Justin White (K&D): Clarity of Vision = Faster Growth (Here’s the Playbook)

Rob (00:01.539)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth Podcast. Epic guests, happy bladed birthday. We got Justin White on the show today. Thanks for doing this,

Justin White (00:11.646)
Yeah, I appreciate you having me on excited to talk about all things landscaping.

Rob (00:16.727)
Very cool, man. I mean, you were kind of like born into this industry. You probably have such a unique perspective as you’ve grown through the whole thing. I know a lot of people have probably seen you speak or on social or online, whatever. But Cole’s Notes give people a little perspective of like where you’ve come from. And then if you could just even let us know a little bit more about the JW group just quickly so we can kind of have some context and then we’ll just jump into it.

Justin White (00:41.39)
Sweet, sweet. So yeah, literally born into it. Actually, my dad over the weekend, I was at his house. He was showing me some pictures because I was asking him for a talk I’m doing in New Orleans this week. If he has any old pictures and we dug some up where I’m like four years old, my brother’s two and my sister was just born and we’re like digging out this lemon tree, like trying to dig out this route so we can put in some like bike, bike jumps or something, you know, like at a very young age, I had a shovel in my hand. So

It was cool growing up in the industry. I never thought I’d become a landscaper or join my dad in business. I always saw it as a summer job, but right around 17, 18 years old, I really started to enjoy the sales side of it and enjoy this idea that you can tell a client, you know, build this vision and name a price and then you get paid that money. You know, let’s say you get paid that 20 grand, whether you do it at a day, a week, a month, a year, you know, you’re getting that 20 grand and.

if you can optimize that, you can actually make a lot of money. And I started to realize this isn’t an industry that people go to as a backup plan. Well, maybe it is, but it can also be an industry where you can go into it as a career and you can make a lot of money. And so I kind of dabbled in and out with the landscape stuff between maybe 17 to 22, 23 years old. And then in 2015, everything really changed. I had been working in the field for the majority of my career. I’m 25 years old.

My parents decide that they’re going to get a divorce and they’re going to, know, basically start to think about shutting the company down or shifting the way it’s being ran. You know, it’s a mom and pop operations at this point. And with my mom doing the books and the backend and my dad running the field, you know, a divorce kind of it’s, it’s a potentially a game ending. Exactly. So my mom decided to move out of state, which was challenging, but maybe worked for the best for the business because it gave me the opportunity to step in.

Rob (02:25.963)
It divides the company, right? Yeah.

Justin White (02:36.558)
and take over a CEO of the company. And that’s exactly what I did. We created clarity around a vision. We hired business coaches. We did all these things. And we went from 1 million to 10 million in about five years. And then boom, we hit COVID and COVID happens. And it was a chance for us to double down. We brought in some talent. We had one of our most difficult years ever in 2021 from a profitability standpoint, had to kind of reshift the company. And then we went on another run from, you know, basically 2022.

January of 2022 to December of 2024, call that three years, we went from 10 million to 20 million in revenue. And it was just, oh, it was wild. So 25 was a bit of a level set year for us. We got some really nice leaders in place. We reshifted the organization of the company. Funny enough, I took on more direct reports, not less. So I went from having two or three to now I have eight or nine direct reports.

Rob (03:14.807)
Boom.

Justin White (03:33.13)
as of today and we’re on our next big mission in hyper growth mode in 2026. A lot happening, that’s a K &D story. I started the JW group a couple years ago just because I started coaching people and I needed something to have them write a check to besides the landscape company, honestly. And so I did that, that led me into having so many coaching clients and I was like, this isn’t sustainable. So I created the disruptors, which is a,

Rob (03:39.703)
Banging.

Rob (03:48.705)
Right.

Justin White (04:00.938)
online community based for landscapers where we can come together as a peer group and we can learn from each other rather than this, you know, one-on-one coaching that just required too much of my time. So the disruptors is a place that people can join as a, as a membership. It’s 300 bucks a month. And you can ask any question you could dream of 24 seven and get answers to those questions from your peers, which ultimately is, I think the best value. I mean, everyone could go hire a business coach, but

Rob (04:11.523)
Mm-hmm.

Rob (04:23.808)
Awesome.

Justin White (04:29.038)
You know, sometimes asking your peers what, what they’re using for technology or how are they hiring or firing? It’s the best. So there’s a level set for us to kind of build on.

Rob (04:38.605)
It’s amazing, man. It’s really interesting you say that to us. I’ve been an EO for quite some time through the Entrepreneurs’ Organization. And there’s this concept of the answers in the room.

Justin White (04:44.578)
Yeah.

Rob (04:48.716)
So it’s like there’s this tendency to always pay these big speakers to come like tell you what’s up about how to build a culture. But like they’re presenting to 400 entrepreneurs that probably employ something like 40,000 people total in the room. And so it’s like maybe the answer is in the room and the power of when the roundtable talks and the peer discussions happen is almost more actually more often than not, it is more valuable than, you know, somebody on stage. So the fact that you’re building this platform. So if somebody wanted to check out the disruptors and are thinking about joining one to learn more, where

they go?

Justin White (05:19.758)
Yeah, go to Jay white group.com and there you can sign up for a monthly newsletter that I just dropped. First step, first issue went live in January. I’m going to do that every month. And then if you want to check out the disruptors, we’ve got a seven day free trial. So you can get in, you can check it out, see if it’s very different. There’s really nothing out there on the market right now. So, so a lot of people are not sure what it’s going to be like. So I say, Hey, 77 days free, check it out. Go from there. So yeah, go to the website, check it out or.

Rob (05:43.939)
Give it a shot. Cool.

Justin White (05:47.916)
Send me a DM on LinkedIn or Instagram or whatever. I’ll get you guys hooked up.

Rob (05:51.713)
Sweet dude. So this is perfect because how long was the company running before 2015? Like when was the company founded?

Justin White (05:59.596)
It was founded in 1986. So I took it over right about 30 years, 30 years in business.

Rob (06:01.879)
Okay.

So you take this 30 year old company, give or take, add about a million in revenue, and then you establish new leadership, and in the next five years, scale to 10 million. What was the difference?

Justin White (06:21.742)
You know, there’s a lot of little things, but if I had to pick one thing we did differently than, than my parents for the previous 30 years is we created radical clarity around the vision of where the company is going in a long-term basis. So we created the goal of 30 million by 2030. It was a 15 year BHAG and that allowed people within the company to start dreaming bigger. And I basically removed the ceiling from the business and that allowed everybody that was already there to actually start like.

seen it as a career versus maybe just a job that they had until they got their next job.

Rob (06:56.631)
So it’s interesting you could talk about clarity of vision, because I think it’s an area for lot of owners where they might rationally understand that it’s important, and maybe it’s clear in their minds, but the idea of communicating it clearly to everybody else either falls short or doesn’t happen at all, or it’s just difficult. So what was it?

to create that like extreme clarity, like how did that happen or was it just simple? It’s like, hey, we’re going to 30 million by 2030. We’re gonna say it again and again and again. Let’s go, here’s how we’re gonna do it. Was there any how involved? Like how does that communication flow?

Justin White (07:35.586)
Yeah, I actually think the the what the 30 million by 2030 is the least important part of the process, but it’s an important part of the process. Nonetheless, the most important part of the process is that you create belief within the company that your team can do amazing things. And that really is the beginning of everything, because if the story we always tell ourselves at that point was we’re a million dollar company, we have 50 employees and

That’s just what it’s going to be. We’re never going to get bigger than maybe two or 3 million because we’re in this tiny little microclimate of a market and no company has ever reached 5 million in our market. And in fact, a lot of our competitors that we knew through the California Landscape Contractor Association told me so when they heard my vision publicly, they said, Justin, I love your vision, but you can’t do that here. You know, you’re going to have to, you’re going to have to go to LA. You’re going to have to go to San Francisco. Like there’s no companies that have that kind of size.

Rob (08:21.82)
Mm-hmm.

Rob (08:26.627)
you

Justin White (08:32.972)
you know, and here we are, you know, 10 years later, proving them wrong. But it’s like, you have to have this unwillingness or this, this, this like unreal, yes, unwavering belief in your ability to accomplish great things as a company. And then once you find out your, your mission, your why behind everything for us, it’s to raise the bar that starts adding fuel to the engine. And then you figure out, okay, where is this rocket ship going to go?

Rob (08:42.549)
unwavering belief.

Justin White (09:01.103)
And that’s when we established that 30 million by 2030, just to give ourselves something to grab a hold on. And I, I repeated that constantly. We would say it in, if I could get on a podcast, if, know, this was kind of pre podcast, there wasn’t a lot of podcasts in 2015, but if I could get in front of landscape management magazine, Lana landscape magazine and share our story, it would just continue to concrete this idea that we are going to become this bigger company one day and,

Rob (09:06.509)
Mm-hmm.

Justin White (09:30.402)
I think a lot of entrepreneurs will create a vision. They’ll roll it out to their team in a big town hall type of a venue and maybe buy tacos or whatever for their team. And then they don’t really talk about it again. They go back to business as usual and maybe once a year, if they’re lucky once every every 90 days, they’re talking about it. But I think you have to say it at least once a day to one person, which is, yeah, it’s constant.

Rob (09:51.467)
It’s just constant. Well, and bring the focus to it, right? And then where focus goes, energy flows. And if it’s not gonna happen from the leader, then where’s it gonna happen? So yeah, I think it’s brilliant. the question of the show is what’s the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry? So I mean, without it, you kind of maybe have answered it, but I’m just curious to get your take on it explicitly before I start asking a bunch of more questions about what you’ve done.

Justin White (10:11.662)
Yeah.

Justin White (10:18.528)
It’s interesting. That’s a great question. And yeah, I think my simple answer is clarity and clarity of vision. I think that’s the biggest growth restraint. And I would say that kind of sits on top of this false belief system that we’ve adopted from our predecessors, from the previous generation of the landscape industry, that this industry is hard. It’s hard work. And it is, but you don’t…

have to go out and work in the field every day and be an operator and work side by side to be a professional and to be successful. That was a belief I always held and to some degree I’m still fighting that today. So you have all of these amazing entrepreneurs that have this guilt anytime they’re not in the field or they’re not in the pickup truck or they’re not in front of a client or on a job site. And if you’re in the office, if you’re not in the trenches, you’re not working. Right. And so I think

Rob (10:57.805)
Hmm.

Rob (11:08.929)
Right, not in the trenches.

Justin White (11:13.984)
That’s kind of the belief system that’s false, but ultimately it comes down to building a vision that your team can grab onto and create radical clarity around where you’re going.

Rob (11:22.435)
Yeah, that’s cool, man. Well, and I think all of that, you know, and this is what has been common in these questions, like the answers we’re getting from the most successful entrepreneurs in the green industry. And I think it’s probably true in pretty much any industry is it’s getting right between their ears to then have that, like that story about I can’t, I’m not working if I’m not in the field. Like that’s this narrative we’ve got in our minds and we have to shift away from that.

Justin White (11:37.432)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Rob (11:49.252)
And so you’re talking about how you have shifted away, but still maybe hold onto it a little bit. C’est la vie, it’s a work in progress. So what was it though for you in 2015 that said, we’re shaking this, let’s go.

Justin White (11:54.189)
Yeah.

Justin White (12:02.538)
It came from a survival mode mindset. was, I really, once I got a taste of working for myself, I did not want to go work for anyone else. I wanted to work for my dad and I wanted to be an owner and I wanted to work for the employees. I wanted to work for our team rather than working for a boss. And so I came up with a bit of an economic scenario of how are we going to pay

myself, my brother, my sister, my cousin, and my dad and my mom. Cause even though she retired, we saw this payout. need to, you know, she built a company for 30 years. So we have six people theoretically that we have to pay. Not, not, not four or five households, but six different households that we ultimately have to fund as an ownership team. And so I just took our company at like a million and said, well, we need to be at least 6 million if we want it just to just to get by.

Rob (12:58.305)
Right, for this to make any sense at all. Pressure creates diamonds, right?

Justin White (13:01.622)
And then we need to go like pressure creates time. then I was like, well, then we need to double it because things are going to be more expensive in the future. So then I came to 12 million, 15 million. And then I said, that’s too easy. Let’s call it 30 million and let’s put it out to 2030. And then we got this like 30 by 30 thing going easy to remember. People can grab onto it. And I was at the time I was studying a Jensen landscape that was ran by John Belay. John Belay was a

He didn’t know it, but he was a mentor of mine. had followed him and tried to learn from him today. We’re good friends. And you know, I, they were doing like something like 20 something million. And so I just said, I want to beat Jensen landscape. So I want to be 30 million by 2030. So that’s, that’s kind of how it all came about.

Rob (13:47.617)
It’s awesome. I mean, it’s pragmatic at some level. And then you transition to aspirational with clarity. And then you just start wiring your conscious and your subconscious mind to figure out how to do it.

Justin White (13:50.797)
Yeah.

Justin White (13:59.71)
And that’s the key that that wiring between your conscious and subconscious. I started to discover this in 2018 after a pretty, pretty bad injury. broke my femur and I was out for, for like six weeks, completely out, like in a hospital bed, not able to really walk.

Rob (14:16.629)
Is it a cool story? I kind of want to derail where you’re going with this, but.

Justin White (14:18.796)
Yeah. so I’m, I’m, I’m with my brother and one of my best friends, Troy, and, we’re dirt biking way up in the California mountains, like way, way up there. And I was coming back on the road. It was a fire road, like a dirt road. And was doing a little wheelie and just spun out the wheelie, just looped it. And dude, next thing you know, I’m like waking up and you know, the legs, the legs broken, like it’s clearly there’s no. Yeah. Yep.

Rob (14:36.131)
No.

Rob (14:43.373)
So like he kind of fell back and just kind of landed straight legged and…

Justin White (14:47.822)
tried to run it out, think is what I did. Yeah, but I was like fourth gear on a 302 stroke. Just such a, like I’ve broken a lot of bones, raced dirt bikes my whole life. And so I get, get hella backed out. get a, I get, it’s a whole thing. get the campers in there gave me a truck ride out to the road. I finally get to the fire truck like 45 minutes after on a log road. Like it was like the.

Rob (14:49.219)
I’m gonna lock it off.

Hey.

Rob (15:00.226)
Right.

Rob (15:04.323)
Jesus.

Rob (15:10.559)
On the log road, I’m assuming, like a logging road. So that’s really smooth. dude.

Justin White (15:14.392)
The worst pain you could ever imagine. I get in a fire truck. They give me a hour ride back down to the mountain to meet the helicopter. get in the helicopter. Finally, I get the fentanyl from the helicopter and the pain subsided for a little bit. And then I got flown out and had emergency surgery, the whole thing. the, yes. And so I had some, I’ve had some kidney issues my whole life. So I couldn’t really take a lot of pain medicine.

Rob (15:24.866)
Right.

Rob (15:30.485)
Yeah. So that, so that led you to rewiring.

Rob (15:40.515)
Mmm.

Justin White (15:40.64)
And so I’m like in the hospital going through this like really low pain medicine protocol. And so I’m having to do a lot of meditation and I’m starting to discover this like subconscious mind that you can get into this state you can get into. And this is like six, seven hours of nonstop meditation, really deep stuff to a point where you’re disconnected from your body. And through that process, I like discovered this whole nother like self of, of my, my subconscious. I started to connect with that deeply.

And that’s led me, I think, to where I am today in so many ways, just being able to like rewire your brain out of necessity for pain management gave me this like new access of, of self belief and, all that fun stuff. yeah, anyway, that’s a whole nother.

Rob (16:25.027)
So yeah, but walk us through it a little bit. mean, this is a big thing, right? Like we talk about it all the time and so do lot of entrepreneurs, especially successful ones, about how you gotta get your head right. And I’m always selfishly trying to figure out how to bring value to the audience. I’m like, okay, so how do you do it, right? And everybody’s answer’s the same, but they’re all different. They’ve all been on different journeys, they all have different stories, they’ve all been through different issues.

So when you talk about this meditation, so A, you’re like trying to research how to get rid of this pain without taking meds. And then B, you found this practice, what was that? And then C, you access this new thing, how did that go? Like, can you break it down for us quick? Just to give us a kind of, like a little bit of like a highlight.

Justin White (17:04.62)
Yeah, no, I love, I actually love this cause I’ve, I I’m on a bunch of podcasts and we’re always talking about the same topic and this, isn’t one of them. So I love this. So yeah, I, so I go through this, this three or four days in the hospital, I get back to my house and we got like a hospital bed in the living room that I’m in. Cause it’s full setup. My, my wife, amazing. She, she took care of me and I’m relearning how to walk, relearning all this stuff. And, and the pain was so intense.

Rob (17:21.549)
Full set up. Yeah.

Justin White (17:33.166)
Um, they basically had to put a rod through my, my femur bone and put it back together. So I had a lot of metal in me. It was an intrusive surgery. No, no, it’s, it was nuts. So yeah, it was intense and I don’t recommend it, but, I found this book and it was, it’s called the injury is the way I think is, is what it’s called or some of that. And it talks about.

Rob (17:37.069)
Jesus.

I don’t mean to laugh, but Jesus, that’s a lot.

Rob (17:50.474)
No, of course not.

Justin White (18:02.562)
people who’ve had major injuries, car accidents and so on and so forth. And they basically say like, you can, you, can never run from the injury. have to go through the injury. You have to accept it and you have to, you have to go through that process. And so it starts to talk about meditation and reconnecting the mind and body. And what has happened when you break a bone of that, of that magnitude is you become disconnected with your, with your body, you know, from the hip down, basically, I couldn’t really feel my leg.

Rob (18:30.551)
Sure your nervous system’s a wreck, you can’t figure out how to make shit move.

Justin White (18:34.72)
Yeah. Yeah. Like trying to get your foot to move up and down was like, would take like five minutes of concentration to get my foot to move. Like it was really, really weird and, disconnecting and, really discouraging. And so there was like these moments of depression of why me. And then there’s these peaks where you’re like, my gosh, I’m making progress. Things are going well. I’m not in pain, but every day would be this roller coaster of emotion and physical pain. And then I started to look into.

Carl Jung and, David Hume and these philosophers who lived, some lived in like the, you know, 10 11th century. Others lived, you know, in the 17th and 18th centuries. And they started to talk about this idea of the subconscious and connecting to your subconscious. And then I stumbled onto Tony Robbins and Tony Robbins talks about how basically you have a full pharmaceutical, pharmacy in your brain.

Rob (19:29.246)
Lab. Yeah.

Justin White (19:31.596)
Like it’s all within you, like everything that you need is already inside of you. You just need to figure out how to access that. And so I started to really do this deep meditation and try to release this, like, you know, pain medicine that was already in my body. And I started to go back to the injury and what was really fascinating is because I went about 45 minutes from when I broke my leg to when I got treatment from a professional, I went through that process of my brain actually releasing these incredible levels of endorphins and adrenaline.

where my whole body was completely numb for 20, 30 minutes. I had no pain. Yeah, it was subconscious. Full shock.

Rob (20:04.631)
Sure, yeah, yeah. Like you did the thing, you just didn’t have any control over it. Full shock response, like I gotta take care of this, my body’s not gonna be okay, so do the thing.

Justin White (20:14.956)
Yeah. So if you can get into a deep in a meditation, you can start to do that thing and your pain starts to subside. And then, I, I coupled that with some, acupuncture and shock therapy where the acupuncture is actually like, you know, giving you electrode magnetic therapy into your, into your muscles, making them pulse. So, you know, it’s really interesting, but you start to get this mind body connection.

Rob (20:35.65)
Yeah.

Justin White (20:40.576)
And so that was kind of like how I did it was, was reading these books and studying these philosophers and understanding things at a deep level. And then I started to realize like, you know, this could actually be very useful in my business life. If, if I was able to teach my team how to rewire their brain to believe they’re capable of doing things that seem completely impossible at the time, our leadership team can become something that is absolutely unstoppable. And.

Rob (21:03.17)
Yeah, buddy.

Justin White (21:09.666)
I think a lot of the biggest and best companies in the world, like the startups, like the Ubers and the Apples and the Googles that are started in these dorm rooms, they do this in, I think mostly on accident, but they find this rhythm that their team has and they start to build this belief system that they’re gonna change the world. And I just tried to bring that into the landscape industry. I tried to bring that into our team. And I think I have, and I think we’re still actually making progress on that.

Rob (21:28.961)
Mm-hmm.

Justin White (21:38.69)
of this belief system that, you know, K and D actually re yes, we do landscaping. Yes, we know lawns and what have you, but our true purpose of why we’re here is we’re actually, we’re here to reinvent and change the landscape industry forever. And if we do our job right in 50 years, there’s going to be some 22 year old getting out of college or maybe not even in college saying, I want to build something like K and D built. I want to do it the K and D way. And so we often talk about that of like in 50 years.

We want to be referenced as one of the companies that change the industry. Yeah.

Rob (22:11.436)
Love it, buddy. And the cool thing, something you said earlier and you just kind of alluded to it now around this idea of like, if I could take this, you know, remarkably necessary, and it’s almost insane how there’s a silver lining in, you know, the whole thing, because where would you have had the opportunity time to study and meditate for those prolonged periods over a period of time like that?

So I mean, I mean, you’ve probably already considered that, but it’s pretty amazing. But then, but then your, your kind of response is like, how can I help other people? If I can get this into my leadership team, level up their heads will be unstoppable. And something you said earlier, which is something I love, cause I think a lot of people have it wrong when they think about starting a business. Like I want to work for myself. I think what you said though, you’re like, I want to work for the team, not for a boss.

Justin White (22:39.096)
Yeah, no doubt.

Justin White (22:59.448)
Mm-hmm.

Rob (23:05.035)
And I think that’s a common mindset we hear around the most successful folks. They literally look at leadership as a responsibility. It’s an opportunity to serve. And they really are trying to lift people up everywhere. Like the most successful and by successful, I mean people that make enough money to do what they want with their time. And they’re not dependent. Like the business isn’t dependent on their presence.

Those folks, and different amounts of money, different sizes of companies, but that’s kinda how I put the success definition on the entrepreneur. They talk about how they’re like training and development companies that happen to be in the business of landscaping, but truly they’re a training and development business. Like that’s their company. So that mindset is something shared among the most successful and something that you’ve brought into K &D. So can you just?

break down a little bit that whole idea of like, I don’t want to work for, I want to work for the team, not for the boss or not for a boss. Sorry.

Justin White (24:04.558)
Yeah. So I’ve always had this mindset that there’s going to be a time where I’m working for other people, but, not in a boss relationship, right? Not like I’m working at a company. It’s like, I’m working for shareholders or I’m working for our team or I’m, I’m serving, you know, at the end of the day, as CEO versus leading. And I think

We hear this idea of servant leadership and what that means. And it’s, it’s a bit of a buzzword, but I think when, when, when I unpack servant leadership, it’s I serve first and I lead second because people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care. And so if you can, if you can serve people and be a server of, of, you know, like of, of growth and opportunity and development, people will then naturally lead or follow you and, and look at you as a leader.

Rob (24:44.119)
Well said.

Justin White (24:58.112)
And so I think when I unpack this idea of I want to lead the team, I want to work for the team is how do I create a environment where people can achieve levels of success and fulfillment where they never thought that would be possible. And the best opportunity to do this is to grow a company quite rapidly where your team is forced to grow outside their comfort zone.

into a position, into a place they never thought they would ever be. And then they find out, actually I’m made for this. Yeah, I can do it. Because like no one, no one could run the five minute mile until someone did it. And then now like, boom, boom, boom. And there’s examples of that all over. when you actually, yeah.

Rob (25:32.835)
I can do it.

That’s the coolest.

Rob (25:39.531)
And then boom, boom, boom, boom, Yeah. But I think it, but it does highlight the power of belief because it’s one thing to hope that something can happen. It’s another thing to know it can happen. And just because I can’t do it, knowing someone else has makes it way more believable that this is something that I could do. And so I think that whole idea that you’re bringing to the group of belief and strengthening this idea of belief is just really powerful. And I just appreciate the way you’re sharing it. So.

Justin White (25:48.237)
Mm-hmm.

Justin White (26:07.714)
Yeah, thank you.

Rob (26:09.601)
to flip the direction of all this thing, because like, you know, go through this thing, you break a femur, gives you an opportunity to be in immense pain and have to figure out how to deal with it, because your kidneys are all messed up, and you know, it’s just a crazy series of events to lead you to a place where you probably understand the subconscious mind and the connection with your body better than a lot of people, especially your average entrepreneur.

Now you’re talking about the K and D way and changing the industry, leading through a change in the industry and starting these new narratives. And then you’ve got this crazy thing called AI everywhere. And everybody’s like, I don’t want to touch it. Or like, oh yeah, I’m using it all the time, but I’m not sure if I’m using it right. Or, it’s cool for writing emails and it just doesn’t seem like it’s hit. I mean, for us specifically, we kind of really.

Justin White (26:42.199)
You

Rob (26:56.481)
went two feet in on landscaping in like 2019 in terms of serving the entrepreneurs in landscape industry and the growth from a professionalism perspective in terms of like, you know, the books that are being read and the discussions that are having just in those six, seven years has been actually quite amazing. But from a technology standpoint, the industry is a little bit behind others, not all, but some. So I’m just curious. I know you did a talk at Elevate on integrating AI into the business.

What’s your take? Where do you see this thing going and how is it helping you guys?

Justin White (27:27.148)
Yeah, I love the setup. Great question. So we are a technology backwards industry, meaning there are more companies working without technology than working with technology. And this is something that an entrepreneur by the name of Brad Jacobs identifies in every industry that he goes to enter and build a multi-billion dollar company, which he’s built seven of them. He looks at companies that are fra, decent, like every company he’s ever built is

Rob (27:38.435)
Hmm.

Rob (27:51.011)
decent track record I it’s a unicorn

Justin White (27:56.106)
achieved a billion dollars valuation. Yeah. And he’s big on public markets. So I really, really like Brad Jacobs. He just wrote two books recently, how to make how to make a few billion dollars. And the second one, how to make a few more billion dollars. Just love the titles. So he can identify as industries that are fragmented along modern pop operators, technology backwards and that have recurring revenue models. so landscaping.

Rob (28:10.915)
Nice. Yeah, I check it out.

Justin White (28:25.654)
I mean, we check all of his boxes. He’s gone into trucking. He’s gone into, waste management. He’s got into, rentals. would know United rentals and his company waste management. So the landscape industry is tech backwards, which most people are frustrated by or don’t understand or complain. And that used to be me today. I, I see it as a massive opportunity because if you can be the company that is tech forward in a tech backward industry, have major, major potential to outgrow.

the market and the cool thing about landscaping is we are actually growing at a really fast clip as our industry is. We’re building new homes all around the country. We’re developing new properties. There’s more landscaping to be maintained and installed every single year where when you compare that to other industries, know, it’s it’s they’re quite stagnant. And so this is an exciting opportunity we have. So when I think of AI, I think of, you know, six basic levels.

And this is something that we’re, working on with my, my team internally of trying to understand the different levels of AI utilization and then map a course. So how do we get to level six? think of level one as entry. You’re using it from time to time to help write emails and maybe asking it for like a recipe on how to cook the chicken better. So it’s not so dry. that’s level one. level two is role based.

Rob (29:46.315)
You

Justin White (29:50.584)
capabilities. So level two is where you’re actually starting to build your AI and give your team guidance on how to utilize it based on their role. So if you’re a salesperson, here’s how you can use AI. If you’re a project manager, here’s some tools on how to organize your to-do list and utilize AI to get some of that stuff done. If you’re a tech, a financial person doing bookkeeping, here’s some tools to analyze data better. And then you go into level three.

which is standardized and production of the AI. So you’re actually creating workflows within your financial team that utilize AI on a prompt basis. So, hey, at the end of the month, we’re going to take our financials, we’re going to upload it to Claude, and we’re going to ask Claude to give us this two page breakout of our year to date and trailing 12 month financials. If we’re a sales team, we’re going to use AI to rate our sales process every time on a scale of one to 10 based on

our interactions with the clients. That kind of stuff that’s like, so many, so many things. And then every month we’re gonna have the AI automatically go and do an edit or an audit of our website and give us a report back of how we’re doing. So this is where level three becomes more standardized. You’re getting some SOPs and you’re using AI in your day to day to make the business better.

Rob (30:46.423)
Best- that’s the best unlock ever, Henry.

Rob (31:07.159)
Yeah, and it’s like a higher level like role output like in the financial analysis or in sales coaching, like you’re actually using it as a role almost like you’re starting to compliment the role to your point about, you know, role based and then level three is workflow.

Justin White (31:23.086)
Yeah, and that workflow starts to replace the need for managers or management. So we’re on a mission to like remove management or managers from all titles at the company, which it’s funny. There’s a lot of managers out there in land, like account managers, project managers. Yeah, it goes on and on. So that’s level three. And that’s like where most of companies will, we’ll get to right now. Like that is pretty much the top of our industry. And most companies, 99 % of companies are at level three or below level four.

Rob (31:27.927)
Mm-hmm.

Rob (31:51.117)
We just did a talk with 50 people and no one was there. Like they’re on level one and two at best,

Justin White (31:53.996)
Yeah, exactly.

Yep. Yep. And the bigger the company, the lower the level. It’s tough. I’m so glad we’re a 20 million dollar company today because we can move super, super quick and we don’t have investors. So that helps a lot too. So level three to four is a big shift. That’s where you go from AI as a tool to AI as a coworker. And level four is where AI is actively doing activities without being prompted and without you interacting with AI.

Rob (31:59.94)
just because the adoption takes longer.

Rob (32:08.194)
Sweet.

you

Justin White (32:26.796)
So it is going into your QuickBooks and it is doing the month in reporting, pulling all your data and emailing your team on the 15th of every month, a big report that would otherwise take a controller or a CFO multiple days to put together. It’s actually going out there and building out your marketing game plan for the next month. It’s creating content for you. It’s developing scripts for your marketing and your social media team. It is going out and

looking for leads, it’s doing business development on your behalf without you doing anything and then sending you five to 10 of the hottest leads for you to call based on search engine optimization or based on data that it’s scraping from the internet that,

Rob (33:07.947)
and the factors of success that you have with clients you work with.

Justin White (33:11.342)
Yes. And I mean, there’s data on the internet, you know, that we have some pretty cool stuff happening right now, but basically we’re able to see who searched for landscape maintenance services in our market at least 10 times in the last month. So all of a sudden you see that this hotel has searched for landscape maintenance services 10 times in the last month. Let’s call them. Let’s stop by. And if the AI can actually prompt that and say, Hey, I’ve queued up an email or I’ve queued up a script for you to call ABC hotel.

because they’ve been searching these terms, we basically can have a leg up against a competition that’s hard to match. And so that’s some of the stuff at level four. Obviously there’s so much more. And then the next is level five, which is true agentic workflows where the AI agents are actually not just coworkers, but they’re actually replacing roles. So you don’t need certain roles in your company anymore because your agents are doing it. And I think account management,

project management and Mark Bradley talks a lot about this with leanscape or where he sees this going. The whole mid level management of company will be replaced. And some people say, well, that’s, that’s not going to happen for years. That’s, that’s not coming to the landscape industry. If you look at the tech industry, especially the financial technology, the FinTech industry, it’s already happened. There are companies doing a hundred, 200 million in revenue with like 40 or 50 employees because they’ve come, they’ve optimized everything. And

Rob (34:34.774)
Yeah, it’s nuts.

Justin White (34:38.338)
And then level six, and this is like the final, peak of everything is basically you have an AI company that you don’t have to do anything for. I don’t think we’ll reach level six in the service industry because we still have to move things. We have to move dirt and we physically work, but there are companies that are being stood up right now with one owner, operator, employee, and they’re doing five to 10 million a year because they are a hundred percent AI. And we may see that with humanoid robots and what Elon Musk is working up with.

where that’s going, we may see a landscape company in 20 years, maybe even 10 years, that is a one or two person operation and they have a team of robotics all over the state and you’re like, well, someone has to work on the robots. It’s like, yeah, the robots work on the robots. So when a robot breaks down, the robot goes out in the Tesla and fixes the robot. Like, yeah.

Rob (35:22.161)
yeah dude!

Rob (35:27.861)
Or the transformer just turns into a car and gets there and turns back into a mechanic and fixes a thing.

Justin White (35:33.782)
and mows it and trims it. I I don’t wanna get too sci-fi here, but you know, it’s happening.

Rob (35:38.551)
Well, I think it goes back to the point though of like, know, the world can be so much more than what we think it can be. And if history has any evidence of what will be, everything we know to be true is wrong today. So it’s like the infinite possibilities are in front of us and whether we choose to accept what it could be and work towards it, or if we choose to put our head in the sand, you know, that’s, that’s a choice.

Justin White (35:50.55)
Yeah, that’s well said.

Justin White (36:01.792)
It’s a choice. It’s choice we’re making. And, so, you know, I say all that to give us a bit of a, you know, basis to talk through of where AI is and where AI is doing in our industry. And, ultimately, I think it comes full circle. You have to have an extremely clear vision and a really, really great culture and a, and a really great why a purpose, a just cause of to what you’re doing. If you want to be successful in the next five to 10 years, because without that.

the amount of growth and turbulence and chaoticness that is AI and technology will completely derail your vision and your company because it’s the shiny object syndrome. You’re just going to go in too many different directions. So I think if anything, it’s more important to have a clear and robust vision today than it was 10 years ago.

Rob (36:42.424)
Yeah.

Rob (36:49.771)
Yeah, it’s like the…

Stormy waters need a more skilled captain. Like when the waters are calm, you can sail anything, right? Yeah. So then just to go tactical and then we’ll wrap up. I mean we could do another episode or five, whatever, when you talk about going from workflows to unprompted workflows, it’s essentially what I heard was the biggest difference. Like one is I’m gonna initiate a workflow and it’s gonna go do things. The other one is it knows what to go do, it’s gonna do it and I’m gonna hear from it when I need to.

Justin White (36:59.17)
good yeah

Justin White (37:14.488)
Mm-hmm.

Rob (37:23.524)
I kind of know a lot of folks in and around circles I’m in are using prompted workflows a lot, us included, but to go into an unprompted workflow, like tactically, what’s required to make that happen?

Justin White (37:35.148)
Well, think fundamentally there’s still a trigger that happens to initiate this, this workflow. And it could be a trigger in terms of date. So every seven days, like this thing’s going to happen.

Rob (37:45.067)
Sure, some sort of, but it could be date, could be stage, could be like whatever, but it’s still automated, it’s not a human, hit a button.

Justin White (37:52.238)
Correct, it’s automated and that’s the key point here and that’s what we’re building out right now. So think of a sales team, salesperson who’s out there doing business development, they’re selling landscape maintenance services and they’re just hitting the phones, hitting the ground, putting out bids and they’re selling and they’re closing work but they’re kind of like, I think I’m on track with my goals but it’s kind of hard to see so you can create an automated workflow that every Monday morning they’re gonna get a sales pipeline update.

Hey, here’s what’s in the pipe that you’ve bid and needs to be followed up with. Here’s the last 30 days, what you closed and that compared to your budget, you know, here are the leads that, are hot that you should call the next five days. But basically every Monday, you’re going to get this update and this, this really, really amazing dashboard that shows your salesperson. It’s a focus tool. Here’s your, here’s your focus. Here’s where you’re at. You’re 80 % of your goal for the month. And you can do that every day.

Rob (38:37.923)
It’s like a focus tool. It’s like here. Put your attention here. Yeah, yeah.

Justin White (38:47.138)
We can text that to the salesperson, we can email that to them, we can teams it to them, whichever form of communication. What’s cool is whatever works best for them. You know, we got three different salespeople with three different notification tools because one, they like text, the other they like email, and the third they like Slack or Teams. So that’s an example of a workflow that we’re currently building out and it’s taken off. It’s like our sales team loves it. There’s less oversight for management because we know that the system is kind of watching itself.

Rob (39:03.415)
Easy.

Rob (39:15.787)
Yeah. Well, and to your point, the company wants clarity, but individuals love clarity. Like I can pop my computer on and I know what I’m supposed to go do. I don’t have to make choices and prioritize like as much as I might. I still don’t like if I get it’s like going to the gym with a personal trainer. He’s like here, do these kettlebells. Okay, boom. Shoulder press like, okay, okay. Yeah, exactly.

Justin White (39:17.134)
Yeah.

Justin White (39:23.757)
Yeah.

Justin White (39:32.46)
Yes.

Justin White (39:37.906)
Yeah. All right. I’ll do it. Yeah. It’s like, get away way better of a workout when you can kind of, you know, I don’t want to say turn your brain off, but when you’re not having to think about what’s your next set, you’re just focused on what set you’re doing and you know, the next set is going to be ready for you and given to you when it’s time. And I think there’s a lot of stress and anxiety. And when you can become self aware of that anxiety and you can actually say, I feel myself getting anxious instead of, man, I’m so, I have so much anxiety. You can.

Rob (39:48.567)
Yeah.

Rob (40:06.627)
I’m overwhelmed.

Justin White (40:07.904)
You can, yeah, you get overwhelmed to burn out and people that are overwhelmed to burn out don’t really perform well. So if you can keep your team in a place where they know that all the information they need is right in front of them and you actually don’t want them looking at anything else, they can then go, you know, and. So that’s, I go back to sales because I think it’s the easiest thing to automate for us. And also for us, organic growth is the most important thing beyond maybe like quality and retention and stuff, but.

Rob (40:22.307)
Yeah, just go get her done. Yeah, that’s cool. Get him running.

Justin White (40:37.166)
Organic growth is the differentiator in 2026 when you’re going against private equity whose strategies are buy and build. We’re family owned and operated with no investors. So our focus is how do we, how do we get 30, 40, 50 % organic growth to compete with the buy and build guys and stay on a trajectory to get to our ultimate goal of 2035, which is a billion dollar company that we’re trying to build, which is kind of crazy.

Rob (40:44.419)
Great.

Rob (41:02.507)
Yeah, it’s amazing, All right, well, I mean, you’ve referenced a bunch of resources. Brad Jacobs had to make a couple billion and a couple more. Carl Jung, Hume, those are classics. Robbins as well. I mean, these are all amazing. But is there one resource that you would want to share with the group that they should maybe go their way to check out now?

Justin White (41:24.972)
Yeah, I worry a little bit because I do think that people who are listening to this podcast are like me. They’re they’re like serial consumers and we’re always looking for like the next guru, the next tip, the next big thing that’s going to give us that clarity to finally go after it. So I will say Jim Collins and good to great is kind of like my business Bible. And yes.

Rob (41:49.891)
It’s an anchor. Yeah.

Justin White (41:51.266)
Like I would much rather everyone listening, I would much rather you read that every three months and nothing else than just trying to write, read like the next best business book that is coming out. And you know, on that same mindset is if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re consuming information, just don’t forget to go out and implement what you learn. like write down the three things that you took away from this podcast and, and do not listen to anything else or listen to a book or anything until you’ve done those three things.

And don’t make them giant things that take you three months, but you know, maybe do it this afternoon or tomorrow morning and then do that for everything you consume. And that’ll keep you in a better balance. Cause I have gotten off balance in the last couple of years where I’ve listened and it consumes so much information that I stopped doing. I just became this consumer and I’ve really tried to flip that around over the last three to six months. And it’s been, it’s been fun.

Rob (42:45.571)
Love that man. Yeah, it’s like learning is a new behavior with the same situation. So if you’re not changing the way you do things after you learn something, maybe it’s not learning. So I think that’s a really cool perspective. And so few people have taken the time to say, it’s almost better to read a book twice than it is to read another one. Because how often do you take everything from that one book? And good to great is probably a lifelong study.

Justin White (42:51.533)
Yeah.

Justin White (42:58.933)
Mm, right.

Rob (43:11.287)
that could be implemented over many years. So appreciate you for doing this. If someone wants to reach out and say what’s up, we’re going to go to.

Justin White (43:19.776)
Instagram or LinkedIn are the two best places to get ahold of me. That’s where I’m pretty active and love hearing from people out there. So DM me and shoot it.

Rob (43:24.343)
Sweet.

And then for what’s the handle on Instagram just for the people listening.

Justin White (43:31.18)
Justin White, CEO. Easy.

Rob (43:33.493)
Easy peasy. Well, I appreciate you man for everything that you do. What do they say? Rising tide raises all ships and just appreciate how you’re doing, buddy.

Justin White (43:37.89)
My pleasure.

Justin White (43:42.06)
Yeah, well thanks for having me on and we’ll see you soon.

Rob (43:44.644)
Alright, cheers. Thanks everybody for listening to another episode of the I am landscape growth podcast.