The GROW! Show

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Episode #193: You’ve built your plan for 2027. You’ve set your goals, established your budget, and mapped out where you want your business to go. But how do you make sure that plan actually happens? In this bonus episode of The GROW! Show, Vince Torchia shares how to track progress, keep your team aligned, and make adjustments when things aren’t going according to plan.

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.

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Key Learnings

• Picture a Pyramid. The whole system cascades from the top: quarterly meetings, monthly updates, weekly conversations, daily numbers. Everything connects.
• Past, Present, Future Is the Cheat Code. Jim Calie’s agenda for any quarterly meeting. What happened? Where are we now? Where are we headed? That one framework handles any check-in.
• Six Hours, Not Three Days. Quarterly meetings don’t need an offsite. Block the second Thursday of the quarter, bring the right people, and you can accomplish more than most teams do in a week.
• Bring in Rotating Voices. Leadership stays for the full meeting, but select up-and-comers or team members from a focus area come in for a midday block. They get context, they add perspective, and they feel heard.
• The Monthly State of the Union. Grunder’s “Grow Meeting.” The whole team hears the same message from the same room on the same day: revenue goals, hiring, future planning, the metrics that matter.
• Rotate the Presenters. When only one or two people talk at the monthly, it stops landing. Rotate department leaders and other voices so the team hears from the people they work alongside.
• Weekly Leadership on Monday. Ninety minutes, open dialogue, progress tracking. Monday matters because the leaders then bring the right four or five points into Tuesday’s sales meeting and Wednesday’s ops meeting.
• The Pyramid Flows Both Ways. Topics that keep showing up in weekly meetings deserve a monthly update. Topics that keep showing up monthly belong in the next quarterly. The team’s attention is the signal.
• Daily Numbers in Public. Grunder runs an earned revenue system with a public dashboard in the shop. Every day, every language, everyone can see where they stand against the goal. Transparency isn’t a problem to solve, it’s a tool to use.
• Acknowledge When You’re Off Track. If you can see it, the team can see it. There’s no sugarcoating. State it clearly: we’re off, here’s why, here’s what we’re doing.
• Within 10 Percent, Flag It and Move. Note it, don’t launch an investigation. The sales team needs to be selling. The ops team needs to be operating. A meeting about missing the number rarely closes the gap.
• Activity Closes the Gap. The conversation about being off track is not the thing that gets you back on. Protect the rhythms. Protect the operating hours. Then course-correct through activity.

Reflection Questions

• Do your quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily rhythms actually connect, or does each one live on its own island?
• When your team sees you’re off track, do they hear about it from you first, or do they hear about it from the dashboard?
• What’s one topic that keeps showing up in your weekly meetings that belongs in the next quarterly instead?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

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Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

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Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #192: If your best salesperson left tomorrow, would your company still hit its sales goals? In this episode of The GROW! Show, Marty Grunder sits down with Chris Psencik and Kevin Keim of McFarlin Stanford to discuss how landscape business owners can build a sales engine that delivers consistent, predictable results without depending on one person to make it happen.

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.

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Key Learnings

• Hope Is Not a Sales Strategy. The owners who get stuck are the ones hoping the phones ring. The ones who grow are proactive, boots on the ground, with a plan for Q4 and Q1 already in motion.
• The Owner Is Often the Best Salesperson. Transitioning out of owner-led sales takes systems, not luck. Hope in the hiring process is just as dangerous as hope in the pipeline.
• If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It. The biggest mistake Kevin sees is owners without visibility into their pipeline or process. CRMs don’t fix that. Accountability does.
• Panic Kills the Strategy. When volume spikes, teams drop their ideal client profile and send proposals to anyone. When it crashes, follow-up disappears. Both failures start with panic.
• Prioritize Like a Pro. Not every opportunity is equal. The best salespeople push the right jobs into the right windows and don’t fill the schedule with work that bleeds money.
• Shoot With a Sniper Rifle, Not a Shotgun. Chris on targeting. Pre-qualify every opportunity against density, bonding, insurance, and the kind of work your team can execute profitably.
• Target Comes Before Attract. Marketing only works when you know who you’re trying to reach. Where do your best five clients live, shop, serve on boards? Build the attract strategy around that.
• Delivery Is Your Best Sales Tool. The work you already sold, done well, is the next sale. Walk the customer through the handoff from sales to production and stay alongside it.
• Think With the End in Mind. Chris would rather have 10 deep, long-standing relationships than 100 shallow ones. One job this year, three next year, six after that. Compounding, not chasing.
• The Untreated Acre. Kevin’s framing: expanding with existing clients isn’t competing against competitors. It’s competing against yourself.
• The CRM Is Not the Engine. It’s a tool. The engine is the defined sales process behind it: how a lead moves from stage to stage, who owns it, when it advances.
• Three Numbers to Watch Weekly. The opportunities in your pipeline, the last touch point on each one, and the total dollars sitting in it.
• A Three-Month Backlog Is the Healthy Benchmark. The strongest organizations in October aren’t talking about October. They’re talking about Q1 2027.
• Weak Sales Processes Ripple. It doesn’t just hurt revenue. It hurts production, staffing, cash flow, and profitability.
• 90-Day Homework. Build the defined sales process. Create a rhythm of accountability calls with your team. Evaluate and tweak as the business evolves.

Reflection Questions

• If you stepped out of the sales seat tomorrow, would your pipeline keep moving on its own?
• What’s your three-month backlog look like right now, and is it the result of a process or a stroke of luck?
• Where in your sales process does hope substitute for a defined next action?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

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Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

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Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #191: In this episode of The GROW! Show, Marty Grunder checks in with three past GROW! hosts: Gene Freeman from Dallas, Texas, Jason Cromley from Columbus, Ohio, and Annette McCarthy from Des Moines, Iowa. Marty asks each of them the same five questions to find out what they’re seeing in the market, what’s working in their businesses, and what they’ve learned along the way.

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.

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Key Learnings

• Feedback Is a Gift. But not every opinion carries the same weight. Judge the quality of the feedback, not whether you like the person delivering it.
• Ask Your Salespeople First. They’re on the front lines hearing objections, pricing concerns, and the reasons customers buy or don’t buy. Ask them point-blank what’s preventing them from selling more.
• Then Ask Operations. Production knows if salespeople are setting the right expectations. Ask what gets sold that causes problems and where estimates fall short.
• Talk to Three Customer Groups. Your best repeat customers, the ones you recently lost, and the prospects who said no. Don’t assume you know why they chose or didn’t choose you.
• Pull in Trusted Outsiders. Your ACE peer group, a mentor, another landscape owner who understands the business. They see what you can’t because you’re too close.
• Who Not to Ask. Don’t build strategy around the person who complains about everything but offers no solutions. Don’t let one unreasonable customer dictate how you run the whole company.
• Three Questions, Not Twenty-Five. What’s working that we should keep doing? What’s not working that we should stop or change? If you were in my shoes, what’s the one thing you’d change?
• Ask the Follow-Up. When someone says proposals take too long, don’t just write it down. Ask for an example, ask how often, ask what they would recommend. Chase the root cause.
• Ask Yourself the Hardest Question. What am I, the owner, doing or not doing that’s getting results I don’t want?
• The 15-Minute Feedback Exercise. Get the team in a room. Three minutes to write down what’s working, what’s not, what to change. Go around once, no debating, just listening. Look for themes.
• Feedback Without Action Is Just a Conversation. Ignore what people tell you long enough and they stop telling you.
• Look for Patterns, Then Prioritize. One person flagging a slow estimating process is worth investigating. Five people saying it means you’ve found a problem. Pick two or three fixes with the biggest impact, assign ownership, put a deadline on it.
• Close the Loop. Go back to the people who gave feedback. Tell them what you heard, what you’re changing, and why you’re not changing the rest. That’s how you build trust.
• Great Companies Don’t Get Better by Accident. They get better because leaders are willing to listen, learn, and change.

Reflection Questions

• When was the last time you asked a lost customer or a prospect who said no exactly why they chose someone else?
• Which pieces of feedback have you been collecting but not acting on, and what message does that send to your team?
• What is one thing you could ask your team this week that would surface a problem you’ve been missing?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

Exmark

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #190: In this episode of The GROW! Show, Marty Grunder checks in with three past GROW! hosts: Gene Freeman from Dallas, Texas, Jason Cromley from Columbus, Ohio, and Annette McCarthy from Des Moines, Iowa. Marty asks each of them the same five questions to find out what they’re seeing in the market, what’s working in their businesses, and what they’ve learned along the way.

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.

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Key Learnings

Gene Freeman (Complete Landsculpture, Dallas)

• The 5/10 Rule for Communication. Any communication received before 5:00 PM gets responded to the same day. Anything after 5:00 PM gets responded to by 10:00 AM the next business day. Shared with clients, subs, and vendors as the standard they can hold you to.
• Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan. On Monday you shouldn’t be asking “What are we gonna do this week?” That happened Wednesday last week to get it lined up for Thursday and Friday.
• Relationships Matter at All Levels. Vince and Marty give Gene credit for this one. From smaller operators to peer group heavy hitters, Gene asks questions because the smaller guys are closer to where the tire hits the road.
• Referrals Are the Number One Lead. A happy client is your best salesperson. Intentionally ask satisfied customers for Google reviews to strengthen trust and brand.
• No Return Visits Protect Profit. Return visits kill profits and erode trust. Incentivize safety and precision because broken windows and dropped margins come straight off the bottom line.
• Standardize Your Plant Palette. 111 degree heat index in July, freezes in winter. Spec plants that work in your market. Fewer SKUs, fewer parts, fewer tires, consistent fleet.
• Educate the Client, Then Void the Warranty. If a client insists on a plant that won’t survive, put it in after educating them, document that it’s not warrantied, and move on. You’re not saying no, you’re giving them value.

Jason Cromley (Hidden Creek, Columbus)

• A Director of Revenue Takes the Pressure Off. When you miss your sales goal three years in a row and you’re the one in charge, it’s time to hire someone who sits beside the sales team daily and holds them accountable.
• Culture Is Your Brand. Brand isn’t a logo on the truck. It’s what people say about you when you’re not in the room.
• Do What You Say, On Time, With Quality. Clients are simple. Let them know when you’re doing it, when it’s done, and that it’s right. Everything else is noise.
• Warranty Budget Is Marketing. Clients fear construction companies won’t show up. Warranty is the proof you will. That’s the next referral in disguise.
• The Project Kickoff Meeting. Once a job is sold, bring in the designer, salesperson, operations manager, accounting team, and project manager to review every detail. A million-dollar job deserves half a day.
• The CD Sign-Off. Bring clients back in to review construction documents. Tile, grout color, grout joint spacing. All the details that go sideways the day the job starts if you don’t nail them down first.
• Nine Types of Waste. Pallet placement, truck parking, four pallets of returned stone. Walk any job site and you’ll see them. Fix them and profit stops leaking.

Annette McCarthy (RJ Lawn & Landscape, Des Moines)

• Make the Core Focus Simple and Real. Not whatever AI gave you with 47 words. Theirs: create beautiful spaces and experiences for clients and team. Beautiful work, great experience, happy team.
• The Team’s Experience Matters Just as Much. Happy people with purpose have smiles on their faces, do work right, and impact clients because they’re the ones touching them.
• Setting the Next Person Up for Success. The question every team member should ask: “Am I making this ready so the next person has a better experience, and the client has a better one?”
• Cancel the Credit Card as a Reset. Switch cards or get a new number. It forces you to re-enter payment on every subscription and expose the ones you don’t actually need.
• Use AI to Audit Expenses. Give Claude your last three months of statements. Ask which charges are subscriptions, which fluctuate, which are redundant. Scope creep hides in autopay.

Reflection Questions

• Could your team state your core focus in one sentence, and do your daily operations actually reflect it?
• When was the last time your warranty, your communication cadence, or your sign-off process generated a referral instead of a complaint?
• Where is scope creep quietly leaking profit out of your business right now?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

Exmark

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #189: Setting a sales goal is easy. Building a plan to actually achieve it? That’s where the real work begins. In this bonus episode of The GROW! Show, Marty Grunder breaks down how landscape professionals can build a realistic, actionable sales plan for 2027, and why simply hoping for more revenue isn’t a strategy.

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.

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Key Learnings

• Hope Is Not a Sales Plan. “We want to grow 10% next year” and “we want to do $8 million” aren’t plans. They’re wishes. Every number needs a compelling reason behind it.
• Start With the Financial Plan. More sales don’t automatically mean more profit. You can grow yourself broke. Decide what kind of company you want to build first, then back into the revenue.
• Break the Big Number Down. A $5 million target isn’t one giant number. It’s recurring maintenance, renewals, enhancements, backlog, snow, and only then truly new business. Make the number smaller, visible, and someone’s responsibility.
• Retention Is Sales. If you lose $300K of maintenance contracts, your sales team is starting in a $300K hole. Every recurring account needs an owner, a renewal date, a strategy, and a next action.
• Go Where You Already Have Trust. Your existing client list is the most valuable sales tool you own. Walk the properties, look for opportunities, follow up on that outdoor kitchen conversation from three years ago.
• Revive Unsold Proposals. Somebody who said no six months ago might say yes now with a follow-up. Pick up the phone. Not an automated email. A call.
• Your Schedule Is a Sales Scorecard. If you need $400K for March and you’ve only sold $175K, you have a problem, and you need to know it in October. Where the schedule is empty, it’s too late to start selling.
• A Filing Cabinet Isn’t a Pipeline. Open proposals with no follow-up and no next action aren’t opportunities. They’re paperwork.
• Every Sale Needs a Next Action. A call Tuesday, a site visit Friday, a revision Wednesday. No next action means you’re not managing the opportunity, you’re hoping.
• Order Makers, Not Order Takers. Good salespeople create activity, follow up, ask questions, find opportunities, and ask for referrals. They don’t sit around waiting for leads.
• Turn the Yearly Plan Into a Weekly Plan. A $2M annual goal is a monthly number, a weekly number, an appointment count, and a follow-up count. Manage the activities, not the end-of-month pressure.
• Sales and Operations Must Talk. If sales sells $3M for April, can operations actually produce it? People, trucks, equipment, materials, cash. The plans have to connect.
• Protect Your Margins. A million-dollar job at a lousy margin isn’t a win, it’s a loss. Revenue is vanity if the work doesn’t make money.
• Action Beats Planning. A beautiful spreadsheet won’t sell anything. A CRM won’t sell anything. People sell. Follow-up sells. Disciplined weekly activity creates predictable sales.

Reflection Questions

• What percentage of your 2027 revenue is already secured, and what are you doing right now to protect it?
• Looking at your existing client list, where are the unaddressed opportunities you’ve been meaning to follow up on?
• Does every real opportunity in your pipeline have a next action with a date, or is your pipeline really a filing cabinet?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

Exmark

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #188: In this episode of The GROW! Show, Marty Grunder catches up with Gene and Chris from Complete Landsculpture, hosts of GROW! 2026 in Dallas, to see how the goals and initiatives they shared with attendees have played out over the past year. Gene and Chris talk candidly about their push to grow maintenance, the impact of losing major accounts, and why strong client relationships remain one of the most important pieces of their strategy.

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.

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Key Learnings

• Flat Numbers Don't Mean Flat Progress. Despite nearly $2M in new contracts sold, two key losses early in the year kept maintenance numbers flat. The team used the year to build systems that will pay off for years.
• Managing, Not Mowing. Account managers walk every property and record videos for clients, noting enhancements and ownership. "Anybody can mow grass. One weed can get you canceled."
• SharePoint as the Central Hub. All communication, schedules, and visibility across business units in one place. A real operational win in 2026.
• The Platinum Rule. Don't just do unto others what you'd want. Do unto others what they expect. This filter catches the quality gaps that technical execution alone misses.
• "She Didn't Feel Loved." Chris met with an unhappy client who confirmed CLS had done everything they promised. The problem wasn't the work. It was that she didn't feel cared for.
• Hard to Fire a Friend. Account managers taking clients to lunch isn't a soft skill, it's a strategic moat. Relationships are what survive competitive bids and board changes.
• Live Video Property Walks. Account managers walk the property with their face on camera, personalizing with details about the client's family or weekend. Removes the "can't reach them" excuse entirely.
• Back Porch Parties as a Trust Indicator. When clients and vendors take time away from their work and personal lives to show up at your office, that's a sign the relationships are real.
• Purchasing Discipline. Two team members bought the same thing on company credit cards with a 65% price variance. Centralize purchasing, share information, don't buy the T-shirt twice.
• Humility Compounds. Frank Mariani sat in on Grow at CLS 11 years ago doing $50 to $60M and asked more questions than anyone in the room. There's no neutral in this business.
• AI as Connective Tissue for 2027. The Asset Include Go platform launch plus AI integration will connect data streams that currently don't talk to each other.
• Know Your Numbers. It's not top-line revenue. It's the bottom-line numbers you need to know. Manage to those and things head in the right direction.
• Revenue Follows Relationships. Marketing is expensive and complex. Don't hunt the next deal at the expense of the ones you already have. Farming beats hunting over the long haul.

Reflection Questions

• Where are your clients hearing from you between visits, and does the touchpoint feel personal when they do?
• Could you identify a client right now who is technically being served but doesn't feel cared for?
• Are your account managers measured on relationships and property walks, or just on dollars and renewals?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

Exmark

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #187: In this bonus episode of The GROW! Show Marty Grunder breaks down how landscape professionals should be planning their equipment needs for 2027, and why that plan should always start with the business plan.

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.

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Key Learnings

•

• Equipment Plan Follows Business Plan. Don't start with what equipment you want. Start with the work you're going to do next year and back into what you need.
• Start With the 2027 Sales Plan. Revenue target, service mix, crews added or cut. Everything downstream depends on it.
• Inventory Everything You Own. Trucks, trailers, mowers, skid steers, snow equipment. Age, hours, reliability, cost to maintain. Decide what stays and what goes.
• The Smartest Purchase Is Sometimes a Sale. Get rid of what's breaking down or no longer fits. You're in the landscaping business, not the equipment business.
• Talk to Your Crews. Group leaders and crew leaders know what breaks, what you rented too much of, and what one more unit would save in labor. Listen to what they need, not everything they want.
• Buy Labor Savings, Not Price Tags. Don't ask what it costs. Ask what it lets you accomplish. One Boss sidewalk machine replaces four guys with shovels.
• Repair, Replace, Rent, or Buy. Four questions on every major purchase. If you use the machine six days a year, don't own it. If you're renting the same thing every week, maybe you should.
• Utilization Decides Ownership. A machine sitting in your yard isn't making you money.
• Build the Budget in Three Categories. Must-have, should-have, nice-to-have. Forces discipline when every shiny truck looks tempting.
• Order Early With a Plan B. Supply chains don't care about your production schedule. Know the lead times, and have a contingency if the truck doesn't show up until June.

Reflection Questions

• Does your current equipment list actually match the work you're planning to sell in 2027?
• What should you be selling before you buy anything new?
• What are you still owning that you'd be smarter off renting?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

Exmark

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #186: In this episode of The GROW! Show, Marty Grunder sits down with GROW! 2027 hosts Rob and Jessie Shrieve of Coastal Shores Landscape to talk about their journey from starting small to building a thriving company centered around great people, strong leadership, and premium service.

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.

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Key Learnings

• From Indiana to the Lowcountry. Rob and Jessie moved from Muncie, Indiana to the South Carolina Lowcountry in 2002 with one little girl, no job, and no landscape experience. The business started with Rob cutting grass on five properties Jessie managed.
• Doing What You Say You Will Do Is Still a Competitive Advantage. In the early days, clients were shocked when Rob showed up on time and delivered a quote he promised. That alone built the business before he knew much about landscaping.
• Premium Starts With Your Team. Coastal Shores applies premium to how they care for their team first: high benefits, high training, high respect. That trust earns the right to hold the team to a higher standard for clients.
• Core Values Need Measuring Sticks. Posters on the wall are not enough. Every value needs tangible, measurable behaviors behind it or the team drifts without knowing why.
• SALT Training Reinforces Culture Weekly. Spiritual, Attitude, Life, Teamwork. The third Wednesday is Life skills, where team members have learned direct deposit, financial literacy, and even how to change a diaper.
• Help People at Home and They Work Better. Mama J's philosophy is that personal life and work life always intersect. Smoothing one smooths the other.
• Not a Culture of Flattery. Build enough trust and care first. When hard conversations come, people are receptive because the deposits in their emotional bank account are already made.
• From Doing to Coaching. Rob's biggest shift as an owner was moving from knowing every detail of every job to coaching, mentoring, and looking for root causes. He described himself as "a blanket on the team, holding them back."
• A Healthy Sign of Scale. When the owners find out about a big job neither of them knew was happening, it means the team is actually running the business.
• Define Your Ideal Client Narrowly. Coastal Shores asks what community you live in before anything else and will decline work outside their footprint.
• Specialization Enables Scale. Middle management and divided roles are not optional at scale. Delaying those decisions costs profit and burns out the people stretched across too many jobs.
• Owners Need Defined Roles Too. Rob and Jessie's roles evolved over 24 years. Rob sets vision and strategy. Jessie runs day-to-day operations. For years they were both doing the same thing and driving staff crazy.
• Commit Fully or Don't Buy the Software. Coastal Shores set a hard switch date for Aspire, went live on time, and never retreated. Jim Calise said it best: the best software is the one you use.
• AI Is Already Changing the Game. Rob uses Claude for Teams at around $212 a month to analyze data, build sales scorecards, and extract insights from their Google Docs library in minutes instead of weeks.
• The Multiplying Effect Is Real. A thousand employees in a room represents hundreds of thousands of lives touched through families and vendors. That is a responsibility, not a transaction.

Reflection Questions

• Are you applying your definition of premium to your team first before you promise it to clients?
• What tangible measuring stick do you have in place today for each of your core values?
• Where are you still acting like a blanket on your team, holding them back by needing to know every detail?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

Exmark

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #185: In this bonus episode of The GROW! Show, Vince Torchia walks through the fundamentals of financial planning for the year ahead. He breaks down how to set a realistic revenue target using historical performance, determine the right mix of services, evaluate your sales and production capacity, and plan for margins, overhead, profit, and cash flow.

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.

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Key Learnings

• A solid 2027 plan starts with a revenue number grounded in historicals from 2025 and 2026, not what you hope to sell
• 10% growth is the baseline for any company on the planning journey. 20 to 40% is aggressive and requires a specific driver (new market, acquisition, big contract)
• Revenue is only useful when broken into the right mix: construction, maintenance, lawn care, snow, seasonal services, and enhancements
• Every revenue target needs a compelling why on both the sales side and the production side. Can we sell it? Can we produce it?
• Sales teams are increasingly specialized. The old unicorn who sold, designed, estimated, and project managed is giving way to focused roles
• Industry benchmark margins: 50% on construction, 40% on maintenance, with enhancements pulling maintenance margins up toward construction levels
• Recurring services are the gift to the industry, the mailbox money that stabilizes cash flow
• Overhead is everything below the line that gets paid whether work sells or not. The ACE benchmark is 30% of revenue
• Investing in people early can spike overhead in the short term, but revenue growth should bring overhead as a percentage of revenue back down over time
• Know your renewal windows, your sell seasons, and your production seasons. Historicals tell you when the cake gets baked
• Jennifer Murray's framework: every month is either a burn month (losing cash) or a build month (gaining cash)
• Cash planning is a separate exercise from revenue, margin, and overhead planning. Debt payments, equipment, taxes, bonuses, and distributions all pull from cash
• A financial plan boils down to four categories: revenue, direct costs, overhead, profit. Everything else is a line item
• Every number you present to your team needs a compelling reason. Don't make it a hope. Don't make it a dream

Reflection Questions

• What is your compelling reason for the revenue target you're setting in 2027?
• Which months are your burn months and which are your build months? Do you have a plan to smooth the year from a cash perspective?
• Where is the biggest gap right now between your sales capacity and your production capacity?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

Exmark

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #184: In this episode of The Grow Show, Marty Grunder sits down with Bill Rosell, Director of Production Operations at Grunder Landscaping Co., to break down what an effective production meeting actually looks like. They share how the GLC team uses weekly meetings to improve communication, plan ahead, coordinate crews and equipment, address safety and scheduling issues, and catch problems before they reach the jobsite.

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.

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GLC Production Meeting Agenda Meeting Template

Key Learnings

The Purpose Is to Make Production Run Better: Not to have a meeting. Not to get everyone in a room. If people leave without knowing where they're going, what equipment they need, or what problems are coming, you had a gathering, not a meeting.

Different Meetings Have Different Purposes: Don't try to accomplish everything in one big meeting. You'll end up with 25 people listening to a conversation that applies to three of them.

Start With the Mission Statement: Every GLC production meeting begins with the mission statement. It anchors the room in why we're here before we get into what we're doing.

Have the Right People in the Room, Only While You Need Them: Zach (fleet assistant) presents his fleet updates first so he can leave and start his day. He doesn't need to sit through personnel discussions that don't involve him.

Meetings Should End in Laughter: Bill's number one sign of a great meeting is when it ends in laughter. Direction and clarity are the two must-haves, but laughter is what tells you people leave energized.

Team Leaders Look at Today and Tomorrow. Group Leaders Look 2 Weeks Out: Great group leaders are not walking in every morning asking "what do I need to do today?" They knew last night. Bill wants group leaders looking two weeks out on equipment and materials.

Sales and Production Cannot Live on an Island: Bill attends the first 20 minutes of every sales meeting. If production has a hole, sales needs to know. If sales has a monster project coming, production needs to know. Bill's job is to help sales know: whatever you sell, we can get it done.

Break Big Projects Into Small Ones: A 3,000-hour job is overwhelming until you break it into phases. Then it becomes a series of 50-60 hour jobs. Team members can see progress and see the end in sight.

Know What Stresses Your People: Bill knows what stresses Gaston, so he takes those things off his plate. On big projects, Bill stays the main point of communication early on to protect his group leader from being overwhelmed.

One-on-Ones Every Other Week: Bill schedules face-to-face one-on-ones every other week. Sometimes Teams, sometimes phone, sometimes a luncheon. It benefits Bill just as much as the group leader because he sees firsthand who is stressed and where he can step in.

Text Doesn't Cut It: If you text someone "how's it going?" they will say "great." That doesn't tell you anything. Call them or go see them. It's the only way to actually know.

Set the Schedule Board by 4:00 PM the Day Before: Salespeople know, clients get automated notifications, team leaders can check the notes at night and think through tomorrow. The next morning rolls out smoothly because the work happened yesterday.

Chaos in the Morning Means Chaos All Day: The morning rollout only looks smooth because of everything set up the night before. The board is set. Trucks are parked in the same spots. Names are on the trucks. Materials are staged.

Don't Confuse Meeting Length with Communication Quality: Bill's meetings never go over an hour. Marty's sales meetings target 45 minutes. Why? Because we want people selling, not sitting.

Keep It Simple. Prioritize and Execute: If a production meeting is running too long, Bill wonders what production actually looks like in the field. The whole point of the meeting is to make the field better.

Reflection Questions

• If your team walked out of your production meeting today, could each person tell you what's on their plate for tomorrow, next week, and two weeks from now?
• Who is in your meetings the entire time who really only needs to be there for 10 minutes? What does that cost you every week?
• When was the last time your production leader and sales leader sat in the same room and actually planned together?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

Exmark

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)

Join Us for GROW! Snow 2026 (Dayton, OH - September 21-23, 2026)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #183: In this episode of The Grow Show, Emily Lindley shares how Grunder Landscaping Company evaluates its marketing channels, which efforts are worth the investment, and which ones need to be cut. The goal isn't to market everywhere. It's to give every channel a clear job and build a plan that supports where your company is headed.

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.

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Key Learnings

Every Channel Needs One Clear Job: Ask what specific job that channel does for your business. Design build leads? Lawn care leads? Residential maintenance? If the job isn't clear anymore, cut it or shrink it.

Balance the Jobs Across Your Marketing Mix: Make sure you have enough coverage for every line of business, and that no one service line is eating all the attention.

Residential Design Build Drives Broadcast Marketing: It's easier to drive inbound leads for design build than for commercial or maintenance. The strategy at Grunder: capture a design build client, then convert them into a maintenance client.

Postcards Still Work (When Timed Right): Start with an aggressive spring push. Every other week for design build, every other week for lawn care, alternating so mailing list recipients get a card weekly for 6-8 weeks. Capture spring demand or you won't make it up later in the year.

Email Is the Best Marketing Channel Right Now: Grunder is seeing 40% open rates. Marketing Pro integrates with Aspire, so lists stay current with actual maintenance and lawn care route data. Every other week, March through November, with rotating seasonal messaging.

Skip the Rigid Newsletter Template: Templates feel stale and restrict what you can say. Instead, rotate messaging by season: design build in spring, mosquito fogging in summer, aeration/overseeding in fall.

Small Add-Ons Add Up: Mosquito fogging is a great example. Techs are already on the property. No extra drive time. It's profitable per stop and adds real value for the client. Small services stack up over the year.

Time Add-On Emails to the Application Route: Send the mosquito fogging pitch BEFORE the tech goes out for the round, not mid-round. Otherwise you're asking your team to backtrack.

Social Media Is About Consistency, Not Perfection: Post consistently so prospects can verify you're a real, polished company when they Google you. Paid social gets zip code targeted and overlaid on postcard drop zones. That's reinforcement, not redundancy.

Door Hangers Work in Neighborhoods You Already Serve: Neighbors of active jobs, HOAs where you maintain the common areas, streets with existing maintenance stops. Brand reinforcement is the win here.

Don't Ring Doorbells: Emily's rule is simple. Drop the door hanger and go. No knocking, no doorbells, especially not at 8 PM. Your brand is being felt every time someone interacts with your marketing.

SEO Is the Sleeper Channel for Commercial: SEO works for residential too, but it's one of the few marketing tactics that actually generates commercial maintenance leads. Publish blogs targeting real search terms every other week. Don't over-rely on AI writing, it gets flagged.

As You Grow, Your Marketing Mix Has to Shift: What Grunder spent as a percentage of revenue at $5M is different from what makes sense at $17M with a 50/50 commercial/residential split. Commercial growth requires business development budget, not just broadcast marketing.

Interest Does Not Equal Budget: You'll get pitched constantly. Home magazines, streaming ads, community sponsorships. Being interested is not the same as it being the right investment. Discipline in what you say no to is as important as strategy in what you say yes to.

Reflection Questions

• If you had to write down the one clear job each of your marketing channels is doing, could you? If not, which one should be cut or shrunk?
• Is your marketing budget matching where your growth is actually coming from, or is it still built for the company you were three years ago?
• What "interesting" marketing pitches have you said yes to in the last year that didn't move the needle? What did they cost you in dollars and attention?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

Exmark

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)

Join Us for GROW! Snow 2026 (Dayton, OH - September 21-23, 2026)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #182: It's easy to feel good about business when the crews are busy and the schedule is full, but what does your schedule look like 30, 60, or 90 days from now? This week on The Grow Show, Marty Grunder talks about the importance of staying ahead of your workload and continuing to sell even when business is busy. He shares where your team should be looking for opportunities, how to make the most of the clients and proposals you already have, and why now is the time to start thinking about next spring.

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.

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Key Learnings

Your Schedule Is a Sales Scorecard: Do not look at your sales pipeline. Look at your production schedule board. What is actually sold and on the calendar 30, 60, 90, and 120 days out? A pipeline filled with proposals nobody's going to buy isn't a pipeline. It's a filing cabinet.

Nothing Happens Until Someone Sells Something: No sales, no work for production, no invoices for accounting, no gross profit, no reinvestment. Spring conditions your team to become order takers. Fall reveals whether you have order takers or order makers.

Order Takers Wait. Order Makers Create: When leads slow down, the order taker asks when marketing is going to do more. The order maker asks what proposals to revisit, what properties need enhancements, and what phase two or phase three opportunities exist.

Start With People Who Already Know You: It is far easier to sell to someone who has done business with you than to create something new. Do not just call and ask if they need anything. Walk the property, take pictures, and send unsolicited quotes with recommendations.

A Good Doctor Doesn't Ask What Procedure You Want: They diagnose and recommend. A professional landscape salesperson does the same. Your clients hired you because you know more about landscaping than they do, so act like it.

Revisit Every Proposal You Did Not Sell: A no six months ago is not a no today. Timing changes. Do not send a "just checking in" email. Give them a specific reason to respond - a scheduling opening, a seasonal window, a follow-up on the exact conversation you had.

Sell the Season You're In: Your clients don't live and breathe landscaping. They don't know what makes sense in October, November, and December. That's your job. Build a fall campaign around 2-3 specific services you want to sell.

Break the Number Down: A $2M goal sounds intimidating. Break it into weekly targets per salesperson. $10K per week per salesperson is believable and manageable. Small numbers compound. $5K in enhancement work per week for 50 weeks is $250K.

Hunt Where You Already Work: Route density matters. Travel time doesn't get paid. If you're maintaining one commercial property, what's around it? If you've installed three residential projects in a neighborhood, how many neighbors drive by every day?

Closed Mouths Don't Get Fed: Ask for referrals. Ask for Google reviews. When a client tells you your team did a great job, that's the moment. It's not begging. Your best clients know people just like themselves.

Don't Just Fill Fall. Sell Spring Now: Commercial clients work on budgets. Residential clients are making plans. There is a world of difference between entering spring hoping the phone rings and entering spring knowing you already have eight weeks of production sold.

Run a Sales Meeting That Actually Manages Sales: Not a storytelling contest. What was the goal, what did we sell, where are the holes, which proposals stalled, who owns the next action? Sales cannot live on an island. Production needs to know what's coming.

Don't Destroy Your Margins Just to Stay Busy: When people get nervous about the schedule, they discount, take work outside their service area, and sell to bad-fit clients. Busy and profitable are not the same thing. Every dollar is not the same.

Marty's Fall Sales Playbook (8 Actions):

• Pull up your production schedule and look 30, 60, 90, 120 days out. Where are the holes?
• Put dollars into the holes. Exactly how much do you need to sell?
• Pull every open unsold proposal. Who's following up, and by when?
• Make a list of your best existing clients. Make sure they know what's possible for their property.
• Pick 2-3 services you want to sell right now and build a simple campaign.
• Identify your best neighborhoods and commercial clusters. Work the route density.
• Start selling spring now. Get renewals closed before your competition steals them.
• Review all of this every week. Great companies are always selling.

Reflection Questions

• Do you have order takers or order makers on your sales team? How would you know?
• When was the last time your salespeople walked an existing client's property and came back with an unsolicited recommendation?
• If you looked at your production schedule 60 days from now, are there holes you already know about but haven't done anything about?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

Exmark

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)

Join Us for GROW! Snow 2026 (Dayton, OH - September 21-23, 2026)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #181: Spring may feel far away, but the best landscaping companies are preparing for it right now. In this episode of The Grow Show, Marty Grunder shares how landscape professionals can use the fall season to strengthen their teams, improve performance, and build a training program that sets them up to hit the ground running next spring.

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.

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Key Learnings

Spring Training Starts in the Fall: If you wait until January or February to start training, you're not building a program. You're panicking. Right now you have the most valuable thing possible: evidence of what your team knows and what they don't.

Train What You See Right Now: Training doesn't need a classroom, a PowerPoint, or a four-course breakfast. When you see a mistake, don't just fix it. Teach it. The habit every leader should build is saying "I saw something today we can teach from."

Keep a Running List of What Went Wrong: Start a note on your phone called "What We Need to Train On." Every mistake, every near miss, every cringe moment. By the end of the year you'll have 20 to 30 items. That's your training calendar.

Do Not Confuse Telling With Training: Telling is one-way. Training is two-way. The framework is Tell Me, Show Me, Let Me Do It, Check Me. Most managers stop at "I told him." That's why the same mistakes keep happening.

Use Your Best People as Trainers: The person who loads a truck perfectly, prunes correctly, or closes out jobs well should be teaching others. Two big wins: you multiply your trainers, and the person teaching gets sharper too.

Capture Your Best People Before Winter: Your best team leaders have knowledge that isn't written down anywhere. Get your phone out. Ask them to show you how they do it. Record five-minute videos. Do two a week and you'll have 20 videos before winter.

Train on the Things That Make or Lose Money: Team members often don't understand how the company actually makes money. Teach productivity. Teach why forgetting a tool and driving 20 minutes back to the shop costs three man-hours. Those little lessons change behavior.

Train Your Leaders Differently: When someone becomes a crew leader, their job changes. Now they're leading people. Teach them how to start the morning, correct someone properly, coach the slowest person, handle a conflict, and close out a job. You can't promote someone Friday and expect them to lead on Monday.

Finish This Year by Getting Better: Take the last 6 to 10 weeks of the season and pick one skill each Monday. Fifteen minutes. Reinforce it during the week. You'll be better at Christmas than you are today.

Build Your Winter Training Calendar Right Now: Before Thanksgiving, put your January and February training dates on the calendar. Who's teaching, what's being taught, who needs to attend, how long, and what standard. What gets scheduled gets done.

Do Not Make Spring Orientation Your First Training: Build day-one and first-week orientation now. What must someone know before operating equipment? What are your core values? What does a finished job look like? Training without a standard is just someone's opinion.

Inspect What You Expect: Training isn't over when the class ends. It's over when the behavior changes. If you trained on trailer safety Monday, inspect trailers Tuesday. Your team notices what management pays attention to.

Make Training Part of Your Culture: Training shouldn't be an event. It should be who you are. When your best people are constantly teaching the next 15, you're building an organization that can scale.

Marty's Fall Training Challenge:

• Start your "What We Need to Train On" list. Every mistake goes into it.
• Pick one 15-minute training topic for next week and do it with your team.
• Identify your five best internal trainers and get them involved.
• Record one training video on your iPhone. Five minutes. Don't overthink it.
• Put your January and February training calendar dates in before Thanksgiving.

Reflection Questions

• If a new employee started tomorrow, do you have a clear orientation plan, or would you be figuring it out on the fly?
• Who on your team has knowledge that isn't documented anywhere? What happens if they leave?
• When you see a mistake on a job site, are you fixing it, or are you teaching from it?

Additional Resources:

Greenius - Training platform for landscape professionals

BOBYARD

Aspire

Exmark

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)

Join Us for GROW! Snow 2026 (Dayton, OH - September 21-23, 2026)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #180: What would happen if you let another landscaping company owner run your company? We launched this new part of our ACE Peer Group Program earlier this year with the ownership of Coastal Greenery switching places with ownership of Malone's Landscaping. In this episode, the group that swapped places talks about what they learned from getting fresh eyes on their company and also spending a week running another landscaping company. They talk about all the hot button issues: managing teams, technology, branding, overhead costs, and much more.

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.

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Guests:

• Jim Cali - Founding Principal at McFarlin Stanford, ACE Peer Group Facilitator, Grow Group Strategic Partner
• Jeffrey Johns - Owner, Coastal Greenery (Brunswick, GA)
• Jacob Johns - Controller, Coastal Greenery
• Jim Malone - Founder, Malone's (Seattle, WA)
• Ryan Malone - President, Malone's
• Jake Malone - Branch Manager, Malone's

Resources Mentioned:

• Coastal Greenery (Brunswick, GA)
• Malone's Landscape (Seattle, WA)
• ACE Peer Groups (via The Grow Group)
• McFarlin Stanford
• Clancy's Restaurant, New Orleans

Key Learnings

You Cannot See Your Own Business Clearly From Inside Your Own Business: No matter how sharp you are, you walk past things every day. An outside set of eyes will see in 15 minutes what you have missed for years.

Peer-to-Peer Learning Beats Zoom Every Time: The value of the CEO Swap wasn't in the ideas exchanged, it was in the one-on-one meetings with each other's team members. There's no hiding, no deferring, and no shortcut when you're on site.

Sense of Urgency Is Often the Missing Ingredient: Coastal Greenery already knew about their account manager churn issue. The Malones pointed it out and drove accountability, which turned a slow-burn problem into four new hires and two internal promotions.

Compensation Plans Have to Match Ambitions: If you want to be the destination workplace in your region, your comp plan for critical roles like account management has to be the best. People are the biggest line on the P&L. Treat it as an investment, not an expense.

The Best Talent Already Has a Job: They're not looking. If you want to recruit them, you have to build a business worth switching to. Nice comp is table stakes.

Small Standards Reveal the Real Standards: If not everyone is wearing branded uniforms, you don't have a uniform standard. If your safety rules aren't enforced, you don't have safety standards. Standards you don't uphold become suggestions.

Clear Career Paths Change Culture: Coastal Greenery has a physical board with every team member's photo, their current position, and the next role they're working toward. When people know exactly what "next" looks like, engagement changes.

Tech Spaghetti Slows You Down: Every growing business ends up with a stack of software plugins bolted together. Simplify. The best software is the one your team actually uses. Switching won't fix a usage problem.

Good Managers Make Good Decisions With Good Information: If you don't have dashboards, KPIs, and metrics that show what's working, you're guessing. Every property, every project, every dollar of fertilizer should be trackable.

Celebrate the Team Constantly: Malone's has built a culture of celebration that Coastal Greenery is now copying. Coastal Greenery has built a level of detail and standards that Malone's is now copying. Both companies got better because both were willing to steal what worked.

Vulnerability Is What Makes Feedback Land: Jeffrey Johns didn't tell Malone's team what to do. He told them what he had messed up and what he learned. That's why people listened.

The Value Isn't the Visit, It's the Execution: A great idea list doesn't improve a company. Doing something about it does. What separates ACE members from everyone else is action.

Reflection Questions

• Who has permission to tell you something you don't want to hear about your business? When was the last time you actually let them?
• What standards in your company are being enforced, and which ones have quietly become suggestions?
• If another owner spent three days inside your operation, what are the three things they would call out that you already know but haven't acted on?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

Exmark

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)

Join Us for GROW! Snow 2026 (Dayton, OH - September 21-23, 2026)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #179: Marty Grunder breaks down the $2 million trap, the point where the hustle that built your company stops working. He walks through six areas where landscape businesses commonly get stuck as they grow, from broken systems and wrong hires to weak delegation, unclear structure, loose finances, and too few developed leaders.

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.

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Key Learnings

What Got You Here Will Not Get You There: Getting to two million is about hustle. Growing beyond it is building a company.

The Owner Becomes the Bottleneck: Too many clients, jobs, and decisions eventually flow back to one overwhelmed person.

Your Systems Break First: If something happens only because someone remembers to do it, it needs a system.

You Make the Wrong Hires: Your best salesperson is not automatically your best sales manager. Leadership is different.

Three Reasons People Fall Short: They were not trained, they lack capacity, or they carry a bad attitude.

The Owner Will Not Delegate: Doing it yourself today signals you do not trust your team to grow.

Delegation Is Not Abdication: Give clear responsibilities, clear expectations, and the authority to make real decisions.

Structure Always Follows Strategy: A good org chart answers one question. Who owns what?

Financial Discipline Becomes Critical: Sales are vanity if there is no profit left at the end.

You Cannot Scale Yourself, Only Leaders: Develop managers who can think, decide, and solve problems without you.

Reflection Questions

• What happens in your company today only because someone remembers to do it?
• What still has to go through you that someone else could own six months from now?
• Who on your team could become a stronger leader in the next twelve months if you gave them room?

This Week's Homework

Write down everything that still has to go through you. That is your bottleneck list.

Identify one system living inside someone's head, document it, and build a system for it.

Identify one person who could become a stronger leader in the next twelve months and start developing them now.

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

Exmark

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)

Join Us for GROW! Snow 2026 (Dayton, OH - September 21-23, 2026)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #178: In this short, tactical episode of The Grow Show, Vince Torchia shares the three things every landscape leader should be focused on right now: access, awareness, and action. With a month and a quarter left in 2026, Vince gives you a quick filter to run your business through so you can finish the year strong and set yourself up for a great 2027.

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.

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Key Learnings

Access: What did you not have access to earlier this year that would have made your life easier now? Missing reports, vendor portals, margin data, or client information. Identify the gaps and put a plan in place to fix them.

Leaders Often Lose Access as Companies Grow: As businesses scale and add team members, CEOs and senior leaders sometimes lose access to information they used to have at their fingertips. Get it back.

The Thursday Night Test: If you're laying in bed on Thursday night wondering if Mrs. Jones has paid, you should not have to text someone to find out. Access the data yourself in real time.

Awareness: Are the key people in your organization aware of everything they need to be aware of? Team members, peers, clients, vendors. If it's a maybe for you, it's a no for them.

We All Think We Communicate More Than We Actually Do: Take that as an opportunity to get better, not a criticism. Zoom out. Put things in writing. Make people aware.

Good News, Bad News, It's Just News: Do not sit on information because you're worried about how it will land. Get over the hump, have confidence in what you're doing, and make people aware.

Action: With a month and a quarter left, there's still time to make real progress. Meetings, emails, texts, huddles. Whatever gets it moving.

Action Begets Action: Momentum is real. Crossing something off the list feels good. Building momentum with your team feels even better.

Reflection Questions

• What is one piece of information you wish you had access to right now that would make your job easier?

• Who on your team is not aware of something important, and what is stopping you from telling them today?

• What is one action you could take this week that would create momentum going into the final quarter of the year?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

Exmark

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)

Join Us for GROW! Snow 2026 (Dayton, OH - September 21-23, 2026)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #177: In this episode, Marty Grunder sits down with Katie Roell, Senior Marketing Manager at Boss Snowplow, to talk about why the best snow contractors are already preparing for winter right now. Recorded in the middle of August, Katie shares how successful contractors use July and August to optimize their equipment mix, evaluate their data, train their people, and get ready for whatever the winter brings. They cover forecasting, worst-case scenario planning, sidewalk automation, insurance challenges, and why the future of snow depends on people just as much as machines. Plus a preview of what to expect at Grow Snow 2026 in Dayton, OH this September.

Resources Mentioned:https://www.weathermatic.com/smartlinkhttps://www.bobyard.com/

• Boss Snowplow
• Boss Weekly Snow Forecast Email (sign up through Boss)
• Spiro's (Iron Mountain, MI - Katie's favorite spot)

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.

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Key Learnings

Stop Asking What Winter Will Bring. Start Asking How Prepared You Are: No one truly knows what the winter looks like. Great contractors don't gamble on forecasts. They gamble on preparation. Whether it's a banger year or a light year, the ones who prepare in July and August win.

Dealer Schedules Are Filling Up Right Now: You can't wait until October or November to get your truck in for service. Get your preventative maintenance scheduled now. If you can't run because your equipment is down, you lose.

Your Data Is Your Playbook: You own the data. You are the coach. Go back and look at where you fell down last year. What lots gave you trouble? What routes need optimization? Where did downtime cost you the most?

Buy Equipment for the Contracts You're Winning, Not for the Sake of Buying: Start with one contract you want. Look at the acreage, the services, the ideal equipment mix. Get that tight. Then build the rest of your fleet around that model.

Plan for Worst Case, Not Just Best Case: The worst case scenario isn't a 12-inch storm. It's zero snow with equipment payments still coming due. Or a downed truck mid-storm with no backup. Build your plan around the scenarios you can't control.

Snow Doesn't Give You Downtime Flexibility: In landscaping, if a mower breaks you can fix it in four hours. In snow, if your equipment breaks, you can't tell a client "we'll be back later." Reliability is not optional.

Your Team Is the Biggest Risk in Your Own Head: Owners who know every customer, every mailbox, every curb are also their own biggest risk. That knowledge has to live in a business management system, not in your brain. That's how you scale.

Nobody Wants to Wake Up at 2 AM Without a Reason: People do not want to be in freezing cold with wet boots unless they're connected to something bigger. Culture and mission matter. Value your people or they will leave.

Sidewalk Equipment Is the Most Underestimated Category: Boss estimates the Snowrator replaces four people. It doesn't get tired. If you're in the sidewalk game, labor shortages make automation not optional.

Insurance Is Becoming a Bigger Line Item Every Year: As an industry, we need to advocate for standards and use equipment data to validate the work we're doing. Equipment isn't just a machine anymore. It's proof for insurance.

The Best Contractors Learn Across Industries: Whether it's snow, green, hospitality, or manufacturing, being a constant learner separates the great from the good. Show up at regional events. Find a mentor. Invest in learning.

Katie's Lightning Round Takeaways:

• Biggest contractor mistake: Not preparing in July and August
• Most underestimated equipment: Sidewalk equipment
• Most overlooked maintenance item: Electrical connections
• Best advice for someone entering snow: Find a mentor and go to a regional event

Reflection Questions

• What data from last winter do you still have not looked at? What is it telling you about your equipment mix, your route, or your client list?
• If your best piece of equipment went down mid-storm, what is your backup plan? If you don't have one, what would it cost to build one?
• Are you buying equipment based on the contracts you're winning, or based on habit? What would change if you started with the contract and worked backward?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

Exmark

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH - August 5-6, 2026 and More Dates!)

Join Us for GROW! Snow 2026 (Dayton, OH - September 21-23, 2026)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #176: Finding great team leaders is one of the biggest challenges in the landscaping industry, but what if you're asking the wrong question? In this episode of The Grow Show, Marty Grunder shares why the best team leaders aren't found - they're developed. Drawing from decades of experience at Grunder Landscaping Co., Marty walks through the systems, habits, and leadership principles that have helped build high-performing crews and future leaders from within.

Resources Mentioned:https://www.weathermatic.com/smartlink

• Episode 162: Jimmy Hendricks on The First Steps You Should Take on Every Installation
• Dayton Foodbank
• Aspire
• Exmark
• Bobyard

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.

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Key Learnings

Great Team Leaders Are Made, Not Found: Stop asking where to find them. Start asking how to build them. The best crew leaders come from within your own company, developed with intention.

Great Days Start the Day Before: The biggest mistake team leaders make is arriving in the morning to start figuring things out. That's 12 to 15 hours too late. Great days start at 3 PM the day before.

Ask Where Your Weakest Link Is Tomorrow: Before the day starts, ask what could stop you and where the weakest link is. Then get ready for it. The weather, a missing crew member, a picky client. Anticipate.

A Team Leader Should Never Say "Nobody Told Me": The information is there. Read the notes. Study the prints. Know the plan. Ownership starts with reading what's in front of you.

Group Leaders Are the Ones Training Team Leaders: Mowing group leaders can handle 10 crews. Construction group leaders max out at 5 because the work is more detailed. Land keeping group leaders handle about 6. The group leader's job is to mentor and empower, not to give every answer.

Own the Morning by Prepping the Night Before: Show up at 6:45. Truck is fueled. Trailer is checked. Tools are staged. Notes are reviewed. The morning is about executing, not figuring things out.

Every Crew Member Has a Job: The number two (team tech / team leader in training) reads the tablet on the way to the site. The number three loads supplies, fills seed, fills fuel cans. Chaos in the morning means chaos all day. Organization creates profit.

Get Better From Every Near Miss: When a pintle pin gets missed on a trailer, don't laugh it off. Have a meeting, retrain, and get better. The goal isn't getting to the job fast. It's getting everyone home safely.

Great Leaders Coach with Questions, Not Commands: Don't say "do this." Ask "what's your plan?" Ask "what did you learn today?" and "what could you do better tomorrow?" Those aren't adversarial questions. They develop people.

Team Leaders Think Like Owners: They understand waste. They don't throw away usable mulch. They take care of equipment. They protect customer property. They know if we sell 150 hours and finish in 130, that's good. If it takes 170, that's bad.

Finish Every Job Professionally: Walk the site. Check quality. Take photos, post in Aspire. Clean up. Review tomorrow. Would you be proud to show this job to your family? Would you pay for this work? Would you want this crew at your house?

Pre-Plan, Coach, Review (Jimmy's Three Habits): Know tomorrow before tomorrow arrives. Make your crew better every day. Learn from every day before starting the next one.

Your Crews Are Your Reputation: Salespeople spend 1-20 hours with a client. Your crews spend 100+. How they drive your trucks, how they show up, how they behave in front of clients - that's the impression that lasts.

Reflection Questions

• Are your team leaders arriving in the morning to figure things out, or arriving with the plan already made?
• When was the last time your group leaders let a team leader make a mistake and learn from it, instead of jumping in to fix it?
• If you asked your team leaders what they learned today, would they have an answer? What does that tell you about your coaching?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

Exmark

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH - August 5-6, 2026 and More Dates!)

Join Us for GROW! Snow 2026 (Dayton, OH - September 21-23, 2026)

Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (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 #175: In this episode, Marty Grunder sits down with Lex Mason, the new CEO of Weathermatic, for an honest, wide-ranging conversation about what it actually takes to succeed your father, build a company culture people want to join, and reinvent the irrigation business. Lex opens up about growing up testing sprinklers in a hot Dallas warehouse, dropping out of college for two months to help save the family business, being sent to Houston with an expense card and a quota, and eventually taking over from his father Mike. Along the way, he shares practical wisdom on succession, mentorship, sales, and why the irrigation division might be the last untapped profit center in your landscape company.

Resources Mentioned:

• Weathermatic
• SmartLink by Weathermatic

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.

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Key Learnings

Succession Actually Starts Day One: Lex's dad read him the Wall Street Journal at Starbucks as a baby. The "dinner table MBA" started at 11. Whether you are preparing your kids to succeed you at your company or somewhere else, you are always preparing them to succeed you at something.

Bring the Next Leader In Early, With No Voice at First: Mike put Lex in the leadership meetings early, but not as a decision-maker. He had to earn a seat at the table by first earning ears at the table. Then gradually, "What do you think about that?" started getting asked.

Give the Dog Enough Rope to Get in Trouble: Mike sent Lex to Houston with an expense card, a quota, and a $2 million product sitting on a shelf. That test built the Partner Program that now has 400+ clients. If you cannot let the leash out, you will never know how they handle no leash.

How You Talk About Your Kids in Public Matters: Founders who flippantly say "That's not Johnny's thing" or "He's really struggling with that" destroy their kid's brand equity with the team. If you want the org to accept your successor in five years, start building them up positively today.

Fill What You Are Best At, Not What They Were Best At: Mike is the guy who runs through walls once a year. Lex's job is to figure out how to do that 52 times a year at scale. The successor's job is not to be a copy of the founder. It is to bring the next chapter.

Have a Strong Leadership Team So It Is Not Just You vs. the Founder: When Mike and Lex disagree, the leadership team steps in. Ben on sales, Bill on technology, Brodie on customer success. That takes the pressure off the family dynamic.

A Culture Sign You Got It Right: When Lex was announced as CEO, the most common reaction was "Wait, we thought you were already CEO." That is what a smooth transition looks like.

People Are the Business, Even in a Product Company: Lex's mom taught him to love on people. Mike taught him perseverance. Both matter. Neither is optional.

Character, Chemistry, Competency (Brodie's Three Cs): Character is being the same person at work as you are at home. Chemistry is elevating the room or draining it. Competency is either being the best or visibly working to become the best.

The Irrigation Division Is the Last Untapped Profit Center: Weathermatic has looked inside 3,000-4,000 landscape companies. 99 out of 100 do not know if they are making money in irrigation. Meanwhile, irrigation inspections are the one part of your business you are paid to go find billable work.

Irrigation Attachment Rate Benchmark: Industry average is 5-7% of maintenance dollars turning into irrigation repair revenue. Weathermatic's top partners hit 20%. That is a 3-4x improvement in a high-margin division.

Per Irrigation Tech Impact: $75K-$100K bottom-line impact per irrigation technician when you get the people, process, and technology right.

Immigration and AI Will Reshape the Industry: Labor is getting more expensive, more political, more regulated. AI is getting cheaper. Weathermatic is launching "Link," an internal AI, this September. Both trends favor operators who invest in technology now.

Skipping Inspections Is the Number One Mistake Contractors Make: Track percentage of inspections completed as your relentless metric. Build the pipeline first, then the process, then the technology.

Reflection Questions

• If you have a family member coming into the business, how do you talk about them in front of your leadership team? Would they want to hear it?
• When was the last time you gave someone on your team enough rope to get in trouble, and then let them run with it?
• Do you know what percentage of your irrigation contract inspections actually got completed last month? What is that number telling you about untapped revenue?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Join Us for GROW! Snow 2026 (Dayton, OH - September 21-23, 2026)

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 #174: In Part 2 of Marty's conversation with Phil Harwood of Snowfighters Institute, they dig into the people, process, and preparation that separate great snow companies from average ones. Phil shares how to recruit and retain drivers, why subcontractors should be treated more like employees, what a great snow team looks like before the first event, and how to run your operation like a well-trained military unit. Plus more details on GROW! Snow 2026 in Dayton, OH this September.

Resources Mentioned:

• Snowfighters Institute
• SIMA - Snow and Ice Management Association

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.

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Key Learnings

Preparing to Recruit Is Half the Battle: Before you post a single job, scrub your job descriptions, clarify weekend and holiday expectations, and rebuild your compensation and incentive plans. Bring people on before you are ready and you set them up to be disappointed.

Job Postings Are Not Classified Ads Anymore: You are not paying per letter. Use the space to talk about mission, culture, and why. Most postings are terrible because they read like a task list. Great postings sell the opportunity.

Speed of Response Is a Snow Pro Advantage: When someone answers your ad, get back to them in 15-20 minutes by text. Nobody wants a phone call anymore. Automate this if you can.

Build Real Pipelines, Not One-Off Hires: Vocational schools, homeschool networks, sports parent groups, recovery community programs, laid-off seasonal workers from painting or carpentry crews. If you can pluck one or two out of a community, they will bring more.

Treat Your Drivers Like Franchise Players: Every event, even a light dusting, give them the hours. Buy them Carhartts and boots. Hook them up. The best contractors treat their drivers like gold because they are.

Don't Be Afraid to Train Your Subs: If your sub is a legitimate business with their own EIN, trucks, shop, and insurance, you can absolutely bring them in for onboarding, training, or hot chocolate. The employee-vs-contractor issue is about control, not communication.

Meet with Subs in the Off-Season: Walk their shop in July. Ask about their sweet spot, their backup equipment, their quality assurance. Be their consultant. You are investing in a relationship that pays off in a storm.

A Great Snow Team Is Drooling Before the First Storm: The best crews attack the season with the caged bull mindset. "Am I ready for the snow? Is the snow ready for me?"

Give Operators the Tools and the Training: Weather stations, GPS, live site maps, salt monitoring, cameras. Then train the trainers in the summer. Get daylight hours on every site. Stake sidewalks and curbs. Dry runs before the first storm are glorious.

Ask Where the Weakest Link Is Right Now: Every time you dispatch, pause and ask: if something is going to go wrong in the next couple hours, what is it most likely going to be? Usually you can pinpoint it (new operator + new truck + new site + picky client) and go head it off.

Run Snow Like a Military Operation: Command, communication, and control. Up and down, not sideways. No debate, no arguing, no second-guessing during the storm. Save the ideas for the debrief.

Documentation Beats Power Washing: At the end of a storm, service verification, reports, and photo uploads matter more than a clean truck. Snow lives and dies by documentation because of liability.

Debrief After Big Events, Not Every Storm: Wait 24-48 hours so heads are clear but the pain is still fresh. Identify what went wrong and who stepped up. Recognition matters as much as correction.

The Org Chart Is Different for Snow: Snow commander at the top (plus a backup so someone can sleep). Area managers below. Site captains under them. Operators and shovelers report up. It is a regional command structure, not a landscape structure.

The Two Biggest Snow Mistakes: Not treating snow as a year-round business, and over-committing without understanding capacity. Both are fixable with planning.

Reflection Questions

• If you dispatched every crew right now, could you name the weakest link in your operation before a storm hits? Or are you finding out at 3 AM when something goes wrong?
• When was the last time you sat down with a subcontractor in the off-season to talk about their business, not just yours?
• Does your snow org chart actually look like a command structure, or is it your landscape org chart wearing a winter coat?

Additional Resources:

BOBYARD

Aspire

ACE Peer Groups

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips https://www.growgroupinc.com/grow-2025The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn