Beyond money, what do you really want to get out of your business? Or if you are an employee somewhere, what's really important to you?
In today's podcast, I'm going to share what's important to me. What I've found matters to my employees, and what I found is important to actual employees of landscape companies. If you are paying people well, this could be a competitive differentiator.
I like being on a team of highly competent people. Beyond financial compensation, there's emotional compensation and intellectual compensation. Feeling like I'm actually helping people versus getting just paid. My name is Jack Jostes. Welcome to The Landscaper's Guide Podcast.
00:45 - The Importance of Financial and Emotional Compensation
Jack Jostes [00:00:45]:
This show we produce every week is all about sales, marketing, and leadership ideas to help you grow your snow and landscape business. First, I want to be abundantly clear that you need to pay people well and have benefits. Your financial compensation and benefits need to be on par with the marketplace. If they're not, none of this video or podcast, if you're listening, is going to make any sense. Let me just say it again very clearly. You need to pay people really well. It's very important that your financial compensation and benefits are on par before we even think about anything else in this video. So wanted to get that out there and in the clear, because whenever I talk about culture or things like that, people say, well, Jack, the only thing people care about is money.
Jack Jostes [00:01:38]:
And they do care about money. Inflation is rampant. Basic stuff like groceries, like, man, groceries are expensive. Or new tires. Have you bought new tires for your vehicle in the last year? It's insane. So we all need money. It's important. And I can tell you that I've talked with employees of landscape companies.
Jack Jostes [00:02:02]:
So I go to conferences regularly. I often get to spend time with the employees of my clients. Like when I was in Nashville at the Grow Conference a couple years ago, I went out to some honky tonks with the employees of one of my clients, and they told me that they left their previous job that was paying them more because they wanted to work at my client's company, because they felt the client was more ethical, ran a better company, and they saw a better career path there. So they took a pay cut because they saw a better fit for them. They saw a better opportunity at the other company. Another time, I was running a webinar about recruiting and retention, and I asked one of the employees of one of my clients who was there a really successful snow and landscape company CP Hort. And here's what one of their account managers had to say. What was the number one compelling reason for you to leave and start working here?
03:03 - Employee Testimonials on Choosing the Right Workplace
Kevin Johnson [00:03:03]:
Turk's story. So going into what I was saying earlier about putting your best foot forward and doing what you say to your clients and backing your client representatives, my decision to change employers was not solely based on compensation. My number one reason for coming here was Turk's story, his business approach. In honest work, Turk sold himself. In doing my own research, I found out what Turk stood for and what Cornerstone represents as a landscape business. And the reasons for me leaving my previous employer were as a small company of relative size of Cornerstone, it felt like anything that we said as account managers or just as salaried employees fell on deaf ears. You get so busy in your day to day that you just mention things in passing or you mention things in an email and it gets forgotten about. Whereas you sit down in this one on one meeting and something that Turk and I needed to talk about was some low maintenance profit jobs.
Kevin Johnson [00:04:10]:
We will sit down and we will dig into that right then and there. And I've got an hour or an hour and a half of blocked out time where this is what we focus on and I can schedule anything in that meeting, whether it be a proposal review, it be profitability review, or I had a client that wanted to do a conference call. That was the perfect time that I know I've got this hour of time blocked out. I have Turk's full attention and vice versa.
Jack Jostes [00:04:38]:
And now that employee was hired for an account manager position. It's a very difficult position to fill in any business. Somebody who knows the business, who knows landscaping, has the technical knowledge and can do the sales and account management and the project management, all those different things, that's a pretty tall order. So for somebody like him to leave a previous company and say that money wasn't the most important thing lets me know this is on track. One of the things that I do regularly is I go on hunting trips and this gives me a lot of time to be quiet and think. And I always bring a journal with me. And I recently went to Business Builder Camp. This is led by my business coach, Wayne Herring.
Jack Jostes [00:05:26]:
He made these awesome shirts for the event. It said, hogs, business and life. That sums it up. We were hog hunting. We were talking about business. We were talking about life. And I brought a journal that Wayne gave me and I wrote in it because there were only four people on this. It was a really cool business coaching experience because it was like a four man intensive.
Jack Jostes [00:05:52]:
There were four guys together, very different business backgrounds, and we needed to talk about what do you like about your business and I wrote that I love being on a team with highly competent professionals who get things done well, fast, and while serving customers. I love sales, sales process, marketing, buying and using audio, video gear, scopes and rifles, planning and executing plans and trips. And I went on, but I like being on a team of highly competent people. I've been on teams my whole life, from, I wrote on the high school newspaper, I was the entertainment writer. I wrote on the college newspaper about entertainment. I've been in plays. I've been doing theater my whole life. I've played in bands my whole life.
06:46 - Creating a Fulfilling Work Environment
Jack Jostes [00:06:46]:
I'm my best on a team. I have an incredible team at Ramblin Jackson, and that's something that I really want. I don't want to not be working right. Some people want to sell their business and sit on a beach and drink pina coladas. I'd get pretty bored doing that. I don't even drink. But sitting on the beach for more than a couple of days, I'd be like, can we go build something? Can we do something? Can we make a video? Can we please help someone? I just want to help. I love what we do.
Jack Jostes [00:07:18]:
I love being on a team of people that helps our customers. That's our mission, is helping small businesses Ring the Bell, and the people who work here want to help small businesses Ring the Bell also. One of the things that Wayne has talked about with me that I finally actually wrote down was, beyond financial compensation, there's emotional compensation and intellectual compensation. So some of the emotional compensation that's important to me is feeling like I'm actually helping people versus getting just paid. And I'm going to tell you a story that helped me realize that in a minute. Feeling productive, being efficient, feeling respected, quality time, working with people who are punctual. Some of the intellectual compensation, like innovating new products, we're constantly innovating and creating new products and systems and checklists and pages about them and videos and email campaigns. So we're constantly innovating, learning new software.
Jack Jostes [00:08:28]:
I love learning new software, skills, tools, cameras. I love reading books. And that's part of what I want out of work, beyond just the money. The money is important, and I need to make it. I want to get paid really well for helping people and building a team and all of these different things, but it's not the only thing. And before I get to that other story I wanted to share, one of my employees told me we had dinner. Somebody who's worked with me for years said, hey, you know what? All my life, teachers have told me that I'm a bad writer. And you're the first one.
09:09 - The Impact of Positive Feedback and Personal Growth
Jack Jostes [00:09:09]:
You're the first person who's told me, hey, you're a good writer. You're good at this. Keep going. And this person I've always thought was really good at copywriting and this person with me, we read a book about copywriting, Copy Editing Secrets by Jim Edwards. That book has changed our lives. That book has become part of who I am and who this person is. And it's, I think, helped us both make more money, which is pretty cool. So that's the kind of experience that I want from work and from my business.
Jack Jostes [00:09:43]:
And then time to exercise every day and go on hikes and rucks and cold plunge and eat dinner with my family. Kind of basic stuff. But I wanted to tell you a story about a project I did recently. I'm not going to say who it was with, but it was a large company that hired me, hired Ramblin Jackson for sales consulting and a HubSpot sales CRM implementation and all these different things. And we got our part done. But the people at this company, they don't want to do it. They're not going to do it. They're not going to use HubSpot.
10:23 - Choosing Projects That Matter
Jack Jostes [00:10:23]:
We got paid. I don't know that anyone's ever going to use it where it might be months from now until it's getting done. And that made me realize I'd rather have three landscape I'm really grateful that I was paid, but I would rather have three landscape clients, smaller projects where we're actually getting stuff done that's going to help people, that they're going to use, that's going to make their life easier, make them money. I'm so much more fulfilled by that than getting paid for things that like, if people were like, Jack, we want you to be the CEO of pretty websites agency. And the websites are not going to rank on Google and no one's ever going to look at them, but they're very pretty and they don't have a careers page and no one's really going to use them. I don't think you could pay me to do it. I want to work here. I love what we're doing, but this isn't about me.
11:28 - Understanding Personal and Business Values to Attract Great Team Members
Jack Jostes [00:11:28]:
I just wanted to share what I realized about myself because I think when you're running a business, I know so many people who lose sight of those things in the name of running the business or growing the business for my family, for my family. I'm running the business for my family. But then they end up working 60, 80, 90 hours a week, and they're grumpy and sloppy and slow. Right? You don't want that. That's not why you started your company. No one wants to work at a place like that. So maybe you don't like the things that I like. Maybe you don't need those things from your business.
Jack Jostes [00:12:12]:
It doesn't really matter. But figuring out what they are, what is important to you is because that's what's going to help you then attract people who want those things, and you'll get more of them, and they'll get more of them. And that builds a culture and that builds a team. And I see it in the landscape business. I see it for sure in the landscape company. We've had a lot of clients on our show talk about some of them who have won the best place to work in the SIMA awards or things like that. And culture is a key part of it. So in addition to the financial compensation, what is the emotional compensation? What is the intellectual compensation? What's it feel like to be on your team? You know, when a company has bad culture and when a company has a good one, but describing it can be difficult.
13:05 - Utilizing Video Interviews to Enhance Company Culture
Jack Jostes [00:13:05]:
So one of the ways to do that is to video interview your employees. Right now I've got my camera set up in the studio. One of my clients is coming here, Jake's Designs. I get to interview not only Jake, but also three of his employees. Some of them have worked with him for over 20 years. And I'm excited to do that because I get to be behind the camera and press record and ask questions and listen and ask a follow up question. That's what I love doing.
Dani Ewan:
So I've worked here for quite a while because I really love the small, the small company feel that Jake's Designs exhibits. I mean, we do some amazing huge projects and we all come together as a team and really feel recognized within each other when we're going above and beyond.
Sam Sommer:
I came in as a laborer and even though they did know I had some experience, I had to prove myself through there, but they quickly recognized I had talent on that. What I appreciate about working here at Jake's is that they do have faith in me to make decisions and the leeway to do quality work and give me autonomy and they have trust in me to get it done
Jack Jostes [00:14:12]:
But I wanted to share that with you because so many people have challenges with recruiting and retention, and I see them not really embracing these ideas or implementing them.
And the companies that are companies that have a culture and are recruiting and using videos, they're succeeding. And the owners of those companies are running more enjoyable businesses. My name is Jack Jostes, and you've been listening to The Landscaper's Guide Podcast. If you got some value out of today's show, give us a like. If you're on YouTube, subscribe and make sure you sign up at landscapersguide.com/podcast so you never miss an episode. Plus, get invites to exclusive live and virtual events that we host for the snow and landscape industry. Have a great weekend, and I'll talk to you next week.
Show Notes:
Watch the full episode + see the transcript at: https://landscapersguide.com/podcast/
Tell us where to send your beef jerky: https://landscapersguide.com/toolbox