Creative Landscaping
In this episode of the Green Industry Perspectives Podcast, Ty Deemer welcomes Mike Depriest, President & CEO of Longs Peak Landscape.
Mike started Longs Peak Landscape twenty years ago as a college student. Today his company boasts having eighty-five employees and offering full-service landscaping to his local market in Colorado. Along the way, Mike’s gone through the struggle most landscapers go through. You know how to landscape, but there’s a steep learning curve to the business side. Mike attributes his success to having the same employees come back year after year. Keeping a core team together creates continuity for his business and his customers.
You can tune in above on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, or anywhere you get your podcasts.
Become a pro member of the podcast to receive notifications for each new episode and bonus content each week.
IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:
- How to prioritize jobs
- Why good business leaders think outside the box
- How the way you manage employees changes as your business grows
- Why turning down work can be a good idea
LINKS TO LOVE:
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Ty Deemer:
You are listening to the Green Industry Perspectives podcast presented by SingleOps. A podcast created for green industry professionals looking for best practices, tactics and tips in running their tree care or landscape business.
All right, everyone, welcome back to Green Industry Perspectives. My name is Ty Deemer, I’m your host, and I’m on the marketing team here at SingleOps. And we’re wrapping up season four, last episode. Just finished a year of podcast with you all and we’re really excited to continue that. So today we have Mike DePriest on the show. Mike is the President and CEO of Longs Peak Landscape in Colorado. Mike, welcome to the show.
Mike DePriest:
Yeah, thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah. So Mike, we asked guests on the show a similar question in every episode, and it’s really straightforward, it’s, in your opinion and your experience at Longs Peak, what have been the top two to three common threads or themes that have led to your business’s success?
Mike DePriest:
I think we’re really lucky to live in Colorado where the desire for outdoor beauty is high and everyone appreciates landscape and nature so we have a lot of clients that love what we do, so that makes it easy. And then from a business standpoint, just we’ve always operated with the philosophy of being open, honest and hardworking and that’s allowed us to just be consistent in the marketplace. And everyone knows when they hire us, they’re getting honest, hard work and loyal people.
Ty Deemer:
Absolutely. So Mike, let’s talk about your business and your background a little bit just so the audience has an idea of who we’re talking to today. How did you get involved at Longs Peak Landscape? And just personally tell us your journey today so far.
Mike DePriest:
Probably classic story to a lot of landscape business owners. My very first need was I wanted a BMX bike and my way to earn some money was by mowing my parents lawn, they paid me $7, it was about an acre and a half. Took me better part of every Sunday morning before the Broncos games to get it done, but that’s where it started for me. And then, I was probably 13, 14 years old and my passion was snowboarding and being in the mountains and so I didn’t really care how hard I had to work over the summers, as long as I got to spend my winter snowboarding.
So it really started out as a lifestyle business for me, I work my butt off all summer, go play all winter. And I was a kid at that point, didn’t have a whole lot of responsibilities so that worked out pretty well. And as I grew up in high school, in college, I kind of kept doing it on the side and I finished college with a horticulture degree and landscape design background and looked at some of the opportunities to go work in a golf course, or manage a sports field. And at that point, I’d been in business for a long time and my phone was ringing, was sitting in my college classes and decided to grow the landscape business and make it legit and hired full time employees and picked up snow removal. And then here we are 20 years later, still doing the same thing.
I don’t think I would have guessed that as a kid, that I’d still be landscaping in my 40s, but it’s been good to me and I truly enjoy what I do. It’s so tangible, when you do good work, the before and afters are pretty dramatic. And I still love being outside and the physical nature of the work. And it’s been good to me.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah, that’s a great story. Are you still able to get out and snowboard during the winter, or the [crosstalk 00:03:58]?
Mike DePriest:
It’s been a little harder, we have a pretty serious snow removal operation, we take care of about 250 properties, and we cover a pretty big footprint so that challenges that a little bit. But I think I got 12 days last year, which my best season was 104 days. But 12, that’s good for the last seven or eight years. [crosstalk 00:04:24] Kids too, so that’s made it a little harder to get up there.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah, I envy there for sure. That sounds awesome. Well, let’s talk about the business too, just so the audience has an idea of what you all do. Talk to me through what services you offer, how big is your team, what’s the company look like today?
Mike DePriest:
Today, we’re about 85 guys. We’re split pretty evenly between our maintenance and our installation departments. Everyone rallies together to help with snow, when we get those events. We’re primarily commercially focused right now. HOAs, commercial maintenance is kind of what we’re looking for. And on the installation side, we’re still probably more commercial focused, putting in subdivisions working for big box, small box, commercial buildings, getting those landscapes installed.
We still do residential design build, but it’s a smaller percentage of our total revenue than it has been in previous years. And obviously, we started as a residential maintenance company and we phased that out. I think the only residential customers we really take care of on a maintenance basis right now are business owners are or key estates, key properties that you almost treat them like a commercial property in how they’re managed.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah, that makes sense. So let’s dive in and circle back to what you talked to towards the beginning of the show. Just the market you’re in out in Colorado, you mentioned that I mean, if anybody’s ever visited the state, your answer makes complete sense, it’s a beautiful state and people definitely care about what it looks like there. Does that make your market competitive? And what does that look like for your business?
Mike DePriest:
Yeah. I think landscaping in general is just one of the most competitive trades, that it’s exciting in that aspect, anyone can buy a truck, could be a landscaper tomorrow, basically. But the demand is really high here, we’re seeing a lot of people moving into the state. I think COVID really made it acutely aware to a lot of people that your lifestyle is important. And I’m sure some people found themselves trapped in places last year, not able to travel and explore and I think that really added to the demand here.
So yeah, it is competitive. There’s tons and tons and tons of companies and I’ve got a couple friends that we’ve all been doing it for multiple decades now. And every spring, we kind of text each other like, “Hey, you ever seen their truck before? Now, there’s 10 of them on the road.” So there’s new companies kind of ebbing and flowing in and out all the time. And I think one thing that’s helped us is that we’ve been stable in our local market for 20 plus years now and so I think we’ve got some good brand recognition that way.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah, for sure. And you’ve probably built like a repertoire with the community. That was going to be my follow up question is, in that competitive market, how have you all been able to differentiate yourselves from competitors, and be one or a company that people go to?
Mike DePriest:
For me, I think it’s just that continuity of service, we’ve worked really hard to keep the same teams intact. I’ve never used H-2B visa program, so it’s, if Mark’s your guy running your project last year, it’s probably will be Mark again this year. And so I think, some of the GCs and superintendents and estimators that we work with appreciate that continuity, but just the reliability that we’ve had.
And again, our core values, we kept it really simple. We’re going to be honest, we’re going to be hard working, and we’re going to be loyal. That goes with our guys, with our vendors, with our clients. I think that’s just been so consistent that people know us, they know what they’re going to get, they don’t have to worry about us trying to do anything shady, or just… We’re going to be transparent, if it’s not a good fit, we’re going to tell you. If our schedules are full, we’re going to tell you. If we think we can stretch and try and get it done, we’re going to tell you.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah. And talking towards the continuity of your team, does being in a state where you can leverage snow services as a way to make sure your team is engaged year round, has that been a key part to that for you? Or what’s been the approach of that continuity? Because I agree, it’s something that everyone in industry talks about, but what’s been your team’s recipe for success there?
Mike DePriest:
Snow is a key part of it. But I think the perception is that it snows all the time in Colorado, and it does sometimes in parts of the state. But we’re in the front range where I think last year, we have somewhere around 20 snow events, and that was one of the best years we’ve had in the last decade. We’ve had a couple of years where we’ve had four or five events.
It is feast or famine, there’s not enough consistent snow work to hold up the whole business and so we’ve had to be resourceful and try and take on project work, try and find projects that are going to get a need to be done in the winter. We’ve worked really hard to educate our customers. If they call in the middle of June, “Hey, we want to rip out all those junipers and put in rock, could we give you a discount to do that in December when we really need work. It’s in a parking lot, we can do that 12 months of the year. We don’t need to do that work in June, can we do it in December, we’ll even discount it for you if we can start back logging work for the winter.” And so our sales team is always planting that seed like, “Hey, continued service is important to you, keeping our team together is important to us. Let’s work together, let’s all be honest.” And sometimes it’s worth giving up some margin to delay that work to a period when you need it.
And just as an owner, to me, it’s been more important that we have the same team to come out of the gates ready to run every spring than it has been to be profitable all winter. And so we’ve had some winters where we’ve had heavy losses over the winter. It takes us a while to get back into a positive cash flow state where if we lose money for the first quarter, we try and make it back in the second quarter, and hopefully, by July 4, we’re ready to build a profitable remainder of the year, and hopefully a kitty that’s big enough to survive an inconsistent snow year. It’s been challenging.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah. I love that example, though, of training your sales team to look for work that you can backlog into the winter. Are customers receptive to that type of thing usually, what’s the feedback there?
Mike DePriest:
Yeah. The ideal customers are, and those are customers that are looking for a win win and we’re honest with them, “Hey, we want to have this team intact 12 months a year, for year after year.” And so they understand that they’re helping us by doing that. Sometimes we have to discount it to really get them to understand it and incentivize it. Sometimes that makes sense, sometimes it doesn’t, depends on what the project is and what the customer is. But it’s a balancing act, I’m not going to lie, we’re always juggling the seasonality of this business.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah. So is everyone in the space for sure. So, transitioning a bit, I want to talk through big picture, what it’s looked like for you to start this company, basically, to fuel basically, your passions and what you’re doing today, where you have a team of 85 people. I’m sure there’s been quite a bit of growth pains along that journey. Especially on the team side, what have been some of your biggest takeaways of what it looks like to grow a team from you and a few full time employees to doing it to 85 people? What have been some of the biggest takeaways for you in finding the right people for your business?
Mike DePriest:
Well, I think that is the biggest challenge, because the scaling talent, scaling people. And so we’ve worked really hard at it, we’ve invested in training. Oftentimes when you invest in training, you’re qualifying people for another better job somewhere else, and sometimes [crosstalk 00:13:07] competitors. And initially, it’s hard not to be a little bit resentful, like, “Oh, I trained them, now they’re doing great over there.” But then when you look at it, I think philosophically, as a business leader, that’s your job, you’re supposed to train and develop people. And if they do move on to bigger and better things, you should applaud that and be happy for them. If they’re moving on because your culture isn’t healthy or conducive to continue growing them, then you need to self reflect and understand why they’re leaving, but if…
I’ve sat down with a number of guys that they come to me, you can tell they’re nervous, “Hey, I need a minute. Hey, I got this offer, what do you think?” And you’re like, “Okay, that’s awesome, I’m happy for you.” You’re not mad and like, “No, you need to take that offer. That’s way better than we can do, your family’s going to benefit from that. Go do it. I’m glad that we developed you to the point where you can go do that now.” And I just think having that… I don’t know if it’s humility, or just having that encouraging mindset where we understand as leaders, we want to keep all the best people with us, but at some points you got to let them fly on their own. So it’s our job to keep growing them and developing them.
And we got to understand that this business does have turnover, there’s no way around that. And so, it’s hard for me, I like seeing the same people, but it’s also it is nice to have new people coming in and get to know them and learn their strengths and weaknesses and coach them up. But it does take some energy, you got to be willing to dedicate the time to people.
Ty Deemer:
For sure. Yeah, that’s a great answer. It’s interesting to hear you talk about it because I think when I talk to a lot of people about retaining employees, there is talk about competition, that’s one of the most cutthroat parts about this industry. You see it all the time with people being frustrated that you have members of your team leave to go to maybe bigger companies that can pay more right off the bat and do things like that. The humble approach is one that you probably don’t hear a lot in the space because a lot of people clench their fists and get really frustrated, but big picture, that’s how you grow a culture that the fact that they felt like they could even talk to you about it just probably speaks volumes.
Mike DePriest:
Yeah. We’ve always had tried to keep a family type environment. And at times it’s challenging, because you can get sucked into a lot of personal conversations, sometimes personal drama. But big business where you feel like a number, small business where you feel like you’re part of the family, we’re kind of right in that middle spot right now where it’s hard to navigate. I used to know everyone and everything about them and now, I still know everyone, but I don’t know everything about them. It’s harder to find that time just to connect with everyone on a personal level.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah, that’s definitely… No matter what business or what space you’re in, the moment where you looked at your business and go like, “Oh, this isn’t what it was like when I started with this.” Especially on a personal level, that’s always a very uncomfortable thing because part of you, it’s like, “Well, I got what I asked for, I wanted to grow it. But it’s not the look and feel that it used to be.”
Mike DePriest:
Yeah. I used to give the analogy, I used to know where everyone went every day, I used to know what time they should be home, then once you kind of open the gates a little bit, you’re like, “I don’t know where he went. I don’t know what time he should be home.” It gets a little bit different to manage for sure.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah. So keeping on the trend of people, one thing that I’ve seen of a bit of a theme of other guests we’ve had on the show that are people like you in your situation, have been a part of growing this business really since day one, they typically have those one to two hires where they look back on it and go like, whatever their name is x person, “They are such a key part of our growth and what we’ve been able to do, I don’t think we’d be where we are today without them.” Do you have a person like that on your staff where you’re like, “He’s my go to, my right hand man.”
Mike DePriest:
Well, I’ve got dozens of them and so, I guess we’re a sales driven organization that operationally figured out how to get it done, and then administratively tried to figure out whatever sales operations was doing. And so, for the first part for me was getting people to help me in each of those departments, and so I’ve had some real solid people in my sales department that have been able to take that and grow it and help me grow it and leverage my abilities there.
So for me, that was probably my greatest strength, was sales. So that was the hardest part to give up was my greatest strength but once I did give it up and then I could actually focus on operations. And then I developed some people in operations that once they said, “Hey, we got it, we don’t really need you.” “Okay, cool, now I can start working on admin and finance.”
And then I realized I really wanted to be a salesperson, wasn’t my favorite part of the business but that’s where I ended up working myself into my roles, building a sales team, that was easy for me. Building operations team that wasn’t as easy but still a strength of mine. And then I went back to school to learn how to do the finances and looking at systems and processes and softwares to manage the volume of customers and humans and vendors that we had. That’s really been my role the last probably five to 10 years is, I’m in the office and I’m in Excel and QuickBooks and various other softwares that we used over the years more than I am out in the front selling it or building it.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah, that makes sense. So, let’s talk about sales a little bit since it’s what you’re passionate about and what you love. When you think about sales, what parts of the sales process are you passionate about? Is it figuring out how to get to the number or are you more of the relational type guy and that’s what you love about it?
Mike DePriest:
It’s funny to me, we do some disc testing and some personality type tests and we did that and I scored the highest for our… We did disc, like, “What’s your normal personality and what do you value?” And I scored the highest in my company for artistic value. I looked over some of my designers and I’m like, “You guys don’t have very high scores for artistic.” They’re like, “Ah, we do, we appreciate it.” But they’re a little more analytical and stuff. And so for me, it’s the creative side.
My home property is my dream property. I remember walking out to it when I was just bare dirt before we built the home. Had a couple of my guys, my mom was there, and I’m kind of like, “We’re going to do a berm over here and that’s going to…” I call it hand painting, I’m out to just… And I can see they just didn’t quite see it. One of the comments that stuck with me last many years, my mom always said, “You sure like to paint with the big brush, don’t you?” For me that’s big boulders, big berms. I love changing elevation and planting huge trees and making just really impactful things from a design standpoint that turn into being really functional elements. Whether they’re a mountain bike step down jump, or a pathway, or a drainage swale, or water feature, or whatever. I really enjoy the creative side of it. I think at some point, it’s a little bit of a unique eye, I’m like, “Hey, you could do this and that’d be really cool.” People are like, “I never even thought of that.”
Ty Deemer:
Yeah. That’s really interesting, because I feel like in the landscape space, and I’m sure there’s some differences between selling a project and we’re based out of Atlanta, Georgia, and suburban Atlanta versus the landscape that you’re dealing with in Colorado. But some so many times I think, landscape professionals say, “What does the client want? And we’ll just deliver on their ask.” But it sounds like to me, you kind of take some of the freedom to paint them a picture of what it looks like what they could do on their properties. Is that right?
Mike DePriest:
I prefer that better. I like it when people are more open to like, “Hey, you’ve done this what…” When someone’s telling me something, and there’s been a number of design consults where I’m like, “I just don’t know if we have the same vision for this, I might not be the best person to help you get this done because I don’t think I like what you’re suggesting.” It’s hard to do that, you don’t want to lose a sale but you also don’t want to have a lack of clarity on something that you’re trying to design build. And I tell my guys all the time, it’s really hard to explain artistic vision. For me that boulder needs to be this way, turned that way, buried like this, it’s easy to see, that’s the face. And some of my guys are looking at me like, “What are you talking about? It’s a boulder, just stuff it in the dirt.” And you’re like, “No, no, there is some creativity to it.”
Ty Deemer:
Yeah. That was going to be one of my follow up questions to your just thoughts there. How you as a leader, how have you been able to try to, and maybe you have, maybe you haven’t, tried to impart some of that creativity on your sales team? Do you have guys that just naturally had it and that’s why you hired them? Or is that something that it’s okay not to have if you’re more of the numbers guy and about the sale? What does that look like for you in your business?
Mike DePriest:
Yeah. It’s easier to explain it to the artists, the designers, they can typically grasp it quicker than the field guys. I think we’ve had some guys that have some natural talent, for sure, but I think our superstars, we’ve just gotten there through repetition. You’re working, you’re explaining, you’re taking the time to educate, you’re building a retaining wall and you’re tearing it down three times because you don’t like the way it looks. You know you’re going over budget but you don’t want it to be there for the next 200 years looking like crap. So you just tear it down and rebuild it, and tell people why you’re doing it that way.
I’ve had some guys get frustrated, but I’ve also had some guys where we don’t have to speak verbally, we can all be in the maniacs, and they’ll be in the skid, and we’re hand signals, it’s all coming together that rocks level, we’re nudging them up and then you step back and you step back again, get a little bit further. I guess that’s really coming together the way we envisioned it. Just like anything, the more hours you have working with someone, the more you’re going to be able to speak that same language. Some of my studs on the build side have been with us for a decade and when we go build something, it’s funny how little we have to talk and we get it.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah. That’s where that continuity comes into play where you’re almost on the same wavelength. That’s it. That’s when you look around, you’re like, “This is the team.”
Mike DePriest:
Oh yeah. I got two guys, Eduardo and Kenny, and it’s like, man, I got so much confidence. I can send them a text message and I know it’s going to happen the way that we do it.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah, for sure. So when we’re talking about your business and thinking about doing it for decades at a time, there’s just a lot of stuff goes down year over year, and the industry shifts, and you see some things change, big picture over time. What do you feel has changed the most about the job and what you all do? Is it how technology has advanced, or has services evolved, or how working with customers? What’s changed the most over time for you all?
Mike DePriest:
Well, for us, we’ve grown so aggressively that we’ve really had to adopt technology. It’s a simple industry. It’s typically started by owners that are good tradesmen and so technology is not typically a strong suit for landscapers. Not may be too broad of a generalization and that may be dating me, I was born in ’79 so the internet was new when I started college.
For me, it’s been hard to get guys to embrace the technology the way we need them to. I’ve had really good salty old dogs 50, 60 year old guys that they’ve been doing it forever, they know everything, but when we ask them to punch in to their cell phone to clock in for the day, they have problems. When we ask to take a picture what they’re working on so that we can document in the system, it’s challenging. So we’ve lost really good talent, industry talent because of our need to try and incorporate some of the technology. And so that’s been frustrating. And I think it is a problem, because a lot of the older talent in the industry is they either have to learn the technology or they’re finding themselves working at smaller and smaller companies that aren’t requiring that. But I think big data is running the world and if you want to be a big company, you’re going to have to, at some level, adopt that philosophy.
And then there are a few softwares out there that are really trying hard to be the front runner and the go to and give you the sales, the work verification, the job costing, the repeatability that simplifies a lot of those administrative processes. So, that’s probably been the biggest challenge is just technology in general, how quick it’s changing and how slow the industry is to adopt it. We’re trying pretty hard, I feel like I’m pretty good with it but I still struggle with it compared to some of these kids in their 20s that they’ve grown up with it and they’re amazing at what they can do.
Ty Deemer:
Have you seen, with any of the younger people you’ve brought on to your staff, are they able to pick up on it pretty quickly? And are they pretty open to it as well?
Mike DePriest:
Oh, yeah. They think paper is a joke. Like, “You want me to turn up paper time sheet? Why?” Because that’s the way we’ve always done it. I mean, it just seems like it is just a generational thing. And yeah, most of the younger guys, that’s what they expect. But it’s hard to be young and experienced. So, again, we’re honest, hardworking and loyal. We want to be talented and experienced and it just takes time to get experienced, and it takes time to get talent. So by having a younger team, you’re going to be less experienced just by the math of it, but you’re going to be probably in a better situation technologically wise.
Ty Deemer:
For sure. One of the other questions I had for you, bigger picture nothing specific is, if you could go back 20 plus years ago when you were starting this business and give yourself one piece of advice that you’ve learned now about the journey and what it looks like, what would that piece of advice be?
Mike DePriest:
I wish someone would have just slapped me upside the face on day one and made me hire a bookkeeper slash finance person. We ran our company without even knowing what a chart of accounts was for years. I mean, I was a kid, it’s all income and it’s all expense. That was our P&L, just two items. So, that wasn’t anything, I got to my school, I got a horticulture degree. I understand plants, I understand design, I’ve learned a lot through the application of that knowledge. But yeah, the administrative and finance side wasn’t really taught to me in college and I didn’t really learn it. I learned it the hard way, and unfortunately, the school of hard knocks is really expensive. And I left a lot of money on the table by not having a good admin finance department. So without a doubt, that would be the one thing that I would have changed.
Secondary to that, I maybe would have specialized a little bit more. I’ve always been proud of being a problem solver. And any problem, whatever, if it’s your drainage, your landscape, I can probably figure it out. And we were pretty good at solving a lot of problems but I think that spread our talents so thin at times that we weren’t specialized. We had people that were really good at a lot of things, but we didn’t have anything that we’re just 100% focused on, and therefore amazing at. Our service offering was always 100 plus items.
I probably would have specialized a little bit more and focused on one of the niches of the business rather than, “Full service landscape contractor. We can do fencing, painting, concrete, pavers, waterfalls, lawn mowing. Commercial, residential maintenance, HOA, government.” You start just blending all of that and it gets really hard to have an identity as an organization on, “What are they known for?” “They’re known for trying hard at everything.” Not, “They’re the best commercial landscape maintenance contractor out there.”
Ty Deemer:
Yeah. It’s such a valid point, too, because you get to the point where it just becomes too much and you’re becoming like a jack of all trades but master of none. And it makes it so much harder to market yourself to your area, especially when it just continues to get more and more competitive. We hear that all the time. When companies start, it’s just all about, “Alright, where’s the next dollar coming from? We’re not going to turn down work, we need work. We’re going to do it.” But then once you scale, you’re like, “No, we’re not going to do that service. We don’t make any money off of that service.” But you typically don’t know that until you solve your first mistake of having a bookkeeper telling you like, “Oh, actually, that work’s not profitable at all.” You could win a job but lose, because you took it.
Mike DePriest:
Yeah. And then you get to the point where you’re like, “Oh, shoot, I can only send this guy to that job, because he’s the only one… he’s the only guy that can build a fence on budget. But we got three fences to build this week, what do we do? That’s the only guy that can build our water features.” So it gets hard to scale some of that. We’ve always taken pride in being just a real problem solving group but that’s hard to scale. McDonalds doesn’t solve a lot of problems, they follow pretty simple systems. And so taking a business that solves a lot of problems individually and allows that creativity to something that’s a little more systematized and predictable is really challenging for me, especially when I can see the solution. I want to solve the problem but I can’t estimate it for how I would do it, I have to estimate it for the talent. We have the team and how they would do it. That gets hard to figure out too.
Ty Deemer:
For sure. Well, I have two questions before we wrap this up. And one of them is just about the time of year we’re in right now. It’s busy, it’s the busy season, it’s summer, things are growing, projects are going off. And I feel like once we get to mid summer, a lot of people have just an understanding of maybe what has gone well, and what’s not going well, and what needs to improve in your business. What’s been some of your takeaways about this busy season, and what you all are doing well or maybe what you’re going into next year and saying, “Hey, we need to have this figured out before we do this again next year.”
Mike DePriest:
Yeah. I mean, irrigation is always tricky for us. Like I said earlier, we’re in a market where the demand is really high to have outdoor aesthetics, but we’ve been in the 90s and hundreds for most of June, which is a little earlier. I think I saw something yesterday that said, we’re having the hottest June on record in the history of the state. And so again, the seasonality of this business is tough. We didn’t need any sprinkler techs in April, because it was snowing. It rained a lot in May, we didn’t really… I mean, we have sprinkler techs but now we need 4X whatever we had because the demand… and for the next three months, that demand is going to be insane. But then once we finish blowouts, technically we don’t really need any sprinkler tech. So how do you manage these seasonal demands, these cyclical demands with some of that?
So, for us right now, it’s hot, things are burning up, nothing looks good. Any job, any competitor, I mean, it’s just the climate is not cooperating for cool season grasses and [crosstalk 00:35:54]. And it won’t get better until end of August, early September and so we just kind of have to explain to people, educate people, or mismanage this precious resource of fresh clean water, which we’re fortunate to be kind of at the top of the food chain there where fresh water starts in our state and leaves and goes to the other states. But we’ve got customers that they don’t care, they’re just, “I want the sprinklers on all day, every day. I want my place green.” And you’re like, “Oh, that’s such a waste of resource but it’s what they want.”
So trying to manage that with what you feel like you should be doing environmentally, versus what the customer [crosstalk 00:36:41]. So, I think water is going to continue to be the driving factor for this industry in my region, the Rocky Mountains, the Southwest, the West, Lake Pearl’s at a record low right now. My sister lives down in Telluride, and she’s worried about forest fires, they had a really light winter. So yeah, southwest part of the state is really struggling with moisture already and it’s start of the summer.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah, that makes sense. So last question I have for you today before we go, is I always like to finish the episode with this, because we spend a lot of time looking back on your business, but looking forward, what comes next for you and what comes next for Longs Peak? And what are you really excited about with you and your business going into the rest of the year?
Mike DePriest:
I’m excited, we’ve got a software program that we’re starting to get some traction with, which I think is going to really give us some great data from where we are actually winning and losing. When everyone goes so fast, sometimes it’s hard to know. And historically, we try and figure out if the previous month was good or bad, two to three, four weeks after it closed. What we’re shifting towards now is trying to anticipate what’s going to be good and bad ahead of time. And so for us, it’s a real philosophical shift from reacting to what sales and operations does to projecting and anticipating what sales and operations are going to do, and budgeting that on the front end, and then executing that plan, rather than just reacting. So I’m hoping that the software platform that we’re in, is going to help us see and use some of that better.
And the market here is just insane. There’s so much work in every sector. And so, again, just being laser on what we want to do and what we want to go after, and maybe not try and solve every problem that comes to us, maybe just be specific on the ones that do make sense for what we’re trying to do and being a little more disciplined on that front from the qualification and the front end sales side.
So that’s exciting to be at a point where you can say no to work, and it doesn’t feel bad. Being an entrepreneur, I think initially you’re like, “Yes, yes, yes, yes. We’ll figure it out. We’ll do it. Thank you, thank you.” And you reach a point in your growth, where it’s like, “Okay, we got to be more strategic. We can’t say yes to all that. We have to say no.” And it’s still hard for me because I’m an entrepreneur, it’s like, “Oh, we should spin that off and have a residential irrigation service business.” But at this point, we just say no, call one of our other friends. Being able to refer work to our friends that we like in the industry has been really a rewarding thing too. And helping them grow their businesses, it’s been nice to do it that way. I’ve never had any enemies in the industry. I love friendly competitors and love helping other companies grow. That’s kind of the philosophy I’ve taken with it.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah. That’s great, and I’m excited for you all. That’s really cool. Mike, we had a great conversation. The ton of the actionable items that our audience can listen to and kind of take away and learn a few things. So thank you so much for being on the show and I look forward to seeing how Longs Peak continues to grow. I appreciate the time.
Mike DePriest:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. I appreciate the time.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah, thanks.
Mike DePriest:
Have a good week.
(music)
Ty Deemer:
Thanks for listening to this episode of Green Industries Perspectives, presented by SingleOps. If you got some value out of this episode, drop us a five-star review on your favorite streaming platform and don’t forget to become a pro member of the podcast at singleops.com/podcast. As a pro member, you’ll get notified of each new episode, access to exclusive voters content, and be entered into some great prices. Thanks, and don’t forget to tune in next week.