Robert (00:03.406)
Welcome back to another episode of the I am landscape growth podcast. I have an amazing guest, Paul Fraynd CEO of Sun Valley Landscaping and long-term member, board member, and now incoming foundation president for the National Association of Landscape Professionals. Paul, thanks so much for doing this.

Thanks Rob, what’s up man, how you doing?

Good, buddy. Ready to riff on this thing. So you’ve been running Sun Valley for what, since you were like seven or something like that,

Uh, so I started in the business. actually wrote a little note. The first time I got paid to do something in the business was when I was 15, there was a blizzard in our town and I borrowed my mom’s snowblower, my dad’s chainsaw and went around and cut trees down and did snow removal for people. Uh, so that was in 97. And then, uh, when I was in college, I started a little business with my roommate called you name it. We dog sat, we painted, we mowed lawns, et cetera.

You it, baby. But the first lawn mowing one I went and bought, I got a little trailer that for like 300 bucks or something that was very homemade and not very nice. I went and bought a $50 lawn mower thinking I had a lawn business. It literally lasted the first lawn, but I had committed to like 15 professors to mow. So I ended up having to borrow some of their mowers and stuff like that. But yeah, I’ve never really had a job. So I started.

Paul (01:29.304)
When I was in college and just kind of grew the business through that and really just fell in love with the green industry. Like, like I was saying, I was doing all sorts of different stuff. but what kind of clicked, I worked at this, it’s the oldest nonprofit in Nebraska. It’s this daycare now and they wanted this nature trail. And I was like, I’ll just take care of that. You know, it’s something, something cool and, designed it with the kids. So I’m like, you know, what do you want here? What do you want the pine cones and stuff like that? and just did it with these kids. And I’m telling you the look on their faces when we were done.

was this power that’s like still stuck with me. was 19 years old. But this kid’s like, can I plant stuff in my yard? And I still remember looking at him over the fence. And I was like, man, plants are awesome, aren’t they? And we grew tomatoes and stuff there. And it just had me fall in love. And I’ve had so many experiences like that with just the power of the outdoors. And that kind of kept me going. So, but yeah, happy to take it from there. But that’s how I got started, basically.

That’s cool. Go now and where are you guys at today and what’s the focus of the business?

Yeah. So like I said, started in college. I, um, I still tell this story to my team. I graduated like cap and gown and all that bunch. Most of my friends were going to work at like Berkshire here in Omaha, fortune 500 companies. Literally I take off my cap and gown. had lawns ago, Mo I had three employees that day I graduated and, you know, they weren’t the most reliable back then. So there were, were behind or whatever. Um, but yeah, so just started and grew it up from there. We experimented a lot. had my

my dad and my mom in the business until we got to about a million dollars of revenue. My mom was my first landscape crew. My dad was an engineer from Q-It who constantly reminded me that I didn’t have all my costs in the jobs. You like your truck costs 50 bucks a day. I think we argued about that for five years and, you know, took me 25 years to realize he was right. He was right. Yeah, he was right. But I know you’ve had Ashley on here and that was like right when we at a million dollars and I,

Paul (03:26.922)
There was definitely a turning point. we had done, was a 2007, I think, like $750,000 revenue up till like December 15th. We ended up at a million because we got this crazy blizzard for about a week. There was two different blizzards that happened. And this is like Craigslist days. So I just use Craigslist, found all these people to help me subcontractors, employees.

We just got it done, did a quarter million dollars of revenue in like 10 days where we did three quarters of million in, you know, 340 days. But this was before we had computers and stuff. So this is all on paper. And, know, I slept under my desk on Christmas came back like beginning of January, had all the papers out to find that the roof of this office that we were renting had collapsed and all this paper got filled with, you know, six inches to a foot of snow.

I literally cried, called everybody I knew. put up like clotheslines and hung all this stuff up, eventually got it built out, but like knew that I needed something to change, you know, in myself and in the business. And that’s kind of led to get to hiring Ashley, which was a big stepping stone. She’s our CEO now. But we went from that 1 million and then we merged our business with my current business partner in 2012 so that we were

call it $2 million in 2012. the idea was kind of he was a landscape architect. We have a supply yard here, as you know, kind of a interesting little mix. So design materials and I had always done the maintenance. So we kind of wanted to combine all those together. And so, yeah, I was trying to remember, it’s like, it’s kind of a blur between then and now, to be quite honest with you, but we experimented a lot, all sorts of different. I had bought a grading company at one time. We were gonna do like new home construction grading and sod irrigation landscaping.

didn’t work out the best. I realized I was buying that on the downturn of the housing market and all that kind of stuff. We were doing apartments, we were doing all sorts of foreclosed homes, just kind of random stuff. And then eventually to where we’re going now, which is more of the high-end full service, kind of complement that business model I mentioned. We have great award-winning landscape architects, we’re really good at install and we’re really good at maintenance.

Paul (05:44.512)
I wasn’t working with the right clients for a long time. we grew pretty fast, but I think we could have grown a lot quicker had I been more laser focused on the right client. But, we’re just about, we’re going to hit $10 million this year. I’m determined where it’s still in play. we got to have some things go right for us, but that’s kind of where we’re at now. But, I reminded my team, we just did our quarterly town hall and I kind of reminded them of, I have a bunch of different stories like that daycare, but.

The idea is like, we’re here to serve. Like that’s what motivates me is, you know, my friends all went and did these corporate jobs, which, you know, they did really well for themselves. Very few of them, for example, never want to retire. I love what I do. Like, I love this stuff. It’s so fun to me. and it’s because one, I love landscaping, like I mentioned, power of outdoors, plants, et cetera. And two, like I get this little chance to shape something in our image of what we think can help people live better lives.

And I, this is a, this is a hundred percent jam. This is what keeps me going. Like those little stories of working with people and seeing what landscaping, what outdoor spaces can do for people. Like that’s happening with our clients is what I was telling them at the town hall. They may not be, they may be pretty sophisticated folks, but when they walk to their backyard with a new pool, new patio, new landscaping, they’re just like that kid. Like they’re, they’re ready. They’re ready to go spend time out there and make memories with their family. And I just love that. And then.

We got to build these careers for our team doing something that they love. I don’t have to convince any of them to love landscaping. They all love it. So I think our work as leaders and executives is we need to love it too. We can’t just get stuck behind spreadsheets and think the business is on a computer screen. The business is out. It’s a very distributed. We were a distributed workforce before that was a thing in the landscape industry. Our business is all over town all the time and we have to.

get out there and know what’s happening. The whole business is to take a person with a shovel or a person with a mower and connect it with somebody that needs that work done and everything else is just kind of bluff, if you will. Really, that’s what we’re really trying to

Robert (07:54.094)
When you get down to breast tax though, you’re exactly right.

But we can get so easy to get distracted on all the other things that aren’t that. So we’re really, like I said, we’re up at this $10 million mark and our goal is to be a LM landscape management, one top 150 business, $30 million in 10 years. And ironically, I don’t think it’s going to be the business. We’re pretty good at business administration stuff. have our stuff together and we use the right tools. I think it’s going to be being excellent out in the field and serving our customers with like a sense of hospitality.

that very similar to a fine dining restaurant. There’s lots of places that have good food, but if they make you feel a certain way when you leave, you tell everybody. And that’s what we really are trying to do. So.

Beautiful, man. Well, there’s lots wrapped up in there. So I’m pumped that you gave us an overview and I appreciate that whole philosophy. think one of the biggest things you said though is that passion and purpose around like the, you know, that sparkle in a kid’s eye as the example that drives people. Cause I think sometimes when it gets tough, people kind of throw in the towel. So has there been a time where you’ve just been like, I don’t want to do this anymore, but F it. I’m going to keep going. Cause this thing’s important.

How long do we have on this? I’m just kidding. I do my best not to make the business, know, my identity and have a scoreboard that’s like, life’s good, life’s bad based on the business. That takes a lot of mental work. I’m not going to lie. But yeah, I think when I questioned if I wanted to keep going, it was because I forgot what I was doing it for. And I think that that is what happens to a lot of people in life. My wife’s a nurse anesthetist and I…

Paul (09:35.168)
Reminder all the time of like this beautiful thing she gets to do at a very stressful moment in people’s lives and Even them as medical professionals I think you know you can just go through the motions and kind of forget I just saved someone’s life this morning potentially We’re not saving lives, but we are potentially you know making people’s lives much better and especially with like prevalence of mental health and stuff like that I truly believe we probably have There’s probably been a space where somebody you know

kind of change their life, save their life, et cetera. I know it’s happened with some of our employees where having a place where people care about you and want you to do a good job is like, what is the biggest thing in their life at that moment? So again, I just have to remind myself, I guess is what I’m getting at. I remember one particular one that brought me back kind of out of it. was a particularly rough like summer, not spring, but summer, we had some people kind of.

Leaving our quality wasn’t good. I was trying to move from these apartments to more like commercial I remember it vividly because I like fired these apartment clients thinking I’ll just get all this new commercial work It wasn’t quite happening But we have always done this green care for troops. It’s called so it’s it’s a free service actively deployed spouses are away We go take care of the others in the lawn back at their house And it was a reason and this guy did not tell me he was coming or anything

He’s coming back from service. He’s got tears in his eyes. He’s got this flag and this picture. And see, I get all teary-eyed too thinking about it. He was just like, I flew this flag for you guys because you were back taking care of my wife and my kids. And we were just mowing the lawn, you know? And was really powerful and snapped right out of it. It was like, OK, this is what we do this for. Oh.

Right.

Paul (11:25.942)
You know, and as a free job, nothing’s going to happen from it. It just reminded me like what we do really matters to people in it. It still hangs up when I walk in. So, but yeah, he didn’t know that was the very moment I needed that to happen. so yeah, it seems like that happens where it’s employee comes in. As you know, you don’t get thank yous every day from your employees, but when you do get them, they’re really powerful. So it seems like the universe, just makes this happen for me when I’m.

When I’m down on it, something reminds me of why I do it. yeah, I, like I said, maybe every couple of years I go on a thing like, the heck am I doing this? This is a really hard industry.

Beautiful.

Robert (12:05.044)
Well, I think a lot of people go through that though, and if they don’t have that, you know, passion for why they’re doing it, it can be really, really difficult to keep going.

Yep. Yep. Yeah. If you go into this one thinking it’s an easy small business to start up, I’d love to talk to you on the phone.

Okay, so you’ve already mentioned implicitly a bunch of barriers to growth or opportunities and challenges to either get or overcome to be able to get to the next level. But through the theme of this show, we always ask the question, what is the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry these days? And so from your perspective, what do you see?

Yeah, I think a lot of folks talk about symptoms. So they’ll say, you know, it’s, it’s the labor force. It’s the, you know, making enough sales. It’s I’m not good enough at marketing or, you know, something like that. I don’t have enough capital. I’m a firm believer that the thing holding us back is ourselves and our mindsets. And if we don’t have a growth mindset, if we don’t have a compelling reason to do what we do, like if we don’t make the business a place worth working hard for, you feel that as the entrepreneur and you won’t be able to

put your whole heart and soul into it. Entrepreneurship is a full life, full body sport. it’s contact sport, baby. We have to be right in every, as the leader. And I suppose you could potentially delegate some of this, I might have a little note I’m looking at right now. My job is the chief energy officer. I’m here to remind everybody of why we’re here, you know, tell stories and show up.

Robert (13:33.482)
Contact, contact.

Paul (13:54.786)
with optimism and, you know, a growth mindset that we’ll be able to figure out the challenges we have. And I think I can’t, I personally can’t do that. If I don’t, that starts, that’s a 24 seven job. have to be physically fit. have to have my mind right, which was a big one for me. I suffer from anxiety. I meditate, I journal, I do all sorts of different things that they get my mind right. Even that spiritual piece for me isn’t a religious thing, but it’s a, know, I get to do this noble calling that I am very proud to do.

And I think some people forget, you know, it’s just a business and they’re going to sell it in three years or something. I don’t know how you stay motivated by that. I don’t think it’s very sustainable. and there’s this, you just hit a ceiling. Like the business is a sort of a reflection of where you’re at. There’s like levels to this stuff. I feel like I’m kind of in a way hitting a ceiling right now. And I know it’s, get to 30 million. got to, if it’s simple math, triple my capacity, but

I agree.

Paul (14:52.558)
I need to get myself to the next level for the business to get there and I have to be where it starts. So, Vern Harnish, you’ve probably read many of his books, but he’s on this little video series right now actually. The biggest concern…

When you spoke about it, was like, yeah, keep going, sorry.

I was kind of thinking that he puts this video out. He’s of course big on health and stuff like that. But he started entrepreneurs organization, as I’m sure you know. And the reason he started is because one of his good entrepreneur friends killed himself. And he wanted that entrepreneurs have a place where they have folks that understand them. And that is really hard. My wife loves me more than anything. It’s not possible for her to understand what this is like that.

you this thing you created, like it didn’t exist. People come show up and work at it. you know, 75 people in our case, that’s 75 families literally that are dependent on this thing. just made up in my head, you know, it’s not like, some institution, you know, Paul kind of, you know, and my team made, brought this to fruition. That’s a heavy burden. And, I, like, I take so much pride in knowing that that is, that’s worth showing up for, guess, is, is kind of how I’d put that in.

I think there’s, you know, technical things that people struggle with. E-Myth is a great book, but there’s a lot of folks that just get stuck in the technician phase of like, I’m really good at doing the landscaping, which I think you can do that if you’re also really good at picking somebody that can be the leader and the driver, but you probably can’t do both those at the same time. And there’s some sort of, you know, mental energy or limiting belief or whatever. And most common is that nobody can do it as good as I can or…

Paul (16:36.344)
There’s a trust factor of some sort. Like if I do this and we fail, you know, they’re just trying to, they have like a limiting belief that is holding them down. And that’s, that’s the beauty of the growth mindset is like all of our challenges we can overcome if we get our head around it. So that, mean, I see it all the time. I talk to people all the time and do a lot of, I was mentored so much through NALP that try to give it back to mentees. And it’s funny, the first call, I’ll just ask them about their personal habits and stuff. And they’re like, right.

I just need to know like how you bid estimate, do an estimate for a big snow removal job. And, you know, the, the core thing after a couple of months is like, yeah, you know, you’re right. I’m just like, not fully in this with my mind and spirit. And once that clicks, they just take off. These kids now are way smarter than I was. I don’t know. They do much better than I did. It took me too long to figure this out, but you know, it’s all good. Now I can tell people so they can do it sooner.

that’s cool. I mean, the NALP thing will come back to you because I think there’s a lot of folks either that are part of it or aren’t that aren’t necessarily taking advantage of like what’s available. And it’s not even necessarily the programming and the events, which mind you are all awesome, but just the network of being around people. I’ll come back to that one for sure. There was something that we run into all the time.

Yeah.

Robert (17:59.894)
is folks, you you said symptoms, right? They’re like, you know, labor’s tough, you know, no one stays. You know, I got these, you know, dumbasses in the truck and they run into shit and like, there’s this negativity towards staff. so, yeah, and I find it usually when they’re smaller, like, cause they haven’t either figured, they haven’t figured it out themselves that they have to show up for these people. And it’s this service mindset of like, a leader’s job is really to serve.

And yeah, so we’ll get a decent check and the good piece of food when there’s a kill. But if things go to shit, we still have to protect everybody. If you look at the contract of a tribe way back when, if a lion comes knocking, the chief’s got to go deal. So what can you say to somebody who maybe doesn’t have their head on right yet? They want to grow, but they have this disdain towards staff.

So they’re not necessarily showing up the way they need to like based on your experience working with folks in yourself, what has been something that’s given them like a, like a hot moment.

Yeah, our businesses like the leverage in our industry is people. There’s not, you know, we’re not Microsoft where we can come up with an idea and then it’s infinitely repeated and leveraged, you know, off of one idea. As we grow, we have to get more people, more trucks. Obviously there’s automation things that’ll help some of that, but we are in a people business. Like this is what we do. So our number one job is to, you know, I’m going to say love, but I don’t mean it like the normal it’s

We are there to like provide for them a career and an ability to get better at what they do. And like everything that happens in our life, it’s maybe not our fault, but it’s our responsibility to fix. That’s the, that little sentence is the part I think that separates folks is it’s somebody else’s fault instead of it’s my responsibility to either, you know, train them or, you know, give them a compelling reason to do better or find other people.

Paul (20:02.574)
Usually in those situations I find I’m like, well, have you talked to them? Have you trained them? Have you done anything? Almost always it’s like we haven’t even sat down and talked. We’re too busy. And it’s like, what do you expect is going to happen? You threw him a truck and some mowers. That’s just the way it’s going to be. Sometimes it feels like you’re going slow. And this happens to me too. I got to get the foundation right of what we’re here to do.

I know it seems like a lot of work to do a mission and values and vision and all that stuff. But if you don’t know where you’re going, how the heck is anybody else going to know where they’re supposed to be going? And I think survival mode is a tough thing to get out of. Like it really is. I see it with our managers who are managing their team. They can’t even see, you know, past that it creates a tunnel vision that it just limits what you’re even seeing. And at that point you just start blaming other people. And so, yeah, I think it’s like a pause.

What is the EOS when they call clarity break, like sometimes one hour, like under a tree with no phone, like use a notebook or something. I might sound weird. I use the shower because it’s the one place that’s like a sacred place. need to like sit and think and be present and like really start with a clean sheet of paper. and it’s funny, like how hard that one hour seems for people. And like, I truly think they’d get a long ways if they did one hour, imagine if they did one day or something like that.

So yeah, it’s just getting out of survival mode, I think is kind of what I try to tell those folks. And when you’re in survival mode, you don’t know you’re there. So you need somebody to tell you, which requires that you reach out and ask for help. mean, there’s so many resources in our industry. It’s the most beautiful part of it is like people will help you. If you’re on this, you could reach out to one of us or whatever, but there’s all sorts of resources to get that help.

No question. We’ve been a part of many industries over the years and by far landscape is the most open. Sharing network, networking resources, even locally, people even locally that are like legit competitors are still like, Hey, how you doing this? What do we do? And how do we make it better? It is a special thing. know, it’s funny you say that about those folks that are in that survival mode and that hour or moment of clarity or hour of clarity for a clarity break. And this idea of like slow down to speed up.

Robert (22:19.662)
And then there’s the other cliche of like, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And I’ve heard all these things. I would consider myself well-studied. And for years, I was just like, if I slow down, that means I’m slowing down. I don’t know how that speeds me up. So I don’t know what these people are talking about, but all of the best leaders I’ve ever looked up to have all said it in some shape or form. And then it finally dawned on me.

And it was something about sports coaches and how sports coaches always come to the first day, like a Monday prepped for their team and the week. They have a plan in place and then they’re going to communicate that plan. So everybody knows what’s expected of them. And I was like, I have to slow down to build the plan so I can communicate clearly and stop expecting people to just think the way I think.

Uh-huh that I’m still learning that one. I think I almost got there. They don’t all think the same way Yeah, but they don’t have the same, you know, I know you read a hundred books You’ve been in many businesses like I got we have to remind ourselves We have a unique circumstance and we’re here like we are acting just like our background and that’s the same for our team so It just sparked my memory of that one similar to what you’re saying, but a thing that sparked with me I studied Buddhism quite a bit believe or not, which I

Learned a Jewish or Jewish. Sorry, Jesuit priest when I was going to college. He taught me it because he’s like, this is actually kind of what gets my mind right. But beginner’s mind is a very simple concept. But that clean sheet of paper for like, OK, what do I write? I would say do the five wise, which is so generic, but it’s so powerful. Like by time you get to the fifth wire, like, I didn’t plan Monday at all. Like we were just going to show up and wing it or whatever. You know what I mean? So.

Uh, that’s the spark that helped me was that beginner’s mind piece. And, uh, I named my daughter, her middle name’s grace. And to me, that means like no judgment, fresh view on the world every morning. And again, you can tell I have a lot of mental, uh, things that I use, uh, you know, it’s so powerful to me, that concept that I named my daughter after it.

Robert (24:33.26)
Yeah, it’s awesome. yeah, it’s interesting. You say that too. mean, a, I have a tattooed on my arm literally right there in, but, I find it. So I train, was training the team, cause it was just a bit of like resentment boiling between two groups. It turns out though, the root cause of it all was that they were all trying to help each other without telling them that they’re trying to help each other. And so we got, we got that all sorted out, which was just beautiful.

I don’t want that.

Robert (25:01.784)
But then we talked about the idea of like, you know, love and grace. If we start from a point of love and grace for everybody, it’s a really easy place to move forward and everybody bought into that. But the hard thing was having people give themselves grace.

Totally. Yup. It’s the hardest one, man.

That’s one of my main priorities right now is to help people understand that the human condition is flawed and it’s okay. Anyway, that’s beautiful. Going back to business stuff, obviously though, is very much related to the whole person. Because to your point, if you don’t have the energy as a leader, if your mind isn’t right, it’s really difficult to lead a group, let alone build a business that people want to come to.

So there was one thing though that you said, you’re like, Hey, we could have grown probably a lot faster or maybe more efficiently if we had become more laser focused on the right type of customer. hear it all the time. mean, we’re biased because we’re in marketing and sales on behalf of all of our landscape clients. So we’ve got a pretty good handle on that process to help build focus on customer acquisition, but segmentation, blah, blah. But what

people hear it all the time when they’re at these talks. I go to all the talks, know, not all of them, but I go to lots of talks and all these different conferences to listen to what everybody’s saying in the industry. And rarely do people break down what does it actually mean to get laser focused? Like what kind of customer did you go after? How did you go do it? And so what, what was it for you in terms of like making that click, like what clicked to make you focus in on that high end customer, the way you’ve done it and what was kind of holding you back before?

Paul (26:45.262)
Have you ever seen that meme? the like Jedi and the idiot or whatever. And it’s like a chart. You ever seen that? It’s like the, the, like the, the dummy guy, he’ll say, just build your business for your core customer. And then in the middle is this person like, yeah, but what about all these people that call and what about my, my friends and what about that opportunity over there? And they’re like, mine’s really busy. And then the Jedi on the other side is back, you know, on that same line saying, just build your cus, your

company to your core customer. And I can’t remember, think it was, uh, I was listening to founders in the Michelin brothers, cause they’re kind of created the wheel literally, uh, is really interesting story. They, they built all the like Michelin guide and stuff to get people to drive more. So they wore out the tires. Uh, but they had a similar thing where it’s like, we could build bike tires, we could build auto tires, we could build truck tires. And the one brother’s like, we are building.

the best car tires. that’s if other people want to buy our tires, that’s fine. But we are they talk about concentric circles. So the core is this car and we’re to get them on the road and teach them about the best restaurants to go see, cetera. If other people end up using our tires, you know, that’s cool. How that translates to landscaping is we’re going to do like this full service high end where we just take care of everything. So.

we’re going to mow, we’re going to do your bed maintenance. We’re going to plant your flowers, do your irrigation, do your fertilizer, et cetera. But you end up with all these people that I just want the bed maintenance. I just want the flowers. I just want the, you know, yada, yada. We have to build the system around that full service. So an example is like when we go do a site audit, even if we don’t mow their lawn, we’re going to talk about their lawn. we only build it for this core customer. If other folks happen to like it and want to, you know, kind of pay for that extra touch, then they’re welcome to do that.

but we, it was more like tying, like I was talking about, you know, the business is tying a shovel and a person that needs a whole dug. If we can just pick what customer wants the things, you know, pick, we pick people were like this particular person. Karen is one of them literally, and Mary Jo. They don’t want to worry about it. They want to have a space for their family. They want to entertain. What would that person need? And they, and we created this list of services and that’s our target customer. it.

Paul (29:05.512)
It is highly correlated to, you know, home value and residential. just be honest. You know, you need a nicer higher end home to do all these services. But like the approach that we use, which is really high touch, we should, tell my account managers, you should know their garage code. You should definitely know when they’re, you know, out of town and you should go stop over there and bring their stuff up to the house. what was hard for me was like, I always knew I liked to do that, but then I’d be like, yeah, but that person over there just needs their lawn mode and they’re just right down the street and it’s fine. But what happens is you, you.

build the system to do this certain type of work. And now this other person doesn’t even want it. And like, you’re kind of, you’re not leveraging your team. They could do a hundred of those high-end homes if that’s all they did, but they can only do 50 of those high-end homes if they also have 200 random other customers. So it’s kind of similar to the like slow down to go faster thing in a way to get the most leverage out of somebody. And by that, I mean like how much revenue they can manage.

et cetera, you kind of got to focus it in, which is super counterintuitive because you think more is better and it’s really not. And that’s what I’ve learned from like these customers. Like Frank Mariani is a long, great mentor to so many, but me in particular, he’s like, Paul used to do all that stuff too. But like, I just had to start doing it. He’s the minimum price to get there. Like basically they’re going to pay for full service, even if we don’t do it. they just self-select. He’s like, that was really hard for me. that.

took me five, 10 years to put that into place. So yeah, it’s like what it actually looks like, I think is more like almost courage and faith a little in some ways. And then obviously you have to build your marketing around it. You have to build your management team around it. We only recently split the business up between commercial and residential, which in hindsight was crazy. We had this manager who has like, you know, seven crews and the crews even did some commercial, some residential.

And they couldn’t get to know their customer and like it was just slowing us down and as soon as we made it So this crew just does commercial because it has the same scope of work the manager manages the same properties No matter what type of works happening The closer we could get to the customer the better that we focused if that makes sense Yeah, for sure. We’re still on this journey to be quite honest We still have some fertilizer clients for example because I look at the gross margin. I’m like, why would I get rid of that one? but it’s

Paul (31:34.541)
At some point you got to make these decisions and I’m always fascinated by some of my friends in the industry that are just like, I just kind of fired all my residential clients one year and I just started to just do commercial. like, how did you get the bravery to do that? So I’m still working there and we want to do, Ashley said it the best, our CEO, she’s just like, we want to do the nicest properties within a 50 mile radius. And that’s going to be some really high end estate type residential and then commercial.

those are our clients, which still isn’t laser focused probably enough, but we’re segmented in the business to be residential, kind of like runs their own business, commercial runs their own business. So in a way they’re their own entities and divisionally. So it’s a journey. I don’t know if that answers it for people, but it’s like-

for sure. Well, it does. It does for sure. mean, the idea though, that I think you layered into this idea of core customer is like, what’s the ideal service list look like? And then you stated also the idea that like, you know, by having people that aren’t part of that service mix, that’s a distraction and people can’t do as much because you get really good at doing this. And that’s what I saying, like, when you target

the right customer, yeah, it’s good from a positioning and marketing point of view, because then you become more relevant to the person that you want to work with. But I think a lot of people miss the idea that because you can operationalize and systemize the way you’re delivering said service, the whole company becomes more efficient. And one of the things we were worried about, or people told us, we’re like, well, if we just do landscaping, isn’t it going to be boring? Like we’re just doing the same thing again and again and again and again.

And then what we found was that we actually got to become more specialized, more masters of our craft. actually got better at it. Everybody had more fun. We went deeper and started building out tools specifically for our customers that we wouldn’t have been able to do if we were doing it for everybody. And so I think it was just, there’s a lot of power in what you’ve brought to the conversation. So thank you.

Paul (33:33.354)
Yeah, I tell my team to like the because we’re, it or not, still getting our morning routine fully dialed in. And, you know, I have a pretty high expectation for it, but we’re still doing some kind of silly things. And we weren’t like a train, you know, the trains weren’t all perfectly on time. And I had the same hesitation, like, this feels like I would hate this. You know, I couldn’t do this, but I have people that could. Our crews love it. Like they want to know what’s expected in structure and

they like doing this same work and what it gives you capacity to do is go talk to your customer and serve your customer. If you have to keep checking, like what did this person get and what does that person get you like they don’t even become they’re almost like a faceless random request versus, know, that’s Billy. That’s my favorite customer on Thursday. And I talked to his dog. Like that’s the thing that is like the where the satisfaction truly comes from is, you know, the deep relationship, not the, and there’s so many, you know,

As silly as like I put in a new mo pattern or I tried a new type of paver. like our brains like that, like it doesn’t have to be something crazy different. can build variety within something, you know, it’s like the chef’s special, the fine dining restaurant. That’s why they’re doing that. It’s probably half the reason is the chef’s like, I’m kind of bored. need to do a cool dish. but you know, he’s still serving the same customer. It’s not like they went from a $60 plate to like, now we sell hot dogs out front. You know, that’s kind of be the equivalent of.

doing all sorts of random different services for different customers.

Yeah, that’s cool, man. And there’s one thing that you’ve woven into everything you’ve been talking about is this idea of like focusing on customers with this air of hospitality and customer service being at the forefront, talking to customers, knowing their dogs, knowing their garage door code, all that kind of stuff. So before we kind of wrap up, what kind of inspired you to engage customers like that?

Paul (35:32.408)
Hmm. Definitely some books and I love going to restaurants as you probably can tell. but there’s just something magical about like, you know, Chick-fil-A is a classic example or the Four Seasons or whatever. and the reason I love like the Four Seasons is the one I like the most because of a simple line, ladies and gentlemen, serving ladies and gentlemen. Inherent is in that is you, trained your folks to empathize, you know, anticipate other people’s needs.

And then you show up in a certain way. Like if I’m going to serve you, I’m going to show up the best, you know, as my best self and I’m going to understand you. instead of life can just become about you so easily. so easy the, mean, really where this probably started is that I’m not a religious fellow, but the Jesuits really, they trained me on man for others. That’s how they, what they teach you. And I went to high school and a college Creighton.

That’s what they teach you how to look at the world. So I would really say that the Jesuits kind of taught me how to do this in that life’s not about you, it’s about other people. So that’s where it came from. And then I’ve read the Danny Myers book, Setting the Table and Unreasonable Hospitality, of course. And it just like, shit, that’s what it actually, this is what we’re doing. We’re serving via this craft that we love.

I have a list of things I’ve been reading about and it’s all these companies that are like, they are doing so well because they love the thing that they do. Raising Cane’s guy, I don’t know if you ever heard of him. I’m just gonna do chicken fingers. People keep trying to buy his business. Like, why would I sell his business? I love making chicken fingers. He’ll go work on the line. Like his favorite thing to do is go work the drive-through. He loves doing fast food chicken fingers. And like somebody in the world.

Probably amazing.

Paul (37:21.55)
Yeah, somebody in the world needed to be that person. And, you know, he found it. like, I, in a way, I feel like that’s like my guy’s like, I’m the person that understands that, you know, there’s this whole connection to life in our in ourself through landscaping and like, I just love that connection. It’s worthy of my whole life’s work type of thing. So yeah, that’s, that’s how I think about it.

Yeah, that’s cool, Mayo. it, yeah, warm up it. Uh, there’s a couple of things actually, you said that’s related with what you’re talking about. First one, uh, I loved was what you say no to is more strategic than what you say yes to going back to your laser focus. Uh, but then the one thing you said recently was the idea that, uh, he’s never seen a customer obsessed business go out of business.

I love that.

Yes. Yeah. I think sometimes as entrepreneurs, forget sometimes that the point of the business is to serve customers. And the word is serve. So I really appreciate you. You’ve dropped a bunch of resources, but if there was one you wanted to share with the audience for them to go check out, which one would it be?

Mm.

Paul (38:27.502)
Well, I’m the book I’m fishing right now. Let my people go surfing the Patagonia one is pretty sweet But a podcast that I love that is about David Senra founders podcast. I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to that one. Oh, yeah for sure I particularly like him He says, know as he ends everyone with you know 400 books down 1000 to go he loves the journey and that’s what I really like about him He’s like I’m gonna be the best person that takes

business founders books and does a podcast about them. I’m not going to hire assistance. I am going to edit it. I’m going to record it. This is my life and I love doing it. And then he tells stories about people that are that way as well. So that podcast really fires me up every time there is one in particular about the, I’m forgetting his last name is gains, but he started that chick. Sorry, raising canes. And it is really cool. This dude could be a billionaire and he’s like, what am going to do?

I want to make chicken fingers. Like I don’t want to sell this business and I’m making, making a ton of money anyway, you know? and so yeah, there’s all sorts of cool stories on that, on that podcast that then gives you in these, you know, then you go in the weeds on stuff. So, really it’s like, we have a worthy cause and we should like doing it. And if you, if those two things are true, like why would you ever sell your business?

what else are you going to do if you find something you really like? I know I’m fortunate to have that mindset, but I think it could be anything, you know, no matter what you do in the world, but landscaping such as it’s low hanging fruit to go love it, like go sit under a tree and you’ll get there. You know what I mean? So I just think I just love our industry and yeah, so that podcast would be great. Now, and I’m glad you shifted your marketing agency to the best one. I’m sure that’s part of the reason it’s like this is cool stuff.

It is cool stuff. everything lines, it was, it’s really, was two conferences we went to and we were just like, we just connected really well with people. And so we’re just like, this is a work hard, play hard industry. Like hands are dirty, literally. They roll up their sleeves. They all share, they’re open. Like we were in the HVAC space for a couple of years and I was running a podcast or tried to, and people wouldn’t share what works.

Paul (40:50.157)
It could just. Yeah.

They wouldn’t, they’re like, why, why, why would I tell you how I’m being successful? I was like, improve the industry, know, rising tide raises all ships. They’re like, so yeah, landscape is a beautiful industry. so last thing then, and I said last thing, but I got to say it again, because I forgot to come back to the NALP piece, National Association of Landscape Professionals. You’ve been involved for quite some time, serving committee board now foundation.

What’s something you can say to people that are either members but don’t necessarily take a full advantage or aren’t members and maybe are considering why they might want to consider joining something like that?

Yeah. And if there’s Canadian listeners, Landscape Ontario is similar. What it did for me is one, you know, I didn’t feel alone, but two, I could see what was possible. we get in our little, even in our little markets, it’s like, you only see, you know, small companies and nobody’s thinking about making the best place to work in their city, that type of thing. It just elevates what’s possible, which helps raise your ceiling. And then people, as you mentioned, are so willing to share.

So just go to an event and go introduce yourself. It’s weird. No one believes me. I’ve seen it at bars. Bars are a pretty good place to go. I’m not going to lie. But anywhere on the trade floor in education session, as I send my team, they just come back with, I have all these people’s phone numbers. And they do exactly what I do. And did you know they do it this way? And there’s this. I don’t know what it is. I’ve only worked in this industry, so it feels kind of normal to me.

Paul (42:24.078)
If you just show up and go say hi, you’re gonna like, it will change your life. I’m convinced of that. got, I was lucky enough to serve on the board next to people running businesses, doing nearly a billion dollars of revenue all over the country. And they’re like my close friends now. Uh, when I was in San Diego, as I was telling you, I went and saw three landscape friends, like, right. don’t know. It’s just, it is something cool about it. And yeah, I think you’re limiting yourself and you’re limiting your fun.

If you don’t go meet other people in the industry. yeah, that’d be my shout out. But NALP event, there’s the one in Phoenix this year coming up in November. So come see it, shoot me a note, I’ll show you around.

Yeah, you’re speaking, right?

Yeah, Ashley and I are speaking. You’ll have to come watch because it’s going to be a little controversial probably. We’re talking about we’re going to have a few stats around. I’ve been thinking about sustainability a lot. Sorry, I know this was supposed to be last thing, but a little primer. Our industry is moving to this like let’s just get H2B people, which I love H2B people, it’s great. We don’t use that. We try to use our local workforce.

The thing we’re just forgetting is like the people aren’t a cost to minimize. The people are here to do the work. Like they are the company. And so a living wage, you know, benefits, things like that, which you mentioned, customer centric businesses, Costco, for example, was one, you know, and I know Charlie Munger was a big fan of they, they said their secret sauce is we pay our employees a lot. Like that is their secret sauce. they all make living wages, cetera.

Paul (44:02.734)
So we’re just going to come in a little bit with like, cause we’ve really, we have done a really good job to reduce our turnover and have an excellent team. And it’s, you know, it starts with generosity and which lets you have higher expectations of people too. Um, but yeah, that’s, there’s all sorts of talks. That’s ours is about culture and thinking about sustainability from your employees standpoint. Um, and then yeah, the, the foundation is the part I do and we do scholarships for horticulture students. So it’s, it’s.

Pretty cool, Skills USA version for landscaping. We actually have a video game on Roblox of landscape design. So just trying to get kids and stuff involved, which doesn’t take much. You get a kid outside, they love our industry already. But yeah, come see us and people can reach out to me or Ashley or any of us. We love to meet new people and show them around.

Awesome. Thanks so much, Paul, for doing this and everybody else for listening to another episode of the IU Landscape Growth Podcast.

Thanks, bro.