00:30 Rob welcomes back Neal Glatt and they talk about the referral partnership between their two companies.

01:59 Why the middle of the design-build market has dried up, and why residential growth needs marketing while commercial growth needs strong salespeople.

03:27 The big question: sales planning. Why calling about your marketing budget in February is already too late.

04:15 Assess before you train. A landscape company with nine account managers learned only five had the sales DNA to benefit from training.

06:57 The real hiring timeline. Why great industry salespeople are rarely available, why HVAC, janitorial and paving reps make good recruits, and why it takes 10 to 16 weeks to get a new hire prospecting.

09:44 The only three ways to grow sales: bigger average sale, more selling time, or a better close rate.

12:12 Raising the floor and adding offerings like lighting, seating walls and plunge pools to lift average ticket size.

12:55 From $20 lawn cuts door to door in Detroit to a $5M+ per year retail portfolio, with the exact same objections.

14:16 The California turf law and why it's a rare example of a real reason a rep's numbers should jump.

15:51 When your team is already maxed out: add headcount, and time hires four months before your buying window (commercial, design-build and snow each have different seasons).

17:26 Territory management: splitting by geography vs. specializing by customer type, like hospitals vs. HOAs.

20:02 Why sales is usually the last thing owners fix, and the "do we take this job just to keep crews busy" trap.

24:55 Sales is an operation too. Why ops work comes to you but a sales day starts empty, and how a fuel-gauge dashboard drives accountability.

29:52 Ending the sales vs. ops war. Ops defines what the company serves best, sales only chases that, and why nobody owns even 3% of their market.

33:36 Metrics nobody tracks: true cost per sales call, activities to appointments, and proposal age.

36:10 Pipedrive's "deal rot," why deal stages matter, and how modern CRMs make tracking easy.

37:44 Customer acquisition cost, the 92% retention standard for account managers, and lifetime customer value.

41:25 How to get your team assessed for sales DNA.

42:35 Neal's recommended resource: Cassidy Gutter on LinkedIn.

00:29 Jay returns to the show, this time as the author of The Green Talent Playbook

01:27 Why Jay wrote the book, and why money alone doesn't fix retention

03:24 Rob on the "law of the mirror": your team either copies you or you're tolerating it

04:35 The three leaders who shaped Jay, plus the owner whose approval depended on his mood

07:20 Jay's eight pillars of recruiting and retention

08:20 Signs your culture is off: blame, finger pointing, and protecting toxic high performers

10:00 Culture defined as what you encourage, discourage, permit, or frown upon

11:43 How Rob's team turned a weekly wins huddle into a weekly fails huddle

12:52 Building culture on purpose, with lessons from Amy Nakai of Rooted Tree Specialists

14:24 Writing your company's "eulogy" and why culture needs new systems as you scale

15:33 Core values that actually work: the rock through the window example

17:14 Culture vs. strategy, and core values as the petri dish

18:24 Why "anyone" is the wrong hire and how to build an ideal candidate profile

19:42 Find your rock stars and look for what they have in common

20:45 Founders who can't let go: if five sales directors failed, the problem isn't them

24:28 Candidate experience and the CareerPlug data on why people accept or decline offers

25:49 What a good job posting looks like: lead with purpose, not "can lift 50 lbs"

28:20 Respond within 24 hours, skip the four interview rounds, make an offer within a week

29:27 Why you're losing workers to other trades that pay $4 to $7 more per hour

31:12 Career paths and the SHRM and McKinsey numbers on why people leave

32:24 How a 20 person company can build objective promotion standards

34:47 Scott Lesak's training program at Kasel Rocks, with a 25% pay bump in week one

35:46 Matching your org chart to your growth plan, and founders who outrun their teams

37:06 How to get the book, where Jay is speaking, and how to reach him

00:29 Rob welcomes Scott Budreau, the brains, sweat and tears behind Intrigue’s Landscape CRM.

01:10 Scott’s background: building and implementing CRMs for companies, plus running his own home services business.

01:41 What the Landscape CRM is: the only sales and marketing CRM built for landscapers, with about 100 clients and just under 500 active monthly users.

02:10 The big question: what’s the primary growth constraint holding green industry entrepreneurs back?

03:24 Why adoption has to come from the top down, connecting with tools like LMN and Aspire, automating the five minute rule, and the sales process that comes built in.

05:53 The mindset of the most successful clients: tie the CRM to revenue goals, get the whole team on it, and live by “if it’s not in the CRM, it didn’t happen.”

07:20 Rob’s observation: 99 out of 100 companies track job costing and profitability, but sales and marketing get no visibility at all.

08:42 Operational tools vs. a true CRM, and why capturing every lead (website, phone, ads, referrals, a neighbor’s info on a napkin) keeps deals from slipping through the cracks.

10:14 The reverse math: tying your revenue goal to close rate, quotes, leads and ultimately your marketing budget.

11:47 How hard is it to get started? Scott explains why your process is probably not as unique as you think.

12:38 The biggest surprise of the last two years: how much changes when owners simply start tracking what they’re doing.

13:45 Beyond sales: email marketing, social media, Google reviews, and replacing tools like MailChimp.

14:29 Ian from Terraforma builds a mulch email drip campaign that generates $75K, then $115K.

15:54 Hormozi’s “black box that prints money” concept from the Acquisition.com workshop, and how Ian built one.

17:23 Voice AI explained: an AI agent that answers when you can’t, after hours, weekends, or during busy season.

20:02 How many calls are you missing? Rob puts the number at 33%, and nobody leaves voicemails.

21:21 John from Enviroscape goes from pen and paper calendar to “AI rockstar” with Mary, his voice AI receptionist.

22:51 Teaching Mary to pronounce Enviroscape, and the $8K after hours project she captured in the first 30 days.

24:27 What’s next: a mobile app, AI sales coaching features planned for 2027, better email campaign insights, and bi-weekly training and open office hours (open to non-customers too).

26:46 How to reach Scott and learn more about the Landscape CRM.

27:13 Scott’s recommended read: Who Moved My Cheese by Dr. Spencer Johnson.

Insurance specialist Greg Botson from Higginbotham, explains how landscape and snow contractors can avoid audit surprises, survive non-renewals, close dangerous coverage gaps, and lower their cost of risk by becoming a better risk. Rob Murray even admits he's excited to host an insurance episode, which may be a podcast first.

00:30 Rob welcomes Michael “Palmer” Palmer of Landscape Collective, a guest with a nontraditional path into the green industry.

01:11 Palmer’s background: design school, branding, agencies, restaurant launches, and startups before joining a commercial landscape group that had completed a dozen or more acquisitions and needed help scaling.

03:11 The core growth constraint: referrals and relationships get you far, then plateau. Most owners dip a toe into new channels without committing the bandwidth or budget to make any of them work.

04:47 The myth that commercial clients never search online. Palmer’s counterpoint: property managers aren’t experts in every trade, so they do what everyone does and type “landscaper” into Google.

06:06 Proving it market by market. A modest search budget found commercial maintenance leads in markets where competitors weren’t investing. Ten of fourteen brands are now enrolled, with more coming online.

08:05 Year one was consolidation: pulling scattered domains and website hosts onto one system so leads flow from online form to HubSpot to Aspire to a proprietary KPI dashboard for a full funnel view.

09:41 How he got buy-in: crawl, walk, run. Work with existing tools, prove a win in one market, then take that win to the next.

11:12 The biggest recommendation: pick one thing, set it up so you can follow it all the way through, and only then move to the next test.

12:41 “I can feel it” is not a metric. Palmer wants to hear that $1,000 in spend produced $5,000 in revenue.

13:50 Saying no with discipline. Social and other channels wait until the current priority is proven and running, while cold email and LinkedIn get small, quiet tests in the background.

14:30 Choosing the most urgent problem with the biggest impact. Organic growth was the goal a marketing team of one could move fastest, and getting everything on one chassis made that possible.

16:08 With lead gen running and the team doubled to two, Palmer shifts to the next big goal: retention and renewal.

16:33 Getting sales on board. Palmer converted reps one or two at a time, used early adopters as ambassadors, and let the data spread the word.

18:10 Online leads have intent. They put their hand up, and ignoring them makes no sense.

19:44 Speed is the number one factor. Top reps respond right away by email, follow with a call, and set a reminder to follow up again. An automated intro email acts as a safety net when something slips.

20:14 Rob’s story: a company hired a full-time lead response person at $40K a year who closed $150K in deals in three months just by responding quickly.

20:50 Why speed wins with property managers: they’re busy, often fill out several forms, and want the problem off their plate.

22:54 What’s next: using AI for speed, data analysis, content, and customer tools, plus a noticeable rise in AI referrals compared with traditional search.

24:44 No silver bullet. Know your audience and meet them where they are, from LinkedIn to industry forums.

25:00 SMS lead gen: the opt-in and legal constraints, and why lapsed customers are the most practical place to start.

26:33 A hypothesis that didn’t pan out: Palmer expected missed phone calls to be a goldmine, but call tracking data showed the bigger opportunity was in online forms.

28:08 Where Palmer draws inspiration: property management and HOA forums, industry organizations, and authors focused on perception and audience.

30:07 Old tricks, new tech: an AI-powered proposal builder and personalized LinkedIn ads that deliver one-to-one responses at scale.

32:14 Lifetime value thinking. Landscape Collective aims for renewal above 90 percent, and an average customer stays a little over six years, so each acquired dollar is worth roughly six times its first-year return.

36:23 Why Palmer might accept 3.25x or 4x return on ad spend when 5x is the usual target: a lot of that first-year revenue keeps coming back.

37:14 Closing thought: operators bring serious rigor to operations and project management but often very little to sales and marketing. If you’re spending the money, watch what it’s doing.

00:29 Rob welcomes Paul St. Pierre of Landscape FX (LFX Group), a Windsor-area operator in business since 1987.

01:15 Paul's origin story: a land developer dad, landscaping at 15, flying home from Laurentian University on weekends to work, and skipping teachers college to go all in.

04:01 The scale today: design build (residential and commercial), property care, maintenance and snow, plus Rochester Place resort, a 16-acre supply center, a local publication, a golf course and land development.

06:21 The Gordie Howe Bridge port of entry and the battery plant: back-to-back large-scale projects in Windsor.

07:00 The biggest growth block: thinking he could do everything and just work harder instead of paying for key people.

09:25 The tipping point came with executive and management hires, around the seven to eight million range. Then comes the identity shift from doer to leader.

10:30 The question Paul asks his team: what do you need from me? Why he trusts from day one and lets people make mistakes.

12:29 Coming back from Florida, ready to plow, and finding no keys and a card-lock fuel system.

14:17 The "in the business / on the business" hat: flip it around so the team knows which mode you're in.

15:43 Why banking relationships, budgets and strong financial statements matter when you're growing fast.

17:48 Surviving downturns by adding offerings and vertically integrating: ready mix concrete, trucking, a supply center and salt.

19:30 The partnership with Troy: hot pink salt supporting families affected by cancer, plus Paul's plan for a bagging plant.

21:29 The surprise 1976 Chevette: Paul's son, dad and family bring back the car he started in.

23:29 The old 220 square foot office (a retired exterior bank machine) and how it anchors onboarding and humility.

24:38 Mentorship: meeting Jean Paul Lamarche (JPL), Mark Bradley's influence and the value of masterminds.

28:29 Book and mentor shout-outs: Crucial Conversations and Tony Garerri.

30:50 Wrap-up and thanks.

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00:29 Rob introduces Mick Selman and Aaron Towlson.
01:07 Mick and Aaron explain their roles: Mick handles SEO strategy and research, Aaron applies it with clients.
02:10 Why this episode exists: a flood of AI SEO noise and questionable AI-generated SEO audits.
03:02 The two audiences every business writes for: robots and people.
03:14 What it means to earn a robot's trust, and why Google's guidelines still lead the pack.
03:37 EEAT defined: experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness.
04:38 Aaron's reframe: Google is just trying to answer people's questions well.
05:38 The AI slop problem and why volume of content isn't the goal.
07:13 The biggest AI content mistake: hitting play on a tool and never reviewing the output.
08:01 Better input equals better output. Feed AI tools real experience, testimonials, and specifics.
09:06 What experience actually looks like in a blog post, not just years in business.
10:33 Why experience and content compound like an investment the earlier you start.
11:09 The case for starting SEO now even when the payoff is a year or two out.
13:11 Google Ads as the hit, SEO as the cure. Why SEO is a long term strategy, not a quick fix.
14:12 Authority score explained, and the tools that measure it: SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz.
15:13 What separates a lead-generating authority score from a weak one.
15:57 The three ingredients of authority score: traffic, backlinks, and natural link profile.
17:36 How to actually move the needle: create reasons for people to visit and make the site easy to find.
19:00 Why domain authority plays differently for local landscapers than for national SaaS brands.
20:32 Social media's real role in SEO: more places for people, and AI tools, to find you.
24:29 Why backlinks matter and why most clients ignore them before working with IM Landscape.
24:50 The honest answer on backlinks: earn them with great content, or pay for them carefully.
28:32 The pillar blog and supporting blog content model, localized project by project.
30:37 AI visibility scores debunked as an unreliable, unregulated metric.
32:17 Where real AI visibility data will actually come from: Search Console and Bing.
33:44 The AI readiness checklist mirrors EEAT: helpful content, site structure, backlinks, and buzz.
35:02 Priority one for AI readiness: make sure your site is indexable and check it in Search Console.
36:35 Mick's number one starting move for landscapers: post your own content, consistently.
37:18 The gym analogy: twenty minutes a day beats fifteen hours once.
38:06 Where to go deeper: Google's own EEAT documentation as a starting point.