do it, that’d be awesome.

28:57
Rob: So then, going back to this idea of building a great company and finding the holes in your bucket that need to be fixed before you start putting more people into it—what do you see as top one, top two issues organizations are facing when they start to go down this path?

29:14
Jeffrey: Yeah, there are seven pillars in my book, by the way. So this is really just one pillar, or even just part of one pillar. So it’s more complex than that. But to answer your question, you asked for one or two things they need to do to improve the transparency.

29:36
Rob: Well, just to start building this trust up and flipping it on its head, so you find the holes in your bucket. I’m just curious, what are those holes typically from the perspective of symptoms? So if I’m a person, an entrepreneur running a landscape business, or anything really, what are the symptoms that I’m experiencing that would demonstrate I’ve got some holes in my bucket that I need to fix?

29:57
Jeffrey: Well, as an owner, you know what the symptoms are—it’s called attrition. But what are the driving—what are the underlying factors? I’ll tell you from a Latino’s perspective because this will highlight it. A Latino—and I’ve been told this by Latinos, so this is me just conveying information from the source—but they will remember every promise you’ve ever made and not fulfilled. Now, in the Latino culture, they like to make promises because they have such belief in their can-do attitude. They’re not necessarily going to fulfill them all and keep them all, but they believe they will, and they want to. So on the one hand, they’ll make these promises, may not keep them, but if you as Jefe make a promise and don’t fulfill it, they will remember that forever. So what I’m saying here is—you’ve got to keep your promises.

30:55
Jeffrey: That goes for Anglos, all of us, right? We all care about it. It’s the extreme example of don’t do any pre-PR on ideas you’re thinking about, but just roll out ideas that you’re going to follow through. Keep your promises. I think that’s a key fundamental. There’s a few, obviously, but that’s really important.

31:21
Rob: Yeah, and it’s crazy because I think a lot of times people don’t necessarily value the perception of not—do what you say you’re going to do. When you say you’re going to do it, sadly, it seems to be a differentiator these days versus the normal. So I think you’re right in terms of building trust because that’s consistency, right? If I say I’m going to do something and I do it, I know I can trust that you’re going to do the things you say you’re going to do. If I don’t, then how can I trust anything that you’re saying? It makes it really difficult for me.

31:52
Jeffrey: Yeah.

31:54
Rob: So then, you know, attrition and then not following through on promises as being one big thing. What else do you see as somebody from a Destination Company that they could do to really start to move in that direction? Actually, you know what the biggest question is—the trust piece. If I have low trust, how do I build my ability to trust others?

32:17
Jeffrey: Well, I work with a lot—I mean, I’m a coach, and some people call me a business shrink. Half of what I work on with entrepreneurs—and these can be wildly successful entrepreneurs. You know, Tiger Woods has a coach, hello.

32:33
Rob: All the best people in the world, all the best athletes in the world, have coaches.

32:36
Jeffrey: Yeah, exactly. And they have multiple coaches, really. So half of my coaching is psychological. Not, “Oh, what did your dad or mom do to you when you were a kid?” Not that, but—

32:50
Rob: It might play a part, but anyway.

32:53
Jeffrey: But it’s really about wrapping their heads around decisions they need to make. Why are they not making that decision? Blind spots—you’ve got a blind spot here. I’m calling that psychology, but let’s get at this frickin’ blind spot. Why is that? Why aren’t we dealing with that? Whatever. And so the psychology of the organization—how do we get the organization to buy into changes? So quite a bit is psychological, right? You want to be good in business—what should you study besides business? Psychology.

33:28
Rob: And then what do you find are typical blind spots entrepreneurs don’t know about?

33:33
Jeffrey: Everyone’s got their own blind spot.

33:35
Rob: It’s all over the place.

33:36
Jeffrey: It’s all—you know, I’m going to go back to my peer group. So we talked a lot about how you pay salespeople in this one peer group—hiring salespeople, making sure the sales commission plans don’t backfire, making sure the cost of the sales team—you can afford it long term. Long term means more than one year, like it’s sustainable. One of my clients, whose name shall remain—who shall remain nameless—he’s had a problem for years, and I beat up on him for years, and he just was very conservative. And even though the sales compensation was working to his disadvantage, he really valued consistency and stability. And it had to do with his personality. I can’t tell you the real personal stuff going on there, but there were some real personal things that he was just trying to overcome in his life.

34:38
Jeffrey: So he wanted stability, and so he lived with it. He finally fixed it, and this has been going on for years. And yay—yay to get—because what would happen was his sales team, some of them would win big, he’d have to do big payouts, and he’d be losing money or breaking even or making 4%. Your sales team will never be completely aligned with your P&L, but it should be somewhat aligned. It can’t be like a huge gap.

35:08
Rob: Yeah, they can’t be making heyday when you’re losing money.

35:14
Jeffrey: It might happen that one salesperson will, but really you’ve got to manage it so that the company rises and falls, generally, more or less, with the sales team.

35:27
Rob: Yeah, that makes sense.

35:28
Jeffrey: He finally addressed it. It had been his blind spot because of some personal issues that I really can’t get into.

35:41
Rob: He wasn’t blind to it. He was ignoring it, essentially, yeah.

35:45
Jeffrey: Yeah, but he finally got around to it.

35:47
Rob: Cool. So then this actually highlights a point I hear some people talk about. I see a lot—can you just speak to the idea of entrepreneurs sometimes running businesses to serve the business, almost to their detriment? So they’re running themselves ragged to try to make this business go versus designing the business to serve their life. Do you see that? And can you speak to that idea at all? What shifts for people when they start to do it the other way around?

36:15
Jeffrey: Well, I thought you were going to say something else, so can I add a third possibility there?

36:21
Rob: Yeah, of course.

36:21
Jeffrey: Some people set up the business to serve the employees to the detriment of the business.

36:26
Rob: Oh, interesting. That’s a cool perspective.

36:30
Jeffrey: You know, we have one client we’ve been working with who—he’s so focused on helping, very spiritual, giving money away, giving people jobs to help them out in the company, and looking to keep his guys employed year-round, even though he didn’t quite have everything set up that way. He took chances, risks, and made mistakes that really hurt his business, which then hurts everybody else. You know, I liken it to a spaceship. Do what you want, but don’t poke a hole in the spaceship. You know, don’t harm the spaceship that’s giving us all oxygen to breathe and getting us from A to B. Right. We’ve got to protect the spaceship at all costs because that’s the livelihood and the life of everybody in the spaceship.

37:25
Jeffrey: And so a business has to be protected in that way. Now, if you’re saying the owner gives themselves too much, like the example I gave, or gives too much of their time—like the example you’re giving—they run the risk of ruining their life. There’s a little cliché, or not a cliché, but here’s how I would say it. If you spend so much time with your business, it’ll be like you’re having an affair, and your spouse may leave you because you’re having an affair with your business, and that’s real. There are a lot of entrepreneurial divorces for that one reason.

38:14
Rob: You see it in all industries, all businesses, yeah.

38:16
Jeffrey: Yeah.

38:16
Rob: With work instead of business, but same thing.

38:16
Jeffrey: Yeah, yeah. My husband’s having an affair—or my wife—with the business. And I think our industry is very wholesome. We’re down-to-earth, we believe in nature, we’re homegrown. And I think our families are very important to us, really, in our industry. I mean, I can’t speak for every industry in the world, but I do think the green industry is a bit of an exception there.

38:45
Rob: And the openness and camaraderie within the industry is something that I haven’t seen in other industries either. So I think you’re right. There is something to it.

38:53
Jeffrey: And so you owe it to your family to set—and you owe it to your company to set the example. By the way, let’s come back to trust. Here we go. We’re coming full circle. If you can trust your employees, hire great employees, set up good systems and trust them, then you can let go and let them run things. And that shows respect to them. You want to build a Destination Company? Empower your team, let go, and get out of work on time. Set the example for them that it’s a healthy business environment.

39:27
Rob: Love it.

39:28
Jeffrey: So I think that all ties together, really.

39:30
Rob: Oh, 100%. And it goes back to mindset. Some people think they’ve got to be the first one in, the last one to go, in order to set the example versus “I’m going to work out in the morning, come in at a good time, leave at a good time, have dinner with my kids”—being an example. So I think that mindset is super important.

39:45
Jeffrey: There are two kinds of companies. Those companies that when the owner leaves, it kind of falls apart—it’s not really set up properly. And then there are companies where, when the owner leaves, it does better.

39:59
Rob: Yeah. And you’ll never know unless you leave.

40:02
Jeffrey: You’ll never know unless you leave. And then if something needs to get fixed, you come back and you make sure the first few days you’re going to be focused on identifying the issues and improving the systems.

40:14
Rob: Love it. Okay, so you said back in the peer group what we’re experiencing now in terms of growth constraint was lead flow. And you said some things are working, some things aren’t—different strokes for different folks. But was there a common thing that wasn’t working and a common thing that was?

40:31
Jeffrey: Everyone had something different that worked for them. I think the common thing that wasn’t working is when you didn’t have a broad enough marketing approach.

40:43
Rob: Oh, it’s like many pillars, so they’re kind of like people were maybe too dependent on one channel?

40:50
Jeffrey: One channel or a couple channels that you’ve always been dependent on and you haven’t really refreshed your marketing approach.

40:58
Rob: And so if you’re talking to someone right now who’s struggling, what would be one thing they could look at?

41:03
Jeffrey: Well, I’d want to look at everything they’re doing. If they’re telling me, “Well, I used to get it from referrals and builders and people who see my trucks,” I’m like, “Okay, well, there’s a lot missing from that plan. So let’s look at all the typical marketing approaches and fill in.” If you’re only getting business from digital and you’re struggling because even digital goes up and down—

41:34
Rob: Sure.

41:35
Jeffrey: I’ll be like, “Okay, let’s look at your power partners. You don’t have enough partners bringing you business?” Right? Let’s look at some of the other factors.

41:40
Rob: Okay, that’s cool. You’ve heard of Jay Abraham’s Parthenon Approach?

41:46
Jeffrey: I’ve heard of Jay Abraham. I believe I’ve heard of him for years.

41:50
Rob: Yeah, he’s been around for a long time. But anyway, he talks about the idea—twelve pillars of lead gen, right? So how do you diversify across twelve pillars? So if any pillar breaks, the building still stands. For anybody who’s listening, that’s a good resource. All right, so a couple of things, then—someone wants to get in touch with Jeffrey Scott, join a peer group. How do they do that?

42:06
Jeffrey: Well, we have a website: www.jeffreyscott.biz. B-I-Z. Now, down south, they spell Jeffrey E-R-Y, but I’m originally from Connecticut, so it’s R-E.

42:22
Rob: Yeah.

42:22
Jeffrey: Isn’t that funny?

42:23
Rob: Kind of important.

42:23
Jeffrey: Yeah. Go to the website, and there are landing pages on our peer groups and our coaching and consulting. There’s a landing page for our events we run. I have my own podcast—you’ll find that on the website as well. And so yeah, that’s the first resource I would go to. You can follow me—I’m pretty active on LinkedIn.

42:46
Rob: Yeah, okay, awesome.

42:48
Jeffrey: So you can follow me there as well.

42:50
Rob: And then, one author, speaker, or resource that you think would be worthwhile for people to check out?

43:00
Jeffrey: I just lost your visual. I’m going to assume you’re still there.

43:03
Rob: I am still here.

43:05
Jeffrey: One author, speaker, resource that people should check out—there are so many. I’ve just read a book with all my clients called Die with Zero.

43:18
Rob: Okay.

43:19
Jeffrey: And it’s all about how to live your life and spend your money so that you’ve maximized your fun and happiness and aren’t just working like a dog to save money so that you have all this money when you die. It’s sort of a cliché, but when you read the book, he actually has some novel ideas that I honestly hadn’t really thought about till I read his book.

43:46
Rob: So Die with Zero—who’s it by?

43:49
Jeffrey: I’d have to Google it, but I think there’s only one.

43:50
Rob: Sure. Either way, we can Google it. Actually, I’ll do it right now, just for the sake of anybody listening.

43:55
Jeffrey: Yeah, he’s got some novel ideas in it that actually changed my approach on how to deal with money with my kids.

44:02
Rob: So that’s one good resource—Bill Perkins, for anybody listening.

44:07
Jeffrey: Yeah. My book, Destination Company—you can find it on Amazon. Become a Destination Company—I don’t make any money selling books, so—

44:26
Rob: No, no, that’s cool.

44:27
Jeffrey: But there are seven pillars there that will help you build a better business. It’s not a big book—I wrote it so that you could—I’m like, you have a short attention span. So I wrote it so it’s going to be easy to get through with some good stories, but it’ll definitely help you.

44:49
Rob: Awesome, man. So check it out: jeffreyscott.biz, social media, LinkedIn active—really appreciate you doing this. Die with Zero, I’m going to have to check it out. I mean, that’s a selfish question. Most of the questions I ask on this podcast are selfish—I’m just trying to learn. So I really appreciate you sharing and for everybody listening to the show. So thank you, Jeffrey Scott, for being a part of it.

45:07
Jeffrey: Hey, I really appreciate it, Rob. Thank you so much.