If there's one thing in common with most ineffective landscaping job ads, right now, it's demanding that everyone has at least three years of experience doing landscaping. But what if you accepted applicants who had no landscaping experience for a paid internship, could it work? Find out if paid internships with inexperienced professionals is working - or rather just how well it's working - in this exciting interview with repeat podcast guest, Monique Allen, who runs the Garden Continuum, a landscaping company out in Massachusetts, who also wrote the book, Stop Landscaping, Start Life-Scaping.
This year, like many landscapers, Monique found herself understaffed and having to deal with supply chain issues and COVID, whatever's happening right now. And she did some things that were really bold. She made some decisions to try some new things this year, like having flexible hours, having part-time employees, and having her team drive directly to the job site instead of to the office first. And in this interview, she talks candidly about what worked and what she'll do again, and also what didn't work. I'll share a win with you that Monique has the mindset that she's the Gardener of the People on her team. And she may be onto something really big here by having a full-time Employee Experience Manager. Find out what's working in her recruiting and retention in today's episode.
Part 1
Jack Jostes:
What's up everyone, Jack Jostes is here and welcome to the Landscapers Guide to Modern Sales and Marketing Podcast. I love running the show because I get to talk to interesting people. And if there's one thing that the Green Industry has in common, you are resourceful. You take challenges in the environment and make beautiful things happen. But a lot of times landscapers haven't really become leaders of people or maybe that part doesn't come naturally to them. And that's one of the topics that I'm really interested in. And today's interview was so inspiring to me that I actually invited Monique to be a panelist at the Landscaper's Modern Sales and Marketing Summit. That's our two day virtual event on November 17th and 18th, and I invite you to join me there because we're going to be talking about recruiting. We're going to be talking about retention. I have a panel, I have sponsors this year. It's going to be really cool, but you're going to want to get your ticket right away because Early Bird tickets are running out. And I'm only going to be doing live website reviews for the people in order that they register. So grab your ticket while you still can at landscapersummit.com. Now let's see what we can learn about recruiting and technology and things that are working right now in this exciting interview with Monique Allen.
Monique. Thanks for coming back on the show.
Monique Allen:
Thank you. I'm really happy to be here, excited to have this conversation.
Jack Jostes:
And Monique, before we pressed record, you were telling me about profound suffering when it comes to labor in the past year. And I wanted to interview you because you've tried some new things this year. In Spring, you and I were emailing and I'm like, well, I'm going to invite Monique on the show in the Fall to see, well, how did it work? So Monique, tell me some bad news. What were some of the suffering that either you experienced or that you're seeing with some of your clients?
Monique Allen:
Yeah, absolutely. I do believe that the suffering out there is profound. And the reason why I say that is because we all know as tradespeople that we suffer a little around labor. It's not the first time anybody has ever said, "Oh, I can't find good help." I mean, we say it. Because we really, really want good help. And one of the things that I'm always trying to wrap my head around and get my clients to wrap their head around is what does that mean? What is good help? And the interesting thing is the suffering in the past has been, somebody shows up late or they did a thing wrong, or they have to leave early. It's a different kind of suffering. This suffering was profound because nobody could find anybody. It was just crickets.
It was so difficult to navigate, especially in the spring. And for landscapers, it was so profound because spring is our toughest season.
It goes from zero to a hundred so quickly. So the profound nature of the suffering was, I don't even know what to do. I would take somebody who was terrible right now. I just need somebody to help me lift heavy things and move them around. And so it just sort of created this swirl and we were feeling it as well. And I think the other piece that made profound was that all of us who got through 2020, I mean, we all made it through. We figured it out. We got creative and we thought when we got to spring of 2021, we were going to be home free. We figured it out. We did it. And new things happened. People showing up with serious anxiety. People showing up with new fear that we didn't expect. People whose families had issues and we didn't expect that drop off. So that's what I mean by profound. I think it was a bit blindsiding for everybody.
Jack Jostes:
Well, it was certainly hard last year and profound suffering is nothing to laugh at. It's real. And a lot of people in industry are experiencing it. There are some things that you've tried that have worked that were new this year, new to 2020. And before you dive into some of those things, tell us a little bit about, how long have you had your landscape company and roughly how many employees have you had during peak seasons in the past and just help people understand, maybe they haven't heard of you some of your experience in the industry?
Monique Allen:
Yeah, absolutely. So my company is called The Garden Continuum. We're located in Massachusetts. We're design-build and fine gardening. And we work in the eco-space. So in the sustainable landscape space really working on regenerative landscape processes, which was why I wrote the book, Stop Landscaping, start Life-Scaping, which says the idea of life-scaping really was to look at the long evolutionary game of what it means to build and manage a landscape. And our peak season, the biggest we've been is probably around where we are now is about 23 people. I may have hit 25 at one point, but it's been a real happy place. Real manageable size, a size I like. We've got a site with some limitations. So I've been really mindful about growth and wanting to go deep instead of wide. So really develop the company with a lot of depth and a lot of solid footing rather than to spread out thin and go wide.
Jack Jostes:
So has that meant that you've had to say no when clients ask you for certain services?
Monique Allen:
Absolutely. It meant developing really solid partnerships with people who have specialties in areas that I just plain don't want to do. I got excited about building ponds and doing water features and then was like, yeah, I don't want to take care of ponds and water features. So I found a great partner, somebody who that's all he does. So I'm really big on collaboration, really big on partnerships. It also means that I picked a revenue point and then said, I'm not growing anymore. I'm staying here. So really purposefully staying at a revenue point and then working the OPEX and below the line area to say, okay, how do I take more profit from that? And then working the above line area and saying, how do I get more efficient at that? So before I grew, I capped it and said, I have to grow profit in this size before I'll grow. And that's worked really well.
Jack Jostes:
Well, good. And that's really what matters most if you own the company. I mean, who cares if you... There are companies that do 10 million, but they're doing it at 2% net profit.
Monique Allen:
Right.
Part Time, Flex Time, & Paid Internships
Jack Jostes:
And it's not a lot of fun. A lot of stress to make 2% net profit. So that's really good. So tell me a little bit, what are some of the new things that you're doing with position types? So in the past, I think everyone... Well, what did part-time used to mean at your company and what are some of the things that you've experimented with this year?
Monique Allen:
So we work five days a week, really important to me to have a weekend off. I did that very early on. So when this company started in 2000, I said, five days a week, that's it. I want everybody to have a weekend and I want people to work five days a week. Then it became, well, maybe we should have some part-time people. And so those part-time people can work three days a week or four days a week. And if they work three days, they have to work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
Monique Allen:
And if they work four days, they work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So that was very hard kind of drew that line in the sand. COVID blew everything up because now I didn't have enough trucks to transport all of my people singly. So I had to think about how do I use personal vehicles? And so in 2020 with the crew we had, we now had to figure out transportation in a different way, which meant I had to adopt a whole legal reimbursement program around people using their cars.
Jack Jostes:
Wow.
Monique Allen:
So that was a big deal. And then there was just a lot going on. So as we moved into 2021 and we realized that we were going to have a really hard time. I thought, well, maybe what I could do is I could create a Flex Time. So our managers get here at 6:30 and our crews get here at 6:45. I thought, well, maybe I could have crews arrive at 6:45 and then leave at like 1:30 thinking, maybe I'm going to hire people who are parents. And I have to think about children.
So I looked at the school schedule and I said, when do parents drop off their kids? When do parents have to pick their kids up? And I thought, okay, if it's a two-parent household, maybe one drops them off and one picks them up. And so I thought if I did a early start, 6:45 and early release, and then a late start, 10:00 and then they work the full day. So I did these overlapping what we called first and second shift. And then overlapping that I started to allow people to show up directly on the job, which for me is new.
I know that's not totally new in the landscape industry that other people do that. And so little by little, I added these layers. I had the layer of people using their cars. I had first and second shift. I had part-time where I was letting people work as little as two days a week. And I was trying to cobble a schedule to together with all of these bodies and some of it worked and some of it didn't work.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. So before we... And I know that you brought a list of what didn't work. What did work? What worked? So we're in this labor challenge. We're having some things, and I love that you're thinking of adapting and you're getting into people's, their personal life. Maybe they have kids, what's their school schedule like. So I love where you're heading with this and you experimented with some things. What stuck? What would you try again that worked?
Monique Allen:
Okay. So two things that I didn't mention that I probably should, because this is going to help frame what's stuck is that I developed an Internship. So I developed one for the Spring. It was a 90 day Internship when I did all of this. And I started to pursue people that were not landscapers, people who were self-proclaimed DIYers, self-proclaimed home gardeners. I started targeting that. And the reason why I did these two things along with all those other things is because I thought to myself, our industry is exploding. It started exploding in the late summer of 2020, because everybody was home. We don't have the labor pool capacity to support the explode. We have to be creative and go outside of our industry to find people. So I was trying to use specific things, they're DIYers and they are self-proclaimed home gardeners.
Monique Allen:
And I'm going to come up with this flex schedule shift one and two, and I'm going to allow people to work as little as two days a week. And what I will tell you is that going outside of the landscape industry worked really well. And the reason it worked well is because I think humanity is ready to reconnect with nature. I really do. And I think that the whole don't be inside and gathering and all of that just reintroduce people to how amazing it is to be outside. We all know that as landscapers. I was out today on a job site, placing bulbs and teaching pruning and I just found myself smiling. It was just awesome. And I'm like, I have the best job in the world. So I think people who got shoved into their houses and then had to deal with all of the remoteness were like, oh, get me outside. So I actually hired a client.
Jack Jostes:
Really?
Monique Allen:
Yes, because she was like, I'd really like to work with you. I don't want to do my job anymore. And so that went really well. So I really recommend to all your listeners that they think a little bit outside of the box and the easiest way to do this is to talk to your staff and ask them who they know, because the warmer that lead is the better. And the beautiful thing is by doing this as an internship, you're only really asking this person to commit for 90 days, which solves your problem, which is for 90 days. That hundred day marathon through the Spring season or that hundred day push to get up to Winter season. Those two seasons, Spring and Fall are critical times. And so I just think that worked awesome. So the internship worked awesome going outside of the industry, worked awesome talking to my people definitely. And getting their input worked really, really well. The Flex Time thing, that did not work as well as I had hoped.
Jack Jostes:
Well, before we dig into what didn't work, tell me more, was this internship a paid internship?
Monique Allen:
Yeah.
Jack Jostes:
So was it a paid internship and what range of people did this? Was it high school kids? Was it retired nurses?
Monique Allen:
Nope. It was a lot of self-employed people who got ousted from their self-employment, like people who did weddings, people who worked in restaurants, people who did work that already gave them flexibility, but COVID crushed. So everybody with the exception of two that I hired were over 30.
Jack Jostes:
Okay.
Monique Allen:
And one of the people that I hired was a sound engineer for theater and he had nothing to do. And he's already a hands on guy and his mother loved to garden and he remembered gardening with her. He was phenomenal. He was actually so great. He did his 90 day internship, got an awesome gig for some back to back theater shows happening in Rhode Island. And then said to me, hey, next Summer... Excuse me, for the Fall. He said I'd really like to come back next Summer, because theater just goes dormant in the Summer. So I have somebody who would want to come back and I don't think he ever would've thought of gardening. And I would've never thought to talk to somebody in the sound engineering world. So it was older.
Jack Jostes:
And so what kind of work would they actually do for you?
Monique Allen:
So they came in as novice gardeners. So the way they were hired was that they were going to do 90 days and that they would basically get a 30, 60, 90 day review. And at each one of the reviews, they would have the potential to earn more money. So I hired them quite cheaply, but I did pay them, but I definitely framed it as an internship. I said, so you're coming here, you're a novice or home gardener, but I still consider that a novice. We're going to teach you. You're going to be such a better home gardener when you leave here. So if you never do anything else after this, you're going to rock your landscape.
Monique Allen:
And we set strict KPIs. So for each 30 days, there was a strict four KPI set, that was reviewed with them. And then they had to get through those hurdles. And as they were getting through jumping each one of those hurdles, they were able to make more money. At the end of the 90 days we had the opportunity to offer them a full-time job or say, thank you so much for your internship. This was great. If you'd like to come back for another internship in the fall or in the spring, you can come back or we could just say, thanks so much. I hope you got as much out of it as we did. Bye-Bye.
Jack Jostes:
Well, and just in round numbers, how many people completed their internship? Lemme start here. How many people were like two weeks in like, wow, landscaping's really hard. I'm out.
Monique Allen:
That is a great question.
So one didn't even make it 30 days.
Jack Jostes:
Okay. Out of how many? So how many did you have total?
Monique Allen:
So all together we had six interns and one did not make it out of the 30 days and the second made it to about 65 days.
Jack Jostes:
Okay. And then the other four?
Monique Allen:
The other four, two are still here because they're the Fall ones. And one not only did we offer her a full-time position and she took it. I am now grooming her to move into sales. Amazing. Never, ever, ever would she have looked at doing sales for a landscape company and never, ever, ever would I have known how to find her had I not done the internship?
Jack Jostes:
Love it. And then what about the last one?
Monique Allen:
Ah, last one.
Jack Jostes:
Or that was it? So one didn't make it, two didn't make it past.
Monique Allen:
Yeah. And then that one was the sound engineer and he said he would love to come back and do another internship.
Jack Jostes:
Well, so in terms of hiring in the past, when you'd have somebody started an entry level position, are these similar numbers, would one or two of them quit within the first month?
Monique Allen:
Yeah. I don't think the numbers are all that different. I think that to have one person, I think the difference is that in the past I didn't hire people that were such novices.
Jack Jostes:
Yes. Got it.
Monique Allen:
You know what I mean?
So it would've been more of a disappointment.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. Because I look on Indeed with my clients all the time. They say "Jack, oh, I can't hire anyone." And I look at their job posts and they're like wanted, someone with three years of landscape experience who will work full time in the sun and must be able to lift 50 pounds. And by the way, we're paying $14 an hour. And it's like, you're just not going to find people with three years of experience who are going to make $14 an hour.
Monique Allen:
Nope.
Jack Jostes:
Probably ever again. So I think people need to get that out of their mind. But a lot of them say they can't get anyone to reply and I'm not surprised because there are plenty of other jobs that pay more that don't require any experience.
Monique Allen:
Right.
Jack Jostes:
So that's interesting that you opened the door to people who had no experience and they added value. They got work done for the most part.
Monique Allen:
Absolutely. I mean, they taught us because when somebody comes in so green ha ha, no pun intended, but so green. It does so before we did this, and I think this is really, really important for your listeners too. We had to make sure that our crew leads and our managers were up for this because we told them look, it's going to be like Groundhog Day all over again every day, because you're going to get questions, questions, questions. People need to ask the same question a dozen times before it sinks in. It's going to drive you crazy. You need to breathe. You need to figure out that this person isn't stupid. It's just that you've been doing this for 40 years. You forget what it feels like to do this. So we had to do a lot of training.
Monique Allen:
We did a month long crew leader training in advance. We did a lot of internal coaching to just help them breathe through not being as productive personally as they would normally be. And I can go into this more, just how we onboarded everybody, but we also created a training rate. And we created one-on-one training opportunities. And what that did was allow us to work on client sites at a much slower pace with these people working at a reduced rate than what we normally would charge a client. And so if our crew is normally a three person crew, we might do a four person or a five person crew with two new people with one of the veterans teaching and we were still getting income, but it was a far reduced rate and the clients knew that we were training new staff.
Jack Jostes:
So, that's a one of the things that we talk about at Ramblin Jackson is Expectations vs. Agreements. And I'm blanking on the author that we learned about that from. I'll put it in the show notes, because it's so good. So expectations and agreements, agreements are actually getting a commitment from your client that the quality is going to maybe be different or the timeline might be longer or something is going to be different and they actually agree to it versus you saying, hey, we've got these new people and you're expecting that they agree, but they don't. So I'm curious, how did you manage that from an account management standpoint? Because people look at your website, they read your reviews, you're the author. They're expecting the A Team. And now you're coming in with maybe a potential A Team, but it's not. How did you get an agreement from your clients on that?
Monique Allen:
So for me it was very easy because we have a very warm and what I would say almost intimate relationship with our clients and our property. So the life-scape method actually is an incredibly high touch landscape method. So our clients are informed when we're coming and then they are informed of what we did once we leave. So there's very high touch point. All of our crew leads are on a first name basis with their clients and oftentimes our clients come out and talk to us. They know the crews by first name, we introduce this is Nina. She's our intern today. This is JD, this is our intern today. I'm going to be training him on how to do the boxwood. So if you see me over there forever, we're all good.
It's in the conversation. We didn't have to do upfront permission for it because we just embedded it into the conversation. And then we've got a budget and our directive is not to exceed the budget. We've got a value range that we have for every year with our clientele, but as long as I'm coming in and I'm not exceeding that, I don't feel like I have to do a whole lot of extra. And then to the point of quality versus time, time is on me. And that's why I'm reducing the rate. Quality is no different because even if an intern was there, the vet has to go and make sure that everything is shaped before they leave. They would never leave it at a lower quality.
Jack Jostes:
So I could see this being really frustrating for somebody who has worked with you for a long time, who grew through the ranks. And now they're at a crew leader stage. Were some of the crew leaders really frustrated that they had these really green people on the team this year?
Monique Allen:
I would say that the frustration level this year was lower than in past years because I leaned into it so hard because of past frustration. So past frustration I had seen, they're new, they don't know anything. I thought they were going to know more kind of thing. And when we brought someone on who was three years in the industry, but you could not get them to tow the line that would make them crazy. Because we brought them in as like, okay, they don't know anything. You have to tell them every... They were prepped for it. And here's the other thing, if you're moving up the ranks into crew lead and account management, part of your job is to be a trainer. And if you can't do it, you can't be a crew leader, account manager. You actually have to train. It's part of your job.
So a big part of what we did in crew leader training in the big beginning of the year was to go through all of those things about being a crew leader that has nothing to do with being the technician. Except that you know how to do it. But I think frustration level, we had them. We had the moment. I mean, it was ridiculously hot and then it kept training. We had them, but we were so prepped for coaching and mentoring each other. It really was good.
Part 2
Jack Jostes:
So before we get more into the coaching and training that you're doing, what about this didn't work? So it sounds like talking to your current team, opening the door to paid internships that worked, you also experimented with flex time. And flexibility means something different at every company and to different people. So what did you clarify it to mean and you said it didn't work.
Monique Allen:
Yeah. So Flex Time for us was first and second shift. So again, what we did was we looked at people who may have children who had to drop them off at the bus or pick them up at the bus. And so we couldn't have someone just work the short hours in between the two. They had to pick. They either got to drop their kids off or they got to pick their kids up. They couldn't do both. So we found out pretty quickly that the second shift was the better version. And second shift was they started at 10:00. First shift was they started early with everybody else, but they got to leave right after lunch. And it just didn't work. And there's a couple of reasons why. It was so blazing hot.
It started in May. It was just so hot here. And nobody was really ready for how hot it got and how fast. And what was happening is that the crews were losing a person, sometimes two people right when the day was at its hottest. And so you're already feeling crappy and then those people get to go home and you not only have to finish, you've got to clean up. And even though you could talk them through it, it was a morale killer. It was just terrible. And so we did our best through the spring internship because we couldn't change people's jobs midstream, but when we launched the fall internship, we only offered second shift.
So you either worked a full day or you could start at 10:00. And then we changed our break time so that all of our full-time staff would break at 9:45. And then at 10:00 they're back to work. But the crew lead is grabbing the interns and getting them started. They have a down, they had a break and whatever. So it just took us figuring that out, navigating what didn't work in the spring. And then deciding that second shift was the only way to do it.
Jack Jostes:
Got it. And so one of the things that we talked about before we started recording was taking risks and experimenting, which I believe is a key part of entrepreneurship and running a business. And the nature of businesses that it's always changing. There's COVID, and then there's... This is shut down, or there's a supply chain issue, or there's a monsoon, whatever it is. And that's one of the things that I love about working in the green industry is how resourceful landscapers are to generally figuring it out and adapting to it. And it always does though involve some sort of risk. So how do you hang with that? How did you hang with, you know what? I'm going to try offering these five things and we're going to see what works. Because sometimes I talk with clients or people on my staff and they get uncomfortable when it comes to participating in some of those things.
Monique Allen:
Yeah. I would say that I'm creative at heart. My genius is that I'm able to find that divine order in chaos. That's what I do. I see through lines. Chaos doesn't scare me at all. I'm actually at my best when I meet up with the most chaotic things. So what I was able to do with my team was just say we need help. We're having a big problem. We had been recruiting... We recruited all March and basically got nobody. And we kept recruiting in April and it just wasn't looking good. And that's when I got this, okay, we're going to do an internship and we just put it out there. And I said, look at this, I don't know how else to help you.
You can't do this by yourself. You need help. You need help that wants to be doing this. And so I said, but I have no idea if it's going to work. Are you willing to play? Because if it works, we're golden. If it doesn't work, we can tweak, try again, see what we can adjust. And then if it still doesn't work, we can just can it, I'm not going to be, it's up to you guys. You have to like it. And I think I'm very blessed and I have invested in this. My people do trust me and they know that I have their best interests at heart. And I think when an owner is able to develop that kind of rapport with their staff, then their staff is really willing. If it's about getting the help they need, why not give it a shot.
Jack Jostes:
Great. And I enjoy the chaos too. It's kind of fun. Do you ever get bored in your business when there's a lack of chaos?
Monique Allen:
No, because my threshold for chaos is very high. And my staff threshold for chaos is not. And so if there's no chaos for me, there's generally chaos for them.
And I am the Gardener of People. That's what I do. And so because the landscape for me is easy. It's easy for me. So when the people need a little gardening, then I go and I tend them. So there's always a little chaos at hand.
Gardener of People Mindset
Jack Jostes:
Sure. So tell me about gardening the people. And we had talked about 30, 60, 90 day check-ins with people and that in particular, this year, you spent more time with your people, but it didn't feel like a burden. What were you doing as far as gardening your people this year?
Monique Allen:
So it really is about tending morale, tending culture, and making sure that you are creating a safe container for them to operate at their highest level of professionalism. That isn't something that happens by accident. And it's necessary. I've learned that if you can have more touch points, then all of the touch points are less scary. As a matter of fact, they're not scary at all. They're incredibly enjoyable. So with the 30, 60, 90 for newly onboarded people, I have a person who's dedicated, she's the employee experience manager. And she does all of our end-to-end talent management. And she does the 30 day. And then whoever the manager is, they do the 60 day with the employee experience manager. And then I do the 90 day. So I'm only doing one, someone else is doing two and someone else is doing one.
Monique Allen:
So you realize that now this person has gotten all this grooming and touching and pending and taking care of, but it hasn't been a burden for one person. And I have to give Marsha such a shout out. She's so awesome. She has literally taken the things that fall out of my creative brain and she's catching them and she's such a great systems builder. And she has built this incredibly robust 30, 60, 90, that has KPIs that has a structure of raises. So they're not only checking in on these KPIs. They're not only checking in on their emotional state, nine times out of 10, they're walking out with a raise. And it's probably 9.8% out of 10 they're walking out with a raise. So I think when people know that it's coming, they know that they have the opportunity to talk to somebody and they know that they're safe.
Monique Allen:
So having Marsha talk to them in that first 30 days is critical. It's not their supervisor and it's not their employer. It's a very safe person that they can say I'm struggling. I don't think this person likes me. I don't think I can do it. I didn't realize I couldn't work in the heat. She's so safe. And I think creating that incredibly safe container in that first 30 days, and then you make it a little less safe in the next 30 days and a little less safe in the next 30 days. You're literally bringing them up in the ranks to be a little bit tougher and a little bit more robust so that they can really be a strong team player.
Jack Jostes:
And so what's Marsha's title at the company?
Monique Allen:
Employee Experience Manager.
Jack Jostes:
Wow. Is that a new role this year or have you had that in the past?
Monique Allen:
No, she's been in that role. She's had that title, I think this is her third year. Last year she was Employee Experience Manager/COVID officer.
Jack Jostes:
Oh, wow. Yeah, I bet. So does she work full time in that role?
Monique Allen:
Yes. So she's four days a week.
Jack Jostes:
Wow. So cool. Monique, what are you reading currently? Where are you getting inspired with some of these leadership and management ideas?
Monique Allen:
So I am reading... I'm not going to remember, Dan Sullivan, who he wrote, Who Not How.
So I have, Who Not How and his new book Gap and Gain or Gain and Gap or something like that just came out like three nights ago or something.
So I'm reading that right now, which is so crazy to read right now, because I just gave a talk in Orlando in the summer at the Florida nursery and growers and landscape association. And I had a whole section in it about agency and the freedoms. So three freedoms and I'm reading the Gap and the Gain and he talks about agency and the three freedoms. And I was like, yes.
Jack Jostes:
So I haven't heard of that. So what is the agency and the three freedoms?
Monique Allen:
Well, so we have the freedom. We want to have the freedom from suffering, from pain, from persecution. These are really important in the United States rights. And so we want to have a life where we have freedom from persecution, judgment freedom. It's like, if you think about the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Freedom from, is at the bottom. It's about all about survival and safety.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. It is. And that's why many people, I think lose sight of freedom because they have this perception of safety and things that they're given that they're like, oh, I don't need freedom. I have safety. So do you find that-
Monique Allen:
But that's just the bottom. So if someone in a company in their first 30 days has felt unsafe, psychologically, we forget about this. And in the landscape... And I'm not even saying not the landscape industry, the trades, construction, builders. The trades are notorious for eroding psychological safety. So we have to be very careful because I believe that post COVID, which has heightened everybody's fear, we are now critically honed into the fact that want to be safe. So if you go to a company and you feel psychologically unsafe, you're going to be like I'm out because COVID the whole pandemic trained us to protect ourselves in a way that we haven't been doing. And so freedom from is really important on that bottom part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Freedom to, is I'm free to schedule to be on a podcast with you. I'm free to cancel at the last minute if I want to.
Jack Jostes:
Thank you.
Thanks for showing up.
Monique Allen:
You're welcome. I'm free to be the Founder and CEO of a landscape company, and I'm free to also build a coaching business. That is that next level up. I couldn't be free to do any of those things if I was hungry. Because I would just be thinking about putting food on the table. And then the third freedom is really the freedom to be. This is more of an internal freedom. This is the freedom that you are able to stand powerfully in your authenticity and truly show up as Monique and truly show up as Jack. This is a much deeper freedom and the other two have to exist. And if they don't exist, interestingly, the freedom to be can sometimes help light a fire under you to get the other two.
So it's really exciting stuff, because I think it speaks to humanity more than anything, but as entrepreneurs I think we struggle a lot. And I think this struggle with the human component of employees and finding help, I think that's a struggle that is way different than trying to figure out how to build a load bearing wall, where you can't get a piece of machinery in. What I have found with landscape business owners is they're the most creative, innovative building stuff. Oh my gosh. Like the stuff they can build.
Jack Jostes:
I think you're really onto something here. And I had another podcast guest, Local Roots. They're in Pennsylvania and they have a wait list for employees who are wanting to work with them. And one of the things one of their owners mentioned creating a safe space for their employees to come and talk with them. And they're talking about the psychological needs that are often brushed aside in different jobs. And it makes doing those jobs really undesirable.
Jack Jostes:
And so when I meet with people like you or Local roots, it is the people who are investing in learning and reading and personal development, and then putting resources into the people who work for them that are growing and thriving and still making mistakes along the way. You've mentioned a bunch of things that didn't work, but I really think you're onto it thinking of the psychological needs. I like that you have a different person and Employee Experience Manager. That sounds really expensive, Monique, is what people are thinking. She is an Employee Experience Manager. Is it expensive or could you not have this position? Talk to me about that.
Monique Allen:
So in, I think it was 2018, I put an ad out for gardeners... I think the title was Gardeners Wanted -- no experience necessary. And I had decided that I wanted to hire two gardeners that I could train to do it my way. And Marsha answered one of those ads. And she's a grown woman. She's got grown kids who have kids. And so she had a very good resume, had nothing to do with gardening, but had bought a house and been gardening for two, three years at that house and really loved it and was just trying to figure out what she wanted to do next.
Monique Allen:
And long story short in her resume was this incredible list of public service and working for 911, the state police working for public safety at BC. There was so much stuff. And so when I talked to her, I said, so now that we've talked about how much you don't know about gardening and how interested you are in it, can we talk a little bit about your public safety background? And we started talking about, and I said, how would you like to come in and learn how to garden three days a week or two days a week? And then the other two days a week or three days a week, however we do it help me build a safety program because I can't seem to do it.
Monique Allen:
So instead of hiring her at the super cheap rate for a novice gardener, I hired her at a little bit more thinking I was getting this transferable skill. And the first year she built a training program... a safety program for me. The second year we started to build that out and she was gardening. And then the second year she started to build that out a little bit more. But actually got so busy that I didn't need her outside as much. And I kept her inside and she was doing three days a week and then 2020 happened. And it was COVID. And so I can't imagine life without her.
And so it was not a big initial investment. It was a big investment in trust and taking that risk and looking at transferable skill, we have got to start looking at transferable skills and asking what did they do in their former life that they could do for me now. That's what's going on with this intern. She's in sales. She's been in sales forever. And when she said she wanted to stay, I said, well, do you want to do this as your career? And she sort of gave me a, ah. And I said, well, could you sell this work? And then her eyes lit up.
Jack Jostes:
Awesome. Well, I love it Monique. So you've shared a ton of value, a ton of takeaways. We can keep going, but it's time to wrap up here.
Monique Allen:
Okay.
Jack Jostes:
And tell us a little bit, you've started a new coaching program that I wanted people to hear about. So tell us a little bit about that.
Monique Allen:
Yeah, so it's called the Makers Business Building Group and it is going to be a combination. So this is going to start in 2022. So it'll start right at the beginning of January and it will be a year-long program. And the people that I'm coaching now, I have a couple of people who are going to come into it and it's really moving. It's like part coaching, part mastermind and part community building. And really what I have found in coaching people one-on-one is that we're solving the same problem over and over. And I think that what people need is the ability to hear what they're struggling with, but somebody else just said it. Somebody else just said, they're struggling with it.
And then they can go, oh, me, I'm struggling with that too. And I feel like two things will happen, which I'm really, really excited about. The first thing is it's cheaper than one-on-one coaching. And so that fear around taking in or taking on a coach I'm hoping to just make it go away. Because I really, really think more people need support. I wish I had gotten support way earlier than I did. I would've struggled less. So that's the first thing. And the second thing is by doing it for a year, you can allow yourself to take small risks, small steps and create those incremental wins. So it's not like I've got to get everything done in three months.
And also we know that, especially for the landscapers and I'm opening this up to all trades people. Because as I told you, when we were talking earlier as a landscape contractor, and I act as the general, I'm working with electricians and carpenters and builders and irrigation contractors, and I'm hearing this over and over this struggle is that if we're able to talk in a group, I think what we're going to do is we're going to become more unified in the way we're trying to change our industry. And I think the bottom line is we're not going back to anything. There's no going back. There's no going back to normal. This is all going to be new. And the people who, like you said are reading, elevating their self-awareness working in community with other contractors, they're the ones who are going to totally rebuild.
Jack Jostes:
Right on. And so how can we learn more and connect with you?
Monique Allen:
So I put myself on this Instagram challenge. So I have this whole series of videos on Instagram, which has been how I've been getting the word out there. And so definitely hop on my Instagram. It's @monique.allen and follow me. That would be awesome. I think Instagram is doing some crazy new stuff. And I think they're going to be creating a favorites list, which is going to be really interesting. So when you get on there, once that's available, definitely fave me. But then monique@thegardencontinuum.com, if you're interested, just totally shoot me an email. It's the best way to do it. Just we'll have a personal conversation.
Jack Jostes:
Cool. And I'll put that in the show notes for people who are watching and listening. And Monique thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. Again, thanks for coming back on the show.
All right, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. I got a ton of value from that, and it was really interesting to hear that. Having an employee experience manager, and she's the second person to talk about really the emotional health of her employees on the podcast. And that's something that's really important with today's environment and today's workers. So anyways, I hope you got some value from that. I hope to see you at the Summit. Register online at landscapersummit.com and look forward to seeing you there.