As a creative professional and business owner, striking the balance between excellence and not taking things too far to the point of perfection is a continual balancing act. Not only in the work that I do in producing this podcast and my own marketing, but absolutely in producing the deliverables for our clients of my digital marketing agency. As a creative landscape design professional, I'm sure that you personally experience this challenge in your own work, leading your team, producing landscapes for your clients. What is the difference between excellence and perfection, and what is your role as the leader of your company in defining this and leading your team? Find out how to strike the balance between perfection and excellence, and how to manage creative people in today's interview, where I talk with one of my college professors, who's a professor of theater arts at Marquette University.
Jack Jostes:
Hey, everyone, welcome to The Landscapers Guide. My name's Jack Jostes, and this podcast is all about sharing inspiring ideas to help you grow your landscape company with sales, marketing, and leadership. Today, we're going to talk about a topic that impacts every small business owner, and really, every person. It's the topic of perfection. You've likely reached a high level of success in your business because of your high standard of quality, your attention to detail, and your work ethic. It's part of who you are. It's part of what makes you proud to do the work that you do. It has many blessings, and there's a dark side of the coin.
Before we dive into how this impacts specifically landscape companies, I wanted to share a bit of my personal story to set up this interview with one of my college professors. Many of you know me from my podcast, from my public speaking, from my two books, Get Found Online and The Tree of Good Fortune, and my marketing work with my agency, Ramblin Jackson. But, did you know that I was a theater major in college? I double majored in theater and English with an emphasis in journalism at Marquette University, a Catholic Jesuit university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
I studied theater and English because I love the English language. I love hearing people talk. I love thinking about the words that they're using and what they mean, and ultimately hearing stories both in real life and in fiction. This later led me to discover a love first search engine optimization, SEO, which is all about picking the right words that a potential customer would search online and using those words in a website so it shows up at the top of the search engines. But more importantly, the human side of it, of persuading somebody to choose the business through stories, testimonials, online reviews, branding, imagery. All of these different creative things come together in sales and marketing in a way that I never would've realized until I had to make a living and had to learn sales and marketing.
I now run a multimillion dollar marketing agency, Ramblin Jackson. We serve the landscape industry with website design, branding, sales consulting, and so much more. We have about 10 full time employees. They're all creative professionals, and all of them I truly believe are the best people that I can find to work with me on my team. Now, our customers are also creative professionals. They're landscape designers and architects and horticulturalists. They're people who appreciate beauty, and work to create it in their landscape projects. Managing a team of creative people, who then sell to and serve other creative people, creates an interesting challenge. We need to strike the right balance between a highly technical, skilled trade, like SEO and website development, and also the artistic vision of our highly creative clients in order to produce business results.
As landscape companies, you have a very similar challenge with your customers and your people. How do you manage this? Especially if you're the founder of the company, and you personally did all of the work to get to the point where you could eventually hire employees, and now you need to trust them to do the work on behalf of the brand. How do you do that without micromanaging and burning people out? How do you do it? Let's hear what Stephen Hudson Mairet, the professor of theater arts from Marquette University, has to say about the role of leadership in helping your team reach excellence without getting lost in the pursuit of perfection in today's interview. Stephen, so good to see you again.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Good to see you Jack.
Jack Jostes:
Tell me, so what's changed for you? You're now the professor of theater arts.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Yes.
Jack Jostes:
What does that mean in 2022 at Marquette University? So much has changed since I graduated in 2008.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Yeah, yeah. Right after you graduated, we merged into one giant department with, what was then broadcast and electronic communication. Now we reframed it to be a little bit more film oriented over there, so it's the program of digital media. There's still separate majors, but we have opportunities for synergy between students who are theater majors and students who are in digital media. We have a short student film festival that involves a lot of theater performances. We have a number of students who come in and double major in both. If you want to be involved in front of the camera or behind the camera or on stage, there's ways to pull that all together.
Jack Jostes:
That sounds really cool.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Yeah.
Jack Jostes:
Since college, I've gotten way into video and the digital side, so right now we're recording this video podcast and that's a big part of what I do.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Yeah.
Jack Jostes:
I wanted to talk with you, I was reading over the Marquette website, and I've been walking the campus thinking about how Marquette actually impacted me now as an adult in my career, and I find that it has in a lot of ways. One of them, the mission of be the difference is something that has stuck with me. My mission at my company is helping small businesses ring the bell.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Okay.
Jack Jostes:
It's very similar to be the difference, and for us, we choose to serve small businesses. But, that was one thing that absolutely became part of me that, as an adult when I look back. The other thing is excellence. On the Marquette website, it talks about excellence. I remember working with you and PR, and I'm blanking on his name, the Ukrainian guy that we brought in for dead man walking.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Oh, you mean-
Jack Jostes:
Father ...
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Father Drance.
Jack Jostes:
Father Drance, yes.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Yeah, yeah. Father George Drance. Yeah.
The Difference Between Excellence And Perfection
Jack Jostes:
I mean, the level, the bar was always high and you were always pushing us to reach the bar, and also the show needed to start. I was walking through and seeing the signs, and you're advertising that the show is going to happen. I wanted to talk to you about, what do you see as the difference between excellence and perfection?
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
From an educator standpoint, I can think of a lot of students who are, well, for lack of a better phrase, type A personalities. Right? They come in and you can see their anxiety burning themselves up inside because they can't achieve perfection. From an education standpoint, I need you to achieve excellence, and there's a difference. We're on a set of a movie that we're shooting this summer, and there are moments within the set where, if this was a house you were going to live in, it absolutely has to be perfect. Right? You can't cut corners. But, in this room it needs to look great. It needs to be excellent. There are things that you have to get past so that you can get it done. Right? For me, excellence is you set the high bar to make sure that everyone is giving their best all the time, but you also have to have grace in how you approach it so that you're not relentless and having that, you know what I mean, the anxiety just eats yourself up from the inside that you haven't made it absolutely perfect.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, I agree. A lot of times, though, you're working with those type A people. I mean, I work with landscape designers now, and many of them are, they are excellent.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Yeah.
How To Strike The Balance Between Perfection And Excellence
Jack Jostes:
They do things in the physical world with construction and plants and walkways and outdoor living spaces that are beautiful and they're striving for excellence, I believe. Sometimes I struggle with people who are expecting perfection, and I'm building a creative deliverable for them, maybe a video or a logo or a website. Sometimes I struggle with it myself, and then I also struggle when I have clients or even team members, employees of mine. How do you coach people through that of, because I think there's a certain level of reaching good enough and accepting what you've built and running with it, but then there's also, like, good enough is not good enough. Right?
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Right.
Jack Jostes:
You can't cut corners. How do you-
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
I think part of that lands in the role of whoever the leader is of the project. Right? That's what I do most of the time as the scenic designer. The people building the scenery, knowing how to read the room and see, where is there a moment when an individual needs to be pushed a little further to achieve excellence, more than just good enough, and where there's those moments where you have to talk those individuals who are going to kind of get stuck on that moment of like, because you can get stuck on this little detail and miss the whole big picture. That's where perfection versus excellence happens. Right? Perfection is getting these minutia to be exactly right. There's a place for that. Right? Like, if you're flying a space shuttle, you need perfection. Right?
Jack Jostes:
Right.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
There's no good enough on the space shuttle. Right?
Jack Jostes:
Right.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Or if you're a surgeon, there's no good enough. Right? There is excellent and perfection, because you want someone to put you back together the way you're supposed to be. But, when you're doing a project like this, you're creating a larger unit that, and I think it probably applies to your world, too. You're seeking beauty. Right?
Jack Jostes:
Right, absolutely.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Beauty is actually, in many cases, imperfect. Right? You have to be able to see that forest for the trees. Right? Be able to see how this all comes together. This little moment that's imperfect plays into all of this. As the leader of the project, you are served by being able to find those moments of grace, but also those moments of a little bit of extra push to get everybody on the same page.
How To Manage Creative People
Jack Jostes:
Do you ever find that, in your role as the leader, that you're pushing people to step up, and then also maybe you're having to get them to pull it in so the show can go on?
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Oh, all the time. All the time. Yeah. It's the students who are here almost all day into the evening that you're like, "You got to go get a sandwich." Because it's all about life and finding that balance. Then there's also those students, not as many, hardly any really, where you're like, "We missed you today." Right?
Jack Jostes:
Right.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Finding that balance. That's the other part, is that there is a level of, for lack of a better phrase, inequality in how you approach this. You're going to push one person a little harder, and you're going to let another one off the hook just a little bit, to get us all to the end goal.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, hey, thanks so much for sharing this perspective on excellence versus perfection.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Yeah.
Jack Jostes:
Tell us a little more. We're on a set right now.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Yeah.
Jack Jostes:
This is pretty interesting. This wasn't happening when I was in college here. There was the, I think it was the broadcast-
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Yeah.
Jack Jostes:
Communication.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Broadcast and electronic communication was the name of the program, and its main goal at the time was traditional radio, television studies.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
It was a good program. But we, about 10 years ago, maybe a little longer, opened it up to be a little bit more film based. We're a small program, but so we have these two bachelor of arts programs, theater and digital media. This summer, one of my colleagues, her name is Chris Holodeck, she wrote a script, and in the spring, last spring, a number of theater classes and a number of digital media classes did kind of the pre-production work. My class designed this interior of an apartment. Then this summer, like right now, they're shooting it across campus. In fact, in Johnson Hall, they're shooting some scenes right now. Then next week they will be in here and shoot all of the interior scenes. Then in the fall, there will be all the post production work, editing and all of those pieces that are very specialty. Then it'll be entered into film festival work whenever it's done. I don't know when that is.
Jack Jostes:
Right. Where will people watch it? Outside of the film festival circuit, will it be-
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
I think it's mainly film festival work, but I don't know. That's a whole layer of distribution that I never have to worry about.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
I know where I know how to distribute my shows because my audience comes to the seats. When I was the chair helping merge these programs, there was a whole level of things that I got to learn about, what does it mean to do post-production? What does it mean to do pre-production? What does it mean to, all these industry terms that I don't fully understand, but I have a sense of it. That's excellence versus perfection again. Right? Like, I didn't need to know every little detail.
Jack Jostes:
Well, and you-
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
I needed to know how to get them.
Jack Jostes:
Right, and you may need to be able to hire somebody who is excellent at something. Right? I think that was one of the things that, looking back, that I really appreciate about studying theater here, was I had to do costume shop. I got to do carpentry.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Yeah.
Jack Jostes:
I learned a lot of stuff that I now use fixing stuff at my house.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jack Jostes:
Then, I ended up going the journalism route and started writing about the theater that we were doing. But, all those different experiences were great. Tomorrow, I'm speaking. I'm presenting at a Snow & Ice Management Association, and I need to be excellent. Tomorrow what I'm going to, or actually right after this, I'm going to go to the library, and hopefully, there was this desk that they had in the corner of the second floor that it was just from the seventies.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Yeah.
Jack Jostes:
It was just this wood desk that you could hide behind. I'm hoping to go there and be quiet and finish my talk. Well, right on. Well, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Yeah, yeah.
Jack Jostes:
For giving me a tour of this set here. You guys are up to interesting work, as usual.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Thanks for flying from Colorado to come to see me.
Jack Jostes:
Right on. Thank you.
Stephen Hudson Mairet:
Come back.
I don't want my talks to be perfect. One of the things that I learned in college through writing for a newspaper and then doing theater was, hey, the show must go on. If we wait until the show is perfect, it'll never be presented. If we wait until the newspaper is perfect, the news will be old. It needs to be excellent and it needs to get out the door. I don't want to be perfect, but I do want to be excellent. I consider public speaking to be a craft. It's something that I want to do very well. I'll have to scrutinize the recording of my talk. I'll have to count all my ums. I'm going to make a transcript of it and see, what could I cut? What could I replace? How could it be better?
It was also my first time presenting over five hours of content back to back in the same day, and presenting to an audience that was half salespeople and half business owners, whereas normally, I'm mainly presenting to business owners. I need to work on my content if I'm going to present to that audience again. But, at the same time, I'm also glad that I got that feedback and know the truth. It's part of what makes public speaking inspiring to me. Sometimes you got to get your ass handed to you with a low
How does all this relate to running a landscape company?
Well, there are a ton of parallels between running a landscape company and running a digital marketing agency. At this time in 2022, we consistently produce excellent results for our clients at Ramblin Jackson. Our client retention is 97%. Our project quality is over 95%. Our net promoter score, which is how likely are you to recommend us to a friend, is 87%, whereas the digital marketing industry average is less than 60%. But, it hasn't always been this way, and this is really the point of this whole podcast. Just a few years ago in 2019, our account quality was an atrocious 67%. Now, part of it was because I had kept some people in the wrong seats on the bus who didn't take our deadlines very seriously, who didn't want to follow the processes, who didn't really believe in our gold standard.
I had to make some uncomfortable decisions and replace some people. I made sure to use personality assessments, we used DiSC, to hire people who would be energized by the role to meet the standards, and that they had the right skills, and ultimately, the desire to do their role. But, in order to get to that point, we had to hire people. We had to do some work together. We needed to try it out. I think that's the key to business, is you've got to do it. You've got to get started. Then you can make adjustments and get better as you go along. There were years where I was stressed out, working a hundred hours a week, and morale was low. Despite all the personal work I thought I was trying to do so well, our quality was all over the place and inconsistent.
I met with a business coach, Al Killeen, who did an incredible podcast about leadership in times of uncertainty a couple years -- who gave me two golden pieces of advice. The first one was to read The E-Myth by Michael Gerber, which was a life changing book read. The second one was to create clear written standards for every deliverable we have at Ramblin Jackson. At that time, I didn't have any of that, and it was such a daunting task. It ended up taking about three years to fully do it. Through collaborating with our operations people and our project managers, we were able to create what we call the gold standard at Ramblin Jackson, which are when projects meet four key criteria. They're on time, they're in budget, they meet our quality standards, and we have a happy client who gives us north of an eight out of 10 how likely are you to recommend us.
In creating those standards and in thinking of the vision of the company, I realized there needed to be a certain level of grace here. I'm not going to personally write the page title tag of every webpage anymore. I learned that there's a point of diminishing returns in the pursuit of perfection. You need to have enough structure for your employees to be on track and to thrive, and also enough flexibility and room for individual creativity and collaboration and client insights. I trust that our quality standards are excellent. I trust the people that we hire on our team to meet the quality standards, and I collaborate with them to evolve our quality standards and our processes to meet the changes of our clients, of the market, of technology.
That's how we've really become a great company. When I was recording the theme song for this podcast, I got to work with Eric Thorin, who's an incredible bass player who happens to live in Lyons, Colorado, where I'm from. Here's an unedited little behind the scenes clip where he and I were collaborating. We were trying to think of what the bass line should sound like. He was playing it. I love what he came up with, but it wasn't exactly what I had asked for, but it ended up being great. Here was his perspective on perfection.
Eric Thorin:
It's not perfect, but it's good because of that. Right?
Jack Jostes:
I don't think it's bad.
Eric Thorin:
No, it's not all.
Jack Jostes:
I think it's just, it's like a little-
Eric Thorin:
No, perfect can be really worse than ...
Jack Jostes:
Have you ever struggled with taking excellence so far in the direction of perfection that it's at the expense of your mental health, or the profits of your company, or relationships with the people that you work with? I know I have. It's a continual balancing act, and one that I find particularly interesting with landscaping, because you all literally build things that people walk on or live on or they're using electricity, and it needs to be excellent. I'm curious, how do you manage this? Do you have a gold standard at your company? I'd love to hear from you. Send me an email, jack@ramblinjackson.com, or send me a message on Instagram or LinkedIn. If you'd like to learn more about the standards that we've set at Ramblin Jackson to produce consistently excellent digital marketing and sales machines for our landscape clients that regularly produce hell yes customers, you've got to check out our book The Tree of Good Fortune: The Landscaper's Guide to Modern Sales and Marketing.
This book goes into detail about how you can do this, and it shares real examples and interviews with real landscapers implementing the exact strategies that I share in the book. I'm pretty open book in the book about how it all works, meaning we share the strategies that we use. The reason is because I believe that part of the key to having excellence without the business owner being perfect and everyone else being perfect, is setting realistic expectations with your clients through sales and marketing. When you set realistic expectations in your sales and marketing, and then deliver on them, you'll have a ton of referrals, high client retention, employee retention. But, when you have bad sales and marketing, and when your clients are expecting things that you didn't necessarily agree to, or they just don't understand how it works, that's how you're going to have unhappy customers, low retention, low employee morale.
Check out The Tree of Good Fortune. It'll show you how to brand your sales process, how to build a website, an online presence that attracts people who understand why you're different and why they should buy from your landscape company. All of this will help you become the highest rated landscape contractor in your local market. There's an audio book and a video book version as well, so just go to treeofgoodfortune.com and order a book, and we'll ship it to you in less than a week or instantaneously send you the audio book if you choose to buy that. I'm Jack Jostes. Thanks so much for checking out today's episode of The Landscaper's Guide, and I hope to talk with you next week. That's what's inspiring to me about public speaking, is you kind of got to get your ass handed to you every once in a while.