The GROW! Show

Upcoming Events: Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH - Multiple Options in 2026!) Level Up Your Sales Manager at Virtual Sales Manager Bootcamp (July 8-9, 2026) Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Discovery (Tucson, AZ - November 17-20, 2026) Master Aspire Software at the GLC Aspire Workshop (Dayton, OH - August TBD & December 2-3, 2026) Register for GROW! 2027 Annual Conference (Savannah, GA - February 17-19, 2027) Episode #170 In this episode, Loren talks about his background in the industry and his approach to commercial landscaping. He believes landscapes should be treated as managed assets and that we should be focused on how we add value for customers. This interview is full of great insight for landscaping companies who want to focus on enhancement sales. BOBYARD is an AI-powered takeoff and estimating platform that automates the most time-consuming parts of bidding work. Contractors report up to 65% reduction in takeoff time and 3-5x more bids submitted per estimator. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Leave a Review for the Grow Show! ️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Subscribe to Our Youtube Channel! Key Learnings Stop Selling Maintenance, Start Managing Assets: Property managers already think about HVAC, paving, and building envelopes as assets. The landscape industry's messaging on this is weak. Reframe landscapes as managed assets and you change the entire conversation. Messaging Has to Hit the Team Before the Client: If your team is not bought into the concept of building meaningful landscapes and great partnerships, the message will not land with clients. Culture has to be simplified around adding value, not selling. Property Managers Hire You for Three Things: Reduce risk, identify opportunity, and make their job easy. That's it. Everything else is secondary. The mention of slip and falls, compliance issues, and operating expense matters more than aesthetics. Use a One, Three, and Five Year Roadmap: Long-range plans help clients budget, help them justify spending to stakeholders, and stop you from chasing reactive proposals. Combine that with annual sales campaigns and your year sells itself. Three Calendars Have to Overlap: Operational calendar (when you have capacity), horticultural calendar (when the work should happen), and customer mindset calendar (when they're thinking about it). Miss any one and the campaign falls flat. Humble First, Trusted Second, Advisor Third: Most companies skip straight to advisor and end up with commission breath. Humble means turning down the blower when someone walks by and listening more than talking. Trusted means doing what you say. Advisor comes last and takes years. Start Every Meeting with Maintenance, Not Enhancements: Arrive an hour early, walk the property with the production manager, and open the meeting with the work orders you have already created. Once you've earned the right, then talk enhancements. Skip this and you have commission breath. Protect the Quarterback: Operations exists to clear the field so account managers can run plays. Site walks should be prepped in advance so the conversation can move to value, not chase complaints. Enhancement sales is a team sport. If We See It, They Pay. If They See It, We Pay: The job is to notice issues before the...

This episode's a little different: we're bringing you Marty's keynote address that opened GROW! 2025 as we're onsite in Dallas, TX for GROW! 2026. Listen to hear Marty's take on growing a landscaping business. He shares the hurdles that stood in the way of growing Grunder Landscaping Co., how they overcame them, and what's ahead for businesses that are excited for the future. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Leave a Review for the Grow Show! ️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Subscribe to Our Youtube Channel! Episode Timestamps 01:53 - Keynote Intro 04:34 - The Importance of Growth and Community 07:53 - Personal Stories & Lessons Learned 13:48 - Early Business Challenges & Successes 20:42 - The Birth of a Speaking Career 21:40 - Financial Struggles & Family Values 23:03 - Lessons Learned Through Growth 27:33 - The Importance of Team and Client Relationships 29:40 - Creating a Positive Company Culture 38:40 - Please Like & Subscribe! Key Learnings Growth Isn't Linear – In my 41 years of business, I've found that growth isn't linear. It's not a straight line. It doesn't happen that way. And it's not easy. I'm a 40 year overnight success story. Training Is an Investment, Not an Expense – The best way that you can grow a team is by making an investment in them. Sending them to something like this is way more than training. This is an experience. This is what can happen when you get around other risk-taking peers and let your hair down. The Christmas Party I Threw for Myself – I spent a lot of money on a nice party at a fancy restaurant. An employee pulled me aside: "We had to buy nice clothes. Our pallets aren't as sophisticated as yours. Pizza and bowling would've been fine. Give us a cash bonus." Who'd I throw the party for? Myself. I made that party about myself. Our New Mission Statement Puts Team First – Creating opportunities for our team to grow and succeed by enhancing the beauty and value of every client's property. The first sentence there, creating opportunities for our team to grow and succeed, that is our focus. Not about Seth, not about Marty, it's about the team. Business Is Like Golf – You grab that club real hard and swing harder and the ball doesn't go anywhere. You hold the club like a bird and swing it real easy and it's amazing how far the ball goes. I'm hitting my five iron 30 yards longer. Business is the same way. When we try too hard, when we push, when we make it about ourselves, we lose. $2.1 Billion in Combined Revenue in This Room – The combined revenue of all the landscape companies in this room right now is $2.1 billion. If we all leave here with our head on straight, with new ideas, making it about the team, not about ourselves, a rising tide raises all boats. Don't Go to Dinner by Yourself – The only way you're gonna get in trouble with me here today is if you go to dinner by yourself. This is a warm, caring community that wants to help you. I don't care how big or small your business is. Learn From the Little Guys Too – I got a buddy in a peer group with all these huge companies. Third year he quit. They were talking about captives, vacation houses, investments. He said, "I want to talk about where are you parking the truck and how are you maximizing that? How are you keeping those hourly workers?" There's secrets in those day-to-day struggles. Stress Is Caused Because You're Out of Control – Look for ideas so you and your team can work together with less stress. Doesn't that sound fun? Stress is caused because you're out of control and you don't know what...

In this episode, Kevin Keim shares what he's learned in his career, the mistakes he's made, and the tips he has for landscape pros to create great SOPs and manage change in their organization. He shares tips for ensuring smoother transitions when you make a change and for documenting SOPs with low-cost (or free) tools. Sign up for Grow 2026! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Leave a Review for the Grow Show! ️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Subscribe to Our Youtube Channel! Episode Timestamps 00:30 - Introduction & Welcome 02:40 - Megan’s Background and Connection to Landscaping 04:52 - The Importance of Accountability 10:01 - Skill and Will in Leadership 11:56 - Practical Tools for Accountability 16:47 - Advice for Landscaping Business Owners 22:33 - What to Expect at Grow 2026 Key Learnings My $40,000 Mistake: I Implemented Change Too Fast – I knew this from Dow, I just never did anything with it. It landed very differently after I made my first bungle, which cost about $40,000 in mistakes. That's just what I could calculate. I'm sure there was a lot more residual impact outside of that. The first thing I did when I came in was realize we needed to change our scheduling software. I rolled it out in three weeks. Big mistake. The Five Steps of Change Management – First, create awareness. Why are we doing this? Second, desire. What's in it for me? Third, knowledge. How do I do this? Fourth, ability. Can I actually do this? Fifth, reinforcement. How do we make sure this sticks? Most people skip straight to knowledge without building awareness and desire first. That's where I went wrong. Don't Stare at a Blank Screen, Just Start With Something – Whether it's change recipes or SOPs, just start with something. Starting is how you go do anything. We started on paper, flip charts literally, moved to a digital format, and then towards the end we took all of our SOPs and put them in ChatGPT and they could prompt and ask questions. Baby steps are okay as long as you've got that consistent change and you're communicating the vision. Use ChatGPT to Build Your SOPs for Free – You can go into ChatGPT and say, "I'm the president of a $5 million landscaping company. I'm struggling with how to implement change and get SOPs and get more of my team on the same page. What would you suggest I do?" You will be amazed at the fire starters that come out of that conversation. You can upload documents, ask it to rewrite things in simpler language, create step-by-step guides. An Employee Who Doesn't Know How to Do Their Job Leads to Burnout – An employee who doesn't know how to do their job leads to frustration, which leads to burnout, which leads to turnover, which is extremely costly. Not having an SOP, a documented one especially when you go to onboarding, is not an option. The biggest freeing moment we had was realizing that holding onto bad employees because you don't have a good onboarding process is what was holding us back. Paint the Vision of What's In It For Them – You gotta paint the vision of what's in it for them. You gotta get them to understand how it can make it easier on them. People at your company don't want to show up and have you hand them a pack of papers with drawings and phone numbers in a three ring binder. It's all on their phone now. It's so much easier. But if you're used to using paper, it does take a while to get there. Change Happens in Baby Steps With Consistent Communication – We started with flip charts, moved to digital, then to ChatGPT. Each step made sense for where we were. You don...

In this episode of The Grow Show, Vince Torchia and Emily Lindley detail the planning that has gone into GROW! 2026, what will be different about this year's event, and how landscape pros can get the most out of this learning experience - whether they attend or not. Sign up for Grow 2026! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Leave a Review for the Grow Show! ️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Subscribe to Our Youtube Channel! Episode Timestamps 00:50 - Introduction to Grow 2026 02:04 - Insights from the Peer Groups 03:45 - Event Space and Logistics 04:50 - Changes to the Tour Schedule and Innovations 08:20 - Networking and Dining Rounds 10:27 - Maximizing Your Event Experience 14:18 - Ways to Follow Grow 2026 Key Learnings We're Expecting About 1,000 More People Than 10 Years Ago – Complete Land Sculpture hosted this event 10 years ago in 2016. We had about 225 people. We might have a thousand more people than that for 2026. Gene and Chris have been to every Grow since 2016, so they have awesome ideas and know how they want their tour to run. More Space Than Last Year—No Crowded Escalators – Last year we had an awesome event in Columbus hosted by Hidden Creek. We had a lot of late signups, which we loved, but there were some tight breakout rooms, tight space with sponsors at happy hours. Other than escalators working in Dallas, I am excited that we have larger space this year—more space in our main stage room, breakout rooms, and general function area. The Tour Is Reinvented: Fewer Stations, More Time – Gene and Chris put together a really good tour schedule that involves less stations that are longer. So we have more time in stations, less movement of people, some more movement of presenters, and finally an actual formal walking tour of the facility. We've also taken some of those tour stations and brought them back to the hotel. Divide and Conquer Breakout Sessions as a Team – I would set up a meeting two weeks before the event with all the people from your team who are attending. Look at the agenda, pick out which breakout sessions everybody's going to. What I would recommend is that teams divide and conquer. Don't all go to the same breakout session. Take your notes and come back together to share knowledge from all the different sessions. Set a Pre-Event and Post-Event Team Meeting – During that pre-event meeting, talk about dine arounds, dinner reservations, what you want to get out of it as a team. Is there a specific challenge you're facing that you really want to find an answer to at Grow? After the event, do a debrief. Talk about breakout sessions, notes, takeaways, action items. Narrow down everything to five things you're gonna implement over the next year. Think: Today, 30 Days, 60-90 Days – Think about what's one thing you're gonna get done today, what's low hanging fruit you can get done right away when you get back home. What's something you're gonna get done in the next 30 days? And then what's something you're gonna get done in the next 60 or 90 days? Make it a manageable to-do list so it doesn't just live in a notebook. We Listen to 210+ Companies to Build the Agenda – We're always listening to not only what we're experiencing at Grunder Landscaping Company, but also taking a deep dive into the over 210 companies that we have in our ACE peer groups. We take into account all those meetings, conversations, accountability calls, and naturally things just bubble up to the top. We'll have more breakout sessions than we've ever had this year. Resources: