IM Landscape Growth Podcast

00:30 Host Rob Murray welcomes Derek Wells (Wells Lawn Care & Landscaping) and Sean Baxter (Lawn & Landscape Solutions), both coaches with Jeffrey Scott Group and both dads of four.02:04 Rob asks for the backstory. Derek shares 20 years in business and why he pulled back from “everything to everyone” in 2018 to focus on maintenance.03:21 Sean’s story: 26 years, design-build plus maintenance plus in-house pools, and a company mission to build people as much as landscapes.06:44 Rob digs into focus. Derek on finding what you’re actually good at and The One Thing’s idea of giving your priority four hours a day. Rob adds the Stephen King example and a Bruce Lee line.09:04 Rob asks what sparked Sean’s people-first approach. Sean tells the auctioneer story: everything he built could be liquidated in four days.11:17 Rob plays skeptic on landscape turnover. Sean explains hiring only from the bottom and why people stay where they can pull themselves up.12:22 Rob asks for a day-to-day example. Sean shares radical candor on skill gaps and his rule that new hires’ hours don’t count against job hours for up to six months.14:03 Rob poses the big question: what’s the primary growth constraint in the green industry?15:02 Derek’s answer: leadership capacity, and the danger of promoting your best producer before they can develop people.16:15 Sean’s answer: systems and processes. Revenue is the outcome; growth is increasing the capability of the organization. Rob notes IM grew faster once it focused on getting better instead of bigger.17:38 Derek’s roadmap exercise: list what drives 20 to 30% growth, list what drives 20 to 30% profit, and focus only where they overlap.18:41 Rob challenges the “we have a process” claim: it isn’t a process until it’s written down. Sean responds that if it only works when the owner is watching, it’s not a system, and lays out stage one (write it down) and stage two (visible accountability via tools like Teams Planner and EOS platforms).21:50 “Software light”: most companies use 20 to 30% of their platform. Rob plays the “my business is unique” card, and Sean explains why your systems go stale every 20% of growth.24:10 Rob shares that he scored 71 on IM’s new Claude-built sales AI coach and immediately booked another call to chase a 90.24:43 Responsible vs. accountable: Derek on using a RACI chart so delegation actually transfers ownership.26:04 Rob asks how to tangibly build leadership capacity in someone willing but not ready. Derek walks through leading with questions: what’s the problem, what’s your solution, what else, and why.29:22 Derek points to IM’s data showing roughly 30% of calls go unanswered. Sean shares that after hearing Rob mention it at the summit, he added an after-hours answering service and got his answer rate back to 90%.31:10 Sean on what he looks for in future leaders (humble, coachable, accountable) and the “bring me two solutions” approach, which Rob highlights as push plus support.34:00 Level two leadership: crew leads running their own one-on-ones and practicing servant leadership.36:01 Derek breaks down radical candor’s quadrants: why new production managers drift into obnoxious aggression and owners drift into ruinous empathy.37:53 Rob ties it back to “clarity is kindness” and asks why owners hold back straight feedback. Sean points to tribal knowledge; a written process makes expectations easier to hold.39:24 Building a culture that challenges upstream. Rob shares his annual anonymous company survey, and Sean explains the confidential feedback built into Jeffrey Scott roadmaps.41:11 Rob asks how to decide what to focus on. Derek recommends thinking time from The Road Less Stupid and explains how constraints rotate from leadership to sales to production.43:27 Sean on niching by customer, not service: serving homeowners “where they sleep.”44:51 The one thing for owners: learn your P&L, balance sheet, and budgeting, or you won’t get to $10M.46:46 Rob invites Sean to share details on Jeffrey Scott Group’s Financial Master Class: benchmarking against roughly 300 landscape companies, a two-day virtual format, and new AI tools for deeper financial questions. Rob compares avoiding financials to skipping the exercises that expose your weak spots.50:49 Rob wraps up and thanks Derek and Sean.

00:29 Rob welcomes Scott Budreau, the brains, sweat and tears behind Intrigue’s Landscape CRM.01:10 Scott’s background: building and implementing CRMs for companies, plus running his own home services business.01:41 What the Landscape CRM is: the only sales and marketing CRM built for landscapers, with about 100 clients and just under 500 active monthly users.02:10 The big question: what’s the primary growth constraint holding green industry entrepreneurs back?03:24 Why adoption has to come from the top down, connecting with tools like LMN and Aspire, automating the five minute rule, and the sales process that comes built in.05:53 The mindset of the most successful clients: tie the CRM to revenue goals, get the whole team on it, and live by “if it’s not in the CRM, it didn’t happen.”07:20 Rob’s observation: 99 out of 100 companies track job costing and profitability, but sales and marketing get no visibility at all.08:42 Operational tools vs. a true CRM, and why capturing every lead (website, phone, ads, referrals, a neighbor’s info on a napkin) keeps deals from slipping through the cracks.10:14 The reverse math: tying your revenue goal to close rate, quotes, leads and ultimately your marketing budget.11:47 How hard is it to get started? Scott explains why your process is probably not as unique as you think.12:38 The biggest surprise of the last two years: how much changes when owners simply start tracking what they’re doing.13:45 Beyond sales: email marketing, social media, Google reviews, and replacing tools like MailChimp.14:29 Ian from Terraforma builds a mulch email drip campaign that generates $75K, then $115K.15:54 Hormozi’s “black box that prints money” concept from the Acquisition.com workshop, and how Ian built one.17:23 Voice AI explained: an AI agent that answers when you can’t, after hours, weekends, or during busy season.20:02 How many calls are you missing? Rob puts the number at 33%, and nobody leaves voicemails.21:21 John from Enviroscape goes from pen and paper calendar to “AI rockstar” with Mary, his voice AI receptionist.22:51 Teaching Mary to pronounce Enviroscape, and the $8K after hours project she captured in the first 30 days.24:27 What’s next: a mobile app, AI sales coaching features planned for 2027, better email campaign insights, and bi-weekly training and open office hours (open to non-customers too).26:46 How to reach Scott and learn more about the Landscape CRM.27:13 Scott’s recommended read: Who Moved My Cheese by Dr. Spencer Johnson.

Insurance specialist Greg Botson from Higginbotham, explains how landscape and snow contractors can avoid audit surprises, survive non-renewals, close dangerous coverage gaps, and lower their cost of risk by becoming a better risk. Rob Murray even admits he's excited to host an insurance episode, which may be a podcast first. 

00:30 Rob welcomes Michael “Palmer” Palmer of Landscape Collective, a guest with a nontraditional path into the green industry.01:11 Palmer’s background: design school, branding, agencies, restaurant launches, and startups before joining a commercial landscape group that had completed a dozen or more acquisitions and needed help scaling.03:11 The core growth constraint: referrals and relationships get you far, then plateau. Most owners dip a toe into new channels without committing the bandwidth or budget to make any of them work.04:47 The myth that commercial clients never search online. Palmer’s counterpoint: property managers aren’t experts in every trade, so they do what everyone does and type “landscaper” into Google.06:06 Proving it market by market. A modest search budget found commercial maintenance leads in markets where competitors weren’t investing. Ten of fourteen brands are now enrolled, with more coming online.08:05 Year one was consolidation: pulling scattered domains and website hosts onto one system so leads flow from online form to HubSpot to Aspire to a proprietary KPI dashboard for a full funnel view.09:41 How he got buy-in: crawl, walk, run. Work with existing tools, prove a win in one market, then take that win to the next.11:12 The biggest recommendation: pick one thing, set it up so you can follow it all the way through, and only then move to the next test.12:41 “I can feel it” is not a metric. Palmer wants to hear that $1,000 in spend produced $5,000 in revenue.13:50 Saying no with discipline. Social and other channels wait until the current priority is proven and running, while cold email and LinkedIn get small, quiet tests in the background.14:30 Choosing the most urgent problem with the biggest impact. Organic growth was the goal a marketing team of one could move fastest, and getting everything on one chassis made that possible.16:08 With lead gen running and the team doubled to two, Palmer shifts to the next big goal: retention and renewal.16:33 Getting sales on board. Palmer converted reps one or two at a time, used early adopters as ambassadors, and let the data spread the word.18:10 Online leads have intent. They put their hand up, and ignoring them makes no sense.19:44 Speed is the number one factor. Top reps respond right away by email, follow with a call, and set a reminder to follow up again. An automated intro email acts as a safety net when something slips.20:14 Rob’s story: a company hired a full-time lead response person at $40K a year who closed $150K in deals in three months just by responding quickly.20:50 Why speed wins with property managers: they’re busy, often fill out several forms, and want the problem off their plate.22:54 What’s next: using AI for speed, data analysis, content, and customer tools, plus a noticeable rise in AI referrals compared with traditional search.24:44 No silver bullet. Know your audience and meet them where they are, from LinkedIn to industry forums.25:00 SMS lead gen: the opt-in and legal constraints, and why lapsed customers are the most practical place to start.26:33 A hypothesis that didn’t pan out: Palmer expected missed phone calls to be a goldmine, but call tracking data showed the bigger opportunity was in online forms.28:08 Where Palmer draws inspiration: property management and HOA forums, industry organizations, and authors focused on perception and audience.30:07 Old tricks, new tech: an AI-powered proposal builder and personalized LinkedIn ads that deliver one-to-one responses at scale.32:14 Lifetime value thinking. Landscape Collective aims for renewal above 90 percent, and an average customer stays a little over six years, so each acquired dollar is worth roughly six times its first-year return.36:23 Why Palmer might accept 3.25x or 4x return on ad spend when 5x is the usual target: a lot of that first-year revenue keeps coming back.37:14 Closing thought: operators bring serious rigor to operations and project management but often very little to sales and marketing. If you’re spending the money, watch what it’s doing.

00:29  Rob welcomes Paul St. Pierre of Landscape FX (LFX Group), a Windsor-area operator in business since 1987.01:15  Paul's origin story: a land developer dad, landscaping at 15, flying home from Laurentian University on weekends to work, and skipping teachers college to go all in.04:01  The scale today: design build (residential and commercial), property care, maintenance and snow, plus Rochester Place resort, a 16-acre supply center, a local publication, a golf course and land development.06:21  The Gordie Howe Bridge port of entry and the battery plant: back-to-back large-scale projects in Windsor.07:00  The biggest growth block: thinking he could do everything and just work harder instead of paying for key people.09:25  The tipping point came with executive and management hires, around the seven to eight million range. Then comes the identity shift from doer to leader.10:30  The question Paul asks his team: what do you need from me? Why he trusts from day one and lets people make mistakes.12:29  Coming back from Florida, ready to plow, and finding no keys and a card-lock fuel system.14:17  The "in the business / on the business" hat: flip it around so the team knows which mode you're in.15:43  Why banking relationships, budgets and strong financial statements matter when you're growing fast.17:48  Surviving downturns by adding offerings and vertically integrating: ready mix concrete, trucking, a supply center and salt.19:30  The partnership with Troy: hot pink salt supporting families affected by cancer, plus Paul's plan for a bagging plant.21:29  The surprise 1976 Chevette: Paul's son, dad and family bring back the car he started in.23:29  The old 220 square foot office (a retired exterior bank machine) and how it anchors onboarding and humility.24:38  Mentorship: meeting Jean Paul Lamarche (JPL), Mark Bradley's influence and the value of masterminds.28:29  Book and mentor shout-outs: Crucial Conversations and Tony Garerri.30:50  Wrap-up and thanks.tbzNBCIYlilHXeo0tvnG