Discussing the 2021 LM150
In this episode of the Green Industry Perspectives Podcast, Ty Deemer welcomes Seth Jones, Editorial Director at Landscape management.
Seth Jones has been writing on the green industry for 20+ years. His magazine, Landscape Management, goes out to 65,000 print subscribers and countless more digital subscribers. Every year Landscape Management comes out with the LM150, a compilation of the top 150 highest-grossing landscape and tree care companies. Ty and Seth not only discuss the LM150 and broad industry trends, but they also take a deep dive into unique ways companies in the green industry separate themselves from the competition.
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 Chenmark stays profitable. (#43 on LM150)
- How Ryan Lawn and Tree creates a culture of ownership. (#45 on LM150)
- Why you always have to be playing the long game.
- Why B2B trade magazines are still viable in the digital age.
LINKS TO LOVE:
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Ty Deemer:
All right everyone. Welcome back to Season Five of Green Industry Perspectives. We have a repeat guest with us today. We have Seth Jones from Landscape Management Magazine. We’re pumped to have him on the episode. We’re going to be diving through the LM 150 List, and just everything that goes into creating that list and some takeaways from doing it. Seth, welcome back to the show.
Seth Jones:
Hey Ty. It’s great to be back. Thanks for having me.
Ty Deemer:
Seth, we usually start off every episode with a similar question, and it’s kind of what are the top two to three trends that you see in successful companies, but we’re going to be talking about successful companies on this podcast episode the entire time, so I think that question is going to get solved as we go throughout all of it, but just for the audience, if they maybe didn’t catch your first episode that you were the show with us for, just give the listeners a little bit about your background and what you do today at Landscape Management.
Seth Jones:
Okay. Absolutely. I’m the Editor in Chief of Landscape Management Magazine. I’ve had that position for going on three years now. I’ve been in the green industry for 20+ years, starting off my career on the golf side. Our sister publication is called Golfdom Magazine. I’ve been the Editor in Chief of that magazine for 11 years, and if I can, the email just went out actually internally. This is another reason I’m having a good day. I just actually was promoted to Editorial Director for the Green [inaudible 00:01:39] Company.
Ty Deemer:
Congrats.
Seth Jones:
Thanks. We were celebrating some last night. It’s been a really cool gig to have and to see it grow. The magazine, Landscape Management, goes out to 65,000 readers in print every month. We’re the biggest magazine in the industry. We take a lot of pride in our print product, but also in our digital offerings. We have a weekly eNewsletter called LM Direct that comes out like clockwork every Thursday and we work hard on it.
Seth Jones:
We put a lot of original content in it each week because we want our readers to really click on the stories and find value in that because obviously we’re selling advertising in those magazines. The way we get paid, because the magazine is free, and if anyone listening would like to check out the magazine online, you can check it out there for free at landscapemanagement.net.
Seth Jones:
Then you can also click to subscribe, and we’d be happy to send you a print issue in the mail for free each month. At the end of the year, all you have to do is click a button that says that you’re still interested in the magazine because we don’t want to waste paper, obviously. We want only people to get the magazine if they like it. Our bread is buttered through our advertisers including folks like yourself, SingleOps, so thank you for supporting our book.
Seth Jones:
We’re a growing publication. A lot of people … There was a bit on CBS Sunday Morning a few weeks ago about the death of the magazine industry, and I sat there and I watched it with my wife. It was a really interesting segment because it gave the history of magazines, and why they were popular, and it talked about some of the dwindling magazines that are out there today.
Seth Jones:
While that’s true, in a sense, the business to business magazine segment, as long as you’re a good, worthwhile magazine, there’s success to be had. I’m very proud of the print product we produce. I’m proud of the digital stuff that we produce. Our website, we’re doing videos and things like that too. Just trying to be out there in the industry because I do think that it’s an industry where people want to learn from each other, and a lot of folks are happy to tell us their stories because they know how hard they worked, and they see …
Seth Jones:
They might not holler across to the guy across town, but just to their fellow journeymen trying to make it in this industry. I think they feel a kinship with those people, and so it’s been fun for me to kind of observe them and talk to them, and try to pick their brains to then help out their comrades across the country.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah, that’s a great little synopsis of your role, and what you do. Congrats on the promotion. That’s really exciting. I think you summarized it well. You talk to a lot of people in the industry. You’ve connected us with a few to be on the podcast even, so thank you for that. Let’s go ahead and dive in. One thing that Landscape Management is really well-known for is their LM 150 List. That’s something that if you’ve been in the space for two months, three months, or 30 years, at this point you know what the LM 150 is.
Ty Deemer:
Let’s talk through first if someone is listening to this podcast, and they don’t know what LM 150 is, can you explain what the list is, and then we’ll kind of dive into how you gather all the information for the list and put it together for your team.
Seth Jones:
Absolutely. Every June we release the LM 150 issue, so it’s an annual tradition for us. It generates a lot of excitement for the magazine. It’s our version of the Super Bowl. It’s the Oscars. It’s the Grammys. It’s a reason for us, as a magazine, to get real excited about the industry and try and celebrate the industry. We produce this list of the top 150 companies in the industry ranked by revenue.
Seth Jones:
The way we compile it is we have a special sections editor. Her name’s Marissa. She goes through, and she watches this thing for months. She’s collecting, we have a submission form that you can do online on our website, and people submit. Then, in the cases where they don’t submit, we use some of the background information that we can compile, and see where they were at, and if they’re publicly traded or whatnot, and the information that we can just gather.
Seth Jones:
We just slap it all together in a big spreadsheet and see where it goes. This year the biggest company, the top, they really haven’t changed in a few years, the top three companies are BrightView, TruGreen, and The Davey Tree Company. BrightView came in this year at $2.3 billion in revenue, so that’s number one. Then, the smallest company, number 150 on the list, is still a big company. That’s a, let me see here, that’s a $13 million company. It’s a lot of submissions.
Seth Jones:
We kind of tell people, we encourage companies that are $10 million and above to go ahead and submit because there’s also information on those forms they can share with us that might catch our eye for trends in the industry or future stories, things that can kind of help us out. The form itself, there’s a lot of fields on it, but it’s one of those things to where you can just fill in what you need to fill in.
Seth Jones:
When it gets down, we ask those questions to kind of lead us to good stories. Obviously, if you’re an $8 million company, this number is not going to fluctuate, and I don’t want to waste anyone’s time on telling them to submit this form. You can always just send us a simple email if you have a good story to tell us, but it does help us to have that spreadsheet, and to keep it close to on our desk here in case we’re looking for story angles and seeing if there’s a common theme that we see a lot of people seeing, especially in what was a really strange year.
Seth Jones:
We knew that this was going to be an interesting list this year with some interesting stories. Then, once you get the LM 150, the challenge there is okay these are obviously big companies, how do you make this content interesting? We look for common themes, common story angles that the mom and pop company would still find interesting to read about how these big companies are succeeding.
Seth Jones:
This year we went with the theme, we did two things. We did a theme on … We saw a lot of people talking about how important it was to have a strong culture in their company especially based on the uncertain times, and how people were really worried about their safety in 2020, with the pandemic, and they talked about how their employees really knew that there was a trust that they had already formed that they were going to make it through this thing together.
Seth Jones:
Is that a little touchy feely? Yeah, but it would make for some cool stories, and we talked to some folks about that. Then, to also kind of nail down the business side of all of this, we decided to ask each company if they could just choose somebody at their company to give us five tips. Just five business tips to help us help the other companies, and what do you see, if you had a dry erase board right there and you were going to lead a meeting with my readers what would you put up on that dry erase board?
Seth Jones:
We saw some common themes there too, but I feel like it made for a nice package. Now, kind of the hard part where it was talking about the importance of having that culture, and just letting the company know that the company doesn’t see the employees as just employees, but part of a family, and then on the other side, the business side, “Hey, here’s five tips. Know your books. Here’s the less sentimental stuff.” We tried to have a little bit of both in this issue.
Seth Jones:
It came together nicely. It’s always fun when it comes out, and you hold it in your hands, and you see it because when we’re putting it together, you see it just piece by piece. I never see the whole thing. Then, when you see the whole thing, when it hits your desk, that’s a cool feeling. It’s pretty fun.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah, absolutely, and especially after what a crazy year it was in 2020, so much fluctuation. I think we can kind of start, I’d love to kind of tap into what you were talking about with the two themes. I know we have some examples planned, but first, when we talk about the really practical stuff, like the five tips of really running a successful business, and how you get to that list.
Ty Deemer:
A lot of those takeaways can be some action out of that company that’s doing $2 million worth of business, can get value out of just like a company that’s doing 15, 20+, so kind of tell me what was a story or an example when you asked that question of people on the list? What was an example that really stood out to you? I’d love for you to share that.
Seth Jones:
Yeah, one of the interviews we got that we were excited about was we got Chenmark on the phone, and they’re up in the Northeast. That’s a company that’s been on our radar a bit. They’ve caught mainstream media attention. They’ve been interviewed in like the New York Times, and so whenever something like that happens, you can imagine at Landscape Management, we kind of get a little bit competitive like, “Hey, that’s our market. Who’s talking to one of our readers, and why are we not talking to this reader?”
Seth Jones:
We reached out, we’ve actually reached out before, and didn’t really hear anything back, but this time they were interested in talking to us. They actually submitted for the LM 150, and the reason they get mainstream interest just because of their recipe for their success. It’s a husband and wife, and then the husband’s brother have gone in together. I think they’re all Wall Street pros, crunching numbers, and decided they wanted to do their own business, just kind of button it up a little bit, and do something family owned.
Seth Jones:
One of the first markets they went into is the lawn care industry. I got James Higgins on the phone for that. We’ll post that interview on our website eventually. I like to sprinkle the [inaudible 00:11:33] out throughout the month. He was a real interesting guy to talk to, and one of the things I asked him was why did you come to this sandbox? What was it? It’s hard work. I mean everyone who’s in this business knows, you’ve got to grind it. He answered really interesting things to say, and one of the things he told me, he said durability was his word. I’ll read you his quote here.
Seth Jones:
He said, “Durability, part of that is related to the core services being offered. Grass is going to grow, snow is going to fall. That’s basic. Beyond that, for a lot of the companies in the industry what you find are very deep and long-lasting customer relationships. There’s the opportunity, when you’re on a customer’s property, caring for it, treating it like it was your own. That can build a very valuable relationship, and that’s very appealing to us.”
Seth Jones:
That interview, to me, was like, especially talking to a guy who I can only imagine his work experiences, and what his life has been like. Now, he’s got several landscaping companies, lawn care companies, snow removal companies, and how different is that? You can tell he’s really into it. He’s like the Monopoly Man now. The other thing he said after the fact, he goes, “I want to stress this to you, Seth, we’re not getting into this industry because we want to flip these companies. We’re keeping these companies. We enjoy working with these people, and getting these companies to be even better.”
Seth Jones:
That was something that I was like, “Wow, I’m glad I got this interview because it makes me feel good about the industry and it makes me feel good about being in the industry.” I know a lot of folks who, 2020 their businesses struggled. Their business was their passion, and if they were in the wrong industry, that pandemic curve ball really hurt them. How lucky were we that we were in this green industry that just went boom.
Seth Jones:
Stuff like that really makes me excited. He gave us five tips. I said, “Hey, what would you tell our readers?” He actually took the time and wrote something up for us, and emailed it, but his tips were get your books in order, focus on the full employee experience, then he said sweat the details, and get the little things right, and then he went on with understand relationship between cost and value, and then he said make mistakes and own then. He went on further. You can check that out. It’ll be on our website, the full column, and his five tips for on the magazine on the website.
Seth Jones:
It was just a really engaging conversation, and I’m glad that we got it in our magazine because I think it was one of those columns where I felt bad that half of it wasn’t even in my own words, but I was like how am I not going to share this? This is better than what I would have wrote, so I’ve got to share what he wrote.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah absolutely. That’s what I was going through. We’ll link to the column in the show notes, the episode. His five tips are pretty impressive because I think they’re a little bit somewhat counter-cultural to what a lot of people would say, specifically the sweat the details and get the little things right. He mentions that they have a core value of chase better every day. I think that’s really a unique characteristic of great companies in the space. There are a lot of people that feel like they’ve got the recipe and it’s set in stone, but the fact that that’s one of their core values is to chase improvement, that’s pretty awesome.
Seth Jones:
Yeah, and the other thing that was fun, these issues, and I enjoy telling you the back story of these issues Ty, because one, I’m glad that you find them interesting, but two, these are stories that I don’t really get to tell. You get to put them in the magazine and you print what you can print, then you can move on with it, and then you go onto the next issue.
Seth Jones:
I’ve got to give a shout out to Larry Ryan and the team out at Ryan Lawn and Tree. They’re local to me. They’re a big company. They’re on our list. I actually went out because they invited me out because they hired a new CEO by the name of Roy Heinbach, who’s a fellow Jayhawk like me. We weren’t in school at the time same time, but I said yeah, I’d love to come up and meet them, and so Larry had me up to his office and they gave me the tour of the office, and then that story just kind of … I didn’t even tell them that I was going to do anything.
Seth Jones:
We were just going to grab lunch, and eventually the conversation started going in that direction. I just got the voice recorder out, and we just talked, and talked, and talked. We talked about the culture up there, and the things that those guys are doing. If you meet Larry, he’s one of those guys that every time you see him, he’s going to ask you about your family, how you doing? He knows how many kids you have, things like that.
Seth Jones:
That’s just cool to me, someone who I know through this industry actually is interested in how I’m doing and what’s going on, and takes me out to lunch and tells me about his business and stuff, and so I put a story together on them too, and their culture, and what they’re doing. It’s just nice to make friends like that in the industry and know that they’re looking out for you, and willing to take the time to sit down and talk.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah, for sure. You mentioned that culture was another big theme of something that kind of stood out, a year that presented, even though the green industry was doing really well, it was really stressful for a lot of people, even though it was like whoa, this is awesome, business is growing. All the different things that were thrown people’s way, it probably put some stress on different teams. What really stands out to you with the culture team as a whole, but I know you talked to Ryan Lawn and Tree quite a bit. What about their culture specifically really kind of pops, or what makes theirs different?
Seth Jones:
Yeah. The big thing, Larry gave me … There is an employee-owned company, and he gave me a stack of paper that thick of all of the philosophies they have on how to make their employees feel like there’s something to work for, they’re in it together. He gave me, it’s called The Great Game of Business is the program that they subscribe to. Those guys, he kind of showed me the things around the office that were there because of their adoption of that program, including this is what the company is valued at right now, and by the way, you go over here, and there’s a dry erase board, and there’s how much we’re paying everybody. Here’s what our line item is for labor. You can break it out by chemical, everything.
Seth Jones:
It’s like there’s no secrets there. In some people, Roy, the CFO, even told me the employees kind of shy away from the numbers. They’re there to do their job, and they want to move on. Others are really … They’re chasing that next goal, and they’re goal-driven. That was really interesting to see. Obviously, not ever company is going to have an owner who is going to say, “You know what? I want the people to own this company instead of me.”
Seth Jones:
That’s something that only a certain type of company can relate to, but I still found it very interesting, and talking to all the different characters involved. They have a guy there by the name of Rodney St. John. He’s a agronomist. He’s got a PhD in agronomy. He used to work for Kansas State University as an extension guy. He’d travel all over the state, just looking at programs and helping people. Now, he wanted to go work for Larry. It was one of those things where he was like, after he went and met with him a few times, Larry reeled him in and said, “Why don’t you come work for us? You can do just as much good.” Now he’s there, Chief Agronomist and he loves it.
Seth Jones:
It’s an interesting team there. You can tell everybody there was really passionate about it. They introduced me to a bunch of folks. I knew that you’re not going to come see the Editor in Chief of Landscape Management, and tell them some story that obviously they’re going to treat me with kid gloves while I’m there, but you could really see the people there who genuinely had a passion for working for this company, if it was the receptionist or if it was the CFO. They all seem to be really, really enjoying what they do, and happy that they’re in the industry, and happy to be working for Ryan Lawn and Tree.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah, that’s really interesting. To me, the idea behind a company, like an employee-owned business in the green industry, do you hear of that a lot? I feel like that might be the first time I’ve ever really heard of that being a thing.
Seth Jones:
I hear of it once in a while. The thing about Ryan is they’re number 45 on our list. I’ll look them up real quick on the spreadsheet. That’s a $46 million company. That’s impressive. They’ve got satellite offices. They’re growing. They’re down in Wichita. I think he’s even expanded into Oklahoma now. That’s a little lightning in a bottle for those guys there to be in that position.
Seth Jones:
They even told me a story about a guy who’s just come in. He wasn’t there. I didn’t meet him, but they say this guy’s had the same job for 25 years. He likes what he does. He basically is the pruning guy. He knocks down the bushes, and does this. He has no real goals of doing anything but what he enjoys doing, and now he’s got this 401 K and stocks that when he retires, he’s going to have a heck of a retirement. Not ever going out of his own little safe zone. Just running a trimmer.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah. That’s so cool, and it’s like just the idea that their retention rates for their employees have to be through the roof, right?
Seth Jones:
I would think so. Yeah. It’s a big company too. I mean you can imagine … They told me of a story they promoted somebody from within, I think he was in Wichita, and he’s going to move to Kansas City to be in the headquarters now too so there’s clearly … The story I told about Rodney. I think an extension guy at Kansas State University, probably really cool job for someone like him, but he was happy to go and change hats to put on that Ryan Lawn and Tree hat, so that’s pretty cool.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah. Let’s talk about just numbers kind of in general. We’ve talked about some of the themes and what you all focused on, but what type of growth did you see from year to year when you were putting together this year’s report?
Seth Jones:
Yeah, for sure. There was all sorts of different … Overall, I’ll tell you that the total revenue on the list was $12.6 billion. It was up $400 million from previous year. They said the average revenue growth from 2019 to 2020 was 8%, and we asked all these companies, what are your expectations for this year to next, and that number was at 12%, so if you go down the list, you’ll see it’s a pretty diverse … Looking at a company right here that dropped 19%, but then there’s some company that jumped up 20%, 30%. We will ask those companies as they’re submitting a form, because obviously we can’t call 150 companies, but we’ll say, “Hey, if you had a good year, what do you attribute it to?”
Seth Jones:
Some of those we’ll break out, and we’ll talk about. It’s in their words, and they know that everything they’re putting in this form is basically on the record. We’re going to share it, but we said it was interesting to see the different things that people were telling us was their key to success. We had a company that said they adopted a program where they were going to … It was one of the stories in the magazine.
Seth Jones:
They adopted a program to where they were going to encourage all their employees to become students, and go back to school and learn about agronomy and what they’re doing, and let’s nail this thing down, and get everybody better. If you’ve got a 4.0, if you made good grades, you got this level of bonus and if you just passed through the course, you got a bonus. They said that was something that’s made them better. We heard people talking about them having so many companies in 2020 that did shut down, and I think the restaurant industry that wasn’t open for business. So many restaurants couldn’t …
Seth Jones:
If they had any landscaping to do, what happened there, we had a company say, “You know what, any client that we had that was in a business that we thought was in trouble because of the pandemic, we didn’t charge them. We still went out, we serviced them. We said we’re going to be loyal to you guys because you’re going to come back, and when you come back, we’re going to be here. They thought that kind of loyalty was something that was going to pay off for them in dividends. I hope they’re right.
Seth Jones:
Living here in Lawrence, Kansas I can tell you some of these restaurants aren’t coming back. That’s just the truth. There’s still work to be done out there, and I think that if you saw that company’s truck pull up, and you know that business wasn’t open, but they were still willing to service it, if you kind of catch wind of that story, that they were willing to stand by that company, that’s probably going to win them some customers too.
Ty Deemer:
No doubt.
Seth Jones:
They think about the long game here, not the short game. Then, just other things we saw were people opening like satellite offices to cut down on drive time, and save fuel, things like that. Other people saying that investing in software, people talk all day software. That’s a common … I get emails about that, just asking me what I’ve heard about that, and it’s like, “Man, you’ve got to call our readers. You don’t want to know what kind of software I used. I use Microsoft Word. That’s my jam right there. It’s interesting to see what people say, and what some of the teams are, but it’s pretty diverse on what they were doing.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah absolutely. One of the other questions I had for you, and I saw it was one of the breakdowns you all did when you produce report was just kind of segmenting the list by region, and because it was such a unique year, and you had each kind of area of the country open up at different times, did you see the impact of that at all when you were building out this report? The first thing that came to my mind was states like Michigan that at the beginning didn’t necessarily have landscape as essential services. Did that impact the overall numbers in certain areas, or was it more like, “Hey, it was an initial blow, and then it ended up kind of leveling out over time?
Seth Jones:
I think it probably didn’t level out over time so much as it just they had to ramp up and catch up everywhere. This yearly report didn’t … With Michigan being shut down. I’ve talked to some of those guys about what that was like, and all of a sudden lose, just sending everybody home, and closing the shop up, and what’s that like? Well, then the day it opens back up, and then basically look at the timing. It’s interesting. Everything kind of started shutting down in March and April, and in a state like Michigan, you can imagine when their season is.
Seth Jones:
Think about Arizona. Think about Texas. By the time June rolled around, and it was like, “Yeah, there’s a pandemic, but everybody’s calling, and we’re open, and we’ve got to get the … The gas station is still open. We’re still open, and I think at that point, it wasn’t ideal in these sense of you don’t want to lose those weeks and months in March and April, but it could have been worse. I mean the timing of it, it was probably a decent break especially up North, that things got started getting back to normal, at least in terms of getting out to work by summertime, and those guys could get back to jamming on projects.
Seth Jones:
Then, all of a sudden people are like, “Oh yeah, let me buy that backyard fireplace now too.” Now, what we’re looking at, now that we’re looking down the road, I’ll tell you what I think the future holds is going to be talking about like the supply chain, and people having to stock up on stuff, and what’s going to happen, The Suez Canal gets jammed up. I mean there’s so many weird stories that they’re going to affect everyone.
Seth Jones:
Gas prices, that pipeline hack. There’s just so many things that are still curve balls coming out way, but I think that hopefully companies are ready for anything at this point, and they’re going to stock up on material and labor. What’s going to go on with the work force, and how much are you going to pay your folks, and what are they getting for if they’re staying at home? Now, I’m thinking about content for 2021, but it’s interesting to think of what are we going to be doing these next few months for the magazine and into 2022, and what’s next years LM 150 going to look like, and what are the themes going to be?
Seth Jones:
It’s definitely like playing Fantasy Football in a sense where is this the year of running backs, or is this going to be a quarterback year? I think this next one’s going to be supply chain, and just being ready for anything.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah, that’s going to be one of my questions that I was going to have for you is you know you mentioned that if someone has a year of growth, you typically ask them what attributed to that. Do you ask any of your participants what they feel like maybe their weaknesses are, or what threats they see coming their way? Is that something you talk about?
Seth Jones:
We do, and some of that doesn’t make for magazine copy. That’s just kind of stuff we might ask. If you’re going to do it, and I’ll be honest, Ty, whenever I write a story, I record my interviews, and if something gets a little bit … Sometimes people will maybe overshare, which is a good sign. That’s me doing my job, but then what I do in return is I’ll send them the story before I publish it a lot of times because I want to keep that trust with my sources and what not.
Seth Jones:
They might say, “Hey, I said this. I really meant this.” Okay, that’s fine. I want it to read the way that you want it to say. Then, in terms of some of the weaknesses and things like that, a lot of those guys don’t really want to share that in the magazine. That’s something they might tell me kind of off the record. It’s interesting to still hear that because it just gives you an idea of what they’re dealing with, and what it’s like to walk a mile in their shoes.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah for sure. The reason I ask the question is kind of what you just touched on before that. I feel like there was kind of a good bit of 2020 once you got through COVID on the back half. The industry as a whole was kind of riding on a high, right? We were looking around the rest, a ton of other industries were taking body shot after body shot, and people are just in their back yards buying services and everybody’s grinning like man, this is the best time ever to be a landscaper or tree care professional.
Ty Deemer:
I feel like it’s still been a good year. 2021 has been strong from everything we’ve been hearing, but there are some … The labor issue continues to be a problem, and it’s only growing. There’s a lot of people that just can’t get, now more than ever can’t get workers, and then when you talk about supply chain stuff, it does seem like there’s got to be some thoughts in the back of people’s minds. How are we going to plan ahead for this?
Seth Jones:
Yeah. That brings in a different part of my magazine where in every issue I just get someone on the phone, a company owner on the phone, and it’s not the most creatively titled section of the magazine. It’s called Five Questions, and I just ask them five questions, and I just kind of condense it, and so that is something where a lot of times I’ll be like, “Hey, what are the challenges in the Charlotte region right now?” Then, I feel like that’s a fair question because I’m not like, “Hey, what’s your challenge in your company right now?”
Seth Jones:
I think even in this last issue, the interview I’m thinking back to is I talked to a guy in Memphis, Jesse Wisely. Great guy. He’s been out on his own for 15 years now, and he’s got a lighting company, and he does … They do maintenance as well, but he was talking to me about the challenges of just getting in electrical wire, and some of the things he’s had to buy like off-brand stuff, stuff that he wouldn’t buy normally.
Seth Jones:
Then, there’s a shortage of plants right now too, and so that’s the weird stuff that you’re hearing that also makes the job, my job, interesting because every issue we could just do like a business story about successful company profile, or maybe like a leadership type of story, and while that’s well-received, it’s that other stuff that’s kind of timely that you’re hearing that … I tell you for sure there’s going to be a story on what’s going on with the labor challenges in all of our publications at North Coast Media because everywhere we go we’re seeing …
Seth Jones:
I was in San Diego, and back to the restaurant business again, but we pop our heads in a place, and we just want to grab a seat, and get some food, and they won’t seat us, and there’s nothing but open tables. I’m like, “Can’t we just grab a seat?” She’s like, “No, because our servers, we only have one server, and we don’t want you to get bad service.” I’m like, “That’s fine, but I’d kind of just like to sit down in front of a TV, and get off my feet for a little bit. I promise I won’t be a nuisance.
Seth Jones:
We talk our way in, and they sit us down, and the guys comes over eventually, but it is what it is. You see stuff like that all the time now that people are having to kind of apologize, and make an adjustment, and then lower your expectations. We were in Kohler, Wisconsin for the OPEI annual meeting just a couple of weeks ago, and we went and stayed at the American Club I think is the name of it. Beautiful, amazing place up there in Kohler, Wisconsin.
Seth Jones:
We asked the question as we were checking in, “Hey, how are you guys keeping your standards, because this is like one of those … There’s like that list of the great resorts of America, and they’re always on it. You can tell that they were ready with the answer. She said, “We are only booking enough guests in order to be able to maintain our standards of excellence.” It’s like that makes sense to me. You’re not booking a whole …
Seth Jones:
There were some of the restaurants were closed at the place. Some of the bars weren’t open. Some of the shops weren’t open but they had enough open that they could accommodate the crowd that was there. I just wonder, that trickles down to everybody, so what is a guy like Jesse do when he’s got more work than he can handle. Is he going to lower the expectations of his customers, or is he just going to take less work? That’s the question there because you don’t want … Your good name is worth more than overextending yourself.
Seth Jones:
I think that’s definitely going to be something that’s going to be a fun … If any of your listeners are listening to this right now, and if that resonates with them at all, send me an email. Those are the stories that I’m really interested in right now, and how are people handling something like that?
Ty Deemer:
Yeah, and there’s no like silver bullet solution for labor. There was no silver bullet before you entered all this stuff with just what’s really impacted the pool of workers you can have, but I think part of it goes back to the themes that you’re talking about with the company culture too. It seems like, to an extent, it’s like going to be the onus on the employer to make it a worthwhile experience to work somewhere.
Ty Deemer:
I don’t know, I definitely empathize with people that are going through it because I think it’s something that no matter if you’re in the green industry or the service industry as a whole, companies far and wide are experiencing it. People just getting to the point where if they’re in a more technical world like we are, there’s transitions happening there as well. It’s pretty interesting time.
Seth Jones:
Yeah, that’s interesting that you said that. In that same magazine, I interviewed Susan McGee. She’s the owner of Lawn Doctor of Wilmington in Brunswick County in North Carolina, and I asked her what she thought was going to be a trend. I don’t know if this made my interview or not because I always ask more questions than I can use, just to make sure I get enough content, but I asked her what a trend she thought was going to be, and she said, “HR.” I said, “What do you mean HR?” She said, “Human resources.” She goes, “We need so much help now with …” It kind of came to that … I think she was kind of trying to say it used to be you came to work, you worked all day, and then you went home.
Seth Jones:
Now, I’ve got people coming. They want to work this much, but then they’ve got to do this. How do I handle that as a company owner. “What do you got to do this afternoon? No, it’s a 9-5. Culturally it’s just changed. Then, the pandemic made it even … Her point was the pandemic has made it worse to where you have to be even more flexible with your employees now, and she said that she thinks it used to be that HR wasn’t something that she worried about at all. Now, it’s something that she’s like I need a bigger HR support staff just to answer these questions that I don’t understand that he challenges of the employee brings to the table.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah. That’s such an interesting point. I would love to do like a poll. Maybe you should do this because you definitely have a bigger audience than I do, but ask like currently on your team, do you have an HR person on staff? I would be really surprised if more than like 20% have that type of dedicated role in their business.
Seth Jones:
Yeah, not to try to paint the industry with one color brush, but you think about a lot of the folks that work in the industry, they’re the kind of guys and ladies who you knick your finger, rub some dirt on it, get back to work. This company is full of tough people, tough, hard-working people. Yeah, to the HR department, it’s probably not something that you’ll see too often and is not something that was really high on the list. Now, especially obviously these big companies, they’ve got to have a huge HR staff, but on a smaller company yeah, it it used to be you can tell your feelings when you’re out on the mower. Just say it out loud. That’s good enough for us.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah, exactly. As we’re wrapping up, kind of what I’d like to finish up with is like from your perspective, being someone that gets to talk to all these people while you’re collecting this list, and putting it together, what’s your favorite part about it? What for you makes this such an enjoyable experience, and then kind of what were your takeaways when you finished this year’s version of it?
Seth Jones:
For me, I think what’s so exciting about it is, and I am an old-school print guy. I’ve been always been really fond of getting magazines and reading them, and I love it that people enjoy our list, and they’re excited for it because I’m excited about it, but that doesn’t matter. I have to have the excitement for it because I’ve got to create the content working with my team, we’re creating the content, we’re trying to make something that’s readable, but when our readers then like look back at you and are excited about it, that’s what’s really cool.
Seth Jones:
This is an issue that annually we feel good about. I mean it’s a little bit of a … It can be chaotic putting it together, and figuring out who we’re going to put on the cover. Where’s that shoot going to be? What’s it going to look like? Then, when the reception comes back, and people are like, “Yeah, I read that. That was cool.” That’s the most rewarding thing because to have my job, the worst part of my job is to do something and then if it doesn’t get like any kind of response, either on social media, or you don’t really hear about it after the fact, you’re kind of like, “Huh, did that story not resonate? Was it just not timely? Is it the wrong time of year or that story?”
Seth Jones:
I don’t expect every story or every cover story to be a home run, but you don’t want to strike out either, especially [inaudible 00:40:23] for me, and my takeaways from it is just the … When we were at that OPEI meeting, Rick Olson, CEO of the Toro company, was up on stage, and he said, “We were the heroes of that story. Our industry was really the heroes.” I thought that was pretty cool. I agree. I think that there was a lot of folks who really came to appreciate what our industry does, and that’s probably my takeaway is that as things are starting to get back to normal and then like I said, I’m going on a vacation here soon.
Seth Jones:
I’m looking forward to just kicking back and relaxing a little bit, and going somewhere with just some beautiful scenery, and seeing some stuff that I haven’t seen in a while. That’s all our folks. That’s what we do, and our readers do. That’s pretty cool to be able to, me, and my wife, and kids are going to go enjoy some outdoor beauty in a different state, and I like it that as I see the mower go by, as I see a crew go by, I kind of know what those guys are all about, and that didn’t come together just overnight. There was some effort that came together right there.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah, that happened to me the other day. We’re kind of going back into our office a little bit, and I was walking to lunch, there’s a place I go to right around the corner from our office building, and I walked outside and took a right, and I actually saw one of our customer’s trucks outside working on the property. There’s something about being in this space, and even though I’m not on a truck every day, going from property to property, I do talk to a lot of these people, and it’s so cool to know when you’re there, you know what work they’re doing, and you probably know a little bit, or an idea behind who’s doing it. That really is a rewarding part about what we do.
Seth Jones:
Yeah. Yeah. You can’t walk across the street without seeing some of our guys somewhere. That’s the cool thing about being an LM too. We’ve got everybody. We consider everybody part of the LM family. That’s fun.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah. Seth, thank you so much for joining us and breaking down this year’s LM 150. If you’re listening to this episode, and you haven’t gotten a chance, check out not only the list itself, but the stories Seth and his team have been putting together. I really encourage you to do it. There’s some great takeaways from it ranging from things about company and culture, but then also really practical takeaways of just lists of things you can begin thinking about implementing in your business. Seth, thanks again for joining us, and look forward to talking to you again soon.
Seth Jones:
Okay Ty, appreciate it. You have a great weekend, and I’m always happy to come talk to you guys. Appreciate what you guys do as well.
Ty Deemer:
Yeah. Absolutely. Have a good vacation.
Seth Jones:
Okay. Thanks Ty.