Will Joyce on Navigating Growth and Legacy in a Family Landscape Business

00:31
Rob Murray

All right, welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth podcast. We tried earlier in the summer, but I think you were on a dock, and I was in a giant conference room. 

00:54
Will Joyce

Yeah, thanks for having me. Happy to be here, Rob. 

00:56
Rob Murray

Sweet. I mean, you have a crazy story with a lot of depth to it, so maybe for the sake of the beginning, we’ll just do Cole’s notes summary of, like, what you’ve been up to over the last couple of years, like, 10 years, and how you got to where you are right now, just to give people an idea of who they’re listening to, and then we can get into the whole conversation for sure. 

01:17
Will Joyce

So, I’m the second generation owner of Cudmore’s Landscape and Design. Our roots are, they go back to 1986, when our family opened a retail garden center in Oakville. I participated in that, like many people in family businesses, and sort of grew up in it, but it was never my intention to come into the business. I went to University of Ottawa, sort of went through a path that led me into not for profit. Worked in advertising for four years or so, all the while summers and whatnot, landscaping and growing up, sort of building that foundation of knowledge and exposure to the business. And 2017, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer and sort of this really unique opportunity to pause your life, step outside of it, and gain some perspective. 

02:03
Will Joyce

And the thing that became really crystal clear to me at that time was I want to be in my family business. I want to be working with my hands in the soil. That’s what I want to do. And that’s what I did. I wrote out of it. I was cancer free by the end of the year. And, yeah, the rest is history. I jumped in with both feet. 

02:22
Rob Murray

Awesome. So today, and like every show, we talk about what the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry is. So, I mean, we’ll definitely have to address that question. But there’s also a whole other point that we’re going to get to around what is it like transitioning a second generation business and how does that work with the first generation and, you know, taking over the steering wheel so that way you can do what you want and what did you end up doing? So that’s kind of the two layers of the interview today, just so people can kind of understand what’s coming for sure. 

02:53
Will Joyce

So I’ll hit on the generational thing first. So a couple of reasons I was really fortunate. A, the original owners, John, Kev, my dad Peter, they were actually already in motion to retire. And me coming in sort of as a late entrance, they were already, they had sold the garden center, the land and really moving on to the next thing. And they were just thrilled for me to come in and continue on some version of the business. And B, they gave me complete and full permission to make it my own. And they had trust and belief in me, and they, yeah, knew it was going to work; it was going to be my thing. And yeah, so we had to move locations, which was an early challenge. 

03:33
Will Joyce

But also this gift of I got to take over a, an established community business with great brand equity, a great reputation. But also, it was infused with sort of this startup mentality because we had a new location and didn’t have a retail frontage. How are we reaching our customers now? I got the best of both worlds. I got to hustle and I got to sort of have this nice starting point where people knew me and knew us. So that was sort of my launch pad and great support and advice from the first generation. But yeah, that was sort of the launching pad, how it all worked. I was very lucky. I know a lot of multigenerational things. There’s a bit more complexity. 

04:18
Rob Murray

Yeah, complexity is good to say. 

04:19
Will Joyce

Yeah, yeah, and yeah. And then to sort of segue to the second part of that. So the growth constraint, obviously no one’s coming on this, spent a bit of time on this. I think for me and going through that process, I had to learn to trust people and delegate way more effectively. And so I kind of, if I were to like label that, it’s almost I had to do the work on me and finding my footing and bringing people in before I could even worry about the systems and the expansion of our programs. And, you know, that’s ongoing. I certainly don’t come on podcast as like, you know, I’m not a 40 year vet who’s sort of on the other end, reflecting back. Like, I’m in it, I’m in the growth trajectory and trying to figure things out every day. 

05:10
Will Joyce

But those, the first three years were me finding my footing. Like I said, I kind of started over. There was a bit of a turnover. I was pretty intentional about the culture that I kind of wanted to rebuild a little bit. And so, yeah, I had to hustle like I was year one. I was selling the work, I was screeding the patio, I was laying the stone, figuring all that stuff out, trying to balance my time. And now it’s just a bigger version of that where this is our sixth year under me and we’re three times as big offline, which is awesome. We’re really excited about that. My thing has always been growing, but doing it the right way with great people and great people won’t stick around if they’re not trusted and given the opportunity to grow. 

05:51
Will Joyce

So those first three years, I really had to find a way to trust people. And I had some awesome people pushing me along to do that, so. 

05:58
Rob Murray

Amazing. So then going back to what you kind of said there about, you know, working on yourself, getting your footing, learn to trust and delegate. Like, how does that show up? Like, what did you do and what kind of, you know, learning or insight did you go through in order to get to that spot? 

06:18
Will Joyce

Yeah. So my leadership example growing up and was I got to watch firsthand what my dad achieved on the landscape design side. And he was, he is a force of nature and real horticultural roots. I’m going to will this to be sort of thing. And when I came on and my skillset, what I had to identify was I was going to succeed in a different way, which was about team building, delegation, and sort of expanding the aperture of what was possible with our company by sharing the responsibility. 

06:54
Will Joyce

And I think I reflect too, a lot that I had, I have the luxury, the privilege to be able to do that because I know, for example, my dad starting out in the 80s and all the different economic conditions they had to navigate and young kids at home and knew how all that stuff he had to will it to be and what he built and with his partners is incredible. But what I had to go through, the process I had to go through with it is going to be a different way of getting to that same result as quality and all that stuff with me. So, yeah, I kind of had to figure that out early on that I’m going to have to bring people in, I’m going to have to do it a different way. I can’t be exactly what he was. 

07:34
Will Joyce

I can embody maybe some of the best things and treat people the same way and, yeah, value all the service things. All that stuff still shows up, but it’s just done and executed differently. Right. 

07:46
Rob Murray

And so then when you said. When you said you had to learn to trust, how did you. How did you figure that out? Like, I mean, you know, I know a lot of folks, they listen to, there’s, you know, from one mentality is if you. If you’re going to do it right, do it yourself, you know, that’s one. And then there’s like, you know, it. It’s tough to build people up and, you know, they. They’re not. They’re not able to do it necessarily as good as I can. So I’ll keep this and maybe I’ll give them a couple things to do. And then there’s like, you know what? I’m going to find people that are smarter than me and they’re going to go do things and I’m going to trust fully, even though maybe I’ve been burned once or twice. 

08:20
Rob Murray

Like, how did you learn Straighters? 

08:23
Will Joyce

Yeah. So there’s a little bit out of necessity because like I said, day one on my restart, I was treating patios. I was selling pretty quickly. You’re aware of your limitations. And I also, from day one of my restart, I had a great. She wasn’t at that time, but she came on Jen, who we just very happily said goodbye to. She’s on to the next chapter for her, but she was, she came on from day one and just ground in the trenches with us and she was hungry to make it a career. And, you know, I wanted to keep Jen. I wanted to keep great people. 

08:57
Will Joyce

And if I just kept it sort of static and only what I could sell and do and was so fixated on the quality that I had to have a hand on in terms of output of the work and stuff. Jen wasn’t going to stick around the next person, wasn’t going to stick around the next grade hire that I was going to make. So it was really driven out of necessity. And I do give Jen a lot of credit. Our relationship had to really sort of expand as went. So I give her a ton of credit for how she expedited that. We had a great goodbye party for her the other day and I just, I looked around at the. Now we’re about 15 people or so, and at that we started out, we restarted at three. 

09:39
Will Joyce

And I just said there’s a lot of opportunities that I give her credit forging forward and creating for everyone else. So it was, I don’t know. I read a lot of books and listen to a lot of podcasts. I’m a bit of like an industry and growth and entrepreneurial nerd. And I can’t remember where it exactly came from, but there’s one person who sort of said, if you can delegate and that person can do it 80% better or as good as you can do it, that is good because then it frees you up to do the right thing that you should be working on. And it’s not to say our quality is waning. I’m really happy to say now that our field staff are better at landscape construction than me. 

10:14
Will Joyce

That was kind of my early goal, like have field staff who can do it better than me. And now we’re at that stage and so it’s that continual assessment of what it is I should be doing, which is right now, you know, sales and growth and strategy and then, you know, figuring out how you disperse the other half. 

10:31
Rob Murray

That’s cool. So, I mean, like, when you say now, you know, at a team of 15 and say, you know, close to 2 million ish, revenue wise, whatever it might be, you know, you’re focused on sales and growth and strategy. But when you were three people, you were quoting, selling, laying brick, maybe even sending an invoice, can you just walk through maybe one or two key things that you had to do in order to make that transition from in the field to growth and strategy? 

11:09
Will Joyce

Define my standard a little bit so that someone else could understand the mark they’re shooting for and give people space to make their own mistakes. Because I made a ton to figure out my own stuff. And obviously, you know, you get bigger and there’s expectations and so you want to have guardrails with that. But yeah, to jump back to the example with Jenna from former employee. Like, she really dug into sales at one point too. And that was also something I had to let go of. Like, I kind of felt I had this stewardship and I was the face of the second generation company, but again, just kind of letting go to say, you know what, this version is going to have the best of what Generation 1 had, but it’s going to be different. 

11:50
Will Joyce

And Jen’s a great representation of, for example, our company. So giving people space to do different roles and, you know, that’s something I’m having mastered. It’s an Ongoing process like most entrepreneurial things are. But yeah, giving people space to fail and succeed, obviously. 

12:06
Rob Murray

Yeah, no, that’s cool. I love it. And the one thing you said at the beginning there was define your standards, which I think is a critical piece in any company’s growth. How did you do that and how did you communicate it for folks? If I’m sitting there in that spot as an entrepreneur being like, I need. Actually, you know what, I haven’t defined my standards for the team. It’s not clear what I expect of folks and myself. I want to do that. What’s a. What’s one of the things you did to bring that to life? 

12:34
Will Joyce

Yeah, one of the big things we did because I’ll admit I’m actually. My strengths are more people and like I said, like team building and that end of things and maybe on systems and like really tight type A type organization. I’m not as strong. That’s sort of something that’s in my head as I’m team building. But what I did was we did a pretty thorough values exercise and that was really important. I’m a pretty heavy participant in landscape Ontario and employers of choice. And through that part were really encouraged to get into that and we did that and it helped us articulate what it is that’s important to us and how it shows up and really the baseline how we treat people. Because, yeah, that was honestly maybe the most important thing to me. 

13:27
Will Joyce

I think a lot of people can do really great landscape work to us, sort of defining like it’s the how that really matters to us and then just baseline how we treat people. One of the biggest things that I think is like the wisest thing my dad passed along to me and had it written on the whiteboard in our old barn, is that the work is secondary, the human experience trumps all. And it’s me, like I said, he had a different experience, a different path. But I just think that is like the clearest definition of what we’re doing here. 

14:02
Rob Murray

That’s amazing and I couldn’t agree more. Right. Because the human experience, if you’re actually going to elevate it really well, also includes good work. But if we keep that person in mind the whole time, we’re not building for the sake of building, we’re building for the sake of people. I think that’s really. And, and I think the greatest ideas are simple and when they’re well stated. That’s pretty amazing. You mentioned that you went through a thorough values exercise you know, talking to thousands of entrepreneurs over the years, I’ve heard, you know, a massive spectrum of values exercises, some of them being complete crap. They end up on a, you know, a board or something like that, on a wall in a room. 

14:38
Rob Murray

And they mean nothing because they’re not lived out properly to people that authentically, you know, live by, speak about, you know, hire, fire, coach on values. And so what does a thorough values exercise look like for folks? Like, how do they know if they’re going into it the right way? 

14:57
Will Joyce

Yeah, we pulled the team into it and it was not a top down exercise. That was like one of the most important things. It wasn’t just going to be me spitting it out and said, this is what I think. We have an amazing designer, Erica, who’s been with our family company for 25 years. So she worked alongside me. Jen, at the time we talked to our employees and what were trying to do is boil down like, what is that secret sauce? I think most companies probably have that intangible. This is kind of what makes this us. But to go through the exercise of actually putting it into a tangible word expression line, it’s really challenging. So we, you know, we started broad and everything. 

15:38
Will Joyce

We talked about who are our model employees, what is it about them that makes them so special and just boil, boil. Kept coming back to it. And yeah, I think we spent quite a number of hours one winter trying to kind of grind that down. And then I think that one of the most important things, once you feel like you have a succinct definition is not, like you said, putting it up in your office and saying like, great, I’m glad we did that exercise. It’s actually using it as a tool, you know, even in assessments, it can be a decision making matrix for our staff. If there’s a discussion or a situation on site and I’m unavailable, whoever their rec report or anyone as a resource is unavailable. Okay, let’s run this through our values. 

16:22
Will Joyce

Like if we make a decision based on these verticals, like we’ll probably end up in a good position aligned with the strategy of the company or the values. And then too, like even in employee checkpoints, I think it was traction that says line up the capacity, the want, or is it the want to do it gets it wants it can do it, whatever that is. And then line up all your values. And if someone’s a clean sweep across the board, like you have someone who’s just roaring. And I think if there’s nothing that is usually A good sort of canary in the coal mine. That this probably won’t go anywhere great or it’s not a perfect match or a fit or. Yeah. Which is okay. Yeah, it’s not a great fit. We’re not a great fit for everyone. And that’s. 

17:11
Will Joyce

Yeah, there’s no hard feelings ever about that. And that’s, you know, something that get more comfortable with as you go. 

17:17
Rob Murray

Yeah, that’s amazing when you talk about using like as a tool so it actually comes to life. And I think that’s when it becomes really magical for folks because if you’re using it like a tool and it’s inauthentic, it’ll be useless. Like, this isn’t actually us. I know. With intrigue. When we first did a value exercise, it wasn’t very fruitful, you know, and went through it. It was in the end though, because, you know, five, six months later we realized these values are just. They’re not us. And so it was like a juxtaposition by going through it. And then were like, okay, we’re gonna actually use these things. They gotta be authentic. 

17:50
Rob Murray

So it’s easy to live by because I find that once you have authentic values in place inside an organizational setting, it’s really easy to just do it because that’s what you value all the time. 

18:02
Will Joyce

Absolutely. 

18:04
Rob Murray

Go ahead. 

18:04
Will Joyce

And I was gonna say give yourself permission too, to kind of check in with them. Just like you said, like you might go through an exercise that felt really true, but five years down the road, not to say your values shift around, but you know, some new ones may be in there or something else they need to modify. Because I. Your company, our. All companies are sort of living, breathing things that expand and things shift and. 

18:24
Rob Murray

Well, yeah, I mean, even in ours we have an acronym so that it’s like Memorable C Flat. So it’s C F, L, L, A, T, T. But within that there’s three that I look at more than the rest. One of the things, and this is just something that if you want to do, you can. If you don’t, people are listening. They can too. Or not, whatever. But we do a. It’s called the C Flat Awards at the end of the year. And everybody on the team anonymously ranks everybody on the team on a scale of 1 to 6. So there’s no middle on how well they live each core value every day. And then the scores get stack ranked, the winners get an award, and then somebody else on the team presents the award. Kind of like An Oscars type of party. 

19:08
Will Joyce

That’s so cool. 

19:09
Rob Murray

And it’s so much fun. 

19:11
Will Joyce

Yeah, I love it. 

19:12
Rob Murray

It’s a blast. 

19:14
Will Joyce

That’s such a meaningful way to package it. I think at one point I was imagining our own version of the Dundies from the Office where you could do the Cuddies, But I think this is a more meaningful and strategic way to execute that. I think that’s great. 

19:29
Rob Murray

Pretty amazing. 

19:32
Will Joyce

Yeah. 

19:35
Rob Murray

If you ever want to do it, I got a whole sheet and stuff like that with formulas that you. 

19:38
Will Joyce

I’d love that. Yeah. Thank you. 

19:40
Rob Murray

Yeah, yeah, of course. No worries. Okay. So, I mean, it’s clear that people are number one in the way that you’re focused on your leadership style. As you’ve been learning about yourself and those around you. What would you say is like one of the big leadership lessons that you’ve Learned going from 3 to 15, that maybe if you had known then you wouldn’t have made that mistake? 

20:07
Will Joyce

Yeah, I think just having an awareness of how your role is going to change really quickly. What won’t change as a business owner is there’s always going to be a variety of hats you wear. But I think being even a bit more dialed than I was in terms of evolving the role I live in and my end, my focus and how I allocate my time. So I’ve always had my to do list organized in the Eisenhower matrix, like sort of important, urgent, important, not urgent, not important, blah, blah. And I recently. Wait, wait. 

20:45
Rob Murray

Take a quick second. Maybe not everybody’s heard of that one. It’s a good one. Just take a quick second. I think you skimmed over it, but I think it’s worthwhile just mentioning for folks who haven’t heard. 

20:53
Will Joyce

Yeah. So if you Google Eisenhower matrix, it’s just four boxes and there’s a grid going or arrows going up and down on the top and bottom. And so on the top, the first box is important and urgent items, so things that should be on the top of your list that day. The second box going to the right is important, not urgent. And then the bottom left is what is it? Not important and urgent. And then the last box is not important, not urgent. And so what I’ve always tried to do, to varying degrees of success, like, I’ll admit it’s, you know, there’s the chaos of running a business, but is always organized my to do list into that format. And just to help me prioritize and be more aware of how I was spending my time. Now, often that first box Overflows. 

21:43
Will Joyce

And what I was going to say is I just read. I mean, this is. I think a lot of people would have read this, but the seven habits, highly effective human. And I loved, like, he sort of, for me, brought it to the next level where he talks about box one and two. And as a leader in a business, you want to be in box 2 most of the time doing the strategically important things, the relationship building, creating solutions. So that box one, urgent and important stuff, the fires aren’t overflowing all the time. And that’s been a real focus for me, I think. And so I just. 

22:18
Will Joyce

Yeah, like I said, going from someone screening and laying stone to now thinking about how we’re organizing multiple streams of business and how we’re sort of allocating resources and investing year over year on growth and roles and defining roles. Like, there’s a lot of that I’m working hard to get good at every day. But I think if I was, it’s almost like I had to figure out that was going to come really fast. As we grew, I just thought, oh, we’re going to grow and we’re going to have people. It’s going to be great. But it’s how the roles change. I think just being really dialed into that is really important. 

22:50
Rob Murray

And so what was one of the biggest changes that you, like, maybe you didn’t see right away? 

22:54
Will Joyce

Yeah. One of the things we realized is that operations and sales is pretty tricky to. A little bit when. When you’re the time and the frame of mind, you need to be selling, estimating work, thinking about, you know, taking care of all these clients who are reaching out to you in the spring rush or any other time of the year we just found is really almost like a different part of your brain than getting into the trenches. Okay, here we go. Like, here comes spring. Here’s how we’re going to execute. Here’s how we’re organizing our team. Like it’s. It’s game day. Like every day you need to be. And it’s a real we. It seems obvious, but we. Back to Jen and I at that time, we had blended roles. 

23:39
Will Joyce

A little bit of ops, a little bit of sales, a little bit of ops, little bit of sales. We had to split. We had to split them. Yeah. And that was that. There’s a tangible example of some of the role definition we had to do. 

23:50
Rob Murray

Yeah. Yeah, that’s cool. And where were you at in terms of level of sales volume when you got to that? Like, how big was the company when you decided to make that decision. 

23:57
Will Joyce

We’re probably breaking through a million at that point. And I’ve also. 

24:02
Rob Murray

Would you have done it earlier if you like, looking back at it? 

24:07
Will Joyce

Yeah, I think I. Yeah, for sure. I think maybe it would have been like 85, 15 or maybe like always a split maybe. But because there is, you know, you’re smaller, there is an element of all hands on deck. But I think I would have been more proactive about when I need to update my infrastructure, my roles. I want to be not just adjusting to what we feel today, but what’s the next. What’s the next band and size that we’re going to get to. So, yeah, I would have, and wanted, in retrospect, proactively been building those roles to accommodate the next cycle, what’s going to happen the next one to two years. So, yeah, I think earlier would have been a bit better, but not all is the way. 

24:47
Rob Murray

Yeah, no, of course. And well, hindsight’s 20, but I think it’s important for people that are listening. If you’re like 750,000 to a million and you’ve got people in blended roles, thinking about them as mutually exclusive roles might be worthwhile thinking about for sure. And so we go back to this question of what’s the primary growth constraint holding entrepreneurs back? It really seems like your answer, just to summarize, was getting your head right as a leader. 

25:13
Will Joyce

Oh, yeah. Yes, I agree. Yeah, that is a good summation for small business. It starts with you and I think back to 7 Habits, sort of taking responsibility for everything. You cannot be everywhere as a business, but you’re responsible for creating the infrastructure and putting people in roles for me to be in that Right. Headspace of really setting things up. And just before hopping on the report, were talking about surrounding myself with smart people to help me do that because I. Recognizing where my gaps are, being aware of what my strengths are, what my weaknesses are, and then surrounding myself with great people to help insulate that like that all that stuff is about just knowing yourself, I think. 

25:56
Rob Murray

Yeah, that’s cool. Well, if you don’t know yourself, it’s tough to find people that are better than you at things that you are about. Right. 

26:02
Will Joyce

Yeah. 

26:03
Rob Murray

So. So if you take this idea of responsibility because that’s essentially like. So when I ask this question, what’s primary growth constraint? I hear all sorts of answers. There’s common answers. Like most common we hear is staff can’t find anybody who work recently sales. So lead flow has been low. But every once in a while you find a gem in people and they say it’s the leader between their ears. There’s other things like systems and sales processes that pop up, that they’re less common. What do you say to folks right now that are having a hard time recruiting? You talk about doing this values exercise and becoming an employer of choice and building an environment where people want to come. Like, has it been difficult to find people or have you found it like, you know, not necessarily easy, challenging, but still successful. 

26:52
Will Joyce

So when we became a. Some of the things we did, we became a certified living wage employer two or three years ago. And, you know, that’s reflective of our values. I want sustainable careers for people. But what that did is it, you know, threw away my early thinking of being scared. Can we afford this? Can we? That felt like a turning point when we started having a floor of here’s our wage point. And then sort of also what that says about us as a company, our values. And then I think for us, like. And a lot of this again stems from employers of choice and all the different peer groups we’re part of. And like, we needed to cultivate more than just here’s the wage, here’s the job description. 

27:38
Will Joyce

Punch and punch out some of my peers who I talk to who are struggling finding people. It’s like, yeah, they’re just trying to get someone who just wants to just on a higher number. It’s a total package that needs to be cultivated, I think. And it’s something I continue to work on. But things beyond just standard benefits that people don’t have to pay in for, like a living wage, an opportunity for growth, that path to be sort of highlighted and shown. And for us, I think there’s like this sort of, that I try and cultivate like this entrepreneurial spirit a little bit, like a lot is possible and you can really grab your role by the horns and really make it what you want to. And what I’m really interested in is obviously aligning people’s career goals with their own aspirations. 

28:28
Will Joyce

Sorry, with the company’s strategic focus. But I also, if someone’s not energized by what they’re doing, there’s only so much time they’re gonna be with you. And so I really do try and understand and talk and listen what people wanna be doing. We’re really proactive in putting every single learning opportunity in front of everyone. We can. We hire for people and not necessarily X years of landscape experience. So that means we lean on the apprenticeship program. We put people through the grow, supervisory Program through low. We have like a learning. We give everyone like a. We contribute to everyone’s courses in the winter or whatever else. Little things, like we pay for everyone’s Royal Botanical Garden membership every single year just to. 

29:12
Rob Murray

Yeah, that’s cool. 

29:14
Will Joyce

That’s such a little novelty thing. But it’s like passive learning. It’s a beautiful space. It’s good for mental health. But it’s just, I think that where maybe the people are struggling to find people is. It’s just a number, just a job. And even if it is maybe more laborious or like you’re joining an irrigation company and at this, your entry level role, you’re really, you’re trenching and you’re supporting these amazing systems going in. I think like, what is it around the edges that makes someone really happy to be jumping into? Like, I think that’s sort of the ticket for us. We haven’t had difficulty finding people. There’s always the assessment of fit. Sometimes someone you bring in and think might be a great fit, it’s not. 

29:57
Will Joyce

But for the most part we haven’t had that difficulty of finding people, which I feel really proud about. 

30:02
Rob Murray

Yeah, it’s amazing. And what’s beautiful in the way that you described it almost reflects to the T that same expression on the whiteboard in the barn. What was that your dad wrote? 

30:15
Will Joyce

Yeah, the work is secondary. The human experience jumps off, you know what I mean? 

30:19
Rob Murray

Like, even the way you just described the staff experience, it fits that perfectly. And appreciate that. I think that’s something people miss, is that sales and marketing for customers fundamentally is exactly the same as recruiting, training and onboarding staff members. And I just don’t think a lot of people necessarily look at it the same way. And actually, if you were to really look at it, you could argue that the team part is more important than the customer part because a team member helps so many customers, especially over many years. I just think that there’s a lot of folks that can take a lot away from what you just said there on recruiting and building. So if you, you go from this recruitment thing and then, I mean, sales and marketing this year has been softer for folks. 

31:14
Rob Murray

So people aren’t booked out as far leads are, lead flows may be down or the job sizes aren’t the same, you know, so. 

31:24
Will Joyce

Yeah, for sure. So I spoke a little earlier about sort of knowing yourself, knowing your blind spots and identifying where you need to surround yourself with smart consultants, smart team members, smart allies. We’ve taken on a lot of partners this year and it sort of felt like the right timing for all of it. And I felt very aligned with everyone we brought on. So not to lay it on too thick, but one of those key partners is your team, yourself. 

31:53
Rob Murray

I appreciate it. I don’t usually get a chance to do this on these podcasts. 

31:55
Will Joyce

Yeah. So we connected last fall at a peer conference. And again, I have a bit of an advertising background, and coming from outside the industry, what I really appreciated about your presentation and your approach is it isn’t totally insular and cultivated just within the bubble of landscape you are. I think you could drop yourself. I know you have a niche, but you could drop your approach and your thought processes and your people in any industry, and you are smart and you would succeed. And that I just felt like those are the people I want to align myself with. And I was really thrilled it worked out. 

32:34
Will Joyce

And on the sales and marketing side, I felt the legwork we did last winter, take the time to go through, set up our landing page, set up our marketing program, set up the infrastructure and how we understand our KPIs. All that stuff made me so much more comfortable going through this year with a lot of discussion about uncertainty. And I know people are having varying experiences with qualified leads and pipelines. And I have felt that our success is in our court because the leads are showing up. And that’s a huge credit to your team, who are all smart and really great to work with and some of the other stuff we did. Like I’ve talked about what my strengths are. It’s not necessarily strength in numbers. 

33:18
Will Joyce

We’ve started a great partnership with Southbrook Consulting and Nathan over there, who have really helped us with monthly reporting, understanding exactly where we’re standing and having information in hand to ground my gut feel on things and make informed decisions. And we worked with George from Knowledge Tree, who I think has been on your podcast. 

33:38
Rob Murray

Yeah, for sure. 

33:39
Will Joyce

George Rivari, who’s such a character, such a smart guy, and so dialed on efficiency and systems, and again, not my strength. Right. So I have this. You know, there’s such an opportunity to do this in our industry and with our peer group in Landscape Ontario. But I have this great, just sort of group of people around us who I can lean on and I can gut check. And I think, you know, oftentimes people talk about entrepreneurialism and owning a business can be lonely. And I think there’s so much opportunity to just build a network that build a sort of an informal board of governors or people you really rely on to sort of Drive things forward. So we. I feel like we’ve had to hustle our butts off this year, for sure, like everyone. And as per usual. But I just. 

34:21
Will Joyce

Like I said, we felt that the ball has been in our court, so, yeah, it’s been. It’s good on that front. 

34:27
Rob Murray

It’s huge, man. And. Well. And one of the things I’d love for you touch on quickly, because when we met, it was September of last year. 

34:35
Will Joyce

Yeah. 

34:35
Rob Murray

And you were starting to get into, like, planning for 2025 in September, whereas, you know, we get calls from people in February being like, hey, I’m just putting together my plan now for the year. And it’s like, it’s February. It’s. It’s not too late, but it’s not early. 

34:51
Will Joyce

Can you. 

34:51
Rob Murray

Can you maybe share a little bit about why you take that proactive approach and what it’s helped you do? 

34:57
Will Joyce

Yeah, it. It. The. Our planning and all the strategy and even our. All our hiring, it all, like, leads. Like, it is starting now. And I think with our process in particular, we needed to define what our goals were. We needed to sort of lay all the groundwork. We needed to establish sophisticated landing pages aligned with our brand. Our website needed time to set the table and then launch our campaign and then also give it time to optimize itself. And then sort of when it really hit steam and sort of was getting all that information to sort of be optimized, it was at that key time of this summer where we needed leads. 

35:37
Will Joyce

And so I think just being aware of that runtime and planning, even if you’re tired and thinking you’re running towards the end of the year, start the process now to give yourself that Runway so that next year you don’t feel totally at a loss come summer time or. I know your team can mobilize pretty quickly, but if your campaign is hitting its stride and it’s late fall, that’s great. But, you know, the earlier, the better. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We felt great. Like spring, there’s a ton of leads, and, you know, it’s volume, volume, and it just. The campaign picked up at the right time for us. So, yeah, that. That worked out really well. 

36:18
Rob Murray

Awesome. That’s a huge deal. And I think everybody could just listen to this. If you can start the planning sooner than later, you’ll also be the only princess at the ball, because very few people are this proactive. So if you start working with companies like us or anybody, the. They’re not buried. Or if you engage them in February and they are in the landscape. Like if they’re into supporting landscapers anywhere between January through April, they’re going to be smoked with demand. So anyway, that’s cool. So to wrap up, ask everybody in terms of like a resource, an author podcast, a speaker, somebody that’s kind of inspired you, what would be someone that you’d give a. I shared out so the audience can go check them out. 

36:55
Will Joyce

So I’ve spoken about a few already. I’m going to drop how many. I made a little list and you were going to ask me. So a couple of recent books that I’ve read, Seven Habits like I talked about. I think every single person should read that. I’m going to have it packaged into an audio book and given to all my staff. I read one recently, Turn the Ship Around. I’m really bad with authors names, but the title is Turn the Ship Around. It’s about a submarine captain, his leadership style. And he did like one of the most remarkable turnarounds for this particular crew. And you know, but his leadership style is very leader instead of leader follower. And that’s really something that really resonated with me and something I’m trying to infuse into how we organize ourselves podcast. I’m a huge industry nerd. 

37:34
Will Joyce

I listened to this one. So I’m really happy that there’s two episodes rolling out and Ultimate Landscape CEO with Jeffrey Scott down the state. He has. He interviews a lot of business owners, a lot of consultants. It’s very. It’s a similar market segment as you but you know, it’s. He has all sorts of people in the states and different sizes and I just. I love absorbing and listening to how other people tackle things and manage the growth and how their businesses are organized. Cause everyone’s a little different. And then the last one is How I Built This with Guy Raz, which is more of a broad view entrepreneurial thing. But listening to all of them, I always get something. There’s all remarkably entertaining. They’re incredible. He is such a gifted host and yeah. 

38:19
Will Joyce

And back to not being insular on our industry, there’s like we value when people come from outside with outside experience, but there’s always something to bring in that can make you better. So that’s sort of my suite right now. 

38:31
Rob Murray

I love it. What is it the one thing you just inspired me to add to because I think you might name actual book. So I want to make sure I get it the new gold standard. You heard that Ritz Carlton. It’s like there it’s all about their customer service. Ladies and gentlemen. Certain ladies and gentlemen. 

39:08
Will Joyce

Oh, yeah, I have heard about that possibly on this podcast, but yeah. Okay. I should add that to my reading list. 

39:14
Rob Murray

And then how to Win Friends and Influence People. Are you probably maybe another person that you’ve. You’ve read through that one? 

39:21
Will Joyce

Sorry, what was the title of that one? 

39:23
Rob Murray

How to Win Friends and Influence People. 

39:26
Will Joyce

Yes. I actually haven’t read that one and I actually. On your most recent podcast, being talked about as a classic from the 1930s. Grunder. 

39:34
Rob Murray

Yeah, Marty brought it up. 

39:36
Will Joyce

Yeah, that was. He had. Yeah. I thought there was a lot of parallels. Like he’s at a different stage, but a lot of parallels with, you know, letting go and his view on how to treat people. I really enjoyed that episode. 

39:45
Rob Murray

Yeah, I mean, he’s a gem, for sure. Well, anyway, and so are you, and thank you for doing this and thank you for everybody for listening to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth podcast. Thanks, Will. 

39:55
Will Joyce

Thanks.