You know, I used to think things like company culture and core values was kind of BS consultant speak, right? And then once I actually finally invested time and implemented and believed it and made it something meaningful at my company, my company really started to grow and I started to really retain and attract great people at my marketing agency. I love today's interview because Wade Martin, who's the president of Martin Landscape, Inc., in Beaufort, South Carolina, talks about how when he finally invested in his culture, his core values, vision, and mission, and then created this fun game. That's one of the keys to his success. So, we've a lot to learn from Wade in today's interview.
Before we dive into this episode, I want to invite you to our live landscape recruiting virtual workshop on Thursday, December 16th. Check it out at landscapersguide.com/events
Interview with Wade Martin
Jack Jostes:
Hey, everyone, welcome to The Landscaper's Guide to Modern Sales and Marketing. My name's Jack Jostes, and today I have an exciting guest. We have Wade Martin from Martin Landscape, Inc., in Beaufort, South Carolina. He's been in business since 2004. I'm going to talk with him today about managing your team and maintaining a strong employee culture. So Wade, thanks so much for coming today. Tell us a little bit about Martin Landscape.
Wade Martin:
Great. Yeah. Thanks Jack. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm really excited to share some successes and some failures, both of them to help other people out in our industry. Started in 2004 with a pickup truck and a push mower. We are currently employing about 75 to 80 team members, and that is in our South Carolina and our Georgia branch. The services that we provide, we call them profit centers, they are commercial lawn maintenance, residential and commercial enhancements, landscape construction, commercial and residential, and we also do street sweeping. That's just a little bit about our company.
Jack Jostes:
Well, that's interesting about street sweeping. How did that become part of the mix?
Wade Martin:
Yeah, we like to self-perform everything, and one thing that we noticed when we hired our subcontractors to do the work, they were saying they were doing properties and they actually weren't doing it. So, we weren't being fair to ourselves or our client. We wanted to get the best bang ... our clients get the best bang for their buck, and we decided to go in-house and try it. And it's got a nice profit margin and we're already on the property, so it really benefits our maintenance teams out in the field, so we decided to do it in-house and saved a lot of money doing it. It's just another thing that we offer for our client.
The Biggest Thing That Helped With Company Growth
Jack Jostes:
Awesome. And tell me a little ... You mentioned that you're going to share some wins and also some failures. A lot of times people see somebody who's been in business for 16, 17 years. They've got 75 to 85 employees and like, "Oh, this guy has it made. It must be easy." What are some maybe challenges or failures or things that you've learned from along the way of growing to this point of having this many people on your team?
Wade Martin:
Sure. Well, Jack, I'm going to start with something that every landscape contractor I talk to, my peers, my mentors, people that are smaller than I am, larger than I am. Everybody's having the same problem, and it's labor. Well, my first question to them, "How often are you working on labor? If that's your number one problem, all you do is have an application on your website? Why don't you have something on your truck that says 'Now hiring'? Why don't you have a banner out in front of your office, 'Now hiring'? Why is your team not talking about it?" So I'm starting at the biggest thing there is labor, the labor challenges today.
We have a full-time HR director. We decided to hire her about a year ago. It was the biggest thing that we've done for this company to help the growth. You know, we were the same way. We were those people. We were complaining of the labor, and it's like a light bulb went off, and I said, "How often are we working on labor?" And I sat down and really did the math on it, and it was very little, the least amount of time on our biggest issue. So I think that's a big piece of the puzzle for most landscape contractors, because I think getting the sales, for 90% of the people, the sales are there. The people are out in their yards with COVID and things like that, wanting to redo things like that, of that nature, and you know, the sales are there. I think you got to have the people, you got to have the team, you got to have that culture built up.
Jack Jostes:
And so when you say "working on labor," what does that mean? How are you actually working on it now? So, you've hired a full-time in-house HR director. What are they doing, and what are you doing now that's working that you weren't doing before?
The Importance of Celebrating Milestones
Wade Martin:
Okay. Yeah. That's a great question. The HR director, her full-time job Monday through Friday, 40 hours a week, is retention, retaining who we have, because it's a lot cheaper to keep who you have. You've already trained these men and women, so retention's a big one. And I'll give you some ideas of what she does to do that and help out, because our whole team does it. Just because she's the HR director, our whole team is working on how to get better and what to do. Yeah.
And then the other thing is new hires. As we're doing departments, she's meeting with department heads and asking what their needs are. Do the numbers make out where you need four men instead of six men on a team? And we're talking about that. All stars, they want to work with all stars. They don't want to work with the guy that's dragging on a crew or things like that. All stars want to work with all stars.
But you know, the retention portion of it, going back to that of what she does, we celebrate milestones. We celebrate birthdays. They get a birthday bag. It's got a Martin Landscape water bottle and a bag of cookies or some candy. I know it's a simple gesture, but let people know you appreciate them. But we don't just celebrate birthdays. We celebrate, "Hey, you've been here for 12 months. You've been here for a year. Thank you." Shake your hand. As the owner of the company, I'll give him a phone call. I'll go see them on the job site. "Hey, I'm really proud. You made it a year. We look forward to having you many more years to come." You know, that's a big thing.
Getting our evaluations on time. We do a midyear eval and we do a end-of-the-year eval. Everybody on our team, there's no questions asked of, "When are you going to sit down and talk to me?" They know when they get hired. Our onboarding process is very detailed. Our HR director goes through everything that the company offers, all the benefits, all the perks of working here, things like that.
What Exactly Are Culture Coins (And What Do You Do With Them?)
One big thing that we have, Jack, this idea came to me. I'm very creative. I like to think outside the box. We have poker chips. We call them culture coins. They have our core values on them, passion, pride, teamwork, and relationships. These culture coins have a dollar value on them, $5, $10, and $20. At the end of every month, we make it a game. The teams turn them in. We have flat screen TVs at both of our branches on the wall, and we have a game. We see who's leading with the culture coins.
They can get these coins for safety. They can get these coins for production. They can get these coins for being a good Samaritan, just being a good person, doing something for somebody else. They can get awarded in a good way. I keep some in my truck as well and I hand them out when I see things going well. I think nine times out of 10, people see the bad things in a person. We try to see the good and go from there.
One of the things they can buy with the culture coins is they can buy Martin Landscape swag. They can buy leather boots. They can buy khaki pants. They can buy a day off, a paid day off. Yeah, I'm an avid fisherman. If they want to go fishing with me, they can do it. They can buy lunch for their team. They can buy a dinner with the owner, which is myself. There's just a bunch of things. So, we got creative on that and we asked them, "Hey, what are some of the things that you guys want, you girls want?" Because it's not about us. It's about them at the end of the day, what do they want? And they said, "A paid day off," things like that, so we added it. We didn't necessarily have that on there, but I said, "Hey, let's do it. They've earned it."
So I think you have to reward people on what they earn, but the culture coins, it's a huge hit of our company. It wasn't at first, but the more we talk about it, the more we're handing those chips out, you'll see these guys at the end of the day, before they go home, looking at the board, "Oh man, you're leading. You've got this, you've got that." And I think internally you kind of learn a lot about a person. So when you see a team leader, he takes those chips and he buys lunch for his team, it really shows that he cares about not just himself, but everybody on that team. You learn from other people as well, so the culture coin has been a huge, huge hit here.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. I love that, and I think you really hit on something that I've learned in growing and managing a team is the importance of praise, and finding something they've done right is something I learned from the book One Minute Manager. Have you ever read that book?
Wade Martin:
I have read that book. That's a great book.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. It's a really great book. At my company we have a Beef Jerky Club. And so part of our deal, one of the problems in my industry, in the digital market industry, is marketers are flaky and late and they don't do what they say they're going to do. So, we have an on-time guarantee, and if we're late, we have to send people beef jerky in the mail. And it's kind of fun. I love beef jerky, but we have a weekly nomination and anyone in our company can nominate other people, and then we have a monthly winner and then a quarterly winner. And we have a bingo board, and if you win the bingo board, if you get your prizes in a row, you can win ... The big prize this year is a Peloton, so it's a big prize.
Wade Martin:
Nice. Yeah, yeah.
Jack Jostes:
It's a big prize, but it also makes it really fun. And what are some of the results that you've seen? I think I'm doing something like this and I'm seeing the results of it. Maybe somebody who's listening or watching, who's like, "Oh, that sounds like a waste of time, culture coins." How has this actually translated into results at the company?
Building Morale + Referral Incentives
Wade Martin:
Yeah, absolutely. We measure everything. You heard me talk about how we put it on the big screen and we keep track of it? So do our teams in the field. They're keeping track of it. They're looking at that big screen. They're high fiving, so it's bringing the morale up. The guys are happy. It's a game. You've got to make it a game.
Wade Martin:
Let's face it. At the end of the day, we see the people we work with more than we see our own families. You got to make it a game. Make them high five their team members, their teammates. Make them get excited about it. It helps the morale. It helps the whole morale of the company when you're doing things like that. So, we see that happening.
Wade Martin:
We'll hire a team member's friend. We do a one-two-three program, so if they get hired on, if they make it 30 days, they get a hundred dollars. They make it six months, they get $200. They make it a year, they get $300. That's $600 per team member they bring on.
Are they going to bring on an all star, or are they going to bring somebody that's really not going to work? They're going to bring an all star, because they want that $600.
Employee Retention
The retention's the big thing though. Being able to drive that morale up, you want your people happy. If your people are happy, they're going to stay with you, and they're going to give you ideas that they want to see happen as well.
Jack Jostes:
So with 75 to 85 employees, that's a lot of birthdays. That's a lot of one-year milestones, two-year milestones, three-year milestones, and so on. How do you keep track of that? Are you using an HR software now or do you have a massive spreadsheet? Is it a whiteboard at Wade's house? What are you using?
Wade Martin
Yup. No, our HR director keeps track of all of that. We run Microsoft 365. We run that, but we also have a CRM system. We have a system just for our industry that we use that we really, really like. And we also ... She has just an HR program that she runs as well.
Jack Jostes:
Good. And you know, one of the things that you mentioned was that you call each division a "profit center" and that you also mentioned that one of your core values is relationships. Have you ever had team members struggle with thinking of their division as a profit center, and the relationship? To me, it's really clear that they go hand in hand. If we're not profiting, we can't have the relationship, and if we don't have a good relationship, we can't profit, but that's something that I've struggled with, with some team members, is helping them understand both. Have you ever had that challenge with people where they're maybe turned off by the idea of it being a profit center?
Using Software to Track Goals
Wade Martin:
Absolutely, we do. The only people we talk to about the profit center would be our upper management, the department heads. And just to give you a little background of what we do with our department heads, once a month, we sit down and we go over just their P&L for just their department. Our landscape software helps us do that, so they have a dashboard and we can just ... If it's someone who's in charge of street sweeping, they're only looking at the P&L for the street sweeping division. We show them their goals, and then if they've hit their goal or not hit their goal. If they hit their goal and they go above it, they get profit sharing, so that's why we called it a profit center, and it encourages them. They want to do more.
Take our irrigation department, for instance. We go over the P&L just for that department. And then once a month, our controller, we have a full-time controller, we'll sit down with the controller and we'll go over the whole company for the month, and we'll look at it and we share our numbers.
Why Not Show Them The Road?
People tell me I'm crazy. "Oh, you share your numbers. You do this, you do that." People want to ... Leaders want to lead. They want to keep going. They want to keep going forward. Why not show them the road? It's like a GPS system. If you're going on vacation and you know where you're going, but you don't know how to get there, well, it's the same thing with running a business. We've got to have some type of direction. So we feel like sharing the P&L, talking about the profit centers, being HOT, honest, open, and transparent. We feel like that's what's really a big contributor to our success.
Jack Jostes:
And when you're creating goals, how do you create goals for your profit centers with those department heads? Talk to me about what's that process like.
Wade Martin:
Sure. So like I told you before, we measure everything we do, so we know the gross margins that we need to hit. We know what our SG&A is. Our department heads, they understand that there's some things they can't control and there's some they can control. So we do a deep dive into the P&L so they really understand it. They know where things go. So, that helps a lot, having people on your team that really realize it and understand.
Jack Jostes:
Great, great. I love it. One of the things I noticed on your website is that you can click a button and there's a Spanish version of the whole website, so talk to me a little bit. Why do you do that and who who's reading it and what are some of the results of that?
Take Advice From Your Team
Wade Martin:
Sure. Sure. We have some current team members that actually brought it to my attention and they says, "Hey, we were on there." Well, they're telling my translator ... We have a few translators on staff, yeah. They were talking and they came to me, about three of them came to me, and the translator came in and says, "Hey, you're wanting to teach this and train this, but the guys, they said, 'All they can do is look at the pictures on your website.'" And we just started laughing.
Wade Martin:
I was like, "Well, what do they want me to do?" And they said, "Hey, man, convert it all to Spanish." And I said, "Hey," so a light bulb went off and I said, "Hey, great idea, guys. We're going to do that." Because they were referring people to look at our website, but they didn't understand where the application was. They'd click on it. The application was just English. And I says, "Man, we're leaving these guys out, guys and girls. We're leaving them out." So an actual current team member brought that to our attention. We changed it immediately. I mean, it was something that had to be done. We changed it immediately. They love it. Catering to our team members, giving them what they want. We like to take advice from them. They're our frontline workers.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. And so how does that help them do their job better, and is anyone reading it?
Discuss Your Core Values
Wade Martin:
Absolutely. Just so you know, when our teams roll out in the morning, we talk about our core values daily. We talk about our mission and our vision. If you follow me on LinkedIn, you will see I've posted things, but we wrap our doors to both of our offices. We have the mission and vision on one side and we have the core values on the other.
I might randomly just go up to somebody, "Hey, do you know the mission?" And they just spurt it right out, English or Spanish. I'll bring my translator with me, and he says, "Yes, he got it."
Jack Jostes:
Nice.
Wade Martin:
And that's where the culture coin comes in, and we'll flip them a culture coin. Core values, you could come to both of our branches right now today. I wouldn't tell them you'd be coming, and I would honestly say, "Okay, ask them the core values." Everybody in the company will know the four core values. We talk about it from the time we hire you on onboarding, every day, because we built this company on those core values and we want to continue to use them.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. I found that creating those core values was something that I always put off. I always thought that it was something that was kind of a bunch of bull, that I've got real work to do. Then once I actually did that and started hiring and managing and recruiting people and then living those core values, that's when our company really took off. I learned a lot about that from the book Traction. It sounds like ... Have you read that book, or where did you learn all about some of the ways you're leading your company?
Find A Mentor
Wade Martin:
This is kind of ... lead us into a different subject, but I've got to give credit to the consultants that I hired in the past. I took on my first consultant, oh, I was probably in business for, let's see here, 10 years before I even hired a consultant because I thought it was crazy. I thought it was a waste of money, but I went to an event. I loved it. I said, "Man, this guy knows what he's talking about." And I took all the advice, and I started running with it and I saw things start to work. And you know, you preach it. You can't preach something if you don't follow it. You've got to follow these things.
And I thought he was crazy. I was like, "Ah, core values. Come on, man. That's silly." But if you think about it, everybody's core value's going to be different at every company they work at. Some may be very similar, things like that, but it's just important. But I give my credit to the consultants that really helped me in my career, and we really started seeing growth after we hired them and started going forward.
So I don't want to take any credit there. Those guys really helped me, but I had to put the work in, so the only credit I'll give myself is, you've got to put the work in. If they tell you to do something, do the work that they say to do and go forward. They've already been there and done it. Don't make the mistakes of going through it on your own. I've made so many mistakes before I had them. People have already made these mistakes.
Find a mentor. Find that person that you can ask those questions that's been down this road and they've done it. It's so much easier. I mean, I call guys that are larger companies than me and I'll just ask them, or I'll send them an email and say, "Hey, I'm having this issue. What would you do?" If you get a great response, most guys in our industry, we stick together. We really do, because we want everybody to succeed.
Jack Jostes:
That's one of the reasons I love the green industry is it's been the most welcoming and supportive industry I've ever experienced. And the way that people help each other in the industry is just really remarkable. So tell us a little bit, what is the vision of your company? You've got 75 to 85 employees. Does that change seasonally or do you work year round or what's that like?
Wade Martin:
Yes. We're very fortunate. We have warm weather year round. It does get cold. We do have a winter, but we don't have snow. Occasionally we'll have a couple days of snow every few years, but we don't get snow here. We're very fortunate in that aspect where we stay busy year round, so we'll keep those 75, 85 team members full-time, year round. Hours may scale back a little bit on our lawn maintenance divisions, but we do seasonal color. We do pine straw applications, things like that, that will keep them busy.
Jack Jostes:
Well, hey, thanks so much for coming onto the show. And Wade, you mentioned people can ... How can we connect with you? You had mentioned sometimes you email people. Is that okay if people email you, or should we connect with you on LinkedIn? For people listening who are inspired by what you had to say that want to network with you, where can we connect?
Wade Martin:
Yeah, absolutely. My email stays full, and I've got that 10 and two rule, so LinkedIn is the best way to get me. I'm very active on LinkedIn. They can connect with me, send me a message, and I can kind of look at their profile as well, and I would love to do that. Instagram, our marketing director runs our Instagram page. Stay up to date with us. Look at our Facebook, Instagram, come to my LinkedIn, go to our company LinkedIn. Go to our company website as well and look around, but the best way to communicate with me is LinkedIn.
The Benefits Of In-House Marketing
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. I'm enjoying LinkedIn more and more every day. I've actually removed Facebook and Instagram from my phone. We still use it for our company. And one thing I wanted to say as we're leaving, another thing that you're doing that I recommend is having a marketing director or a marketing coordinator, somebody in-house, manage your social media, because they're going to be on the job site. They're going to be at that company huddle in the morning. They're going to just understand what's going on.
I don't think you can outsource social media for a landscape company, and when I see people doing it, it's really obvious. Your website hosting company probably has no idea what an HOA is. You know what I mean?
Wade Martin:
Yup, yup.
Jack Jostes:
There's no way that they're going to market what you're doing in any kind of good way. So you're doing a lot. That's great. Everyone, check out Wade Martin on LinkedIn, and MartinLandscape.net. Thank you, Wade.
All right, everyone. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. Talking with people like Wade is, one of my favorite things about working in the green industry is, all the opportunity for growth and advancement for you and your people in your community. That's really the outcome of running a great company, and it's so much fun talking to people like Wade.
And speaking of great people, I'm going to share some amazing case studies and other tactics that are actually working to recruit and retain great employees, so join me for my virtual workshop on Thursday, December 16th, The 7 Keys to Landscape Recruiting in 2022. This is a paid workshop and you can get tickets at landscapersguide.com/events. See our show notes for a link, again, to landscapersguide.com/events. Thanks so much for tuning in. I look forward to talking to you again soon.