What's in store at the 2025 Business Builders Summit

Lawn & Landscape will again host our Business Builders Summit May 7-8 in Nashville, Tennessee. The event is designed to put landscape professionals who want to grow their revenue and profit aggressively in the same room to network and learn. Panelists Austin Ashmore, CEO of Sunrise Landscapes; Peter Lucadano, CEO of RedTree Landscape Systems; and Jessica Milligan, president of Strathmore gave some insight to their approach to leading a growing company. For more information on the event, visit bit.ly/llbusinessbuilders.

What’s the most important thing about leading a growing company?

AA: The thing that I had to really get comfortable with was being uncomfortable. We tout a mantra of progress over perfection, and I think that's the reality in a growing company. If you want to make sure everything is perfect, you're going to stumble over a lot of roadblocks. There’s the old adage that you have to break some eggs to make an omelet. In an entrepreneurial, fast-growing organization, there's 10,000 things to do and you can only possibly pick 10 of them.

What's extremely important is to make sure that you're prioritizing and picking the right 10 things. Inevitably, that means there's going to be 9,990 things that don't get done, and little fires that you have to walk past and know that I'll come pick these up later and address these later.

PL: One of the best things that I had ever heard and or read came from Burton Sperber, who was the founder of Valley Crest. He used to use a term called “Right to Grow.” After 40 years in the commercial green industry, I understand what that means, and that's the ability to replicate what you're offering to your clients, what you're offering to your employees, the entire experience of working with your company. In order to grow your company and be able to grow it aggressively, you have to be positioned to grow. You have to have strength financially and numerically in personnel. You have to be very confident of your systems internally, that you can replicate them, that you can teach them and that you can continue to offer your clients that great experience.

JM: What's been really important for us is understanding the client that we're trying to serve. Trying to be everything to everybody, you wind up doing everything poorly. We really understand that we're dealing with clients who are looking for high quality and peace of mind, which positions us to deal with a certain segment of the market. The other thing for having fast growth is having a good culture base. Having a strong foundation of people pulling in the same direction and having the same kind of goal, vision and values.

How do you know if you are growing too fast?

AA: The first thing that comes to mind is just organizational stress. We've certainly seen it through lack of processes to keep up with the scale of the business. Areas like finance and accounting can start to stumble a little bit to stay on top of things and get your operators the information they need as quickly as possible. The scariest spot is to see it in service delivery. Things that you can watch out for are, what are your net promoter scores doing? How are clients receiving the level of service that you're performing? That may get a little bit messy. You may see it in turnover amongst your team. There are all these little areas that can pop up and say, wait a second, there's maybe not a red flag, but a yellow flag. And if I don't pay attention, it could become a red flag.

PL: If the wheels start to come off and we're not able to deliver and we're not able to keep our word to clients, that's a good indication that we might need to pull back the brakes. We're in Florida here. So, seasonality plays a big part of that. You have to have a really good grip on what your seasons are. Everybody knows in Florida, for example, in July and August, it’s the toughest time. It rains every day. It's a hundred degrees, so nothing looks perfect. But if you have a grip and you're able to be on your properties and you're able to do the work that you're supposed to do, then you know that we can handle ourselves going forward and be able to take on more work coming in the fall and into the winter.

JM: For us at Strathmore, the values are the foundation of everything that we've done. So having a strong values-based foundation helps us to maintain the culture as things grow. Culture takes over and keeps feeding itself because it's so many people sharing the same values. The other really important thing to remember is that we're managing a people business, so keeping the people at the center and keeping them strong and focused and with a clear vision helps us to be able to serve the clients well, even through super hyper growth.

How do you maintain that solid good culture when you're focused on growing that bottom line?

AA: This is a tricky one. I have certainly made some mistakes on this front. I have really learned over time as we've scaled, we’re over 11 locations now, and I can't be everywhere. Making sure that we're really conscientious about having a mission statement, having core values and making sure everyone really is marching to the beat of the same drum, I think is probably the biggest component. That's only important so far as it leads to the talent and hiring decisions and evaluations of the people on the bus, so to speak. I'm a big believer that good people get good people. If you hire people that fit your culture, they're going to hire more people that fit your culture.

PL: It goes back to listening and talking to your people. Constantly taking the temperature of your own people, keeping them positive. I remember a very good businessman told me a long time ago, he said, I can tell the condition of a company by looking in the eyes of the people when I walk in their shop and when I walk in their office. Are your people excited and positive about working for you? Or do they constantly feel that their own feedback is being neglected? Do they ask for certain tools to do the job and they don't get it? That's going to demoralize them.

JM: We've always grown 25% a year. At the beginning, that sounds reasonable. Then you get to a certain size and you say it’s going to be impossible to repeat that this year. And then you do it and then you enter a different bracket. Keeping the foundation really on values and making sure that your growth aligns with your values and you're working with the right client, you can keep your growth manageable, even if it's very fast.

The author is editor of Lawn & Landscape magazine.