Scott Pearce [00:00:00]:
What we fought for so many years was just lack of awareness. So anything we can do to get people more aware now, they go, oh, that's really not that far. That's a win. When I hire some for the Garden Center, they're hired here where they're hired for landscape and mains. They're not hired to do three different things. They're hired to do one thing. We found that inviting people to come to our store and take a discount is very different from not inviting them to accept one of our services at a discount. You hate to say crisis, but let's be honest, crisis is probably when you're most grateful you have something. And we feel like we just want people to have someone they can reach out to.
Jack Jostes [00:00:33]:
All right, everyone, we are here at For Garden’s Sake in Durham, North Carolina. I'm out here speaking at the NCNLA Education Summit, and I'm here with the owner of For Garden's Sake, Scott Pearce. So, Scott, thanks for coming on The Landscaper's Guide and for having me here today.
Scott Pearce [00:00:48]:
Yeah, thanks for having us.
00:49 - For Garden’s Sake 21-acre Garden Center
Jack Jostes [00:00:49]:
So, for those of you listening, you might want to check this one out, see our show notes. There's a link to the YouTube video. We are at a beautiful 21-acre property. It's a Garden Center. It's a landscape company. And, Scott, tell us a little bit of a quick history about yourself and this cool business.
Scott Pearce [00:01:07]:
Okay. Yeah, we were living in Florida and sold a smaller business. It was a lawn treatment company back in ‘08. And we moved here and I came to work for the previous owner of this company. It was sort of owned by an older lady, sort of a hobby interest. And I came to work for her, tried to turn it into a business that could work, and it began to show some signs of life. And then in 2016, my wife and I purchased it from her. And here we are today.
Scott Pearce [00:01:36]:
And, yeah, the property itself is a combination of a couple of residential properties, a historic chapel on the other side. So two and two and 16 acres. It eventually became 21, and on it today, we operate a Retail Garden Center, a Landscape Design-build Division, and a Maintenance Company.
Jack Jostes [00:01:54]:
Excellent. And so, in round numbers, what's the revenue breakdown like between the Retail Garden Center and the landscape side?
Scott Pearce [00:02:02]:
Yeah, so the Garden Center is just shy of 3 million right now. And then landscape and maintenance together make up another about four to 4.5 this year. So between seven and eight.
Jack Jostes [00:02:14]:
Awesome. And are you enjoying running it?
Scott Pearce [00:02:17]:
Yeah, I mean, it's been a lot of fun. I mean, it's been an evolution, like anybody else over the years. But I think the joy starts to come from the growth and having some growth and more people and that's, to me, made it a lot more fun to do.
Jack Jostes [00:02:30]:
And do you see most of the landscape company or clients coming from the Retail Garden Center, or how do. How do those divisions kind of feed into each other?
Scott Pearce [00:02:41]:
Yeah, without. Without exact numbers, definitely. We would say close to half of the consult requests we get come through the Garden Center. So it definitely acts as a front door. And then obviously others come through, you know, the web and things like that. Landscape or lawn maintenance, not as much. It's interesting. Those mostly come through referrals and the Internet.
Scott Pearce [00:03:01]:
I don't think people come here and think of us as a lawn maintenance company. So it's something where we're thinking about how we work on that.
03:07 - Social Media & Newsletter Cross-Marketing
Jack Jostes [00:03:07]:
I was sharing with you before we started recording that my first job was working at a Garden Center. And I knew I wanted to work there, partly because I got this print calendar from them growing up. So one, I would go there as a little kid with my mom, and we'd get plants in the springtime and whatever we needed. And then I had that print. They did a really good job of kind of marketing to us throughout the year. What are you doing to let people who are Garden Center customers know that you have the lawn maintenance division?
Scott Pearce [00:03:40]:
For us today, it's predominantly social media. I mean, there are two avenues or several, but the two that stand out are just our social media. Instagram, Facebook are the keys there. And so we mix that in. We don't want to. We tend to try to not overdo it. The Garden Center itself, the social media, there is much more plants and activities and events, so we don't want to fill it up with landscape projects and mowers. You know what I mean? It's a different thing, but we do routinely mention it.
Scott Pearce [00:04:05]:
And then we also have a newsletter that goes out every week from the Garden Center, but it always has a blurb, you know, about our landscape and maintenance services.
Jack Jostes [00:04:13]:
I like that you're cross marketing them in those different ways. And I think that's. That's really good.
Scott Pearce [00:04:19]:
Yeah, yeah, no, we found that, again, they all feed each other, and we found that if one. If one was to go away, it wouldn't. It wouldn't end. You know, it wouldn't dissolve everything, but it would certainly create a damper. You can see how they feed each other.
Jack Jostes [00:04:33]:
Does that create challenges from a, like, recruiting and management standpoint, having the different divisions, or do you have different department leaders who kind of headed up and it's dialed in or tell me a little bit about that because they're really different. They're different people that you need for Retail Garden Center versus landscape maintenance versus design build.
Scott Pearce [00:04:53]:
That's a good point. Yeah. We call it the three headed monster and we treat it like that. So they are three completely separate divisions. Although again, working under the same name, I feel like you could almost come in and pull any one of them aside and they could keep going with no problem. So they, they interact with each other enough to be a team, but they don't, you know, eat each other's resources or do anything. It's negative. So when I hire some for the Garden Center, they're hired here where they're hired for landscape and mates, they're not hired to do three different things.
Scott Pearce [00:05:20]:
They're hired to do one thing.
Jack Jostes [00:05:22]:
That's good. I think that's, that's, that's really, really smart.
Scott Pearce [00:05:25]:
Right? Yeah, for sure. We found that to be the only way it works. Now we've had people change divisions and say, hey, I'd love to go try that. Right? Great. Let's, let's give it a try. We have multiple people who have moved around and that's been a lot of fun.
05:36 - Tour Through the Garden Center
Jack Jostes [00:05:36]:
So, Scott, it is June right now. What do you have on the racks here? Like what are people buying in June in North Carolina?
Scott Pearce [00:05:46]:
It's a tough one. I mean, what you typically have in summer North Carolina would be, we were just talking about this day. You're going to have larger annuals, meaning they bought annuals in the spring. Maybe some haven't survived. They went on vacation, they died, things like that. So now they want to, they don't want to wait. They want insta plant and so you get the six and eight, you know, the larger annual. So those, those do really well.
Scott Pearce [00:06:06]:
And we tell people we're a twelve month planting season here. You really, can we, it's not that there is, you could plant any month here. You just got to care for it differently. So it's not uncommon to sow a lot of like blooming hydrangeas and the shrubs that are resilient and things like that. So trees, not as much trees definitely go down, but definitely blooming annuals, perennials and hardy shrubs still, you know, they sell pretty well through the, through the summer.
Jack Jostes [00:06:29]:
Cool. Well, I'm excited to see some more of this property. What are we going to go look at next?
Scott Pearce [00:06:33]:
Well, let's take a look. We'll go through the Garden Center here. Just take a little look around, show you what's going on, some highlights of this, and, yeah, we'll go from there. So these are the hydrangeas I was telling you about. Probably the most common one here, because of the heat, is the limelight. The limelight is just resilient and blooms all summer. You've got the large, original limelight. Then you've got a little lime, which will just stay a few feet tall.
Scott Pearce [00:06:57]:
So most of our landscape designs always include some type of limelight hydrangea. And then, obviously, you've got the traditional mop heads, the endless summer. They're called summer crush. Now, all sorts of varieties going on. That's where you get more of that blue and pink. Obviously, depending on soil ph, that's where you get that large. Had a larger mop head bloom. But these are very popular all summer long.
07:21 - The Potting Shed: A Unique Customer Experience
Jack Jostes [00:07:21]:
So, Scott, we are in front of the Potting Shed. Now. What? Tell me what happens here.
Scott Pearce [00:07:26]:
So the backstory is there used to be a different building here. It was small, and it was literally a Potting Shed. It had a big bin in it. People could come in, they take their containers, fill it with soil, and make pots, which eventually we decided to get rid of. And we had an idea that serving drinks might be fun. My wife and I used to, we would vacation at the beach here in North Carolina. And when our kids were younger, we would go down every night.
Scott Pearce [00:07:49]:
There was a place that served what was called Sunset Slush. It was like an Italian ice version of things. And our kids want to go every single night. And my wife said, we should really do that at the Garden Center someday. And I thought, I don't know if we should or not. We weren't sure, but here we are. And several years ago, we contacted them, and we got a license to sell it, and then we got an ABC License to sell beer and wine. And so now we have what we call the Potting Shed, which serves beer and wine every day, and sunset slush.
Scott Pearce [00:08:18]:
And then particularly on the weekends, we have someone specifically. Man, that. And then we'll often have events every Friday night in the Spring. We're open late. We have live music. People come out and sit, have a drink. Their kids have a slush, and they shop late until 8:00 so it's become quite a little gathering place for our customers, which is fun.
Jack Jostes [00:08:37]:
That's cool that you have these events and this Potting Shed and all these different things going on.
Scott Pearce [00:08:44]:
Yeah. Yeah. It's really. It's served to just enhance the customer experience. We feel like we feel like gives them another reason. Maybe stay a little longer or bring a friend and hang out, introduce someone new to the place.
Jack Jostes [00:08:55]:
Yeah. Events have been a big part of my business, and I think they make sense, definitely as a Garden Center. And I'm curious, how does that feed into the landscape side of things? Or is it generally just feed into people becoming a customer?
Scott Pearce [00:09:09]:
Overall, my sense is it's awareness. You know what I mean? Without measuring it, what we fought for so many years was just lack of awareness. We were in an area which ten years ago would have been considered, you know, out there or further away, and it's still a little bit, but we're about 2 miles from, you know, I 40 and what is classified as the second busiest exit in North Carolina. So we're actually very close to things, and things are moving towards us. So anything we can do to get people more aware now, they go, oh, that's really not that far. That's a win. Does it immediately or directly feed landscape and maintenance? We'll see. That's more of an indirect thing, I think.
Jack Jostes [00:09:46]:
So I'm curious, are you sending out direct mail postcards to people in the area?
Scott Pearce [00:09:51]:
We have attempted that. We did direct mail the last two years for the Garden Center spring. We did a two part mailer, and I asked them to come back in and present it. And. And the results were fantastic. We have. We have the results. They were wonderful.
Scott Pearce [00:10:06]:
We tried one this year in addition to that for our lawn maintenance service, because we've added, you know, the addition of treatment services, fertilization, all that. And the result was literally zero. We literally got zero response. Now, there may be a lot of factors to that, but it's very. We found that the inviting people to come to our store and take a discount is very different than not inviting them to accept one of our services at a discount. Again, we don't know all the pieces of that yet, but they definitely were very different.
Jack Jostes [00:10:33]:
Yeah, that's interesting. I wonder, you know, I was talking with one of my clients, and he was talking about, got a guy. Oh, I've got a guy. I got a guy who does my, you know, my lawn mowing or my lawn maintenance or whatever. So, I mean, typically, the reason to switch is if there's a problem. Like if there's an issue with the service. Sometimes, though, I found if we can get our foot on the property, maybe you could offer some kind of evaluation or an assessment or something, or like a landscape evaluation with a report.
Jack Jostes [00:11:11]:
And then now you're getting there. And you can, you have a reason to talk to them. But do you think, do you think the people who got the postcard knew that it was from For Garden's Sake?
Scott Pearce [00:11:22]:
We tried really hard, you know, to make that obvious and hope that that would bring some. And we did it very locally. We did them very close by here. But again, just literally not one person responded to that, whereas, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds brought it into the Garden Center and took a discount to buy something, you know, in person.
Jack Jostes [00:11:40]:
So in the history you're saying that the lady who started it was kind of a hobby. Was the Garden Center the hobby, or was the landscape part the hobby? Like, when did the services side of the business evolve?
Scott Pearce [00:11:53]:
She had it all. But again, when I came in, when I came in 2010, here they were doing a little of all of it was eleven employees total. So it was very kind of what you mentioned at one point, it was very mixed. So everybody was kind of doing everything. You might be on this, this day and doing this, this day. And so it was sort of not, it didn't have any real order to it, you know what I mean? And then over time, I think I just began to separate those and build them. Each kind of individual together, but very individually. And so it was probably three to four years, probably 2015, before that began to really, they began to make their own distinctions, you know.
12:29 - The Houseplant Room
Jack Jostes [00:12:29]:
Cool. Well, what should we see next on this property?
Scott Pearce [00:12:32]:
Let's go inside. I'll show you. Houseplants, big, big category for Garden Centers in general. Once again, something that my wife suggested many years back. And I was like, houseplants, you know, and if you, you know, if you follow any trends, it's a huge trend. And one of our, one of our bigger categories today.
Jack Jostes [00:12:49]:
Yeah, I'm curious. We didn't, we didn't talk about this yet. How much do you do wholesale?
Scott Pearce [00:12:54]:
We don't, or.
Jack Jostes [00:12:54]:
No. Okay. It's purely retail.
Scott Pearce [00:12:56]:
Absolutely. We do it. We'll offer a 10% discount to a landscaper, which doesn't sound like much. And candidly, it's intended, you know, that we have many, you know, for everything from a small landscaper to the national companies that will come in here every week. It's usually just because they need to grab one or two of something, and that's fine. We're happy to help them, but we just don't, we're not equipped currently to stock and sell true wholesale.
Jack Jostes [00:13:15]:
And is there a nursery here or do you primarily buy all the plants?
Scott Pearce [00:13:19]:
We don't grow anything currently everything's bought. It is locally. Everything's probably within 150 miles. And so we have a great selection of growers. North Carolina really is very fortunate in that and great long term relationships. But we have currently said we won't grow anything. Not saying never, we won't, but today we don't.
Jack Jostes [00:13:36]:
Well, I mean, you've got a, you know, 21 acres.
Scott Pearce [00:13:41]:
We have people that are very interested in it, for sure.
Jack Jostes [00:13:43]:
Yeah, I can see that. So I, you know, and that's, it's just interesting to ask that question because I have many clients who are Garden Centers and landscape companies, and some of them are also a nursery and they're also a rockyard, and then some of them aren't, and some of them are retail only.
Scott Pearce [00:14:00]:
Right. And we've considered all of that. Yeah, we have people, you know, people that grow annuals in particular. The margin is fantastic. Right. But again, you've got to build the facilities to do that here because you do have some winter you have to protect from the rock yard. We've considered, again, the space. Like, why wouldn't we do that? And maybe, but we are fairly focused on a few things, trying to get those really good and get them right.
Jack Jostes [00:14:27]:
Okay, so now we're inside.
Scott Pearce [00:14:29]:
Right?
Jack Jostes [00:14:29]:
And we're in the indoor house. We're in the houseplant room. Right?
Scott Pearce [00:14:34]:
Right. Yeah.
Jack Jostes [00:14:34]:
So tell me, what kind of houseplants do you have here?
Scott Pearce [00:14:37]:
A little bit of everything. We have a buyer who buys for the entire Garden Center, but his specialty originally was houseplants, so I feel like we really do a good job with that because of him. And we added this. What we're standing in now is an addition that was done probably two to three years ago. So we don't have a lot of indoor space, but particularly during COVID businesses, like ours, thrived. I mean, we were doing well because I think we were outside a lot, but also plants in general did well. So during that time, I think it was about 2020-2021, we added this on about double the space.
Jack Jostes [00:15:13]:
Oh, really? Wow.
Scott Pearce [00:15:14]:
Yeah. Yeah. So now here we are in the middle of all the things that people see in magazines from, you know, the fiddle leaf fig to the ZZ plant and the pothos that trail down and everything, all the way down to orchids and bromeliads and all the. Just everything. But then also, it's funny you say, what types? Unique plants. There's a shelf over there behind us. Again, not as popular now, but particularly during COVID unique plants became a rage. It was a bit, I feel like it was a bit of a phenomenon, but we got into it, and it was not uncommon for people to be buying six and $800 plants that were this big, super rare, being shipped from overseas.
Scott Pearce [00:15:50]:
Wow. So houseplants are a real passion for some people. I mean, really, they want to get them small, grow them, watch them put off new shoots. It's a very pleasant experience. And it is. But, I mean, especially for some, it's a real hobby and they enjoy it.
16:05 - Garden Center Demand Now & During Covid
Jack Jostes [00:16:05]:
So I'm curious. So it's Summer 2024, right. What's the demand, like for houseplants? I mean, I definitely think there was a peak in 2020 when people had the stay at home business going on. People were working from home. They wanted plants, they wanted landscaping. Like, has that tapered way down, or is it like, what's it like? Maybe even compared to pre pandemic?
Scott Pearce [00:16:32]:
Yeah, so pre. Well, we are a tough case to compare pre pandemic because we had just an unusual growth. We are. Garden center revenue from 19 to 20 was 3.5 times. I mean, it was. Wow.
Jack Jostes [00:16:49]:
Just in one year, even.
Scott Pearce [00:16:50]:
Even before COVID Yeah, well, during COVID during 20 and then going into 21, so. And that's just not normal. That doesn't happen. And so it was a mad race. Now, we were doing everything. We were. We were. We set up an online ordering system overnight.
Scott Pearce [00:17:04]:
We were preparing orders, take them to people and take them in the parking lot, meeting people at their cars, putting them in. I mean, we did everything possible, and we. And growth was just unbelievable. Now, since then, it's sort of plateaued. Candidly, this year and last year, very much like 21, and so houseplants took a surge and they've stayed about the same. They're not getting a lot bigger, but they're staying about the same to that new level they reached in 2021. Really interesting.
Jack Jostes [00:17:30]:
Yeah. That's incredible, because I think, I'm curious, what's that like, though, on the landscape design side? Because what I'm seeing across the country, talking with a lot of clients, is that has gone way down. So what do you see? What are you seeing on that part of the business?
Scott Pearce [00:17:44]:
Yeah, we don't necessarily see down, but we definitely see a definite softening. It's plateauing a bit. Again, those services, like, everybody, maybe in 20, and again, I'm not exact, maybe in 21, we were seven or eight months out, which was not healthy. I didn't feel like candidly. But now we're back to three to four months out. But the demand for the services, the amount of calls we get, is down some, but not sharply. I'm calling this year and last year very level. Not down dramatically, but definitely not dramatically up.
Scott Pearce [00:18:16]:
That's kind of what we're seeing.
Jack Jostes [00:18:17]:
I think that's partly because so many people are still moving to North Carolina. So do you think that plays into it?
Scott Pearce [00:18:23]:
For sure? And our maintenance manager routinely says, I said, how many estimates you do this week? And he'll tell me, and I'll say, tell me about where? And he's like, well, one from California, two from Boston, one from New York. You know, it is very common that they are all people moving here from.
Jack Jostes [00:18:37]:
Out of state, and so they don't have a landscaper, and they may probably don't even know their neighbor for sure. So are they, are those people the ones that are finding you online?
Scott Pearce [00:18:46]:
Yeah, either they're seeing our truck in the neighborhood because a lot of these are in places we already do work or. Yeah, just going online or maybe they've passed by here. A very small thing we did, which I know sounds, you know, it's very old school, but when we go over to the church in a bit, you'll see it has a lot of road frontage, the old chapel. And we bought, we had banners printed and we just hung them all on there. Just telling the services we do.
Jack Jostes [00:19:08]:
Yeah, I really. I noticed that. So what was that road that I came in on? That kind of t bones?
Scott Pearce [00:19:12]:
Yes. You came in O'Kelly Chapel road. O'Kelly Chapel is the name of the chapel. So back in the day, you can imagine this whole dirt road thing going on out here. You came in O'Kelly Chapel road, which hits Highway 751 that we're on, and right there, that intersection, thousands of cars a day. And so we've talked about electronic signs and all sorts of things, but we said, well, what's an easy thing to do? And we did that. And funny, we are, we did an estimate for an HOA that I think we're going to pick up this month. And Dylan said, how'd you know? He goes, well, I mean, I've been by your place a million times.
Scott Pearce [00:19:41]:
The other day I saw a thing that said, you did lawn maintenance services. And our HOA, literally, the company that was doing it, like, stopped. They just disappeared. And we knew. And I thought, well, call you. So I thought, how funny that something is simple as a printed banner.
Jack Jostes [00:19:53]:
Well, yeah, I like that. So I have a chapter in my book about branding, and part of branding is basic stuff like having your logo, having your signage is so important. And I'm thinking of a client right now who, he's got unmarked white trucks. And I'm like, why? Why? What are you doing?
Scott Pearce [00:20:15]:
Right.
Jack Jostes [00:20:15]:
Like, get your vehicle wrapped. So I'm glad to hear that that's paying off, because as soon as I came down that road, I saw all the things that you did and I was like, oh, I actually didn't, I didn't realize that you did that you had the lawn component and you just got the lawn truck recently, right? Is that new?
Scott Pearce [00:20:33]:
Yeah, the chemical treatment truck for fertilization, insect, fungus, shrub treatments. That's new. We got that, I think, in fall. We hired a gentleman run that, and he's on it full time. So we don't quite have a full route. You know, between the maintenance clients, we had it probably roughly, kept it, got it about half full. And now we're taking, we used to, we wouldn't take a client that called. So we just want you to do our lawn treatments.
Scott Pearce [00:20:57]:
We said it would be full service or nothing. Right. Mowing weekly. Now we'll take that because of that truck. So now we're starting to pick up clients that just want us to do their treatment work. And I'd say it's about 70% full. And. Yeah, just that sign out there saying it, I think maybe it'll trigger people to realize we do more than maybe they realize. That's our hope.
21:16 - Historic O'Kelly Chapel: A Passion Project
Jack Jostes [00:21:16]:
So, Scott, we are now standing in front of this historic church. It's the O'Kelly Chapel Christian Church, organized in 1794. I'm looking at the sign by O'Kelly, and we actually just walked through the cemetery and there were some O'Kelly family gravestones for sure. So tell me, what's the story of this place?
Scott Pearce [00:21:38]:
Yeah, so this, this again, was not planned. We, the denomination that owns this currently, or did, approached us several years back. My wife and I just said, we, we've decided there's no, we're not using the chapel anymore. We're just spending a little bit of money doing some maintenance. We wonder if you would want to purchase it, maybe integrate it into your business someday. So we weren't really looking to do so, to be, to be completely honest, we had not purchased the, the Garden Center yet. So we thought what a strange risk we would take to buy this if we don't own that. But we did.
Scott Pearce [00:22:09]:
We felt a real sense to do it and we did it. And then, of course, within a year or two, we purchased the Garden Center. So again, it all eventually got recombined, as we discussed earlier, it's all one piece of property. Now, short version, church itself. This is one of those things where in business, I feel like I analyze everything, and I have friends who say, let's analyze it. Let's run it through. Can it return income? Can it. We really haven't done a great job of that on this.
Scott Pearce [00:22:34]:
My wife, this. I call it a passion project. She has felt this desire and burden. I don't know if it's a burden, but this real intense desire to bring this chapel back to life. And so we're doing it. And when you say, what's your return on investment? How exactly will you use it? I'll tell you. I have no clue. Clue just yet.
Scott Pearce [00:22:53]:
That's just the honest truth. We have a lot of ideas. We just don't know yet.
Jack Jostes [00:22:56]:
Well, that's amazing. So a lot of other things in your business, like you said, are very calculated. You know, everything you're doing. And then what was it about this thing that drew you into it? What was it when you came here that gave you that feeling of, yeah, let's go for it?
Scott Pearce [00:23:13]:
Yeah. I still don't know. I still don't know for sure. It's very hard to explain. I mean, it is a beautiful, historic chapel, as you say. It's the fourth building on this site. This one came in 1900. So it's been here 124 years now.
Scott Pearce [00:23:27]:
It was sitting on rocks, literally, like a stack of rocks at each pillar.
Jack Jostes [00:23:31]:
And so it's now propped up on bricks. Did you guys do that?
Scott Pearce [00:23:35]:
We did. So my wife's been working with a contractor who works on historic things. And they jacked it up slowly, took those rocks out, built these pillars. They put them down the middle by removing all the floorboards inside the church and built pillars, then put the floorboards back and then set it back down.
Jack Jostes [00:23:51]:
Okay, so you bought this when? 2017 then. Because. Was it?
Scott Pearce [00:23:55]:
Well, the business in 16. I probably bought this in 15.
Jack Jostes [00:23:58]:
Okay, so you bought this in 2015. And as we walked over here, you shared that you have to do an enormous septic project in order to even be able to use it.
Scott Pearce [00:24:08]:
Well, let me back up a little. Rezoning came first. That's part of the reason the use has been hard, because I've been in years of rezoning. So we had to rezone this, recombine it. It was part of a joint use plan, which I was told you can't, which we pushed against and eventually got it done. But it was years of process, which I did all myself, and so it just took time. And so now here we are. And as you say, the biggest hurdle was bathrooms.
Scott Pearce [00:24:34]:
We live in an area where the soil, if anybody knows North Carolina, and especially this area, the clay is just like a brick. So we had a lot of testing done. There's nowhere you put a septic system. And so now we had to go to the state and apply for what's called a surface strip septic system. And so we're having to build a bathroom, put in a septic. So again, we got 250, 300 thousand dollars just in that to get ourselves an occupancy certificate to even use the church.
Jack Jostes [00:24:58]:
And meanwhile, and I asked, are you planning to do weddings? And you shared no.
Scott Pearce [00:25:02]:
Right? So everybody, everybody. And we get calls, and we get calls weekly, can I do a wedding there? Can I do a wedding there? And first of all, we can't yet. And we just don't feel compelled to do weddings. What we see it as is we'll definitely do our classes. We do tons of classes every year at the Garden Center, and we currently do them in our back office. There's a big conference room. What a great cool spot, right? To come and build a wreath in an old chapel. Right? So part of it's just nostalgia, I'm telling you, part of it is just the fun of it.
Scott Pearce [00:25:31]:
And then we'll also probably allow people, we thought I be cool to, like, allow people to do business meetings here. What a great off site business meeting spot. We'll equip it with, you know, audio, video equipment. And then the last, and again, I'm being careful because we don't know. But the last thing we probably were considering expanding, doing all of that, but expanding the Garden Center, indoor plant area and a coffee shop. We really think there could be a coffee shop, wine bar experience out here in this place. So those are the ideas that are floating, that have not solidified yet. Cool.
Jack Jostes [00:26:01]:
Well, I can't wait to connect with you in a few years and see, you know, what, what you end up using with it. And I look forward to taking a peek inside. Yeah. One of the things that I learned during, when we were preparing for this is that you actually, and maybe it's unrelated to the church, is you have a chaplain, right. Who comes once a week, so can you tell me about that?
26:21 - A Chaplain for Employee Care
Scott Pearce [00:26:21]:
Yeah, we do. We have a chaplain service that comes. They're. We have a male and a female chaplain assigned to our company. And so typically they'll alternate weeks. One will come one week, one the other. Sometimes our male chaplain comes a few times, he'll come an extra week or two, and that is just to provide some employee care. And so we adopted it about a little over a year ago with some hesitation and uncertainty of how that would be received.
Scott Pearce [00:26:45]:
But so far it's been pretty well received. And they'll come and just kind of walk around, check in with everyone they're available. Twenty four seven. And so it's great to see people finally connecting. I'm watching him walk around with a guy in the morning and chatting with him and having a conversation, maybe walking around the pond and, yeah, it's been really neat. And we had an incident where a gentleman who worked for us was in a horrible accident, not on company time, but became paralyzed from the waist down. And then his nephew still works for us. And the chaplains were there.
Scott Pearce [00:27:17]:
I mean, we called him and they were at the hospital visiting with him. What do you need? And coming back to us saying, they need this as a company helped them with that. It's been a really neat, just thing. You hate to say crisis, but let's be honest, crisis is probably when you're most grateful you have something. And we feel like we just want people to have someone they can reach out to, you know?
Jack Jostes [00:27:35]:
Well, I think, yeah, that's fascinating. I haven't met any landscape companies or businesses who have a chaplain. And is this somebody that you met through your church or how did you connect with this?
Scott Pearce [00:27:46]:
No, this connection actually came. I've been a part for, see, this is year eight that I've also been a part of a peer, peer group, C12. It's a national peer networking group, a CEO group, I should say. So we meet once a month for a full day here. And it's a group of businesses, not like mine, which, again, at first I wasn't sure we always want to be around landscapers, exchanging information, but I'm sitting in a room with a financial advisor and a caterer and this and that and, man, I just can't tell you that our businesses are all the same. They're all the same. It's, it's people and it's process and it's finance. And so through that group, C12, they have recommended, you know, the resources of corporate chaplains and marketplace chaplains.
Scott Pearce [00:28:27]:
We use marketplace. And again, I, our guys encouraged it for years and to be transparent, I, I just didn't know, I knew what I believed, and I think our people here know that, but I didn't feel that I wanted to push that on people.
Jack Jostes [00:28:41]:
Right.
Scott Pearce [00:28:41]:
And so we were cautious and I didn't want that to be misconstrued as wow. Now we all got. Scott's got his thing going in here, and I don't believe the way Scott believes. So we just told our people, we don't need you to do that. That's not. This is care. This person's here to provide care. If you want to have a spiritual or religious conversation, go at it, but you don't have to.
Scott Pearce [00:29:01]:
And they're not going to initiate that with you. That's not. They're here to check in, be a resource, and just maybe it's, you're having a crap and it'd just be nice to talk to somebody a little bit. That's as far as it goes. That's okay. And by the way, if you don't want to talk to them, you can wave and say good morning and keep going. And we have people that do that. And there's no offense taken.
Scott Pearce [00:29:17]:
It's totally okay.
Jack Jostes [00:29:18]:
Yeah, I was curious. I'm glad you shared that because I could see non religious people being like, what's going on with the chaplain? What is Scott trying to get me to do? So I'm glad that you positioned that way. How have the staff responded to it again?
Scott Pearce [00:29:33]:
You know, the good part is, one part is it's anonymous in a good way. Right. So what I get is a report about every four months that says, this is how many contacts we've had. And by them, a contact. I don't remember the exact criteria, but it's not hello and keep walking. It means maybe two minutes or more. They've got a criteria. These are contacts I made each week.
Scott Pearce [00:29:52]:
And then maybe text messages that were exchanged or this, that. And I get a report and I don't remember, but I know from the first one to the second one to the third one, I just got. It's. It's dramatic. It's all of a sudden, like, everything's going up, up, up, and so we find it to be really good and like, so just watching our people. And I've had no, I mean, I got. I got one anonymous letter about a month into it where someone just said, hey, you know, I don't. We don't need this.
Scott Pearce [00:30:18]:
I don't know why you're spending money on this. People need whatever, something, whether it's mental health or something, spend money on that. It wasn't nasty. It was just like, why are you, you know? And we just said, hey, man, you know, I get that. And we can. We can explore that as well. But this is just one thing we're offering.
30:18 - Enneagram in Business: Improving Team Dynamics
Jack Jostes [00:30:32]:
I was checking out your LinkedIn, and you are a certified. And. Help. Help me here. You're a certified enneagram. What is?
Scott Pearce [00:30:41]:
Coach
Jack Jostes [00:30:43]:
Okay. You're a certified Enneagram coach. What is the enneagram and why did you get certified in coaching it?
Scott Pearce [00:30:48]:
Yeah. So the Enneagram. Let me start with. I'll go from the front back. When I say that is a designation. I'm really not practicing it yet. I can tell you how I hope to use it. But for here, it's been, you know, the enneagram is a profile. You take a test, much like people call it personality test, but it's a profile of behavior and the way you respond and react to things and some of your natural tendencies.
Jack Jostes [00:31:08]:
So, Scott, tell us a little bit. How are you using Enneagram? What are some of the insights that you've had in managing your team?
Scott Pearce [00:31:16]:
Well, for one thing, you have to be careful. We have to be careful. You don't want to put somebody in a box. You're this type of enneagram. So you can only do this and you can never do that. The great part about enneagram is it's a natural tendency. I have a lot of natural tendencies on the enneagram. I don't look like I should own a business, right? But that doesn't mean I'm restricted by that.
Scott Pearce [00:31:32]:
It's an awareness of how I naturally respond to things. So we often, you know, again, we give it so we can kind of see what a person's natural tendencies are. So we can say, hey, in this job, because there are enneagram types that probably are very non confrontational. Not that anybody super, but, you know, I mean, like, very nervous inward. So if they're in a job where they're gonna have to do that sort of thing. I'm just using an example. It might be a question, how are you gonna handle that? Would you say your tendency is to. And they would go, yeah.
Scott Pearce [00:31:58]:
Well, then how are you gonna do this? How would you handle this? And a lot of times their answer, oh, that's great. I know my tendency, but I'm great at this. And they might be right. It's. It's. That's not. That's not inaccurate. And then we also use it relating to each other.
Scott Pearce [00:32:10]:
So because different types on the enneagram, they communicate differently, they hear differently. Some want a lot of words. Some want just a few words. And so we've used it in meetings. We'll say, okay, we're gonna put everybody's enneagram type on the board and, you know, when you see something kind of point and we can, you know, kind of ingest it in fun, you can say, I can see now why when Bill and Sally are going head to head, I can see, see it now because Sally sees it like this and he naturally sees it like this. No wonder. And so they both got to stop for a minute and go, hold on a minute. And if they'll do that, their communication's totally different.
Jack Jostes [00:32:44]:
I'm curious. So you were joking. For people watching or listening? I took about 15 minutes to set up this shot because I wanted it to look good. I wanted to get the church in the background. And you joked about my enneagram. You haven't seen it?
Scott Pearce [00:32:58]:
No.
Jack Jostes [00:32:58]:
But based on that, what were you thinking when you, have you ever taken it? I actually haven't taken it.
Scott Pearce [00:33:04]:
I'll send you the link.
Jack Jostes [00:33:05]:
Okay.
Scott Pearce [00:33:05]:
And we'll do it just for, you know, we can report back.
Jack Jostes [00:33:07]:
That would be fun.
Scott Pearce [00:33:08]:
I would, I would, I would say you're probably a one. A one tends to be a bit of a perfectionist. Things go a certain way. They, you know, the shots got to be just right. I'm probably going to go set the camera up and there's gonna be all kind of stuff in the background. I'm like, whatever. I mean, we did, you know, we filmed the thing right, but I might be wrong, but that I picked that up. Like, he cares about getting it right.
Scott Pearce [00:33:30]:
One of my designers is a strong one. He's been with me for twelve years and, you know, he knows it. And we just like Doug and we kid him a little bit once also. It's like there's one way to do things, it's my way. And we're kidding. But I mean, you know, Doug just, he's, and I mean it like, we love it. Like he. But he gets things right, you know, and Doug is good at getting it right, which can sometimes I'm going, let's just make a decision.
Scott Pearce [00:33:53]:
And he's going, slow down. And then I'm always like, usually glad on the back end that I waited and let him get it right.
Jack Jostes [00:33:58]:
Yeah, I think, yeah, it's, so what I'm thinking about is in D.I.S.C. because I don't know Enneagram well enough yet, but my D.I.S.C. actually changed as I added more staff and after I had kids, for sure. So I used to have the higher C, right.
Scott Pearce [00:34:13]:
That's the equivalent.
Jack Jostes [00:34:15]:
And that is kind of the detail, doing it right. And I did a lot of the SU, and when I'm doing this, yeah, I'm the guy, I'm the cameraman. So I do, and I enjoy doing it really well. But when I'm leading a group of people, my D.I.S.C. is more way off the charts on the dominant side, and I'm way more directive. So I think it kind of, for me, depends on what am I doing and am I leading a group of people to do things with me or am I personally doing it? But if I'm personally doing it, I'm going to be pretty exacting.
Scott Pearce [00:34:45]:
Right. And that's sort of the Enneagram. I can have a few variations on it, but I've always got a kind of a default. Like, that's my default, typically and so quickly to speak. So the reason the other, the certification is, I hope our business is growing and we're being able to have people run the day to day. One of my hopes would be to introduce this to landscape companies, other companies, too. It could go anywhere because this is our industry and our passion. I would love to go into companies just like ours.
Scott Pearce [00:35:14]:
Take their leadership team, 6,8,10 people. Do it. Spend a half a day just creating some self awareness. I just think some self awareness and how we work together can make so much of a difference and have a long term impact. And if it does anything but crack the lid for somebody to go, hmm, I'd explore a little more about why I, or how I react or how I do that.
Jack Jostes [00:35:33]:
Yeah, I agree with that. I think there's tremendous value in that. Some of the results that we've had in doing it are people are like, oh, I used to think you were really weird, but now I'm really glad that you're here because you're really good at that one thing. And that that person's like, I thought you were really weird, but I'm glad you're here. And so that empathy and understanding, and then that can, that can strengthen those relationships. And I think especially in an office staff.
Scott Pearce [00:35:59]:
Right.
Jack Jostes [00:35:59]:
That's, that's really important.
Scott Pearce [00:36:01]:
And I think it'll take some time because we as companies, we're happy to send people to learn about landscape design. We're happy to send them to learn about plan ID, but are we willing to spend money to go get them to learn about themselves a little bit? And so that may take a tide turn. I've always loved, that's, to me, my preference, because I think you grow people that they're just better employees all around. Of course we want to teach industry specific knowledge. But I think as companies, if we can get better at spending a little, you know, take a little bit of budget and say, let's spend it on making our people stronger and better. Personally, I think there's a huge impact there. And like I said, we see it here just by the way we do it. I'd love to.
Scott Pearce [00:36:37]:
So I hope at some point to help some companies do that. It'd be a lot of fun.
36:40 - Upcoming Projects & Favorite Books
Jack Jostes [00:36:40]:
I agree. Well, Scott, you've got a lot of cool things going. You've got this church project, you've got your Garden Center, you've got landscape, you've got landscape construction. You're going to help people with Enneagram. What else are you doing that is interesting? What are you up to? I have a feeling you've got something else. Or is that it?
Scott Pearce [00:36:58]:
Well, I did go get my real estate license this year. So it's funny you said that. That was just, again, something I've always wanted to do. Funny enough, when I sold my business in Florida, I thought I would go into real estate for a season. It's just I'm one of those guys that I remember when I was a kid, the real estate for people that don't remember used to come in a magazine and you take a magazine out of the box, you know, you didn't have the Internet. And I would sit at dinner with my parents. They'd be having to, and I'd sit in circle houses and think. I just, it's just always been a thing.
Scott Pearce [00:37:23]:
And so I said, so when I sold my business in Florida, I was gonna do it, but it was zero eight. And as you know, everything just fell apart. It was not a good time to go become a real estate agent, not a good time to do anything with property. And then we ended up moving up here. And so last year I thought, I'm going to go get that. I'm going to go get that done. So again, I'm not practicing with it right now, but it's a future thing that I think may be of interest to me at some point, possibly in the commercial sector, I think could be a lot of fun just because I enjoy the process, I enjoy thinking through it.
Jack Jostes [00:37:50]:
So, Scott, so tell me, what are two of the most important books that your C12 for joke about?
Scott Pearce [00:37:56]:
So, yeah, it's a funny thing. So obviously C12 is a christian based organization. So the Bible is obviously key and central. But then also the book Traction, the EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system on which we run. So it's pretty common in one of our meetings for someone to say, you know, did you bring your copy of the Bible? I mean, Traction. Because kiddingly, we've just found it to be so crucial and so foundational to our business.
Jack Jostes [00:38:21]:
What is it about Traction that resonates for you and your business?
Scott Pearce [00:38:25]:
Yeah, I think it's just the consistency. Anybody that knows it knows it's not anything the Bible says. There's nothing new under the sun, right? And it's the truth. It's not all brand new, it's just a systemized way of doing business and that's the part I've loved and we had to really embrace it and people that have done it probably can relate. Either you get on, you kind of start getting sideways and just doing pieces of it, or you just go all in and this is one of those things we just said, we're going all in.
Jack Jostes [00:38:51]:
So did you hire a coach or did you just do it yourself?
Scott Pearce [00:38:54]:
We did not. I did it myself. I'm not saying that was the best. We have looked at the idea of an implementer when we're so deep into it now, we feel, okay, well, so.
Jack Jostes [00:39:01]:
I self implemented it also. However, I have people on my team who read it and are bought in and have helped me do it and I remember when I read the book, it said something like, this is going to take three years to implement. I'm like, dude, I'm doing this this weekend. And then it did take years to establish, but I started that in 2017. So seven years, I guess. And it is a key part of what we do. Our company rocks. I'm curious, how do you communicate the vision of the company to your employees and is that important in a landscape company?
Scott Pearce [00:39:36]:
It's been challenging. I mean, it's what we found. Let me throw in one other thing. We do a survey once a year and it's called BWI and it's a survey of employees integrated. Originally it was done mostly in christian organizations, but they broadened it where it can be done in any organization. And so we've done that. And what I found, to answer your question is we do a really good job of communication, vision, all that at the higher level and it definitely breaks down the farther it goes. There are questions that ask that and we got a sense that we're not doing as good of a job.
Scott Pearce [00:40:08]:
So we're working on that. We're a company. We do, we just did it this week. We do a once a quarter meeting, which I know is not a lot, but it's something we can commit to right now. So once a quarter the whole company comes together. In our world, that's hard to do.
Jack Jostes [00:40:20]:
They're all, I agree. I was going to commend you for even doing that because I know a lot of companies where they get together once a year at the Christmas party, kind of, but you've got crews coming in at different times. You've got retail, you've got maintenance like it, you've got job sites and properties. It makes sense that you wouldn't all be together. Have you branded your vision Traction organizer? Do you use that?
Scott Pearce [00:40:45]:
We do so every, at our leadership team, every. So we do the weekly, you know, the weekly meeting and then as a leadership team, and then there are other department divisional meetings that happen throughout the week. We do the quarterly and the annual. As a leadership team, we use the Traction organizer there. I have an assistant who handles all that, keeps up with all of that. It's wonderful. And she keeps us on track, literally. And then again rocks from the leadership team down to everybody.
Scott Pearce [00:41:15]:
We have not implemented that again on the crew side just yet because we thought they were in a production role. It's a little hard, but otherwise, every Garden Center employee has a rock or two.
Jack Jostes [00:41:23]:
Do you have scorecards in the departments?
Scott Pearce [00:41:25]:
We don't use an official scorecard like EOS Rec. We do have KPI's that everybody fills out prior to the leadership team meeting that we go through every week.
Jack Jostes [00:41:33]:
But are the, are the crews seeing that information?
Scott Pearce [00:41:35]:
Not really.
Jack Jostes [00:41:37]:
That's been the, I think the biggest thing for me, I think, and sometimes it's hard to know, but we have a weekly meeting and we have a scorecard and we, and we look at that scorecard at least once a month. And then every quarter when I set our new quarterly rocks, I make a video. Do you ever, have you ever used Loom?
Scott Pearce [00:41:55]:
Yeah, we use Loom.
Jack Jostes [00:41:56]:
So I make a Loom video. I'm like, hey, everyone, here's a quick recap. Here's our company vision, here's our three year picture. And that way, because I have, since I did that last quarter, I have two new employees, so this is gonna be their first time. So I'm kind of repetitive in it. And every quarter I do that. And I've found that people, when things are good, they're like, cool things are good. And when they're not good, if things are off, they know about it and they know about it sooner.
Jack Jostes [00:42:20]:
And I found the right people care and want to help. So I don't know. I don't know what it's. I don't know what it's like to have 80 people. Right. But I wonder if you could print it or email it or text it. One of the things that's worked really well for our clients. We're a partner with Team Engine and you can do a text message newsletter, so you probably aren't going to send a thousand word text message, but maybe you could text out a link to that loom video and people would watch it or listen to it or whatever.
Scott Pearce [00:42:47]:
I love the idea. It's funny you say that because we've been using Loom for some training videos, creating some SOPs, and then we're now using, obviously, we're using a different. We're just going to YouTube for training videos at the Garden Center. And that's the great, you know, I really should, you know, that's a great way to just create something, share it and let everybody. Because you're not, again, you're not going to get them all in a room every week. But, yeah, it's a great idea. And you guys just have to say things over and over again to people they want. You know, they don't always hear or catch it the first time.
43:14 - Final Thoughts & How to Connect with Scott
Jack Jostes [00:43:14]:
Cool. Well, Scott Pearce from For Garden’s Sake, if people want to connect with you, network with you, how can we get in touch?
Scott Pearce [00:43:23]:
Yeah. So again, my email scott@fgsdurham.com. i'm on LinkedIn. Scott Pearce, P.E.A.R.C.E. And, you know, those are the two main methods. I'd be happy to have people. It's on the website and everything. It's simple.
Jack Jostes [00:43:35]:
Cool. Well, I'll put links to that in the show notes for people to connect with you. And thanks so much for sharing your story on The Landscaper’s Guide Podcast.
Scott Pearce [00:43:42]:
Thank you. It was a pleasure.
Jacl Jostes [00:43:44]:
Like today's video and subscribe to our YouTube channel to get upcoming videos to help you grow your snow and landscape company. My name is Jack Jostes. And check out my free resources in the show notes and click the next video to grow your business.
Scott Pearce [00:44:04]:
Let's take a ride. We'll take a ride over to the chapel through an old. Well, we'll take a ride by an old cemetery.
Jack Jostes [00:44:09]:
Well, yeah, we got. Are we gonna. Are we gonna go in the cemetery?
Scott Pearce [00:44:12]:
We'll go right through there.
Jack Jostes [00:44:12]:
Actually, I've been dying to see it.
Scott Pearce [00:44:14]:
And that'll take us right over to the chapel. That's our latest construction project. We'll show you what's going on.
Jack Jostes [00:44:19]:
All right, good.
Scott Pearce [00:44:20]:
Dying to go.
Jack Jostes [00:44:21]:
Okay. All right. Very good.
Show Notes:
Watch the full episode + see the transcript at: landscapersguide.com/podcast/
Tell us where to send your beef jerky: landscapersguide.com/toolbox
Watch the full episode on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=OYvb9cXSmS4
Connect with Scott:
???? For Garden's Sake: fgsdurham.com/
???? LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/scottspearce/
???? Email: scott@fgsdurham.com