Could you imagine having a wait list of qualified employees who want to work at your landscaping company? I bet you couldn't believe that could happen, considering what's happening in the labor force right now. But today I'm excited to interview Pat and Kenn from Local Roots Landscaping in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who share what they're doing to literally have a wait list. And I'll give you a tip, it includes paying people really well, that's an obvious one, but they get specific about their mindset, which is absolutely critical if you're going to choose to be a leader that people want to work with. And how they get over 95% of their seasonal staff to come back the following year. This is a really exciting interview about business leadership, and I can't wait to share it with you. So let's get started.
Kenneth Deemer
Managing Partner
Patrick Murray
Managing Partner
Jack Jostes:
What's up everyone? Welcome to The Landscaper's Guide To Sales and Marketing podcast. I'm your host, Jack Jostes, And in this show, I interview really cool landscapers who are doing great things. And today I'm excited to talk with somebody who's doing a great job with recruiting. All right everyone, I'm super excited to interview Kenn and Patrick from Local Roots Landscaping. They're based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and we're working with them on their website and marketing them. One of the things that I hear from a lot of my clients is how they can't find anyone to work for them, but you all somehow have a wait list of people who want to work for your company. So first of all, is that true? Do you actually have a wait list of people who want to work for you?
Patrick:
It is. It is. Yeah. Kenn, if you want to get into that a little bit.
Kenn:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean yeah, we're staying relatively surface level with this right now. Yeah, I'd say it's probably about a year or so now, since we've really seen the shift of just being absolutely desperate for people to having a kind of, whether it's a wait list... At different points in the year, we've had a wait list, we've had some times of the year where people have been provisionally hired, like whenever the position opens up, you're next in line for it. But yeah, it's been very, very awesome so far this year with us.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. Well and so, it's really interesting to hear you say that it has changed because for many people, the opposite is happening. Right now they're having a harder time than... I've heard some of my clients in their 20 years of running their company, they're having a hard time now than they have at any other time. And for you, it's you have a wait list. So what are you doing to create that interest in working at Local Roots and for the people who don't know, you all just tell us a little bit, where are you, how many people work at your company about how much business are you doing?
Local Roots Landscaping
Patrick:
Yeah, so we are based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as you said, it's myself and Kenn who own the place together. We're 50/50 partners in the deal. And we have about 28 employees right now, that's including office staff and field labor. This year we're looking to do anywhere from 3.8 to 4.2 in sales and, what else did you ask?
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. I was just wanting, people listening to get a little background of how much business you're doing. And so you've got 28 people, and is that 28 all year round, or is that seasonal? Tell us a little bit about some of the services you do and what your staff makeup is, from maintenance to construction, stuff like that.
Patrick:
Yeah. Good question. So we're a design, build, maintain. So we have about 30% of our sales would be in our maintenance side of things. And then the rest would be split up between landscape and hardscape and then landscape construction, involved in that as well. As far as full-timers are concerned, we keep about three quarters of our staff on full-time throughout a year. A lot of our team members they'd prefer to go, be laid off or be part-time in the winter to recoup and get some energy back.
Patrick:
We don't do snow removal in the winter, so that's a kind of a nice perk we offer actually, that our guys or girls don't have to work on that kind of stuff throughout the winter. So we do a lot of team building in the winter. We do a ton of working on our systems, things of that nature and just general cleaning up shop and whatnot there to keep everyone busy.
Jack Jostes:
So there's a ton of snow removal to be done in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, why aren't you offering that? Have you offered it in the past and realized it's awful? Or how did you decide not to offer that?
Kenn:
We've gotten close a number of times, it's really tempting. It's October, November, the season's winding down and I mean, it's different across the country, but at least in this part of the country, you're staring down two to three months with no revenue based off the weather. So it's been tempting a number of times, but we've had enough experiences where it's been... One that stands out in my mind is it was Valentine's day, and this is my now wife, then girlfriend. We had this whole just awesome date planned, we were skiing, we were doing, we were hanging out, we had a picnic, we're going to go ice skating.
Kenn:
And it was just this killer snow storm came through on Valentine's day, and that was one time where I was like, "If I was in snow removal..." And that's, I mean, we were a seven or eight man band at that point. So that was where it's like, "If we did snow removal, I would just have to leave this right now." And there's enough about business ownership and running the landscape company where it's like, there's enough of that, enough of the year, so that's kind of, I don't want to do it and I don't think our guys would want to do it. So just one of the ways we've tried to create as predictable and enjoyable of workplace as possible, is not getting into snow.
How To Increase Your Employee Retention
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. Snow is funny. I don't have any group of landscapers who feel the same way. I have some clients who love doing it. I can't say I have anyone who loves doing residential, snow removal. I think a lot of people have tried that and realized the calls that you get for that are just not worth what it takes to, I don't know... I wouldn't want to do it personally. That's interesting though, so you keep about 75% of your staff full time, year round, and the other 25%, they know this and they're okay with it. How many of those people come back the following spring?
Patrick:
Yeah, so we have decent retention. I mean, essentially when we're hiring for spring, we're not actually hiring to fill positions that have left us, we're just hiring to fill new positions that have come out of our winter planning and growth. So essentially I don't want to say a hundred percent, but I think this year Kenn, correct me if I'm wrong. I want to say it was high nineties, if not a hundred percent of our retention from last year, came back.
Kenn:
Yeah, we lost one laborer out of, at that point, I think it was 26 field staff.
Patrick:
Yep. One maintenance guy, you're right. So the layoffs in the winter, a lot of the guys will go out west they'll travel a bit. Some of them will just spend time with family and whatnot, so they look forward to that. And usually by March, they're ready to come back, so we have a big kickoff, early March, late February for the team to come back and recoup. This year we're going to do it a bit differently. We're going to keep even the people who are not on, or if they are laid off, we're going to actually keep them in the door a little bit to have a weekly training one day a week, something like that to just have more interaction with them, because we do find that we have some separation in the winter that we don't want to lose track of, just what everyone's up to and that company culture that you can lose sight of in the winter. We just want to have our hands on that, which we're, I'm excited for it this year.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. So what do you think is the reason, what are some of the things that you do to retain people and get them to come back in the high 90%, after winter? What is it that you're hearing from your team that they like, that you're doing that makes them want to come back?
Patrick:
I think, and Kenn, we can ping pong back and forth here, but-
Kenn:
Yeah.
Patrick:
I think that's definitely a loaded question. I mean, I wish there was an exact science to it. I think we have a lot of boxes ticked. We've really thought diligently about the key elements of that and have spent tons of time on it. So I'll start by saying, if you have a problem where you're saying this just won't work, or we just can't find good people, or this just always happens. Let's dig into that a bit. Let's really research what we're saying here. And Kenn's really good at this, he'll challenge me all the time. If I can't find good help for some reason, that's not an excuse I can ever say if we're obviously saying that we, that we're doing so well at this.
Patrick:
So he'll say, have you done this? Have you dug here? Have you done this? So we have spent so much time and energy into figuring out what I would want as an employee, what Kenn would want, what our team members would want? Rather than just talking about it, rather than just complaining about industry average and what everyone else is saying on the street. And there were a couple of days, or not a couple of days, there were a couple of moments, I remember whenever we would fall into that category where we'd hear other landscapers at supply yards, constantly talking about that issue. "I just can't find good help." And I would play into that negative energy. And I would say the same thing, "Yeah, it's really hard. I'm out here by myself too."
Patrick:
And then we started just questioning, "What is going on here? There has to be some sort of fix to this, right." And so again, I'm getting off track here, but to answer your question, what are you paying your team members? When was the last time you checked into what industry averages are, what other competing labor industries are? Or even noncompeting industries, right. We're competing with essentially every industry out there right now, you can go to a local gas station and make a really good living. So are your team members willing to do an entire drainage project in 90 degree weather for X amount of dollars? That has to be a serious question, right.
Patrick:
So I can say the obvious, pay, benefits, schedule, things like that, those are just the very low-hanging fruits that you can really cut off that we can chat about. But then there are a lot of things that aren't quite as tangible. And that's where I think a lot of this, lies. It's going to be company culture, boom, buzzword, everyone says it, "Oh yeah, our culture is great here." So digging into company culture. I don't know if Kenn want to dig into, just general feel of our company and what it means to roll into work at 7:00 AM every day and the roll out of the shop, and that experience that you're getting here versus what maybe a typical job would have.
Kenn:
Yeah, absolutely. So I think a lot of it comes down to... A lot of this just overall concept is I think people are looking for the secret, like what's the secret, Kenn and Patrick? What's your secret? What do you do? And what it comes down to, there's a lot of it is not very, it's not hard to understand, but it's really hard to actually execute because it takes the consistency. It takes just a repeatability, and to be like, "Man, this is a hard thing to do right now." It's really hard to say no to this extra work, but we just don't work Saturdays. You know what I mean? It's very hard to say XYZ, but this is what we do. This is who we are at Local Roots. So a big part of it is keeping promises to the guys.
Kenn:
So for our management positions, I'm telling you, I get the same look, every time we hire a field staff manager or any project manager, landscape maintenance manager, operations manager, we always get the question, "What kind of field work is entitled in this, or is entailed in this?" And there's any way you could run this. We run it, that our guys have virtually no field work. They go to support the teams. They might do some training. We tell them, "There is no field work related to this whatsoever." We even hired a designer recently who asked the same question. He's like, how much will I be expected to work in the field?" And we told him, "No." And everyone gives me this look like, "Okay, we'll see about that."
Kenn:
Because I think a lot of, it's so easy to just as a business owner, we're always just grasping for resources and we're trying to cobble together as much as we can, as quickly as we can to make the greatest impact. And I think a big part of what we're trying to do is shift that mindset to long-term impact rather than short-term impact, rather than say, can I get off this job today? It's can I build a long lasting team? And a lot of that comes down to keeping promises to the team. And that way someone told us a while ago that you want to do the gifts, you want to do the company events. You want to do whatever thing you do to show appreciation for your team as a reward and as appreciation, not as an apology. And that really stuck with me, because I felt myself doing that sometime where it's like, here's the worst job ever.
Kenn:
Here's this crappy job planner. Here's a client who's already pissed off at us because we're two months late getting here. Here's all this stuff, go get yourself lunch today. And they're like, "I don't want lunch. I can pay for my lunch. I want a good job to come to." So I think it's that, which is again, it's just consistency and keeping promises rather than some kind of magic bullet.
How Mindset Impacts Recruiting
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. I think a lot of it starts with you two and your mindset. The first one being what Patrick said around the negativity that so many people feed into, "Oh, I can't find anyone." I started writing a post recently, I haven't finished it yet, but I believe there are three types of business leaders. One, there are solo entrepreneurs. There are people that they do not have any employees. They do not have any staff, and there's nothing wrong with that, right. Maybe you choose to go out and do everything by yourself. Maybe you're a highly skilled subcontractor. Then there are people who I'd call accidental employers. These are people who have grown to a certain point right, where now they've started hiring people, but they have that victim mentality of, "Oh, my employees are evil and the people are bad and I can't trust them. So I'm going to go and have to do all of this."
Jack Jostes:
And then you two have decided to be business leaders, right. You're growing people, you're thinking about them. And that carries through to not working on Saturdays, keeping your promises, things like that. So a good job, both of you in doing that. That's something that, Kenn, you and I met years ago that I could tell about you when we met, that I'm sure you're people notice too.
Patrick:
Jack, if I could just touch base on something as well, that's very serious at our company, is just the concept of health and wellness and mental health. I think that's something that's been neglected a ton, especially in our industry and in just construction and in the trades in general. Now it takes a lot to get certain people to talk about those sorts of things. You're not sharing everyone's business, on the job or off the job when you first meet someone. But the more you can create that relationship with your employees as a vulnerability, or to say, "It's okay to not be well right now. And I'm here to listen to you or we have resources for you. To talk about that stuff, it's not taboo, it's not strange, it's not weak to do this."
Patrick:
You see a look again, something turn on in their brains to say, that says, "I've never had an employer normalize this, let alone some... Or I've never had a family member normalize this, let alone an employer that normalizes this." And I bring up mental health like it's very normal because it is a normal thing. And so you know the employees who come to work knowing it's a safe space and we're not just saying, it's a safe space now rub some dirt in it and get over it. We're saying, "It's a safe space, what do you need from us? Is there something we could do... Is there anything that we can possibly do in your job to make it healthier, better? Is something in your home life not going super well that we need to know about that is coming into your work. That's okay. We just need to know that it's not your job that's doing that."
And so that's the human aspect that we can talk about this all day, but unless you're willing to really be in tune with that, and man, it sucks the energy out of you to do that, I'm not going lie, but it is the most valuable thing.
Humans are humans.
They are not machines, they're not tools.
Everyone has a heart, everyone has a brain that struggles.
And so it's really that's I think a core concept of the health of our company. And when you say at our place, "Have a good day, we so appreciate you being here." That's sincere. And you'll hear that back. All of our team members will say that same exact thing back to us and then share that to other hires, which then creates this funnel inwards, who doesn't want to work for a company that has those vibes, right. That's the more tangible one.
How To Train Your Managers On Your Company Culture
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. I think that's a really an important part, especially when you talk about doing the drainage project in 90 degree heat. Not only are people thinking about how much they're going to get paid, but that's hard excruciating work and we're all human. We all have family and health issues, things that are going on and absolutely working somewhere where people care about that, is that's a big, that's actually what culture is about, right. That's said, how do you as you grow, now that you have 28 people, how do you help the your managers and the leaders at your company, how do you help them do that? Maybe that comes naturally for you Patrick, or at least you're aware of it. How do you coach your managers to tune in with some of the field staff on those things?
Patrick:
Kenn, can I speak a little bit on this?
Kenn:
Yeah, for sure.
Patrick:
Yeah, so that's actually, it's a really good question and I love that you said it because again, it's, as you're growing, not everything that you've done from the beginning is sustainable, right. And so even as our field staff is growing, I can't be involved in every single team member's life on a day to day basis, taking them out, doing this stuff. So it's multitude or multiplicity of your impact. So it would be training our managers to do that kind of stuff, and to instill in them what I have done for so long, or what Kenn has done for so long to show them that importance. So that whenever we are a hundred laborers in, I have all the managers that are trained, ready to go, to be able to pass that down, they could do the same stuff that we've been doing, but it's actually scalable.
Patrick:
So we're actually working on that right now. And we're still at a size where I can still have direct reports to my foreman. I actually just signed up to do... Every Thursday, I'm taking a different foreman out for breakfast to just get to know them a little bit more and catch me up to speed on things, because I've been a bit absent from the field in the last couple of months, so I'm still able to do that. But in reality, the bigger effect would be making sure our managers have those skills and that they can take those foremen out to breakfast.
Patrick:
So I'm doing both right now, if that makes sense, we're in that size that it works, but I don't see that as being sustainable. I almost want to pass the baton off to someone who could do it even better than me, and that's the goal there but, Kenn you could speak on that you're really crushing it with our manager so.
Kenn:
For us, it starts at hiring to those strengths as well. We opened up a couple of management positions in the spring that we were hiring for, and there were... Man, Patrick, how many people did we interview for project manager? Like 11, 10, 11. And at the end of the day, a lot of them were very equally matched in terms of experience. You know what I mean? And how well they would be able to communicate with the client, communicate with us and make sure everything gets done that needs to get done. But I mean, no one's even really even remotely in the running, unless that they, unless they are first displaying those strengths, the relational parts of it.
Kenn:
And it's funny, our production meetings are always a bit of tension because everyone's kind of, it goes back and forth, so that'd be me, lots of times it'd be like production, where are we for production? And lots of times it's my, it's our management staff who's going to vouch for the guys, who are going to vouch for the guys. He's like, "Well, here's what they're up against. Here's why we're in these situations." So it's actually a very encouraging thing to have to see them checking me and correcting me. Where it's like, "All right. Kenn, zoom out, see what's going on." That's a big part of it.
Kenn:
And then another thing is giving them a seat at the table, so not just hearing it, but then also allowing them to be a part of that and have agency in it. Working really hard to interview and to select the right people and then believing that they have a seat at the table and acting like that. So we have a question that we ask at our staff meetings. We have a biweekly, full staff meeting, which has all the designers, managers, office staff. And the question that we ask, the last question, in every one of those meetings is, "Who wins when Local Roots wins? Or are we who we say we are? Are we who we say we are to our clients? Are we who we say we are to our staff?" And then yeah, ultimately, "Who wins when Local Roots wins?"
Kenn:
Because it's very easy for everyone to see a path for Patrick and Kenn to win when Local Roots wins. But to be able to spread that to everyone, that question could be asked of is always our goal. And as soon as we see any daylight, any crack open up in any one of those categories, we do our best to just address it very, very aggressively.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. I really like that and I really believe it does start with hiring. One of the things that we've done at Ramblin Jackson is we finally wrote down our core values. This is something we did about four or five years ago. And when we're interviewing, we have deliberate ways of finding if people share those core values. So one of them you guys share, is be on time and prepared to add value. You're both on time. That's pretty easy. Are people on time for the interview or not? Oh, Zoom. Yeah, Zoom does have problems sometimes, sometimes we can tell that you're lying about Zoom having problems, if it happens twice right, during an interview cycle.
Jack Jostes:
And then that's one thing that we do is that we then coach people with our core values. And that's been a way that we've been able to make the core values scalable if you will, because it's something intangible. But by now every quarter, we have people grade themselves on the core values and it's not about points, it's more of how am I doing? I was late for the client meeting or whatever. That's one of the ways that we're doing it. And it sounds like you're building something in with your leaders that similar.
Kenn:
Yeah, absolutely.
Patrick:
So basically what you hire and fire on your core values, right. And so we have it's called grow, go home safe and healthy every day, respect all people, operate with integrity and then welcome new ideas. And then we have sub-categories into that, but essentially, are we growing every day? We'd ask our guys. And so that's one thing is, those are the values you hire and fire on. And then you've touched on it a little bit, but basically character-based hiring. So we've gone away from just strictly resume skillset, how many years have you been building? I mean, obviously experience is really good for certain positions. You need to know how to build or do these things, we can't just hire total greenies at that.
Patrick:
But there is an extent where we're willing to lax or I guess relax a little bit on that side of things to really focus in on the actual character side of things. So interviews, I remember I have my interview templates that I go off of and I find myself not even reading into the skill questions at all. I'm just hammering in on relational, family, integrity type questions. And I've realized that I have to rewrite my interview format, because I wasn't even asking a lot of these questions and it was a big eye opener for me because I really care a lot more about the latter, right.
Local Roots Landscaping Facility With Onsite Training Space
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. And so tell us a little bit about your new facility. So last year, I believe you guys bought a facility and part of it includes an area where you do onsite training. So tell us a little bit about your facility and where do you do training?
Kenn:
So we're in the process of re-imagining that at the moment, we're considering getting more dedicated space. Right now we have two, 400 square foot, we call them the sandboxes, that are inside our facility, and training is right now every Monday morning. And then like Patrick said, we're going to be switching it over the course of the winter to continue it through. But right now it's just training on everything from planting, to pavers, to what, I mean, we just, we did Gator Base most recently, Gator Base and cuts, you know what I mean? For pavers.
Kenn:
And it works, it has a lot of benefits to it when done correctly. So you get just the training element of it, which is really fantastic. You get the cross training, so you do it, all of our technicians and advanced technicians do the training together. So then if you ever do have either a landscape job, that's a little construction heavy, or a construction project, that's a little planting heavy, they have that experience. They have the SOPs, the best practices for that type of stuff. But then one of the most powerful things that can come from it is the, I mentioned that it's techs and advanced techs, and that's actually the time that we let the advanced technicians lead that.
Kenn:
So that happens during our foreman meeting, when all the foreman are meeting with the project manager and operations manager. So that allows them to step up into a role of, to direct things, train, get a new level of agency with a little bit of a lower level of risk for us. So I'm not worried that the six figure project that's getting installed is being led by someone who I'm maybe not entirely comfortable with, but it does let them step forward and take the reins in terms of leadership with that.
How Patrick and Kenn Generate Leads For Their Open Positions
Jack Jostes:
And so what are you doing to generate leads for open positions? So you've got a really good interview process, you've got a wait list. What are you doing to generate enough volume of people applying, that you could even have a wait list?
Patrick:
Yeah. So an employee referrals are our biggest, we are constantly incentivizing employee referrals, that'd be number one. Even if we aren't quite hiring, we just bring it up all the time, "Please, constantly feed people to us so we can see who's interested in applying." And we do the online stuff we have, Facebook, Instagram, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, we do all those platforms as well, constantly getting notifications of who's applying. And it's just always, we're always hiring good help, and I know other companies have said that like, "Oh yeah, we're always hiring." But truly we are always interested in hiring good people.
Patrick:
So if you're a good person and we want you, we will extend a job, offer, give a time period on that, right? And say, "We'll be ready for you in two months, three months, whatever it is. If you're willing to wait, we'd love to have you on." And then move forward with you at that date. I think always having our fingers on the pulse and not having it as an excuse to not have a position or have a position filled, right. We want to have that at our disposal versus being desperate, which would be the opposite. So if we find ourselves being desperate for a position we're not functioning properly in what we believe, because we shouldn't be, we should have a pool of qualified candidates for that position.
Jack Jostes:
All right. Well, Patrick, Kenn, thanks so much for coming on The Landscaper's Guide To Sales and Marketing podcast, it's been a pleasure talking with you.
Kenn:
Yep. Absolutely. We appreciate it, Jack. Thanks for having us on.
Patrick:
Yeah. Thanks for having us, Jack. Really good chatting.
Jack Jostes:
Thanks so much for listening to today's episode of The Landscaper's Guide To Sales and Marketing podcast. I really think the key piece here is their mindset around people is a big piece of it. So I'd love to know what's working for you, and I invite you to check out the show notes and visit RamblinJackson.com/podcast. We have other episodes that you can find on our website about recruiting. And if you know anyone like Local Roots, who might be a cool guest on this show, send me an email Jack@RamblinJackson.com. I look forward to hearing from you and I look forward to talking to you next week.