Shaping a New Blue Collar Culture with Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan

00:03
Rob Murray
Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the I am Landscape Growth podcast. I have a special guest today. I mean, most guests are special, but there’s a really cool perspective I think we’re going to get. I have the fortune of having Mikhail Turgrian on the podcast today. Thank you, Mikhail. Really appreciate doing this today, man.

00:21
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Thanks. Appreciate it. 

00:25
Rob Murray
So, more than ten years in the industry, from lawnmowers in the back of a truck to scaled businesses, coaching, redefining blue collar, we’re going to get into all of it today just so people have an understanding of who they’re listening to. Can you give us a quick, close note summary of how you ended up getting to where you are today? And what does that look like right now? 

00:47
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Yeah, absolutely. And of course, thanks for having me. So I was working at the bank. I did a whole bunch of other odd jobs in the past and started working at the bank. And I thought that’d be my first real job. I wanted to benchmark myself and see if I could actually make it in the corporate world. Didn’t work out after a couple months, quit that, wanted to start my own thing and that was always on the radar. Finally did. Had a couple thousand dollars to my name at the time, bought a couple lawnmowers, put it in the back of my dad’s Honda, and off went. That was my first business at the time. We’re just grass cutting landscape and that sort of thing. From there I started a bunch of other things. 

01:28
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
I was in media, I had a marketing company for a little bit. Tried that. Tried my hand at h vac. Tried my hand at. I had a meal kit company. I don’t know if you heard of meal kits like hellofresh or chef’s plate. So. So were one of the first meal kits in Canada. Worked on that business for a little bit and just was always looking for ways to, I guess, get out of the industry. For some odd reason, the industry was just never something that was attractive. There was a like a built in stigma that I had on the industry and it just wasn’t something that I wanted to stick around to grow into. And so kept looking at other opportunities, other businesses. 

02:13
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
And then right around 2020, when my marketing company at the time basically shut down on the world, shut down and everything went to zero. And my other companies, everything basically went to complete ground zero. Started rebuilding in this industry. A couple of my friends also were out of a job, so they jumped in and we started rebuilding the company and it was basically at that time that I recommitted to the industry, and I said, let me try my hand at really committing myself to this. And basically, from last four years, went from. From zero to 100 employees in one company. Then we have another franchise that we’re building. We got a fourth location going for that. More on the home service side of things. Our other businesses in commercial snow and ice and landscaping. 

02:59
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
And then recently started a education media company called Redefined Caller around some of the things that we’ve been learning over the last few years. Some of that media, you know, I guess, sweet tooth that I wanted to satiate and get my hands back into that and a few other things. So really feel like this industry is a fantastic place to be, and I know what it’s like to be on the other side of that and just be in a place where you’re trying to get out of it because you think it might be a dead end, but it’s absolutely nothing. Want to share that message as well with the other company that we’re building. 

03:38
Rob Murray
Okay, so, cool. So, you know, you look at a long history of trying to find something that’s, you know, the grass is greener on the other side, no pun intended, you know, getting outside the green industry and then coming back, recommitting and seeing at scale, and then through that experience, you know, bringing education to other folks. So this whole idea of redefined blue collar, can you just give us a quick rundown of what. What it’s all about and then we can get into this, you know, the primary growth constraints. 

04:08
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Yeah, I think it’s. It’s. To me, it’s what everything’s about, which is culture. Right. Like, culture is basically the thing that sits on top. It’s the umbrella that holds everything together, and it’s basically the umbrella that holds the blue collar industry together as well. And there’s a certain pace of a certain feel to the industry, the certain culture within the industry, and redefine glucose, a paradigm shift into a new way of thinking, a new way of approaching the industry, a new way of building companies in the industry, a new way of being a team member, a leader in the industry, and helping break some of that stigma, which is naturally going to break when you introduce a lot of new people into a space, into a culture. 

04:50
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
And now we have the great shift where you have exponentially more younger people that are entering the industry, but then even a greater number that are leaving the industry. And so now you have this massive shift where the old guard is retiring and they’re on their way out. But there isn’t necessarily a set culture for the guys that are coming in. And we have an opportunity now to reset that culture, retune that culture, and make it more conducive to both the current environment and the current things that are going to help a business grow and prosper. And also we have an opportunity to shape the culture as new people are coming in. And why not shape the culture? 

05:27
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Because, you know, when you’re talking about an industry that for a long time has been undisrupted and you have a little bit of technological disruptions happening here and there, I see the main disruptor in an industry that is primarily dominated by people as culture. And that’s basically what the movement’s all about. Cool. 

05:49
Rob Murray
So then, just to give people a quick little tangible nugget on this, because we’ll come back to it, what is a way to kind of summarize the stigma or culture of the past towards what will be potentially something that’s going to help people thrive moving forward? 

06:08
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
So there’s sort of two sides to this, right? There’s. There’s top down, there’s bottom up. So bottom up is, you know, I’m going to be entering an industry as a. As a team member, as an employee, and eventually as a somebody who’s going to be a leader in a company. I’m going to look this, I’m going to look at this as a temporary stop. So many of my new hires for a long period of time, we’re looking at this as a temporary place to be. It’s sort of a stepping stone to your real career. 

06:38
Rob Murray
Right. 

06:39
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
There aren’t real careers in this industry. That’s sort of one of the stigmas. Yeah. This, this industry can be a dead end. It’s a second option. It’s a last option that’s part of it. And then the other part of it is, you know, when you’re in a company, the culture of a company where there’s less investment into people is less investment into growth, less investment in education is sort of the other side. And then for the entrepreneurs who lens of this, it’s the opportunity. Right. So the same thing. The opportunity in the industry isn’t what it needs to be. There’s a shinier object happening over here. It’s a. It’s an option that you go to when you haven’t got your education straight, you haven’t gotten your other things in order, and you’re going to be sort of looking at it from that perspective. 

07:39
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
And you, in order for you to build a great life, you potentially have to be looking at other industries, other spaces. You can’t build a great life in this industry. You can’t be a highly educated, highly ambitious, highly successful individual in this industry. And I think that’s wrong, but that’s definitely the part of the stigma along with other things. Like, I’ll give you a quick anecdote to this as well. I’m an immigrant. I have immigrant parents, okay? And I’ve talked to a lot of my friends about this as well. It’s go to school, so you don’t have to end up doing this work no matter what position you’re in this industry. That seems to be the message I’ve had. My guys resonate with that message as well, where their parents are constantly putting that pressure on. I’ve had that happen to me as well. 

08:37
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
I was telling a story about my girlfriend, who basically confronted me about this in my keynote. So that’s more or less the stigma and the thing that you’re up against, and that’s what your team is up against, and that’s what people that you’re hiring are up against. They’re up against the idea that this is. 

08:56
Rob Murray
Swimming upstream like a second tier. Yeah, second tier place to be, which is just so not true. 

09:04
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Which is so. Which is so not true. And the other thing is, like, right now, we’re in the attracting business. Like, we’re in the attracting and we’re in the converting business. There are so many voices online that are trying to attract people into their industries. They’re trying to attract talent to their space. Your ability to attract talent into your company is one of the things that’s going to help you stand out. But right now, we’re competing in a global marketplace. Everybody is looking for the same talent. 

09:32
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
So our job, I think, as leaders of industry, is to come up here and say, okay, look, this is the best industry to be in if you’re XYZ, and these are the following reasons, and we need to attract you into this industry and help you understand why some of those stigmas are there and are in place and why some of those predispositions are there. And let’s break some of those down so we can actually get that talent into our space. 

10:00
Rob Murray
Yeah. Awesome. And then that helps everybody grow. 

10:02
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Right? 

10:02
Rob Murray
The rising tide raises all ships. And so if we take that then and switch over to this theme of the show, is, what’s the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry, you know, what’s your take on that? 

10:22
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
So, primary growth constraint, generally. So there’s different stages of this. Right. One of the things that I see is, what should I be working on as a leader? Like, what should I be doing as a leader to move the needle forward in my company? That’s the question that you have to answer every single day. When you wake up and you’re approaching your business and you need to grow, what is the thing that is holding you back at this stage? And traditionally, when you’re talking about specifically an industry that is focused on people are going to be the number one area that you want to invest your time, energy, and effort into. But who is investing that? Time, energy, and effort is generally the leadership. 

11:11
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
So, to me, the first thing would be to start working on the leadership development in your company, even having a personal development or a leadership development program in your business. And right now, if you’re just one person or three people or ten people, that leadership development is you. You are the leader that needs to develop. Then, as you start to develop, you can start passing on some of those things to your team, and then have your primary focus be developing your team. Then from there, that team, as it starts to develop, will form a culture. And you have to be the culture engineer of your company and set up a culture that is going to be conducive to those people going out there and growing your business. I always say that leaders shape culture. 

11:57
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Culture shapes people, and people build companies in a people centered industry like the one that we have. 

12:04
Rob Murray
Sure. 

12:04
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Yeah, no, it’s sitting here right now. Right like, I’m sitting here. My people are building our company based on a vision that we have and based on our culture that we have. My primary job is to figure out, how do I shape that culture that will then shape those people, and the people can go out there and build the companies. 

12:24
Rob Murray
Yeah, I love it. So, I mean, just to kind of synthesize that, it’s. It’s really about growing yourself so that you can grow people, because you can’t take someone somewhere you’ve never been. 

12:39
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Yeah. You can’t fill from an empty cup, either. So it’s. It’s funny, too, because then you’ll have your work in the. In the beginning, like you’re doing everything, and then only you’re doing a part of the work. But then as you start to get deeper in your work and you start doing your personal tasks, somebody from your team comes up and they need something. One, two. People. Now, all of a sudden, if you have a large team, everybody needs something. You know, you have two options. You remove yourself as the bottleneck from a lot of those decisions and a lot of the things that are needed. Fine, but how do you show up for your team the rest of the time when you’re not a bottleneck, you’re just showing up to add to whatever they’re working on. 

13:27
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
You need to be in a position where you are constantly taking in throughout your day. Whether it’s physically, whether it’s mentally, whether it’s spiritually, whether it’s listening to podcasts, reading books, going to courses, going to seminars, developing yourself, talking to industry leaders, you’re constantly taking in. And then you’re in a state where at any point in time, you can give to your team without you being so deep into this one little task that you’re trying to push through. Instead, you can kind of zoom out and be the architect. And it takes a long time to get to that point. So there’s a whole bunch of steps before, and, like, this isn’t today, you need to start doing this, and today you need to just zoom out and be an architect. 

14:11
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
What’s the balance of you being in there every single day and over time, scaling that back to where you can constantly just zoom out, zoom out and. And help everybody else see the direction that they need to go? 

14:25
Rob Murray
Yeah, that’s good. It’s great, man. So if you got somebody listening to this, let’s say they’re between 500,000 and a million dollars in revenue, they’ve got a team, maybe a crew or two. They’ve been doing it all. They see an opportunity to start maybe letting some things go. They don’t necessarily know how to start growing themselves as a leader or personally, which maybe is the same thing. But, what would be like a step or two someone might consider taking if they’re listening to this and being like, okay, I want to do it, but I just don’t know how to start. 

15:01
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Number one, join a group of other guys that are in and around that similar space. 

15:06
Rob Murray
Peer group. 

15:07
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Join a group of other. Join a peer group, period. That should be the number one thing that you’re doing. Get it wrong, because anything else that comes out of my mouth is potentially a next solution to a next problem. But you’re going to have from 500 to a million to five and five and beyond. You’re going to have consistently evolving issues and problems, and so is everybody else. That is, that has gone through some of those steps and other guys that are both a. Going through it with you will be the closest to experiencing that. And usually you want to learn from somebody that’s from two types of people, somebody who’s a little bit further ahead than you. Then they can pass on that immediate knowledge and then somebody who is a lot further ahead. 

15:53
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
And then they can sort of paint some of the bigger picture and envision the leadership and that, and the strategy of it. So that’d be, number one, other guys that are in a similar space. What are some of those groups? And it doesn’t even have to be the exact industry. It can be. And certainly there should be education coming from the industry. But I would highly recommend also getting into a group with people that are not in the industry at all, a peer group that is outside of the industry. You know, they’re in fashion, they’re in media, they’re in education, they’re in content there. And then you’re, you start seeing things, okay, these guys are doing all these things this way in this industry. Why are we not doing this? 

16:38
Rob Murray
Yeah, that’s cool. Advantages to both. Right. 

16:42
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
And there’s a tremendous amount of takeaways that we took from being in all these different other businesses in the past where, for example, for our food business, we’re competing against all these different companies that have incredible funding and their marketing is top notch, the websites are excellent, their SEO is fantastic, and everything is just at a super high level. We’re trying to compete in this industry. Those things aren’t necessarily prioritized at the same level. Well, why not? How can we take what these guys are doing here and inject it into our industry so we can actually stand up? Because if you’re only listening to guys in the industry, you’re only not showing yourself a little bit ahead. 

17:23
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
You put something else into your operation, all of a sudden you’re getting an order of magnitude which is ten times larger or ten times faster, an order of magnitude difference into your business. So that would be basically the talk, too. 

17:41
Rob Murray
Yeah, I love it, too. I mean, like, one of the things we’ve done on the same thinking is look at the hospitality industry from, it comes to customer service. Like, from a marketing point of view, from a marketing firm perspective, not a lot of similarities, but from a taking care of customers point of view, hospitality, they’re pretty good at doing it that way. So, you know, taking inspiration from people like Ritz Carlton, you know, ladies and gentlemen, serving ladies and gentlemen, and goes a long way when you’re taking care of people. When you’re in a business, that’s a selling to people. So I think that perspective of widening the point of view from other industries is super helpful. 

18:18
Rob Murray
So peer group number one, whether it’s people in the industry or people not getting around other entrepreneurs that are trying to grow businesses, definitely has a ton of value. Was there any groups that you joined that had a bit of a, like a aha. Moment for you? 

18:36
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Absolutely. So I joined a group. This was probably around 2020. This is one of the first groups that I joined. It was called CLM. It’s called the conscious leadership mastermind. And it was all around the idea of conscious leadership. And in this group, where people from every industry you could possibly imagine, there’s a group of 33. And then went through, and it was in a couple of other groups as well, that is a similar structure. So we’re going through a set curriculum, you could say, and then we’re also going through a set number of experiences together, like physical experiences. So, you know, we’re traveling together, we’re taking information as a group, and then we’re applying that information to both, all of us as individuals, and then we’re seeing how everybody processes that, and then we’re applying it to different industries. 

19:38
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
So now you’re learning, okay, this is, this works here in the following way. This person is taking this information in the following way. What things, what takeaways do they have? How are they processing? How are they thinking? And I think that the biggest takeaway that I had from all those experiences is how people think through problems. People in a specific industry generally, because they’re following a similar pattern of a similar background, of a similar age. Like, the more similarities there are living in a similar environment. So you’re in Canada, so that’s your environment. The more those similarities come together, the more people are thinking in a. A more linear fashion within that channel. Sure. These types of opportunities are a way to zoom out and basically cover. It’s like, you know a mountain when you’re skiing, right? 

20:36
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Like, you have all these different channels and you constantly are going down the same path, same path every day. And all of a sudden, you’re so deep into that path that you’re going routine that you can’t see anything around you. There is no. You could pivot a little bit, but you’re not going in a totally new direction because your way of thinking is the same. This is a way to zoom out and completely have a blank landscape and see how other people are processing issues and going through case studies and seeing how they think. I think that’s incredibly beneficial. 

21:17
Rob Murray
Yeah, I mean. And was it Dan Sullivan. Ten x, easier than two x. So, like, you know, you. 

21:25
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Sorry, you just cut out. 

21:27
Rob Murray
No, it’s okay. 

21:28
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Ten x is easier than two x. Yeah. 

21:30
Rob Murray
So, like, because you can’t. You can’t ten x doing what you’re doing. You can’t just work harder and add a ton of people. I mean, you can, but it’s not going to happen quickly. So how do you ten x your business? It’s almost easier to do because you have to think differently than just trying to double what you’re doing. Anyway, there’s a really cool read. Ten x, easier than two x. Dan Sullivan’s the guy. But I think it just complements very well what you’re saying in terms of getting outside of those ruts that have been built over time with similar. We’ve done this because. We do this because that’s the way we’ve done this thinking, which is. Was something that, I mean, a lot of people you fall into just by time, and that’s just the way, unless you start to think differently. 

22:16
Rob Murray
And so being in a peer group and seeing through this experience, you had obviously helpful to see that firsthand. So you mentioned everything reset to zero. We had that crazy thing that happened in 2020, and then you dedicated yourself to the industry and you grew a business from essentially like a couple folks. Zero, almost to 100 in four years. Like how? Like, you know, everybody. There was no people to hire, according to some. What were one of the two or three catalysts to make that kind of explosive growth happen in just four years? 

22:58
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
I think. Well, first of all, it was. It was. It was basically ground zero from. From an existing operation. We had. We had gone. Gone down to zero because of COVID and everything else that was going on. And now it also had 1ft out. And I started looking at the way that were. We were approaching the business at that time. The way that were approaching it was. Everything was. Was focused on profit. And everything was focused primarily on profit for this specific job, this specific project. We need to maximize the profit for this job. And it was at that sort of micro level. So I started zooming out as much as we possibly could, and it was a great time to take some inventory and zoom out to a level of, okay, what are we actually building? Why are we building it? 

23:54
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
And why would somebody else get excited about building this thing? Because in a zoomed in state, every single one of our team members at the time, they’re saying, okay, what’s my job here? I’m going to go out and do this, perform this work. I’m going to go cut this lawn. I’m going to mulch this bed. I’m going to create this patio. Is that in itself exciting? Is that in itself something that, when we’re looking at it from a zoomed in state, is that something that somebody wants to just continue doing day in, day in, day out? Well, potentially, yes, if it’s building up to a larger project and it’s part of a larger company that has a bigger mission than themselves. 

24:28
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
So started really looking at being intentional about the culture that we set, the mission that we have, and the values that we put in place in the past. This was something that, okay, I’m going to do over a weekend. I’m going to create our mission statement, our values and our culture. They’re not really important. I should be spending time on the job. I should be spending time trying to maximize these projects, trying to sell more, trying to do more, and that didn’t work. I think when we talk about mission, it can’t just be something that you write down in a weekend. It has to really, really matter, and you have to spend a tremendous amount of time on it. Your culture, it is something you need to work on every single day. 

25:18
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
And those culture, mission, and values literally became the top three things that I’m working on every single day. Every day I wake up, I’m working on those three things. How can I retune this to make the most compelling reason why every single person is in the building, have a culture that is engaging and create a set of values that we are consistently reevaluating and consistently hiring based on firing, based on acting on every single day. So that was sort of the first step. And then we started growing. So I think when you start with growth and you start with that momentum, a lot of times it’s going to be you as the leader who’s going to have to get that Boulder moving up the hill. You’re going to have to put that extra effort to get that momentum started. 

26:14
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
And then you paint that picture of where that Boulder is going next every single day, painting that picture for the team, painting the picture of the future truth that they want to be a part of. So we started really focusing on hiring people that wanted to grow, young guys that didn’t necessarily have a lot of experience in the industry, but wanted to be part of something. And I spent the majority of my time helping these guys grow, helping them paint a picture of a future truth that they wanted to also experience and creating a compelling company culture that we didn’t see exist anywhere else. We also started investing a lot in media. Having our media and our marketing be at a level that was far beyond anybody else that we saw in the industry because were seeing that was a big gap as well. 

27:05
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
I brought somebody on who was primarily working on our systems as just a back end systems guy. He was helping us with that. Those are some of the initial early catalysts, but the main thing that was different, and that happened over the last three, four years, is we had a bunch of guys in the building who, from the. From the day that they were hired, were communicated the exact vision, not just for the company, but for themselves. We would have retreats, and we still have retreats that we host at least once a year with a full leadership team where we talk about their goals, you know, their personal goals that they want to achieve, and how can the company be a catalyst for those things happening? 

27:49
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
And you walk into our building and you see guys there till 08:00, 09:00, 10:00 at night, working five, six, seven days a week. Nobody’s looking at the clock. Nobody is trying to cut corners. Everybody is motivated. Dedicated guys are working their butts off. Young guys like this new Gen Z talent. We have a super young team, and they’re freaking ready to go. From my perspective, I’m saying, guys, this thing isn’t about me. It’s not about the company. It’s not about any of this stuff. It’s about this mission. It’s us versus them. We’ve painted this picture of them, which is, you know, the force that we’re going up against, which is the stigma, the industry that the current space that everybody is in and us. How can we be different? 

28:39
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
How can you be a part of this team that is going towards a different direction? I say all this knowing that if you. If you are starting out or if you have five employees or ten employees, what I’m saying doesn’t sound like it’s important. Like, I wouldn’t have taken any of this stuff to heart, like mission, vision, values. I need to sell more jobs, I need to do more jobs, and I need to make more money. I got it. But you don’t need to be the one to do that. You need to be hiring the people and getting them to go out there and do this work, and then you are the facilitator and the support for this talent. And you don’t have to start with 20 guys, start with one, get one person. I’m going to invest a lot of time. 

29:37
Rob Murray
It really, I mean, if you come back to this whole thing, when you said, you know, primary growth constraints, were talking about that in, you know, leadership development, personal development. But really, what I think it boils down to, and you’ve just kind of articulated it over the entire conversation is, it’s a, it’s a mindset shift to go from being the doer to supporting the doers, whether you’re one employee or a hundred. And how can you start growing people and help them understand how their effort every day ties to the future of the organization that they would want to be a part of? And if we don’t spend the time understanding that for ourselves, how could we possibly communicate it to somebody else? 

30:23
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
And also trying to boil down what is different about your organization? You know, what is your USP? Your USP as a people focused business? You know, your unique selling proposition isn’t that you’re selling this new revolutionary way to cut grass or to install a patio. Your USP cannot be the product. Your USP has to be your culture and the way that your internal operation. So, you know, any business, you have your internal operations, you have your external operations. In this business, your USP is not going to be through your external operations. Of that how you necessarily do the work? Yes, it’s important to do quality work and to deliver at a certain level. However, in this business, the way that you deliver that result and the way that you deliver that type of quality is through your internal operations. Your people and your culture. 

31:26
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Those are the things that are going to set you apart. And you need to be thinking about what is your USP as a people focused on a human focused business. You know, what is it that you do differently? Why does it feel different to be part of your company? What are the things that you value and you just place at a much higher level than other companies in your space? And for us, we figured out a few things that were extremely important for us, that we put a lot more stock into. One of those things was the personal development of the individuals in our organization. Personal development, forget about company, okay, what are we doing for that? Okay, we’re going to have these retreats. We’re going to have these workshops. We’re going to have these workbooks. 

32:15
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
We’re going to have these optional meetings that we’re going to do to clean improvement. Another thing that we valued was media. So we have a literal built in studio in our shop on the second floor where we produce content and we produce media for our company. Right. What else do we value? Okay. We think that technology in our business is incredibly important. Okay. So we’re going to go out and we’re going to invest into every single piece of technology that we could possibly put into our business at the level that we’re at, etcetera, to continue bolstering up our internal operations so that internal operations can then go out and deliver the external result that our customers are looking for. 

33:02
Rob Murray
Yeah, I love it. And the cool thing, I think the way you just shared that, and I’m not sure if everybody picked this up, so I just want to point it out quick, is there isn’t necessarily a right thing that you value more. It’s just whatever you value more, you invest in, and then you give yourself a disproportionate advantage in that area, and then customers who care about that area will come to you. 

33:30
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Yeah. And it’s so interesting because when you first you say it and you start putting that out, it’s at a point now where my team will go to me and they’ll say, okay, Mikhail, this happened. This happened, and you dealt with that issue in the following way. I don’t think that’s redefining blue collar. Oh, what happened? Okay, so this person, this team member said this and this happened, and you dealt with it in the following way. I don’t think that’s redefined blue collar. I think we should be doing it like this. That’s fantastic. So now my guys are calling me out of, on the way that I’m doing something based on a methodology that we installed of redefine blue collar. 

34:15
Rob Murray
Epic, right? 

34:16
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
We should be treating customers like this. We should be doing. I don’t think that’s. We, hey, these guys, the way they work, you know, some of the subs that we work with, you know, they’re, they’re more concerned about, like, just getting the job done and making the most amount of money. You’re not concerned about quality. They’re not speaking to a customer the right way. You know, you know, they don’t have that customer service focus that’s not redefined blue collar. So we can’t be working with these guys. So it’s a great culture is self policing. You do not police your culture. A great culture polices itself, and the people within your culture have accountability to each other, which literally means that you can’t be walking in as, hey, this is me. I’m. I’m the boss, and everybody has to listen to everything that I say. 

35:05
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
No, you’re part of that culture. If you level yourself with your team, then your culture can become one that is self policing. But then you got to be also included in that. If you screw up and your team’s calling you out, that’s the hard part of you saying, my bad. 

35:25
Rob Murray
Yeah. And I think the other thing that a lot of people like, it’s. I. From my experience, it’s been a lot easier to live a culture that’s authentic based on the core values that are defined, that are real, than trying to be altruistic and fake in something that we aspire to be but we aren’t. And so many times I’ve seen people go through core value and culture exercises where they end up with a bunch of aspirational words with aspirational definitions, but they fall flat because they’re not actually resembling irrelevant to the company and the group and the way that they act and behave and value things. 

35:59
Rob Murray
And so I think, to your point, if your values in your culture that you’re building and live by are authentically real to a founder, leader, or leadership team, it becomes a lot easier to live by them because they’re real. And then when you make a mistake, it’s easy to say, my bad, I’m on it, where a lot of people, I don’t think, necessarily have that figured out quite yet. 

36:29
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
And it starts from you taking accountability and from you making the decisions that you set forth that the team is going to live by. Right? So if our mission is to continue growing the company, and right now, we’re growth focused, we’re not taking profits off the table. I can’t be buying a new lake house. Right? Like, there’s certain things that you’re gonna have to say no to as a leader based on the stage that you’re in. And I’m not saying that, you know, you don’t reward yourself. You don’t take certain trips off the table. But if right now, you know, I look at this as, like, I say this in my team all the time, it’s like, okay, we’re. We’re growing, guys. So we’re on the fourth floor right now. 

37:19
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Okay, we can stay on the fourth floor, and we can have a start building out the offices, and we could have an amazing environment on the fourth floor. But if we want to get to the 7th floor, like, we. We can’t be. We can’t be, you know, investing into this floor that much. If we have to continue moving up, what floor are you guys comfortable being on? Like, if you guys are comfortable staying on this floor, I’m not going to drag you guys to the 7th. Okay. You guys want to keep growing? Okay, here’s what it’s going to mean. This, this. If we want to keep going, and then the. The amount of work and the amount of financial investment that is going to require to continue elevating past those floors mean that. That you can’t be on the fourth floor sitting around comfortable. 

38:04
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
We need to continue elevating, which means you have to continue working hard. I can’t be taking money off the table to invest into other things. And we all need to have that mission of we’re elevating to the next score, and there will be a level that we get to with this business that we’re comfortable and we want to be at this level for a little bit, or we just haven’t built the instruction to get to the next level. Fine. But for now, we’re growing. Is everybody in on that? Cool. Okay, so then this is what needs to happen for us to continue to elevate. So that’s part of it. 

38:41
Rob Murray
Getting back to this and just this core values and mission piece, developing an engaged culture, someone’s like, okay, cool, that sounds amazing. How do I start doing that? Same kind of question from before. What’s one or two things someone listening to this can start moving towards? 

39:03
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
The first thing is you need a one true believer. Okay. You don’t start with the whole team. You need one true believer. You need one person in your organization outside of yourself who’s a true believer in the things that you. That you want to inject into the company. Okay. You need. You need one person in the beginning. Start having those one one conversations, right? So figure out, is it. Is it going to be your right hand man, your right hand woman is going to be the number one leader in your company, or is it going to be just a team member who you hired last month? It doesn’t matter. But you need one person outside of yourself who can be the initial catalyst for that new culture, new way of being. Okay, what are some things that you want to embody? 

40:02
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
What are some behaviors that you want this person to embody, and obviously yourself as well, but. Okay, start with one. These are the three, four behaviors. Okay, great. What needs to happen for those behaviors to not only exist in that person, but then also to permeate within the rest of the organization. Okay? So this person should be enthusiastic. They need to be extremely selfless, because those things that I value, they need to be a creative thinker, and they need to be extremely, like, out of the box. Right? They need to be a free thinker. They need to be somebody who’s thinking outside the box, who is extremely creative, etcetera. Okay, fantastic. Those are the things that I value. Here are some things that I’m seeing in one individual in my organization. They believe that those things are extremely important. 

41:04
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Now we start developing, you know, what are, what is that decision making framework that is going to help the rest of the organization get there? Okay, so let’s say our one big initiative for now, for our culture, is we need to go from, like, linear thinkers to big thinkers. Like, we need to have a culture of people who think outside the box. Okay, fantastic. What are things that I can do to get my team to start thinking outside the box more? I’ll talk about this in our meetings. I’ll talk about this when we’re doing our reviews, like our performance reviews. I’ll start talking about this potentially to customers. I’ll start putting it on print that we hand out to our team. We start identifying, like, self identifying ourselves as a company of creative thinkers. A company of new thinkers. 

42:04
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
We’re a group of innovators who think different. Okay? So now we’ve developed the idea through one person. We’ve identified what a couple of those qualities are, and we’ve self identified ourselves with those qualities now. And this is the hard step. Who in the group has those qualities already? Okay, these. These five people. Who doesn’t? Okay, let me start working with these guys and talking to them about, hey, we want to really start working towards this culture of new thinking. I want to bring more of this new thinking into our group, into our culture. I’ve noticed that you’re constantly shutting down other guys when they’re bringing up new ideas in a meeting. I’m noticing that you’re constantly moving away from this direction. Start working with some of your guys one one. 

42:57
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Eventually, there will be people that you need to cut out of your culture who do not embody some of the things that you value. But it is a process of first having those conversations with one person, then a small group, then the whole team, and allowing enough time from when you identify, establish, and clearly define. So identify, establish, and clearly define the things that you expect in your culture. To the point in time when you’re going to be. Then the fourth step, which is evaluating which members of your team have that. And then the fifth step is you work on developing those things within your team. And of course, if you go past the fifth step and you aren’t able to develop in certain team members, then you need to move on and hire based on your new predefined set of. 

43:48
Rob Murray
Nicely, nicely said. Extremely clear. Now, one thing that some people are going to latch onto is that this weekend they’re going to go identify what their value system looks like. Then they’re going to communicate it and say that they’ve established it on Tuesday and then on Friday when somebody isn’t thinking the way they want them to think, they’re going to be like, oh, they don’t fit. So when it comes to timelines, can you just give a little bit of an idea to folks about like, this might take x months or whatever to permeate through a group of individuals who have just heard an idea for the first time? 

44:25
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s going to take about a month for you to. So, okay, let me say it like this. The first list that you establish, like those first few values that you establishd are probably not going to be the ones that you’re sticking with for the long term. We still evolve our list, but the first thing that you come up with is probably not going to be it either. So, so take it with that grain of salt, right. And give the rest of your team some grace. You don’t want to be the guy who’s like, you know, you go into a conference or you listen to a podcast, and then all of a sudden you’re going to your team, you’re like, listen, everything is now different. You’ll burn the whole place down. So you want it, you want to ease into it. 

45:1
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
And I’ve been guilty of this as well. 

45:12
Rob Murray
We all are. 

45:13
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Plug, it’s, you know, and they don’t know because they didn’t go through that experience with you, right. Or they didn’t go through this exercise with you. So you establish your first list. You do. It has to come from, you give about 30 days just to even like introduce this to your team, let alone start evaluating people on it, just to even get your team to understand this stuff. If it’s a month, you’re going to probably mention it in four meetings. So you do your weekly meeting, you mentioned it four times and maybe you do a printout or you. Or you try to communicate it visually in a different way. Great. That’s nothing. Give them, then chat with your team about some of those values. Okay, are you guys starting to understand this? Are these things that are aligned to get some feedback? 

46:05
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
It’s going to take you three to six months just to even get that initial list down to something that actually resonates, not just with you, but with the rest of your team. Perfect. So I would say in the first year of doing this, you’re going to get your version, one of your set of values and your ideals. I wouldn’t fire anybody within the first year based on what you established. However, by the end of that year, if you’ve done this correctly, it will be glaringly obvious who those people are that you need to now move away from, because now you’ve allowed three to six months for them to get it, then another three months sent you to help them do it, and then another three months of you trying to help them change their behavior. Now you can start moving off. 

46:59
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
After you’ve done the first version of this. You got to sit down with your team and say, okay, guys, this is my list of six. You got to do this exercise with your team. So every. And you do it yearly, every single year, we sit down with our team, not in the office, in a totally different environment. So this year, were in. We were in a cottage in Montremblant. We were there for four or five days after the entire experience. We sit down, we look at our values, we look at our culture word or culture statement, we rewrite it. Maybe we add some things, maybe we subtract some things, etcetera, okay? And then we all sign it and we all date it, and we say, hey, this happened on this day. This is our values, their ideas. 

47:58
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Those things on a piece of paper mean nothing. On the wall in your office, it means nothing. 

48:03
Rob Murray
It just. 

48:04
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
It’s every day your actions, right? If your value is to be a new thinker and your company are consistently shutting down ideas, you can have that written on 100 things. That’s not the way that you’re behaving. That’s not the way that you’re hiring. And if you hire somebody with 30 years of industry experience who doesn’t want to change anything, it means you’re not a company of new ideas. 

48:28
Rob Murray
Yeah. By definition. So, by definition, there’s very few people that articulate some of the hows in building culture. So I really appreciate you sharing that with this group. Because a lot of people speak about it, but they don’t necessarily talk about how you actually make it work. And everybody, if you can just remember he said, a year of doing this type of intentional work before you start actually making decisions around people. So one last one before I let you go, an author, resource, speaker, somebody that you’ve drawn from, who do you think people should check out but a couple. A couple that come to mind, like, what do you think? One or two that couples. 

49:11
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
So. So leadership. Patrick. Ben David. Great, great speaker, great leader, great motivator. They do a conference every single year. It’s called the vault. I’ll be attending that again this year. Great place to bring your team, three, four, five of your key personnel and go through that experience together. They have different levels. You can go through that. Do some development there, specifically on leadership and specifically on building your business plan. I would look there. Awesome authors. You know, I just finished reading the true artifact by Daniel DiPiaza. Interesting read. 33 ideas of him at 33 years old. You know, this entire thing for me, when I’m. If I’m going to recommend an author, if I’m going to recommend a speaker, I would say look to the furthest opposite of yourself. Look to the furthest opposite of your industry. Right. Daniel writes about psychedelics and. 

50:30
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
And, you know, mind bending transfusion. Okay. You should probably look into that because. 

50:38
Rob Murray
Well, it’s bad if you’re an industry of landscapers trying to think creatively. I mean, that’s going to give you some inspiration, no question. 

50:45
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. 

50:47
Rob Murray
Okay. So, and if people want to look. 

50:48
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
To other industries, and if people want. 

50:50
Rob Murray
To look inside their industry and look to you, how do they get in touch with Mikael? 

50:57
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Just mikael.com and redefinebluecaller.com are the two best places. We have an event coming up in January. It’s our leadership retreat. And then I also run a mastermind group as well for brand new leaders in the industry that want to continue growing and developing themselves, and then they can pass that knowledge on to their team. That’s a great place to start and also maybe a great place to see, you know, kind of how we do it. I’m in a bunch of masterminds as well myself. I’m seeing how are these guys doing this thing and how are they running their groups? How are they running their personal development workshops. So that’d be the best place to get a hold of me and to start. 

51:40
Rob Murray
Awesome, man. Well, again, thank you for doing this. I really appreciate the time. 

51:44
Mikayel Ter-Grigoryan
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

51:46
Rob Murray
And thanks again for everybody listening. We’ll see you on the next episode of the I am Landscape World podcast.