Steve Wheatcroft (Wheatcroft Advisory): From $0 to $104M Landscape Empire

Intrigue Media (00:01.366)
Hi everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the IM landscape growth podcast. amazing guest had the opportunity. I think we met, where was it? Maybe Nashville was the first time.

Steve Wheatcroft (00:15.316)
No, didn’t. You know what? wasn’t in Nashville, but I think, well, I’ve been at all the other, a lot of events that you’ve been there. So I might be the one after that, which would have been, I think it was in Florida we met the first time. One of the ones.

Intrigue Media (00:20.63)
Also… Yeah, okay.

Intrigue Media (00:28.288)
Yeah, OK. Yeah, that sounds right. then so somebody was like, hey, you got to meet this guy, Steve, Canadian entrepreneur, awesome dude. So Steve Wheatcroft thank you so much for doing this. I’ve been looking forward to this one. So yeah, again, thanks for being part of it.

Steve Wheatcroft (00:32.658)
Hahaha!

Steve Wheatcroft (00:41.14)
You bet.

Intrigue Media (00:43.648)
So as per usual, you know, I got to do my diligence and look up LinkedIn profiles and internet and articles and see, know, what it is that you’re saying in the world and what you’ve been up to. And I would say that your list of experience is a little bit too much for me to go over because it’s pretty vast. But the long and the short of it is you’ve been in the landscape industry for the better part of 35 years, ran a really successful company, exited, had other enterprises or other businesses that you’ve done similar things with.

So the idea of like growing a business, scaling, exiting, advising now, I think it’s pretty compelling perspective. So that’s kind of why I’m really excited to hear, you know, from somebody who’s like in it, but someone who’s been in it, come through it and then helping others. So can you give us just a quick Coles notes, you know, two minutes summary of what the heck happened in last 35? Well, I guess it’d be more than that. It’d maybe 37 years. Let’s go.

Steve Wheatcroft (01:36.276)
Yeah. Yeah, well, put your seatbelt on. 1980, yeah, 1989, I started a company while I was at university. I got a hockey scholarship there to play hockey and took a business degree there. And we wrote a MBA level.

document a business plan on starting up a landscape company. We wanted a white night the industry and have white trucks and clean it up and make it really professional. And this is back when, you know, ACDC shirts were, you know, throw cigarette butts out the window. Nothing was systemized. Yeah, so.

Intrigue Media (02:10.36)
Beastie Boys were throwing out magazines anyway.

Steve Wheatcroft (02:14.046)
you know, fast forward to 80, you know, from 1989 all the way till call it 2019. I finally grew the business about 31 million. I was approached by private equity to take ULS as a platform business and build out a national service provider across Canada. I decided that was something that sounded pretty exciting. So I flipped the switch on the deal, took a check and then

I had started up another business called Spectrum Equipment where we were like an equipment manufacturer for OEMs like Traycan, Douglas Dynamics, Western, Fisher, Metal Plus, ProTech and we were building out kind of a distribution network through Spectrum across Western Canada. I left ULS for about three months and kind of we’d already grown that business about 15, 16 million. But I parked my ass in that office for a little bit and then private equity. It was funny because that

that building was like one block from ULS and they walked across the street said Steve we want you to come back as a CEO. I was just advising to them on &A so I came back as a CEO for another call it two years and as soon as I came back as CEO we started to acquire other businesses so you know I was working with private equity to buy other landscape companies we acquired about another five

businesses, some through what I would call more of a merger and some were more like full the M &A playbook. We bought them out, rolled them together. So from 2019 to 2024, those five years, we grew the business to about 104 million, which in Canada would make us, I would say one of the bigger companies. Yeah, well, Glintar was always kind of pushing up there around 90, but they’ve kind of slid down. you know, they’re…

Intrigue Media (03:48.803)
Yeah.

Intrigue Media (03:53.154)
Yeah, like top five, 10.

Intrigue Media (04:00.302)
It’s also a different business model too,

Steve Wheatcroft (04:02.248)
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, if you look on in Canada, we were one of the biggest, if not the biggest. whatever, as we, as we’ll talk about, you know, top line vanity, bottom line sanity, cashflow is king. So, I kind of had my, fill of working with private equity and that’s a whole different story. and I moved on, right at the beginning of 2024. And it really took about a year off just to kind of have some fun and clean up things like 35 years of.

Intrigue Media (04:15.501)
No doubt.

Steve Wheatcroft (04:32.182)
entrepreneurism it was like a…

an explosion, was carnage, like watching John Wick, right? Like there was bodies flying everywhere. I’d open up files and like, I own, you know, 140 acres of land in Saskatchewan and it’s not even registered to a company that even exists anymore. I got together with my accountant and my lawyer and I said, we got to clean this mess up. And they just loved it, right? Cause they just thought like, wow, Steve’s actually going to calm down. And so we went through all the files, got everything kind of fixed up. I sold off some

Intrigue Media (05:04.974)
I feel like I wish I had known you in 1998. Let’s see what Steve was.

Steve Wheatcroft (05:05.11)
We cleaned up a lot of stuff and it was great and then know spent probably

half year really embracing fly fishing and just kind of kicking back and then I quickly went you know this isn’t for me like I my wife was watching me literally crawl up the wall and you know at that time I I’d known Mark Bradley for quite a while so I joined on with leanscapers to help there I had some other advisory clients outside of leanscapers as well and that’s where I am today you know working alongside leanscapers great organization and then I do have some

boards that I sit on outside of that for different companies that I’m involved in. And then I still own, I had a third company called 1867 Developments. We built condominiums for blue collar commercial businesses. So HVAC, plumbing, landscapers, of course. And I still have that company. We have some rental properties. We’re still wrapping that up. So, you know, over the years that company built like three big projects, which is kind of interesting. I mean, my company alone did six different facility moves.

So I’m pretty good at building steel buildings. Yeah, so that’s kind of in a nutshell. There’s all kinds of entrepreneurial twists. We’ll leave those for another day. We don’t have 18 hours to talk about this stuff.

Intrigue Media (06:14.638)
Mmm.

Amazing so it’s like

That’s a large nutshell.

It’s a Himalayan mountain nut. Okay, anyway, it sets the stage to provide some really neat insight, not only from your own experience, but also from acquiring other companies and looking at seeking value and bringing and bolting and rolling companies up together and working with all these different entrepreneurs, advisory services, you name it, it comes back down to this show, which is the primary growth constraint holding.

Steve Wheatcroft (06:29.415)
Yes.

Intrigue Media (06:55.626)
entrepreneurs back in the green industry. And so from your viewpoint, what do you see as the big thing holding people back?

Steve Wheatcroft (07:05.278)
That’s a loaded question. You know, if you look just at growth itself, right? So going from, let’s say, the first dollar of landscape services I sold to like being a hundred million dollar business, a year business, I don’t think a lot of people could actually even fully understand what it would take to do that. And so you talk about…

Intrigue Media (07:07.053)
Hmm.

Intrigue Media (07:27.182)
I would say the vast majority of the world has no idea.

Steve Wheatcroft (07:29.844)
Yeah, and you know, and I talk, you know, that’s where people talk about visions and stuff. But, and I always had that saying that if you can’t see it, you can’t be it. So you got to be able to kind of see where you’re going and you have to have that vision, ability to vision and put yourself there. But I think this constraint that starts to happen is it’s a balance between really, I mean, it’s kind of like, I’m cheating a little bit because it’s a, it’s a balance of three things. And the three things are as a business grows and people try to scale a business, three things happen. First of all, more

Intrigue Media (07:38.723)
Ooh, there you go.

Steve Wheatcroft (07:59.81)
complexity gets added to the business. So this level of complexity starts to rise and that’s where see a lot of people fall apart and then you hear the talk about we have to have systems and all that SOPs and everything gets lit up and that’s around this juggling of complexity and then the next thing is you have to add more and more competent people and this

This quest to find deep intelligence within others and being able to manage it and work with it and build a culture is something that’s incredibly hard to do. And then the third thing when you see this growth in what holds people back is their access to capital. when you look at…

And we’re talking about the landscape industry in general here. When you look at this, it’s one of the hardest businesses you could ever pick. Like I’ve had seven different businesses, I’ve had three exits. And I would say the landscape company at scale is by far the hardest because you’ve got a huge amount of equipment that’s needed and it’s expensive equipment. You’ve got a lot of staff and it’s…

Intrigue Media (09:08.279)
They’re moving around all the time.

Steve Wheatcroft (09:10.128)
Exactly. It’s a mobile environment where you get to sit, you’re sitting at a, you know, maybe you run it off an acreage or maybe you run it off an industrial building and you’re sitting in there, but everything’s out there moving around. it’s all these like risks and liability points that if you really think about it, why would any sane person sign up for this shit? yeah, so it’s mind boggling. And then on top of it,

Intrigue Media (09:31.791)
Well, we never debated if anybody was sane.

It’s like watching Uber, just risk everywhere.

Steve Wheatcroft (09:40.276)
Yeah, and then all this cash that’s needed to do it. Like, you know, when I first started, I could get like an F-150, spec’d out how I wanted with four by four for Snow and Ice Management for 24 grand. Like that doesn’t exist anymore. I just bought a new truck yesterday. It was 119 grand. You know, I mean, it was a nice truck, but, but like the cost. And so these three things,

Intrigue Media (10:00.28)
Sweet truck though. Yeah, exactly.

Steve Wheatcroft (10:09.318)
and then you put a weather over top of it. So there’s not a lot of businesses besides farming and you always hear that adage, know, if you want to sit around and hear about complaining, let’s sit down and have a cup of coffee with a farmer like he’s never happy. And the whole landscape industry is right there. Like it’s either snowing too much like you did in the US this year, it’s not snowing enough or it’s raining or it’s too dry or there’s a water ban like.

Intrigue Media (10:32.557)
Yeah, when was the last time there was a perfect climate year?

Steve Wheatcroft (10:35.292)
No, it’s like, it’s like Wheel of Fortune, right? You just get up in the morning and you spin it and whatever weather shows up, it’s not good enough, right? It’s too hot, it’s too cold, it’s raining, it’s snowing. And that…

you know, especially when we dealt with private equity and we had to like deal with, you know, this, they’re like, well, we need your, you know, forecasts, you know, for financial statements. I’m like, well, can you give me a forecast for weather? And they would look at me like, what does that matter? I go about as much as you’re, you’re forecasting on, on budgets is going to be because it’s going to be driven by snow, by all kinds of different things. this, yeah.

Intrigue Media (10:57.71)
Yeah.

Intrigue Media (11:08.931)
Yeah, if it’s drought, irrigation’s gonna go off. If it’s wet as shit, it’s gonna be dead.

Steve Wheatcroft (11:12.198)
So when you look at growing this landscape company that it’s, see, that’s what people try to pick one thing, but it’s a dynamics of this. You grow and needs cash. There’s complexity. And then there’s people. are the three real big constraints.

Intrigue Media (11:25.357)
Yeah, well it’s interesting as you explained it and before you did you talked about this idea of vision but as you were explaining it I drew like a triangle and I’m just curious if you look at each of these points, complexity, competent people, culture, access to capital, in the middle there’s an entrepreneur. And so like what is it that either unleashes the ability to

Steve Wheatcroft (11:46.535)
for sure. Yeah.

Intrigue Media (11:54.464)
simplify the complex, attract competent people, or gain access to capital, what does that person in the middle have to do, be, think like? What does that look like?

Steve Wheatcroft (12:09.214)
Yeah, a lot of people, especially under public speaking, they’ll say, Steve, what was the thing that made you successful? You know, like what was the real thing if you boil it down and really? My answer, and I thought about this a lot, because, you know.

Especially when you get out on a fly fishing river and you’re sitting there by yourself and this fly goes out a thousand times and your mind goes into these wild wild places I thought what really what was it Steve like be honest with yourself and really what was my ability to connect communicate and resonate with people and I think I had a very high oh Man, maybe some I think 2 % of the world doesn’t like me But the other 98 % does and the 2 % that don’t like me I get why they don’t like me

Intrigue Media (12:54.224)
Yeah, it’s okay. So wait, what was was connect, communicate and.

Steve Wheatcroft (12:55.164)
Yeah, you know, yeah, he probably probably and, you know, and likeability and being able to resonate and you cannot grow companies or organizations without some type of way to bring everybody together. And a lot of people talk about culture, right? Like culture, culture is just so overused.

and you know Mark says culture is just the way it is but as a leader your ability to create an environment where people want to participate is that’s it and when you look at the middle of that triangle that’s what you have to do and I think people they complicate it, it’s like they think they got a trick everybody and really you know I always thought like let’s make business fun like when you

When you think about life, you get eight hours where you’re supposed to be working. And if you’re an entrepreneur, that’s the biggest load of shit I’ve ever heard. Cause it’s never.

Intrigue Media (13:54.263)
Yeah, we’re the only people that are willing to work 12 hours a day to avoid working eight, right?

Steve Wheatcroft (13:57.426)
Yeah exactly so you know and then you got eight hours to sleep well you don’t really get that either initials have eight hours of having fun and well that’s what gets sacrificed in an entrepreneurial environment and I always thought well if I can’t go to work and have fun like this is gonna be bad, it’ll be a bad life.

Intrigue Media (14:16.835)
for everybody. And it’s not gonna be good for anybody around you.

Steve Wheatcroft (14:18.61)
And so I always like said, let’s make work as fun as you can. And that’s where I, and dream big and have fun and push the limits and.

One time I asked my staff, like I used to do these town halls and this grew where, you know, at the end of it became where I just got an airplane and flew to different cities and did town halls. Really, that was my biggest job. But I’d ask them, you know, I asked once when I was in Calgary doing a town hall, was about 295 people. said, why do you guys work here? Why do you work for me, work with me? And almost everybody said the same thing. Cause I just want to see what crazy shit you’re gonna do next. Really? It was like.

Intrigue Media (14:55.163)
Hahaha

And so has it always been like that? Like, did you start off like that? Like this idea of, you know, think big, connect with people, have fun, or did it evolve?

Steve Wheatcroft (15:09.426)
No, I think I was like that from almost from a young age. I mean, I was always kind of a leader of my hockey team. was my captain, my rugby team. And it was just how it was. know, all my friends say the same thing. know, Steve was like, I know this guy. I’m a good friend of this guy because Steve introduced me to him. And I didn’t really go out of my way to try to do that. wasn’t doing it. But I just, I had a lot of energy all the time.

Intrigue Media (15:21.39)
Right.

Intrigue Media (15:38.447)
Still do.

Steve Wheatcroft (15:39.644)
well and as I get older I find like I can get drained way quicker but man I used to be like my mom and dad like honestly like there’s a bad thing to say to someone when they’re 12 they said we don’t think you’re gonna live to the time you’re 16 honestly like could you imagine a parent telling you that?

Intrigue Media (15:56.593)
Cause you’re jumping out of trees or what?

Steve Wheatcroft (15:59.092)
I was just always jumping bikes or lighting shit on fire or getting in fights. My mom stopped coming and watching me play junior hockey. She’s like, it’s no fun because you’re in the penalty box all the time. And I was like, well, that’s my job. next year when I move up the ranks, I’ll start scoring goals. But I was always like, first and protect everybody, love everybody, wear your heart on your sleeve.

Intrigue Media (16:17.808)
haha

Steve Wheatcroft (16:25.908)
And people don’t understand how important that is in business. Like, people want to work for people like that. They want to work with people, not for people. They want to have somebody that says, yeah, we’re going to do crazy shit. Sometimes it’s not going to work out, but it’s OK. We’re going to figure it out together. People love that.

Intrigue Media (16:43.95)
Yeah.

Well, and I love what you said earlier too about how like there’s this mindset, whether it’s conscious or not of like, people have to be something they’re not to like trick people that they’re this thing that, you know, isn’t real. Where if they were to just lean into their authentic self and lead from there, it might actually be a lot more enjoyable and people would probably connect with it a lot more. You know, I had a struggle with that personally. I thought I had to put on suits every day and, you know, play this part that I wasn’t really comfortable doing.

Thank God we found the landscape industry as a niche, because you guys all wear what I want to wear every day. So it makes it really easy. But I do believe that there is a lot less energy expounded if you’re not having to put on a facade.

Steve Wheatcroft (17:16.51)
Yeah.

Steve Wheatcroft (17:27.252)
Yeah, well, when I was at the Lean Scapers Conference last one that I went to would have been in Phoenix. And I asked somebody, what do really get out of this? And everyone’s like, well, this is the community. And everybody’s laughing and share and having fun.

Intrigue Media (17:40.336)
Hmm.

Steve Wheatcroft (17:44.052)
And then the same guy I saw, he’s just a ball of energy. He kind of walked down the hall and then he had brought people with him and they were working for him. was the owner. And then these four or five people came around and all of he changed. He was this super fun guy like 10 minutes ago and I was laughing, everybody was talking and his staff came around and all of sudden he just this big wall went up like, oh I’m the owner now and I gotta act like this and that and I have to have this big persona on like you said.

And I went, so the guy left and I said, why did you change when you went back? Well, I have to be more like I’m the boss. I have to look more professional. said, I love the guy that I was hanging out with 10 minutes ago. I don’t know if I liked the guy that walked up to the four people that work for him. And he just looked at me and he said, wow, like that.

Intrigue Media (18:35.64)
Well, and if anything echoes to the power of those events, like, Leanscaper has done an amazing job bringing people together like that.

Steve Wheatcroft (18:41.469)
Yeah.

Yeah, so, and it’s a hard thing to do. But I think people, most companies when you talk about growth, it really comes down to the leadership, the people that are guiding the ship. if they’re, if they’re, they’re gonna reach a point where they max out their ability to do it. And I reached that tons of times where my head was banging off the ceiling, right? And I’m like, yeah.

Intrigue Media (19:08.408)
Yeah, so let’s talk about that quickly or at length, because that’s kind of what we’re trying to get at is what stages did that happen to you and what did you do to get through it?

Steve Wheatcroft (19:22.676)
So I would come up, I usually come up with like people make things pretty complicated. I’d like to come up with like a mantra or just one kind of saying or something that I live a year by because I think that people try to do too many things. Like they want to get in the best shape and they want to be more romantic in their relationship and they want to like blah blah blah and it goes on and on the list is endless and then they they don’t do any of it.

Intrigue Media (19:47.908)
Hmm.

Steve Wheatcroft (19:48.304)
their goal should have been, I’m gonna get really good at managing a bunch of goals that I’m never gonna get done. And then they would have been successful. So I would always say like, I’m just gonna have a saying for the year. And then it became almost nauseating. Because I would say it all the time to staff. And so my big breakthrough is when I came up with this mantra for the year is delegation builds the nation.

Intrigue Media (20:17.635)
cool.

Steve Wheatcroft (20:18.268)
So that’s all I thought about.

And that’s all I had like at the every day of my day timer back then. And then as when I got into use, actually a smartphone that was in my calendar for the day, like people put down their meetings and I just would put it in bold at start of every day reoccurring at 4 a.m. So it was the first thing I saw and was delegation builds a nation. For me, that was a call to understand that I cannot be the smartest person in my own company. And if I am, it’s not a good company.

Intrigue Media (20:49.209)
And what inspired that thought? We’re going to come back to it. But what was it that kind of hit you over the head that made you, you know, write that down and make it a theme or whatever it is you would call the mantra for the year?

Steve Wheatcroft (20:59.508)
Well, I kind of always like, again, whether it’s through like having a cigar or like going fly, I try to find some time staff, some free thinking. And what are you?

Intrigue Media (21:09.581)
also very underutilized and undervalued as an activity.

Steve Wheatcroft (21:13.586)
Yeah, and I think one of the best ways to free think is to just walk. Because walking puts your body into a different state. Because the physicality of walking locks in that, so the physicality is dealt with, so then it’s just your mind can have a chance to, and I was walking around and I kept going like, you why do I feel stuck? And I got to the point where I was exhausted. And,

Intrigue Media (21:39.279)
And where was the business at that time?

Steve Wheatcroft (21:42.164)
So we would have probably been rate around like five or six million.

Intrigue Media (21:47.299)
Okay, this is great. Listen up for folks because this is what we see we call it the messy middle people get stuck here a lot.

Steve Wheatcroft (21:49.49)
Yeah, and so, yeah, they do. And so really the character I was playing, I don’t know if you ever watched the movie Platoon, there’s a scene where Tom Berenger, he’s smoking a cigar, he’s got that scarred up face, and he had the ace of spades in his helmet, and he just like, the generals are throwing out, and Tom Berenger just runs up the hill, kills everybody, and they’re up there, and…

Intrigue Media (21:58.689)
Absolutely. Tom Beringer. Epic.

Steve Wheatcroft (22:17.372)
the more I run this walk, I was thinking, it’s like, that’s who I am. Like, I’m the guy that’s running up the hill over and over again, and I’m smoking cigars, and I’m yelling, and I’m trying to motivate people. And in that moment, I realized that motivation is kind of the B grade of having people, moving them to…

to do great things and what I started to think about is I want to start instead of motivating which is more physical yelling that you know we see like do another push-up let’s get up the hill motivate motivate but then you think of people that were inspiring like Gandhi or Martin Luther King they did it with with words and they did it with mindful action and and they didn’t have to yell people just like wow like and that’s where I thought

Intrigue Media (23:02.192)
Hmm.

Steve Wheatcroft (23:06.376)
that’s how I have to be a different leader. And so then I came up with delegation builds a nation and at that moment I said, if it doesn’t make me feel excited or energize me or doesn’t, I’m not good at it, I’m gonna stop kidding myself and try to learn it. And it was kind of a jump of faith, because there’s one side that says, gotta learn everything about my business and I have to be the best at everything, because I’m the leader. And I just threw that trash to the wind and I said,

it’s worth the gamble for me. So there do I stay where I am and keep running up the hill and eventually get shot I’m not gonna make it or do I truly try to change and by really change it meant like if I didn’t like it and I knew I couldn’t do it deep down I was gonna just hire people and in that moment that changed the way the business ran.

Intrigue Media (23:42.722)
exhausted.

Yeah.

Intrigue Media (24:04.88)
So it’s a huge pivot point in the business.

Steve Wheatcroft (24:07.122)
huge because what I did is I started to say things like you know are you open to helping me grow the biggest landscape company in Canada are you what can you do for me that I’ve undervalued what what could you leverage up what are your skills what do like to do so that conversations became different and

Intrigue Media (24:33.808)
Totally different.

Steve Wheatcroft (24:35.612)
people love that shit. They love it. Yeah, you’re saying like, so basically what I did is I said, I want you

Intrigue Media (24:38.542)
Yeah, because you’re unlocking them, right?

Steve Wheatcroft (24:48.498)
and when I met you it’s whoever it was. I want you to tell me what to do. I want you to give me your vision. I want you to spend my money. I want you to be able to go up to the craps tables and throw the dice and your grandpa’s standing there and the guy’s about to die in another five years and he’s got 40 million dollars and he just wants to burn. Because that’s what I want to do.

I want to do and then that’s where I came up with saying you know that was like my mantra for the next year after delegation builds a nation was we’re gonna do cool shit. Seriously and did I make some mistakes you bet I did did I blow some stuff up you bet I did but when you start really throwing heat

Intrigue Media (25:21.648)
I know I love it, dude

Steve Wheatcroft (25:36.764)
You know, like you learn about yourself and people get chances to do things and then they’re like, we only lived through that one. Well, you just keep getting braver and braver and the ability to tolerate risk goes up and was it always smooth? No way. Did I almost go bankrupt twice? You bet I did. Yeah.

Intrigue Media (25:57.402)
Yeah, so let’s talk about this because a lot of people that I’ve had the opportunity of working with, speaking to, have this apprehension towards this type of bold risk taking. And there’s this financial impact that’s kind of comes up in the conversation. And it’s around both things really. It’s like, I don’t have the people to unlock, like they don’t see it that way. Like they don’t think the people they have can do that.

I don’t have the money to hire the people I think I need in order to do that. And if these people go and take my money to the craps table, I’m going to go bankrupt. So Steve sounds great, but WTF man, I can’t do that. And so I just love to walk through that to help people understand like there is a way to do it.

Steve Wheatcroft (26:44.36)
Well, that’s one thing like it’s weird because I can meet with everybody and they’re like, I think I don’t hire a COO or I got to hire this or I got to hire that. I brought a lot of people through the organization from within.

And a lot of people go, well, they don’t have it. My question is, do they not have it or do you not have the ability to understand what they do have and can you leverage? Like the guy might just be working in the field, but he’s just dedicated. Like he’ll be there to start the crews up and shut them down and he’ll be stay up all night. And that’s a huge asset. How do you take that guy that wants to do that and leverage that up as much as you can? So maybe he’s the guy that’s

that she’s your eyes and ears so you don’t have to be at the business all the time. And that ticks a box off and now you don’t do that anymore. So I think people are always looking for the silver bullet or that perfect and it doesn’t work that way. Like for instance, our sales team, when you’re selling $100 million of services a year, but you don’t think, you know how much work that is? You sell?

Intrigue Media (27:42.212)
A unicorn.

Intrigue Media (27:54.251)
Yeah, I do.

Steve Wheatcroft (27:56.752)
and contract it and get it all booked and scheduled it’s insane. not one salesperson in our organization was hired externally. Not one. Because the best people to quote your work

Intrigue Media (28:07.537)
Yeah, well it’s it’s it’s cool

Steve Wheatcroft (28:13.532)
are your operations that deliver the service because what happens is when you bring somebody in from unrelated industries to sell they might understand like all the KPIs around sales and you know all this different you know I guess theories of selling and everything great but nobody knows how long it takes to cut grass or lay pavers or build a wall or plow a lot like guys that have done it for three or four years

So if you can, know, when you see an operations guy that wants to leave your company because he’s get, maybe he’s just, it’s too hard on him to be in the field. the first question he asked is, is there anything else you think you could add value or what you could do? And a lot of my ops guys said, well, I’d love to get into sales. We’ll make them sales guys. So that’s kind of, like a lot of people think it’s outside, but it was like the delegation, a lot of it was delegating to people that were already there that were on payroll that understood the company.

Intrigue Media (29:07.855)
which is like a huge asset in itself.

Steve Wheatcroft (29:09.938)
Yeah, where I went for outside hires was stuff like, okay, we’re at the point now where the black swan would be like a death from lack of safety or lack of compliance within safety. That’s hard internally to get somebody because it has to come with some type of certification and there’s mandatory. Yeah.

Intrigue Media (29:30.937)
Yes, like legit experience has to be there in order to do it in a competent way.

Steve Wheatcroft (29:35.43)
So, and they’re usually by themselves. And like, I always said to when I hired a safety guy, you know why you have a cross on your safety vest? That’s because everybody in my company is gonna want to kill you. Because nobody likes the safety guy. Like that guy is no fun. He is like, breaks up all the parties and everybody hates him when he comes around.

Intrigue Media (29:46.929)
You

No.

Okay.

Steve Wheatcroft (29:59.164)
When I hired a safety guy, told him, your first job is to win everybody over. You have unlimited ability to buy gift cards, coffee, slurpees, because people have to love you. And the guy looked at me goes, I’ve worked in this industry, Steve, for 15 years, no one’s ever told me that. I go, but is that not the truth? So when you go outside of like kind of standard positions inside the landscape company, the other one is HR.

Intrigue Media (30:11.047)
Yeah.

Steve Wheatcroft (30:26.004)
You know, I got to a point where we, know, personnel was such a deal that we just hired a professional HR person from outside of the firm. And then we used consultants, like to be honest with you, like when we went, we rebranded three times. The last rebranding, which really added enterprise value, we did that through a consulting firm. So there’s stuff that you go outside for, but really,

Intrigue Media (30:48.058)
Nice.

Steve Wheatcroft (30:55.452)
You know, if you don’t have a COO grooming within your organization, where are you going to find that?

Intrigue Media (31:04.12)
Right. And then, and then if you do find somebody outside, how long do think it’s going to take them to ramp up to be able to replace somebody who’s doing it today? Like it’s not, it’s not a six month ramp up time to understand how every nook and cranny works inside a company.

Steve Wheatcroft (31:10.889)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Steve Wheatcroft (31:16.648)
And a lot of things, I don’t know how a lot of people grow, like we had a little bit of organic growth, but companies really grow when something happens that pulls them out of balance. So everybody’s like, well, I wanna grow my company and I just watch them and they’re like a little bit here and a little bit there. That’s really, to get to 100 million growth came in like, what?

we landed that contract, you know what the F are we gonna do? Like we’re screwed. To the point that one year I had a nine month ban on any selling any contracts and every single person in the sales department became kind of like a, like I said, your job’s just to go out and make sure that these contracts will be onboarded, that they’re happy, like taking the hockey games, don’t give a shit what you do, you don’t let us sell anymore.

Intrigue Media (31:48.177)
Right.

Intrigue Media (32:05.282)
Yeah, yeah, just grease the wheel.

Steve Wheatcroft (32:06.898)
just keep them happy and default in operations as needed and the guys are like well like so we can’t sell them it no you’ll get terminated for selling so it was like.

Intrigue Media (32:18.79)
We’re way over. So wait a second. Take a step back though. How the heck did you make that happen? Like, anybody listening to this is going to be like, that would be amazing as much as it’s a nightmare and I can understand why. But what landed and how did you go about going to get it?

Steve Wheatcroft (32:33.8)
Well, we got a huge municipal, we broke into like municipal storm of on a large scale. So we kind of like, you know, I was on that podcast with Benji. We talked about some of the call it whale hunting. I called it elephant hunting. We landed an elephant. So it was a $6 million a year, six year contract for $36 million. And we had 90 days to mobilize. We had to bring on 25 trucks. So, you know, like we had a team of three people that

Intrigue Media (32:55.834)
You

Steve Wheatcroft (33:01.108)
you know, okay, what’s the strategy to get these trucks? can’t get them because we used to do factory orders from Ford. So we just got a truck carrier. We hired and like, we just said, start driving across Canada and go, we’ll phone the lots and we’ll find out if they got our trucks back. And so like they went to like, you know, Kitchener, Ontario and then Waterloo and then they end up in Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, know, know, Weber in Saskatchewan with this truck carrier and they keep adding like F-150 four by fours of their specs. And, and we got across Canada.

We got to Calgary, shit, we only got like 22, we need four more. We got another team that’s phoning all the other manufacturers. Do you wanna get in with us? So this is what happened is that that amount of work, like I’m sure like people are listening now, like I would love just to be doing $6 million in revenue.

Intrigue Media (33:50.897)
Great.

Steve Wheatcroft (33:51.06)
But what happens when you get a call and go oh yeah you guys it was broken out over 40 we bid on all of 40 and we got all 40 so we thought well we maybe we’ll get half of them no we get we want to give you guys preference when you take the whole contract and we’re like yeah we’ll do it. So you’re here you’re on a Monday and yet six million dollars of work on and it has to start in 90 days like.

Intrigue Media (34:14.684)
Game on, game on.

Steve Wheatcroft (34:16.412)
So what it did is it changed the whole dynamics of the company immediately. And that’s how growth really happens. you can, when you, if you’re asking for growth, you’ve got to have to understand that when you get it, it’s going to cause some discomfort for a while. It’s like,

Intrigue Media (34:33.702)
Yeah, that is growing pains. That’s what it is.

Steve Wheatcroft (34:36.98)
Yeah, it’s like, hey, you you’re walking around like one guy like I used to be like 235 pounds now I’m 200 like I was a little bit of a meathead. got a hockey well, what I’m gonna do I’ll just go to the gym all the time and One guy wants to come I’m to the gym. He’s like, oh Steve I used to play hockey here, right? Yeah. Yeah, and he says like how’d you get so big and I said, well, I used to wear a medium shirt and I bought an XL and I walked away

but that’s how companies grow too. Like you’re gonna be like small or medium. One day you’re gonna get asked to put on a different size shirt and you gotta be able to grow into it.

Intrigue Media (35:13.052)
Yeah, or just, yeah, exactly. Like whether you’re able to or you make yourself able to is probably a bit more of the question to be asked.

Steve Wheatcroft (35:20.02)
Well, as soon as you sign one of those contracts like that, or you commit to something like that, it’s like a fishhook. It’s only one way. It only goes in and it don’t come out. It’s a one way street. You’re all in and if you fail, it’s pretty devastating, right?

Intrigue Media (35:29.68)
which is.

Intrigue Media (35:37.467)
Yeah, and then you’ll learn a whole bunch, hopefully. Well, and it’s really interesting too, because I think when you put that much pressure on yourself and you can speak to this, it makes you think differently. You’re like, how are we going to mobilize this many people this fast? And what we’ve been doing doesn’t make that happen, so we need to change the systems of this business to accommodate.

Steve Wheatcroft (35:39.874)
yeah.

Steve Wheatcroft (36:01.586)
Yeah I mean if we were probably 24 million dollars at that time so to digest six million is a lot different than if you’re a three million dollar company and got that contract you wouldn’t even be out allowed to bid it right you wouldn’t have the ability.

Intrigue Media (36:09.692)
being at five million.

Intrigue Media (36:15.675)
Right.

So then tell me about this idea of like, hey, like the, you just mentioned, the idea of maybe mess it up. And you mentioned the idea of bankruptcy one or twice, once or twice. What was that like for you and how did you come back from it?

Steve Wheatcroft (36:26.217)
Yeah.

Steve Wheatcroft (36:33.01)
Well, in Canada, they have a thing called SAM, which is special accounts management. So what happens is if you’re pushing up against certain banking covenants or you can’t pay bills or whatever, you get this guy that shows up and he’s usually there for a reason and that’s to get you out of the bank. So they put you in a special accounts management. I went into that twice and both times it was due to…

a garage it would be like I would say like getting killed by a boa constrictor and the boa constrictor is a thing and it’s a real tricky animal that people don’t really fully understand or don’t appreciate it’s called cash flow. So what happens is the cash flow boa constrictor comes and you’re sleeping in your tent and this thing wraps around you and you’re like kind of a bit freaked out because you realize you got a snake around you but this thing it’s kind of warm it’s not that big of a deal and then it just slowly kills you.

Intrigue Media (37:15.823)
Right.

Steve Wheatcroft (37:30.772)
and that’s probably the number one reason why companies go out of business is the inability to unlock the cash. Like I’ve heard a lot of people say like well I was doing really good and but I have no cash so in both yeah so what happened in both those situations was we grew too fast so it’s like our head goes through the door but our ass is still in the other room and

Intrigue Media (37:44.57)
Which is the access to capital, which is what you’re saying on the triangle, right?

Steve Wheatcroft (37:59.472)
Sometimes you gotta wait so both times that I’ve helped people get out of the situation now a couple of times where I say when you get to the point where cash starts to get tight and you can’t free up cash and the business starts to struggle that is a signal you need to picture in your mind somebody standing over the stop sign it’s saying stop and let your ass catch up to your head and and understand that

Like I said, growing requires cash and a lot of people don’t recapitalize the business. They keep growing and there’s this lagging need for cash which they don’t address and then all of sudden it catches up to them. And then all of sudden you need more people so you start to pay more and hiring people is one of the big APs you can’t stretch.

Intrigue Media (38:42.778)
Yeah, well, I-

Intrigue Media (38:53.722)
No, no, not, that doesn’t go well. That’s if there’s terms on those payments.

Steve Wheatcroft (38:57.424)
No yeah so if you don’t pay your staff every two weeks you don’t have a company. It’s the number one rule of business you know pay your staff first your suppliers second and yourself last. So both times when I got in this situation it was like the first time I didn’t know how to deal handle it because I’d never been there before but what solved the problem was coming out with a cash

management plan, stopping growth.

and removing assets that weren’t needed for the business. Like every business I pretty well look at like, why do you have 20 trucks when you need 16? Well, we need extra trucks around. Well, why don’t you go talk to like Enterprise rental and if you set up a program where if you need a rental truck, they’ll get you one and you put your deckle on it. Like Enterprise got mad because they always put ULS deckles, like rip theirs off and put them on there. You can’t do this. And I’d be like, charge me for it.

Intrigue Media (39:38.448)
Right.

Intrigue Media (39:56.468)
Yeah, yeah, just say yes and I’ll do it.

Steve Wheatcroft (40:00.316)
I just I didn’t they told me not to do it I just did it I didn’t give a shit I paid the fines and I just it wasn’t gonna drive around an enterprise truck with my trailer on it. So you know freeing up assets that aren’t needed looking for you know places where cash is tied up you know you got to look at AP you know you got to get on accounts receivable and you got to improve those systems to unlock cash out of your business before you can grow again but most people

Intrigue Media (40:09.221)
No, of course not.

Steve Wheatcroft (40:29.352)
They just keep growing unregulated and then they get themselves in trouble. I was a gun, I admit I was a bit of a gunslinger. You don’t get 100 million without being a gunslinger and some of the stuff was in hindsight, I would not advise people to do.

Intrigue Media (40:45.393)
Right, just because of the risk inherent in the approach.

Steve Wheatcroft (40:49.01)
Yeah, like I’m not gonna go to somebody and say, you know, I could have lost my house twice. You mean like I like had a lot of sleepless nights. Like I don’t advise that for people. Everyone has to digest their own amount of risk. And I’m not here to say to somebody like, you know, don’t put your butt pussy and like start swinging the baseball bat, right?

Intrigue Media (41:10.523)
Yeah, yeah, I get that.

Steve Wheatcroft (41:11.164)
You know, usually when people can’t grow their businesses, there’s another reason for it. And if you can grow it responsibly, that’s a lot different than just being risky. So what I do now, you know, when I engage with clients, I say I’m kind of, you know, I’m here to help you grow and scale. That was kind of my first kind of I help statement. And then I added on.

in a responsible manner. I’m here to grow and scale your company in a responsible manner because until I added that tagline on I kind of thought I could see myself getting people into trouble and that’s not my job here.

Intrigue Media (41:36.691)
With a caveat, yeah.

Intrigue Media (41:51.784)
Right, yeah, you’re there to coach and then they can go swing the bat how they want to. And I think it really helps too, sorry, but bringing yourself to the brink and back and to the brink and back again really does create a perspective though that you have that a lot of people don’t have, whether they’re an entrepreneur or a coach or advisor, whatever, which I think kind of just leans to the depth of how you help folks.

Steve Wheatcroft (41:57.01)
Yeah. Are you going? Yeah, no, go ahead.

Steve Wheatcroft (42:17.788)
Yeah I was sitting with some clients last week and they’re like they’re knocking out of the park like they’re the most profitable landscape company I’ve ever seen I’ve looked at literally hundreds of financials team they’ve never done a budget and I’m like how do I tell these guys that they’re just they’re doing 22 % bottom line to get a budget and they’re like we don’t need a budget Steve we don’t we budget in our own way and I said

Intrigue Media (42:29.651)
Hmm.

Steve Wheatcroft (42:44.82)
And then I said, what did you guys hire me for? And they said, we hired you so we know the pitfalls and what we need to do to become bigger than we are now. And they’re roughly around 8 million. And I said, well, that’s why you need a budget because what’s going to happen is you’re going to reach a point where you’re to have to get credit or you’re to have to talk more to the banks. And when you go in there, you have to talk in their language. They don’t care about.

fertilizing having a higher margin or what you’re gonna they don’t give a shit about that they care about like your gross margin they carry about your overhead you carry about ratios even so you need to be able to speak their language so what I’m trying to tell you is you only need to do this for one reason to practice your financial intelligence so when you have to get on stage to perform for the bank and tell them

Intrigue Media (43:21.268)
Debt equity ratio and cash flow, yeah.

Intrigue Media (43:39.773)
to get access to capital.

Steve Wheatcroft (43:41.746)
Yeah, you can get it. You’re asking me how you’re gonna grow. Well, you gotta learn this now. And the other thing about budgets are when you don’t hit numbers, people go, well, I don’t know exactly. I don’t feel sure about this number. So what? Throw it your budget. When you get to that month, the power’s in why. Why did we exceed this line on the…

P &L or why did we not hit it or why do we have this, why do we have that? And when you ask yourself these why questions you start to get more and more financial intelligence. So when you don’t run budgets and you don’t track things you don’t, that’s the power is why didn’t it happen how I thought it was.

Intrigue Media (44:21.595)
Well, and then you repeat it year after year and you get tighter and tighter and tighter and your hypothesis gets more accurate and more accurate and more accurate. And then, yeah, and you see the patterns. So complexity, people, access to capital, the mindset in the middle, delegation builds the nation. I love that mantra. You did mention fly fishing a couple of times. I do have to ask you on the spot. Are you going to do a fly fishing retreat for landscape entrepreneurs at some point?

Steve Wheatcroft (44:25.544)
Yeah. Exactly.

Steve Wheatcroft (44:47.06)
I think I should I was playing around with it last week and said well I wonder if people would want to do that but I think if anybody had a chance to come to Alberta and fly fish I think they would love it.

Intrigue Media (45:01.299)
I’m just saying I don’t think it’s going to be a tough sell, my friend.

Steve Wheatcroft (45:03.868)
Yeah, and talk landscaping and get out in nature. I mean, there’s something majestic about being at the foot of the Rocky Mountains and pulling a fish out of the water. There’s something to be said about it. And we were talking before we started to roll here today about the analogy between fly fishing and business. And there’s a lot of takeaways there, right? Yeah, yeah.

Intrigue Media (45:25.093)
Absolutely. Yeah, you gotta be in the right place. You gotta know what fish you’re going after. You gotta know what bait’s gonna use to get them. Patience usually wins. Anyway, there’s lots. I appreciate, man, if someone wanted to reach out to Steve Weecroft, how do they do that?

Steve Wheatcroft (45:29.5)
Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Wheatcroft (45:38.292)
Well my email is steve at WeCraftAdvisory.com and my website is WeCraftAdvisory.com and you can reach me through that too. I’m going to be at all the Lanescaper events and

Always open to people just coming up and asking questions and talking. That’s the best thing you can do. I don’t need to work anymore, but Mark was like, Steve, you can add a lot of wisdom and help a lot of people. I’m just there to help and have some fun.

Intrigue Media (46:08.145)
Yeah, that’s awesome, man. Okay, last one then before we let you go. A resource that hits you over the head that you thought was epic. I know you mentioned Platoon earlier, so people have to watch that one. But author, speaker, book, something that was like, you know, I think worthwhile sharing with other people to check out.

Steve Wheatcroft (46:24.904)
Yeah, I was…

You know, some of the books that resonate, I really like Scaling Up by Fern Harnish. I love that book. And if somebody wants like a real quick, simple read, I smoked three cigars. That’s the length of reading the book. Not in a row. But there’s a guy out there named Adam Coffee and he talks about the Private Equity Playbook. But the first book, just the Private Equity Playbook, it’s a great read for owners that want to understand what’s going on with private equity and how it works.

Intrigue Media (46:31.495)
Yeah.

Intrigue Media (46:40.784)
You

Steve Wheatcroft (46:56.246)
I thought that was a kind of a cool quick read and it I mean I it’s not as deep as someone like myself would have experienced but I think it really touches on the main key points.

Intrigue Media (46:56.72)
Awesome.

Intrigue Media (47:06.867)
Well, and a lot of people are curious, like what does it look like? You know, what do I need to do to make it a possibility? Do I even want to participate with that type of exit? You know, I think that’s a, so it’s the private equity playbook.

Steve Wheatcroft (47:09.651)
Yeah.

Steve Wheatcroft (47:16.424)
Yeah, so you read that book is it’s a simple read like I said it it probably if you don’t know anything about it it would expand your knowledge tenfold in basically three hours. Yeah.

Intrigue Media (47:29.041)
Amazing. You rock buddy. Thank you for doing this and everybody else for listening to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth Podcast.

Steve Wheatcroft (47:35.454)
Thanks.