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Pride In Your Work And Serving Customers
00:00
Chris Pesche
Really have to take pride in what you do. And that's really what he taught me. Besides taking care of your employees, taking care of customers. You know, people say, well, who's your competitor? And I always feel I'm my own competitor. Customer service, helping your customers, respecting your customers, listening to your customers.
00:16
Jack Jostes
A lot of people ask me, jack, how did you decide to focus Ramblin Jackson on the landscape industry? The answer is that it happened rather organically. I never would have thought I'd run a multimillion dollar marketing company focused on snow and landscape. But every day I'm grateful I found this industry. And a big part of this story starts at a garden center in Des Plaines, Illinois called Pesci's Flowers. In today's episode of the Landscaper's Guide, I'm sharing some footage from 2019 when I went back and interviewed my first boss, Chris Pesci, the third generation owner. I worked at Pesci's in high school. I did everything. I was an entry level worker. I cleaned the toilets, I swept the aisles. I help people move plants and compost and whatever else to their car, whatever was needed to help customers get their garden supplies.
Jack Shares How He Entered The Green Industry
01:15
Jack Jostes
And I had no idea that this place was quietly shaping my work ethic and pointing me towards this industry. Pesci's Flowers has been serving the chicagoland area since 1924. And in this interview, Chris shares what it takes to build a business that lasts, from customer service to technology. From, you know, going from just a local garden center to also having a seven figure online store to combat the seasonality in the winter. So this is the story of how I ended up in the green industry. And it's also an inspiring story about a multi generational legacy which your business could become someday too.
Meeting Chris Pesche And The History Of Pesche's Flowers
02:03
Jack Jostes
All right, folks, here we are at Pesci's Flowers in Des Plaines, Illinois. I'm here with the third generation owner, Chris Pesci, who was actually my boss about 15 years ago. When I was in high school, I worked at the garden center for spring and summer for about five years. It was a really great place to work and I'm excited to interview you. Chris, thanks for doing this.
02:25
Chris Pesche
Oh, it's my pleasure, Jack.
02:26
Jack Jostes
You know, you guys have such a tremendous history in the area and it was really a great place to work. So first, thank you for giving me a job and bringing me back when I did work here.
02:37
Chris Pesche
You know, we, I don't want to say we raise, but we bring in a lot of young kids to start here. So a lot of Them, it's their first job and it gets people out and with other employees their same age and it's, it's great for the community and it's great for the kids that live close to us.
02:54
Jack Jostes
Yeah, it was great. You know, and I learned a lot about hard working with you, working with Frank Pesci, your dad. And, you know, I did everything from, I'd get here early and clean the toilets and mop the aisles and sweep and water plants and then, you know, eventually help people put plants and manure and compost or whatever they bought.
03:17
Chris Pesche
Loaded people cars. Yeah.
03:19
Jack Jostes
Carry out carryout was. Was where it was at. So that was a really great opportunity. And thanks. Thanks again for having me.
03:26
Chris Pesche
Well, that's one thing my father did believe in, was you learn every job in the business, like you said, sweeping the cleaning the restrooms to loading people's cars, and then you just keep going up the ladder from there. So it worked out great.
03:43
Jack Jostes
Yeah, it did. And, you know, and eventually, you know, just being here, I learned more about different plants and different product that was here and was able to help people when they came in.
03:53
Chris Pesche
Correct.
03:53
Jack Jostes
And knowledge.
03:54
Chris Pesche
Yeah, knowledge is power is king. And look at you now.
03:58
Jack Jostes
Yeah, now. Yeah. So now we work with landscapers and arborists, lawn care, garden centers. I help them get found online. And that's really what this video blog is all about, is helping the green industry get found online and grow their business. So I wanted to, you know, interview you.
04:13
Chris Pesche
No pun intended.
04:15
Jack Jostes
No, sometimes. Right. But what I wanted to interview you about, you know, was what's it like to be in a family business? Tell us, you know, short history of. Of your family. Right. You were, before we started the interview, you were telling me that your family's originally from Luxembourg and they were growers back there.
04:35
Chris Pesche
That's correct.
Building A Family Business Since 1924
04:37
Jack Jostes
Just tell us a little bit, how did the nursery get started?
04:40
Chris Pesche
So my grandfather actually came from Luxembourg in the 19. About 1900, 1899. And being flower growers, him and Mr. Leiter and Mr. Amling, which are all big flower names here in Chicagoland, all Luxembourgers, they more or less were all partners and they started growing roses for cut. For the flower shop, cut roses, cart carnations, and then like anything else, you want to develop and come up with your own ideas, so you start your own business. And so back in the early twenties, my grandfather started this location in 1924. It started off as maybe a four and a half acre facility, and now we're up to eight acres altogether. But my grandfather, you know, it was more or less a farmer, flora grower. And then from there, we took it to where we are today. Still have the original greenhouses in back.
05:39
Chris Pesche
Foley greenhouses from 1924. They've just been re. Retrofitted and sort of brought up at times. But, you know, history is huge, you know, for us. So from there, my father came around and his 10 siblings. And then my father had 11, seven sons. And I'm the baby from number seven.
06:03
Jack Jostes
Wow.
06:04
Chris Pesche
And so I'm here taking over the business, which you learn at a very young age how to work, like you said. And so I've been actually working here since I've been seven or eight years old.
06:15
Jack Jostes
Wow.
06:16
Chris Pesche
And probably because of my grandfather, my father, they. They started child labor laws, I think, because.
06:23
Jack Jostes
Right.
06:24
Chris Pesche
You know, but. But when you're a kid, you enjoy it.
06:26
Jack Jostes
Sure.
06:26
Chris Pesche
You know, it's not about money and it's not about anything. It's just about helping a family business, which for us was. Was very important.
06:35
Jack Jostes
Absolutely.
06:35
Chris Pesche
You do what you have to do to. To get by.
06:38
Jack Jostes
What. What would you say is the same now about what you know about the business from the 1920s? What. What's the same about.
00:06:38
06:47
Chris Pesche
Well, you know, it all comes down to, I mean, customer service. Helping your customers, respecting your customers, listening to your customers. You don't always agree with your customers, but, you know, to the best of your ability, you have to smile, grin, and bear some of the negative stuff. But you learn, you know, this is all a learning process. Every year, we're thankful that we get another chance, especially in Chicagoland, to do the season over again, because you always learn from the previous year what could have been better, what worked, what didn't work. Hopefully you pick up the pieces and you move on from there, right?
07:30
Jack Jostes
Yeah, absolutely. Customer service is king.
07:32
Chris Pesche
Customer service is king. And treating your employees. So that would be number one or number two in any one.
07:40
Jack Jostes
They're up there for sure.
07:41
Chris Pesche
Because if you don't have good employees that represent your business, then one bad egg could spoil, you know, your name to a lot of people.
07:51
Jack Jostes
Yeah. And that was one of the things, you know, I appreciated about working here was you guys gave me a raise. Right. I came back and I was excited to come here. You guys have sweet polos now, but I was always excited to get the hat, the new season's hat and shirt. You guys changed the polo.
08:06
Chris Pesche
We'll get you one of those before you leave.
08:07
Jack Jostes
Yeah, that'd be great. I was always looking forward to get those. But you guys did take good care of us and, you know, customer service. I, you know, I remember when I was working, you know, helping people with plants to their cars, some of them paid us tips.
08:22
Chris Pesche
Yes.
08:22
Jack Jostes
And so I learned a lot about how to talk to customers. And not that were expecting tips, but we learned that if you talk to people a certain way, they had a good experience, you would get more tips.
08:34
Chris Pesche
And people that shop in a garden center. Not to say that it's necessary for them to give you tips. No, but it's a happy place. It is. You know, people are here buying flowers and plants. I mean, it's a wonderful thing. And then when you help them out to your car, you might have a little tear in your jeans or something, and it's, oh, look at this boy, I better give him a couple dollars. You know, I could buy some clothes.
08:56
Jack Jostes
Right.
08:56
Chris Pesche
But no, it's customers, our customers are wonderful here.
09:01
Jack Jostes
Yeah, you know, we, My family was. We were customers all growing up. And I remember always having that calendar in our. In our kitchen with the flowers and things. And I was excited to hear you guys still continue the calendar. That was something that we always look forward to.
09:16
Chris Pesche
What was nice was. And here again, as far as marketing goes, you always had your name in front of the customer 12 months out of the year.
09:23
Jack Jostes
Absolutely.
09:24
Chris Pesche
So the calendar, even.
09:25
Jack Jostes
Even in, you know, July, August, September, when it's slow.
09:29
Chris Pesche
Exactly right.
09:30
Jack Jostes
You're still keeping in front of the customer.
09:31
Chris Pesche
People are looking at the calendar and they still see your name. Pescis. And thank you. And we're fortunate. Not only do we have just a garden center, but we have a full service flower shop. So the flower shop really gives us great business throughout the whole season and year.
09:46
Jack Jostes
So, you know, taking care of customers, taking care of employees, those are things that, you know, I think are just staples in running a successful business. What would you say is the biggest thing that's. That's changed, you know, from the time that maybe when you were a kid or even since. Since I stopped working here 15 years ago.
Technology, Efficiency, And Working Smarter
10:03
Chris Pesche
Technology.
10:05
Jack Jostes
Yeah.
10:05
Chris Pesche
You know, technology is huge now, even. And it doesn't have to be technology with your POS system, which we upgraded back in 2007, but technology with filling flats and filling pots. Where before everything was done with shovels and hands and safety goggles, now everything's done with 60 cubic foot bulk bags, flat fillers, pot fillers. So, you know, one of my philosophies has always been work smarter, not harder. And so if you can accomplish the same thing in Less time and a lot of it is thought process. You know, with my father and grandfather, they were pretty much straight and narrow, which we did this every year and we're not going to change off from it, but sometimes you have to veer off that beaten path a little bit and you really find out, you know, that there's more than life, than working so hard.
10:59
Jack Jostes
Right.
10:59
Chris Pesche
So if you can make anything in our industry any easier, especially for yourself. Yeah, I recommend it a hundred percent.
11:07
Jack Jostes
Tell me a little bit about the inventory management and how is that different and what has been the benefit of, you know, the new way that you're managing inventory?
Inventory Management And Profitability
11:16
Chris Pesche
Well, back in 2007, right before the economy crashed for us there, and we felt that, you know, 2008, 2009 were scary years.
11:28
Jack Jostes
Sure.
11:28
Chris Pesche
But back in 2007, we implemented a new point of sales computer system and it's 100% inventory control. So yes, you have to make purchase orders and yes, you have to go through and keep everything upgraded. But at an instant or at a second, the click of the mouse, you can see exactly what you still have on hand. You can see what's selling, you can see what's not selling, you can make immediate changes. The 8 inch pots of geraniums aren't selling at 2499. Let's mark them down to 1999. And that's just green goods. But you have the same thing with pottery, with chimes, with, you know, any of your inventory in a store, you just need to be able to make the time, which is very difficult in the spring season, and go through and actually see what's selling and what not selling.
12:21
Chris Pesche
In the past we used to have a buyer that just the salesman would come in and say, oh yeah, give me 10 pallets of potting soil. Well, we still had 10 pallets down in the warehouse, but he didn't know and he was too lazy to go check.
12:36
Jack Jostes
Right.
12:38
Chris Pesche
So now, right now you could actually set a mock order up and you set a limit and the machine, the computer will actually tell you what you're low on, what you're, what you need. And it just takes any guesswork out of the whole principle.
12:53
Jack Jostes
Was there any resistance from either other family members or other people who work here to make the shift to that?
12:59
Chris Pesche
There's always resistance. I had one cousin of mine say he was going to break it because not only did it do inventory control, but it did dispatch and delivery for my flower shop. So if you're doing 3, 400 deliveries, it routes everything and points everything out. But here again, you have to follow the procedures and do everything correct and it just makes your life easier. But when you're a little hard headed, sort of like we've always done it this way, why change? Well, for the simple fact you can work smarter, not harder. I mean when you're writing everything down on paper and someone calls you from a thousand Jefferson street and you have to look through 20 pieces of paper to find out, hey, where's that delivery for Thousand Jefferson Street?
13:45
Chris Pesche
Now you just point, click on that day and say, oh yeah, here it was delivered at 11:30 in the morning.
13:50
Jack Jostes
Yeah, it saves you a ton of time and allows you to get more done and be more profitable.
13:55
Chris Pesche
More profitable. And then you also have a record and you don't have all the paper trails. Everything's just stored right in the computer system.
14:02
Jack Jostes
Wow. What are some of the sales and marketing lessons that maybe over the years of running the company that you might share with some of our other green industry business owners?
00:14:02
Sales Strategies Without Constant Discounts
14:13
Chris Pesche
Well, as far as sales go, as far as putting stuff on sale, I mean we never try to put stuff on sale at the same time every year. People, people aren't stupid and they'll know if you have a Father's day sale and perennials are 20% off, they're going to be waiting for that Father's Day sale. I'm going to have customers come in and say, hey, isn't stuff supposed to be on sale this week? No, no it's not. So you have to be careful. You just, you don't get into a rut where you know, every expecting sales, people are expecting sales. So right now we run very few sales. I would soon go back to if some an Item's not selling. 1999, Okay, let's change the price of 17.99.
14:55
Chris Pesche
And a lot of times just doing some price adjusting without actually calling it a sale works tremendously for us. Obviously people look for those four big letters sale. And you can do that right now we just started perennials on sale at 20% off. We grow about 30,000 of our own perennials. So it's not stuff we're buying in. So it's actually for us it's stuff's marked 12 and 14.99. I'd be happy to walk home with 10 or $11 on a gallon perennial right now.
15:27
Jack Jostes
Sure.
15:28
Chris Pesche
So it's here again. You're using your traffic flow to the best of the ability and hopefully people pick up a hanging basket maybe a few Pots of flowers besides.
15:40
Jack Jostes
Well, so before the interview, I was walking around, and in some ways, so much is the same, and some things are really different. Like that koi pond is enormous. I don't remember that. Koi pond is. How big is that thing?
15:52
Chris Pesche
Yeah, that's actually our water reclamation. So we catch all our water runoff from all the greenhouse and just the water that's in the garden center. We don't collect anything out in the parking lot just for fuel oil. Anything that can get in there.
16:06
Jack Jostes
Sure.
16:06
Chris Pesche
But that's probably 60ft by 40ft, and that's about 30ft deep.
16:13
Jack Jostes
Wow.
16:13
Chris Pesche
And that's actually where we catch our water. And that's what we use to water all our plants with.
16:18
Jack Jostes
Great.
16:19
Chris Pesche
We could just inject some fertilizer now and then if we feel up to it. But, you know, with the fish in there, you get natural fertilizer. And the main thing is you're not using city water, you're not paying another bill, which is more chlorinated water here in Illinois. So if you can use rainwater and catch rainwater, you're way ahead of the ball game. And people always ask why our flowers and plants look so good. And I really have to say that's one of our tricks. It's just that we're using all rainwater.
16:51
Jack Jostes
That's great.
16:53
Chris Pesche
And you learn a lot, you know, rainwater in our soil, you know? Yes, Both of them.
16:58
Jack Jostes
Right. You guys make your own potting soil here. Potting soil was a family favorite.
17:02
Chris Pesche
Yes.
17:03
Jack Jostes
Growing up.
17:03
Chris Pesche
Yeah. That was another thing that we used to fill by hand with shovels and put hog rings on the top. And boy, funny, the things we used to do and still do a lot of them. You know, not to say it's wrong to work hard, but here again, if you can get it in and make better profits on something, that's wonderful. So now you have someone coming in strictly for your potting soil. So now you have another draw.
17:28
Jack Jostes
Right.
17:30
Chris Pesche
To bring someone into your store.
Building A Seven-Figure Ecommerce Business
17:32
Jack Jostes
So, Chris, one of the things you told me that's also new here is you have myfairygardens.com. So what is that? And how did you get started in that?
17:43
Chris Pesche
MyFairyGardens.com is actually an Internet website that we started probably about seven years ago now. We were sort of in a dilemma because were selling so much fairy garden merchandise. April, May, part of June, when your customer count's huge and people are walking through, all of a sudden, now you're in July, August, September, and Your customer counts are 15, 20% of what they were.
18:09
Jack Jostes
Right.
18:10
Chris Pesche
So our sales were direct proportion to what our customer count was. And I talked with my manager and we both came up with, hey, how about if we go online and do a website which you would have access to the whole country now. We said country, maybe the whole world.
18:27
Jack Jostes
Right.
18:28
Chris Pesche
So we developed myfairygardens.com went through the platform, put everything in there. Started off very small. Our goal was maybe we'll do 100,000 the first year. And we actually ended up doing 200,000 in sales. Wow, that's great. And right now we're doing over seven figures a year. That's awesome in that department.
18:51
Jack Jostes
And so how are people finding that? Are you marketing it? Are you doing advertising or what are you doing to.
18:56
Chris Pesche
Well, we market my fairy garden with everything we do with Pesci's. So everything with pesce.com or myfairygarden.com are pretty simultaneous. So it's all our advertising, whether it's Facebook, emails to our customers. We do local advertising on radio, newspaper, very little. We do a few commercials. We always include myparrygardens.com were doing Google Ads for a while when we first got started. So we've always, we pretty much moved up to the number one spot. But here again, it's all about keywords coming up with anything that has to do with fairy gardens, where your website would come right up and being competitive.
19:39
Jack Jostes
Right.
19:39
Chris Pesche
I mean, you're not going to make 100% margins or even 50% margins, but it, but if you can clear by time expenses, 35% margins, I mean, that's, that's still 3, $400,000 you didn't have at the end of the year to help, you know, go into the kitty.
19:57
Jack Jostes
Yeah, for sure. Especially during those lower times a year.
20:00
Chris Pesche
Yes.
20:01
Jack Jostes
And really help with that.
20:02
Chris Pesche
That's correct. So that's been a great, great link for us. Good.
20:08
Jack Jostes
Well, we'll have to check that out. Tell us a little bit, what are maybe some customer stories or things that people have told you throughout the years about why they enjoy coming here or are there any customers in particular that you can think of that have been here for decades or.
Leadership Lessons From Frank Pesche
20:24
Chris Pesche
Yeah, we actually, besides the greenhouses and flower shop, garden center, we actually had a grocery store. So were a large certified grocery store back in the 60s and 70s. And here again, it all started out because my grandfather and my father had chickens and different animals running around. So they had too many eggs so what do you do? You put the eggs for sale in the flower shop. Next thing you know, people want milk and then they want bread, right? And so we developed into a very large supermarket. I believe were in the top 10 certified grocers back in the 60s. Some, like if you went to a Safeway or a Jewel Osco, it was just a huge grocery store with liquor, with meat department, with frozen food, produce.
21:12
Chris Pesche
And so from there I get customers that come in and say, oh, I remember when I used to shop in the grocery store and your father Frank would be there. I mean, my father was a workaholic. He was here 18 hours a day. But he loved it, you know, it probably ruined his marriage, but he loved working hard and this was his baby. But, you know, my father was the type of guy that people would always remember. You'd see a little boy standing up or a little girl standing up in a shopping cart. He would be the first to come over and say, madam, you know, have your kids sit down. And the one says, you know, Joey, sit down. You're going to get hurt, you know, and then I'll never forget, as the cart pulled away, the little kid stuck his tongue out.
21:57
Chris Pesche
I'm like that, just like, I was like, oh, wow. But, you know, my dad was a stickler for certain things.
22:05
Jack Jostes
He was, I remember working with him,
22:08
Chris Pesche
He was very strict, but very fair. He was so he could yell and rant and rave at you for 10 minutes and then 20 minutes later he would come up and apologize and, you know, look at your point of view. And he was a very fair man, you know, and I learned a lot from him.
22:25
Jack Jostes
What are, yeah, what are some of the things that maybe in your day to day that you think of him, that you learned about work, running the garden center?
00:22:25
22:32
Chris Pesche
You know, he was always here early, he always was here late. But the main thing was you always ran a clean, efficient garden center. And that's the one thing we'll do is we always sweep, we always wash the. Under the tables. Because besides having your name on the sign out in front, which a lot of people say, you know, I can't believe how beautiful. And everything's clean and neat and organized. I said, well, that's my name on the sign. You know, I take pride in it.
22:59
Jack Jostes
Absolutely.
22:59
Chris Pesche
If I was working for Smith flowers, and nothing against Mr. Smith or anyone like that, but. And I'm just kidding, if there are Smith flowers out there.
23:09
Jack Jostes
But we'll get some comments on the blog.
23:12
Chris Pesche
But, you know, you really have to take pride in what you do. And that's really what he taught me. Besides taking care of your employees, taking care of customers, when people walk in, they want, you want them to be in awe. And, you know, people say, well, who's your competitor? And I always feel I'm my own competitor. If I don't get a, if I get a new customer in a store and I don't get them to come back, then it's my fault. Our prices are very pretty much in line, probably even less expensive than a lot of places. But we sell volume, and that's another key item I would really push is for our garden center, I don't want to sell 20,000 four and a half inch pots. We sell about 254 and a half inch pots. 250,000. Sorry about that.
24:01
Chris Pesche
And we sell 40 or 50,000 hanging baskets. So my father's day, they would want to sell hanging baskets for 29.99 and be happy selling 500 of them. Well, I came in here and changed the old store from doing, you know, 500 to doing almost 35, 40,000. Wow. But you have a 1999 price point and you're doing a lot of monoculture baskets. But, but that's in our community here. I mean, we're a blue collar community. So, yes, we get people that are driving nice cars and very professional, but the whole thing is you have to sort of favor everyone. And we try to be middle of the line with pricing, and then if we see there's an issue, then, you know, we can change it.
24:51
Jack Jostes
Yeah. And now with your new inventory management, you can do that quickly, you can.
24:55
Chris Pesche
Do it instantly instant. And you just do one or two clicks and your prices change. I still have a few 1 gallons being 6 July here of annuals. I just tell the girl, okay, whatever the hundred we got left, let's put them on half price now. We made our money, let's get rid of them. Because that's really not the focus of our business now. But if I can make $1,000 instead of throwing them at all away in another two, three weeks, I'll do it right. So you really want to be on top because you get to the point of the season now where you have to make some hard decisions. Yeah. Either you're going to sell it or smell it.
25:33
Jack Jostes
Sell it or smell it.
25:34
Chris Pesche
I love it. And sometimes that was the meat department.
25:37
Jack Jostes
Yeah.
25:37
Chris Pesche
From back mentality. Yes. So it just gets to the point is, yeah, you don't want to Give anything away and you don't want to hear, again, train customers that you're running sales. But if you made your money already. And this year has been a very tough year in Chicago. We've had, oh, the weather. Inches and inches of rain and very cold weather. And our first 85 degree day, I think, was the first day of summer.
26:02
Jack Jostes
Wow.
26:02
Chris Pesche
And nights have been cold. So it hasn't been easy for garden centers in general. And we're all in the same boat.
26:10
Jack Jostes
Right.
26:10
Chris Pesche
You know, but it's just who can. Who can do best with what they have? And us being growers, we can take care of our plants. And we have a full crew that goes through and cleans them, which is also very critical. You don't want people showing up and seeing yellow leaves all over your geraniums or hanging baskets all full of dead heads from the potoons. Yeah.
26:32
Jack Jostes
I remember when it was slow here, they would just send us down the aisles and we would. We would pick, you know, leaves out of things. Always keeping it looking good.
26:41
Chris Pesche
Correct.
26:42
Jack Jostes
And always sweeping at the end of the day and in the morning.
26:46
Chris Pesche
Correct.
26:46
Jack Jostes
We did it twice. Right.
26:49
Chris Pesche
And. Yeah. And what we have here, everything's open air, so we're.
26:52
Jack Jostes
Well, yeah. Stuff would blow around.
26:53
Chris Pesche
We're at the mercy of the weatherman.
26:55
Jack Jostes
Good.
26:56
Chris Pesche
You have rain, you got snow, you have sleet, you have high winds, you have heat. So you try to make it, obviously, as comfortable as you can for customers, but you have to keep your image, which is really key if you can keep your image up. And people come back. Yeah, people keep coming back. It's not always easy, especially now. I'm very tired. This is the last place I want to be. But you have to fulfill what you're doing. And to be in this industry, you have to give two, three months of your life every year to make it work.
Preparing For Showtime Every Day
27:32
Jack Jostes
Right. So, Chris, you've worked here, you know, since you. You were seven, eight years old.
27:37
Chris Pesche
Yes.
27:37
Jack Jostes
And it's hard. I mean, what time did you get to work today?
27:40
Chris Pesche
3:30.
27:40
Jack Jostes
3:30.
27:41
Chris Pesche
Right.
27:41
Jack Jostes
I remember you guys. You and Frank, you know, guys, we get here early, and I. I thought I was getting here early when I was 16, but you guys have already worked four hours or whatever.
27:50
Chris Pesche
And. And it's. And it's key. Your whole crew has to be ready for that day. Sales and being the owner, I mean, it's just not walking in, watering and checking things out. I mean, you have to. You have office work to do.
28:02
Jack Jostes
Yeah.
28:02
Chris Pesche
Ordering, get done. So there's so much besides Coming in and taking care of business, even though that is taking care of business. But you have to get all your work done. So when that gate opens up at 8 o', clock, you want the place spick and span and you want everything watered and organized. And you know, when people, in the springtime, it's not so bad now, but in the springtime if people come at 8 o' clock on Saturday morning or Tuesday morning, and they come in at noon and on Thursday morning, everyone deserves to have the same show as they do with the people that come first thing in the morning.
28:38
Jack Jostes
Right.
28:38
Chris Pesche
And so that's one thing I really pride myself is whether you come at seven o' clock at night or you come at seven in the morning, you're gonna have the tables jam packed full clean merchandise and you're not worried about, if you're not there by noon, all the big boy tomatoes are sold out. Right. So for me, that's one of the hardest things, but it's stuff that I have a passion for and that's really what I can give thanks to my father where he's instilled that in me or hate him for it.
29:09
Jack Jostes
Sure. Well, having worked here since you were 8, what do you still love about it? I mean, what gets you going here at three?
29:17
Chris Pesche
Just knowing at seven or eight o' clock you're going to have 100 people at the gate waiting to come in to buy your plants, patronize your business. And it's probably hard for a lot of people to understand, but you know, when I rev myself up and people were saying, God, he's like a chicken with his head cut off. I said, yeah, but you don't understand. It's showtime, right? You know, in another hour this place is going to be a madhouse, you know, And a lot of times I do it actually to put a little fire under my employees. So there's different motivational skills.
29:48
Jack Jostes
Sure.
29:49
Chris Pesche
You know, the yelling part I don't really like. I try to be very level headed, right. But sometimes you see something that's, you know, I don't like to say anything stupid, but there's errors that are made and someone will come up and say, well, this is what I thought you wanted me to do. And I said, no, I'm not paying you to think. I'm telling you just to follow through what we're all doing here. And you know, I could be very hard nosed if I want to be, but it's not really the way I run my business. I mean, my father was A little one dimensional, where I'm a little more two or three dimensional. And I try to walk through as I am a customer.
00:29:49
30:25
Chris Pesche
And that's the hardest thing is walking through your door just with an empty mind saying, oh, boy, that looks bad. And, oh, that's a great idea. And looking at displays and looking at things, you have to be your own critic. And you got to critique yourself and listen to what people write you and comment on Google's. And you can't get frustrated when someone puts something negative because you have to take it as constructive criticism. Not everything you have to believe in. But no matter what, you can't email them back. And once you post something, you can never take it back, even though you'd like to say something different. You always want to thank Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Smith. Thanks for the criticism. I'll work on that.
Managing Online Reviews And Customer Feedback
31:06
Chris Pesche
Even though it might not have been our problem or whatever, but, you know, that's a part of business. You have to be level.
31:12
Jack Jostes
Yeah. And nowadays. Yeah, that's one of the things that's definitely changed since I worked here was, you know, Google, Yelp, Facebook reviews, and absolutely responding, addressing them, thanking them.
31:22
Chris Pesche
Correct.
31:23
Jack Jostes
And I always encourage people to try and settle it offline. If you know that customer's phone number, you can post, hey, I take your criticism very seriously. Call me Chris. You know, here's the store phone number. A lot of times people will call.
31:35
Chris Pesche
And talk to me, that's a good idea.
31:36
Jack Jostes
And then sometimes went to that, oh, yeah, Sometimes they'll even change their review and say, hey, this peop. These people took care of me. I'm changing my review from a 2 to a 4. And yeah, I think reviews can be a customer service opportunity.
31:50
Chris Pesche
See, I expect fives always.
31:52
Jack Jostes
Yeah.
31:52
Chris Pesche
Someone gives me a three, I'm like, wait a minute, what happened? Yeah, but no, you're right, it's very serious. Because nowadays one person wants to make an exchange and you tell them no, they're going to bad rap you all the way to downtown, you know, and they say, what, 10 people hear the bad stuff and that's right, hear the good stuff.
32:11
Jack Jostes
Exactly. Chris. Hey, thanks so much again for hiring me to work here and for doing this interview. You know, I really fell in love with the green industry working here. And now with my marketing company, I now help garden centers and nurseries, landscaping companies, lawn care, the whole green industry get found online. And for those of you watching, I wrote a book about it called get found Online. Huh? Yeah. And you can. I'll Send you one. Oh, and you can get a free copy of the book@landscapingbook.com and all I ask is that you pay for shipping. And for everyone who gets a book there, I'm actually donating $10 to the Industry Growth Fund, which is from the NALP, to help really fund scholarships and awareness of careers in the green industry.
32:57
Chris Pesche
Well, that's huge. I mean that's one thing I try to do here at Pesci's is when we get teachers that come in and they're buying plants, sort of little first graders or kindergartens or fourth graders, whatever they want to plant something up, that's the first thing I donate. Unfortunately teachers right now are pretty strapped here, but anything I could do to produce the goodwill of plants in our industry and that's really what we have to do, is plant seeds in these young kids minds just to let them know this is a great thing. This is a great industry we live and work in. And it's a career opportunity for like you said yourself, for me in the busy time, I have over 90 employees that work with us.
33:44
Chris Pesche
And so it's very important to from the bottom up, start teaching kids about planting, about flowering, about vegetables, where stuff comes from. Because unfortunately a lot of our children don't realize even where milk comes from. And so here, and they're kind.
34:02
Jack Jostes
Of pushed a certain career path and there's this whole industry from horticulture to agriculture to the, you know, the landscape side of things, that there's a lot of work, there's a lot of people, there's a lot of opportunity.
34:17
Chris Pesche
Correct. And that's great of you.
34:19
Jack Jostes
Cool.
34:20
Chris Pesche
Perfect.
34:20
Jack Jostes
Well, thanks again and go ahead, grab your book@landscapingbook.com and have an excellent week. We'll look forward to seeing you next Friday.
34:29
Chris Pesche
Thank you.
How Pesche's Flowers Influenced Jack's Career
34:30
Jack Jostes
I'll never forget what May morning smelled like at the garden center. After the morning watering, my favorite compost was cypress and then Coco was a second runner up and there's nothing also like the smell of blood meal and bone meal. It's not my favorite. I'll never forget, you know, on good days there was a rush of customers all day long on the weekends and we directed traffic in the parking lot. And later in the season as things slowed down, I understood when the staff was let go, when they're just, we just weren't busy.
35:12
Jack Jostes
So as an hourly worker, you always.
35:14
Jack Jostes
Wanted to earn your spot to be the person they kept longer when the other guys were let go. So that means you needed to learn answers to the most commonly asked questions and where things are located in the store. And if you could move pallets with the skid steer.
35:30
Jack Jostes
You were golden. You were golden. You were.
35:32
Jack Jostes
You were going to stay working that day. So Chris Pesci and his family have been running this business since 1924, and the lessons haven't really changed and they apply to my business and really every business. Take care of your customers, take care of your employees, put your name on everything you do and mean it. And also work smarter, not harder. Chris has innovated a lot of things, but most importantly, when it's time, it's showtime. Get ready for the rush of customers and take care of them. Years after working at Pesci's after graduating college, I became one of the top speakers for Constant Contact, the email marketing company, and they hired me to speak at the Pro Green Expo in Colorado, which is the Garden center and Landscape and Nursery show.
36:26
Jack Jostes
So I stood up in front of a room full of green industry business owners and I shared my story of how I used to work at a garden center. And something clicked. I connected with that audience in a way that felt completely natural. One of the first lawn care companies I worked with who met me at that show was getting calls for landscaping work that they didn't even do. So much to the point that they could hardly keep up with all the calls in April and October despite having three full time receptionists. So I looked at their website and I said, you have the word landscaping all over your website and your SEO settings and you don't even do landscaping. You do lawn care. He had no idea. So we fixed it.
37:14
Jack Jostes
We optimized his site for lawn care and aeration and all the right keywords, and he grew 15% in a year. And then he referred me and I also met at that program expo, an arborist in a garden center and several landscape companies who all got similar results. And I realized that I understood how to talk to green industry business owners in a way that their current marketing people just couldn't. And my results earned me speaking gigs around the country at national and state landscape events. In 2018, after nine years of working with a big variety of local businesses, I realized that landscaping was over 50% of my revenue and I loved working with those clients. So we rebranded Ramblin Jackson at that time to focus exclusively on the snow and landscape industry.
38:12
Jack Jostes
And in 2020, I launched this podcast, the Landscapers Guide to Modern Sales and Marketing. We're just getting started. We're going an inch wide and a mile deep with sales systems, marketing automation, AI and so much more to help our green industry clients. Every day I learn something new about the landscape industry. It's a privilege to work with family owned landscape companies and to go to look at their designs and the photos of your work and meet your team at trade shows or video shoots. I really love this industry. So whether you're a second or third generation owner like Chris, or maybe you're building your first company from the ground up, but we love helping green industry businesses dial in their marketing and take it to the next level.
39:05
Jack Jostes
So if you want to talk about what that looks like for your business, book a free 15 minute marketing brainstorm with me and my team at landscapersguide.com brainstorm. We'll help you figure out who is your Hell yes customer at this phase of your business. Where are you heading and what kind of marketing will you need to attract more of those customers? See our show Notes for a link to that page where you can schedule that call. And thanks again to Chris Pesci for the interview and for giving me my very first job. My name is Jack justice and I look forward to talking with you next week on the Landscapers Guide.