Success in the centennial state

Back when Ben Fisk serviced neighborhood lawns with a used mower he bought at Goodwill, he learned the most valuable lesson in business — relationships are key.

Creating relationships with clients is critical, like when Fisk sold his first landscape installation job to someone who already paid him to mow her lawn. She trusted Fisk because of his track record of solid maintenance work.

The job also helped Fisk create relationships with others in the industry. He met folks who knew how to stamp concrete for edging and others who designed landscapes as a living. His friend’s dad even loaned Fisk a skid loader.

But perhaps no relationships mattered more than those Fisk had with his employees. Two decades later, Fisk still looks back on that job and knows there are things he’d do differently, like his plant selections or where he placed them.

Even still, the biggest takeaway was that he’d need to start thinking about the quality of the people representing his company.

“I hired my friends at the time, as any good high schooler would do. Some of that did not go so well. I cared about it more than they did,” Fisk says. “As I look back on that job, one of the takeaways is, it’s often about who you know. A relationship is how business gets done.”

Today, Fisk Lawnscapes in Colorado Springs, Colorado, employs 45 people and is on pace to pull in $4.5 million in revenue this year. It offers its employees a matching retirement account, mental health services and additional compensation for external training that the company also reimburses.

Fisk admits it’s been a process finding the right team and implementing all these changes. He estimates he’s conducted over 1,000 interviews with prospective employees over the last 22 years, but he believes the old adage is true — Rome wasn’t built in a day.

“Culture is not built overnight; it has been a gradual change,” Fisk says. “There’s still been times… we’ve hired the wrong person, but with each of those, we’ve done a good job autopsying that.”

Catching the Right Candidates

When Gene and Diane Carroll moved from their HOA in New Jersey all the way out west to Black Forest, Colorado, they found Fisk Lawnscapes to help build up their dream home.

First it was a retaining wall, and this summer, it’ll be additional outdoor lighting and pouring cement in the back by their greenhouse.

Their last impression from landscapers came from the guys who serviced their property in New Jersey. Diane says she could tell they didn’t care about the role they played in keeping the properties beautiful.

“You can tell they like working with Ben,” she says of the Fisk Lawnscapes employees, adding that they’ve been such a pleasure to work with, she’s invited them inside for lunch. “I’ve been very happy with their work.”

Gene adds that just recently, when he called Fisk to schedule their new summer project, Fisk came out himself to walk the property with the Carrolls to understand the scope of the project.

“For the landscapers (in New Jersey), it was a job, it wasn’t a business. They were hired and they just did their work. There was no loyalty,” Gene says. “(Fisk) didn’t just send somebody here. He came himself to see it.”

Fisk brought in Katelyn Milanes earlier this year to help him bring on more star employees. Milanes worked in New York City for five years, working in advertising across platforms like social media and television. When she moved out to Colorado, she didn’t know she’d become Fisk Lawnscape’s director of culture and employee engagement.

There’s been a learning curve in learning the company — and in learning the green industry itself. Milanes says the passion she feels industry-wide is especially magnified at Fisk Lawnscapes, where she immediately noted the enthusiastic leadership team in her first interview. She noticed they knew every single team member and their own personal interests and families.

“I was also really drawn to this healthy core value system that we have in place, and we have a really impressive code of conduct that elevates Fisk in the industry for sure,” she says.

Building the Playbook

That code of conduct includes lessons Fisk drew from the book “The Ideal Team Player” by Patrick Lencioni, which outlines a model that emphasizes “humble, hungry and smart” employees.

“I read that book five or six years ago,” Fisk says. “That completely revolutionized how we run as a company.”

Fisk uses the model when interviewing candidates. He admits humility is hard to gauge, but he can quickly find folks who seem arrogant versus those who want to keep crafting their skills. The hungry speaks specifically to work ethic — “we want employees who bring 110% every day” — and the smart is all about having emotional intelligence when dealing with clients and those around the office.

“Can you understand a client’s face when they don’t say anything, but they don’t like a tree you just put in?” Fisk says. “Will you then ask emotionally smart questions to fix the problem?”

Fisk adds that they’ve tacked on other core values like character and competence. He says hiring prospects don’t need green industry experience if they’re coming in as general laborers, but anyone they want to hire for a foreman position must have that experience.

It’s not a completely foolproof plan: there have certainly been bad hires since Fisk started applying this model.

“Desperation hires are never good hires,” he says. “As my company was growing, we needed people, and we needed people bad.”

At one point, they had three open jobs and just three applicants. They hired them all and came to regret it. Today, when he goes to hire, Fisk says leadership asks themselves if they’re hiring out of desperation or because it’s a good fit.

This one question has helped dramatically — earlier this spring, Fisk Lawnscapes had five candidates who made it to a second round of interviews and a couple who advanced to the trial workday out in the field. Fisk says they only offered a role to one crew lead position but didn’t hire elsewhere.

“We’d rather be a foreman short than hire the wrong foreman,” Fisk says.

Honesty Hour

Milanes remembers the interview process herself. She says her interviews with Fisk and with the company’s Chief Operations Officer, Jacob Stankich, included some questions that left no room for anything but complete transparency. She was coming from a position working at an influencer marketing firm, so the Fisk Lawnscapes leadership team pointed out that her possible new role included lots of human resources responsibilities.

“(They asked), ‘How do you plan on navigating a new role that you have not previously worked in before?’ or ‘How do you plan on learning things where we don’t necessarily have other people where you can learn these specific tasks from?’” Milanes says, adding that her role was freshly created and she’s the first one to fill it at the company. “Those types of pointed questions were really great for me because they’re raw and honest.”

That honesty, in turn, also empowered Milanes to ask tough questions of her own, like embracing the fact she didn’t have much HR experience and asking, “What about that concerns you most?” or “Why would I not get this job if we didn’t move forward today?”

“Being able to have those honest back-and-forth conversations really elevated our level of trust between myself and Jacob and myself and Ben,” Milanes says. “I would say from a communication perspective, transparency is key.”

On the Fly

Milanes likens her role —which she started seven months ago — to building a train as it runs.

That means she’s helping Fisk Lawnscapes roll out some new initiatives in addition to what they’ve already done to land on Lawn & Landscape’s Best Places to Work list. This includes their new Core Value Champions and High Quality Craftsman programs.

For the first program, the leadership team is trying to highlight employees who live out the company’s core values. “We will get the opportunity to celebrate our crew members when they're succeeding in these core value areas,” she says. “Then on the flip side, we also are getting the opportunity to provide resources and support to the crew members who may need help in certain core value areas.”

That program also ties into Fisk Lawnscape’s peer review system, where every crew member is asked to review three of their peers with a core values systems checklist.

Likewise, the High Quality Craftsman program will enable Fisk Lawnscape’s best employees to lead lunch-and-learns, and Milanes will help bring in expert speakers to talk about different aspects of the business.

The company also added a mental health benefit last year, where they offer 10 sessions of therapy entirely covered by the company.

Fisk Lawnscapes even offers a 3% IRA match and a clear pay increase structure, rewarding tenure at the company. Fisk adds that they now offer to pay for certifications, whether it’s National Association of Landscape Professionals, Irrigation Association or somewhere else. Anyone who receives certifications also gets a pay raise.

Beyond that, Fisk adds that they offer a corporate membership to a climbing gym. They also have a remodeled 5,000 square foot shop positioned in a farm house built in 1917. “It’s just an incredible blessing for our team space,” Fisk says, adding that they bought that space around 2016 and had to do quite a bit of renovating.

“I think if you start with culture, a lot of the other things fall into place,” Fisk says. “We’ve done a lot of intentional work around that the last three or four years, wanting to be a destination company.” L&L

The author is an associate editor with Lawn & Landscape magazine.