What Separates Landscape Companies That Grow from Those That Stall – Kim Hartman

00:00
Robert
Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth podcast. I have an awesome guest today with a very cool perspective on the industry in. In landscaping. Kim Hartman, president of Landscape Illinois, Landscape Illinois and director of Rossboro Partners. Thank you so much for doing this.

00:50
Kim
Absolutely. I’m happy to be here.

00:53
Robert
So you’ve been in the industry for a while. You obviously have seen, you know, the ups and downs and all the things. For the sake of the audience though, can you give us a quick Coles notes summary of like, how you got involved and like what you’re up to now?

01:05
Kim
Fantastic. Well, I joined the landscape industry a little over 20 years ago as a landscape designer. Before that I actually was a communication and human resources consultant. And you might think, hey, how do you get from being a communicator and a management consultant to working in landscaping? Well, around 40 years old, you have a family of three, you don’t want to spend as much time on airplanes and traveling. You want to be home more and you want to take your passion for growing things, designing things, creating beautiful, sustainable places and make it your career, which is what I did about 22 years ago. Since then, I’ve been at multiple different design build maintenance companies, a retail garden center. So I’ve worn a variety of hats, but held on to my passion for communication, training and education in the process.

02:01
Robert
Epic. And so what are you up to now? What’s the, what’s your core focus in terms of the association and at Rossboro?

02:08
Kim
Well, I took on the role of president of Landscape Illinois, which is our brand new name for our association of over a thousand members now, which is very exciting. And we represent all facets of the industry. They’re in part of the reason for the name change. We represent obviously landscape contractors, but growers, wholesalers, retailers, irrigation specialists, those that do restoration ecology, lawn care professionals, designers. So like so many other state associations and even our national associations, we said we’re better together and we’re building our wealth of knowledge, professional development standards, our advocacy when it comes to legislative issues by being one. So that Journey started when I became part of Illinois green Industry Association 20 years ago. And that was an association that was primarily growers, retailers.

03:12
Kim
And then we had the landscape kind of contractors association in Illinois about little over 10, 11 years ago. We looked at, does it make sense at this point in time for us to join as one organization? It didn’t at that time, but I was serving on education committees for both associations at the time and was the liaison between the two. So bringing again professional development to different parts of the industry. Well, two and a half years ago it became time, it became the right intersection of events, intersections of business. As were in the peak demand for our industry in Covid times we said we need to do more to bring more people into our industry, to bring more membership into our associations, to bring more involvement from our volunteers and our leaders.

04:06
Kim
And we had memo of understanding with the Illinois Green Industry association, the Illinois Landscape Contractors association, and we came together as one. The new branding just became effective January 1st, right at the same time as I was coming into the presidency. So it was a fulfillment of a dream, a goal, a vision we had 15, 20 years ago.

04:34
Robert
Amazing. You know, it’s really cool. First of all, I think it’s definitely like the right move because being better together, just the scale and opportunity that you can bring to the group because they can fund everything together, like there’s just, and then the networking opportunities, you name it. But I, it just reminds me of that saying, like people all often overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade. And you know, taking that long term approach and bringing people together, that’s. That all happens because of great leadership. So hats off to you, Kim.

05:02
Kim
Thank you. Well, speaking of a decade, we started our I landscape trade show which is amazing.

05:10
Robert
Just full disclosure and I gotta give a testimonial. I had the opportunity of attending and we’re so stoked to go back, but it’s gotta be like we attend shows all across North America and Ilandscape’s gotta be in the top three.

05:22
Kim
Well, thank you for that. We work hard at that. We basically said we need to do something that’s fresh and different. We had a show that was a joint venture between the Wisconsin associations, Illinois Green History, Illinois Landscape Contractors association called Mid Am, that was held in Chicago, you know, back in the early 2000s, right up into about 2010, 11. But with that change to move away from that venue, that type of show, we created something new. Ilandscape just celebrated its 11th year. This year, we hold it in the wintertime. It had been late January, early February. Now it’s late February. We had a few issues with weather and blizzards and polar vortexes and every act of nature that could get in the way of late January. So now we do late February.

06:16
Kim
But we are proud of the fact that we draw nearly 7,000 attendees over three days. We do 60 different education sessions, some in Spanish, obviously in English. We do it also where we have some international speakers travel in. We also bring them in via live feed. So we are not just focused on what’s happening in Illinois because we are influenced by what’s happening in our region, in our country. Influences from Europe, from Asia, from South America, in our plant palette, in our design, in our decisions, how we serve clients. So we’re trying to bring that type of education as well. We do it in suburban Chicago and Schaumburg, which has worked well for us in terms of convenience, expense, accessibility. We are looking ahead three or four years and saying, are we still okay with that space or.

07:16
Robert
As long as it’s close to Chicago? I need an excuse to get deep dish pizza, so fair enough. That’s my only vote, if that counts as anything.

07:24
Kim
Well, that’s always the trade off we have to make with those traveling in, especially speakers saying, you’re coming in February to Chicago. Trust me, there’s always good food, good entertainment close by.

07:35
Robert
Yeah, it’s great. Okay, cool. So the nature of this show is all about what’s the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry? And I love when we get somebody coming in from an association, president, executive director, whatever the width, you know, being able to see the experiences of your members from like a bird’s eye view, as opposed to maybe if you were just at Rossboro Partners, you know, you only see the business that you’re in. And maybe you can speak from both perspectives. But like, what do you see as the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry today?

08:07
Kim
I think the biggest challenge we’re seeing, and we’re looking at this from both an association point of view and within our specific business, is the growth of those at those intermediate management roles. Looking at people that are in account management roles and operations director roles, production manager roles, people building their sales skills. So while we might have a strong leadership team, we also know in our industry there are people retiring, passing on to the next generation, consolidating. We, we need those business skills, those people management skills, those communication skills, to look broadly, to find those Efficiencies, to find those profitability to find those clients when we’re not seeing the same growth that we did two or three years ago.

09:00
Kim
And we want to hold on to our clients long term, hold on to that market share, but have people that are going to be challenged and growing in our industry. Of course, we need a very strong field staff, a very strong office staff. But I think our biggest challenge right now is finding those future leaders and those that can manage people and manage a business.

09:23
Robert
Yeah, that’s cool. And like, I mean, if you really oversimplify this, there’s only two ways to get them. Either you hire them with the skills or you build the skills in them. And so what are you seeing across your membership in terms of, like, success stories, developing internally, hiring from outside. Like, I know there’s no one silver bullet answer, but what do you see in this working?

09:43
Kim
Well, I think there’s a combination of both. I think on the operation side, it’s more often than not growing from within because having people understand the seasonality of our business, the client demands of our business, of course, weather is a factor. Coming from different industries sometimes is difficult for people coming in unless they’ve worked.

10:08
Robert
The work is so specific.

10:09
Kim
Yeah, that type of thing. So we see those people with ambition, willingness to learn, people that are our natural communicators, but also have the technical skills. And having done communication consulting for a long time, you can teach people a lot of the things about horticulture, but about leading and communicating, it’s looking for those people that have a passion for it and a natural talent for it. I think on the sales side, I think we in our industry got a little spoiled during COVID because there was so much demand for our work that the phones were ringing, the emails were coming in. People that were not landscaping in the past were spending their money, spending their time in their yards, wanting to invest. We’re back to where were five, six years ago. We need to sell again.

11:01
Kim
And sometimes having those salespeople who are also project managers can be tricky. So we’ve had some success bringing from outside the landscape industry people with, again, business development skills, client relationship skills. And I think based on the size of a lot of our landscape companies, we ask our salespeople to do multiple things. We ask them to project, manage, take care of relationships, you know, work on proposals and designs. But we need that business development aspect too. So I think as I look at this from an association we have just started in the last year, an owners and senior management committee who Is creating events, a peer group, professional development for those in those roles that are saying, hey, what do I need to do to build my succession plan? What do I need to do to build future leaders?

11:59
Kim
What do I need to do to support each other going forward?

12:03
Robert
That’s so big. Like I’ve done maybe 70 episodes of this show and then countless interviews at events and just speaking to entrepreneurs, you know, in the landscape industry. And the most successful, and this is like unanimous, say that they’re training and development companies that do landscaping.

12:24
Kim
Yes. Yes.

12:24
Robert
Like they actually focus their entire brain on the idea that they are a training business. Yes. And they just happen to do landscaping, which I think is really interesting because it parlays so well into the initiative that you’re trying to bring to your membership, which is amazing.

12:39
Kim
Well, and I have a corollary on a business level at Rossboro Partners, I basically created a new role and my role is director of team development. To your point, what do we need to do to build the skills, the abilities, the confidence, the success of the people that are here? And frankly, it’s a retention tool too. If you are investing in people, and I’m talking not just sending them to trade shows or formal education, but on the job, training, mentoring, follow up, holding people accountable through performance reviews, key performance indicators, having some compensation at risk related to some of that performance. A lot of landscape companies don’t have someone that’s looking at it in that way. We often look at it from a human resources point of view, from a compliance point of view.

13:33
Kim
But take a broader step back to say this is about team development. I give our owner, Phil Rossborough credit for supporting this initiative, my fellow senior leadership team, because it’s something that creates a culture of growth, a culture of investing in people.

13:52
Robert
You know, it’s really interesting. So like we’ve been doing talks with the, you know, associations for, I don’t know, better part of seven years, something like that. And when we did our first one, it was at Landscape Ontario and I asked an audience of maybe 250, 300 people, who here’s heard of Simon Sinek, you know, Jim Collins, Seth Godin? And it was crickets. Like maybe one or two hands popped up out of 300. My the last one we did it was maybe three or 400 people at the MNLA, so Minnesota nursery landscape Association. And when I asked those questions, it was like more than half the room. And so it’s just, it’s really interesting to see in like a short seven years, the professionalism just is increasing in the industry so much, it just seems like what you’re working on it.

14:36
Robert
It’s like if it was seven years ago, it might have fallen on some deaf ears, but I feel like now it’s just ripe. Like people want to figure this out.

14:42
Kim
Yeah, agreed. And we’ve seen it at Landscape Illinois at the association level too, because it used to be when we designed programs, we’d have, you know, horticulture related programs, plant health programs, hardscape programs, and obviously some business programs. The doors would be, you know, closed, the rooms full for all the ones with landscape design and all the horticulture classes. The business classes might have 50, 60 people in the seats. That has reversed. We now, out of the 60, 25% of them have to do with business and operations, marketing, sales, human resources, and they have just as high of an attendance as those with the most epic landscape designs. So that tells me too, it’s not just leaders, it’s again, those people that want to grow saying, hey, this is important too, and it’s not just for corporate America.

15:41
Robert
Yes, love it. So then from a selfish, biased perspective around sales and marketing, because that’s just what we help people with, right? What are you seeing in terms of what’s working and what’s developing or how to develop people around sales and then in terms of like getting customers through the door, are there any success stories popping up? Because we have heard this across the board, right? Like the market’s softer than it used to be. You know, we’re back in 2018. We heard a lot of. We didn’t hear. We saw a lot of business practices get a little bit lazy during, you know, 21, 22, 23. And then they’ve like almost forgotten what it was like in 2018, where people are sending email quotes for like, you know, $75,000 projects and just sending out an email and being like, let me know.

16:25
Robert
And then they don’t hear back and they’re wondering why, you know, what are you seeing working?

16:30
Kim
I think what we’re seeing working is FaceTime. To your point. You know, we have all of these tools at our disposal. You know, between AI and automated emails and newsletters and that type of thing there, our business is still primarily a referral business. But in order to get those good leads, those good referrals, and it takes some face time to do that. But it also takes very targeted marketing because we’ve seen as we’ve done some marketing both internally and using external resources, sometimes the funnel is too wide and we’re not getting leads that are a good fit. So the more market segmentation we’re doing, the more direct, whether it’s zip codes or type of work, looking also to our partners, we have strategic partners that we work with, people that are engineers, architects, people that are subcontractors, that home.

17:30
Robert
Builders, you name it. Right, yeah.

17:32
Kim
And mining more of that information, mining more of that data, and frankly, using more of our own data. Many of us have followed the journey of introducing a new ERP system and adapting to that. Whether it’s Aspire, LMN or any of the others out there, we now have a lot more information at hand about our current customers. And just mining that information to say, hey, have we talked about this to this client about plant health care? Have we approached this client about seasonal displays?

18:06
Robert
Sure, yeah. Like, we did. We did.

18:08
Kim
Yeah.

18:09
Robert
I love it. We did $150,000 project two years ago. Like, when was the last time we spoke to them? Like, do you want to do a walk around and see how it’s going to.

18:15
Kim
I think the other thing that’s worked for us, we call them site audits. But again, whether it’s FaceTime with the client, it’s getting on the property more frequently and looking for those things that need attention sooner. It’s almost like preventive medicine, if you will, or if there was a big construction project done two years ago. Beyond just looking at what needs to be warrantied, how are things doing? We know a garden, a landscape is never done. It’s always evolving. It always needs attention. So I think making it a priority for that client, FaceTime for site audits, and we actually, at Rossboro, measure that, the client referrals. But I think we all need to get smarter. And that’s where organizations like yours, Rob, come in about using all this new data we have and how what you.

19:05
Robert
Just said that was so perfect. And I just want to illustrate that idea really quickly with their site audit point of view. Because a lot of people, when we’re. When we start working with them, they say some weird things, which include things like, we don’t have time. We can’t afford to do those types of audits. We gotta dispatch our team. Okay, fair enough. Whatever. Let’s just do some math. Let’s assume it costs you 250 bucks. That’s an expensive site audit. But let’s say you send, you know, a lead, somebody who gets paid well, but. And it’s a half an hour walkthrough, and it takes you half an hour to get there, and half an Hour to get back, whatever. Two hours all in, plus some stuff. Who cares? Maybe even a gift for the customer. Who would have thought? Maybe a bottle of wine.

19:44
Robert
So 250 bucks, that’s a high. That’s a high cost to do a side audit. But let’s assume that’s what it is. And you do 10 of them, so it costs you $2,500. And out of 10 of them, there’s $20,000 in enhancement work.

19:56
Kim
Right.

19:56
Robert
If you’re on a 40% gross margin, that’s 8K. You spent 2500, you made 8. You can afford to do it. I would argue you can’t. You can’t afford not to.

20:04
Kim
Right, I agree. And it’s making it a priority and keeping people accountable for doing that. And we also have the ability to take pictures at different times in the season, create a record for the client over time. And I will tell you how much they appreciate some of that feedback. Not just their plan design, but that progression of the garden over the season. It’s small things like that keep that rapport and that relationship strong.

20:34
Robert
I love it. So are you doing a talk of the next eye landscape? Because it sounds like you probably should.

20:39
Kim
Well, I am part of the education committee, so I help choose the 60 people to talk. But yes, I do have another situation where I do give presentations as well. Yes.

20:51
Robert
I think a lot of people. A lot of people need to hear it. And it’s just. It’s just so on point. Okay, so shifting gears completely, there’s this thing. It’s been popping up. It’s in everywhere now. It’s AI. So. And I’m asking some entrepreneurs these questions, and some people are like, I. I don’t know what to do with it. I know it’s crazy. You know, I got this free account I use sometimes to ask it, like, questions about what’s that lump on my skin? Or something like that. But, like, it’s. It. It doesn’t really seem like it’s getting adopted quickly. And that’s not just true of landscape. That’s. I mean, some industries are more apt to do it just because of the nature of their business. But, like, what do you see or hear about people using AI?

21:34
Robert
I mean, I’m going to share a couple here, but I’m just curious, like, what kind of, like, grumble you’re hearing in the membership about this technology?

21:39
Kim
I think some of the early adopters have used it more from a human resources point of view, job descriptions, you know, some of the standardization or branding of Some information. When I was at Cultivate last summer, I went to a program about using AI in our industry. I was struck by how much the growers are adapting some of the AI tools and abilities to manage inventory to create better just in time availability messages to all of us that are buying. But I think there has been some tentative reactions because it doesn’t have the appropriate voice.

22:24
Kim
So thinking about it from a marketing point of view, I know at our own organization and at some of the landscape organizations, people have dabbled in using it for marketing, whether it’s a newsletter, an email campaign, whatever the case may be, and trying to make sure it has the right tone and right voice. I, I think that’s creating some hesitation. I think the other caution that some people have is if I’m putting information in is that public domain, is that.

22:54
Robert
You know, breaching someone else. Yeah, someone else going to get access to it.

22:59
Kim
Exactly. So I, I, I think there is a lot of education to be done. I think the other big issue out there’s actual a group of us called the Great Lakes Conference. It’s the associations that touch the Great Lakes, including landscape, Ontario. And at our, we meet once a year in September. And one of the topics last September was AI and how to use it. And I think the other thing that came up in that conversation is what tool is right for what problem or solution you’re trying to find because there are specific tools for different solutions and that information isn’t readily accessible to all of us. So I think sharing. Okay, if I have a situation with hr, here’s the best tool. If I have a situation with marketing, here’s a tool. If I’m looking at inventory, here’s the top three tools.

23:52
Kim
So I think as partners in the business, all of you helping us know what tools to use because there are so many choices.

24:03
Robert
Yeah, I love it. And also how to use the tools. This is just something that I found really interesting because I’m just trying to figure out all the different use cases to your point of how do I leverage this thing? And really ChatGPT being the primary market leader currently, it’s garbage in, garbage out. So if you ask it for, hey, give me this blog post or the prompt is what’s going to dictate the quality. And so we’ve got actually some really cool prompts that we can share with folks about how to make sure your tone does get used by like filling out information from a subject matter expert first to then leverage it. But this is just a picture of my House. And we’re like, you know, we should probably get some landscaping.

24:46
Robert
I wonder what it would look like if we modernize this whole thing and like kind of upscaled it and just like, you know, with a prompt. And it just gives me this. And so now I’ve got this working draft with my wife of like, is it this style? Is this style? Is this style? And so like, we’re so much further down the purchase journey without the help of a landscaper. It’s like, how can we get folks like you helping us do this better? So that way when we do build a relationship through, like trying to figure this stuff out, we come to be like, hey, like, this is kind of what we’re looking our budgets, 200K. Like, yes. What do you think? Like, it’s just, it’s remarkably powerful.

25:28
Robert
And so I think there’s this huge opportunity if the landscapers can like the ones that can like get it right quickly.

25:35
Kim
Yes.

25:36
Robert
Have a, like, there’s like a gap. I’m not sure if it’s going to be a year or three for like people to catch up, but there’s definitely a huge opportunity to take advantage of it right now.

25:45
Kim
But Rob, you said something important. You had a budget in mind. I think the risk with some of the tools and the education we need to do with our consumers is I can use these tools to create a landscape design. But what does that mean? You know, if I’m putting in a new sidewalk, a new patio, a water feature, this, these plants here and they have in their mind that’s $10,000.

26:08
Robert
Right. Well, that could screw everything up.

26:12
Kim
And we’ve looked at this frankly as Landscape Illinois as an association. And I know a lot of other associations have this dilemma too. How much of our association resources do we put towards serving the public and consumers versus our members? And one of the things that we’ve chosen, Landscape Illinois, let’s take this as a case in point. Let’s better educate our members so they can educate the public. Because we tried something a couple years ago before even a lot of the AI tools to an estimator that was customer focused. And. But what was happening is when you work in high end residential or down, you know, Illinois, the budgets are completely different.

27:03
Robert
Yeah. Materials haven’t. Yeah.

27:05
Kim
Nothing. Yeah. So.

27:07
Robert
Well, and it’s interesting you say that too because of like, even as a landscaper being like, hey, if you are using ChatGPT, use these prompts.

27:15
Kim
Yes.

27:15
Robert
To make it so that you can frame it. Because I Did it with a budget. I said, this is my budget, this is my area, this is the thing, this is what I’m looking for. And then, I mean, I don’t know how accurate it is. It did cost it out though, like, which is just really bananas. Oh yeah. All the materials, all the plants, all the labor, all in ranges, right?

27:32
Kim
Yes.

27:33
Robert
And like I have to show it to somebody here just to be like, is this legit? Like, is it even. Is it even close? Because you also have to validate all of it because we don’t know. It could be lying. Sometimes it gets drunk and it’s stupid. But it is fascinating to see how much you can do with it. And I was just curious what you’re hearing. And obviously you’re hearing grumbles, but it doesn’t seem like anybody’s like grabbed it yet.

27:54
Kim
So resistance as much as it is. Tell me more.

28:00
Robert
Yeah, totally.

28:01
Kim
Yeah, I think people are open, but. But they want to better educated before they jump in.

28:07
Robert
I love it.

28:08
Kim
Yeah.

28:10
Robert
So in terms of what’s going on with Landscape Illinois, like if you wanted to, eventually you’re going to share this with members probably, or people that are not members. Like one of the things that we see a lot, and I want to just give this over to you in just one sec, is like our most successful clients, all of them have been on or are on boards of associations. Like full stop. There’s this like it’s almost one to one correlation with people going on to leadership in associations at state levels or national levels, whatever, and. And them being more successful.

28:41
Kim
Yes.

28:42
Robert
And then there’s members who participate, there’s members who don’t participate, and then there’s non members. And so like, what do you want to say to folks who are members, how they can engage better and people that are maybe non members and what they might want to consider when becoming part of something like Landscape Illinois.

29:01
Kim
I think the biggest thing, whether it’s our state association, Landscape Illinois or any other state or provincial association is get more of your team involved. Involved. It’s in the past we’ve seen maybe an owner, a senior leader attends, or just a supervisor attends. The amount of networking, professional development, inspiration, and frankly engagement you get from your team members by putting them in a situation where they’re there with their peers, where they can learn, when they have been rewarded with the opportunities to attend events, to build skills, I think is important. That is something we tried to do by moving the show to late February. We wanted to get more of those people that were Coming back early, some of those foremen, some of those supervisors, those operations managers to get them better integrated both in the trade show and our learning events.

30:05
Kim
I think we do a very good job at Landscape Illinois across the year. And it’s not just our big show, our tent pole, if you will, that we do in February. It’s we do a program called Fire and Ice, which is an outdoor trade show in education that happens in August. We do foreman training, we do pruning workshops. We have women’s networking groups statewide. So we look at demographic groups, we look at different technical skills that need to be built. We have over 20 committees working on all of these opportunities and events. So when I say member involvement, it’s not just you are a member as a company, we need more individuals to be participating and having access to the information. For those non members, I think it’s looking at value. Our trade show and education is high value for the investment.

31:06
Kim
If I compare it to other trade.

31:08
Robert
Shows or national shows from an outsider, it’s top three in North America.

31:13
Kim
Yes, the value you receive, you can go for three days. You can attend four sessions on two of the days, three sessions on the last day. If you’re a landscape architect or an arborist, you’re getting CEUs. So again, high value. We’ve tried to keep those membership dues reasonable over time and we are successful doing that. We would like to see more mid and smaller level contractors, growers, retailers join us and we want to make it accessible to them because we’re there for them too. We’re very conscious of not every plan that we showcase or every design that we build is $200,000. There’s things for those that are doing work for 5,000, for 20,000. And we want to build that level of professionalism in the industry and we want to frankly bring more high school students, junior college students, university students to our industry.

32:11
Kim
We’ve got to get to the parents too, because we have a little bit of a issue with our reputation as employers. You know, you’re going to work hard, you’re going to be outside in the elements and you’re not going to make a lot of money. Well, guess what, you get to work hard, you get to be outside. That’s a good thing. You’ve got a lot of variety in your work and yes, you can make a good income in here. Yeah, we have to change some of those perceptions and we’re working hard as an association to do that.

32:44
Robert
So then last piece around, leveling up as a leader within the association like, can you just help people understand? Like a lot of times we hear like, you know, I’d love to be on the board, but I just don’t have the time. Right. And it’s like, okay, well I. Anyway, I’ve got a thought on that, but what’s your take on.

33:01
Kim
Well, I will tell you. Having again looked at our Illinois Green Industry association, which was a very top down organization, very traditional organization, very board driven, and then looking at ILCA before it came Landscape Illinois at the beginning of this year, Landscape Illinois is very bottom up, volunteer driven again with those over 20 committees. Those leaders of those committees, the chairperson, the assistant chair come from volunteers within the committee. Those chairs typically are on the path to becoming board members. And we actually, this is a strategic objective for our association this year, are making sure people are rotating through those leadership roles on committees in order to give more people opportunity to lead and to grow. And we are asking people on the board that you are on the executive committee track unless you tell us there’s some reason you’re not.

34:03
Kim
And the relationships that are built, the networks that are built, the intrinsic motivation that comes from being part of these committees and this board, the pride, it adds so much value to the work we do. Especially coming out of May and June when it’s like woo, this is, you know, go time. Seeing our peers and being able to reach out to them whenever there’s a question, a comment, a concern, in a heartbeat. We are a generous industry that we.

34:34
Robert
Work, no question, we are generous with.

34:36
Kim
Our time, our advice. So there is, we have a waiting list for volunteers. You know, we’ve talked to other associations of how do you get people on the board? How do you get people to volunteer? You listen, you give them a voice, you give them influence. They’re not just, you know, sitting on a committee for the sake of representing. They get to speak up, they get to influence what we finally do. And I think we hold really true to that in our mission as an association.

35:08
Robert
I love it. Well, I appreciate you doing this and I just know that more people need to be part of the associations and get into leadership. Because I said before, the correlation with success and leadership in association is just, it’s undeniable and just appreciate your service for the industry. It’s been a long road and then, and bringing everything together like that is just a, it’s a monumentous occasion. So anyway, just congratulations to all the work you’ve done and what you’re doing for the industry. So then, one last piece. I ask everybody a source of inspiration, you know, an author, speaker, whatever it might be that gave you an aha. Moment and kind of made you think a little bit differently and how you run your businesses and lead.

35:53
Kim
I would have to believe it or not, go back to Stephen Covey. Highly effective people. And just about how you prioritize your time, leading with humility, leading with giving others credit and opportunity. Yeah. Some, some information is timeless and some guidance.

36:18
Robert
And Covey is one of those resources.

36:21
Kim
Yes. Yes.

36:23
Robert
You’re the best. Thank you so much for doing this and everybody for listening to another episode of the I Am Landscape Growth podcast.

36:28
Kim
Thank you so much.