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IM Landscape Growth Podcast

Date: February 25, 2024

“Culture is often talked about in vague terms, but when you substitute ‘culture’ for ’employee experience’, it starts making a lot more sense.” – Matt Crinklaw

TLDL 😉

Matt Crinklaw, co-founder of Greenius, delves into the transformative role of training and development in the landscaping industry, discussing the integration with LMN and strategies for enhancing employee experiences.

Here’s what we discuss in today’s episode:

• Introduction to Matt Crinklaw and his tech background, detailing how he co-founded Greenius, a platform addressing training needs in the landscape industry.
• The evolution of Greenius, its growth, acquisition by LMN, and the emphasis on industry training.
• Discussion on addressing labor challenges in landscaping, including strategies post-COVID for recruitment and retention by aligning job roles with modern expectations.
• The importance of effective onboarding and creating positive employee experiences to reduce turnover and promote a culture of growth.
• Insights into skill development and career progression in landscaping, emphasizing the need for clear career paths and micro-promotions.
• Final thoughts on the ongoing efforts at Greenius to enhance training frameworks and their overall impact on the landscaping industry.

Actionable Key Takeaways:

Adopt a Comprehensive Onboarding Program:

Implement structured onboarding processes to better integrate new hires into company operations, enhancing retention.

Focus on Career Development:

Outline clear career pathways to motivate and retain employees by showing them a viable future within the organization.

Implement Micro-Promotions:

Use smaller, frequent promotions to maintain employee engagement and satisfaction, facilitating ongoing development.

Leverage Technology for Training:

Utilize platforms like Greenius for consistent and effective training, ensuring skills development across the organization.

Address the Repurposing Trend:

Adapt to changing labor market needs by meeting new expectations for work-life balance and job fulfillment.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

1. Greenius platform for landscaping training.
2. LMN tools for business management.
3. Books for further reading and inspiration:
   “Fire Your Hiring Habits” by John Mitchell – insights on innovative hiring practices.
   “Building a StoryBrand” by Donald Miller – a guide to creating a clear and compelling business narrative.

👍 If you liked this episode, please rate and review us on your favourite podcast platform, and be sure to hit the subscribe button! 🔔

Episode Transcript

Robert
00:00

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the I am landscape Growth podcast, where entrepreneurs help entrepreneurs grow faster, better, and stronger in the green industry, from leadership to sales to recruiting and operational excellence. We cover the topics holding entrepreneurs back and share how to get past those bottlenecks with the best in the industry. I’m your host, Rob Murray, co founder and CEO of Intrigue, a digital marketing company focused on helping landscape companies grow. So sit back and enjoy the show. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth podcast. Today I have the privilege of introducing our guest, Matt Crinklaw from Greenius now with LMN. Matt, thank you so much for coming on the show and doing this.

Matt
00:42
Yeah, no problem. I’m really happy to be here.

Robert
00:45
So, I mean, you had quite the journey the last couple of years. I know you’ve been growing Greenius as a co founder for the better part of two decades and then acquired by LMN in the last couple of years. Massive focus on training and development within the green industry. But maybe you can just give the audience a little bit of how did this whole thing started, where you’ve come from and kind of what you’re up today in Cole’s notes summary fashion.

Matt
01:11
Yeah, for sure. So we started probably 17 years ago, and it was kind of the idea. There was a large landscape company, I think they have around 120 employees, and they kind of needed a training program. So I’m from the tech world side of things. So they reached out to me and said, hey, we need this training program. So I said, you got to do a, b, and c. And then they said, well, why don’t you come work with us and let’s build this together? So I did the tech side, and then the landscapers did the expertise and all the equipment side of things, and together we built the greeniest platform. And I got to say, were way ahead of our time because thinking back about 17 years ago, streaming video really wasn’t a thing. It’s not what it was today.

Matt
01:57
So really what we had to do was take the video, break it down into a series of jpegs, and the user thought they were watching a video, but really it was just a jpeg slideshow.

Robert
02:09
That’s great. A true frame rate back old school. That’s so great.

Matt
02:15
Yeah. And then, so we launch, and then we thought, okay, we got a million dollar idea here. How are we going to line up all these sales? And, yeah, it was a grind. It was a grind. Landscapers weren’t ready for technology. How could you train somebody online to use a mower in the field. Right. Like the mindset we had to battle. So once we got the mindset conquered and the technology conquered, we started winning. And it was a grind, and it’s still a grind, but we’re very proud of it. Yeah.

Robert
02:47
So you’re like the 15 year overnight success or something to that effect?

Matt
02:50
Absolutely. I can tell you 50 ways how not to film a training course or how not to do it and how to waste money trying to figure it out. So it was quite the learning process, and, I mean, it got us to where we are today. So we’re extremely grateful for the process. It was just an awesome experience.

Robert
03:10
Very cool. And so what is your primary focus now? What are you up today?

Matt
03:13
So now we’re all about helping landscapers solve the labor problem in the industry. I know since COVID we’ve all heard the term the great resignation. Right. But it’s more than that. It’s been more the great repurposing. So people have really readjusted their priorities. So there’s not really a labor problem, it’s more of a repurposing problem. So the people are out there. Right. So you got to meet the skills development, the work life balance, and just kind of fill the needs of what people are looking for, and you can solve this problem. So greeniest really helps by onboarding people. So if you look at the landscape industry as a whole, turnover is a big problem. It’s one of the largest compared to any other industry, and it comes down to employee experience.

Matt
04:08
So whenever I hear the word culture, we always hear this talk about, hey, you got to have good company culture or you have bad company culture. But whenever I hear that, I challenge people to say, okay, take the word culture and swap it out with employee experience, and it starts making a lot more sense. So you either have good employee experiences or you have bad employee experiences. And what we do, starting from the very beginning, is a solid onboarding program built around good employee experiences. So show them the ropes, show them what their first day would look like, how to use the equipment, how to fuel the equipment, and they’re going to really feel comfortable in their new role and have this great experience and not be constantly getting in trouble for doing the wrong thing.

Matt
04:54
So anything you can do to really build a solid onboarding experience is just a huge win. And that’s where we come in. So we can execute a full 90 day onboarding program, and it’s only going to take, I would say, two to 3 hours of the crew leader’s time in that 90 days, because we’re doing all the online training with all our videos, and then they got to do the quiz at the end of those videos to verify they learned the skill. But then we’re the first to acknowledge, you just can’t watch a training video. Be an expert on landscape equipment. You got to use the equipment. So we have a field app where they have kind of these field checklists where they actually have to demonstrate the knowledge of the equipment. And where that really helps is kind of that standardized messaging.

Matt
05:47
So all crew leaders are delivering the same training all the same way. And I like to use the analogy of McDonald’s. Like, you go to any McDonald’s and the food tastes the same because everyone’s following the same process. So how do you apply that as a landscape company and get all your crew leaders training on the same process? And that’s where our fuel checklists come in, so, you know, they’re all training the exact same thing.

Robert
06:10
Okay, we’re going to get into this deeper, for sure. We just pull back for a minute, though, and we talk about this idea around people see the great resignation or the great repurposing, and then there’s this perception that there’s not enough people out there to recruit or it’s very difficult to do. And even if we do get them, they might not have the best employee experience. They end up walking out the door and we’re kind of leaking out the back. What do you see as the primary growth constraint? That’s theme of the entire podcast. And if we look at what you’re talking about right now with regard to recruitment, employee experience, onboarding, skill development, career paths, promotions all around people.

Robert
06:49
But what do you see, like Matt, as somebody working with dozens, if not hundreds of landscapers, being at these conferences, hearing everybody talk about what’s going on in the market, what’s the primary growth constraint from your perspective, for entrepreneurs in the green industry today, for sure, I.

Matt
07:01
Think the number one problem is people. So if you want to grow by 20% next year, their first thought is, where am I going to get the staff to do that? Right. And I think it’s a fair statement that a lot of contractors have the sales to grow by 20% next year if they really wanted to. It’s the people problem that I think is a big constraint. So the question is, how do you get the people you need so you can forecast and grow? Right? And there’s two parts to that. One is building an employee funnel. And I’ve been coaching our contractors on this is like, we all know what our sales funnels are. Right. So you have your lead sources, your social media, your referrals, your sales team.

Robert
07:55
All these people, your email list.

Matt
07:57
Yeah.

Robert
07:58
And your current customers. But for some reason, we don’t want to do that when it comes to recruitment.

Matt
08:03
Exactly. So I challenge our contractors. Take all your mindset you have around lead funnels and apply it to hiring funnels. So, you know, okay, if we need to hire ten people, we need this many people into the funnel. So how do we get them into the funnel? So you got to solve that problem through job boards. Indeed, LinkedIn, social media posts, make sure all these are kind of streamlined and built around recruiting people. And then from there you got to pre qualify them with the same as your sales funnel. So you might have a five survey question, are you willing to learn new skills to work in the landscape industry? That could be one of them. Then from there you get to your hiring state. And we’re at a state where it’s a job seekers market.

Matt
08:53
So it’s almost like you got to use your sales hat. If you have all these people you want to work at your company, you got to sell them on your company. So all your recruiting pages got to reflect that. Possibly short videos from current employees talking about how the company supports them, how it’s a great place to work.

Robert
09:13
It supports being a great place to work, needs to be part of the whole thing. So as a leader, we kind of look in the mirror and say, what do we do to make this great place to work?

Matt
09:21
Absolutely. And tell everybody about that. So once you convert them, then you got to try to keep them. And then, so how do you nurture them? Right. So you nurture your current customers to get repeat business and possibly enhancements and grow off the revenue of current customers. Well, you got to do the same thing with your employees. How do you turn them into referrals, into selling your company as well?

Robert
09:48
Advocates, right? Yeah.

Matt
09:49
And I like to say, what would your employees say to their family members around Thanksgiving dinner if they said, hey, what’s it like to work at your company? Or how’s work going? What are they saying about you? And that’s what they’re saying to everybody. So you want to make sure that’s a good story they’re telling.

Robert
10:06
Cool. And that really shifts back to what you were saying before, right, about this employee experience component. And before we started recording, we talked a little bit about how the most successful entrepreneurs I interview, actually regardless of industry, but definitively part of the green industry focus on training and development as like a priority. And some of them even admit that they’re not even landscape companies, they’re actually training companies. They just happen to do landscaping, the ones that are really good. So outside of the platform, obviously, that being a huge tool to help people build training programs because there’s a lot of stuff that’s necessarily unique to them that you can grab from, I’m assuming the library that exists on the platform. But what do you see as opportunities for onboarding and skill development?

Robert
10:55
And what can companies do to help create that great employee experience so that people, when they do come through and you’ve done all the work to get somebody through your recruiting funnels that they want to stay?

Matt
11:05
Yeah, for sure. I’ll start at the very beginning of the process. So in your job ad, you kind of want to talk about. Well, you do want to talk about that you’re a career focused company, not just a job. So, hey, we want you to be successful, we want you to grow, and we want you to have a career with our company. And that’s really attractive to prospective candidates because the myth we’re battling in the landscape industry, that it’s a dead end manual labor job. And when that’s far from the case, there’s so much opportunity in the landscape industry, and it’s just that we got to convey that. So you think about a snow shoveler. It’s a very high turnover position in this time of year.

Matt
11:49
A lot of people are trying to recruit shovelers, and you look at a snow shoveler ad, and this is a traditional snow shoveler ad I pulled that’s out and live right now. It just basically says, hey, they’re responsible for the safe and productive removal of snow and ice from residential, commercial job sites, walkways and traffic areas. Must be willing to be on call work nights as needed, et cetera. Doesn’t sound very exciting, right?

Robert
12:12
Very inspiring.

Matt
12:13
Yeah. Well, with a few minor tweaks and leveraging, the fact that you’re a growth minded company and we have a training program, and I’ll talk about how to structure that a bit. But if you put that in your job ad. Now listen to this version of a snow shoveler job ad. Get ready for an awesome career journey with us. Our snow shovelers are more than just snow experts, are destined for greatness. Picture this. As winter ends, our top shovelers get special training and promoted to our maintenance teams in the spring. That’s not all. We love celebrating success. Brace yourself for a pay raise in your new maintenance role. Once on our maintenance team, you learn new skills and knowledge to continue moving forward. We’re not just offering a job, we’re paving the way to success.

Matt
12:56
You could be a crew leader or hire in the future. Your career adventure awaits. Let’s shovel our way to success together.

Robert
13:02
Yeah, that’s cool. It’s not crazy. Like, you’re not having to put miraculous copy together. It’s just tweaking. Kind of what you said at the very beginning, right?

Matt
13:12
Yeah. You’re just leveraging the fact that the old analogy, chop wood, carry water. Right. Do the work now for comfort and success in the future. And a snow shovel. There’s a hard to recruit position, but use it as leverage to say, hey, just get your foot in the door, get this job done. You’ll be on our maintenance crew. From there, we’ll train you to a crew leader. From there, you could be a branch manager. And companies that post these career paths, take your career path and post it in the break room and show here’s how you go from Shoveler to branch manager and everything you have to do in between. They’re seeing drastic reduction in turnover because employee progress is clearly laid out on how to get from step a to b and c.

Matt
14:00
They know exactly where they’re at in that process, and they know the next promotion is just around the corner.

Robert
14:05
Yeah, it’s so cool. I dare I reference a third year university course. But organizational behavior, two, talk about an expectancy theory. One of the best ways to engage somebody within your workforce is to help them see clearly what can be expected of them in the future. I think you’ve outlined that pretty specifically. So if I’m there, let’s just say I’m an entrepreneur right now, and I don’t have that career path set out right now. Maybe I’m a bit smaller. Maybe we don’t have room for a bunch of branch managers. Maybe we’re a $10 million company. We’ve got one or two branches, and I start talking about how they’re going to be the next branch manager, and the branch manager is like, what am I going to do? So it’s just not quite there yet. I haven’t done any of this yet.

Robert
14:46
What’s the first way of starting to build out these career paths so that people can start to promote them?

Matt
14:51
Yeah. So I’ll use my example. I started with, okay, we’re at a snow shoveler. Okay. So to move to our maintenance crew in the spring, we expect these things from you. So we want you to complete your maintenance level one training, which might include the small equipment, engines of fuel basics, which is how to operate the equipment. Fuel the equipment. Maybe we’ll lay out some key skills you need to start on our maintenance crew, but also tag some items that are valuable to you as a company owner. So, okay, to get promoted in this role, you got to show up 99% of the time, and you also got to show up 100% ready to work. So no ghosting us, right? Showing up is a key thing here. So you got to show up.

Matt
15:36
And when you do show up, you got to be ready to work. So you got to be dressed properly, you got to have all your PPE, and then maybe you might tag some time requirements around it, like you got to have 200 hours on a shoveler crew before you can move on to a maintenance role. So set up this criteria. Checkboxes that everyone meets. Hey, if you get all this done, then we’ll bump you up to our maintenance crew in the spring, and then from there, you set them on maintenance level two. So in the spring, they might start as a maintenance level one. So they’re going to be on the basic equipment, garden beds, but you can start them on their maintenance level two training, which is your larger equipment. Any additional skills, you’re on time again.

Matt
16:19
You’re showing up 100% ready to work. But here’s the opportunity to start building your funnel, where if you know, you want to grow your design, build division next year by 20%, you want to do more installs and more construction jobs, and you know you’re going to need staff, and you have an employee that might want to go that route. Well, you could start them on the design and build pathway now, and they can start learning how to use the equipment, how to read the blueprints, everything required of them for next year. So then when that division grows, you have people in that funnel that have been training all year and can go right into that role, and you’re upskilling.

Robert
16:59
Them before you necessarily need them. And so does Greenius have all this training baked into the platform so you can put them onto these different paths and I don’t have to go build it myself?

Matt
17:09
Yeah. So we have all these paths set up, and we’re actually launching a full training pass apprenticeship program, hopefully at the end of Q one, early Q two that we’re really trying to support the whole apprenticeship mindset because companies that are rolling out apprenticeships are really seeing a lot of employees returning year after year. They’re seeing better workers, better skills, and I’m using the analogy, a lot like baseball. I’m a huge baseball fan, and they have the farm system and the professional leagues and a lot of successful teams build their farm players up to that level so they don’t have to go out and pay millions of dollars. They grow them from within. And that’s kind of what landscape companies can do, is start growing the employees they need so they know their next year’s plans.

Matt
18:00
And if they can grow the employees they need, then they’re going to be one step ahead of the game.

Robert
18:05
Yeah, it’s huge. And very few people are doing it, let alone doing it well. So one of the things you mentioned is this idea of micro promotions. Can you just speak to that and help people understand? What does that mean?

Matt
18:18
Yeah. So there’s a book I read, and I highly recommend it to everyone. It’s called fire your hiring habits. And it’s all about a post Covid world about hiring and covers every industry. And the writer of the book was from a vp from a major electronics manufacturing company. And they have plants all over the world, and their average turnover is 30% to 40%, which is, again, very similar to what we’re seeing in the landscape industry. But they had one plant where their turnover was less than 10%, so they were shocked. Well, why? Same plant, same modern facility, same processes. But why is their turnover 30% better than everyone else’s? So we got to figure this out. So they went there, and they discovered two things. One, that, a, they clearly had the employee progress mapped out.

Matt
19:15
So how do you go from an entry level position to management? And they had this all on the wall, every step and everything you had to do. But what they did differently was they offered micro promotions and how you can apply to the landscape industry. If you think about the career ladder, the rungs of the career ladder, how do you shorten those rungs? And I use this analogy for simple math only. Your wages are your wages. But if you’re paying a year, one employee $15 an hour, and then as soon as they hit a year, two employee, you’re going to pay them $19 an hour. Right. Well, if you can take that $4 an hour raise and break it down and every three months, give a dollar an hour raise, make it kind of a micro promotion.

Matt
20:00
So over the next three months, you got to do this many training courses in greenies. Again, you got to show up, you can’t be late, you got to have your PPE, you got to learn this skill. And then if you get all this done at the three month mark. We’ll give you a dollar an hour raise and then you repeat that in the next block. Another dollar an hour. By the end of the year, they’re at that $19 an hour raise that you were going to give them anyways. But what you’ve done is created a retention tool. So now the employee knows they’re always at that next pay raise or that always next level. That micro promotion is just around the corner, so they’re not going to leave and go somewhere else because they know they’re that close to that next step.

Matt
20:42
So it becomes this huge retention tool because they know they’re moving forward and they’re not going to leave and start over somewhere else.

Robert
20:50
Yeah, that’s super cool. And then it also is that progression is addictive too, right? I’m seeing the impact of my hard work quicker. I’m not waiting till the end of the year to have to do something about it. Let’s say you have a staff of 50, 60 folks on a first year basis, maybe 30 people on a first year basis. Is there any hints or tips on how to administrate something like that? Make it simple. Any tools that you guys know of that you might want to recommend or just give somebody an idea of how they want to go about it?

Matt
21:23
Yeah, definitely thinking here, the most important thing is documenting it and making it clear. Very much like streetlights on a dark night. Right. They should be laying out clearly the next step and clearly the goals and everything that needs to be accomplished. And it should be very well documented, very, crystal clear and very easy to achieve. And also be giving people the opportunity to learn these skills as well is very important. You just can’t have the program and say, this is what happens. You also need to give the opportunities to learn those skills.

Matt
22:13
So if you got to move from one level to the next level and there’s a key skill you have to learn to get there, well, then maybe every Saturday you should be hosting skills clinics for your company where, okay, every Saturday come in for an hour and we’re going to learn a new skill this Saturday. There’s breakfast, there’s coffee, and each week will be a different skill. Make it optional. You don’t have to make it mandatory.

Robert
22:36
Yeah, no, that’s cool. But provide the opportunity and the platform to do it.

Matt
22:40
Provide the opportunity each week. And if you think about yourself as a manager and you’re constantly putting out fires, think about the top five fires you’re always putting out. And then there’s your first five topics for skills clinics, right. And the more you can train people on what is going to benefit you, and when you can get an employee’s training and objectives to align with the company objectives, that’s the winning formula. Right? So if you have an employee that says, hey, you know what, I really want to be a crew leader. It’s just something I really want to do. But then, you know, you’re trying to grow by 20% next year and you’re going to need two more crew leaders. It’s like what a winning formula, right?

Matt
23:25
So this person wants to train over the year to be a crew leader, you need crew leaders. And now your objectives are aligning with their objectives. And that’s the goal around this whole program, is to get alignment on objectives.

Robert
23:38
Yeah, no, that’s cool. I think if there’s a theme in everything that you’re talking about, it’s just a little bit of discipline. This isn’t a rocket science type of approach to things. You look at the top five fires that you’re dealing with on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, and then you build a skill workshop for an hour every Saturday to deal with the top five fires. That does not take somebody, a massive amount of creativity to come up with this approach. That’s why I think it’s so beautiful, because it’s simple. It just takes a little bit of discipline. Not to mention the fact that people that show up on Saturday for an hour are obviously engaged folks because they care about developing themselves on times they’re not necessarily on the clock. So that’s a really cool approach.

Matt
24:16
Sorry, I just want to quickly add to that. I’ve heard of one contractor that does run these skills clinics and they open it up to other landscapers in the area. So they say, hey, we’re having a skills clinic on a cut saw or a stone saw on Saturday. They charge them a nominal fee. It just helps cover breakfast and coffee. But then they kind of create this community and they get all these landscapers coming together and learning skills together. So they kind of provide the service, but then also they’re exposing their culture and their company to other people out there and down the road. If those other people ever want a new job, that might be the first call they make as well, because they already know what the culture is like at that company. Not to mention just one strategy I’ve heard of.

Robert
25:02
Yeah, that’s cool. Of all the industries, I think green is one of the most cooperative businesses are really open to share when we’re at conferences as part of associations. And it’s also a cool way to make it so that you don’t just have one person showing up for a skill session. Right. You can have a workshop. You can have it. So there’s six, seven people coming from two or three companies. So then as a person that’s been in the space, you’ve seen people fail at this and succeed at this. When it comes to skill development, training, building an organizational culture around developing humans and career paths, is there any way that stands out to you as, like, these people really got it right?

Robert
25:47
Is there a story you can kind of help people see of like, maybe they started off a bit smaller, but then they started to put these pieces into place and they grew over time. Just so people can get an idea of the impact of starting this type of discipline.

Matt
26:00
Yeah, for sure. The key is to make a process and stick to it. So there’s so many contractors I talk to, and I help them roll out greenius. And my first phone call, it’s like, okay, what’s your onboarding process now? And they’re like, we don’t have one. And it’s not like a small company problem. Like, I’ve been to large companies with 500 plus employees that don’t have an onboarding program, so there’s so many softwares involved. So the first question is like, okay, you finish the job interview, you’re hiring the person. What’s next? How do you enter them into your system? When do they get entered in? Who enters them in? And set up some owners in the process. So, okay, now we’ve entered them into our systems, into our HR tool. Who’s going to add them into greenius?

Matt
26:49
Okay, we got them added into Greenius. We send out their training id. The employee does it. Who’s going to do those field checklists? Are we going to have checklists on Fridays? What’s our checklist? Day of the week? And then are we going to have weekly tailgates and clearly define your process and set owners to it. And that’s the only way it’s going to succeed. If you kind of just hope it works out, it’s just not going to work out. You need to define your process and set clear owners of each of those processes that are accountable to it. And that’s the only way I’ve ever seen it successfully roll out.

Robert
27:27
Yeah, that’s cool. And I think also sometimes not necessarily the most natural state for an entrepreneur to talk about process. For some folks, they’re a bit more like fly by the seat of the pants. They’re really skilled and knowledgeable in their craft. They’re good at sales or good with people. They’ve inspired some folks to come join them. And then the idea of developing a process can be like, I don’t like process, but I think what you’ve articulated, too, and what we’ve seen in not only ourselves, but in a lot of our clients, it doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to be, here’s the four steps. And then as you develop the four steps and run them, you’re like, we’re missing two steps. It’s like, okay, cool.

Robert
28:07
Now we can add them, but if the first four steps are never there’s nothing to ever work off of. I think that’s a big piece for people to just know that you don’t have to get the process perfect out of the gate.

Matt
28:16
Yeah, for sure. And what the most common process is, so I don’t want people to feel alone here, is like, I talk to a lot of contractors, and the first thing that most of them do is just on the job training. So we hire somebody on Friday, we put them on a crew on Monday, and that’s it. There’s no follow up. Yeah, and that’s not a good process because now you’re going to be putting out the same fires today that you’re going to be putting out next month. And you’re just hoping they’re learning through osmosis that they’re becoming these great employees, but you have no way to measure it. You have no way to identify their strengths, their weaknesses. And I went through this myself. To be truthfully honest, I wanted to learn the landscape industry a lot better before I started building greenies.

Matt
29:03
So this is going back, like, many years ago. But I said, okay, I want to work on a maintenance crew. I want to see what it’s all about. I want to work on a construction crew. And I show up for my first day on the construction crew. And at the time, the crew didn’t know who I was. To them, I was just a new employee.

Robert
29:21
Welcome. Here’s your coffee.

Matt
29:23
Exactly. And they said, hey, Matt, hop in that tractor and move that pile of gravel from the front yard to the backyard. We need to work on this. They were building a retaining wall at the time. And I said, I’ve never driven a tractor. What do I do? And they’re like, oh, just sit in it. Turn it on. This is your gas. And I was like, okay. Within 20 minutes of showing up, I was in a tractor moving gravel. But then within about 30 minutes, I was getting crap because I wasn’t doing it properly and the bucket of gravel wasn’t full enough. Right. But that was the training I got. So I was annoying the crew leader, I was annoying all the new experienced workers because they’re waiting on this gravel either. No, I felt terrible.

Matt
30:09
And I mean, with a proper program I would have been showing how to use a tractor before I was on the job site. I would have known my expectations and then I would have been more qualified. And then if I went through this proper onboarding, I would have shown up knowing what to do. Not to mention the risk. Like I was going within two to 3ft of the house and I could have easily hit the house. I didn’t. But it could have easily happened and all of that got skipped and I was just show up, get in the tractor and go. Whereas so much could have gone wrong. And that’s where a solid onboarding program would prevent that. And then there’s less fires and then I’m not annoying the crew leaders. The job is getting done faster. My billable hours are better.

Matt
30:52
So this onboarding program just pays dividends.

Robert
30:56
Yeah. Well then the crew leader isn’t annoyed. They’re having more fun at work. They want to stay, they’re doing more, they’re more productive as a group. And the list goes on and on. So if I am just like, okay, cool, I need to use greeneus, what do I do? How do I start looking into this platform and reaching out to you guys and figuring out whether I should use it or not?

Matt
31:16
Yeah. So first of all, just go to our website, gogreenius.com. From there you can sign up for a live, we call it live proof of concept live demo. It’s usually hosted by me or Jeremy. And twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we host an hour session where we go through how to build an onboarding program. Why you need to be doing training. From there we then open the Greenius program and we actually build that onboarding program. And the key thing I like to point out is that live POC is only about 1 hour. And in that 1 hour you learn how to build an onboarding program and build it ingredients and execute it. So we’re a little bit different than other softwares where your rollout is two or three months and you need kind of five people.

Matt
32:04
Just one person can be a great user in an hour and you can be an expert in 2 hours. So I would start by going to our website, signing up for one of those live pocs and we are also hosting. I know it’s coming up really quick. On February 20, 21st and 22nd, we’re hosting a summit for all greenies users and LMN users where you can come learn about how to improve your business, how to improve greenius. Mark Bradley is going to be speaking a lot about revenue per hour. So how landscape companies can really maximize their profits. So it’s just kind of these three days of intense workshops and lessons as well. It’s a great opportunity to learn about both products.

Robert
32:47
And is this the first time you guys are holding it, or is this like annual thing?

Matt
32:50
It was annual thing before COVID Then we shut it down, and then it’s our first one since COVID So they’re very well attended. Lots of contractors are there. It’s a great community chance to talk with everybody and just really learn about the products, learn about processes, learn about how to create more revenue per hour. Like, if you left there and didn’t learn anything or change something within your business within a week, I’d be shocked, right?

Robert
33:16
Yeah, no, that’s cool. And where do you sign up for that?

Matt
33:21
That is on the LMN website under the summit. So all the details are just go to golmn.com and then the landscape summit links there, and you can sign up and get all the information there.

Robert
33:34
Sweet. And if you can’t sign up this year or make it, whatever, because this will be posted probably in a week or two. So it’ll be maybe two weeks before the actual show or the workshop. Then maybe put in your calendar at your market for next year.

Matt
33:49
It is live. You can go to the website and see everything@golmn.com. And you can sign up now. I know people might not have the bandwidth to go because it’s in three.

Robert
34:02
Weeks, four weeks, and it’ll probably be two weeks once this thing goes live. That’s okay. So then you mentioned a couple of books. The one you mentioned, fire your hiring habits. But before we let you go, Matt, what would be one of your most influential authors, speakers that you’d want to be like, hey, you got to check this person out.

Matt
34:26
So there’s two for sure. Firing your hiring habits by John Mitchell. And then the second book, you might even know this from the marketing world, but building a story. Miller, that book changed my mindset, because you got to have this great story for your customers to understand what your business is all about. But that also applies to your employees, right? They got to know your story brand, and they got to know what your brand is all about, and all your employees become your brand ambassadors. So when they’re telling your story to their friends about what it’s like to work there, you want to know what they’re saying and controlling that message. And if you don’t define it, how do you know what they’re saying? Right? So those two books, I read both of those books and made changes I found pretty powerful.

Robert
35:19
Cool, man. I appreciate you sharing. So we got fire your hiring habits, John Mitchell and Storybrand, by, which are amazing. I haven’t read fire hiring habits, so I got to check that out for sure. Well, Matt, really appreciate you doing this, man. Thanks for coming on the show and everybody else for listening to this. So we’ll see you in the next episode.

Matt
35:37
Thank you.

Robert
35:41
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