Ep 125. Family Business to Destination Company: Jeffrey Scott on Building Better Landscape Firms

Summary

Green Side Up – Episode 125 Summary

Title: Family Business to Destination Company: Jeffrey Scott on Building Better Landscape Firms
Date: May 21, 2026
Hosts: Jason Lee & Jordan Upcavage
Guest: Jeffrey Scott (Consultant, Peer Group Leader, ex-CEO, Author)

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Overview

This episode features renowned green industry consultant Jeffrey Scott, who shares his journey from a multigenerational family business in pools and landscaping to coaching, peer groups, and transforming companies into “destination” workplaces. The discussion dives into the challenges of family-run firms, modern leadership, talent retention, building a strong business culture, the nuts and bolts of growth (notably the “lean” operational approach), industry trends (including M&A activity), and practical pricing and sales strategies. Real-life anecdotes from all parties add humor, candor, and actionable insights for entrepreneurs “in the weeds.”

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Jeffrey’s Story: From Family Business to Consultant

• [02:53] Origins: Jeffrey shares his roots in the swimming pool and landscaping family business, beginning work at age 7 (“My first paycheck was two pennies…pre-tax. I had to save one for college.” – Jeffrey, [04:47]).
• [05:31] The family business evolved to include landscaping; Jeffrey later earned an engineering degree and MBA, then worked in Europe in new product consultancy.
• [07:28] On leaving manual labor: “I grew up in landscaping…this is hard work…so I took another path. It’s like the mafia though. It pulls you back, doesn’t it?” – Jeffrey, [07:50].
• [13:11] Family business challenges: Sibling/relative dynamics, diverging visions for company growth, and ultimately, deciding to “exit the CEO platform.”

2. Transitioning to Coaching & Peer Groups

• [10:50] “I started consulting 18 years ago, 2008 or 2007.” – Jeffrey
• [11:48] Recollections from Jason and Jordan about first hearing Jeffrey speak at industry events, and how peer groups and seminars have helped their businesses.
• [25:06] Reflection: “It was a phenomenal event. My big takeaway: I should have brought my whole team here, because this is what we’re trying to accomplish.” – Jason

3. Family Business Realities

• [13:24] Jordan probes Jeffrey on the practicalities of leadership succession, navigating disagreements, and the realities of stepping away.

4. Building a Destination Company

• [15:04] Cultural Innovations: Drug screening, strict company culture, offering higher pay, employee recognition (“five year wall”), HR support, and mutual respect.
• [21:39] “If you have happy employees, you have happy clients. If you attract great clients, you attract great employees…it’s like a spinning top.” – Jeffrey

5. Charging for Consults: Adding Value and Filtering Shoppers

• [25:33] Jordan describes implementing paid consultations post-Jeffrey’s seminar: “It was scary…But people said yes…and the ones that said no…even better. I didn’t have to drive out and waste my time.” – Jordan
• [28:14] “I don’t want their hundred dollars. I want to not waste my time. I want someone who values what I have to say.”
• [28:59] A client even said, “To be honest with you, it made me want you more, because it told me you valued yourself.”

6. Peer Groups & The Power of Shared Experience

• [30:42] Jason credits peer group membership with “a tremendous amount of value…you learn from other people’s experiences. The power of the peer group is phenomenal.”

7. Summer Growth Summit & Best Practices

• [31:46] Jeffrey previews the upcoming event in Michigan, touring two companies ($10M and $20–25M businesses), with a focus on marketing, sales, lean management, and business development.
• [33:33] Special offer for listeners: Half-price admission for one ticket via the show notes.

8. Lean Management in the Green Industry

• [34:38] They break down “Lean” – its origins at Toyota, core principles (standardizing, sorting, simplifying, cleaning), and examples both big and small:
  • [38:34] “How many steps does it take to get the chainsaw off the truck? Is it easy, is it always in the same place?” – Jason
  • [39:59] Tagging and organizing equipment repairs: “Draw a circle for broken equipment, use red and green tags…so it’s clear for everyone.” – Jeffrey
• [43:33] “It’s hard to see your own crap…Put a drone up, watch your teams. You’ll learn so much.” – Jeffrey
• [42:06] Lean solutions often start small – “One bite at a time,” as Jason puts it.

9. Sales, Seasonality, and Weather-Driven Demand

• [47:47] Jeffrey’s LinkedIn poll: About 25% of companies are doing worse than last year, with weather and economy as key factors; the majority are seeing steady or improved leads.
• [51:12] Jordan details navigating a “down” winter—layoffs, pivoting with email marketing, focusing on backlog and experimenting with commercial leads.
  • [52:38] “I have no choice but to stick with it…gotta keep leaning in.”

10. Business Development: Taking Control of Growth

• [54:49] Jeffrey: “You just gotta become a marketing expert or business development expert to run a business. Don’t think short term—plan to be a savant in this over five years…it’s like planting a garden.”
• [55:27] Both hosts discuss hiring new business development staff, blending inbound and outbound marketing, and trying “everything at once”—including, reluctantly, more social media.

11. Industry Trends: Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A)

• [57:27] Jason notes a prominent local company’s acquisition by a large Atlanta-based firm, raising questions about competition, pricing, and culture.
• [60:46] Jeffrey: “When a company is bought, the only way they make money is by growing organically. Some may mess up, be too numbers-driven…there may be recruiting opportunities. Look for short and medium term advantages; use the competition as a rallying cry for your own team.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It’s like the mafia. It pulls you back, doesn’t it?”
  — Jeffrey Scott reminiscing about returning to the green industry ([07:50])
• “If you have happy employees, you have happy clients. If you attract great clients, you attract great employees. It’s like a spinning top.”
  — Jeffrey ([21:39])
• On paid consults:
  “It told me you valued yourself, so you must be the best. Made me want you even more.”
  — Jordan’s client, via Jordan ([28:59])
• “It’s hard to see your own crap…Put a drone up, watch your teams. You’ll learn so much.”
  — Jeffrey ([43:33])
• “To run a business, you have to become a marketing expert or business development expert…plan to be a savant in five years. Year one: You plant. Year three: You harvest.”
  — Jeffrey ([54:49])
• “Use the [M&A] competition as a rallying cry—use jiu jitsu to get your team on board: Step it up, boys.”
  — Jeffrey ([62:24])
• Humorous moment:
  On incredibly tight parking at Jordan’s shop:
  “We’re rubbing mayonnaise on the side to fit them in. Like sardines.” — Jordan ([42:06])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Segment/Topic | Start | |----------------------------------------------------|------------| | Jeffrey’s background & family business tales | 02:53 | | Consulting roots & “the mafia” effect | 07:28 | | Family business succession & challenges | 13:11 | | Building a destination company (culture, turnover) | 15:04 | | Paid consultations—shifting to value | 25:33 | | Peer group & seminar impact | 30:42 | | Summer Growth Summit breakdown & offer | 31:46 | | What does “Lean” mean and how to do it | 34:38 | | Lean examples: trucks, chainsaws, shop tags | 38:34–41:29| | Sales, backlog, and weather swings | 47:47 | | Pivoting with marketing, layoffs, and new focus | 51:12 | | Business development as a mindset | 54:49 | | Handling regional M&A: effects & response | 57:27 | | Final remarks & Jeffrey’s business plug | 64:15 |

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Resources & Links

• Jeffrey Scott’s consulting and peer groups: jeffreyscott.biz
• Summer Growth Summit 2026 (Detroit, Aug 18–20): Special half-price ticket link (see show notes)
• Jeffrey’s podcast: The Ultimate Landscape CEO (Spotify, Apple, others)
• Host businesses: Sky Frog Landscape, Independent Tree Service
• Mentioned vendors: Intrigue Media, Mitigrow

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Tone & Takeaway

Candid, witty, grounded, and practical, this conversation peels back the business of landscaping as a long game of evolution, adaptation, and people. Family roots never fade; culture and standards draw top talent; experimentation (from charging for consults to embracing lean) is key to survival. The landscape itself—of clients, competitors, and even one’s own business—demands vigilance and creativity. "Keep leaning in," as Jeffrey says.

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For more actionable insights, industry tales, and unvarnished truths from those who’ve been there, be sure to follow Green Side Up and check out the episode’s resource links.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to Green side Up, the perfect podcast for small business entrepreneurs looking to cultivate success in the landscaping and tree care industry. Join Jason Lee, a seasoned landscaper, and Jordan Upkavage, a true tree whisperer, as they share their wealth of experience and insights to navigate the challenges of growing your business. Get ready to hear real life stories, practical solutions, and invaluable advice that will empower you to thrive amidst the chaos of entrepreneurship. And now, let's keep the Green side Up with your host, Jason Lee and Jordan Upcavage.

[B]

Welcome back to this week's episode of Greenside up podcast recording in progress. Jordan, it is great to see you this fine morning in Tampa, Florida.

[C]

Jason, right back at you, man. We were recording last year yesterday and we had to stream it all through the Internet, but you drove down to Tampa and thank you for having breakfast with me and my family. And as I was hiding in my office this morning stifling my ulcer of scheduling and emails and damn it, here's another one that I have to do. You said, hey, Jordan, did you get my message? No, dude, what's up? He goes, we got Jeffrey Scott at 9:30. No joke, Mr. Jeffrey Scott. So without a further ado, a quick across the end of the Internet here on through my computer screen. Jeffrey Scott, welcome to the main stage.

[D]

I'm across the Gulf of America, baby.

[C]

You know it. Yes, yes. We got a. We got a good governor down here in Florida. And so when you come down tomorrow, when you land in Tampa, we will welcome you with open arms and a red carpet. And I'll have about 600 little children out cheering and saying a chant in Mandarin. And we won't really know what they say, but it's going to be positive.

[D]

I don't know what all that means, but I'm looking forward to it.

[C]

You didn't get the. Oh, bro. All right. Donald Trump flew to China and that was. Yeah, red carpet. The welcome ceremony.

[D]

I thought you were telling me that the Chinese bought Disneyland or something.

[C]

No, they tried, they tried, but Ron Desantis saved us. Well, welcome to the show, Jeff. How are you today?

[D]

I'm doing good, thank you.

[B]

Well, thank you for joining us, Jeffrey. Anyway, we've been back and forth a little bit about me coming on your podcast, and then we had a recording day set for today, so we're going to flip the script. And you had an opening this morning, and we had an opening and we're glad to get you on. Lots of good things to talk about before we dive into all the fun Stuff you want to give our listeners a little bit about your background in the green industry and how that led into your coaching and consulting business. We can do.

[D]

Jason, you know me as good as anybody. I know you probably could get that intro a little bit.

[C]

Well, why don't you try, Jason? Why don't you hear? I'm going to try. I attended Mr. Jeffrey Scott's destination company seminar in New Orleans, pre Covid 2020, 2019, whenever it was. And I'm gonna give my attempt of my memory.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

So Jeffrey's on stage. And I think when you start a seminar, you try to establish some goodwill, some trust and warm up the audience before you just have that authoritative, I know everything. Well, I'm not gonna say you know everything, but listen to me. I have credit. You're trying to establish your street cred, right? Warm up to your audience trust a little bit. So from memory, you told me that you grew up in the green industry. I believe it was swimming pool construction. That was perhaps, I think, a family business that you got involved in the family business of pool construction. Then maybe either things got weird or you owned the business and then sold the business. But something I can't recall, the exit time was right. And then you took that knowledge of being a pool contractor, employees, subcontractors, and overall general business outside of people's homes and morph that into a consulting business, which is, I assume, Jeffrey Scott Consulting. And you helped teach some principles and concepts for business owners to find a faster pathway to success.

[D]

This is excellent. I'm going to fill in just a couple blank spots.

[C]

Okay.

[D]

You know, I grew up working in that business at the age of seven and my first paycheck was two pennies.

[C]

Post tax or pre tax?

[D]

That was a pre tax. I had to save one for colleger. You know, hopefully I was going to college. And so I had one penny to spend. But my grandfather actually started the first gunite pool company in Connecticut. My uncle took it over. Then my father started up his own, but made it more about landscaping. So we really wore a pool and landscape business.

[C]

Okay.

[D]

And I got a degree in engineering. I got my mba. I did consulting in Europe, corporate consulting. And then, you know, you, you somewhere around the age of 30, you're like, wait a minute here. I have to come home and. Time to get serious.

[C]

This is in Connecticut now.

[D]

Well, I was in Europe, but I came back to Connecticut, joined the family business, took it over, was the CEO. But there was a lot of family members in the business. So at some point, my wife And I are like, you know, we should just go back into consulting and focus on the green industry.

[B]

So when you were doing. When you were doing the corporate consulting, was that just more general, general business, or was it a specified niche of business over there?

[D]

That's a really good question. So I was in a. In a boutique consulting firm where they. They were all sort of engineers, but they were. Right brain engineers. And so we did a lot of new business creation, like helping people develop new products, new services, which really is up my alley. I love the whole marketing, product development, everything. And so, yeah, so they hired me probably because of the engineering background I had, plus the mba, plus I spoke English.

[C]

So what's an engineering product development? Are you building bridge spans and pilings like, tonight?

[D]

My degree was in chemical engineering. And so. And there's a lot of food companies in Holland.

[C]

And.

[D]

But we worked for everybody. We worked for insurance companies. I mean, listen, you're in consulting. In general consulting. Whoever's going to write the check, you're going to help them out.

[C]

So it's interesting. Out of college, you have a right. You studied engineering, you have an mba. So we have this kid out of college that's now a consultant. That's a ballsy move, right?

[D]

Well, I grew up in landscaping, and I said to myself, this is hard work. I mean, trust me. All my friends were out having fun, and every Saturday morning I had to go to work, and I'm like, I'm not doing this anymore. And so I took another path. Yeah, but you know what? It's like the mafia.

[C]

It pulls you back, doesn't it? Yeah.

[D]

And so I just got pulled right back in.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

So the best industry in the world, honestly.

[C]

So, Jeffrey, I work for my dad. My. My dad started independent tree service in 1978 here in Hillsborough County. Right here in Tampa. Pickup truck and a chainsaw knocking on doors. Didn't know anything other than find a dead tree and knock on their door. And in the first year or so of his business, there's a story that he tells, and he's been on this podcast before, there's a story that he tells of. He's up at the top of a ladder, hanging on with one hand onto a tree branch, cutting a tree branch with his right hand.

[B]

Oh, man.

[C]

And the client opens the phone book, white pages, looks up upcavage. It's only my family here in Tampa. Calls grandpa and says, gerald, up cabbage. You need to come get your son. He's gonna kill himself. And so grandpa drove to my dad's customer's house and said, jerry, my dad, get the hell out of that tree. You're gonna kill yourself. And that was one of the first times that sparked the idea of, I need to hire an employee that knows what they're doing because I'm going to kill myself because I don't know what I'm doing. And that stemmed my dad hiring his first climber that actually had skills and saddles and ropes and knots and knew what they were doing. So 48 years later, here we are. Independent tree service.

[D]

Excellent.

[C]

So I feel you with the mafia because it does suck you back in. And my sister operates the office. If you call Independent tree service, it'll be my sister that answers the phone.

[D]

So I am going to call up right after this when we're done here. Yeah, get Jordan out of that dang tree.

[C]

Right. He's going to kill himself. And then that'll be my sister. She's going to laugh and be like, jordan doesn't even remember how to climb trees anymore. Plant healthcare seems to be all the buzz in the green industry right now. Are you like many business owners that don't know how or where to start, or are you looking to add a new tool to your PHC toolbox?

[B]

Mitigro is an innovative product that focuses on root and soil. A different approach than loading up the ground with more npk. Mitigro is a blend of mycorrhizae, fungi, bacteria, vitamin B and Iba, which is a rooting hormone.

[C]

The concept is simple. More roots equals a healthier and more robust plant. This simple concept is exactly why both Jason and I have incorporated mitigro into our PhD programs. Deep Root applications on my end for mature or struggling trees, soil drenches and spray applications for when Jason installs trees and installs new sod.

[B]

Give Mitigro a shot for yourself. Their product is easy to apply and no special licenses are needed. Visit mitigrow pro.com to learn more. That's M I T O G R O W pro Com. So Jeffrey, what year did you start the consulting business?

[D]

18 years ago? 2008 or 7. Okay to the math because the first

[B]

time I heard you speak it was after would have been so Jordan, myself and then John Burns who is a a salesman for Sky Frog Tree Service. We all lived together when I we were starting Sky Frog. So post college I'd already done my stint at Austin Outdoor slash Yellowstone, moved back to Gainesville, and then all three of us move in together and have lots of fun as we were starting our entrepreneurial journey. But John and I, we didn't have any work, so, you know, going into wintertime, we didn't have any work. And so John and I decided to just, you know, we should go to Gie. We should go to Kentucky. Let's. Let's go to Kentucky and go to the expo. We'll stop on Nashville on the way up and Nashville on the way back and have a good time. And that was the first time I heard you speak. I think you were given a design build seminar. So that would have been 2009.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

There we go. You were the first man. So my only client, Jason, who has his own podcast.

[B]

Hey, there you go.

[C]

I'm sure that Jason has a lot of only client stories. He's the first how to that have had. And you know. You know all the details. You know what I know, Jeffrey? Jason has got to be the first and only that has checked that box. Several boxes.

[B]

Probably the only one.

[D]

One that fill in the blank alligator. Fill in the blank fire department. Okay.

[C]

So. All right, so keep going.

[D]

Wait, Jason, you work for the fire department?

[B]

No, no, no. I'm probably the only one that had an employee burn their building down.

[D]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

Unless.

[C]

Unless you're saying.

[B]

But unless you know anybody else and we can. You can give me their number so we can commiserate.

[D]

I. I'm gonna keep my brain open on that one. Well, I'll get back to you.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

Any. Any other clients experience arson?

[B]

No.

[C]

All right, so keep going. Tell me, you know, you. You were doing consulting stuff in Holland, in Europe, you come back, you and your wife talk and say, hey, this whole, you know, swimming pool, landscaping stuff, let's go back into consulting, Right?

[D]

Yeah. I mean, family business difficulty. It's just crowded. Basically. If you had a big Italian family or, you know, whatever family it gets. And then you got spouses. Yeah.

[C]

How did. How did that work? Because I'm so curious. Because family businesses can be wonderful. They can be sticky and weird at the same time. So if you're CEO of the business, of your dad's business.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

That is different than your uncle's business. That was your grandfather's business. Whether they're competitors or not. I don't know, how do you exit the CEO platform and say, dad, I want to quit? I mean, how do you do that? Or how did you do that?

[D]

Well, I came in. My brothers are in the business. One of my brothers is the CEO, and I guess he couldn't handle the pressure. I never really asked him, but he stepped down, and so the slot's empty. And I stepped up.

[C]

And you said I volunteer for CEO or did you say I volunteer for CEO? Or did your dad say Jeff, my boy, will you be my CEO?

[D]

I have to. You know, we're going way back here. I probably volunteered. It was probably a two step, like COO and then CEO. I was running the whole service division, full service. We, we. And we got that up to a 65% gross margin. 67%. And we were kicking butt.

[C]

How many employees annual gross revenue? Ish.

[D]

Well, so pool service and then landscape maintenance back then. So we're going back. These are old dollars.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

I mean I was running service. It was probably 2 million.

[C]

That's a lot.

[D]

And the company was probably 5.

[C]

That's a lot.

[D]

That's in. But that's in old dollars. Right? We're going, yes, those are pre inflation dollars. And I, I actually argued with the family. I said we should grow service and make that the majority of the business. And my dad and my two brothers, they all came from the installation side. And they fought me and fought me and fought. So there really were a lot of things we did not agree on.

[C]

Yep.

[D]

Of course, after I left, one of the family members. Oh, I have this great idea. We're going to grow the service side of the business because the install side goes up, goes down. You make money one year, you make no money the next year. Or just depending. We made money the years when we were so overbooked, we were running cats and dogs as fast as we could. That's when we made money in install. And we always had some angry clients because we were running too fast. And then you'd have a slow year. And it's design build with a heavy landscape architecture component. Especially big jobs. Big jobs don't always mean big money. It's not easy. It can be big risk. We were killing it. And we had that dialed in our pull service, we charged as much, twice as much as the. Not the next company, but twice as much as all the small companies. And we still had great clientele and great business.

[C]

Did you have a employee turnover problem or did you. So we, we were talking before we hit the record button and we were talking about hiring people.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And I told you, Jeffrey, that if you, if you want to work for me, you or anybody, Jason or your son or your daughter or your nephew, anybody, you have to possess a driver's license and you have to pass a drug screening. If you don't have those two qualifications, you don't meet mustard to work for me.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And part of that is if you don't have a driver's license, you have life problems that are going to become a work problem. You have made decisions in the past or you have demonstrated a series of behaviors that resulted in you don't have a DL. So that is a high likelihood of causing a broken promise on my end. And then the drug test, either you don't smoke dope.

[B]

Cool.

[C]

Or you're smart enough to figure out how to pass the drug test. So it's a litmus test of problem solving. Now between you and me, Jeffrey, I don't care what you do. I'm serious. I don't care what you do on the weekends. Right now, if you're doing heroin, we got a problem. You're doing meth. Not for me. But if you go smoke a joint on a Saturday and you come to work sober on Monday, I don't care. But can you get past this? Can you creatively think, can you problem solve or do you just simply not smoke dope? And I don't want a marijuana culture in my business, and I don't have one. But so those are the two reasons. So in the service industry, I have a pool and I have. Pool guy comes and does the chemicals. There's a lot of turnover. And did you work that by charging more money and in turn paying your employee more money or soliciting a better level of a person to perform the service for you? Much like how I have very, very little turnover in my business.

[D]

Yeah. Well, we. A couple of things. We were ahead of our times in that we drug screened way back then, which was a definite high bar. You could not smoke on a client's property. And so we had, I don't think we were completely non smoking, but we had a very strict culture and we were really a destination company and we were innovative. Way back then, nobody was doing pools and landscaping together. Now it's. Everybody's doing it. But wasn't too long ago where it was new. And so people wanted to work in our company and we had some high standards. So I mean, of course we had turnover, but I think we attract. We definitely paid at the, we didn't pay at the bottom of the range. Right. We weren't trying to cheat people. And so we definitely paid for skills and talent. But you know, we had an HR person and so we were focused on the employees. We had a very rich employee culture. You know, the five year wall. We give out awards every year and so we, we treat them with respect. Hey. Right, the basics.

[B]

Yep.

[C]

And you had if you were doing, then you said 2 million in maintenance 20 something years ago. 30 years ago. That's a lot. So are we talking 30, 30 trucks, 30 techs? Ish.

[D]

Well, let's see. Pool service, because that's a lot of pools. Pool service was in the spring. It was two men. That's where we trained and qualified our next new techs. And then it was one man maintenance. You know, we probably did three man crews. I don't remember exactly the number of trucks. And really my field managers were running all that. And I really came from the whole business management, business development side of things.

[C]

And

[D]

I was never the guy out there turning the wrench.

[C]

So you had people in, you had the operations manager, you had firefighters below you to intercept and filter out the day to day fires for sure.

[D]

And we, you know, and I've mentored these guys to become the managers that they became. And we were well staffed. We had, we made sure we had an extra guy in full service so that when the client called, we could run out the door, give them that troubleshooting service at a high enough fee.

[C]

Yep.

[D]

And so we had very happy clients. You know, if you have happy employees, you have happy clients. If you can have and attract great clients, you're going to attract great employees. You really have to say yin and yang. That you have to. It's like a gentle, it's like a spinning top. Just got to keep the top spinning, take good care of it and it'll work for you.

[C]

Yeah, it's interesting you say that about if you have happy employees, you'll have happy clients. I went to a client yesterday, Juanita Steffen is her name. And just to come full circle on who this person is, I've done work for Juanita for a decade. Well, Jeffrey, there's something called the International Society of Arboriculture. I'm sure you're aware of.

[D]

Isa.

[C]

The isa. There are chapters of the ISA throughout the country and throughout the world. Florida has a chapter, Florida chapter of the isa. And our CEO was a guy named Norm Easy. And at the time I was on the board for the Florida chapter. Norm Easy's neighbor said, hey, my mom is in Tampa and needs an arborist. Who can you refer? So Norm referred me to go take care of the mom. And I've worked for her for over a decade and I was meeting with her yesterday and she goes, you know Jordan, the young man that was here last time? I said, okay, my salesman, his name is Marti. Oh, what just a lovely young man. He is he was just so happy and so smiley. And then the men that came to do the work, they were just nothing but yes ma' ams and, and just no cursing and no yelling and hooting and hollering. They were just having fun trimming the trees. And it just brought joy to my heart to see these boys outside working hard and having fun. And it's exactly what you just said. If you have good people having fun at work, you just inherently have that good, positive energy rubs off on other folks. Yeah.

[D]

And if you have clients that respect your employees, then it's easier to keep them.

[B]

Yeah. And he mentioned. You mentioned the destination company. Jeffrey, before we got press record button, we were talking about. Anyway, Jordan and I, prior to. Anyway, hiring you as a consultant and joining the peer group. That was. We went out, had it been January, maybe of 2019. I think you had a destination company event. And I told Jordan, I said, hey, I think so. I said, I said, hey. I said, I think, I think I'm gonna hire Jeffrey Scott and join this peer group. I said, but you're gonna buy a plane ticket and a ticket to this event and we're going to New Orleans and we're going to go have fun and check it all out before I pull the trigger. And so we took a field trip out there and that was a phenomenal. And of course I brought Jordan so that we can have fun. And you know, he's my. He was. Jordan and I have been our own little mini peer group for. Since we lived together in Screenside podcast. So here we are, our own mini peer group, slash, HR consultant, slash. But whenever I left, whenever we left the seminar, I think it was a two day, two day seminar. I thought to myself, it's like, man, it'd be really good if I would have just brought my whole team here because that specific event. And I don't know if you've. I don't know if you've. Have you done it since then?

[D]

I have not. I really. I really should do that again. I segue to or summer growth Summit, which is our big event now.

[B]

Yep. But no, I think that's the.

[C]

Hey.

[B]

But that was my big takeaway of man, I should have brought everybody here because this is what we're trying to accomplish. Yeah. So you might want to do that again.

[D]

You might want to. I think I'm going to put that in the. I'm going to. I'm going to write a note there to myself.

[C]

Here's the one thing that I. There's a lot of Stuff that I took away from, from that. But what that 2019 seminar inspired me to do was to charge for estimates. And nobody does that in my area. So after that seminar, it's like, it was scary. Like, oh my gosh, I'm going to charge for estimates. Well, how much do I charge? And so I thought about it and labored it. I said, okay, if it's a repeat customer, no problem, we're going to come see you. If it was a direct referral from a existing client, no problem, we're going to come see you. Yeah, but what I don't like is being the estimate factory and spending my time and knowledge on shoppers. I want people to call me for the knowledge and information I'm going to give, not for how much does tree cutting cost? Because when I go to a job site, I don't look at the assignment and tell you a cost. I have to develop the assignment. I have to put together the scope of work and build the scope of work based off of my knowledge and training. So it's going to be very tailored to that person. And it's not just an estimate. Sure, I can give you an estimate if you give me a written scope. So coming back from destination company, I said, dad, we're going to charge for customers. If they found us on yellow Pages, if they found us on Angie's List, if they found us.

[D]

Yelled at you. Yep.

[C]

And said, if they found us on Google, we're going to charge for estimates. And he was, didn't want it. I said, dad, let's do an experiment. Let's fricking try it. If it doesn't work, we can stop. But if we don't do an experiment, we're never going to know. So we made the fee. $100. You pay, you call independent tree service. My sister answers the phone, hey, I found you on Google. I'd like an estimate. Okay, we'll have the arborist out for a consultation. The consultation fee is $100. They'll put together a customized proposal and work order, or prescription and work order. If you decide to hire us and move forward, we credit the $100 to the invoice. Would you like to move forward? And a lot of people said yes and was like, oh, my God, it worked. And then the people that said, no, it was even better. I was like, great, that's one person I didn't have to drive to spend fuel, time, energy. Because look, by, by three o', clock, you're tired of tap dancing. Damn it.

[D]

You've been talking all generous if you give them back the hundred bucks. Yeah, very generous.

[C]

It's because I don't want their hundred dollars. I want to not waste my time, and I want somebody that values what I have to say. That's what I want. It ain't their hunter box. And so that worked out so well. And it worked out so well that I felt bad. And when someone didn't need work and I was like, you're fine. Call me in 18 months. You don't need anything. I felt bad for taking their hundred bucks. So I stepped it down to 50. And it did the same thing. It was the exact same outcome. $100 versus 50 bucks. Did the exact same thing. It killed the shopper I didn't want to deal with, and it kept the person that I wanted to deal with and was only 50 bucks. So that's where we are today. And I have had a customer. I forget his name, but when I go. When I showed up to give him the walkthrough, I introduced myself. He said, jordan, you know you're the only company that charges a consult fee. I said, yes, sir, I'm aware of that. He said, to be honest with you, it made me want you even more because it told me that you valued yourself and that it was important to you, so you must be the best. And it made me want you even more. So let's dance. Said, okay, Yahtzee. So anyways, thank you, Jeffrey, for that and thank you, Jason, for having me fly to New Orleans. And thank you, Christy, for putting my sister Christie for putting our bar tour together on Google Maps for us to walk around after the seminar. And that has been a very helpful thing for independent tree service. That was my main takeaway.

[D]

Do you yell Yahtzee to your clients as well? Like, what does that mean? Actually, I don't know.

[C]

I have three kids, and we were playing Yahtzee the other night. You know the dice game? You get all five fives in a row, you yell Yahtzee. It's hard to do. Okay.

[D]

It's been a minute.

[C]

Yeah. Your kids are all grown up though, right?

[D]

One's in Tampa, right next door to you.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

One's in New Orleans. Just had a baby.

[B]

Ooh.

[C]

Oh, congratulations.

[D]

First and my dad's first great grandson.

[C]

Awesome. Also boy. A baby boy.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

And I got your email the other day. I saw you sitting on a white couch holding an infant.

[D]

That's it.

[C]

That's your girl. Okay. All right, well, congratulations. So, yeah, I have two 8 year olds and a 2 year old

[B]

so Jeffrey, I reference. Anyway, I referenced the peer group fairly often because after joining it and being a member for multiple years, I mean it added a tremendous amount of value to me personally and to the business. So, you know, just through, and just through experiences during the time, it's always reference points of people. But you know, the power of the power of a peer group and learning from other people's experiences I think is a phenomenal way for entrepreneurs to learn. And then obviously having someone like you to facilitate is fantastic. But you'd mentioned the summer Growth Summit, which is not necessarily tied to the peer group itself. But I'd like to talk about that for a minute. I think the last one we attended was maybe Mariani in Chicago.

[D]

Okay.

[B]

I think. But this year I was, I talked to Ivan yesterday. I'm trying to find them a few lemon trees to ship up for a client up in Michigan. But I know he's one of the co hosts. So you want to take a minute and tell us about this year's summer Growth Summit? That'd be awesome.

[D]

Yeah, thank you, man. August 18th to 20th, the summit is 19 and 20th and we have a pre event on the 18th where the owners and other key people are speaking. So really it's a two and a half or three day event, you know, two and a half. But if you can only make it for part of it, you can. We go visit a company and this year we're doing a double header. So two companies, Ivan Katz, he was in your peer Group around a $10 million company. And then there's another company around 20 to 25 million. Troy Clog Landscape Associates. So we're going to go visit both companies. We're going to see the best, you know, both companies are going to give talks with some of the best things they do. And then, and that's like kind of the middle day of the three days.

[C]

How far apart are their offices?

[D]

Well, that's a good question. I think it's going to be a 30 or 40 minute ride. We're going to rent buses for everybody. And so are they competitors?

[B]

No.

[C]

30 to 40 minutes apart. They're not competitors.

[D]

Well, so you're in Detroit. One is closer to Detroit and the other is really up, way up in a suburb. And so I mean they may compete a little bit, but Detroit's a big area. There's a lot of clients there. It's a big city.

[B]

I took a field trip. It had to have been at the end of one of our peer group zoom calls. But I, I heard Mike's Mark Smith talking to Ivan about going and it was when Ivan moved into his new new facility. But I heard Mike talking about going and touring Ivan's place and we were, we're always, we're still in rebuild mode from our shop but at that point we were putting, putting things back together. So I called Mark, I said, hey, when are you going to see Ivan? I said, because I said I need to, you know, brainstorm ideas for the shop. So I bought a plane ticket, went up there and then Mark also said he's like, we're also going to the tour, Wade and Dustin's place up in Grand Rapids. So I flew up and we went on a like a 36 hour tour of tour of shops in Michigan. But Ivan's got a great facility, is

[D]

massive, his new facility. So lucky or smart to find that building and you know, I'm assuming an affordable plot of land. But in any event for people want to throw in a little teaser here to see who listen to the podcast towards the end, I'm going to send you guys a link to put in the show notes for a half price ticket on top of our early bird pricing. So you're gonna. It'll be good for one ticket for whoever wants to come. And so check it out.

[C]

August 18th through the 20th.

[D]

Yeah. Okay. It's gonna be excellent.

[B]

And I can speak. Go ahead.

[D]

We're gonna have an AI panel on that pre event. We're going to have both owners giving us telling us how they do their best marketing and sales and business development. We're bringing in someone to talk about Lean management. Now, Lean is all the rage, but it's not actually lean. The real science behind Lean is how you take an organization and remove all the useless steps to keep it organized and make it work smarter. And you can do lean in any part of your company. Although production's the most obvious part.

[C]

Let me ask you this, is lean an acronym or which Just what the definition of lean is.

[D]

Lean is like six sigma. So making things simpler, standardized, short. There's like five S's to it. Can somebody Google this? What are all the S's sorted? Standardized? I don't know, simplified.

[C]

So give me an example. All right. I know of leanscaper. All right. That is keying on this Lean concept that I don't want to say is a fad, but it's trendy. People are saying the word lean, right? So in a non AI generated response, can you Lean is because everybody wants to be lean. I think I'm lean. But like I have crew leaders can see paperwork. They're. I'm not the bottleneck for it. Communication equipment that's used frequently and not pieces of equipment that are just on the trailer not getting used. Can you just break it down in plain English on what the hell that means?

[D]

It's about standardizing, sorting and simplifying, removing steps that aren't needed, keeping what you do very standardized so that anybody can go and find whatever they need at any time and keeping everything clean on a regular basis. I know there's a couple more to this, but it's about removing waste from a process. Wasteful steps. Wasteful because it's. You're unorganized, unneeded steps.

[C]

Can you out of in your tenure of business. Can you give an example?

[D]

Let me tell you where it came from, please. So Toyota invented Lean. And it's how Toyota became the best car company in the world really over decades. And they made their assembly line so efficient, if anybody saw a problem in the assembly line, anybody in Toyota, they could pull a knob and stop the whole assembly line to fix the problem, identify the problem. And so Toyota became experts at building company cars with fewer defects more efficiently. And they created in Japanese, invented the whole process.

[C]

Is there a client of yours or somebody like Jason or maybe you can answer this question. Can you give a specific example in a green industry business of something that was cut out, that was non needed fat or steps that I can quietly think and reflect on.

[B]

It would even get as simple as. So who is it I heard, is it Paul Akers is like the key king of Lean? I think he did some work with Toyota. I think that's his name. I heard him speak about it on. On the topic of Lean and I know he had references with Toyota, but it'd be something for your business, Jordan. It's like all right, on the truck, on the tree truck, we have a chainsaw. How many steps does it take to get to the chainsaw? Is a chainsaw inside of a box and then under something buried in a chest? Or do we have the toolbox easily accessible on the outside of the truck? And it's one home where it always lives. And you walk out of the truck and you grab the chainsaw and you're eliminating three steps of finding the chainsaw, at least in my.

[D]

And does a chainsaw have a specific place where every person keeps it on their truck and it's all the same.

[C]

Got it.

[D]

I think another great example. I'm not going to say this all completely to your standards, Jordan. I can Tell you a very high standards here on examples, but it's like when you drop something off in the shop to get repaired. What's the system for that? People now do tagging systems. Right. You got to tie a red tag on it and put the problem and the person who's doing the work. And then you have to put it into a circle. You draw a circle on your shop floor and all the broken equipment has to be put within that painted circle. And then when the work is done, take the red tag off, put the green tag on, move it to a different part of the shop. So everything that would allow your equipment to get fixed as efficiently as possible and as quickly as possible. And while keeping your shop from being chaotic. Chaotic, yes. And stopping people from having to call somebody on the phone and say what was wrong with this? Or hey, what, you know, when is it going to get fixed? So the whole system around tagging and moving around broken equipment and getting it repaired quickly, all that you could think

[C]

about in terms of lean makes sense. I can definitely relate to the chainsaw that's rotting on the workbench and nobody knows what the. Why this chainsaw is there.

[D]

It's just a red tag on it.

[C]

There's no. Yeah, makes sense. Thank you. What I mean, this whole concept is going to take a ridiculous amount of effort to implement and it probably takes a long time.

[D]

Yeah, it's cultural, it's piece by piece. But it could start with, do you make your guys clean their trucks once a week and put everything back to where it is? Allegedly that's where it could start.

[C]

Yeah, allegedly, yes.

[D]

You make them clean their trucks once a. Once a week?

[C]

Allegedly.

[D]

Do you have a cleaning station on property?

[C]

No, we have a very small property where it's like this is a, a self made problem. We have a very small piece of property with so many trucks on it, it is like Tetris. So there's not a whole lot of room where.

[D]

So you need lean to there.

[C]

We have no room. We have so little room that we have to rent parking and you know, 15 miles north for our big grapple truck because there's no room for it at our shop. So we have a satellite area for our bigger equipment because there's only so much room in our little postage stamp in metro West Tampa has property in

[D]

Gainesville to rent you.

[C]

It's too much windshield time, believe it or not. You can't come off an hour and 45 minutes.

[B]

You might not be running many things lean in your business, which you probably are. But Your parking situation, which I have seen firsthand, is as lean as it can be, because there's not.

[C]

It is fascinating.

[B]

There's not a square inch of it is. And to see it unfold in the morning, Jeffrey is. And I don't remember how tight. I remember Ivan showing me when we were at his new facility, you know, an aerial. Aerial of his old facility. And I was looking at all the stuff he had. It's like, how did you fit all the stuff? And it's probably the same thing as Jordan. I mean, there's not a. Yeah, it's

[C]

like a 130 by 130. And there's eight trucks and eight trailers in a 130 by 130. It's like we're rubbing mayonnaise on the side to fit them in. Or like sardines.

[B]

But on the concept of lean, after. After I heard the one speaker talk about the concept, it's like, oh, my God, we always have so much stuff. And we're still post fire, you know. Now our shop, Jeffrey, is. Anyway, we've got the shop back. We're not building offices out. We're still operating out of a construction trailer, but we've got. Now we've got a fully insulated building with power. So we operated like three and a half years with no power, just a 110 outlet off of a temporary power pole. So my mechanic was the happiest person in the world when we got actual electricity back. But, you know, as we're still putting things back together, you know, I come back from this talk and all these lean concepts, it's like, oh, man, this is going to be overwhelming. And it's just like, well, no, it's just how you. How you eat an elephant. It's one bite at a time. So I started walking around the yard and it's just like, all right, well, we don't need this here. You know, why is this still here? So we started just getting rid of some things and then moving things around. And it's like, all right, well, if we stop, why are we putting this all the way over here? You know, why are we parking all these lawnmowers way over here? Just because that's where we put them at some point after the fire. And it's like, well, we need to put the mowers over here now. It's like, well, no, now we have more room. Let's make this the mower station and save, you know, 30 seconds a trip for the guys driving back and forth whenever they're moving Equipment around. So it's little things. Yeah.

[C]

We did the same thing with fertilizer. We had pallets of fertilizer in the way and in the wrong spot, and we restacked it up and it makes more sense.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And little things if you want to get a good view. It's hard to see your own crap. Right. It's hard to do. But they. If I don't. If you could get on your roof and videotape your guys leaving one morning and just all. How many repeat trips do they make? Just even looking for that, because Lean would cut out those repeat trips. So invite Jason over, get on the roof, and just watch your guys in the morning. Even with or without a videotape, you will learn. You guys could do this for each other and you would learn a lot.

[B]

That's a really good idea, actually. I'll put the drone up in there and just record the whole thing. Yeah, I like it.

[D]

Nope.

[C]

That is interesting.

[B]

So, Jeffrey, I've got a couple of, I don't know, I guess, industry. Industry topics I'd like to pick your brain on before we wrap up. One is trying to. And Jordan and I are very much. Our podcast is. Well, it all stemmed from. We had a couple of more beers than we probably should have to inspire this idea. About nine.

[C]

About 900.

[B]

About 900 of them in Jordan's backyard. And I told him after I started listening to some industry podcast, I told him, I said, man, I said, we, you know, we. We've got real businesses with real stories. And I said, there's a lot of other podcast guys out there that are giving out great information and, you know, talking about a lot of things. I said, but they don't have real stories to tell. And I said, and after being in Jeffrey's peer group, I said, I've learned more, so much more from other people's experiences. I said, we need to start our own podcasts. We're going to have an endless amount of employee stories and, you know, war stories to tell. So that's kind of how we. How we landed to where we're at. But this year, we're really trying to dive in and pay more attention to our sales process, you know, we've made. And I found I had to go back. So I normally operate off of a yellow notepad a lot of the time. So I'm keeping notes, keeping to do lists. And I hoard those notepads in my garage. Not in an organized fashion, but just in a pile. And sometimes they move into a file box. But going back probably a decade and I had to find something specific I was looking for, which I finally found. But on one of them it had to have been maybe from one of our coaching calls or maybe from a peer group meeting. But I saw a list of action items that I was working on and one of them was a sales process and it took me a minute. As I read these six or eight items I got a little discouraged. It's just like Jesus. So this is from five years ago and I'm still working on these things and it's just like oh, these are things that were always. And it took me a minute, like I got a little depressed and it's like oh no, these are things that we're always going to have to work on. So it's just that these are constants. So we've been working and talking on sales processes in general, trying to improve, well, just improving that process from intake to estimate to close job, focusing on increasing close ratios but then also trying to keep a pulse on lead flow and just general kind of economy and industry and what's going on in general. And I know I was talking with Ivan and Mark Smith about it and what are you seeing across I guess across the country and across the industry with the pulse of what's going on with work and sales and seems like, seems like springtime for a lot of people have been pretty decent and picked up even given all the wild things that are going on.

[C]

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[B]

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[C]

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[B]

Intrigue Media is fast tracking lead volume for both Sky Frog Landscape and independent Tree service. You should give them a try for your business. Visit intriguemedia.com if you want to make more money and crush your competitors online. That's intriguemedia.com so I just did a

[D]

poll on LinkedIn and about I'm going to go from memory here. About 25% were doing worse than they were last year in sales at this point. And then maybe 15% were doing the same. And then everyone else was either doing better or much better. And I think the ones doing worse, half of them were weather related. Like if you're in a snow belt or a rain belt or a tornado belt, whether this spring was worse and so, and then half is the economy. But surprisingly meaning people are surprised that there, there's some good lead flow out there.

[B]

Now that's good to, that's good to hear because we're, we're seeing it. I mean we're seeing an uptick in leads. And even yesterday when we were recording, I was trying to go back through and now I'm just some of the stuff with. If it's weather wise, I mean you can't change that. But I really want to start focusing on, in, on in our business and time of year and trying to look at the seasonality of things even getting down to the month. You know, if we can track things and maybe try to market a little different. Yeah, you know, do do something and just pay more attention to it. But for us, it got really cold in February, so for us in January, lead flow. As soon as New Year's hit, we had. Phone was ringing off the hook. It was great. All of a sudden it's instantly, it's like, wow. And it seemed like all these people were waiting, you know, till after New Year's to call about their project. And then that was picking up, picking up, picking up. And then for Florida, Florida, we got extremely cold, you know, in Gainesville, down to the low 20s, probably maybe high teens. So that kind of just shut everything down. And then we picked back up in March. So trying to pay attention to things like that.

[D]

And then it was cold across the entire continent, wasn't it?

[C]

Yeah. So I've, I've raised my hand. I am doing less in sales than I was this time last year. And I personally, I hate excuses. It's just in my DNA. I don't like excuses. I don't use excuses. You just have to own everything. And instead of saying it's an excuse, it may be circumstances that result in current experience. Yet at the same time you have to have ownership and be willing to pivot and adapt.

[D]

Right.

[C]

So I just, I hate excuses. I am doing between 100 and $200,000 less a month right now than I was this time last year.

[D]

Okay.

[C]

We got blasted by Hurricane Milton in 2024.

[D]

October.

[C]

Okay.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

So much work was performed. I took trees off of houses for three Weeks, cranes, all of it. So many out of town people came in and performed work. So many consumers hemorrhaged cash fixing their shingles and their trees and their fences and the whole bit. Last year we were in a drought. No rain. Not one tropical storm in the Gulf of America. Not one. Okay, so when October 2025 came, the faucet turned off. No demand, zero demand. So what do I do? I'm calling my phone line to see if my phone line is working. Why the hell is it not ringing? I'm calling my own office line for my cell phone to see if it works. It's working.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Like, damn it, what are we going to do here? I laid six people off in November, had to make a hard decision. I went from five crews down to four crews. Sucked. I'm very prideful person and letting six people go in person at my shop was one of the worst things that I've had to do. I ended up. So we've, we work with Intrigue. I've had Intrigue put some marketing emails about a discounted rate now through February and email drip it out to 11,000 clients that we have. That kept us moving from December, January, February. If I didn't do that, oh, I would have been in a bad spot. But that was me pivoting. But I'm still only running four crews. I'm not running five. I have about a week's backlog on the books right now, which is amazing because the entire wintertime I'm selling work on Friday, that I'm performing Monday, I'm selling work on Wednesday, that I'm performing Thursday. High stress. So I've been focusing and I've been pivoting with some plant healthcare ideas and I'm trying to get into some more commercial stuff where the residential is that constant, like maintenance. Right. It's residential. It's constant, constant cash flow. Cash flow. But what I want is the, the five figure commercial job or the six figure commercial job that can then eat a huge amount of crew time. Let's say that's going to eat two crews for two weeks. It's a huge amount of crew time. Then my residential can pick up the other crews and pump my backlog out further. So I'm trying and I hired a business development manager who's getting in with CI and BOMA and other network groups. I'm trying experiments to see how can I better come up with this mousetrap. And I can't change residential consumers willingness to call that's weather related or economic, whatever you Want to say, but I'm under the mindset of how can I outsmart this and try another way. And it buddy, it ain't easy. I'm not kicking ass at it, but I'm giving it a hearty college try right now.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Ivan is an expert at business development and so I'm actually helping him put together a whole talk for the pre event for our summer growth summit. He built his whole business on. I cannot wait for that phone to ring. I have to go out and shake the trees. And he's done it residentially and commercially. So I'm a big believer in you just got to become a marketing expert or business development expert if you're going to run a business. Like I wouldn't look at this, Jordan, as a short term, no solution. But like I'm going to. This is me projecting. Like if I was you, I'm going to become the expert of this and I'm going to focus in the next five years so that I'm going to go from beginner intermediate to, you know, savant in how to market my business and just make it a year over year learning goal. And you know, it's like planting a garden. Right. Year one, what is it? It takes three years for a garden to take off. So you'll get some solutions in year one, but by year three, you know, you're going to be in full bloom. Master marketer harvest and business harvesting tomatoes in three.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Year three. Yeah.

[D]

Is that it?

[C]

I think so, man. That's where I got to try. It's like this whole consult fee. You don't try. You never know. Right. So I look at business as.

[D]

I'm just saying stick with experience.

[C]

Oh yeah. I have no choice. I have no choice but to stick with it, man. I got a more even solve. Yeah.

[D]

Keep leaning in.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

And it's going to do you because it's also will help you with recruiting. Right. Recruiting is kind of like marketing. So that general skill is going to help you.

[C]

Yep.

[D]

Every. It's gonna help everything.

[B]

And we're doing, we're doing the same thing, Jeffrey. It's, you know, we've never, I never had a really outward facing sales position. You know, even from the time that I worked with you, it just never. We were always inbounding our, inbounding our leads and taking, you know, with commercial maintenance, we have enough brand recognition in Gainesville that we get calls from property managers and we just field those maintenance leads as they come in. And that was just always our natural workflow. And to Kind of get past our plateau point that we've been at the past couple of years. We've improved tons of things and processes of management and how our business operates. But then at the end of the day we're still not really growing to the point that we need to be to be profitable. So now we're, I've also hired a business development manager and we're doing more boots on the ground stuff. And it's really, I think it's just doing it all when it comes to the word of marketing, it's doing it all at the same time. I mean we're doing, you know, we're working with Intrigue Media. So far the results have been very good with them. And then getting out there and meeting people, doing the in person networking, you know, Jordan is very anti social media. We've embraced it. So we're just trying to hit it, hit it from all, all angles. So we've recently. Jeffrey and one topic I wanted to wrap up on. So it's very hot news in little gold Gainesville, Florida, but with the topic of mergers and acquisitions in the industry, you know, we've Gainesville's in this little bubble in Florida. You know, we're an hour and a half from each, each coast. We're an hour and two hours from Orlando, two hours from Tampa, two hours from Jacksonville. So we're on this little isolated island with the University of Florida and a couple of hospitals. And so we've got a fair amount of national and regional companies that come up from Ocala and you know, try to pilfer town and they have a lot of windshield time. So they're not very successful. But okay, no, I can't, I shouldn't use names yet. They haven't, I don't think they've made their press release. But a very prominent company from Atlanta that is now in the mergers and acquisitions game has now acquired one of the two largest companies in our market. So as of last Friday, so we're fixing to have a regional company now kind of come into town, I guess and have a flagship, a flagship brand compared to other national and regional companies. So for us, competition wise, and I guess my question would be as we see more roll ups and more competition, you know, operators that, and companies that aren't interested in that just want to compete in the marketplace, you know, do you have any, I guess, do you see any trends on the topic as a whole? Would you have any suggestions of how, you know, we can market ourselves better against the companies that are, you know, rolling up because it seems like this as the roll ups occur then they're just pumping more. You know, their marketing efforts have stronger dollars and well, maybe not stronger dollars are probably stronger dollars, but stronger dollars and more coordinated efforts and anyway, myself and a few other contractors in town were just talking about the subject and anyway, I wanted to get your thoughts.

[D]

I don't know who the name is, but is it Russell Landscape?

[B]

No.

[D]

What?

[B]

No, Russell's in. So Russell's come down to Jacksonville.

[C]

Do you want to put it in the chat?

[D]

It's all good. I was just trying to guess. So.

[B]

Or we could say the owner's name's Jim.

[D]

Oh, I know Jim.

[B]

Okay, so there you go. But no, Ben, I've got a lot of, I mean I've kind of followed that specific business, you know, since I was in college. They were, we went to ALKA Student career days and you know, they were one of the sponsors and yeah, we're big there and yeah, you know, so it seems like their business. I've always kind of admired and listened to them.

[D]

I did a podcast with Jim a few years ago. So yeah, if you scroll for the name Jim on my podcast, you'll, you'll.

[B]

And by the time this comes out they might already have their press release press release out. But it, it's just very interesting now that it's hitting, hitting close to home and with this specific business anyway they have a lot of potential to turn it around because it's known to not be the best.

[D]

That's in commercial. Yes, you're in. Do you do any residential or are you all commercial?

[B]

So we do our maintenance is a lot of our design build is, is residential. We're doing a little bit of build the bid build construction. But probably 70% of our maintenance book of work is commercial.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

So I think the only problem that I foresee is is if they lowball to buy business but even that they have to raise the price back at some point. But I think that's the only problem from a client perspective that I miss. Obviously it can have some big advantages. But I'll tell you, when somebody buys a company, the only way they make money from that company is if that company also grows organically. So that company has to grow and keep growing. And I think what can happen is the buying company is too numbers driven, too accountable to the investor and not enough to the employees and clients, then they're going to make a misstep. So I do think some clients and some employees initially may say, oh, I don't Want to even be part of this. So there could be some recruiting opportunities you have right away.

[B]

And that's, that's what we're, we had a, anyway, we had a brief conference call yesterday with. Anyway, we've got some new salespeople.

[C]

So you're saying the culture could tank.

[B]

Well, it's, it's, it's, it's gonna be, it's gonna be interesting in the dynamic because the culture of the business that's being acquired is reputationally known for being not good at all. So. And being very low priced in our marketplace.

[D]

Right. So it could get better is what could happen.

[B]

So it's, it can only, from what I hear. I mean, it can only go up. And I spoke to someone at this. Anyway, the, I spoke with someone at the company that's buying our local company. And you know, I told him just flat out, I said, man, I see you guys have lots of opportunity to make changes. And I said, I look forward to the quality competition. I said, and hopefully you'll raise, you know, you'll raise your prices to where you need to be because the competition is known for being like the biggest. Well, they are, they're 10 to, I'm guessing 10 to 12 million dollar company in our market and you know, still holding on to $40aman hour for commercial maintenance or $38aman hour. So, you know, they're kind of keeping our, keeping our maintenance prices beat down a little bit in the market. So we're looking, looking forward to that as being a positive.

[C]

No. Really?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

All right.

[B]

Jordan just guessed the, Jordan just guessed the, the company that's being purchased. But it's. So, I don't know, it's a weird dynamic of I'm trying to predict in my mind how things are going to go and I think with any transition and I think that there probably this would be an acquisition where they would, you know, kind of change the brand, I'm guessing, and bring it.

[D]

I think you have some short and medium term opportunities. Yeah, you know, short term, some people just won't like the change. So you have an opportunity. Medium term, they, I mean, I was gonna say they could piss off some clients, but it sounds like they're, you know, if they've gotten to that size at that price, they probably have a client niche that's probably different from yours. But still there's gonna be some opportunity so you gotta look out for it. And then I think that you can use it as a rallying cry in your own company to, you know, we've got to up our game and so you got to take that pressure and use jiu jitsu to get your team on board to. Let's step it up, boys.

[B]

Yeah, no, I think, I think longer. I think long term it'll be a good thing because I'm friends with a few other decent sized contractors in town and we've all had the debate. The guy's been trying to sell his business for years and years and years and haven't hasn't found anybody successfully until now. So. Yeah, but as a trend, as a trend across the board. You mentioned Russell. I mean Russell's. I think they're here in Tampa. They're. I know they're in. I know I see him at Jacksonville now when we go over there and work. I don't know.

[C]

Russell.

[D]

Okay.

[B]

There is Russell based out of Atlanta. Jeffrey?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[D]

Yep. I don't know.

[C]

Well we're, we're right at about an hour here. Jeffrey, if you can. I'd like you to take a couple minutes if you'd like to plug yourself your, your business, your website touch on the summer growth summit coming up August 18th through the 20th and tell our listeners how they could seek your services and how you may be able to potentially help them in their walk of entrepreneurship.

[D]

Well, I really appreciate that, Jordan. The website is jeffreyscott Biz B I Z and as I like to joke that's the northerners spelling of Jeffrey. J E F F R E Y down down south. They spell it all different kinds of ways.

[C]

It's just Jeff in Florida.

[D]

Exactly Jay. We help companies to fix scale or exit their companies. So we help owners fix. If you feel like you're overworked and underpaid which is many people scale. If you feel like you've hit some kind of glass ceiling which is happens to everybody at some point and then exit whether you want to actually sell or just retire in place. And so we do that through our peer groups. We do that through our coaching. Can you hear the dogs barking in the background or no?

[C]

You just as you probably heard my dogs earlier during this show. Yeah.

[D]

So we run peer groups. Jason knows all about them. We do one on one coaching. We're here to help. We have the summer growth summit so you can come learn from all your peers in a couple day intensive. We're going to put a link in the show notes so whoever first come, first serve, whoever wants to see sign up half price on top of the early bird you get that opportunity and

[C]

that is in Detroit.

[D]

Detroit, Michigan. Detroit's a great city. It used to have such a terrible rep, and it has. Totally. It's just like, Jason, your new office, once you get it built. Yeah. It's. It's no longer this old thing. Detroit's a fun city. It's got a lot going on for it.

[B]

Yeah. Awesome.

[D]

And then your podcast is the ultimate landscape CEO.

[B]

Well, that's on Spotify, Apple, and all the podcast.

[D]

All those.

[B]

Yep.

[D]

We're gonna get you on there. So let's.

[B]

Good deal.

[D]

Set that. Let's put that in the book.

[B]

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. We can pick up maybe pick a day next week, see if something lines up. I like it. Yeah. Awesome.

[C]

Jeffrey. Thank you, sir. I appreciate you spending your Friday morning with us.

[D]

Thank you very much.

[A]

As you continue your journey toward entrepreneurial success, let Jason and Jordan be your trusted companions on this uphill climb. Don't miss out on future episodes of the Green side Up podcast. Make sure to hit that follow button to stay updated. For more ways to connect with the guys, check out the podcast description. Thank you for tuning in. And remember, keep working, working hard so you can play even harder. And keep the green side up.