Steve Reynolds (River Valley): Why Most Contractors Stay Stuck at $1–2M

Intrigue Media (00:02)
All right, everybody, welcome back to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth podcast. I have an awesome guest on the show today. We got Steve Reynolds from River Valley Landscaping. I’ve had the chance of working with you guys for almost two years and had a chance personally to work with you and Amy for some months. And you’re always dropping knowledge bombs. So that’s why I was super pumped to have you come on the show. So thank you for doing the interview.

Steve (00:26)
Thanks for having me.

Intrigue Media (00:28)
⁓ So Steve ⁓ has been in the green industry from an entrepreneur’s perspective for almost 20 years. But when I was doing my backstory check before we got on the interview, ⁓ there was some gaps and I was like, huh, what’s this? And so I’m really hoping you can help fill in the gaps, but also just give the audience some perspective of how you got into it, what the journeys look like and what you’re up to now. So they’ve got some perspective on who they’re listening to.

Steve (00:55)
Yeah, absolutely. So, ⁓ gosh, I’ve been doing it for, I guess, almost 28 years now. ⁓ Actually, I got into the industry because at the time, and I guess even now, it kind of had a low bar for entry. And I kind of realized I wasn’t always the best employee. I actually lived near a nursery and I’d walk down there every day. I worked in restaurants at the time and I picked four or five plants and I’d go home and learn about them. And eventually,

They ended up offering me a job working there. I was the guy that watered the flowers, moved the plants from one table to another table, and took an ICPI class, honestly, just to get out of town for a weekend. Came back in town a couple weeks later, the owner of the nursery asked me if I was ICPI certified. said, yeah.

I hadn’t learned the value of saying no at the time and he asked me if I could install a paver patio and me and another guy actually sat out there with that book from my class literally step by step, you know, installing the paver patio and you know, it worked out and it led me down this crazy road for the last 28 years of my life that’s been up down sideways and

You know, me to this phone call right here, this podcast right here, my first one.

Intrigue Media (02:18)
Awesome. Well, I’m pumped to be your first one, Steve. ⁓ So then you started River Valley and then it paused and then you started again. What happened? How did that all shake out?

Steve (02:21)
Yes.

You know, I had some really good opportunities to work for some really good people along the way that kind of invested me and teaching me why we do things a certain way as far as style, install, design. And, you know, like everybody else, I wanted to chase that dollar. So when I was a younger guy, I kind of decided I had a truck and a trailer and I was going to start a landscape company. ⁓ I did it on two different occasions.

⁓ and both times were, I look back at it and I call it a hobby type company. ⁓ I, you know,

Intrigue Media (03:08)
Right. So

a business not necessarily making a lot of money.

Steve (03:12)
No, yeah, I mean, there was no marketing. I was driving around at 2 30 and three o’clock in the morning, dodging cops, putting postcards in people’s mailboxes. You know, it was was guerrilla warfare marketing. You know, I’m amazed that that I was able to do what I did, but it wasn’t anything that was scalable. Fast forward to about 10 years ago, I had I had my daughter, my first baby.

Intrigue Media (03:20)
That’s the best. ⁓

Steve (03:41)
And I’d hurt my back so bad I couldn’t hold her. ⁓ So I decided it was kind of time for a change because I couldn’t do the work anymore and I was broke. And so I actually, I left the industry and I went to work for a local home services company. It has nothing to do with our industry. And they spent about six months training me in value-based sales.

⁓ They did an amazing job with their processes and systems as far as how they held everybody accountable and putting a consistent product out. And I thought to myself, man, you know, if somebody took these premises and these ideas and applied it to a landscape company and became more value-based, there’d be no stopping you. So after three years, I basically forced my way into a sales position at

one of the larger companies here in Knoxville. I saw firsthand what that training did, what the processes did. I did that for three years. I kinda felt like I reached the pinnacle of what I could do as an employee. ⁓ coming out of the field, it gave me unique perspective. I often found myself

moving up pretty quickly in companies. I was managing people that were older than me that had a lot more experience than me. You know, and it’s taken me on in the business for four and a half years to kind of really understand the importance of that. But there’s definitely a learning curve. You know, I made a lot of mistakes to get where I’m at and I’ll make more mistakes on this road, but I still got a long ways to go.

Intrigue Media (05:09)
Mmm.

Yeah, it’s amazing though. I just think that there’s a lot of people that only see the highlights of business ownership. They don’t see the, you know, sleepless nights or the, you know, dodging cops at three in the morning to how you can drum up another customer or even just the idea of like shutting something down to like learn and then come back and be stronger for it. So I just think that there’s so much baked into your journey that think a lot of people can take away from. So.

Steve (05:31)
in the US.

Intrigue Media (05:46)
The primary question is, what is the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry?

Steve (05:55)
Knowledge. ⁓ I think knowledge is the number one thing. I know that when I look back at the first failures, ⁓ I hate calling them failures because they were great learning experience. ⁓ Knowledge, you know, we all want to own a business. We all want to control our own destiny. ⁓ But it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I’m a parent. I’m a husband. I’m a son.

⁓ Running a business, it’s hard to do. You have to have a love of pain. You gotta have a strong heart. I have to have mine checked about every six months to make sure it’s still ticking right in there. And you gotta be glutton for punishment. And I tell people, everything for me lined up. I spent 13 years of my life working in restaurants.

Intrigue Media (06:31)
You

Hmm.

Steve (06:51)
waiting tables, bartending, ⁓ managing. And I think that that experience helped me fulfill something that a lot of guys in the industry are missing. And that’s that ability to talk to people. And it’s also the comfortability of being uncomfortable.

Intrigue Media (07:09)
You know, it’s really interesting you bring that up. And I’m gonna, there’s a couple things you just said there that I’m gonna come back to. But I don’t know if you know this, but I spent 10 years in food and beverage too.

Steve (07:19)
believe it.

Intrigue Media (07:19)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there’s something to be said about, like even in our space with say marketing companies that work for all sorts of people, customer service isn’t necessarily a priority in terms of training teams. And one of the things we always talk about here, and this is true, I think, for any business, but I think restaurants are just something we all experience, so it’s easy to grab onto. But like in a restaurant, there’s front of house people and there’s back of house people. Front of house deliver the food and talk to the customers.

and open the wine and back of house, you know, make it all great so that we can bring it out and look good. But what’s really interesting is that the front of house, the servers, whatever, ⁓ are the quality control at some level. Like they can decide that they don’t want to send a dish because they don’t want to put something that’s crap out on the table.

Steve (08:05)
Mm-hmm.

Absolutely.

Intrigue Media (08:09)
And I mean that, along with many other lessons from hospitality, like intuitive customer service, which we can talk about maybe some other time, isn’t necessarily common. And I always say, you everybody should work at least a month, you know, in a restaurant. I don’t care what side of the business they work in, just to get a sense of what it’s like working with customer service. So what is it from that experience have you been able to bring into your landscape business?

Steve (08:36)
Commonality. know, it’s, I’m in the Southeastern United States, you know, we like to say y’all here. And it’s as simple as that. It’s as simple as the way that you greet somebody that very first time. I mean, so much is gleaned in the first seven seconds of an interaction about a person. We don’t realize it, but that judgment’s instant, you know? So it’s that ability not known at the time, but…

to recognize the different personality traits of the people that you’re waiting on, kind of trying to find out why they’re there. Why are they at Karabas? Are they celebrating something? Is it a birthday? Is it just a dinner? Is it a business dinner? And then once you understand that, understanding how you need to communicate with that person. If it’s a business dinner, I’m not there a lot. I’m not asking if they want drink refills. I’m just bringing them out automatically. ⁓

Intrigue Media (09:10)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Steve (09:33)
I think one of the biggest things for me is, you know, I worked in a restaurant where we made wood-fired pizzas. And so we provided kids with kid dough, you know, basically play dough. They could make something out of it. We could go cook it for them. And I found that if I focused on a family’s kids, I got made more money. And 75 % of what I do right now is provide environments for families to feel safe with their kids.

Intrigue Media (09:52)
Yeah, like legitimately.

Yeah, no doubt,

Steve (10:04)
You know, it’s the exact same thing. And I think that’s so valuable. I think that, you know, a well-run restaurant is a group of individuals that are organized towards a common goal, of living the rush, you know, surviving the night. And we have to learn to depend on the people around us as they depend on us. And it just, it really kind of embodied that team environment as well.

Intrigue Media (10:29)
Love that man. So you said something too about knowledge and ⁓ prone to painful experiences, entrepreneurship is all the above. ⁓ But you said something that was like being comfortable, not being comfortable.

Steve (10:39)
Yeah.

Yeah, getting comfortable being uncomfortable.

Intrigue Media (10:51)
Yeah, so like break that down for us. Like what do mean by that?

Steve (10:55)
⁓ the ability to, to have a ⁓ tough conversation, you know, the ability to, to overcome a conflict or an issue, you know, oftentimes we all watch a movie, scary movies, especially, you know, don’t go upstairs, you know, if a killer clown breaks in my house, I know I’m not going upstairs, you know, and, and, and so I think it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s that process of, you know, in business,

While it’s my job to sell stuff, that’s not truly what my job is. My job is to employ people. It’s to give people an opportunity. But I have to be sometimes real uncomfortable criticizing and driving and pushing people with clients. You know, I quote Meat Loaf a lot. A lot of people just probably can go right over their head, you know, I’ll do anything for love, but I won’t do that. You know?

Intrigue Media (11:52)
Right. Great song.

Steve (11:55)
So, you know, I have to take that time to explain, you know, where my price, where my cost comes from. You know, I’m not pulling a number out of the air. It’s the cost to do this job in a way that one, I can warranty that job. But two, that if another landscape company comes out there, I want them to say this is right. You know, so a lot of times I have to tell customers like, listen, you know, I can’t do what you’re asking me to do.

in your budget. And when you’re trying to sell work and you’re trying to keep employees happy and keep bills paid and keep revenue up, you know, it’s a constant fight to not sacrifice, it’s constant fight to not sacrifice quality or doing things the right way. You know, and I think that restaurants taught me that because you’re one and done.

Intrigue Media (12:43)
Yeah, big time. So.

Right.

Steve (12:49)
You know,

the food is garbage. You’re not making any money. The service is garbage. You’re not making any money, you know.

Intrigue Media (12:55)
So knowing it’s really interesting how you put that out there, like, cause that balance of, you know, staff, customers, financials, quality work, warranties, you know, putting your name on it, backing it up. I mean, that’s it. That’s the dance. So, so how do you work through that when you’re trying to balance everything and how do you prioritize it? Like what is it that you’re doing to bring balance to that dance?

Steve (13:09)
Mm-hmm.

You know, I think that every landscaper, I think we all have different roads, different words for it, but you know, I call it, I’m in triage mode. You know, there’s times that I have to make the difficult choice. Am I going to pursue this lead? If I pursue this lead, is it going to allow me to do this other thing that I’ve promised to do? It’s setting the right expectations, you know, from the get-go.

You know, it’s the hardest thing any employer does. You know, I tend to focus on my why. When times are tough, I go back to why I’m doing what I’m doing. And I try to make my role as much of a facilitator as an owner. You know, I try to explain to my guys every day, I’m not the boss. I’m not the person that’s out there putting money in the bank. They are. I work for them.

You know, and so it’s a tough balance, you know, because you’ve got to do what you say you’re gonna do, but you’ve also got to be able to manage client expectations. You’ve got to manage your employees’ expectations. You’ve got to manage your vendors’ expectations. And on top of this, a lot of us have families. You know, we don’t have the ability to put in those 90-hour work weeks. You know, and so it’s kind of being able to figure out.

what’s most important at that time to be able to continue that growth and to be able to continue to kind of start stacking successes and hitting goals, you know, and kind of creating that snowball effect.

Intrigue Media (15:03)
Yeah, that’s cool. I mean, that’s really well said. And I think you’ve articulated, you know, an entrepreneurial balance of like, how do I focus on what needs focus and attention now in order to get the biggest output of this thing I call a company. And you talk about expectations. I think that’s a really interesting point. One of the things we’ve learned is that the more clear our expectations are upfront, the better the relationship ends up.

Steve (15:19)
Yes.

Intrigue Media (15:31)
because everybody knows what’s involved from each party. So when you look at balancing the expectations of your team, suppliers, vendors, customers, family, it really seems like it’s an exercise of prioritization. So how do you look at that? What’s your decision making look like in order to figure out what season needs what focus?

Steve (15:57)
So, you know, one, the biggest priority is love the one you’re with, right? That’s my number one rule. ⁓ If I’m in a consultation or an initial onsite with a client, nobody else exists. Nobody exists. God forbid something happens to one of my kids or wife, because I’m not going to know until it’s over. When I’m with the guys in the field, they’re my priority. And as sad as it sounds, you know,

growing a business, sometimes that’s the way you prioritize. It’s where am I? Where am I the most beneficial? Where am I most impactful? And that’s where I tend to prioritize it. Obviously, we’re a small company in the relative scheme of things, but we want to be able to do training. We want to be able to be successful enough in spring, summer, and fall that in the wintertime,

If it’s nasty outside or it’s cold and we can’t work, then we’re training our employees. And so I think at the end of the day, it’s a tough question to answer, especially at the stage my company is in because I don’t pick all the time what is the priority. The priority oftentimes finds me.

Intrigue Media (17:20)
Right, and I mean, that’s a stage of growth that you’re in. But I love the idea of love the one you’re with and bringing presence to where you actually are. I know a lot of people that are walking around with phones in their hands, talking to team members, talking to family, and they’re always somewhere else too. And I think if you’re in two places, by definition, you’re never in one. So I think that’s just a beautifully simple way to put it.

Steve (17:23)
Yes.

Well, that’s the getting comfortable being uncomfortable. You know, I sometimes do my best thought process, my best thinking from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. when I can’t sleep. You know, and that’s my time. Sadly, sometimes that’s my time for me in the day. Everybody in my house is asleep. My phone’s not ringing. I don’t have problems. Now I can make me a priority. What do I need? You know, my priority right now

Intrigue Media (17:52)
Mmm.

Steve (18:18)
⁓ you know, the priority is always putting out a quality work, you know, profitable work, but you know, right now, my biggest priority is developing my employees, you know, and it’s a huge priority to me, you know, as a small company, we we’ve had a lot of turnover, you know, I’m a, I’m a give a guy a shot type of guy. ⁓ I don’t want to be judged on my past. Oftentimes don’t judge other guys on their past, but I’m adamant about we do things the right way, you know? So oftentimes the priority is, is.

removing the negativity or the negative training or knowledge, and then being able to fill that back in with kind of positivity and the right way to do things. And so for me, you know, I’ve prioritized over the last few months on improving my staff. You know, I want to employ as many people as I can because I want to give as many people the opportunities that I had coming up in this industry. And so, you know, to do that, sometimes I have to make a tough decision.

Sometimes I have to let a great person go to make room for that next person that’s gonna help River Valley be able to grow and as a result, employ and help more people.

Intrigue Media (19:30)
Well, mean, it’s interesting, right? And this is one of the reasons why I want to have you on the show is that this idea of developing people as a priority. You know, I’ve had the opportunity to interview hundreds of landscapers, probably thousands at this point, like over a thousand at least, specifically over a hundred on this show. And all of the most successful, and by most successful, I mean people that have built businesses that don’t depend on them.

They almost all at some level describe their business as a training and development organization that does landscaping work. And so this idea of focusing on developing your people, I think that’s what’s really what’s gonna keep your growth trajectory moving the way it is. But one of the things you’ve mentioned before in the past is that it’s difficult to develop people if you don’t develop yourself. And so what are you doing

Steve (20:24)
Yes.

Intrigue Media (20:27)
You know, for somebody listening to this, say between one and two million in revenue, and they’re trying to figure out, like they’ve got it, they figured, okay, I’m the leader, I’m the bottleneck, I gotta figure out how to raise my own ceiling so I can raise the ceiling of others. What does Steve do to develop Steve?

Steve (20:44)
So I remind myself every day that I worked for River Valley Landscapes. I don’t own River Valley Landscapes. I’m an employee. I’m another one of the guys. I have to remember that to be grounded. I think the hardest thing for me is I often say that in a perfect world, I’d hire a CEO. I’d turn the marketing over to Amy. And I’d go out in the field and run a crew because that’s what I love to do.

I love the physicality, I love the work, I love the challenge. I think the hardest thing for me to learn and I think that it’s part of the reason that.

it’s been kind of a tough road with River Valley is that I’m not a landscaper. I’m not a hardscaper. ⁓ I’m a business owner. And I could be the best paver installer in the world. I could be the best landscape designer in the world. But that’s not what IM. I own a business. I’m an entrepreneur. And, you know, I think that when I started this company that that’s something that I discounted.

think that it’s something that I didn’t prioritize. It was I can sell the work and I can do the work, right? Well, a lot of people can sell work. A lot of people can do work, but having to make tough decisions, having ⁓ to be really honest with myself about what I can do, what I can’t do, what I’m good at, what I’m not good at. ⁓ But then also transitioning from having learned about sales for the last several years to

using all these resources that are available today to help me better understand what being a business owner means. You know, and it’s something that, you know, you’ve got to constantly learn every day. Every day I try to learn something new. Every day I try to get 1 % better. And I think that that was the toughest transition, you know, was having the ability to let go. know, listen, I’m not going to lie. I have a really hard, frustrating day.

Intrigue Media (22:39)
Mm.

Steve (22:50)
I go out and pound rocks. I mean, it’s therapeutic for me. I make the time sometimes when I know I have a tough week, hey Friday, I’m spending four hours in the field and I’m gonna tear some stuff up. And it is, it’s just, it’s that, it’s learning how to make the best use of your time. IM, I’m 48 years old. I feel older than that sometimes. Sometimes I feel younger, but.

Intrigue Media (23:03)
you

Steve (23:18)
You me and Amy often have the conversation of, I have a new most valuable asset in life. And if I had to realize this 20 years ago, me and you wouldn’t be on this podcast because I’d be sitting on a beach somewhere where nobody knew where I was. And that’s my most valuable asset’s time. 100 % time. As a business owner, it’s the one thing that you never get back and you never have enough of. And so for me, getting better at time management.

Intrigue Media (23:35)
Hmm.

Steve (23:46)
you know, instead of being surrounded by chaos, learning to organize that chaos and learning to put it into blocks of, this is the time for this, this is the time for that, but then being able to adhere to that schedule.

Intrigue Media (23:59)
Yeah, that’s the kicker, right? The discipline. So then where are you getting your inspiration or your learning from? And then we’ll talk a bit more about the prioritization piece. I think a lot of people ⁓ struggle with not enough time in the day. But where are you drawing on your inspiration?

Steve (24:01)
Anyway.

See you guys.

I think that great landscapers are artists. I think that we tend to discount the art side of what we do. I think that my inspiration comes from that. A big part of my inspiration is I worked for another company. We had to do eight hours of community service every quarter for this company. ⁓

That had a profound impact on me. And it had a profound impact on me because we went and fed breakfast to men and women that were trying to defeat homelessness. And they, you know, we did that for several months and then one month we have an all employee meeting, you companies got 150 employees, they introduced new employees and I turn around and there’s three men standing at the back of the room that I had been feeding for, because they were homeless. You know, that was seven years ago.

Intrigue Media (25:14)
Hmm.

Steve (25:17)
Two of those three men own homes. They own businesses. They’re both felons. They both overcame so much more adversity in life than I did because somebody else gave them a chance. And so in my industry where I’m at, you tell somebody you’re a landscaper, they’re asking you to mow their yard. And I don’t mow my own yard. I don’t even own a lawnmower. And so the inspiration for me is that

One, you know, we’re installing six figure projects. All over the country, people are installing six figure and even seven figure projects. And a lot of people still think we’re the guy that mows the yard. You know, so part of my inspiration is to help bring a little bit more legitimacy to what we do, you know, to the value in what we do that this isn’t a hobby. It’s not me out with a mower and a weed eater, mowing and blowing.

Intrigue Media (25:58)
Yeah, of course.

Hmm.

Steve (26:16)
You know, it’s me building very technical, high-end projects. And I feel like lot of these guys that we come across, you know, they’ve got checkered pasts, they’ve had their own issues, and being able to give them an outlet, you know, if you’re a really frustrated or angry person, it’s kind of hard to be angry at the end of a 10-hour physical day. You know, and it also…

Intrigue Media (26:41)
Yeah, mean, isn’t that the truth?

Steve (26:46)
You know, I want to empower people. You know, I was lucky to have some of the people that crossed my paths in lives and I didn’t understand the value at the time. You know, and so my inspiration is that, you know, if I can do it with my ADD brain and my bouncing off of the walls, then anybody else can do it. You know, so I think my inspiration is, you know, helping others grow.

Helping others see that they’re capable of a lot more. And helping young men, specifically in this industry, be able to have a career. You know, be able to go home and be proud of what they do. You know, I think that’s my biggest inspiration.

Intrigue Media (27:29)
love that.

Yeah, it’s amazing. So when you look at how you’ve learned over the time that time is the biggest asset you’ve got, ⁓ because there’s never enough of it and we never get it back, what are you doing tactically to block that time and adhere to said blocks?

Steve (27:54)
I’m so sorry. Will you ask that question one more time?

Intrigue Media (27:57)
It’s all good, yeah, no worries. I’m just saying when you talk about prioritization, you said time is your biggest asset, because we don’t have enough and we never get it back. And you mentioned the idea of time management and getting clear on what it is you need to focus on in a week, month, whatever. So what are you doing tactically to block that time? Where are you spending it? And what are you doing to make sure you adhere to it?

Steve (28:20)
So, you know…

had a dad that owned a business that was gone for work in the mornings when I woke up and oftentimes wasn’t home until I went to bed at school. He never missed mine or my athletic events or my sister’s things. ⁓ He had a lot of structure, you know, and so I think for me, it’s introducing that structure to my life. It’s recognizing that it points throughout the day. I sometimes have to take a few minutes for me.

⁓ Whether that’s lunch, whether that’s getting to the office an hour earlier. The biggest thing that helps me honestly right now is lists. know, kind of keeping a list of what I have to do. And you know, I tell people when you start making that list, it’s daunting at first. How am going to do this? You know, but then as I check something off, it’s a win. This task, maybe it’s running payroll. You know, maybe it’s…

Get in the mail. mean, it’s something simple. And I tend to try to start my day out with tasks that I can knock out in one to five minutes. ⁓ I need to order something. I need to make a list of ⁓ what we’ve got to pick up for this job. Just things that I can do that kind of start knocking off that first goal, that first thing. And so, I tend to break the first hour of my day into…

of preparing myself for the days. I’d say that’s probably 15, 20 minutes of it and then preparing the company, you know, for the day. And the goal is to get to a point as an owner to where I’m doing this a month at a time, right? And then I have my operations manager that’s doing it a week at a time and then I have my foreman that’s doing it every day. But it’s starting those processes and those procedures, keeping them consistent.

Intrigue Media (29:56)
I love that.

Steve (30:18)
and keeping them possible. And then at the end of the day, I recognize that sometimes I’ve done everything that I can do for that day. I’m satisfied with it and I’m checking out. And when I check out, I’m checking out.

Intrigue Media (30:33)
which is a tough thing on its own for a lot of people to shut off at any given time as an entrepreneur. But I love the idea of moving yourself of I’m gonna prep me for my day, then the company for the day. And then I’m gonna do it for the month and then have other people doing it for the week and the day. And then I mean, I don’t think it’s gonna take long to you’re doing it for the year and for the three years and having people fill in the gaps.

So then where are you getting learning from? What are some speakers, authors, mentors, who should someone check out based on what you’ve had a chance to learn?

Steve (31:08)
So I think one of the most, I’ve always been a reader. I always read for entertainment and not education. I think that books have been a huge impact for me. ⁓ You know, I defeated boredom through books. I’ve read a lot of books in my life. When I worked at a previous company outside of the industry, we had to read books and we had to do a one page report. And I actually won an award for the salesperson of the year.

And as part of that reward, well, part of that award, it was my first year, so I got rookie of year too, but I got two books. One of the books was called Grit and one of the books was called Cells EQ by Jeb Blunt. ⁓ Cells EQ changed my life. ⁓ It’s about developing our why. It’s about understanding our clients why.

Intrigue Media (31:38)
No, not shocking, not surprising.

Hmm.

Steve (32:04)
But it went a lot deeper for that for me because it helped me learn to develop more about my wife’s why, my kids’ why, my parents’ why, my employees’ why. You know, when you know what your why is and you focus on that and you base your decisions on that, then you never have to defend the decisions that you make because you’re making them for a noble reason, for the right reason, you know?

When I look at it from a client perspective, ⁓ know, they want a retaining wall, right? They don’t want a retaining wall. They want, yeah, nobody wants to drop the point on a retaining wall. They want a place to gather. And oftentimes where we live in Knoxville, we’ve got a lot of families here and a lot of families moving here. We have a lot of hills and we have a lot of really bad drivers. ⁓ You know, so it’s creating that ability for

Intrigue Media (32:41)
Yeah, nobody wants a retaining

Steve (33:01)
you know, hey, if I focus on this client, they’re telling me they want a retaining wall, but they really want this retaining wall so that their kids can play in the backyard where they can keep an eye on. Right. So like my house, me and my wife debate it every day. I go to Costco and load up on snacks and I feed the whole neighborhood. Right. Because I want my kids at my house. My wife is like, quit feeding the whole neighborhood, you know. ⁓ But but it’s it’s kind of I think that that book kind of changed my trajectory in life. It took me from being

Intrigue Media (33:22)
Hahaha

Steve (33:30)
a selfish thinker, me, me, me. And it made me really focus on you. You know, and I think that’s huge. And I’m not I’m not perfect, you know, and recognizing that I’m not perfect is where grit comes in. Right. It’s it’s not how many times in life we get knocked down because we’re all going to get knocked down. It’s how many times we get back up. And as long as you’re. Yeah, and as long as you’re plus one on the getting back up.

Intrigue Media (33:54)
Yeah, and how and how long we stay down for?

You’re good. Yeah, it’s interesting. You there was a saying about how like business is baseball with no strikes. You know, the only way you can lose is if you stop swinging.

Steve (34:00)
You’re gonna be all right, you know?

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, and the other side of it is…

I don’t have competitors in my mind, right? The other companies that I run against that I see on an everyday basis, like I’m friends with these guys, right? We don’t discuss pricing. We don’t discuss what did you price that job at, but we do discuss, man, you know, I got this employee that just told me yesterday they need next week off. What did you do in that case? And like I’ve learned that by trying to focus,

on helping other people, even if they are my competitor, that I gained so much out of that relationship. I gain filling my cup back up when it’s empty. I think a lot of business owners know what I mean when I say that. I tell my wife all the time on Fridays, sometimes my cup is just empty. You know, I’m hoping by Monday it’s running over, but on Friday it’s empty. And so I think that’s been huge to me. You know, we do a Home and Garden show.

I’m deeply considering whether I want to do it again because it is a monumental amount of stress and I tend to be a little bit extra on stuff like that. But at the end of the day, the fellowship, we’re there a week ahead of time with seven other landscape companies, right? We’re all lending equipment and materials and tools and helping each other out so that we can literally in four days go to war with each other.

Intrigue Media (35:27)
Yeah, I saw your poo. It looked amazing.

Hahaha

Steve (35:47)
You know, and I tell people like, you know, I think for me that’s the neatest part and that’s I’ve learned the most from those people, you know, I’m trying to do a lot better at shutting up and listening. Right. And, you know, I’ve made some over the last year, I’ve made some unbelievable relationships. Some of these people I’ve never even met. You know.

Intrigue Media (36:01)
Love it.

Steve (36:12)
I met you once, we didn’t really say hi at Harz Cakes North America, but I feel like I had a good relationship with you. But it’s developing those, the nationwide Facebook pages. When I first got on there, I’m like, oh my God, that’s not the way you do that. Oh my God, don’t start a business, go get an education. And it wasn’t received real well, right? And so, you know.

Intrigue Media (36:18)
yeah, we have.

Steve (36:39)
I tried to focus more on maybe sending a message. You hey, I noticed this on your page. I think that this would look a little bit better. mean, listen, these young guys and girls coming up in this industry, like I can’t wait. When I’m out of this industry, I can’t wait to see it because there are some just amazing people out there that are putting work in the ground that just, it blows me away and that pushes me, that drives me. It makes me want to be better.

Intrigue Media (37:08)
Well, it’s so cool, right? Though like, we talk about this, we do a session called the $10 million marketing mindset, know, shameless plug if you’re listening to this, intramedia.com slash events, you can register, we do it once a month. But we talk about this story of somebody who’s, you know, holding on to everything and you know, they’ve got team members who want to step up, but they say, hey, you know, that’s what I control and I’m responsible for.

And then we’ve got these, you know, scaled companies. We just use 10 million as a number, but we refer to all these clients that we have that are over 10 million and how they look at how do I help my community? How do I get involved in the association? How do I get involved in the industry? How do I help people? How do I train and develop my team? It’s like, and I think that’s one of the reasons why I know you’re not quite at 10 million yet, but having you on the show is, uh, I think a really important piece because, you know, sitting at, you know, between whatever one and 2 million on, your, your way to, you know, three, five,

the next two years, there’s a lot of people in that situation that don’t necessarily see it as possible. So I just really appreciate you doing this. We’ll make sure we definitely reference SalesEQ and GRIT in the BIOS so that people can check it out. But if somebody wants to get a hold of Steve, how would they do that?

Steve (38:16)
They can always go to our website, rivervalleytn.com. ⁓ I’m on Facebook, Steve Reynolds. ⁓ I love to network, especially with the guys that are better than me. I learned a long time ago that if I’m the smartest person in a room, I need to get out of it. Because that’s, yeah, I’m probably in jail. ⁓ But ⁓ it’s about the only place I’m the smartest person. And I’m not even the smartest person there, I don’t think. But I think that

Intrigue Media (38:32)
You’re in the wrong room.

Steve (38:45)
That’s cool. know, I draw a lot of inspiration. You know, I’ve started checking into a lot more of your podcast. You know, the classes, know, things I don’t have time for, you know, and I make the time for them. And it may be driving down the road with my phone on mute, my camera off with my air pod in, you know, but but it’s great. It’s great to hear other owners. It’s great to hear from people that have been there before.

You know, we all want to help each other out, you know, and so, you know, if you’re a smaller guy, I don’t know it all. I figure I’ve installed somewhere between 40 and $60 million in hardscapes and landscapes in my career. I know how to do the work. ⁓ I’m still learning how to run the business. And that’s something I hope I never quit learning. And I think that’s, I think that’s the key. Always, always, always learn something. Every day, pick something up.

Intrigue Media (39:42)
Love it, buddy. Thank you so much for doing this and that everybody for listening to another episode of the IM landscape growth podcast.

Steve (39:44)
No problem,