NALP event gets rebranded as ELEVATE

The National Association of Landscape Professionals has rebranded their LANDSCAPES event as ELEVATE, which will kick off September 2022 in Orlando.

NALP CEO Britt Wood made the announcement during the opening session of LANDSCAPES 2021. The event will move to November in 2024. You can learn more by clicking here.

Wood also announced 4 NALP awards including Lawn & Landscape columnist, Bruce Wilson of Wilson & Co. consulting group, as the Lifetime Leadership award winner.  

Other winners included:

2021 Advocacy Award: Brandon Sheppard, Weed Man

2021 Young Entrepreneur: Andrew Ziehler, Ziehler Lawn & Tree Care 

Woman Entrepreneur of the Year: Loriena Harrington; Beautiful Bloom

Opening keynote: Kaihan Krippendorff focused on 5 steps to generate the fourth option and outthink your competition.

The "fourth option," as Krippendorff said, is the option that your competition hasn’t considered. He said there is a point where people stop thinking and they stop looking for new options, but you have to go beyond that point to beat your competition.  

He used the example of American high-jumper Dick Fosbury, who used a different way to perform a high jump. Prior to Fosbury, there were a few different ways to high-jump until Fosbury came along and did what came to be known as the Fosbury Flop. 

The 5 steps are:

1. Imagine the future

2. Dissect your business mode: Explore multiple points of differentiation.

3. Expand your strategic options: generate 40-150 options: “You have to prepare for the future while focusing on today,” he said. 

4. Analyze and choose options: Take a crazy idea and work on it. How can you turn it into a winning idea. Competition will laugh at you but use that time to focus on it, he said.

5. Sell your strategy