Scott Tolson on Nurturing Leadership in Landscaping

Robert
00:00
Hi, everyone, and welcome to the I am landscape Growth podcast, where entrepreneurs help entrepreneurs grow faster, better, and stronger in the green industry. From leadership to sales to recruiting and operational excellence. We cover the topics holding entrepreneurs back and share how to get past those bottlenecks with the best in the industry. I’m your host, Rob Murray, co founder and CEO of Intrigue, a digital marketing company focused on helping landscape companies grow. So sit back and enjoy the show. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the I am Landscape Growth podcast. Today I have the honor of introducing Scott Tolson from lawn and landscape Solutions. Scott, thank you so much for doing this.

Scot
00:40
Thanks for having me, Rob.

Robert
00:41
Scott is also on the board of directors for the Magic Council, which is the Mid America Green Industry Council. So we get a really cool perspective from not only an association perspective, but also from somebody that’s got boots on the ground. So, yeah, thanks, Ganscock, for doing this. I was checking you out. I have your LinkedIn profile up right now, and one of the things I love about what we’re going to do in today’s show is you have it nailed in your LinkedIn profile. Trust the people and inspire everyone with big exclamation point. So I think a lot of people are going to get a lot of value out of listening to that whole approach.

Robert
01:14
So before we do that, though, and to give everybody a bit of context in terms of where you’re coming from and where you are today, so that when they’re listening, they have an idea of the perspective it’s coming from, can you give us a bit of a Cole’s notes version of your ramp up to where you are right now in the green industry and kind of what you’ve been up to get there?

Scot
01:32
Sure, sure. Yeah, I actually, I started in the industry very young, so I’ve had a lot of background in it. I started around two years old. My uncle was a landscape designer. All of my family has been in the ag industry for my entire life. Grandparents, farmers, great grandparents, farmers. I’m the fourth generation ag student graduate from Kansas State University. So I’ve had a lot of background. We put a lot of landscapes in when I was little. Helped my family, helped my mom and dad. My grandparents had extensive gardens and stuff like that. So my background in agriculture and horticulture together is very extensive. So I actually didn’t find the industry professionally until I was about 26 years old.

Scot
02:16
I ended up graduating with the Ag degree, but thought I was going a completely different direction in sports turf, found landscape in that whole situation. So I started in a commercial company when I was 26, after I graduated as a turf manager, and have kind of worked my way up into understanding leadership and worked into leadership roles. So turf manager, division manager, operations manager, branch manager, and now as a general manager. So that’s kind of the gist of where I come from and where I’ve been.

Robert
02:50
Awesome. And just in terms of, like, some of the specifics around the business, so being in lawn and landscape solutions right now, what is the core focus of the business? Just so people have a bit of context around where, where you are there.

Scot
03:02
So we’re primarily a residential business. We’re about 95% residential, 5% commercial. We are 60% design and build. And our mantra is design, build, maintain. So we’re about 40% maintenance enhancement, and we’re really driving our maintenance business through our design and build division.

Robert
03:18
Okay, sweet. So we’re going touch on that in a quick second, but I want to come back and circle back towards this idea that you said you kind of started learning leadership and studying leadership. I think it’s a good of a fascinating topic because it’s pretty nebulous. Like, leadership means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. And, you know, everybody’s got a definition. It’s kind of like strategy, you know, no one really knows what it is. Everybody knows what it is, but everybody’s got a different answer.

Scot
03:41
Yes.

Robert
03:41
So can you just kind of give us a bit of an idea from your take on, like, what is studying leadership actually mean? Like, how do you start that process? Like, how did you get into it?

Scot
03:50
really, it started pretty, when I was pretty young, I was a Boy scout. I grew up that way. started when I was a Cub scout. And I’ve always loved the leadership roles. I was a patrol leader, I was a senior patrol leader. I was, all the things in Boy Scouts leadership you could possibly be that grew into sports as well. And you can. It’s kind of always been a thing where you can be a leader without being the, you know, the manager as well, but as a high school wrestler, as in being a captain of the team and things like that. So I’ve always kind of been involved in some sort of leadership role. I’ve always looked at leadership, to me, as helping everyone else before I help myself.

Scot
04:30
I always obviously wanted to win in high school sports and engineer high sports, but always got more joy out of other people winning. And I didn’t really know what that meant until later on in life when I started getting into more roles that weren’t individuals like turf management. Just when I was put into my first management role as leading a mowing division, I really started to realize what that meant and then got really into it in reading and started reading a lot of landscape management articles and things like that. I started reading books pretty heavily in the last two years, but that wasn’t really a thing for me until then. So I’ve always been really intrigued by leadership, but didn’t know what that really meant, really, until the last two to three years.

Robert
05:14
Very cool. And is there a resource or two that you might point people towards that you’ve kind of found? Kind of hit the nail on the head?

Scot
05:24
The two books that have influenced me the most over the last three years are both by Simon Sinek. Huge fan of that guy. It is start with why and the infinite game, and that it just encompasses everything about what we’re talking about, the leaders building leaders, which I did not coin that phrase. That actually comes from Thane Isaacs. He leads innovations tomorrow. You can find him on LinkedIn as well. Great guy. We hooked up a couple years back and met on a podcast just like this. And he kind of turned me on to leaders building leaders, and that’s kind of how I’ve led my life over the last couple years.

Robert
05:59
Jeff, very cool. Well, and one of the things you said, too, earlier, that kind of struck a chord and is very much in line with Simon Sinek stuff. Right? Like, you know, making sure everybody else is winning, making sure everybody else is going to, you know, improving and doing well. And then there’s that leaders eat last kind of concept, if you had a chance to read that one, too. But it’s. Yeah, it’s awesome. So the infinite game. And start with why. So, you know, there’s a lot we can actually, we’ll dig in on the start with why. And I think why it’s so valuable for folks to understand engaging people emotionally. John C. Maxwell’s got a good one. If you heard the 21 irrefutable laws.

Scot
06:33
Of leadership, have not read it. But I know who John Maxwell pretty well.

Robert
06:37
Yeah, it’s a solid read. And one of the concepts is you got to win a heart before you can ask for a hand. And I just think that kind of embodies kind of what you’re saying. So that’s cool. So, I mean, sticking on this leadership thing, then. Leaders building leaders, something that you gravitated to, you know, when we ask people growth constraints like the whole person, the whole point of this podcast is to help identify, you know, what are people seen as the growth constraints within the industry, and what are entrepreneurs, folks like you, leaders in the industry, doing to break through those constraints? We hear it time and time again. Number one out of the top three is staff.

Robert
07:14
You know, whether it’s getting staff or keeping staff, you know, there’s either, there’s nobody out there to hire or everybody will jump ship for a dollar, you know, like, and polarizing, because not everybody believes this, but that is what we’re hearing. What’s your take on the biggest growth constraint right now in the industry?

Scot
07:29
You know, it’s about the same. It’s the same for everybody. It’s staffing. It’s staffing, it’s recruitment, it’s retention. And it’s really retention. You could, if you can, keep your people in place and give them forward movement, opportunity, growth, all the things that people want, that’s where it all starts. And then you have a better chance of acquiring better people as well. So it is staffing. That’d be the number one thing.

Robert
07:57
Cool. And so with lawn and landscape solutions, I mean, I know you’re focusing on the whole way through, whether it’s, you know, recruiting, training, coaching, mentorship, retention. But if you were to look at that life cycle of somebody coming on the team, are you putting more focus upfront to new people, are you putting more focus, you know, growing folks or, you know, retaining folks? Like, if you had to break it up into three kind of spots, in.

Scot
08:23
My role, I put more on coaching. That’s where I spend a lot of my time. Because if we’re talking about leaders, building leaders, as a general manager, I oversee our leadership team, which is our, which are controller, a CFO, basically our operations manager, our sales manager, and everything goes downhill. So if I’m coaching my staff, my leaders, then they’re building leaders underneath them. And that’s really what we’re working on right now, is the front line, is the leadership team to the front line leaders. So it’s really the coaching and the growth and everyone from that top leadership roll down. So that way we have the infrastructure and the people to continue to build our retention, continue to build our growth.

Robert
09:08
Cool. And so for people that maybe are doing some coaching but don’t necessarily have a formal approach, maybe some people have heard of doing coaching but haven’t actually started doing it, you know, what are some of the things that you do when you’re coaching your leaders on not only them, but also coaching them to coach others. Is it, is there a formal process? Is it a bit more like, hey, we’ve got this amount of time set aside. We’re gonna talk about these things. Like, how do you go about doing that?

Scot
09:32
Well, we keep, remember, one thing is you keep your coaching sessions very constant. Weekly, bi weekly, whatever you’re doing, you don’t give up that time to anybody else. You give it up to only that person. So that way you’re focusing on that person. Follow down structure wise, it just depends on the person. It depends on what you’re doing. I have different structures that I’ll follow for different people. Some people need different things. Some people understand coaching. Some people don’t know exactly what coaching is. They understand what management is. But you manage numbers, you lead people. So if you follow that, it’s, you have to kind of determine where people are at in their leadership careers and coach them based on what they need.

Scot
10:13
And that’s kind of where I facilitate and where I put my effort into everyone.

Robert
10:20
Yeah.

Scot
10:20
People first.

Robert
10:22
And so when you’re talking about people first and, you know, taking this approach where you can understand someone, where they are in their career and where they are in their lives, and then coach them kind of from there, what are some tips that you’d give leaders that are listening to this, that want to start coaching but haven’t really gotten into it too much yet, and they’re like, well, I don’t like, what am I supposed to say when I’m in these meetings? You know, like, let’s say we set up this meeting. It’s weekly. Thursdays, every Thursday. 09:00 a.m. 10:00 a.m. Whatever it might be. Okay, I’m going to go sit down. And I’m like, I got nothing. So, like, what are we saying in these sessions?

Scot
10:51
One, there’s always an agenda. You know, you have to kind of formalize it to what they need. And there’s always agenda. You stick the same agenda. The number two is listen. And that’s probably the most important thing is that listening to who you’re working with, it’s not always about me talking. I can talk till I’m blue in the face, and sometimes it doesn’t do any good. But you’re listening. You’re giving feedback based on what you’re hearing from them. What’s their concerns? How are you addressing their concerns? Their issues in the field. Coaching is more about listening than it is that it is talking sometimes. That’s really what it is to me.

Robert
11:28
Yeah, I love it. One of the things we will ask a lot is anything in your way right now? Is there friction inside the company, customers, team members, processes, systems, lack thereof, that are making it difficult for you to do your job? And kind of looking at, like, my job as an opportunity to, like, clear the path so that people can move quickly and do things well without having to, like, you know, be frustrated or like, why don’t we have this thing or whatever? Right. Is anything in your way? We find is a decent question for that? Is there any question that you have as a go to that you kind of ask folks when you’re kind of kicking things off?

Scot
12:04
How are you doing? That’s, that’s number one. How are you doing as a person? How are you doing as an employee? You know, that’s number one. Number two, what do you feel good about? That’s usually what we start with is, what do you feel good about? And then we kind of go from there. But those are the two, those are the three main ones you talk about then where you need, where are you needing help right now? What, what resources do you need to be successful in life, be successful in your job? And sometimes they vary from week to week. You know, it may not always be the same. I meet weekly with all of my leadership team, individually and as a group as well. And we talk about just those things. We mainly talk about people.

Scot
12:47
We don’t talk about numbers so much in the one one, and that’s where we talk about the numbers in the leadership meetings, with our scorecard, we follow EOS system. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that one very much so operating system, and we’re new into that about six months. So we follow that, and then that kind of trickles down from top down. But the one ones is just purely based on coaching about people and people outside it, not as well as just inside the business.

Robert
13:12
And so then, so you hear some folks being like, you know, hey, I don’t need to hear about your personal lives. You’re at work right now. Check it out the door. Like this older school mentality of like, hey, you know, actually, I think there’s a show on Apple TV, what’s it called? A convergence or something like that, where they get actually programmed so that when they walk in their office, they forget themselves as a human being. And when they leave the office, they forget their office work. so we know that we’re kind of past that, or at least I believe a lot of people know we’re past those days.

Robert
13:41
What do you say to people that are, like, having a hard time bringing personal issues in with the business when, especially in a coaching environment, when you’re asking somebody how they’re doing, they’re going to be prone to talk about like, hey, you know what? It’s tough, you know, like, I have twins under the age of one right now. I’m not sleeping really well, and, you know, life’s kind of tough at home. You know, that might. That pops up, right?

Scot
14:01
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Now, I mean, the number one thing is care. You got to care about your people. And that’s kind of where what my whole year has been driven about is 2023 is about caring. You got to care about the people that work for you, work with you. And when they’re struggling outside of work, obviously they’re going to struggle in work. And it’s not work related whatsoever. It’s not a issue within what they’re doing at work. It’s purely outside. So you have to be able to help them and listen to what their needs are right now. And it’s difficult because it’s not about work, and it’s fun to help them in what they need outside of work as well. We set goals.

Scot
14:45
One of the things we just have done is we set goals, three work goals and three personal goals, and we’ve shared them with the whole team and that way we hold ourselves accountable. But three personal goals. The reason I do that is because they’re, if you’re helping each other outside of work, your trust and everyone inside of work is going to be way better.

Robert
15:04
Way better. Yeah, we have a resource. I’ll make sure I send it to you after this called roadmaps, very similar to what you just said. And I’ll put it in the link when we put this up the show up on itunes and Spotify. But, yeah, to your point, you know, if I understand what you want to accomplish and, you know, what I want to accomplish, and we see it out in the world, we might be able to like, hey, support each other and making that happen, or I might know somebody that, you know, might be able to help you. That kind of thing. That’s super cool. So then, okay. Coaching to help people grow, coach people through some difficult times, using questions like, how are you doing as a person? How you doing as an employee?

Robert
15:39
You know, what do you feel good about, like, these are all really good tips. And I think it’s really undervalued in terms of some organizational settings where they’re not having these weekly, like, kind of opportunities for coaching. Now, if we flip it a little bit, though, and talk about, like, someone’s having a hard time, meaning they’re not doing a good job, they’re, we’re putting time into them, but they’re not able to get there. And we’re talking about, like, we might have to leave, you know, separate and go different ways. Do you have some approaches that you can share with people? Because I think that idea about caring about people is also about, like, being humanistic in, you know, if we have to end up going separate ways and have to let someone go, it still needs to be done with care and compassion.

Robert
16:17
And so do you have any tips or stories that you might be able to share, like how someone might approach something like that?

Scot
16:23
The part of, the, part of the one ones is kind of the accountability factor as well. It’s, it’s not that you want to hold people accountable. You want to trust that they’re doing their, what they’re supposed to do. And when they don’t, a lot of times when you’re meeting one one, they already know. And that’s the best part of the sharing the numbers as a scoreboard and the leadership meetings and on down operations meetings, they all have the same type of meetings is everybody already knows pretty much where they’re at accountability wise. And so they’re usually asking you prior to you having to go to them about the issues. It’s pretty open book.

Scot
16:58
It’s very visibility on the entire employee, all the employees at the same time, for most parts, when you’re having a discussion with them, it’s not as hard because you’ve already had that. They’ve already been aware of it or have already come to you in most cases. So when now if it comes to the end result of separation, you always want to put everything you can to everybody before you have to do that. But it does come down to it. Sometimes you got to cut ties and go a different direction. Now, if you’ve had enough good conversations, quality conversations with them, is there an issue of capacity of the job and they’re just in the wrong seat, or is it, or they’re just not a good person or a good, not a good fit for the values? And a lot of times you’re.

Scot
17:44
They’re not good. It’s not that they’re not a good fit for the values because they’re. That they’ve been there, you’ve hired them, that you’ve been in the right place. They’ve been in the place for the right amount of time. They just not have the capacity to handle what they’re doing. So it’s. It may be just a move of seat, the different seat in the company. So, you know, you never want to think about it as cutting ties because you just, you want to put everything you can into your people. And that’s. That’s kind of how I follow there. It’s just, let’s find a different seat. And if there’s not a seat, okay. I mean, it’s, this here’s where we have.

Robert
18:14
Yeah. And so, I mean, a lot of times we’ll hear people feel like they’re blindsided if they get let go or something like that. And, I mean, having this kind of one one accountability and visibility, I think, really helps, you know, create that because I feel like if somebody isn’t doing a good job, they’re usually pretty stressed out about it, too. Like, yes, if they know it’s a lot easier to manage. So I really, you know, appreciate that perspective. So then going back to this original idea of leaders, building leaders, then. So you’ve got this idea in this framework for building a coaching with your leadership team, and now you’re working on getting them to coach, you know, the frontline staff, you know, whether it’s supervisors or people out in the field, whatever it might be.

Robert
18:48
So what kind of approaches do you take to get them going on? You know, the idea of literally doing what you’re doing, which is, you know, building leaders to lead. Leaders. Like, how do you focus on that?

Scot
18:58
Yeah, well, our number one job is to be able to train our replacement. Right. Or we’re never able to move up. We’re never able to move out. If we eventually want to retire and we want to continue with our infinite mindset, as Simon Sinek would say, it’s an infinite game, the game continues without us forever. So it’s just a repetitious thing where you just keep doing the same thing. You have to have the correct onboarding. How are we onboarding? And this is always something we’re working on and we’re getting better at. Is onboarding. When you do recruit? After you recruit, you’re onboarding. How are you onboarding? What does our onboarding look like? Our onboarding process is throw them in a truck and good luck. Or are we spending time with them?

Scot
19:41
Going over the most commonly asked questions of the industry. There’s three. Where’s the bathroom? Where, what’s, when’s payday? And where do I park? That’s the three become most commonly asked questions in landscape and then go over. Over. What is our values? You know, what is our. Obviously, you went through the interview process. You’ve heard about our values. We feel you meet the values. You feel you meet the values. And what’s our mission? What’s our vision? Where are we going? What’s our long term scheme? What’s our, what’s our one year? What’s our three year? What’s our five year? And we’re sitting down with different. Different business or different business portion owners, like the operations manager, leadership team owners, and going, okay, this is their portion.

Scot
20:16
And we have our visionary, which is our owner, and he lays out the vision and we try and get that done more and more as we go on. We always hear, we don’t have time, but we don’t have time not to. So it starts with onboarding.

Robert
20:31
Tell me about that. We don’t have time not to because there’s so many people that say they don’t have the time to do that.

Scot
20:36
So the thing is, like you, if you invest into people and you say your people first, you always have time. Your time is just moved. Your time now is to sit there with that person and onboard them correctly. And it’s three or four different people’s jobs to do that throughout that day. But if you don’t do that time, where’s that person going to be in two weeks or tomorrow? Really? So if nobody has time, but everybody should have time.

Robert
21:08
So not to mention the amount of the impression that can be created the first day.

Scot
21:12
Right.

Robert
21:13
Like that whole halo effect that can work for you or against you in day one. I think that’s a really valuable piece, man. So, okay, coming away from the leadership piece for a minute and going back to what you’re saying with regard to this mantra, design, build, maintain. You know, we work with a bunch of landscapers and they do design, build. We don’t do maintenance. Yeah, we have a bunch of people that do maintenance. They’re like, yeah, we don’t really do design, build. And then you’re talking design, build and maintain. This is something that we’re really trying to get people to understand the value of. Like, you have a really good customer because you just, you know, did a, whatever, $280,000 project or $150,000 landscape construction project. And now you’re going to let it grow over and someone else is going to maintain it.

Robert
22:00
So, like, where does it come from for you folks around this design, build, maintain mantra? What is that? What is that all about?

Scot
22:06
So about. Well, it’s actually always been our logo. That’s the crazy thing it’s about. In 2013, when I joined lawn and landscape solutions, we had it in our logo. It says, design, build, maintain. And about two years after that, we started working with Jeffrey Scott, an industry consultant, pretty heavily owner’s very involved with him now. And it was, where are we going? What are we doing? And I was like, well, it’s right in our logo. You know, we talked about, it’s right in our logo. It says, design, build, maintain. We’re doing a great job, design and building, but what are we doing with the maintenance? We were, were a smaller maintenance company then than we are now. But it’s, what does the customer experience look like going from design to build to maintain?

Scot
22:47
And we’ve really narrowed that down here in the last six months is to what that process looks like and to be able to maintain that property afterwards. Be surprised how many people in our industry, or in any industry for that matter, is, oh, I didn’t know you did that. Right, but so many times I didn’t know you did that. Well, it’s literally in our logo. Well, don’t assume people are reading your logo. No, people understand that you’re doing what you’re doing. It’s design, build, maintain. So, hey, we have our design team, we have our sales team, and we have our maintenance team. And there is actually a process that goes through that whole structure of how we sell it, we design it, we sell it.

Scot
23:26
And then the handoff when that, when the walkthrough is done with the account manager, we have an account manager come in and actually meet with them to sell them ongoing maintenance and provide ongoing maintenance. They’re going to spend it anyway with somebody, so why not spend it with us?

Robert
23:40
Right? And so then what does that look like in terms of that process? So you’ve got somebody who comes in and does a walkthrough. They’re stoked, right? Because now the project is, you know, quasi finished, and they’re just looking at this epic thing that has just been built from whatever it was before. is there a couple of key steps, around, like that, approach and that, like, service approach? you know, some people, we hear they don’t want to be pushy or salesy. So it’s like, they’re like, oh, I don’t necessarily want to push this on people, even though they don’t have a clue that they do it. So can you just kind of give us an insight, like, how you folks walk through that process?

Scot
24:12
We. One, we don’t see as being pushy. We see as adding value. We. We’ve already installed all the work. We understand what it takes. We. We know what it looks like to take care of it for the rest.

Robert
24:22
Of the better than anybody could possibly.

Scot
24:24
That’s right. Right, exactly. So we have certain positions within the company, and we have a project manager who pretty much means after it’s sold, and there’s a handoff between the salesperson and the project manager and the production manager. They do a walkthrough of the property. We build the project. The project manager actually sees it all the way through, and they work with the homeowner at the end to do the walkthrough, the punch list and everything. And that’s when the account manager is also present. They do the walkthrough as well. They already have a proposal and. Okay, let’s talk about what it takes to maintain everything now. And usually they’re using somebody do some of that stuff, but. Oh, okay. You know, let me take a look at it, and then it usually moves on from there.

Scot
25:04
We’ve had a pretty successful conversion rate this year with the process that, the way it is, so.

Robert
25:10
Yeah. Okay. So what would that look like for someone listening? That’s been, you know, either putting it off or they’ve, you know, haven’t really thought about it. Now they’re thinking they want to. What, what does it look like out of ten projects built, constructed, how many of them are turning into maintenance clients when doing it the way you’re doing it?

Scot
25:23
Right. We build a lot of bigger projects right now, so it’s. It’s hard to say how many projects. And out of the last ten, we probably have. We probably have a 50% conversion rate at this point.

Robert
25:33
That’s huge.

Scot
25:34
I’d like. I’d like to see it about 80 or 90, but that’s the general manager talking, so.

Robert
25:39
Yeah. Yeah. Good on you. But still, like, you know, and then what’s the average value of a project? Last ten for you folks? Like, in terms of size from a dollar perspective?

Scot
25:48
Oh, last ten. We have some really high ones, and we have some. Obviously, we do a lot of work in between. Anywhere between 5200, 300,000. So average. Probably about 80.

Robert
25:59
Yeah, $80,000 average. And then you look at, you know, maintenance, average annual maintenance value. What would you put that at? Ish?

Scot
26:09
I think our average is between about 4000, 510,000. Just depends on the size. So call it applications only all the way up to full service. But our full service clients are usually about 7000 to 10,000.

Robert
26:22
Yeah. Okay, cool. I’m just saying like, you know, you get essentially ten clients on the maintenance. You essentially have a new product design that’s baked into your business every year forever as long as you don’t mess it up. Right?

Scot
26:35
Correct.

Robert
26:35
Not to mention the recurring revenue model and what it does for the sales value of the business. And, and so I just think that’s really cool, Scott, I really appreciate you sharing that. All right, so as part, like, a board of director, and you’ve been part of the Mid America Green Industry Council for quite some time, can you just give us a quick kind of overview of what it’s all about and then the value afterwards of, like, being involved with it? Okay, sweet.

Scot
27:03
Yeah. So our Mid America Industry Council, green Industry Council is based in Kansas City. We serve mainly the Kansas City metro area, but it goes a little bit further than that. It depends on what we’re, with the current offering. We do a lot of continuing education. We support the industry as a whole in our area for the h two b program, things like that. We’ll bring in speakers and we don’t work with lobbyists or any of that in that stuff. There’s a whole other group that does that. But we definitely support the industry as a whole in that aspect. So a lot of the education advocation that we do and then that we ultimately cultivate cultivation is what we do. So that’s kind of along those lines that we’re redoing some of our rebranding and stuff.

Scot
27:49
And it’s our three pillars, cultivate, educate and advocate. And that’s kind of what we’re going for. And that’s what we’ve been doing for years and years.

Robert
27:57
Yeah. Okay, cool. And so then being involved yourself, like, one of the things we find a lot are folks that are. So there’s like, you know, to oversimplify, people that aren’t involved industry associations, people that are and people that lead within them. And we find that, you know, the more involved people get in these things, usually the more successful they are with their business outside of the association. You know, coincidence? I think not. So, you know, in terms of your experience involved with the association and being on, say, a board of directors, like, what’s that been like for your leadership journey and just understanding the business better and being around these folks, like, what’s that done for you personally?

Scot
28:31
Well, the initial reason why I got on the board, other than, I mean, I had some friends on it and they, you know, it’s always a good thing to be a part of something bigger than yourself, is I want to make the industry better. Like, my whole goal is kind of along with the infinite game, is I don’t want to just leave what I have behind. I want to leave the legacy behind, not for myself, but for the industry. Our industry could be so much better than it is, and that is why I’m a part of it. I want to help raise our industry efforts. I want to help raise our industry education level. I want to help raise our industry just the way we are viewed as a whole. For the whole.

Scot
29:09
For the whole city, obviously, but for the whole country as well. I think we do sometimes do a pretty poor job of letting people know how good we actually are and what we actually stand for. And that’s why I’m there and that’s what my experience has been and that’s why I continue to do it.

Robert
29:24
That’s very cool, man. It’s interesting. I was talking to a guy actually out of New Brunswick in Canada, and he’s been a director of landscape new project for quite some time, and he talked about the idea that landscaping and the green industry is really the only true green industry. He goes and does a bunch of engagement talks with kids in high schools, that kind of stuff, and he says is riding an electric car to work or to school green? And they let people put their hand up and he’s like, well, it’s not green. It’s less gray. Is riding your bike to school, is that green? Yes. I’ll put hands up. He’s like, well, it’s not actually green. It’s actually less gray. You know, planting is green.

Robert
30:02
You know, like shaping landscapes and making things healthier, whether it be, you know, waterways or retaining walls for escarpments, whatever. You know, like, there is legit green in the industry. I think you’re right. That isn’t necessarily positioned the best, especially for a generation of folks coming up right now, young workers who want to be part of something like sustainable environmental and has impact. So. So then in terms of the magic council and your participation. So how has it given you that opportunity to do that. Like have you had a chance to learn and grow while being a part of it? You’ve been in it for how many years now?

Scot
30:35
I think around five. Five or six now I believe. I don’t know the exact date.

Robert
30:39
I still part of a decade anyway.

Scot
30:44
Yeah, yeah. Been involved, I’ve been involved with it since pretty, almost the beginning of my commercial experience in 2006. So in some form or fashion just have been on the board for about five years.

Robert
30:57
Very cool. And so then what’s it been like then from for you to be able to, you know, surround yourself with those people and what’s it been in terms.

Scot
31:04
Of the value that it’s brought to you for professionalism? It’s great. For me individually, it’s been awesome. You get to be around a group of professionals who love the industry as much as I do, who care about it as much as I do care about the people who are involved in it and raising the bar for everyone around. So it’s been awesome for me. It’s helped my professional career immensely. I mean, I’ve got to help with our conference every year. I’m the conference chair. That’s where we provide the speakers and the facility for our recertification for chemical applicators. That’s one of our biggest programs that we have year to year just because we have to keep everybody on the up and up for certifications, companies as well as people. So that’s usually a two day event.

Robert
31:53
And when is it this year?

Scot
31:55
It’s I think the third week of December, right before Christmas this year. And we’ve just moved to one day. But we cover Kansas, Missouri. We have a lot to do since we’re on the state line. Yeah, but it’s been a fun experience. And Jane Miller, director, has been fantastic. So just want to give her a shout out as well.

Robert
32:12
Sweet. Well, thank you, Jane. Okay, so then you mentioned something in passing there a while ago and you referenced it a couple of times. Whether it’s using core values, whether it’s vision or it’s picture of five years, three years, one year, and this whole EOS framework, the entrepreneurial operating system, when did you guys start using that? What’s the impact been for the business, leveraging a system like that?

Scot
32:38
So we started that in January, right when I started back with lot of landscape solutions. The owner and I actually read the book about traction about the same time. And then we read Rocket fuel, which is a visionary integrator relationship. And right before I started. So it’s actually, it’s been great. It keep, it keeps you on track. It puts everything into perspective and has the measurables that you put it. You can put a business in line with. And it works for any business I just landscape. So it’s, it’s been great for us. I mean we’re still new to it. Six months in, seven months in. So we’re still a little clunky, but we’re working out kinks and really moving forward. It’s been big help for moving the business forward and to know where we’re at and where we’re going.

Robert
33:19
Very cool. And in terms of the organization, does everybody have an idea of what’s going on within eos and like, you know, there’s a vision traction organizer that as an organization you fill out and share with everybody. Is that, is it almost there? Six months isn’t a long time. Right. So. And that’s a lot of work to get done.

Scot
33:34
It is. And I will say that’s where, that’s our biggest goal for the fourth quarter. Third in the third and fourth quarter is to really share that vision. We kind of came together here about a month ago, so we did a great job in the leadership team, but we have not done a great job showing, sharing it with the rest of the team. So we all have faults and that’s been ours this year and we’re really working on that one going forward for the fourth quarter to make sure it shares some top down.

Robert
33:57
Yeah, that’s cool. I mean, conscious is the consciousness is the first step to change. Right. So as long as we know we didn’t do it. So. Okay. So, you know, you mentioned that growing up, the leadership’s always been kind of emergent leader in everything that you’ve done, and then you’ve brought it to, you know, where you are professionally and this idea of care being theme of this year for you. Like, do you have a theme every year? And what made this year’s care or this year’s theme care?

Scot
34:23
You know, not really. Like I said about two years ago, I got really into reading and I read a book by John Gordon. I’m familiar with John Gordon. The one word I believe, and it kind of said put a word out there for the year annually and live that word every day. Every, if something, if you wake up and it’s not driven by the word, it’s probably, you’re probably doing something wrong. It’s pretty easy to do if you just wake up. I’m going to care about what I do for myself. I’m going to care about my people today. I’m going to care about my family. I’m going to care about, you know, everything that goes on around you. So it’s been easy for that for me for this year.

Robert
35:00
Very cool.

Scot
35:01
That’s where I came from.

Robert
35:02
Yeah, no, that’s cool. I appreciate you sharing it because it’s just, it’s so simple, right. And I find things that are that simple take a lot of time to get to, you know, I think. What was that saying? You know, sorry, I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you this long one. And when we simplify things, I think things become so much easier to manage and to work through. So I just really, you know, sharing. That’s really good. All right, so if there was one thing, then if you were to tell a leader, who’s like, you know what, I’m going to step up. I’m going to start leading. I’m going to start coaching. I’m going to start serving my people. What, what’s the one thing that you wish you had learned?

Robert
35:35
Maybe, say, five or ten years ago that, you know, today, that you wish you had known then that you’d want to tell someone else?

Scot
35:40
No matter what you do on a day to day basis, always make time for your team. Always make time for someone on your team. If they, if they need that time, right, then there’s something that could be done with a computer later on. I know it adds time to the day, but always take time to listen, I guess.

Robert
35:59
Very cool, man. What do you, what do they say? Two years, one mouth use according. Yeah, anyway, this is awesome. This is jam packed, too, right? Like, I mean, everything from the idea of leaders building leaders, eos coaching and the little nuances to it design, build, maintain, and the whole business model around making a profitable landscape business. Like, why would we let someone else maintain the project that we know better than anybody in the world? I really appreciate you doing this, Scott. Thanks so much, man.

Scot
36:26
Yeah, thanks for having me, Rob. Appreciate it.

Robert
36:27
All right, thanks, everybody, for listening. Stay tuned for the next episode of I am Landscape Growth podcast. The I am landscape growth podcast is brought to you by intrigue, where passionate marketing meets predictable results for entrepreneurs. Remember to like and subscribe the podcast so you don’t miss the next episode. And if you would like to be a guest on the podcast, please visit intriguemedia.com and click on podcasts.