Sergi: Landscaping CEO’s Secret to Growth: Fixing the Leader Bottleneck

Update: 2025-10-02

Description

Timestamp	Topic
01:04	From Hobby to CEO: Tiffany Sergi's journey to leading Landscapes by D&J after quitting nursing school to take over the business.
02:27	The Primary Growth Constraint: Leaders themselves being a bottleneck is the biggest thing holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry.
03:10	Changing Culture: How self-reflection and implementing core values changed the company culture, starting with the leader.
03:59	The Core Values "FEATT" Acronym: Fun/Family, Excellence, Accountability, Transparency, and Teamwork.
07:19	Authentic Reinforcement: Creating a weekly core value winner who receives $20 to reinforce desired behavior.
09:56	Business Scale: Landscapes by D&J is currently around $4 million in revenue, aiming to flip to 70% commercial.
10:30	Personal Hurdles: Overcoming imposter syndrome as a female leader in a technical industry and hiring a fractional CFO to manage financial analysis.
11:47	The Superpower of Support: Acknowledging weaknesses and bringing in strong support (SME, fractional CFO) is a critical leadership style.
13:20	Fighting Imposter Syndrome: Reflecting on past successes and the team created to shift the framework and focus on the mission.
14:49	The Delegation Hurdle: The next biggest constraint is still being the bottleneck by having a hard time delegating ("I can do it quicker").
17:47	Balancing Profit and Capacity: How adding administrative salaries (heavy G&A) is an investment that frees up the CEO for higher-leverage, revenue-capturing activities.
20:48	The Accountability Chart Exercise (EOS): Placing roles and tasks in buckets, not people, to identify where tasks fall and reveal necessary new positions (like Director of Operations).
24:49	The Hard Part of Leadership: Tiffany walks through the difficult process of terminating employees, grounding the decision in the company's core values.
27:52	The Arrogance of Cocooning: The flawed thought process of keeping someone for the sake of "not messing up their life" at the expense of the whole company.
29:30	The Biggest Lesson: "Look in the mirror and not through the window." The culture is a reflection of the leader.
30:36	Resource Recommendations: Traction, How to Be a Great Boss (Gino Wickman/EOS), and Leaders Eat Last (Simon Sinek).