0:00: Highlights from the FNGLA Landscape Show in Orlando, FL
Just how many worms did Rodney bring to The Landscape Show in Orlando, Florida? Find out in today's episode, where I interview some really interesting people down here, including one person who shares how you can build relationships with your local college to find highly qualified employees for your landscape company or nursery. I also talk with somebody who started a new website software company that builds e-commerce websites for garden centers and has this really interesting AI tool that your customers can ask plant questions to, and it sources data from local colleges. So, really interesting stuff today, plus how you can source new plants that you may not have thought of for your landscape company.
Hey, everyone, Jack Jostes here, and welcome to The Landscaper’s Guide podcast, where we share sales, marketing, and leadership ideas to help you grow your snow and landscape company. Right now, I'm in Orlando, Florida at the FNGLA's Landscape Show. I just presented The Landscaper’s Guide to Modern Sales and Marketing. It was a great presentation, and I love coming to these shows because I get to connect with people in the industry. I've been wanting to come to this show for a long time, so thank you, Billy and Linda, for hiring me to come here.
Hey, if you enjoy this show, I'd love to send you some beef jerky and a marketing field guide to help you figure out how to get more of your leads finding you online. Check out landscapersguide.com/toolbox, see our show notes for a link, and let's get into some interviews with some people I met in Florida.
1:46: Meet Rodney Eaton from Eaton Worms in Orlando, FL
We’re at the Eaton Worms…
Rodney Eaton:
Booth.
Jack Jostes:
Booth, thank you, at The Landscape Show in Orlando. This is amazing. I was walking by and Rodney's like, "Hey, Jack." He just read my name tag. We end up having a great chat. You started this though-
Rodney Eaton:
I did.
Jack Jostes:
... because you enjoy fishing, and you couldn't find a good supplier of worms.
Rodney Eaton:
Right. I live here in Orlando, Florida, and there's great excellent bass fishing around here. All my friends, when we tried to hunt down worms, we couldn't find it. Even our go-to Walmart, it's tricky to find them because people go in there and dig out and look for them and hide them. So, I started growing my own worms and collecting them. And then after a long time, I'm in 20 different gas stations now across Central Florida here.
And then over time, my girlfriend came up to me and she was like, "Give me some of that black gold in your worm bins." I'm like, "What is black gold?" She's like, "I want the worm castings. That's awesome fertilizer. It's a natural organic fertilizer for your plants." I was like, "What?" I did some more research on that, and then it turns out that it is. It's a biological life ecosystem in itself with all the bacteria and the beneficial enzymes that it creates that, now, we do still sell fishing bait, worms for fishing.
Jack Jostes:
You couldn't get live bait, and you're like, "You know what? I'm just going to grow my own worms." Where did you get them? How did you get started? Did you buy a kit on Amazon, or did you?
Rodney Eaton:
I did. I started on Amazon. I looked on Amazon, and I found a supplier on Amazon. I like to go big, so I bought a couple pounds of them. I spent about $500 to start out, and I didn't know what I was doing. I just threw them in the bin and they all escaped. They ran away. I went back. My friends were like, "Let's go get some worms. We're going fishing." I looked in my bin and they were all gone, because I didn't understand how to raise worms. It was either temperature, heat. There were cracks in my bin. They were escaping out the bottom. I didn't even have a floor on.
Jack Jostes:
Was this in your basement or in your yard?
Rodney Eaton:
This was my backyard.
Jack Jostes:
Luckily, it was outside.
Rodney Eaton:
Yeah, it was in my backyard. I just used cinder blocks and created a little square thing and put all the worms in there. When I went back in two days, they were all gone. They went out and drained out through the ground, or either crawled out.
Jack Jostes:
Typically, at least where I'm from, when you go to Walmart or wherever the gas station you get worms, you're getting nightcrawlers. Is that what you started with?
Rodney Eaton:
Well, we have them over here. We got 10,000 European nightcrawlers in this bucket right now to show people. You wouldn't think this bucket could hold 10,000 European nightcrawlers, but there's 10,000 European nightcrawlers. Or they're also known commonly as Super Reds.
Jack Jostes:
Do they get bigger than this?
Rodney Eaton:
Not much bigger.
Jack Jostes:
Okay.
Franny:
These are European nightcrawlers.
Jack Jostes:
Yes, the ones that you buy at…
Franny:
There's Canadian and African, which are larger.
Rodney Eaton:
And they're the bigger ones.
Jack Jostes:
What are the big ones?
4:24: Florida Fishermen: What Type of Worm You Want to Use
Rodney Eaton:
The African are the biggest. And then, the Canadian nightcrawler, and the European nightcrawlers. Now, the reason why we went to the European nightcrawlers is because of the temperature range. We live here in Florida, so these European nightcrawlers thrive in 60 to 80 degree temperatures, whereas Canadian nightcrawlers prefer cooler temperatures, and African nightcrawlers prefer hotter temperatures. Now, these red wigglers here are a lot smaller. There's 5,000 of these in here in this little bucket. But as you can see…
Jack Jostes:
Those are much smaller.
5:15: Which Type of Worms are Best for Composting
Rodney Eaton:
Much smaller, but they're ferocious eaters.
Franny:
Those are for compost?
Rodney Eaton:
Yeah, these are compost. And then when you could put them down, you could just look at them like waterfall out of my hands. But they're ferocious eaters and they eat a lot faster, and they work great together in our bins because the red wigglers like to live on the top two, three inches of your soil, and the European nightcrawlers live in the bottom six to eight inches of your soil. They work nicely together for our bins to eat up the whole thing.
Jack Jostes:
Wow, that's awesome. How many worms do you have?
Rodney Eaton:
We have over a million worms in our bin. We got over 40 bins, about 15 cubic feet each bin.
5:30: Where Can You Find Eaton Worms?
Jack Jostes:
Who are your customers?
Rodney Eaton:
Right now, we're in about 20 different garden centers across Florida, from Daytona down to Miami, east to west coast. And then, we also have gas stations that we provide our bait for because I'm still in the love of fishing, and we got 20 different gas stations. These are our bait containers that you'll see around in our gas stations here.
Jack Jostes:
Oh, nice. Eaton Worms.
Rodney Eaton:
Yeah.
Jack Jostes:
European nightcrawlers. Fish love them. Do large mouth bass eat these things up?
Rodney Eaton:
Yes, sir. We evolved as a business, and the soil is where it took us. There's more need for worms to regenerate this earth and bring the... For years, 50 plus years, we've been pumping our earth with synthetics, and that's just depreciating all the living organisms in our soils. Now, people are understanding that and they're coming back and they're reviving their soils again with our fresh castings that has all the bacteria and enzymes that you need to replenish your soils.
Jack Jostes:
You're saving the world with worms.
Rodney Eaton:
Yes. One wheelbarrow of food at a time.
Jack Jostes:
There you go. I love it.
6:40: How Rodney is Partnering with Local Grocery Stores to Produce the Healthiest Soil
Rodney Eaton:
And we're keeping all this food that we get donated from grocery stores, produce stores that are going to go set for landfill. They're donating it to us to feed our worms. So, we're keeping landfill out. We're producing soil in the healthiest soils that are the highest NPK levels on the market.
Jack Jostes:
You've even got a federal judge…
Franny:
That's right.
Rodney Eaton:
I even got... Hey, she keeps this in line.
Jack Jostes:
I bet.
Rodney Eaton:
We are a straight business.
Jack Jostes:
I would think so.
Rodney Eaton:
No shortcuts with Franny involved here. She's by the book. Everything is by the book.
Jack Jostes:
Franny, the federal judge. Love it. Where can people find you online?
7:15: How to Connect with Rodney from Eaton Worms Online
Rodney Eaton:
We got Eatonworms.com. We own Eaton Worms, all platforms. Eatonworms.com is our website. And then, we got Eaton Worms Facebook page, Eaton Worms Instagram, Eaton Worms YouTube.
7:49: How Earthworms are Saving the Soil Through Natural Growth Cycles
Jack Jostes:
Franny, what do you like about Eaton Worms? Why is this your side hustle? What do you do here?
Franny:
One is because I get to work with Rodney every day. I have to give him a lot of credit. But the main thing for me is, and I think Rodney's touched on this, we're taking what is a product that's a natural product to the earth. It's the hardest worker on the earth, the worm, and we are using every product, and then putting that product back into the environment. It's all natural. It contains its own natural pesticides. We're not having to add pesticides to our product. The products are growing better, we're having better growth, we're helping people create better home gardens and vegetables. And then, once those scraps, as Rodney said, come back to us, we're regenerating and using that. What we would recommend is we would recommend if you had soil, we would recommend you would take some of our natural fertilizer, which are the worm castings, and add it to that soil to create the healthiest soil.
If you, depending again on the size of the bed, you also could use two types of worms, the nightcrawlers and the compost worms and put that in the bed. Now if you are getting foliage and things, those compost worms are going to eat at that foliage on the top two layers, like Rodney said. And then, those nightcrawlers are going to go in six to eight inches. They're going to work around your root systems, eat any bacteria, make sure you don't get any root rot. So once they're in there and they're happy, they're easy to maintain. As long as you're regularly watering and doing the things you need to do, that soil's going to continue to stay a really nice healthy soil so that you can grow the best plants and vegetables, herbs, whatever you may be growing. And then, what you would take is just the castings every couple of months and sprinkle it along the top.
9:05: What are Worm Castings & why is it so valuable?
Jack Jostes:
What are castings?
Franny:
Worm castings are worm poop. It is the byproduct of the worm. What we say is what we're putting in, which are these fresh fruits and vegetables, that's what they're ingesting, and what's coming out are our high NPK level castings. That's why we have the highest rated NPKs because we're not just feeding cardboard, which has no nutritional values. When you take our castings and put that onto your product, all those nutrients are going into the plant. I mentioned the thing about the repellent, it also creates an enzyme called [inaudible 00:09:43], which once those plants absorb that, they have a natural repellent then against anything that has chitin in it or chitin. That is the exoskeleton of a lot of bugs that naturally go after your plants. So aphids, white flies, cockroaches, things like that, that have that exoskeleton, they're going to now have that natural repellent and you're not going to have any bug issues, so you're not having to put pesticides on your plants. We all know pesticides. You're rinsing your fruits and vegetables constantly. You don't want that on your food. You don't have to do that with our product.
Jack Jostes:
Cool. Well, thanks so much for coming on The Landscaper's Guide and sharing your story.
10:23: Introducing Mike Lord from Artificial Grass Warehouse
We are here with Mike Lord from Artificial Grass Warehouse. I was walking by and your team volunteered you to be on the podcast with a sales and marketing tip, and you were about to tell me.
Mike Lord:
Oh yes, yes. I handle a lot of the sales and training in the company. One of the things that we stress to our salespeople is building rapport with our guys. So, building rapport with our customers, following up with them comes next. Building the rapport outside of the job, finding out how their family is, what they do outside of work, building a nice friendship with them, or like I said, the rapport.
10:57: Mike Shares The Most Critical Component for Training His Salespeople
And then once you have it, then following up I think is the most important thing after that. We always preach follow up, follow up, follow up. It doesn't do us any good to do a whole bunch of work up until the point to build the relationship and then we never talk to them again. I think it's really important, especially in our industry, to have that rapport, consistently following up with other companies, letting them know about the new trends that are happening in the industry. Also letting them know about new products that we have coming out, things of that nature.
Jack Jostes:
I agree. Building rapport and following up with people are really important. What are some of the ways, once you've established that relationship, that you've found that are effective for following up without being annoying? Because there's the balance of following up and being persistent and being helpful. What are some of the ways that you do it personally maybe?
11:44: How Mike Prioritizes & Executes a Prospect Followup System that Gets Results
Mike Lord:
Personally, the way we do things is we'll follow up with them every week or two. We'll let them know about new sales and things we have going on. Not only that, but when we have other projects that come up, if we know, let's say they also do pay for it, let's say they also dabble a little bit in landscape, we'll refer to them, "Hey, we have jobs coming in over here. Is this something you want to take a look at?" So, we'll refer to them to get their expertise when it comes to landscaping. Then also, we follow up via text messages, via emails, just following up to see how things are going with them, dropping by their job sites, dropping by their actual locations, bringing them turf samples, just doing anything we can to make the process easy for them.
Even if they don't have any projects going up, we give them a call, we let them know, "Hey, listen, if you have anything coming up, we're here to help out. You have any big jobs we need to get skinny on to help you out, that's something we can do too." The design aspect of things as well, the CAD process as well. There's extra steps. We go extra beyond for them to try to give them extra perks as well to let them know that we care about their business, because the more that they sell, the more that their customers are going to be happy. They'll, I think, get new customers then come back to us, and we're consistently moving forward, putting out a good product with quality installations and quality customer service as well.
12:51: Meet Mario Cambardella from Scapify
Jack Jostes:
All right. Here we are. I'm with Mario Cambardella from Scapify. Actually, we talked about a year ago and you were doing a different project. You heard me on a podcast, I shipped you a book, and then we met here, and you're doing something really cool that I think people should know about if they have a garden center or a nursery. Good to reconnect with you. Tell us a little bit, what is Scapify?
13:12: How Scapify is Changing the Game for Garden Centers Through eCommerce
Mario Cambardella:
Well, the story of Scapify starts with ServeScape. That was our proof of concept. It was an online only inventory list, e-commerce garden center. Once we realized that it worked, this methodology worked, we really wanted to take it to the masses. We really wanted to take it to every grower and garden center across the country. We say that we can take you from the ground to the cloud, and really digitize the whole experience of plant buying and having tons of other technology to enable the customer to really know what they want and discover new things and have a more efficient way to do business for growers and garden centers.
Jack Jostes:
I like it. For the people who have a garden center or a nursery and they want to sell plants, what does it do?
14:02: How Scapify Harnesses AI Power to Help Garden Centers Customize their Buyer Experience
Mario Cambardella:
It puts a lot of those products online, and it creates the most sensorial process that you can for plant buying online. You see the picture, you see a video, you see the description. We now have AI chatbots, so you can ask questions about that plant. ChatGPT is married with University of Georgia and other university agriculture extension research, so you're getting the combination of those two powerful research and language model to get a conversation, finding out everything you want about the plant or care or blogs or press release.
Jack Jostes:
If a customer is on the website, and you showed me this AI tool, it was pretty cool. I said, well, what are the best tomatoes to grow in Estes Park, Colorado? Which is kind of a specific question. It's at an elevation. There are challenges, and it gave me a pretty thorough response. So, it's pulling this data from these universities, from other things so that way, you can, if you have a nursery, put this on your website and your customers when they're asking horticultural questions, are getting a pretty detailed automated response.
Mario Cambardella:
Yeah, it's semi customized to your plant and your customer needs. We call it Master Gardener AI, and it can be white labeled for your customer or for your website as a chatbot or a separate page. We go through your persona, you want to name it something specific. ServeScape names theirs Plant Nerd, and it's using UGA extension data, so you can pull in the right information that you want it to provide your customers.
15:37: Learn More about Scapify Online
Jack Jostes:
I love it. Cool. Well, so where can people learn about it?
Mario Cambardella:
Well, Scapify.com. Everything's there, really transparent with pricing. We really want to engage with this customers of our garden centers and growers so that we can bring them from the ground to the cloud.
15:52: Introducing Kata from Walter Gardens
Jack Jostes:
Here we are at Walter Gardens booth with Kata Wallace. Not [inaudible 00:15:58]. They misspelled your name on your name badge. But anyways, tell us a little bit. We talked last night. Where are you from originally?
Kata Wallace:
I'm from Austria. I grew up there. I moved to the States seven years ago, but my parents have a grower retail garden center with very rare and unique plants. I've always done perennials. It's all I've known in my life. At one point, I just moved here and now I'm here.
Jack Jostes:
Your parents have that business in Austria?
Kata Wallace:
Yeah, yeah.
Jack Jostes:
You grew up around this.
Kata Wallace:
Yeah.
Jack Jostes:
Did you study horticulture?
Kata Wallace:
No, I did not
Jack Jostes:
But you studied it just by growing up around it?
Kata Wallace:
I guess so, yeah. I actually always thought it was really boring and was always embarrassed of my parents having a garden center, because it was not a cool job like my friends had. But yeah, I came around to this industry being really cool.
Jack Jostes:
When did you realize that it was cool?
Kata Wallace:
Probably at 23 or so when I was studying in Vienna, and I needed money. My dad offered me to go to trade shows and get some pocket money, and then it was just kind of fun.
17:01: How an Internship Turned into a Career Opportunity for Kata
Jack Jostes:
So then, that led you, what was the first job you did here in the States?
Kata Wallace:
In the States, actually my dad suggested that I would do an internship here because I finished my studies in January and I couldn't get a job until September. He was like, "Why don't you go to the States and hang out here?" So, I was an intern at Plant Delights Nursery and Juniper Level Botanic Garden in North Carolina.
Jack Jostes:
Awesome. Then you ended up staying and starting a career in the industry. What do you do now?
17:27: How Walters Gardens is Bridging the Gap Among Landscapers, Wholesalers & Plant Nurseries
Kata Wallace:
Now, I'm the product manager for Walters Gardens. We are the home of Proven Winner perennials. We do liners and bare root plants, but we also have a very big breeding program there. I kind of promote those plants anywhere between Virginia and Louisiana.
Jack Jostes:
Last night, we were talking about how you feel like sometimes landscapers that have been in business for a while have been offering plants, like a certain little book of plants, that they feel are safe, but there's new plant varieties. What's in it for them in learning about them? Some of my clients are more interested in plants than others, and they're already seeking this out. And then, some of them are more construction focused, and maybe they're not. Somebody just yelled here at the trade show. Talk to me about that. How does it help them to learn about these new plants and how are you reaching them?
Kata Wallace:
I really feel like it's a twofold. It's really there is a lacking communication between landscape designers and architects, and then breeding companies such as ours. I think for one, landscapers really need a reliable supply chain. When they can't truly trust that it will happen, I think they default to the plants that they know. But then also as you mentioned, there's just people who are more interested in plants than others. I'm really trying to do lunch and learns or really actively seeking out landscapers to talk to them about some of the new varieties, and then connect them with wholesalers who then buy the plants from me basically. Yeah, it takes a lot of effort to kind of bridge that gap between landscapers, wholesalers, and companies like ours.
19:10: Kata Shares The Hottest Plant Trends for Landscaping
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, that makes sense. What are some of the new plants that you're seeing that are thriving and becoming popular? What's up and coming?
Kata Wallace:
I think it's a lot of times not even new plants, it is plants that have existed. Like Nepeta, everybody has done Walker's Low for the last 20 years or so, but there is other ones, like Purrsian Blue or Cat's Pajamas that essentially look very similar, but they have a much tighter habit. They bloom longer, you don't have to cut them back as much. So really, those are benefits to landscapers that they should really appreciate, but I think sometimes they don't either know about those new plants or they're scared to try them.
We do see a trend of course in the native section. We are trying to really focus on also introducing cultivars that are having native fruits in America, make sure that they bloom longer, that they're more disease resistant so you wouldn't have to spray them as much. Nowadays, I really feel like the breeding effort is not as much anymore getting the newest and coolest colors, but also making sure that the plants that we bring to the market are really high in quality.
Jack Jostes:
Great. Well, thanks for coming on the show.
Kata Wallace:
Yeah, for sure. Thanks.
20:22: Meet Tati Togafau from Valencia College
Jack Jostes:
All right, everyone, I'm here with Tati…
Tati Togafau:
Togafau or [inaudible 00:20:26] is the proper way. Togafau is as close as you're going to get. That's totally fine with me.
Jack Jostes:
That's close. You're a greenhouse assistant?
Tati Togafau:
Yes, sir.
Jack Jostes:
... at-
Tati Togafau:
Valencia College.
Jack Jostes:
... Valencia College in Central Florida.
Tati Togafau:
Yes, sir.
Jack Jostes:
You were telling me you went from being a student to an intern, and what are you doing now?
Tati Togafau:
I went from student to intern. I interned so much that they're like, "Oh, you'd be a really good worker." A facility opened up in Winter Garden. They asked if I wanted to be one of the people that worked there. And so, I've been working there for the past six years.
Jack Jostes:
You started picking tomatoes and-
Tati Togafau:
I got asked to come out to intern and see what the hands-on was about, and I was pulling tomatoes and potatoes out the field in the Edgewood Children's Ranch that Valencia was partnering with for the entire summer. And then, we moved onto another facility and they're like, "Hey, do you want a job here?" And I said, "Absolutely," because it seems to be the thing that I'm good at.
Jack Jostes:
Cool. What are you doing now?
21:24: How Valencia’s Internship Brings Students & Local Landscape Companies Together
Tati Togafau:
Right now, I work for Valencia College still. Love it. I am the greenhouse assistant. I help facilitate the greenhouse for the students. We help set up the lab so they can get the on-hands learning. Also, we're revamping our area to be more permaculture. We're doing a lot of innovative stuff with our students, trying to get them hands-on, and also trying to expand out to the community. But we have aquaponics, hydroponics, aeroponics, literally anything. We're trying to get our students out into the field in any way, shape or form that they can go, because it's a changing industry, and not enough people know about the options that are available to them.
Jack Jostes:
I agree. I think it's really cool that you found this. The reason I wanted to interview you, we were at the happy hour at The Landscape Show, and you were telling me that you connect people with landscape companies too. Tell us about that. For many of the people listening are landscape companies, how do they work with people like you?
Tati Togafau:
The whole point of us being here at The Landscape Show is so that we can reach out, partner with our local community, and then get our students available internships so that they can go out into the community and start already before graduating the program. A lot of times, our students come on tours with us to different facilities around the area. They bring their resumes, and they end up getting hired on the spot because Valencia is known for having a good program and our students usually come out on top, so they get hired as growers. They always, majority of the time, end up in a higher position by coming through us then by going by themselves. So, we try to do a lot of connecting our students to the people that are in the community so that it basically comes back to us tenfold.
Jack Jostes:
Cool. For people in Florida that are listening, do you have an event or something other than coming to The Landscape Show, which people should? How do you network with your state association, with the colleges? I just see other opportunities. One of my clients, they actually started a high school apprenticeship, and they're now recruiting people who many of them stay on and work for them. Maybe they're not in Florida, maybe they are, how do they connect with colleges to find employees?
23:37: How to Connect with Colleges In Your Area to Begin an Intern Outreach Partnership
Tati Togafau:
Honestly, I would go to the college and ask for the chair of whatever program that you're trying to branch into. For instance, you would come to Valencia College and say, "Hey, I'm interested in the plant program. Is there anybody you can connect me to?" You'd probably get connected to either my boss, myself, or their boss. And then, we would help you basically figure out what kind of avenue do you want to go to, what type of landscaping do you want to go to. Do you want to actually work for the growers that do the landscaping? Do you want to be out there on the field pruning, collecting, doing the landscape job? Or do you want to be on the business side of it? Because we offer all those avenues.
Our job is to figure out exactly where you fit, and then to fit you into those positions with what we have. The more people that come in, the more resources that we have to branch out to as well, because they have information that we might not have. They might know a family that's been doing this for 20 years that we had no idea of about, and then we get to connect to them and then other students get to connect to them as well. It's this beautiful little cyclical circle that we have going on. I would honestly just say reach out to the college itself. These are really our outreach programs to the state when we do these events, or come to the meet and greets of the college.
Jack Jostes:
Cool, Tati. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Tati Togafau:
Thank you. I appreciate you.
Jack Jostes:
Thanks so much for checking out today's episode. Thank you to the FNGLA for having me speak. It was such a pleasure. This is a great show, The Landscape Show, and I'm excited to be down in Dallas, Texas in September for NALP's Elevate. If you're going to that show, reach out to me. I'm having some people get together for dinner, and we're going to have a booth number 1110, so be sure to stop by.
If you haven't already claimed your Landscaper’s Marketing Toolbox, I'd love to send you one with a free bag of beef jerky, some helpful podcasts, and a field guide that'll help you figure out which marketing to focus on first. So, claim yours at landscapersguide.com/toolbox. See our show notes for a quick link to that. My name's Jack Jostes, and I look forward to talking with you next week on The Landscapers Guide.
We've got people photo bombing us or video bombing us, I guess. Yeah. There you go. It's a great show.
SHOW NOTES:
????️Watch the full episode + see the transcript at: https://landscapersguide.com/podcast/
????Tell us where to send your beef jerky: https://landscapersguide.com/toolbox
➡️Check out Eaton Worms for ways to improve soil for future generations
➡️Discover more about Artificial Grass Warehouse for high-quality wholesale turf
➡️Learn more about Scapify eCommerce for Garden Centers
➡️Discover new plant varieties & popular perennials for 2024 at Walters Gardens
➡️Check out the Valencia College Plant Science & Agricultural Tech Program