00:00 – Build a business that runs without you
00:00
George Urvari
Part of our success is building a business that runs without us. That would be the dream of many people, to have a business that runs without them. You know, the trick of being in business really is to have it work for you instead of you work for it. And so we've sort of mapped that out and that really makes a big difference for people because they know what the next steps are.
00:21 – From Oriole Landscaping to KTC, George’s story
00:21
Jack Jostes
Hey everyone. Welcome back to The Landscaper's Guide Podcast. Today I'm excited to interview George Urvari, who co-founded Oriole Landscaping in 1986, building it into one of Toronto's top residential design-build firms and later expanding into high-end construction with solid space construction. Now through Knowledge Tree Consulting, he's helping landscape and construction entrepreneurs across the country and all of North America succeed faster with less pain, sharing the proof proven systems he's developed over nearly four decades in business. Today we're going to have a conversation around leadership and how to lead a team. So George, thanks for coming on the show. What else should we know about you?
01:09
George Urvari
Oh, thanks for that. Interesting. So I started the business knocking on doors to get business to pay for school. It grew. I hired all the neighborhood kids, I did landscaping for all the neighborhood parents. And after I graduated university, I kept doing it. And it wasn't a plan, it just happened. I got lucky along the way with my business partner and the number of amazing key people that have helped our business get to where it is today. And it's really a story of just starting in the ground level and working your way up right, to doing the bookkeeping, to being on the shovel, to implementing, estimating programs, you name it, we've pretty much done it.
01:53
George Urvari
So a lot of learning, a lot of pain along the way and we certainly can help other people save all kinds of time and mistakes and that's sort of the story.
02:01
Jack Jostes
That's great. And so we met at the SIMA Symposium in Grand Rapids. And how was that show for you?
02:07
George Urvari
Oh, it was great. It was really well run show, tons of fun, great activities, great speakers and I, I would recommend it to anybody who's in the snow business, that's for sure. It's great networking. I mean that's how I met you. And, and learning, obviously you learn a ton of things, so it's a great investment to make and it's really not that expensive and it actually is fun. So you can write it off, it can expense it as a. I, I agree.
02:35
Jack Jostes
It's actually one of my favorite shows because it's big enough that I meet a lot of new people, but it's small enough that I run into them two or three times over the, the course of the week. And it's just an incredible industry. So I, I love that show. It was good meeting you. One of the things I was curious, do you still run solid space construction in addition to your consulting company or what are you up to nowadays?
02:59
George Urvari
Yeah, so my landscaping business, my construction business run without me. So we've got, you know, general manager who manages that. I maybe touch base once every three months. That's about it. I get my dividend check. And so, you know, part of our success is building a business that runs without us. And I think that would be the dream of many people, to have a business that runs without them and inevitably is great to sell. So you can sell your business at some point, whether it's to your employees or to an outside vendor. So you know, the trick of being in business really is to have it work for you instead of you work for it. And we figured that out and we know what to do and when to do it. And so we've sort of mapped that out.
03:41
George Urvari
And that really makes a big difference for people because they know what the next steps are.
03:46
Jack Jostes
Well, yeah, that's interesting. So how many are you comfortable sharing? How many owners are there of the company now in?
03:53
George Urvari
So in the landscape business and the construction business, only two owners. In the consulting business, there's five of us. Okay. So we've got people that are specializing in finance and data systems management. We've got, you know, Internet technology, we've got, you know, hr, so psychology, human relations, that type of thing. And then I'm sort of a generalist where I typically in the lead consultant, I go in and I find out what's going on. And then on the deeper dive things like the statistics or that type of thing, I'll get the math majors to dive in and work on those things. So.
04:32 – Who KTC serves and how the team works
04:32
Jack Jostes
And does Knowledge Tree Consulting, do you guys specialize in the landscape industry or do you have clients outside of it?
04:37
George Urvari
We have clients outside of it. So we've done some manufacturing businesses, we've done some roofing businesses. We're doing a, one of a large company right now. We're doing a mulch and topsoil manufacturing business that also has a construction division. So it's, it's pretty much anything in the service industry that sort of construction related. Yeah.
05:00 – Leadership blind spots and the delegation bottleneck
05:00
Jack Jostes
Cool. Well, so one of the things that we talked about that I wanted to hear your insights on was blind spots and leadership. Tell me more. What does that mean to you and what are you seeing specifically with landscape companies?
05:14
George Urvari
So I would say it's general to all business and we like to do psychological profiles, we like to do Myers Briggs analysis on the different types of people that are out there and then see who's in the driver's seat. And so that really we've started to see some and patterns in terms of great leadership. So you might have somebody who is very intelligent. It's just they're not wired for being a CEO. And an example of that would be intuition. So believe it or not, intuition is not something that's common. Only 25% of the population has. Everybody has some intuition, but higher levels of intuition. And so they're not able to extrapolate the future. So they can't. To grow a business, you need to have that skill set. Now the good news is if you have a team, you can leverage other people's talents.
06:07
George Urvari
So part of the journey is let's say you're a leader and you're low on intuition and you're really good manager. That's great. The company's not going to grow. And so part of a CEO's job is to look at the future and then figure out how to navigate that risks and opportunities and then move the company forward. So there's things like organizational skills. So some people are really good at creating organizational structures. And if you're not organized, then you don't have an organization. So that's another leadership skill as well. There's actually 13 different types of leadership styles. So there's styles, then there's psychological profiles. And all these determine how effective you're going to be. So there's a thing called the Peter Principle. You will rise to your own level of incompetence. And that's become very clear to me what my Peter Principle is.
07:00
George Urvari
So I'm not good at certain things, so I get other people to do them. A lot of leaders can't delegate. For example, they might be the smartest person in the room. They literally cannot delegate. So it's often a fight to get people to delegate. They just can't do it. And if that's the case, then that part of that business is going to suffer because the direction is not going to be pursued or met because you can't get to where you're going by yourself. You need a team. Getting people like, I have a client coming in Saturday morning to talk to Me about the fact that he's so mired in the day to day and he, he loves it. He doesn't want to let go, but he knows he has to because his team's great.
07:38
George Urvari
And so what we have to do is we have to either say to him like literally suffer and I don't know, go play golf or something and network or you know, start working on the business. Let's look at the things that you're talented at that you could add value to the business and start, you know, being busy in a productive way as opposed to just tripping people up. I call it stick in the, you know, the stick in the bicycle spokes going down the hill. So I think that is very common. Very, very few people are able to delegate, you know, have all those qualities that are there to be a leader. There's one of the personality profiles and the name of it is called commander. And so then you can get sort of get into the boss versus leadership, right?
08:20
George Urvari
So you don't want to command, you want to empower people. Chief Empowerment Officer. And so you can work on getting better at a leader for sure. You just have to be aware of what your leadership blind spots are. And, and sadly they don't teach leadership in schools unless you go to business school. And even then there's not a high focus on it. Leadership can be taught. There are people with certain predispositions for it for sure and it's the greatest opportunity for every business. So when I see great leadership, I know the business is going to do better faster. When I see poor leadership, I know it's essentially handicapped.
08:54 – What good leadership looks like
08:54
Jack Jostes
How do you know when you see good leadership?
08:57
George Urvari
When you're meeting with businesses, the ability to assess risk and the ability to make decisive decisions. So you know, I like to use logic. So one of the first quadrants in Myers Briggs is analytical quadrant. And the people that are not analytical, which is most people, that's actually 90% of people, are not analytical. They will not have fast decision speeds. It may be subjective, not objective. So based on the personality profile and then when I show them the pros, cons and unintended consequence of a decision, if I can't get them to pull the trigger, in other words, contribute money to something, then I know that we're stuck. And so getting people to make those commitments and move forward is the secret. It's okay to make a mistake provided it doesn't put you out of business.
09:51
George Urvari
What's worse is doing nothing so most people get stuck and they're this morass and they just, they can't move. And that is essentially a good way to prevent your business from improving or growing for that matter.
10:05 – Intuition in the CEO seat
10:05
Jack Jostes
You said earlier that only 25% of people have high intuition. How important is intuition to being the CEO of a company?
10:15
George Urvari
It's absolutely critical.
10:16
Jack Jostes
What do you do if you don't have it? So what if, I mean, because there are many people who, like you, shared your story. They started mowing lawns, they knocked doors, they eventually learned construction skills, they have built multimillion dollar companies or they're on their path to it. What do you, what do the folks do who are listening, who have done that are maybe suffering and leading their company? Could it be a lack of intuition that is causing an issue?
10:42
George Urvari
Oh, for sure. Here, I'll give you an example. I brought this team into my company for advice and went to a restaurant to order food. This is just an example. And I already know what I'm going to order. Boom. I order it. I know the type of food I'm having, I can extrapolate what it's going to taste like and I make a decision. And I had earlier spoken to this person, I said, you know, I, I don't think you're the fastest decision maker. And he says, I, I don't think that's true. And sure enough, he's the last person to order at the restaurant and tells everybody to go ahead. So there is a. And that ties into your ability to take risks as well. So, you know, you're, there's uncertainty and there's risk and you know, uncertainty is terrible.
11:27
George Urvari
The trick is to qualify the risk and then figure out what the downside is and then pull the trigger. And so that requires intuition to be able to assess the future. Like, I think, you know, the economy is going to go south and you know, it's going to be terrible on this front, however, maybe we can buy some business for cheaper. And so now you're starting to look to the future. So really, actually intuition is the ability to look into the future and extrapolate outcomes. That's, that's what it is.
11:55
Jack Jostes
So what if you're working, I'm just curious, what do you do when you're working with people? You're running these personality assessments and they reveal that somebody does not have intuition. What do we do next?
12:08
George Urvari
Well, the good news is that there's two types of companies. There's distressed companies and there's opportunity companies. So a distressed company Needs fixing and an opportunity company needs to grow. Most companies have a bit of both, to be honest with you. And so we can focus on growing the bottom line without needing a lot of intuition. Cut this, fix that, change that. It might be something like, we need to hire this person for this position. You don't have them yet. You don't even know what they look like. This is what you need. And you know, someone's gonna have to take a leap of faith to spend a hundred thousand dollars on human capital, which is intangible, to change the business outcome. And some people just aren't willing to do that. They look simply at the numbers and they.
12:52
George Urvari
They don't see the benefit of, say, you know, I could use the hockey analogy. If you brought Ovechkin onto your team, you're gonna. He's gonna score more goals. The assistants are. Assists are gonna go up, and the hits are gonna be spectacular. Yet you don't wanna pay the premium for that player. And so there's an example of me explaining to them that, you know, these are some bold decisions that need to be made. None of them will put you out of business. You may be wrong, because in HR, you're only right 30% of the time. So even with the best hiring practices, you might bring somebody in and they don't work out. If you're lucky though, it will. And with persistence, you're going to get really lucky. So that is.
13:28
George Urvari
That's the difference between the companies that I work with, that improve exponentially versus incremental, you know, glacial improvement.
13:36
Jack Jostes
So you feel like people only hire. Right. 30% of the time, Is that what you're saying?
13:41
George Urvari
Correct. Correct. Yeah, yeah.
13:43
Jack Jostes
Even. Even when they're using these personality assessments and hiring recruiting processes, sure.
13:50
George Urvari
There's stuff that happens, right? People have, you hire somebody that's older, they got family issues, somebody gets sick. There's so many things, Murphy's Law, that can happen that can undermine what you're doing. It might be you as a leader, make a mistake that you say something that offends somebody in a certain way or whatever, and that just creates a cascading series of events that are. That are negative, that can lead to an exit. So there are so many things that there. There is more that can go wrong, that then. That then goes right. And most businesses aren't turnkey, where you're jumping into a beautiful system. There are so many things that are going wrong that can turn somebody off or, you know, different viewpoints, different perspectives on risk, on how things should be done and what should be done first.
14:34
George Urvari
So there's so many things that can derail a relationship and you know, it's at a fundamental level. So when you know, think about marriages, 50% of marriages don't work out, and then how many of the people that are married are happy? So to have a great company, you want to have a great culture, you want to have a happy marriage and a successful marriage and business is no different.
14:52 – Getting the team on the same page
14:52
Jack Jostes
What about team alignment? That was, I think this is related to what you're talking about. You know, one of the topics that we wanted to dig into a bit was team alignment. What is team alignment?
15:05
George Urvari
Yeah, great question. So I go into companies and sometimes there are, you know, there's a husband or a wife, right, A leadership team. And you know, the wife wants to work more and the husband wants to work less or vice versa. So we have to align. Well, how much are you willing to work? Are you willing to sacrifice your golf game on Saturdays if something needs to get done? Are you willing to sacrifice that trip you're going to go on if the wheels are falling off? Are you willing to sacrifice the growth of the business to restructure and take on some of the roles that you know, let's say you hired this person, they didn't work out, and then you have to step back and pick up that role. Are you willing to do that? Right?
15:44
George Urvari
And so, you know, what are you willing to sacrifice? Actually, at the end of the day, that's what alignment is about. What are you willing to sacrifice when the chips are down? And if you get that sorted out, then you'll know how well the business is going to go, whether it's going well or poorly. When things are going well, it's easy. When things are going poorly, it's a different matter. And so I've seen companies that, you know, are making a million dollars profit and they have a growth strategy and they hire somebody that's extremely expensive as sort of a future forecasting decision. So intuition, but not well, well decided. And the company starts eroding their profits and their balance sheet hoping for this thing to turn out. And they don't pair their expenses with their revenue immediately.
16:29
George Urvari
And so they burn through four or five hundred thousand dollars in a year. And it's very hard to get people with fixed mindsets to change their minds. And so the difference between a lot of people is they're subjective rather than object. So it's based on feel, not on facts. And so again, there's no correlation between intelligence and subjectivity and objectivity. You want your leaders to be more objective, obviously with some subjective inputs. Yeah, it's, the alignment piece is huge. To get your team like, where are we going, how fast we're going there? What are we willing to risk? What are we personally willing to risk to make this thing happen? That's what alignment is all about. And, you know, what's the culture of the company going to be? Is it going to be a fair culture?
17:12
George Urvari
Is it going to be based on, you know, the almighty dollar? What's it, what's it based on? So those are all alignment issues that have to be resolved and early on and it makes a big difference if you can square that away.
17:24
Jack Jostes
What, what are maybe. So we've talked about identifying a lot of problems. What are maybe some things that we could share with the audience that they could take away and go and try maybe a way of approaching a conversation with a team member or do you have any assessments online that people could check out?
17:43
George Urvari
Yeah, so we've created a whole pile of assessments and most of them are proprietary, so we don't share them because it's taken, you know, hundreds of companies of testing and implementation to validate their efficacy. What I would do is, you know, having a frank conversation of things like what are you not willing to do? I think I would start with what are you not willing to do? So success is what are you willing to do? And it's also what are you not willing to do? And then that you take everybody, you make a list of the people, what are they not willing to do? So am I willing to come in at five o' clock in the morning? Am I working to, willing to give up that Saturday? Am I willing to, you know, use my company vehicle to whatever.
18:26
George Urvari
Am I willing to, what am I willing to do? What am I not willing to do? And I think that's where you're going to find out whether the effort is going to be balanced. So, because then you get envy, you get judgment, this person's not working as hard, then the compensation has to align with the effort and the results. So there's so many factors that go into it.
18:50
Jack Jostes
This is interesting. So what, what maybe could we, could you rattle off a list of things? Because I could see asking certain people on my team and they would know what they're not willing to do and some people would be totally stumped by this. So what are maybe some things specific to landscape companies that Would have a productive. What are you not willing to do? Conversation.
19:14 – The “not willing to do” exercise and the 10–15 year reality
19:14
George Urvari
Yeah. So I think the number of Saturdays you're willing to work, the number of evening appointments you're willing to take, like, so when you're starting a business off, this is for businesses that don't have what we call pull. So the business is coming to you and you're saying no. Companies that actually have to grind and get business are in a much different position. So you know, to get a sale, what would you do? You know, do you have off hours on your phone? You know, that next sale might be that next three months worth of work. And if you're not the first person there and dealing with a client in a proactive way, you lose the deal. So you know, business is you hear these people preaching about the fact that, you know, we're going to have work, life balance and things like that.
19:57
George Urvari
Well, when you're first starting a business for the first 10 or 15 years, you know, you can forget about that.
20:03
Jack Jostes
Can you say that again more slowly? How long?
20:07
George Urvari
10 to 15 years for sure. Yeah, it's.
20:11
Jack Jostes
I agree. Yeah, I agree. And luckily I had a business coach who told me that it takes 10 years to build a business. I was in year three and really suffering eventually had a ton of debt in year five that I worked through. And hearing that it and hearing you say 10 to 15. I think it's important for a number of reasons. One, I think a lot of people have this. A lot of people have this idea that when they start their own business that they're going to have all this free time and they're going to have all this control over their schedule. One, one good joke I heard was that when you start a business you only have to work half days. And which half of the day you work is up to you.
20:55
George Urvari
Yeah, I would say. How many sleepless nights are you going to have? And what did you resolve while you were dreaming?
21:02
Jack Jostes
Yeah. And then still have to go to work the next day.
21:06
George Urvari
Yeah. So think about this. You've got a difficult client and it's a giant project and you've got to deal with it and it's not going away. It's not like it's a one or two day job. Like you're stuck in this bad relationship and you have to fight through that and you might have a couple of those in succession. And so your motivation has to be very strong and your teammates may have to pick up the slack for you if it becomes untenable. So you know, there Is no I in team. It's about we. And so it's like the legs of a stool. You know, three legs is, two legs is no good, three legs is good, four legs is better. And so, you know, there's the five pillars of business.
21:43 – The five pillars and when to invest in marketing
21:43
George Urvari
And so you need somebody who's finance, economics oriented, you know, insurance, law, accounting, you need operations minded people, you need human relations minded people and you need technology people as well. And then the sales and marketing is typically something that's the fifth pillar is something that very few people have. The energy, the bandwidth, the mindset, the disposition, the personality profile for. And so that's something that, you know, that's why there's all these companies like yours that help with the marketing because to try and do that in house while you're running your business is just insane. It's a business in itself and it's a specialty. And, and so there's so many like I did, I've mapped out business literally where there's I think something like 700 folders and there's typically about 1200 folders and files and there's eight layers of folders in a document system.
22:37
George Urvari
So I've mapped out our business. And for a small business to wear all the hats is insane. And then to have the right personality profile and you know, it's, it's really crazy. So you need partners. And so you know, on the marketing side you gotta have a marketing partner and you know, they will, they can be turned on and off because you, there's no point having too much business when your business is upside down. But when you're ready, you need to prepare for that either before a recession. So if you hear the word recession a year before, you should turn on the marketing dollars. And, and because it's too late when there's no revenue.
23:17
George Urvari
And then you need to make sure that you're doing the right things and your, your presentations are proper and your website's clean and your, you know, all that stuff is going to feed your business. If, if your business is struggling and you have work and your problem isn't that you don't have enough work or the right work, it's just people problems, cash flow problems. Those are different issues. So it's complicated. Business is very complicated.
23:43
Jack Jostes
It, it is complicated. It's hard. And you know, I think having people like you come in and I've worked with business coaches. Oh, I, I wanted to ask you about that. That reminds me of one of the things you, I know you want to talk about is what is the difference between consulting, coaching and advice. But, and I wanted to lead into it saying that I have hired consultants, coaches and advisors who have made me aware of things. And to me a coach is somebody who's going to work with me a little longer, they're going to coach me through it. That, that to be to me. Whereas a consultant may come in and identify a problem and give me some ideas, but they're typically not engaged in a longer period.
24:26 – Consulting vs coaching vs advice, KTC’s ER approach
24:26
Jack Jostes
But I'm curious about your definition of it. What do you do, George?
24:32
George Urvari
Yeah, great question. So I, I consider myself a emergency room physician and okay, what I like to do is I like to get my hands dirty. I like to take the bullets out. I like to stitch it back up and then I like to give some advice. And so I, I call that project based consulting. So let's say your books are upside down. And by the way, 99% of people's books are fine upside down. We'll analyze the financials and then what we'll do is we'll your chart of accounts so it's clean and organized so you can actually understand what's going on and then you can use the data moving forward. So we would go in there and do all that for you. Set you up, set you up with your QuickBooks and away you go. And so now we solve that problem.
25:13
George Urvari
Okay, you've got some problems with people not getting along okay. Or you know what you want to implement continual improve in your business. Okay, let's have a team meeting with your entire company. We'll hold a Kaizen session and we'll explain to them the 5s, the 10 types of waste, the 10 commandments of improvement, flow, efficiency, all these different principles that the company's going to live as an ethos and then help them implement all of those processes. So we get our hands dirty and we actually are an employee of yours temporarily until you don't need us. We do have, so that's, that's consulting. Coaching is where you're there for sort of an ongoing advisory basis where you're meeting say once a, a month. The dilemma with that is that your business probably should be fairly advanced for that type of relationship.
26:04
George Urvari
I think it's more about fixing things first and then advice. We have what's called our 911 advice. So essentially if you got a problem like I just had somebody call me yesterday and they're like, we Got this huge tender we're putting out. 1.5 million. Can you review the tender with us? So I went through the tender with them. I, I showed a couple of things that were missing. I made a couple of points and I said for this type of work that you're bidding your profit margin that you're expecting is too high. It's a year and a half from now. Will, will you be booked anyway? Yes. Then I would actually, if you want this job, I would suggest lowering your margin and here's why. And so that would be sort of an emergency advice. The tenders do the next day.
26:43
George Urvari
They probably should have called me, you know, two weeks earlier, problem solved. Or I've got this construction issue. I'm working on this hillside because of course we've, you know, I worked my hands, I built everything. I've operated excavators, skid steers, backhoes. You know, I've done masonry, carpentry. I can give advice on how to build things or what to look out for or more efficient ways to do things. You know, if you're working with concrete, that's also a terrifying business, what to do and what not to do in those situations. So that's sort of an advice kind of thing. And it's, you dial up the advice and you might get, you know, five minutes or 20 minutes or it might be an hour. That's sort of the advisory and coaching is something where you're with somebody through the journey.
27:26
George Urvari
The way I look at coaching though, there's a certain point where you outgrow your coach. And you know, if I'm, there's a certain point where I'll hit my peter principal and you need to hire somebody who's another level. So I'll give you an example. A friend of mine at our golf and country club, he, his job is to find food businesses that are $10 million, around $10 million, and then grow them $100 million. And my job is to take businesses, either a startup or a seven or eight million dollar business and then, you know, get them to be sort of turnkey. And then the next levels of getting to 100 million is not my specialty. So I would try to find somebody to send them to. That, that takes you from 10 million to 100 million.
28:08
George Urvari
If your business is dysfunctional at 20 million or 30 million, I can fix it because that's the ER surgeon role. And so I recognize what I'm good at, what I like doing.
28:18
Jack Jostes
And so George, would you say that's kind of your health. Yes, customer, your sweet spot is a 20 to 30 million dollars company.
28:24
George Urvari
No, no, no. I've, I've got startups, I've got people that say, listen, set me up with my financials properly, give me the advice I need as I need it, set up my, my file tree for my business so that I can manage my documents properly, and then tell me what I shouldn't do and what I should do.
28:46 – How to contact George
28:46
Jack Jostes
Well, George, you know, this has been a wealth of information. I appreciate you coming on and where can folks connect with you if we want to learn more?
28:55
George Urvari
So the best way to get in touch with me is to email me at George@KTC.biz.
29:07
Jack Jostes
Great. Well, George. George Urvari. Is that. Did I say that right?
29:11
George Urvari
Correct. Yeah.
29:12
Jack Jostes
From Knowledge Tree Consulting. Thanks so much for coming on The Landscaper’s Guide.
29:16
George Urvari
Thank you so much.
29:19
Jack Jostes
Well, I really enjoyed interviewing George on the podcast. And if you enjoyed today's episode, make sure you like this episode video and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Every week we post new interviews about sales, marketing and leadership to help you grow your snow and landscape company. My name is Jack Jostes and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.
Show Notes:
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