Ep 127. From Pitchford Design to Wilcox Nursery: Zack's Leap from Operator to Owner

Summary

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Green Side Up, Ep 127: "From Pitchford Design to Wilcox Nursery: Zack's Leap from Operator to Owner"

Date: June 4, 2026
Hosts: Jason Lee & Jordan Upcavage
Guest: Zach Pitchford (Owner, Wilcox Nursery)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the entrepreneurial journey of Zach Pitchford, from his early hands-on landscaping days to taking the bold leap into ownership of the historic Wilcox Nursery in Largo, Florida. The conversation is a candid, insightful look at the messy realities of running a green industry business—covering risks, setbacks, leadership, marketing, and growth pains. If you’re thinking about scaling your landscape business, juggling operator-to-owner transitions, or navigating the unpredictable terrain of retail and service, this one’s for you.

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Zach’s Unconventional Career Path: From Shovels to Ownership

Early Roots and Education

• Zach’s passion for horticulture began in high school, working for Clearwater Plant Natives:

  "I could see a plant, remember it... I just loved it. I have no idea why." (03:12 — Zach)

• Studied Environmental Horticulture at University of Florida after realizing agricultural engineering wasn’t for him:

  "Pre calc was kind of the red flag. Like, I don't think I should try to get through the calculus after this." (04:36 — Zach)

College Days & Lessons Learned

• Zach and Jordan reminisce about their college landscaping adventures, both learning tough lessons in the field:

  "We dug holes hard and then maybe we drank some beers and had some common interests. And now we're old and married and we're dads and we are still paying our mortgage in the green industry." (00:59 — Jordan)

• The importance of mentorship and quality work, influenced by Jordan and others:

  "If we want to do something good, we don't cut corners. We do it the right way. Even if the right way isn't done by everybody, we do it the right way." (08:09 — Zach)

Early Professional Experience

• Brief, eye-opening internship at ValleyCrest, learning what not to do:

  "The branch manager...would come out...hungover, like, 'Alright, who's the first person to piss me off today?'" (10:58 — Zach)

• Rejected a lowball offer post-internship and went out on his own:

  "I can do...up from 12 to 12.50. I was like, oh, wow. Next day he got, yeah, no, here's the notice." (13:49 — Zach)

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Pitchford Design & Global Detours

First Runs with Pitchford Design

• Starts Pitchford Design & Landscape but quits twice for major life moves and self-discovery.
• First quit: Moved to St. Kitts with then-wife, living the "beach life" running paddle board/coconut water/fishing businesses with "Trinity Mike":

  "I'm the beach guy. Running paddle boards, doing tours for the cruise ships...climbing coconut trees and cutting down coconuts." (16:15 — Zach)

Second Quit & More Travel

• Returns to US, partners with his brother, restarts the business, then moves to Texas for new family opportunities.
• Works at Stephen F. Austin University’s azalea/native garden, continuing to build his plant knowledge.

Pitchford Design Reborn (Again) & Back to Florida

• Post-divorce, moves back to Florida, briefly does construction, then restarts Pitchford Design with renewed focus:

  "I was like, screw it, I'm starting Pitchford again. I'm gonna go just balls to the wall. Like, this is it." (21:01 — Zach)

• Self-investment: bought his own mini Bobcat and dump trailer to maximize solo efficiency.

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Wilcox Nursery: From Sub to Owner

Contracting with Wilcox Nursery

• Worked as a 1099 subcontractor, under Wilcox’s brand, designing/installing for their leads:

  "I was a subcontracted 1099 designer installer under Wilcox. That’s just how I represented myself for those customers, which we still carry the same setup today." (22:02 — Zach)

• Benefited from not having to do any advertising, focused only on execution and sales.

Path to Ownership

• The Wilcox Nursery, est. 1947, needed a new owner. The risk was significant due to expensive land, requiring creative financing.
• Multiple rejections from accountants until Zach found an entrepreneurial CPA (Mark) who helped him see the opportunity with a detailed pro forma:

  "Get the right person, and they just lead you...with their expertise, they have your best interest in mind." (29:10 — Zach)

• Final deal through First National Bank of Pasco with a combination of bank and owner financing.
• Immediate challenge: firing a few misaligned team members right after closing deal; had to create management structure from scratch.

First Steps as Owner

• Transition from managing 3-4 people to 15 staff and 10 subcontractors overnight was shocking:

  "Going from seeing tens of thousands...to hundreds of thousands...those extra zeros are like, the heck? This is scary." (33:19 — Zach)

• Implemented company hierarchy, promoted internally to create leadership team.

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Leadership, Growth & Lessons Learned

Leadership as Key to Sustainable Growth

• Zach stresses building a business to run without you—“build it to sell it”—with a strong leadership pipeline:

  "The biggest thing I've learned...poor leadership is a poor business. You can see if we start slacking off in leadership...you see it real quick." (35:48 — Zach)

• Emphasizes promoting from within where possible but acknowledges sometimes external hires will be inevitable for expertise (e.g., hardscapes, irrigation).
• Currently, a general manager runs day-to-day with Zach staying involved, especially during expansion into garden maintenance and other service lines.

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Sales & Marketing: The Modern Nursery's Challenge

Blended Approach

• Outsourced agency manages Google Ads, website, and e-commerce; in-house marketing employee (Jared) focuses on email campaigns, video content:

  "I've got an outside group that does our Google Ads...then I've got an in house marketing guy, Jared...He does all of our newsletter, our emails, this week's best, [and] films me..." (42:08 — Zach)

Successful Tactics & Investments

• Significant ad spend (~$10,000/month), with the largest allocation toward landscape services for best ROI (44:54).
• Struggle to get organic SEO traction for services side; taking cues from Jason’s site to build out "service area" landing pages for local search.
• E-commerce investments ongoing, but not yet at the desired level.
• Email newsletters and timely content (e.g., irrigation tips during drought) resonate with clients and build authority:

  "I am now on one of your lists as a client and I get emails from Wilcox Nursery that are not time sensitive but time relevant to the season..." (39:26 — Jordan)

Social Media

• Meta/Facebook store and ads effective for retail but less so for high-value service leads.
• Experimenting, but expecting to refine spending for better ROI.

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Practical Takeaways & Technical Tips

Watering/Irrigation Deep Dive

• Zach’s “Rule of Threes” for deep irrigation during drought:
  1. Short initial watering (primes soil)
  2. Wait an hour, repeat
  3. Wait, then longer, deeper soak (bulk of watering time)
• Mimics nursery practice; less runoff, better root penetration, helps lawns survive tough restrictions.

  "I don't water my grass more than once a week. Never have. Whether we're in a drought or not...The portion looks the best is under the shade of an oak out front..." (53:09 — Zach)

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The (Messy) State of the Green Industry and Wilcox’s Position

Post-COVID Boom and Reality Check

• COVID years saw massive demand—“You could sell anything.” (30:53 — Zach)
• 2023–2024: Services revenue jumped from $1.4–$1.5M to $2M, but current year sales are softening.
• Higher ticket design/install sales have slowed, but gardening/maintenance recurring revenue remains stable:

  "We've refined our marketing. We've created a little bit of a minimum that we try to push towards now, which is healthy." (57:11 — Zach)

• Retail traffic steady or slightly up; more DIY clients buying plants but not always springing for full-service installs.

Adaptation Strategies

• Minimums for design/install to filter out tiny, unprofitable jobs.
• Continued investment in operational tracking (close ratios, lead sources), watching trends (drought impacts, proposal lag).
• Maintenance and aftercare services act as business stabilizer and gateway for enhancements/upgrades.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On career instability:

  "I started pitchford design and landscape...I quit it twice." (14:50 — Zach)

• On the risk of buying Wilcox:

  "Last thing I need to be doing is buying this place. Like, I don't even know the first step." (26:33 — Zach) "The stars kind of aligned, actually..." (26:34 — Zach)

• On leadership:

  "Poor leadership is a poor business. And...if we start slacking off in leadership...you see it real quick." (35:48 — Zach)

• On marketing strategy:

  "Currently they're working to optimize our services side...It's finally just like that time. Like, all right, we're spending all this money on the online store. Why not just keep it going?" (44:04 — Zach)

• Jason’s growth advice:

  "Have you heard of the Gator 100 award?...You should definitely do it." (61:31 — Jason)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Zach’s early experiences & college days: 03:12–08:49
• Pitchford Design beginnings & St. Kitts story: 14:47–18:07
• Return to FL, solo business growth: 21:01–23:31
• Path to Wilcox ownership: 26:09–33:19
• Building a leadership structure: 34:01–35:48
• Marketing, e-commerce, and ad spend: 42:08–47:21
• Deep watering strategies: 48:22–53:42
• Financial growth, challenges, and trends: 56:04–60:10

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Connect with Wilcox Nursery & Zach Pitchford

• Website & E-Commerce: WilcoxNursery.com
• Newsletter Sign-Up: About Us page on website
• Social:
  • YouTube: Wilcox Nursery
  • Instagram: @wilcoxnursery
  • Facebook: Wilcox Nursery

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Final Thoughts

This episode is packed with real-world business wisdom, personal struggle, hard-won leadership lessons, and actionable insights on how to grow—and survive—as a modern green industry entrepreneur. For every operator dreaming about ownership, Zach’s journey proves it takes grit, humility, and above all, a willingness to ask for help and build a strong team.

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Transcript

[Jason Lee]

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 hosts, Jason Lee and Jordan Upkevage.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Zach Pitchford. Welcome to Greenside up,

[Zach Pitchford]

guys. Thanks for having me. Really excited.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

How are you doing, Zach?

[Zach Pitchford]

Listen to the podcast too, so I'm ready.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Nice.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So Zach, I don't know how long I've unknown you, but I think we went to college together and I'm pretty sure we sweat behind the end of a shovel when I was attempting to run a very half assed landscape company as a student, really having no idea what I was doing. And I think you helped me out on a couple of assignments and we dug holes hard and then maybe we drank some beers and had some common interests. And now we're old and married and we're dads and we are still paying our mortgage in the green industry.

[Zach Pitchford]

Right? That about sums it up.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah.

[Zach Pitchford]

Sweating a lot.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So Zach Pitchford is a environmental horticulture graduate from University of Florida. And Zach, you live one county west of me in Pinellas county, and you've had a interesting journey that I am aware of. We were in Gainesville, then we both moved Back to Tampa, St. Pete. You were self employed doing Pitchford landscape design and you would do kind of some Florida nativey Florida friendly landscape installation type stuff and then time travel and you took some big risks and you acquired property, you own a retail nursery and you've kind of grown rapidly from owner operator to businessman. So I thank you so much for sitting down with us here to do an episode, but I'd like to hear a little bit about the story of Zach Pitchford. I want to hear a little bit about Gainesville. I want to hear about take it

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

back to the college days, take it

[Jordan Upkavage]

back there and then walk me through the advancement to the pedigree that you have now. And then I have more follow ups that go, but I want to, I want to hear about Joe Dirt.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah, man. Yeah. Awesome. I mean, you kind of summed it up. There's a little part that you left out that I'll bring back up here kind of between it all later on. But yeah, Started actually. Started in high school. Family friends of ours, longtime family friends of my grandfather's, actually. Good old Clearwater plant natives here in Clearwater. Started a big growing operation, which there's. I don't think there's a single growing operation left in this county. Maybe some minor ones, but they. This big. It started with oranges, and they cut all the orange trees down. They went into production of plants. So I got a job there. They had a little retail section, and that's. I don't know what it was, but, like, something just clicked. I could see a plant, remember it, remember the name, see it all all over the place. Like, I just loved it. I have no idea why. So fast forward got to University of Florida. Haven't had this brief background working in a retail nursery. Thought I was going to be like, an agricultural engineer. I tried that for a year, like, growing it through pre algebra.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Well, like, what do you mean, an ag engineer? Are you engineering corn and tomatoes?

[Zach Pitchford]

Honestly, I don't think I really knew plants. I like the plants. Engineering sounds like a good.

[Jordan Upkavage]

That sounds smart.

[Zach Pitchford]

And oh, my gosh, like, struggling through the. Or. No, pre calc, not pre algebra. Pre calc was kind of the. The red flag. Like, I don't think I should try to get through the calculus after this. Yes.

[Jordan Upkavage]

This function doesn't.

[Zach Pitchford]

It just didn't click.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yes.

[Zach Pitchford]

Didn't make sense. So I looked at landscape architecture, and then I just got to start over. Like, school is the last thing I wanted to be stuck in for a long time. Like, no, I can't. I can't just, like, start this over. So I landed on environmental world, which was like, oh, cool. Like, designing. I did a lot of that when I was in the retail nursery as a high schooler, just telling people what they needed in the yards and learned about the plants. And then there I'm going through, like, plant id, just acing it. Like, people were over my back.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Cheating off of you. Yes.

[Zach Pitchford]

I'm like my buddy Blake. Blake, just stand behind me. I know you didn't study. I know you're a tree guy. You don't care about any of these plants around here. You just want to grow trees when you're older and just. Just look over my shoulder, man. And so go going through that, because that's just something that clicks with me. Make it through there. And I worked. I don't think. I don't know if we were actually in school, but I had Aaron, Aaron Alvarez, which I know works. Favorite teacher. Awesome. Taking our landscape management course.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

So what Year did you start?

[Zach Pitchford]

And 2008 or 2009. Somewhere in there. I graduated in 2012. That's how I usually look at it. Yeah, but somebody in like the horticulture club or something said, hey, you gotta. You kind of know what this stuff is. You work hard. You know, we're doing like the work days for the club and stuff. He's like, you should call this guy Jordan. He usually looks for somebody in the summer to help run, you know, work on his landscape maintenance crew. I was like, oh, cool. Yeah, that'd be awesome. So that's how I got. I don't remember who the guy's name was, but I guess he had worked for you and.

[Jordan Upkavage]

No idea.

[Zach Pitchford]

That was like kind of my introduction to, like, actual landscaping. I'd never actually done the, you know, the make money part of it. Like, we got to get out here and bust our tails and make some money doing this for Jordan here. And the guy we worked with, Sean, he's a character with him all day.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Yeah, Sean's a good dude.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Blonde hair. Sean.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Guy worked hard. But, you know, I really instilled. I gotta say, Jordan, I look back, I probably look back on my time with you every day, like there's something that clicks. I'm like, how would Jordan have done in this situation? Or how would Jordan have talked to somebody? Because I got to say, you are so clear spoken. You made a lot of things pretty simple. And you took the time just to like, say, this is what we're doing. This is why we're going to do this. I just remember sitting in somebody's yard trimming knockout roses three nodes down. And me, you and Sean just sat there trimming. Dude, it had to be 50 knockout roses in front of this house for like an hour. Just three nodes down. Three nodes down. Deadheading. All these knockouts.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Heck, yeah.

[Zach Pitchford]

But stuff like that, that just kind of stuck with me. And I was like, you know, I love this. I remember you asked me one time, like, are you sure you want to do this? I was like, I think so. Like, it's pretty fun. Sweating's fun. Wearing jeans every day is kind of fun. I don't do that anymore. But this is good. So brought that back. I bring that experience back, actually, from when I started Aaron's class. I remember her saying something about irrigation. I did busting all the irrigation on those job sites we did on like five o' clock bus. Irrigation.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Damn it. Damn it. Yes.

[Zach Pitchford]

You kidding me? They're teaching us how to do irrigation work. One time or talk about just, like, the gluing and everything. She's like, so some people will, you know, have you trim off the burrs, but that's. That's not really. After you make the cut, you have to off the little shavings. That's, you know, industry doesn't do. I was like, oh, Jordan does. He makes us do that. And she's like, well, yeah, Jordan would just. Just to show the quality, you know, that you were after. Like, we're not cutting corners. We're doing it the right way, whether it takes an extra five seconds to get it right. So I kind of, like, instilled that in me. It's like, you know, if we want to do something good, we don't cut corners. We do it. We do it the right way. Even if the right way isn't done by everybody, we do it the right way.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Well, Zach, I didn't invent any of this stuff. I learned how to landscape from working with Galen. Right. So Galen, like, taught. Taught me, like, how to mow the right way, you know, how to rake the right way. Galen introduced me to what a pony shovel was, you know.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Did you know Galen, Zach? He probably already left before name, because I've.

[Zach Pitchford]

I've heard you guys talk about him. Yeah. But I don't.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So Papa G was my mentor, and I was just. It was the relationship of, I will never be outworked because I'm a sicko and I'm a little screwed in the head and I enjoy the competition of I will work harder than the next guy. And it's just maybe a sickness.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

But it's. It's fun when you share that with somebody, you know.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So doing that. And I remember watching, like, Jason's cruise because you guys lived together in that. That house out. I was always jealous of. What's that?

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

I said out off Mill Hopper Road, man.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah, Snow Hopper Road. That's right. Beautiful drive out there. I love that. And I remember you would, like, show up. You'd be hanging out. I'm like, man, I want to be that guy. One day, Jason's showing up, just kind of checking in, and I think we borrow, like, one of your guys every once in a while. We were behind or something, and. And that guy be like, yeah, now Jason doesn't work. You know, he doesn't work. I'm like, he works.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I'm pretty sure he does just a little.

[Zach Pitchford]

Little different than what you're doing, but, you know, it's just got that mentality out there, but just like, really set the foundation for. For where I went with that. So graduated, got my internship just like everybody else at Valleycrest. Yep. What office were you at that was eye opening? What's that?

[Jordan Upkavage]

What office were you at with Valleycrest

[Zach Pitchford]

in up by you? I don't think it's there anymore.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Hillsborough County.

[Zach Pitchford]

Oh, my gosh. What's that?

[Jordan Upkavage]

What's that in Hillsborough County?

[Zach Pitchford]

It was in Pasco, technically.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Oh, okay.

[Zach Pitchford]

Trinity.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Trinity.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think it's there anymore. The branch manager, there was nobody like them. He'd come out, like, for the morning meetings and hungover like, all right, who's the first person to piss me off today?

[Jordan Upkavage]

That's great. That's a great rah rah Monday.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, like, what is this guy doing? So I learned a lot about what not to do there.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You're right, man.

[Zach Pitchford]

That was eye opening. Having to weed eat all day.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah.

[Zach Pitchford]

Working with you, Jordan, like, weeding is a part of the day, you know, on each. At each house.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Right.

[Zach Pitchford]

Then like, wow, I'm just weeding these micro homes all day long. I was like, I don't like this.

[Jordan Upkavage]

For a guy that's an asshole that says, who's going to be the first one to piss me off today? Like, this is really motivating and fulfilling of my life plan. 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 to your PHC toolbox?

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Mitigro is an innovative product that focuses on root and soil health. 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.

[Zach Pitchford]

The concept is simple.

[Jordan Upkavage]

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. So soil drenches and spray applications for when Jason installs trees and installs new sod.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Give Mitigro a shop for yourself. Their product is easy to apply and no special licenses are needed. Visit mitogrowpro.com to learn more. That's M I T O G R-O-W

[Zach Pitchford]

P R O.com I kind of like weaseled my way into. They had an opening for the enhancements vendor during my. My internship. And you're supposed to let them like go through like two weeks and here, two weeks here, two weeks here. So you're like rotating through about like just. I'll do that. Like just call that the rest of my internship and I'll get in here and I'll run this crew and we'll do plant all the flowers and all that. I freaking loved it. It was awesome. And finished up that. I think Aaron was the. The contact there. Went to Costa. No, Puerto Rico with Aaron. Okay. Horticulture club from selling so many poinsettias.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, yeah, I think that. Did you go. You didn't go to Costa Rica or Pacific Northwest?

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

No.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, I think we were just apart. I think I exited right when you were coming in.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah, that's. That sounds about right. Yeah. I started pitch for design and landscape.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So it was, hey, Valley Crest. Screw you guys, I'm out.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

How long were you there?

[Zach Pitchford]

I was just my three month internship. They offered me a job after at, you know, most of my friends who got. I'm doing like the enhancement stuff. And just to tell you a little more about this branch manager I'm seeing my other friends like get offered their jobs at 16, 17 an hour at Valleycrest after their internships. This guy offers, okay, I can do. We'll go up from 12 to 1250. I was like, oh, wow. Next day he got, yeah, no, here's the notice. I'm going to be out after my internship. Like, I don't even want you to come back with me with another offer. Like, I'm not interested.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You have a college degree and you're going to get 1250 an hour.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Come on. And you have a driver's license. Yeah, yeah.

[Zach Pitchford]

And I saved you guys from having to hire somebody else. Yeah. To run this enhancements area. It's like, come on, dude. So that's when Pitchford Designer Landscape was born. Yeah. And I did that. I quit it twice.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You quit Pitchford Design and Landscape? Two times.

[Zach Pitchford]

I quit it twice.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay.

[Zach Pitchford]

The first time. Did I quit it twice because you

[Jordan Upkavage]

had business cards and then you were working. You get leads from Wilcox Nursery. That's all I know.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah. Yeah. So I got back in. So that was one of the nurses I worked at in high school after the family friends. I did that just like summers in college or whenever. Started doing some subcontract design and install for them as well as some of my own stuff. And yeah, I quit that twice. The first time was to. I moved to St. Kitts.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. Yes. You went to the islands.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Where did you go?

[Zach Pitchford]

And I climbed Coke I think Kitts.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Okay.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah. It's like, it's like halfway down the chain of islands on the way.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Is it British or US Virgin Islands?

[Zach Pitchford]

It used to be till the 80s. So now it's just its standalone country.

[Jordan Upkavage]

It's its own deal.

[Zach Pitchford]

Seceded from all and okay, own deal, which is really, really cool. So I followed my first wife there actually, and she was in veterinary school there. So I got to go like as a. They call this VIPs in the school. Pretty cool. But you got like. I got to get the visa to stay there for a year and.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So what did you do in St. Kitts? Did you like, work at a bar? Did you work on a boat? Did you just hang out drinking Mai

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

tais, picking up coconuts, German coconuts.

[Zach Pitchford]

There. There was a little bit of all that. So I got in with this guy, they called him Trinity Mike. He was from Trinidad, had retired into St. Kitts. He had built all the cruise ports throughout for cruise ships.

[Jordan Upkavage]

He built the ports for these big ass ships.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yes. Yeah. So he's a construction guy and he's retired in St. Kitts. Living on top of this mountain, or hill, I guess you'd call it, in

[Jordan Upkavage]

a big ass house.

[Zach Pitchford]

Nice house. And he's got a fishing business, a coconut water business, and a paddle board business. Okay. And these are all small. Like, this is just retirement stuff. He's not. Like, these things aren't blown up. Him and his business partner.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, yeah.

[Zach Pitchford]

He's like having fun. He's making his beer money. Right. And. Or as he does, rum and coconut water. Rum and coconut water money. And so I'm this beach. I'm the beach guy. Like, I'm the guy on the beach where you're like, man, when you're on vacation, like, that looks like the life. Like that was me. I'm running paddle boards, doing tours for the cruise ships. Like we're going up and down the coast. We don't have that going on. I'm climbing coconut trees and cutting down coconuts. We're using spikes, dude.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Oh, yeah. It doesn't damage them if you're. If you're near the equator. Yeah, it doesn't damage it. It's a fact.

[Zach Pitchford]

It probably doesn't. So we're going up there. I got a rope, I'm tying around the log.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yes.

[Zach Pitchford]

And I misplay it. Every once in a while, the thing just comes crashing. Yeah. Bustle of coconuts. Everybody's pissed. Can't use any of them. But we're lowering that down. Like I'm Doing that. And then he has a boat. We do charters every once in a while. We're just catching Wahoo. Marlowe twice, two or three times a week.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I need an ice pack, man. If this erection lasts longer than four hours, I gotta seek medical attention.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

So you might get to love. You might get to love palm trees, Jordan. If they were in a symbiotic relationship with turtle fishing and you were in.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I'm gonna have a rum and coconut water later today.

[Zach Pitchford]

Dude. They're good. It's good stuff. Studied that for a year. I learned a lot. This guy is a good business guy. The way he talks to people, the way he interacted. I learned a lot. So I came back and I started pitch for design again.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Is this like after you find out she was a trifling hoe or Before? Before. Okay. So you moved back before it ended?

[Zach Pitchford]

Okay. Yep. Moved back. Partnered with my brother, who had just kind of taken a different course from fishing on a headboat. Partner with him. We started up a maintenance part this time. So he kind of ran. Ran the maintenance. I ran the design and construction side. The same thing. Doing work with Wilcox, all that. And my ex wife graduates veterinary school, gets a job out in Texas. Shut down. Pitchford. Moving to Texas. Lived in East Texas, which is a bunch of towns connected by farm roads. All right. And I don't think there's a single town with more than 30,000 people that.

[Jordan Upkavage]

There's good pig hunting out there, though.

[Zach Pitchford]

I'm sure there is. I did do a lot. I met a guy duck hunting. Okay. Deer hunting on his property in a lake on the property is awesome. And I met him at the bar, and he's just, like, retired. Just. He's a oil rigor guy, so he, like, had done that his whole life and made a bunch of money and just doing this. So I did that. I worked at Stephen of Austin University. I ended up getting a job there. While I was out there, they've got the largest azalea gardens in, I think, the country.

[Jordan Upkavage]

No joke. At a college. At a college, Right? University of college. At a college. Yeah.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah. And so I did that working there. They had also a native garden, so I was able to help them with that. That was kind of a little background I was really interested in. Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Because you knew Florida natives and these are like east. East Texas natives. It's similar. Yeah.

[Zach Pitchford]

It really wasn't.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Vitex. A lot of crossover Vitex up the wazoo.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah, yeah, Vitex. And blazing or blanket flower. Yes.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Galardio pulchella.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yes.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yes.

[Zach Pitchford]

Come to find out it's not actually native in Florida or not, but it looks pretty. It's everywhere now. Yeah, they look good. And did that for a year. Then that's when, you know, we separated and I moved back here, started pitchford again, back into it.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Back to Penelope. Yeah.

[Zach Pitchford]

Working for my brother or my buddy's dad as a construction worker, I was like, talk about the slowest days. Like, I lived a month and a week just standing watching stuff happen to, like, just make a couple shovels at a time. Like, I'm a landscaper. Like, I need fast action. Like, go.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

So what time. What time period?

[Zach Pitchford]

I want my 10 hour day to fly. What.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

What time period is that? What year did you move back from Texas, do you think?

[Zach Pitchford]

20. 19. Okay, so right before COVID 19. Yes. Yeah. So I did that for a month. Then I was like, screw it, I'm starting pitchford again. I'm gonna go just balls to the wall. Like, this is it.

[Jordan Upkavage]

This is like 2020 now.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah. So it's like 20 in the middle of 2019. Okay. I was like, I know how to do this now. So I went, I bought my mini Bobcat, bought my dump trailer. I'm set. Got the grapple for the mini, got the forest, the bucket. Like, I could be a one man show like this and not exert a ton of force or a ton of energy and get some stuff done. And did the same thing just with Wilcox until I was presented the offer to buy it.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Now, at Wilcox, would you work there part time? Or they saw a client that wanted install and they would refer. Or they would refer and then get a cut of it. Or how did that work?

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah, so it was under their umbrella. So whenever I got one of their customers, I represented Wilcox.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yes.

[Zach Pitchford]

So I was a subcontracted 1099 designer installer under Wilcox. That's just how I represented myself for those customers, which we still carry the same. The same kind of setup today. Mm. Yeah. So that's. That's how it was. So they would send the lead to me. I'd usually get at the time it was like still on paper or something. Like I get a photo of the

[Jordan Upkavage]

lead of a sticky note. Yeah, yeah.

[Zach Pitchford]

All right. Call this person. And so I'd call them, set up the consultation, go out there, meet with them, go through the design and installation process with them. Wilcox, I do like an estimate under Wilcox through their platform. They'd order in the plants, they'd get the plants. Let me know when they're ready. I Set the date to get the installation done, and we get it done.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. So you were working for yourself under the brand of Wilcox?

[Zach Pitchford]

Yes. Yeah. Right. Okay. Which is really healthy. I didn't have to do any marketing.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yep.

[Zach Pitchford]

No advertising. Like, I'm just taking the leads. I charge what I want. I, you know, they, they take a portion, obviously. Yep. I mark it up appropriately, make sure it works for us all. And I get also a cut of the material I sell. So they're taking a portion of my labor, I'm taking a portion of the plant sales and kind of like as a sales commission in a way. And that's how I was operating before. And that's how I was operating. We still operate that same way today.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So that was 2019. 2020, like pandemicy and Zach. I went to Wilcock Nursery maybe less than a year ago. Six months ago, I got a Environmental Protection Commission violation on Lake Magdalene where my community boat ramp is because somebody called the EPC on me. Tattle, tattle, tattle. I was making the boat ramp great again, which is nothing wrong with it. But anyways, I had to plant some native plants that were wetland plants. So I needed a bald cypress and I wanted some, oh, hibiscus coccinea. And I wanted some rush and I wanted some other blue thing, name I can't remember. And I'm struggling to find wetland plants, native wetland plants. And so I said, wait a minute, Wilcox Nursery is a native plant place. Maybe they have it. So I call Wayne 800 Wilcox Nursery, and I talk to them over the phone and they're like, yeah, we got enough stuff here. You need however many. Sure, we can piece something together. So I drive over there and I'm hunting around the mat. And you got everything that we need. And it's nicely organized. You got your rows of stuff here and there. You have your cutie things closer to the building. Then you got some little tchotchkes inside the building. And I'm checking out, like buying this stuff. And I'm talking with this gentleman who might be in his 60s, Jonathan. Yeah. I go, hey, man, this is a nice looking nursery. Do you know my buddy Zach Pitchford? I think he works here or worked here or something like that. And he goes, zach, he owns the place. I was like, you're shitting me. Zach bought the whole nursery. Goes, yeah, it's my boss, he owns the place. And as I'm like swiping the credit card, here comes this dude with a half assed mullet and a floral shirt looking all Young and sexy. And I was like, zach Pitchford, he goes, jordan. And so I bumped into you in your own building, making a transaction, buying your plant material. And so it was. I didn't know about Zach Pitchford Design to. You bought Wilcox Nursery, which is a hell of a move, a hell of a lot of risk. So tell me about the opportunity that. That happened there.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

And, man, so I've been following you on Instagram, Wilcox Nursery. And, like, I saw a post. Yeah, I mean, the place has been around for a long time, right? 40s or something?

[Zach Pitchford]

40s? Yeah, yeah, 1947. And the fourth owner.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So how. How did you buy the place?

[Zach Pitchford]

You're there, all right.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Moonlight and landscape and under their umbrella. How did the stars align?

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah. So it took a couple years of, like, not really negotiation, but me just getting up the courage, really. The owner had. Bruce, he had presented the offer to me, actually, several times throughout even just working there in the past. I was like, dude, last thing I need to be doing is buying this place. Like, I don't even know the first step. So the stars kind of aligned, actually, through my wife's family. Her parents owned an air purification company. Big company. They ended up selling it for like 20 mil or something. It was a big deal. But their accountant was. His name's Mark. I had run through all these accounts, trying to run the numbers of this business by them. And it's like, because of the land it's on, it's a risk. It was an expensive piece of land. It's like, oh, man. How do you justify buying it at this price, having the business sustain what it's going to cost each month just to pay the mortgage? And so this accountant through my wife's family, Mark, he's entrepreneurial himself. These other accountants, I'd run to risk. Too risky. That's too risky. I wouldn't touch it. Like, oh, man. Okay, okay. So I get to this guy, and he's like, this looks good, I think. Let's talk about how you might be able to make the numbers work here. I was like, okay, yeah, let's talk about that. This guy taught me so much about numbers. And just looking at stuff between him and actually my wife's uncle, we put together this pro forma, which I never heard of.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I don't know what a proform is.

[Zach Pitchford]

Honestly, I can tell you what I think it is.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

I don't know what I would sum it up as. Like, it's a projected budget, just like we did Tony Bastille on our actual businesses. It'd be like, hey, we're going to do this business, but we got to predict what.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Predict what we're going to do.

[Zach Pitchford]

So we put together this pro forma. Yeah. And it shows, like, it can tell you the cash flow. You know, you put the. What the estimated mortgage might be in there. So you can, like. We're doing all this on Excel. Like, we can. You can plug and play and, like, figure some stuff out. You can figure out what you're going to need to make so any kind of changes might have to make. And he's like, all right, well, I'll set up some meetings with some banks, and we'll sit down. I'll be here with you. I'll talk to them about the financials. You talked about what you love to do, and we'll see which bank will go with us. I was like, okay.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And like, no shit.

[Zach Pitchford]

So we're doing this. But that just showed me the power of, like, your team, you know?

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yep.

[Zach Pitchford]

Like, you get the right person, and they just. They lead you with. They got their expertise, they got their lane. They have your best interest in mind. They just, like. He just took me along, and that's really what gave me the confidence and the know how to understand. I was like. Because I can do these things, you know, operationally, but I don't know what.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So what bank got you financing?

[Zach Pitchford]

First national bank of Pasco. Kurt Peters.

[Jordan Upkavage]

All right.

[Zach Pitchford]

He's not there anymore. He retired. Yeah. First national bank of Pasco. They have single branch at the time. I think they got a couple now, but up by you and Lutz, I believe. Okay. And, yeah, they just. They kind of went with it. We did an unconventional loan. I do have some owner financing, so it needed some owner financing at a lower interest rate. But, yeah, we did the deal with them. I had a lawyer to work up all the. That was a mess, dude. Just trying to put all this stuff into a asset purchase agreement.

[Jordan Upkavage]

How long have you. Because you had to buy inventory, too. You bought the land, you bought the building, you bought the inventory.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And how long have you owned this place?

[Zach Pitchford]

So. I've owned it since 2022.

[Jordan Upkavage]

2022. Four years. Yeah.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

And you did all this right in the middle of insanity?

[Zach Pitchford]

Right.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

I mean.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

And so did Wilcox see an uptick during COVID I mean, with. I mean, we did in our business.

[Zach Pitchford]

Oh, for sure. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you. It didn't matter. You could sell anything.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Yeah.

[Zach Pitchford]

Like, numbers on paper didn't matter. Like, it was just like, am I going to get what I want. That was. That was what we had to deliver on it. It was easy. So hard.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Once you took the reins in 2022, did the employees stay on? Did some leave? Did you fire some? You hire new ones? How did that culture of workers go? Like, hey, guys, there's a new sheriff in town.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah. Yeah. So I had insider knowledge. You know, I've been a part of the place. So I. I knew the good and the bad were.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yep.

[Zach Pitchford]

Um, whereas if you didn't, you, you know, you would come in and have to figure that out. So there was a couple people that got cut immediately. Just bad for the culture. One, you know, I didn't want to cut, but we just. I had to meet a budget. I needed to bring somebody different in.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yep.

[Zach Pitchford]

To fill, like, a slightly different role. So that one, I did feel bad about that one because he was a great kid, but we just needed to go a different direction for my pro forma to work. Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

The ones that you cut, was it a personality thing? Was it an attitude thing? Was it theft to drugs?

[Zach Pitchford]

It was a personality. It's bad for the culture. Drama.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah. Drama's not good.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You're not changing that business. Yep, totally. I get it.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yep. Yep.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So.

[Zach Pitchford]

And that was, you know, that was a rough one. He was pretty upset. But it's.

[Jordan Upkavage]

It's terrible to do, like, the day leading up to it or the morning, an hour to hour before you're going to do it. It's awful. I hate it. But as soon as you're done, it's like, oh, my God. It's like you just. Just like you just took a huge dump. You've been holding. You're like, oh, my God, I feel so much better. It's over with.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it did feel anyway, except for the one kid. And so I guess that's. That was the deal. Then it was like the next day, after signing all that paper, I immediately fired. After signing the sign the papers, I immediately. I was like, I'm just gonna get this done. It's all fresh. Just gonna get it done. We're not gonna play around. And the next day it was like, what have I done?

[Jordan Upkavage]

Oh, my gosh.

[Zach Pitchford]

It was. Honestly, the first couple weeks were very scary, you know, going from leading a team of three, four people, max, during busy season to heaven. Fifteen employees and 10 subcontractors under my wing.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

I was like, yeah, you can. And you're gonna make payroll. You gotta make payroll. Starting day one. Harold doesn't stop.

[Zach Pitchford]

No. Nope. So it Was a lot. It was, you know, see. Going from seeing tens of thousands on a regular basis to hundreds of thousands on a regular basis. So it was just like, those extra zeros are like, the heck? This is scary. But I had a really good team behind me. I had been meeting with the owner's knowledge and whatever, he allowed us to do it. Meeting with a couple of the staff that I was going to promote into management, because it wasn't even a manager. It was kind of just like the owner was the owner and everybody else just kind of did stuff.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Right. There wasn't a hierarchy.

[Zach Pitchford]

No, no, nothing. So a lot of people doing really random stuff and a lot of dead time, for sure.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yep.

[Zach Pitchford]

Because of that. And so I worked with them to establish the hierarchy, establish title duties. Yep. Yep. And so one of them was the gm. One was gonna be the retail manager, and I was gonna run the landscaping side, the construction side. And we went into it. They had. You know, we had worked for weeks on building this and, like, making sure it was going to roll out. Right. It was a lot all at once. First meeting, like, all the staff, like, their eyes are like this wide. Like, he just fired people. And now we're all having this meeting, and what's going to happen? I remember looking at everybody like, all right, this is something. Having my, like, first leadership meeting of. Of any sort of, like, you know, a real leadership meeting. I had to do something real for once. So that was a lot. There's been a lot of growth since then.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Well, tell me what. What's something that you learned along the way? Like, how's the business doing now? I know we talked before recording that you have a meeting coming down the pipe later today, but, I mean, how's business as a whole? What have you seen from promoting people or inventing positions? You know, what wisdom have you learned over the past four years?

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah, so one of, like, kind of my. My visions going into this is like, I do. Would I. Would I try not to think about it too much? Because I'm trying to focus on this place. But, like, it'd be great to, like. I'd love to open up another native nursery somewhere or buy another nursery, make it a native nursery kind of thing.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And for production or retail?

[Zach Pitchford]

For retail. I think sticking in the retail space for now.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay.

[Zach Pitchford]

But I've had that vision. I knew to make that happen, I needed a good team, and I needed to not be the one running. Otherwise, I was never gonna be able to just be chaos all the time. And I'd never Be able to break away. So I was going with that vision of like the there's a sales book somewhere out there, entrepreneur book like build it to sell it from day one to make it sellable. It's more appealing and you get more if you're not there and the place runs. So that was kind of like the backbone of how we were going to build this. And so I think one of the things I've just. The biggest thing I've learned, wisdom wise is the leadership side, how important that is. Poor leadership is a poor business. And we can see if we start slacking off in leadership and we start things get too overwhelming or we're not paying attention to our team or our customers as much. You see it real quick. So myself, really, and I'm not a leader, dude. I wasn't the captain of the football team. I wasn't leading people in high school and call a little bit in college maybe, but I wasn't the one volunteering to be class president or anything like that. I'm a quiet guy in general. You put me in a group of 50 people, I'm not going to talk. I'm going to stand there and be like, you come up to me, I will talk. But it's been something that has been uncomfortable, but with that, a lot of growth. And so the wisdom there is like just don't underestimate the value of the leadership and the potential impacts that it has on the business.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So have you had to source outside leadership to bring in or have you promoted internally from your existing staff base?

[Zach Pitchford]

So far we've been promoting internally.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Okay.

[Zach Pitchford]

Which has been really nice. And that's one of the. That's something I'm trying to get with my managers to continue to find ways to grow leaders from. From the, you know, from the minute we hire somebody, like what's their pathway? How can they potentially become a leader one day for us if the need arises, whether we're growing or we need to make a change or somebody leaving and exiting, that's always the easiest way, I think, to promote from within. I still think, you know, maybe one day I do have growth offer or growth in mind and it might be that you need to hire somebody outside that's just got a little more of what I need. We want to expand into hardscapes and irrigation. Nobody on my staff has any experience with that. So that's, you know, potential where I have to bring in an operations manager or something that can get us into that.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

So does your general manager run day to day operations yeah.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yep. So he's running the day to day. I'm still quite a bit involved right now. Especially we added on garden maintenance. It'll be two years ago this August. That made. That had us to. Then we promoted somebody from within to a services manager.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

So with garden maintenance, you're doing like fine gardening hand detail work.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Nice.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah. Yep. So now he kind of. He oversees the whole landscaping side of the business. Really? With a field manager under him.

[Jordan Upkavage]

A lot of those leads. Leads stem from the retail space at the nursery.

[Zach Pitchford]

We get a good amount there, but we do a lot of marketing too.

[Jordan Upkavage]

So I want to. That. That intrigues me about marketing. I want to know how you're doing it. But what I do know is since I became a client of yours buying plants, I am now on one of your lists as a client and I get emails from Wilcox Nursery that are not time sensitive but time relevant to the season. For instance, when it was wintertime, there was a video of Zach Pitchford with some sort of a fungicide copper sulfate squirt bottle thing squirting the heart of a frickin Christmas poem or whatever it was about some preventative or fungal issues from frost. Well, that was cool. And then I get like the wild flower of the week or the plant of the month, whatever the hell it is. I was like, oh, this is cool. And I like plants. Obviously I studied it, so I didn't like angry unsubscribe. I was like, no, I want to know what the hell Zach's doing so I can steal his ideas for my own business and do it for me. Right. And plus, I want to see what's up.

[Zach Pitchford]

Up.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And then we're in a wicked drought. Good Lord, we're in a drought. And then here's Zach with some. You know how to keep your alive when you can only irrigate once a week. And you had a interesting strategy for irrigation. So I want you to tell us what your irrigation strategy is, but I Prior to that, I want you to tell me about marketing. I want you to tell me about how do you go out and get it that's not inbound from the nursery and then play on all the other crap I just spewed out. Do you want your office phone to ring more and increase service requests to your inbox? Want to push the gas pedal on your lead volume?

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Looking for a marketing company is daunting. And who knows how to select a marketing company that really works? No business owner wants to spend their hard earned money on empty promises.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Intrigue Media Is your solution. Both Jason and I have partnered with Intrigue to help grow our businesses by simply making our phone ring more. Intrigue will build you an up to date website in record time. They had my website live on the Internet start to finish in under seven days. Intrigue will crank up SEO for your business, increase your organic Google ranking and even handle your paid Google Ads.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

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 yeah.

[Zach Pitchford]

Well thank you for not unsubscribing.

[Jordan Upkavage]

No bro.

[Zach Pitchford]

How you out of that? Yeah, that's awesome. And yeah, if you ever see anything that you're like hey Zach, this is, I don't think this is very good, just let me know. Wrong. We get that corrected. But so I got kind of a two part marketing system. We've got a group, an outside group that does our Google Ads. They optimize and run our website, our e commerce store. So we have an e commerce part of the retail side. So I've got a group that does that and then I've got an in house marketing guy, Jared who previously was my sister when I first bought the business but she has since had two kids and couldn't devote the time. So brought in this guy Jared almost a year ago now and awesome. He does all of our newsletter, our emails, this week's best and he goes out and films me doing the stuff that I want to talk about. Thank you to Jared for dealing with me on like 92 cuts and retakes per video. Say something wrong. So those two kind of in a way work together. I find myself doing a lot of the marketing, especially this past year we had a major investment into our e commerce platform. We got a new POS system at the nursery which forced us to get a new explore a new platform from the e commerce side because the one we had previously wouldn't be compatible and that's been a challenge with WooCommerce. So it required a build out major investment. It's still a thorn in my side. We have not gotten it to where I want it to be almost a year later. I really hope that we get it there soon because I'm tired of thinking about it every day. So they're doing that, we're doing the Google Ads currently they're working to optimize our services side. So prior to this time we didn't really have a good funnel on the website for getting to our service. I mean, we had people come in there. Oh, I didn't know you did landscaping too. And so hearing this over the last few years, I'm like, I know, I know we don't have a great presence on there. I know we don't have a funnel. So it's finally just like that time. Like, all right, we're spending all this money on the online store. Why not just keep it going? We'll just get all this out of the way with. So we've been working on that. We're still working through some final reviews. I hope to have that live, like by end of June or so.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

What kind of ad spend do you have? A month on Google.

[Zach Pitchford]

So it's kind of split between gardening, landscape services, retail, E commerce. We're doing total about $10,000 a month on ad spend.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Okay.

[Zach Pitchford]

A lot. And that's. Yeah, yeah, it's a lot. And that's split between. We have the highest going to landscape just because it has the better roi.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And that's people googling landscaping near me.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah. What. That's targeting that better.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah.

[Zach Pitchford]

And that's one of the issues is we don't show up that great enough because of the. Our current website just doesn't have a powerful enough, I guess, landing pages and whatnot for that kind of SEO to work. Organic traffic to work. The paid ads is fine, you know, but our website's not really optimized to bring in a lot of good SEO to the landscape side. So actually, Jason, I sent them your website for a little bit of inspiration.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Yeah.

[Zach Pitchford]

With the way you have the, like the different pages for different areas.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Yep.

[Zach Pitchford]

That you service.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

No, that was.

[Zach Pitchford]

I really like this.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

And that's all part of. I mean, that's part of our SEO strategy.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Was to get that and have that, you know, organic. Organic SEO. And I was working with Ramblin Jackson when they kind of built out that. That concept for the current pages that we have. And I mean, we get. We still get hits on those specific pages, you know, in specific areas. And some of them now we even need to rein back and add in, you know, add in different areas. So now it's like, I need to.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

A couple of weeks ago, we were having a meeting and we were looking at everything with intrigue. And it's like, well, shit, I don't really want to work in Danielle. And you know, we keep getting these leads into Nelland. It's like, why the hell do we keep Getting leads in Danielle and it's like, oh, we made a page and it's hitting, you know, hitting that area. It's like, well, no, I'd rather work and you know, focus on some houses out in Keystone Heights or, you know, Lake Santa Fe. It's like, but we don't have a. Hell, I just need to have a page just for Melrose, you know, so it's, it definitely works, but that's a long term. I mean, and I think. Yeah, you know, we just, we did a recording with Jeffrey Scott earlier and we were talking a little bit about marketing and I think it's. You got to do it all at one time and the SEO is a long term play. But you know, once it's once that flywheel spinning organically and then it's worth it. But you got to do, you know, for us, it's pumping money into Google Ads, you know, to make up for what we need for lead flow in the meantime. But do you see. No, go ahead.

[Zach Pitchford]

I was gonna say that's where we're at is really pumping a lot of money. Those ad flows to make up for.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Do you see any organic social media traffic, you know, people?

[Zach Pitchford]

Definitely for the retail side? Yep, it's. It's money on the retail side. We even have our e commerce store on, on Meta.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Okay.

[Zach Pitchford]

Which we're meeting, coming up to just kind of really see the ROI on that. But this I don't see a lot on the services side. I don't think it has a big appeal there. Like, yeah, we don't get people saying, oh yeah, I saw you on Facebook. I'm ready to spend $20,000 with you.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Do you run any Facebook, do you run any Meta ads?

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah, yeah, we do right now, but we're going to. That's kind of like a. The investment this year to figure out what's working and we'll. I hope to reel it, reel it back and direct the money a little differently next year with the team. Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Tell me about your irrigation scheme. And does it really. Yeah, I like the concept. I'll shut up now. Tell me about it.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah, so I've been doing it, this scheme, I've been doing it myself for a few years. So it's not like untried. It's not like something I just whipped up out of the, out of thin air and then. But through all the different, you know, working in the nursery and understanding soils and whatnot and, and just how things work. So my, in my mind, like having grass and whatnot is great. As long as it's functional and it's not just like all you have in the landscape. But another part of me is I don't, you know, especially with my kids and stuff, I don't want the pesticides going all over the grass. It's, it's. Now it's directly known that Parkinson's. Parkinson's is a man made disease. It comes from all these, these things going in the grass and you have your kids rolling out in it and stuff and then the airborne stuff of it. So I'm like, all right, how do I have. Because I've got grass. Sorry to all the native people out there, but I do have grass, but it's untreated, it's watered once a week and that's it. It's functional. My kids play in it, they enjoy it. It looks good. And I attested to two things. One is my watering strategy. The other is command soil. I don't know if you guys have heard of command soil.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yes.

[Zach Pitchford]

But three times a year, command soil goes on the lawn to inject the nitrogen and build a good topsoil. I think that's made a big difference. But the watering, what I found is especially working the nursery, you know, you water a dry soil and it doesn't want to go in, it puddles up, it runs off. If you got a pot, it stays there. It's got to, you know, eventually soak up. But you're just putting that on a slightly sloped piece of lawn or something. A lot of that is shutting off. So one of the strategies we do in the nursery is you wet it, you just move our kind of line, then you come back down the line again, and then you come back down the line for a third time. So it's a rule of threes. That's what we have in the nursery. That's what happened to my landscape crew from watering a dry landscape out there during the day. You know, later in the day, things have kind of dried up. Did everything three times. So I was like, okay. Now we're. If you're like any, you know, a lot of people out there watering their lawn or grass three times a week, it keeps the soil pretty moist. So it's always can pull it in. But we get in these water restrictions where it's. You can't water more than once a week. How many people are following that? I don't know. I don't track that. I don't know if people are getting fines. I don't know if the county actually does that. But I was like, hey, maybe I can help people out. Especially with our clientele that want to be very sustainably minded. This is what I've been doing on my yard. But how I instructed or made this thing is like, okay, well the rule of three is water runs off when the soil's dry. If we're waiting a week before watering, the soil is probably the upper inch is gonna be pretty dry, especially if it had any rain. So why don't we do a light watering so we do it. Say you're running, you got rotors, you're running 45 minutes to an hour. Run it, run it for 20% of that time or 10% of that time. So I do like 10 minutes and that's the first watering. There's like an hour break and then we do it again, a second watering for 10 minutes. And this would you just be, you could do all your zones or your just your grass zones. You know, whatever's your water hogs. But what we're doing for priming the soil, we're just kind of getting some water in there. Whatever sticks, sticks, whatever runs off, runs off. But we're not having like, you know, the first 30 minutes of the water and just run off. And so we're just priming the soil. So the first one primes, the second one starts to get some penetration and then we get to the third one where we run maybe like 80% less than what you typically run rotors for. So say if you're doing 60 minutes now, you're going to run it for 40 or 50 minutes and you run that. And the idea is you get less runoff so deep and you're getting deeper penetration so you're actually getting some of the deeper soil horizons wet rather than just the top, top inch right where the grass is going to dry out in a few days. After that, no matter what are you, I've.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Are you programming that on? Are you doing well at your house? Are you doing, are you programming that? Are you doing it manually? And if you are programming that are using like a cycle soak function function on the controller.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah. So we're, I'm programming it. I got a hunter controller. Yeah, it's just on the, the watering. I got like a three time water.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Yeah.

[Zach Pitchford]

Water setup for it. Yeah, yeah. I'm in cycles. Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And you found that it works and it's worked?

[Zach Pitchford]

Oh yeah. I don't water my grass more than once a week. Never have. Whether we're in a drought or not.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

What kind of grass do you have?

[Zach Pitchford]

It's St. Augustine. Okay, I got. There's a portion. The portion looks the best, is under the shade of an oak out front. But I got the backyard. It's. I got about a thousand square feet back there. It's in the sun all day. It's actually catching like a super bad reflection glare off the upstairs windows. Like it's really hot. I don't know what's up with that. But it gets a little. It starts to get a little crispy by. By day six. I'm not worried. Tonight's the watering night. We're gonna be good.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah.

[Zach Pitchford]

And it, it kind of pushes through that and it's worked out really well.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Well, it piqued my interest when I was sitting in my truck looking at my emails, catching up on it, and they came down the pipeline of call it marketing or whatever it is. And I was like, here's Zach telling me about irrigation. Then it let me reflect on how I irrigate at my house. And I said to myself, this guy is friendlier to the state of Florida than I am, so well done.

[Zach Pitchford]

Have you adjusted?

[Jordan Upkavage]

No, I have not

[Zach Pitchford]

to do a check in.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, I do have. I just need some rain. It looks beautiful back there. And it is cut at just below one inch.

[Zach Pitchford]

Okay.

[Jordan Upkavage]

But I need to get roots deeper, man. They're just not. They're not deep. And maybe I need some command, but I just have a shallow root.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Well, Commander, what Zach's talking about is going to drive. Drive deeper roots.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, but this shit dries out so fast. What do I do? Just tolerate the crispy and some of the death.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

I mean, you just have to tolerate it being crispy for a little while.

[Jordan Upkavage]

I don't want to do that.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

As long as it doesn't die. Yeah, I don't want to sound like Ryan. I got a client, Zach, that. But he's on reclaimed water. But he. And he's been there. Or hell, you might have been to his house if, you know, during our working together. But you know, he lived in Wild's plantation and you let him get home from work and see a brown blade of zoysia grass and he's turning this water on. It's like, Brian, like you have fungus in your yard. He's just like, I have. I have to water it. I have to water it. It's turning brown. I said, Brian, like, stop. Stop turning your controller to run every day. Like, just let me. Let me run it for three days a week. No, no, no. It has to run every day. And he's like, I'm Ordering it twice a day, because when I get home, it's brown, and I water it and it turns green. I said, yeah, well, it's going to be green in the morning. I said, just please stop watering your grass so much, you know, so. But he's like. He's like, I'm gonna reclaim. I don't care. It's like, okay, yeah, but so you

[Zach Pitchford]

just have to get stuff that's. Yeah.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

You stole a little bit of Christmas.

[Zach Pitchford]

Customer's initial instinct.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Yeah.

[Zach Pitchford]

It is water.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yep. I am. I am a customer.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Yep. So, Zach, you mentioned growth since the time that you've. You've acquired Wilcox. I mean, is that growing all service lines? Just the business. Business as a whole. You know, what. What do you see or what have you. What have you seen or accomplished?

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah, definitely all service lines up till this year. You know, we brought the nursery from, I think, two years ago. I might have been my first year now. I remember second. Second year, I think we hit $1 million on the retail side. That was like a big year. I'd never done that before. I think we're. We're almost at capacity of what we can do there. Just the amount of land we have and in our area. So I'm fine just kind of hanging out there. We'll see an increase as we increase prices, you know, whatever with inflation, but the. We're good there. The services side, we really grew from, like, 1.4 or 5 million. We had our first $2 million year last year on the services. We're not on track for that this year. It's been a really rough start to the year. We've all my designers. I have five designers, 1099, saying, like, it's getting. Like I'm having to work so hard to sell. Like, people are just either saying they're going to do it themselves or whatever.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

So are you seeing that you're down on leads or it's just people aren't buying?

[Zach Pitchford]

We're mostly people not buying. Yeah, we are down on leads, but that's part of, like, some of the marketing. We've refined our marketing. We've created a little bit of a minimum that we try to push towards

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

now, which is healthy.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah. So we've. We've developed that, which we didn't have before, and that drove my designers nuts. Like, oh, my gosh, you know, I have to do all these little $2,000 design product installs, and I got to get away from that.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah, there's not enough margin in that.

[Zach Pitchford]

No, no. And the man, the Management doesn't change. Like you still have to put just as much energy into that.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yes.

[Zach Pitchford]

Usually it's more.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Of course it's one stupid. It's a fact daylily, you know.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah.

[Jordan Upkavage]

You're driving way the hell out there for a $6 plant.

[Zach Pitchford]

Oh yeah, yeah. So it's, that's tough. It's already tough in the native industry. You know plant sourcing is, it's a full time job I have somebody doing and these plants could be all over Florida and it's not justifiable for us to go all over Florida just to go get answer just doesn't work. So a lot of working with designers on that like hey, I don't think we're able to get this one. But going back to your, your question Jason, it's like. We have a lot of growth but we are down this year on the services side. We are up about 5% on the retail and we're, our traffic is about the same. We're up on the retail. I think we're having more people not necessarily buy the service and they're coming in and doing it themselves. So they're buying plants themselves.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

We're trying to pay more attention to this and Jordan and I, we've talked about it on the podcast and then off air but you know, just paying attention to what's, where the leads are coming from, what's going on, what's trying to and I'm just trying to now focus on even month by month just seeing what's going on on in that month, tracking our close ratios because we're up on leads like and I can, I don't know if we can equate it all to intrigue media or we're trying to do all the things at once. We've got more leads than we ever have but our close ratios are still the same or a little bit lower this year. And you know, I don't know if we can attribute that. I think the drought might have something

[Zach Pitchford]

to do with it.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

You know, people were given proposals but nobody wants to pull the trigger until I'm hoping that, you know, I'm hoping that it starts raining and we can go back and mine our proposals for the last three to four months and you know, start, start closing some closing some work that's just been lingering. But then I think I'm hoping that is one scenario. But then in general we're just kind of seeing a trend that you know, people aren't either it's taking much longer to close, you know, 60, 90100 days. 120 days longer to close or they might just sit on it. Yeah, but that's one.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah, we're, we're. We're definitely seeing that the closing is hard right now. We're not having an issue closing gardening jobs or maintenance.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yeah. Because that's consistent. That's somebody that's financially secure when things

[Zach Pitchford]

are a little tough. You know, I had a 20,000,$20,000 job. Doesn't sound so appealing right now. But this two thousand dollar cleanup for my existing stuff, you know, I might as well get this looking nice until I'm ready to spend a 20 grand. Yeah, I don't know if that's. That's what's going on, but it's.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

You're selling that as a recurring. You're selling that gardening service as a recurring service, correct?

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah, monthly.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

And I made. You know, and when. Installs are great, they're great. But if things slow down, maintenance is. I mean, I don't really like doing landscape maintenance. I mean it's not, not fun in my world, but it's a necessary evil and definitely a part of our business, the way we've built it.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And, and that leads to all the enhancement of the lighting and pavers and hardscapes. You're fitting to do, Zach.

[Zach Pitchford]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And we started it for just the retention. We found that when we're just in the landscaping, it then goes to transfers to somebody else's hands to maintain that landscape. Especially with the native stuff. We get rid of a lot of grass. It's usually more of a garden, so it goes to somebody else. And then they get the mulch refresh, they get the new plants that would come in. Oh, by the way, there was this phase two. Do you think you could just install this? Phase two? Yep. Or do I need to go back to Wilcox? No, no, I can do it. So.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Yep.

[Zach Pitchford]

Part of that was just keeping the customer for life.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Have you, have you heard of the Gator 100 award?

[Zach Pitchford]

No.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

You should look it up. We've gotten it four times, but it's based on the cumulative average growth rate. And you. Well, I don't know your growth rate specifically, but you fit. After you've had the business five years, I think you'd qualify for everything to apply for it. And you should definitely do it. It's for Gator. It's the fastest gator. Gator grad owned businesses in the. They've got international people, so they call it the world. But anyway, it's a. It's a cool thing, accolade. Like I said, we've gotten it a few times and it's, it's fun to be in a room with entrepreneurs that, I mean it's across all industries and businesses out there. So it's interesting getting the rub elbows with some very successful people. Yeah. But no, but as you, as you grow, I think you could definitely, I mean where you're at and your potential, I think you should, you definitely maybe hit the marks there. So I'd look it up, keep an eye on.

[Zach Pitchford]

Cool. Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Well, Zach, you got a leadership meeting coming down the pipe in 38 minutes. You got to go crack some skulls and creatively think on how we're going to keep this ship steaming fast ahead. So maybe it is this maintenance and other services that you're going to offer. Maybe plan healthcare. I don't know. The world's your oyster. But thank you for taking time out of your day to chat with some amigos, being me and Jason. And then I look forward to mailing you the copy of this book for you to read to your four year old daughter around bedtime looking for bunny flies. And I hope you have fun at dance and gymnastics that you're going to be going to later. And a badass 5th year birthday party on Saturday. Because nothing says fun for a millennial than going to some other kid's birthday party in the middle of the day on Saturday.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yep. In summer.

[Jordan Upkavage]

In the summer, yes.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

So Zach, you want to go ahead and plug Wilcox Nursery, your business, social media website, all that stuff.

[Zach Pitchford]

Yeah. Awesome. Would love to. So Wilcox Nursery and Landscape, we're in Largo, Florida. The website is Wilcox Nursery Nursery.com. so over there we've got E Commerce. We do delivery to the local Tampa Bay area. You can also stop in and do your shopping there or pick up your plants after purchase. And we also have a full service, almost full service landscape company doing design, specializing in design and installation and the care of the landscape afterwards.

[Jordan Upkavage]

And is there a segment that we can sign up for your newsletter and get the fun emails that I get to enjoy?

[Zach Pitchford]

Yes. Yeah. So you can head over to the website and go to the about us and just sign up on our form there to get the newsletter and follow us on YouTube. We're on YouTube so a lot of our videos get posted there. Nice. I believe it's just Wilcox Nursery on YouTube and we have an Instagram Wilcox Nursery, beautiful. Instagram are very active on. I know it gets plugged into Facebook. I don't know how crazy Facebook is these days, but I don't do a lot there.

[Jason (possibly Jason Lee)]

Yeah, good deal.

[Jordan Upkavage]

Well, rock on, Zach. Appreciate it. Maybe next time we'll rub elbows, we'll have a frosty beverage in our hand, and we can absolutely trade more stories.

[Zach Pitchford]

So. Yeah, definitely.

[Jordan Upkavage]

All right, man, I'll see you.

[Jason Lee]

As you continue your journey toward entrepreneurial success, let Jason and Jordan be your trust 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 hard so you can play even harder and keep the green side up.

[Zach Pitchford]

Sam.