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Ep054: Innovation in Green Spaces with Scott Snodgrass and Clayton Garrett
In this episode of Building Texas Business, I sit down for a compelling conversation with Clayton Garrett and Scott Snodgrass, the innovative founders of Agmenity and Meristem Communities. They share their inspiring journey of transitioning from agricultural services to conceptualizing master-planned communities.
I learn about their groundbreaking project, Indigo, an organic farm-centric community in Richmond, Texas. Clayton and Scott reveal their entrepreneurial backstories and how their passion for farming and experience in real estate development converged in their work.
I also come to understand the delicate balance of maintaining culture during growth. Clayton and Scott provide insights into the significance of soft skills, fiscal responsibility, and a culture of positivity. We explore the unique dynamics of their partnership and leverage diverse strengths.
It is fascinating to see how these entrepreneurs have fused urban farming with real estate development through their trailblazing work.
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Clayton Garrett
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TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Chris Hanslik
In this episode, you will meet Clayton Garrett and Scott Snodgrass, founding partners of Agminity and Maristim Communities. In this episode, you will learn how they have built an innovative company that brings urban farms to master plan communities, and done so by focusing on caring about people, being passionate for farming and delivering healthy food. Alright, clayton and Scott, I want to welcome you to the Building Texas business. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having us. Yeah, absolutely, let's get started. You've got some great stories to tell, but let's just talk about, I guess, what your company or companies do so they give the listeners a background on kind of the type of business you're in. I know you have Maristim Communities. You also have Agminity, so tell us about those companies and what you do for inside those companies.
Scott Snodgrass
What happened. You know we originally had Agminity. It was our first company together that we've been running for a number of years now and Agminity provides agricultural amenity services to developers. That's a big chunk of big words. So we usually break that down by saying that we put urban farms into master plan communities, into neighborhoods, and we do that in partnership with the developers that we work with there. So we had been around the real estate development world for a while providing those services, but really from a farmer's point of view and very much. Clayton and I had both been on the ground doing farming work there with Agminity and then that transitioned into Maristim Communities.
Clayton Garrett
And Maristim is a community developer. In our context in Houston we call those master plan developers, and so we're doing, in this instance, a master plan called Indigo in Richmond, texas, so southwest of Houston, and Maristim's goal is to connect people to amazing places. So, in fact, our tagline is places for people and we're focused on the design and the framework and how to connect interesting spaces. So, as you can imagine, we also put an organic farm in Indigo.
Chris Hanslik
You're very sure, Be odd if you didn't.
Clayton Garrett
Yeah it would be very strange. It's something we're incredibly passionate about and easy for us to do where it's a big challenge for other developers. So we've oriented a community around that and we're super proud to bring it to market in January 24.
Chris Hanslik
Great, so it sounds like a common evolution, with this Agminity being a service provider to developers and then transitioning now into a developer yourself of the full community.
Clayton Garrett
We had a property and we went to the development community and said, like, if this was your property, what would you do? We just asked questions, right, and we had known some things about what we're interested in prior to you by just being associated with it. So we're kind of the we're a consultant to a lot of other master plan developers and so we get to sit in the room when they're talking about where they're going to put a community center or how they're going to connect spaces, and so we were able to really engage on that front. And then when we had our own property, we didn't set out with a goal in mind, we were just other than like, hey, we have some, we've seen some things that didn't work in other places, like why do they make these decisions, and so we kind of framed our plans around what that was going to be.
Scott Snodgrass
But people look at us and they're like you're not developers, but you're doing development. And how did that happen? And then when they find out agriculture was in our history, they're like from farmer to developer, like that's a big shift, and so we have to explain that. You know, we had been sitting in those development meetings for years with a number of different developers and so we'd seen behind the scenes and we started to ask questions about why decisions, certain decisions, were made. I think we were also shocked that it may just be two or three people making the decisions for what's going to be a more than billion dollar community.
When it's done like that was kind of shocking to us how small the actual employment side can be for those teams. And we said, okay, well, we have this property now and we heard some other people's opinions and it didn't really nothing resonated with us. We didn't find anyone we really wanted to partner with, and so we said, okay, well, you know, let's look at what we're going to do here. And we started going down the route of looking at, like maybe some light industrial, just ways that we could use some of the property, you know, return some income from it but also keep a farm there. We had a farm at that property as well, and then you know I don't know if you heard of it, but COVID hit. I did breach something about that recently.
So what happened with COVID was, in the real estate development world, basically everything. There were only two parts of the market that were still active, so the like logistic side of industrial started to explode because everybody was ordering everything at home. All of a sudden, amazon needed a bunch of more distribution centers and fulfillment centers, and then also single family homes went through the roof as everybody was stuck at home and realized how unhappy with their home they were, and then the people who could afford to were looking to add a home with another office or zoom rooms became a thing at homes that people were starting to move into. So the single family market went kind of crazy in Houston, and still is, right now even. And so we said, okay, we've been walking alongside all these master playing communities. We really understand the human side of it and the connections between people and how important it is and was something that we were interested in fostering, and so we said, okay, I guess we looked at each other and we're like I guess we're going to be master playing community developers.
Chris Hanslik
I love how that just organically happened, and no pun intended with agriculture and organic. But let's go back to the beginning. What was the inspiration behind of your background in farming, if there was one? Tell us a little bit about how that just all came together and you two partnered up.
Clayton Garrett
Well, we're sitting in a lawyer's office, so my story I'm a licensed attorney, which is recovery.
I like to say as well. So you know that wasn't a great ultimate fit for me. I was interested in building something. I've always been sort of more connected to small business side, but Scott and I joined forces in 2008 and at that time Scott had an edible landscaping company and I had seen a couple of models of large scale organic farms that were in the ecosystem, and I was really interested. I came from a food production background. I was managing an artist in Bakery in town that had about 70 employees.
At that time, we had just finished purchasing Whole Foods as Bakery when they were kind of moving out of it, and so I wanted to be in the food space and I also want to be connected to agriculture, which I have, my family has a history of.
So that was the genesis for me, and Scott was doing something really interesting in town, and so you know then after that, from my perspective, it's just been a series of opportunities coming our way, us looking at them in a unique light, I think, trying to be in a niche, qualitative business, not trying to have a discount model, which, you know, it's just not something that our personalities can wrap our heads around, and so, you know, agminity was an opportunity presented to us, a landscape architect in town brought us in and was like hey, we're trying to do this interesting thing with one of the great developers here in Houston, johnson Development and can you guys help? And so that you know a series of conversations later we're creating a farm with them, advising them on the plants that are going to be without throughout their community, and then that was the same sort of conversation around purchasing a farm here in town and kind of going after that vision.
Chris Hanslik
How about for you, Scott? What kind of got you started in this? What was that inspiration?
Scott Snodgrass
Yeah, so I was. Actually. I was managing a coffee shop and then shifted into actually buying coffee from Central American countries, primarily Nicaragua, and so I had been traveling in Nicaragua and really working on both sides of the relationship in the US trying to teach people about quality coffee. In 2006 and 2007 and even in almost 2008, when I was doing this work, the coffee scene in Houston was pretty lacking. There were, I think, three coffee shops. There were three of us like trying to actually do good coffee in Houston. That has now bloomed and now there's great coffee shops all over town.
Chris Hanslik
It's exploded, right. I mean they should open a new one down the street. I saw this week in Cuckoos. Yeah, yeah, of course we have slow pokes in the building. There you go. Yeah, yeah, and so we knew that was changing.
Scott Snodgrass
So trying to teach people here in the US that they should pay for quality coffee. So what is quality coffee? Enjoy it, learn to enjoy it and then pay a little bit more for it. And then cutting out the distributors who acted as the middlemen in the process and working directly with farmers or cooperatives of farmers in Nicaragua. So I was traveling down a couple of times a year talking to farmers, testing coffees, negotiating with them pricing and everything, and then importing it back into the US and, as a part of that, started getting asked all these agricultural questions and I was like no, I'm the sales and marketing guy.
You know I'm your buyer and then I'm helping you with your marketing in the US. Basically, I don't know the ag stuff, but I realized their only access to information most of the small towns didn't even have an internet cafe in them at that time, so they had no access to the internet and the only access information they had on the ag side was the chemical salesman in their town who was in charge of selling all the chemicals. So of course every problem they went to him with he had a solution they could buy that fixed the problem. But it might also create another four or five problems for them. And so in seeing that, I was like, okay, well, I'm trying to help these farmers out anyway. On the sales side I have access to information.
So I started to go start doing some research on my own and so started just like watching YouTube videos and reading things on the internet and checked out a few books at a library to learn about coffee production, and I think the bug kind of bit me and really got into agriculture then. And so I had started an urban farm and run it for three years here in Houston and then Clayton, and I joined up soon after that and also, you know, interestingly enough our lives had unbeknownst been intertwined In the past. We were both at UT at the same time, graduated a couple years apart, but there at the same time never knew each other. And then both of our families are from Lubbock, both involved in cotton farming in Lubbock, and my, my mom and my uncle both graduated just like in the class or a class away from Clayton's dad in Lubbock. So small world.
Chris Hanslik
You know, leading these intertwining paths to bring us back together, right, yeah, well, that's great. So then you hook up and you start working with these developers. Give us an idea, I guess. How did Agminity start to grow and what were, what were, some of the growing pains you experienced through that process?
Clayton Garrett
Yeah, you know, starting Agminity was really about sort of fulfilling one particular client's needs, right, and they were trying to do something. They were amazing in understanding that we were headed from a concept that had been sort of around in the US. I mean, there were probably at that time maybe 10 to 12 agri-hoods that were sort of known and they were trying to do it in a different way, sort of a more mass way, let's say, instead of a very curated, passionate project by a developer. So it was kind of walking alongside them and growing over time, really understanding what that individual project was. And then how could we start to apply it to other people and places and what is the market? Right, we felt like at one point we felt like we were doing something that was very specific and then over time we realized, oh, we, there's some ways in which we can use some of these lessons to apply them to different places. And so you know, I think that the market for Produce that's sort of connected to community and that in the, in the community, that farm can create within the broader context, I think that appetite is huge.
I think people, from a development perspective, when we talk to developers, you know they're just like. Their questions are pretty rudimentary, like how does this work, like what is the structure involved, what is the compensation? And when you start to sort of go down the line, it's sort of a no-brainer for a lot of folks that are engaged and interested in it. So you know, it was just a matter of time. These development projects take a long time, as many of you know, and and so part of that process is just Having a timeline being available, having consistent communication around the people who are kind of the early adopters, and then broadening the appeal, saying that you know, this is available for lots of different people in different ways.
Scott Snodgrass
In each project is a big undertaking for us and we have full-time embedded staff at every farm. So harvest greener first project. We have four full-time staff members on the ground.
Chris Hanslik
They're farming and teaching classes every so Agminity that kind of goes to a question I was gonna ask. The Agminity actually runs the farm inside the community. So you employ people to do that right, just get paid by the developer, right by the homeowners association in other states we get, we may get paid through like quasi public financial Bodies.
Scott Snodgrass
On Florida's, cdd's tend to be the groups that are paying. So okay, so we employ and then get paid for doing that.
So it's an amenity service that we're offering and then residents get to enjoy it, and so we were. You know you asked about some of the struggles there. Hiring has been, I'd say, the number one struggle at Agminity. We were first started just looking around in Houston because we were a new company, we were learning what we were doing. We didn't expect to like bring in top talent from around the country. You know to do this and we had already known this but struggled through it even more that there's not an urban farming scene in Houston. It's very small.
Yeah we're already friends with all of the people who are in that scene and knew that none of them were, you know, interested in leaving what they were doing. They're all entrepreneurs themselves. None of them were gonna leave what they were doing to come join us at Agminity. And so it really was a struggle and you know, we went through a few rounds of employees of trying to figure out like who is the best fit, what sort of person is the best fit for that? And you know we have a CEO at Agminity now, justin Myers, who does a great job. He handles all the hiring now.
Chris Hanslik
Thankfully I didn't see, but he smiled. Yes, scott, big smile. He said that.
Scott Snodgrass
Thankfully, both to take it off of our plate and also because he does it better than we ever could have. Yeah, and I think we've really as a team kind of narrowed in on who is the right kind of person to come in and be one of these positions, because the reality is most farmers in big-scale agriculture they have that job because they like to be in their tractors alone, most of them they don't necessarily like being around people a lot.
Yeah they tend to be more introverted, and so at our farms it's an amenity service, so our teams have to. They get interrupted constantly by residents who want to ask questions and see the farm and meet the goats and all those sorts of things, and so our team has that both sides. They have to be able to put their head down and do hard work in a hundred degree weather Outside in the afternoon, and they also have to be friendly and smile and talk to residents when they come out.
Clayton Garrett
I didn't have to be passionate about both of those things.
Scott Snodgrass
I mean, that's right, you know the people who we hire.
Clayton Garrett
This is all they want to do. This is a mission for them. So our company adminity reflects the mission drive that they have.
Chris Hanslik
So let's just to drill down a little deeper, because Hiring is the key to the kingdom, right? I think I don't care what business you're in, if it's an, especially the service side, yeah, hiring the right people that they had the passion for what your company's mission is critical. So what were some of the things that you learned, I guess, along the way mistakes in the hiring process, and what was the learning and the correction you made to kind of hone the process so that you could find the right fit?
Scott Snodgrass
Because I think there's a lot of learning for people in that yeah so Clayton mentioned passion.
Passion is really important, but passion without grounding in experience is not great, and we went through a number of hires where there's these romantic ideals around agriculture and people are like, oh, I've been working this desk job for the man and it would be so great to get out in nature dance with the butterflies, and that's just not the reality of it. It's sweat and dirt and blood sometimes, and so it is very difficult work and so you need that deep internal passion that's realistic, that says this is going to suck a bunch of the time, but also the impact that I'm having on people having access to fresh produce.
Learning about where their food comes, is so impactful to me that it'll keep me going, because it's difficult work and at the same time, we have to make the job better and continually find ways to. We can't change the weather in Houston Just the two of us and we're in other places.
Clayton Garrett
Just for a sense of scale, agminity is in the process of in various stages of development. We have seven agricultural farms within developments and it sounds like across different states. Yeah, across different states. So here there's four in Texas and then we've got three in Florida and one coming on. Our eighth one would be in Alabama. So it's across the Southeast and with different developers doing different sort of scales of development, which is really interesting, from sort of mixed use projects to larger master plans, traditional neighborhood design plans, so sort of more walkable.
But I think the scale is relevant for what we're interested in, and so the competencies that people need to have. I mean our hiring process. It used to be sort of we needed somebody and we hired very quick At a desperation, yeah.
And now I think there's a written component of our application process. There's probably, I think, over six interviews, hour-long interviews. There's a team, there's on the ground working days. There's sort of a filtering process where somebody gets kind of brought into our framework and they have to meet other people in the team and they get to hear it from them. So the goal is hey, you have to hear it To ground people in reality. Talk to Nathan on the farm and he'll tell you what his life is like right On a very real basis. And so and I think one of the other things I think we've learned is I want people to be as calm and as grounded as possible in interviews. So I really want them, I really want to get down to a non-stressed environment for them so I could see what they are in a non-stress environment, because there will be plenty of stress when they're on the farms or in any sort of engagement, and so those stress times are different than a normative time for most people.
Chris Hanslik
And that is a transition.
Clayton Garrett
I think a lot of people of our generation are looking at instead of the old ways of hiring where you're trying to put people on the spot or what it is.
Chris Hanslik
So what, if anything, do you do to kind of keep your team and immunity connected Throughout the state of Texas and across the state? Do you do anything to kind of build the culture for those?
Scott Snodgrass
employees. We're just talking about that today. Actually, right now we have Texas, that's kind of a hub, and then Florida is going to be a hub, so those two hubs are going to have their own connected kind of subcultures within the community. Alabama may get lumped in with Florida in that regard too, or here it's about halfway. But how we do it corporate-wide is a question we haven't answered yet. So we've talked about is that like a corporate retreat for all employees where we go somewhere, and so maybe it is going to one of these farm resorts? There's Flora Farms in Cabo.
Chris Hanslik
I was just there last week.
Scott Snodgrass
So Flora Farms is a good, something like that, or maybe it's Blackberry Farm in Tennessee, or maybe it's another location. Are we taking team members somewhere, letting someone else do the work, but still letting them enjoy the same kind of experience that they get to give other people, and then doing a series of workshops and team building and that sort of stuff? We've got to find some way to get everyone together. Right now. Our leadership on the ground in Florida. She was one of our leaders here in Texas, so we've been able to transfer the culture over there that way.
But we recognize that it's like, the faster you grow, the more people you bring on, the quicker you dilute the culture that you have and the more influence aggregated that all those new employees have. And so we don't want to grow so fast that we just lose that dynamic culture that we have, because right now it's really healthy. So we're trying to find out kind of how to do that and you hire people who fit into your culture relatively well and who add to it and change it. That's one step, but also I think just making sure that those two groups stay connected so that they don't end up, you know, ending up diverging too far, will be really important.
Clayton Garrett
I mean we have a very strong leader at Agminity too. So common language, common framework, really caring about people and having other people care about fellow employees. I think everybody recognizes that there are easier ways to make money than to do this work, and so the people who are invested and engaged, they want to be recognized for the challenges that are there, but also the opportunities, and so most of the people are interested in food and plants, and so we speak to them in that vernacular often, and it's been incredibly rewarding. We don't really have a retention issue. People leave for great opportunities, which is something we're really proud of.
Chris Hanslik
Very good. So you started in Agminity and the farming game. We talked about this a minute ago. Let's go deeper. You transition into a Development company. What really was the calling there? That's not, like you said, a long time, long lead time projects and stuff. So what was the the bug or the catch for you to make that transition?
Clayton Garrett
Really to stubborn, very stubborn people Ha just incredibly obstinate about Accomplishing a vision. Yeah, I think having a company like amenity that has such a high mission and is is with truly lovely people as a Teams encourages, I think, a certain type of behavior from all of our other businesses from Maristome. So I mean, from my perspective it was, you know, we really looked at our property and our project and sort of what could happen in the ecosystem and we tested. We did a bunch of pressure testing with the market, let's say, and so we asked other developers, we asked consultants, you know, for feedback, and so we went to the market and got feedback and that feedback we liked some of it, we didn't like other of it, yeah, and so then we just decide, you know, like Scott mentioned earlier, we decided we need to own and control this, and so once we made that decision, then this is sort of there's a cascading effect, right and so if a
sense of scale, where it's a Maristome is developing indigo and Richmond and indigos has will have 650 homes, residences, 120 multifamily units with a commons around a 42 acre farm.
So when you think about master plans in Texas, you know relatively small, about 235 acres. When you think about, you know our California friends and our East Coast friends, you know that's a pretty big project, right, about 400 million dollars of assessed value from a taxable value standpoint. So that's a very different scale than Agminity is a consulting business, right, right. And so we had to have great partners and so through our years of working in Around real estate, we understood we needed to get some great consultants, and so we had seen some amazing people doing large-scale projects. So, for instance, one of our consultants is Terry Slavik Siyuki, who was the CMO of Newland communities, which is one of the largest master plans Companies in the US. So, like that level of talent we needed to bring on our team because we were first-time developers and so to be able to attract folks like that and to kind of help them, like, have them help us plan and conceptualize our project, was really impactful, both in raising capital and, you know, bringing on other team members as well.
Chris Hanslik
So sounds like you know, with Meristem you're managing consultants where at many, you were managing employees. What's that? One of the similarities? What have been the differences and the challenges in the stem construct of managing contractors?
Scott Snodgrass
There's been, yeah there's been so many similarities that have been surprising, I think you know, first, when you're out there trying to select consultants for a project, so say we're doing indigo, we need to have a land planner who helps us develop the land plan for the community. We don't have expertise in land planning on our own, so we need somebody's gonna help us do that. It's not unlike hiring someone, right? You start talking to people about how you're doing this thing, asking do they know anyone who does this work that they'd recommend, just in the same way that you would look for an employee through those sort of good relationships. And then you know. Then they come to you and they present their work and what they've done before and why they think they're a good fit for you. So the interview process Relatively the same in that regard, and then we've really found that like, like we said, you know you see these billion dollar projects only with two, three, four employees working at that firm or in that division of the firm, but there's a group of 10 to 15 consultants that are there doing a significant portion of the work.
And I think that the difference is that it's very easy because those people work for another company with its own values and its own vision. It's very easy for your vision as a developer, to again be watered down through all of those steps. Like we don't have the expertise in land planning, civil engineering. Like I don't know. I don't know all of the nuances of getting sewage from someone's house to the wastewater treatment plant and getting it treated and I'm not interested in learning.
Clayton Garrett
Yeah.
Scott Snodgrass
But our civil engineers.
Clayton Garrett
It needs to work.
Scott Snodgrass
It really isn't very important, and so our civil engineers have to know how that works, but their value set isn't necessarily our value set at Maristown communities.
And so how do we make sure those things align?
And we're learning more and more that that being in the development chair, wearing the development hat, is really about crafting a vision and then, as much as you can, through all of the steps in the process, trying to hold on to that vision in every way that you can.
Because inevitably you come up with some great utopian idea and it gets punched around by your consultants first, and then it gets, you know, severely drugged through the mud by the municipalities, your county and your city and other people, right. And then, once you actually go Out to the public, you're gonna get public commentary on it, it's gonna get beat up a little bit again, and so it's really about how do we craft a vision that's strong enough to make its way through all of that and then, through the whole process, be willing to take the hits and get back up and still keep that vision. And so not only do we have to hold that vision ourselves, but we have to convince each of our consultants in that process to hold a vision which is very similar to a company culture. Sure, in many ways.
Chris Hanslik
What you're gonna think it about on the financial side. What are some of the lessons that you've learned? Maybe wish you had known, but you learn the hard way that helped you maybe Manage growth and that you might tell a. You know a listener that's an aspiring entrepreneur. You know. Try to avoid this. You know, pothole if you can. We're serial entrepreneurs.
Scott Snodgrass
So we had another business we haven't talked about yet, which was a farm. It's the property we're now developing and at that farm we we took a really like go big swing on the farm, and I think that was the big financial lesson is like we made sure to have the capital we needed to go out and do everything. So on the financial side we had everything set up. But if you don't have the back end handled really well too, and then you're just gonna bleed all that money that you've arranged for, and so we really struggled on the staffing side of having the right staff to keep that like really grow that business and get it to the size it needed to be to support the financial Infrastructure that it demanded, and so I think that's one.
It's just always I think most entrepreneurs go the opposite way and we have done that before where it's like you don't capitalize yourself well enough and you're just bootstrapping constantly. Right and that's a big struggle and it doesn't put anyone in the right mental place to do their best. But if you go the opposite way, you know you can have the same problems if you overcapitalize but you don't have the operation side handled right.
Chris Hanslik
I mean, since I might collect anything to add to that, you know.
Clayton Garrett
I mean so many lessons around financing. I mean, I think when we were financing this project, you know we did everything that every bank, institution, private lender asked us to do and still they were, you know, having trouble wrapping their heads around sort of us as a development entity, a new entity, right, and sort of. Our vision and you know, it's really fascinating to me is the things that people would comment on them being a fiscal challenge around is really which means risk Right, is the thing that we're getting the compliments and is creating the most value for us. So, for instance, indigo's a walkable neighborhood with traditional neighborhood designs, which means alley load. Houston, if you're familiar with it, does not have a lot of alley loaded home types and so.
But when we looked at, we did some market research. When we looked at the market is massive for that, there's a huge appetite on a relative basis for that and you can see lots of reasons why I think, if people have ever lived in that sort of Framework, so that is the thing that is creating a tremendous amount of value for us and the sort of financing world Considered that to be risk right, and so to really try to understand what that is, I think is a critical lesson and how to overcome it. And I think you know people told us no, all over the place told us we're crazy. You know those lessons are very familiar for us at this point. But also we've been able to be stubborn, like I said earlier, and kind of craft our vision and hold our vision. And you know we're, you know we're set up for this project to be very successful and have an identity in the future as well.
Chris Hanslik
That's right, let's talk a little bit about leadership, and I asked both of you kind of how do you describe your leadership style? How has it evolved over time? How do you try to show up for your people?
Scott Snodgrass
So, this has been a big learning process for me, I think, since the first time I was an employer right, the first business I had, it was just me and a business partner. We didn't have any employees. That's. It was really just about learning that partnership relationship, and Clayton and I continue to evolve that and see all the benefits in being founding partners together and not just alone.
Chris Hanslik
Yeah.
Scott Snodgrass
There's tremendous value there. But on the leadership side, with employees, you know I very early on I don't have it's easy for me to perform highly in the work that the company does, and so I would place that same standard on every employee, expecting every employee to be able to accomplish the same amount of work per hour that I was, or at the same level of detail that I could. I have a high capacity for stepping into a new space, quickly figuring out the ecosystem and then understanding how things work and crafting a plan.
And I'm very ideological, it's like a line for me, this step, and so I've had to learn to put a little more effort into the soft skills side of things and to recognize that, like, my role in the company needs to be different than anyone else's role in the company. And so then, therefore, I can't have the same expectations of anyone else, or even, you know, like Clayton and I, can't have the same expectations of each other, even though we're in the same role, because we're different people. And so just I think, recognizing the differences in people and then having some more of the soft skills, being able to slow down a little bit and say, okay, in this moment we need to make sure this person feels cared for. The work doesn't matter right now, let's just care for this person. And so shifting more and more to a focus, I think, on humans, which is what.
Marisem does as a development company, so we have to do it from an employment standard as well.
Clayton Garrett
Right, clayton, and I think the job of leaders to be a servant to the company. I mean, we, you know, people think we we have this conversation occasionally with our kids or wives like, oh, you own the company, you can do whatever you want, you know right. And you're like, no, that's not how it works, right, we are serving, we are servants to the sort of overall framework of the community.
Chris Hanslik
So you know, I think there's a.
Clayton Garrett
One of the things I think is a job is to prioritize a number of different things. But from a leader standpoint, you really do have to prioritize various things. Like top of the list is payroll every two weeks for us, right, and so that's a high priority. I was talking to a leader of a company with a couple hundred employees and I asked her she's the president. I asked her, like do you still think about payroll, you know, and she's like yes, in fact, we're talking to our owners, our principals in our company about that every day, because they need to be on board about what needs to happen. And when we think about cash and we think about all those other things, and and I was just relieved to think that it never I mean it never goes away from the sense of like this is a priority that a leader needs to understand and they need to understand the cash position at all times and you understand sort of their fiscal responsibility. And then there's all the soft skills Right, are you being true and authentic? Are you showing up? And I think you know, I think that's relatively easy for us to do because we're passionate about what we do.
I think, scott, I think we have the at times. I think we have the absence of when people complain about work or what they're doing or it doesn't matter. It's like we just have the absence of that. We don't. We feel like what we do matters, but it's less about. It's less about promoting a positive ideal than just not having the negative right Right which people experience, and so people in our organization are excited about typically what they do and how they're doing it and they can show up in authentic ways. So I think there's some other good lessons, like being playful around what we do, you know, trying to play as an organization and be curious, you know. Do you believe that's a big part of the lesson for leaders allowing that space to happen?
Chris Hanslik
That's great. So let's talk about this. Scott, you kind of mentioned it, but what has been the learning and the value for the two of you than being co-founders and partners, because that's not always an easy thing and, in fact, can be the downfall of an organization. If they're more than one at the top and they're, you know they get sideways. So talk us about that a little bit.
Scott Snodgrass
You know, I mean, it's no surprise we talk about it in marriage terms. Quite a bit you know, and you know both of our wives, I'm sure, are here plenty and are like, yeah, and you do the same thing.
Clayton Garrett
You come over here you know, and they're not wrong.
Scott Snodgrass
And so I think it's actually. I think it's really helpful because there are things that your employees, no matter what level that they're at, are going to struggle to share with you, to tell you about who you are, and it's a little bit easier when you have someone who's at the exact same level as you, has the exact same authority that you do, and so, like we're 50-50 in everything we do. You know, we anticipate doing all of our businesses together. If we open new businesses in the future, anticipate doing that together. It just keeps things simple and we're a good pair. I think we're very complimentary. So if you had two people who were the same personality, that might not be great, because you're bringing the same things and you're lacking the same things when you come to the relationship. And I don't know that when we became business partners, we knew that. I think we just lucked into it.
Clayton Garrett
And we had struggles.
Scott Snodgrass
And that's why it's lasted so far, but I do think there's a lot of value in that. And then also, I think having two partners it's also great for your employees in the regard that like if someone's having an issue with one partner, they have another partner they can go to and talk to them and say hey, you know, help me deal with this situation. And we're, you know, we have different employees who were, over the years, have been naturally drawn to one of us versus the other, just because of personality, fit being better, and so I think there's a lot of great benefits to it. No doubt it is a struggle at times, but I think that struggle is the kind of refining fire to a degree, and it's when Clayton and I can't agree on something.
We're 50-50, so no decision can be made unless we can agree on it, and so we're kicking the idea back and forth, we're both beating up each other's arguments, and then you know, figuring out in the end like which one is coming out of this fire, and even stronger than it went into it.
Chris Hanslik
Right, that's great. That's a really good, healthy process.
Clayton Garrett
I was joking the other day with Scott that we're designing buildings and frameworks around buildings now, right and relatively large-scale master plan and I was like we were arguing about something and I was like how about we just each design our own buildings?
Chris Hanslik
Like, let's just do that.
Clayton Garrett
Let's just divide the line. But you know, sometimes you do want to put a piece of duct tape down the middle of the room and be like you stay over there and I stay over here. But I think the lesson I mean I think structurally I think one of the most important lessons that we've been very true to is Scott mentioned it but we've never changed the incentives. So there's been lots of different ways, lots of different times, lots of good reasons to change incentives around what we do. But from my perspective, what we're trying to accomplish is this macro vision, and so all of the minor sort of day-to-day stuff even capital calls and you know, various things like that is sort of secondary to what we're trying to accomplish, and so for me that's been a critical structural component. That's been really helpful and it just feels like we have a.
I feel like I have a partner. I'm in this like if I want to go on vacation or if there's life happens, which it does right. We've been in this eight years now and we've both had numerous babies and like life and deaths in the family, right, and so you need somebody to help. In fact, I feel tremendously lucky to have a partner and I look at some of our business friends who own businesses, don't have a partner, and I'm like man, that is a challenge to not have somebody to rely on in lots of different ways. So you take the good with the bad not that there's a lot of good, but we also have fun.
I mean, I think that's another part of it's. Like we celebrate wins. That's a big part of what we try to accomplish. Like we're on this, our spouses and families are on this journey, but like really, the two of us are on this very specific journey and so we have somebody to share and reflect like, can you? I mean, we talked about our story a little bit. It's like we started out of a landscaping company. We knew there was something there and we've come to the place where we're, you know, doing a $400 million community. Like that journey is shared and so we get to talk about that. Yeah, and which is amazing, that's really cool.
Chris Hanslik
All right, we're very dynamic story, so I appreciate you sharing it. I mean, it is very to me innovative and I can see why there's been so much success. But I can see where the interest is around that. Let's turn a little bit to the personal side. So both of you, I'm actually both Tex-Mex or barbecue Tex-Mex.
Clayton Garrett
Yeah, same.
Scott Snodgrass
Okay, this is why we're good partners, that's why you're good partners. We're gonna be very similar, you agree? We?
Clayton Garrett
would agree on all the best barbecue restaurants in town, though.
Chris Hanslik
So we would go down. All this to you Very good, all right, and then. So I'll go with you. First. Scott, if you could take a 30 day sabbatical, where would you go? What would you do?
Scott Snodgrass
Oh goodness, probably Central America and like take the kids and kick around in the cloud forest a little bit. Very cool yeah.
Clayton Garrett
Very cool, like I'd love to get a Japan and really experience like a very different culture than what I'm used to, so that would be something interesting. Very good.
Chris Hanslik
Well, guys, thanks so much for taking the time to come on the podcast. Love your story and best of luck to you With Indigo. I know it'll be a success, Thanks.
Scott Snodgrass
Chris, yeah, appreciate it no-transcript.
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By BoyarMiller
5
3131 ratings
In this episode of Building Texas Business, I sit down for a compelling conversation with Clayton Garrett and Scott Snodgrass, the innovative founders of Agmenity and Meristem Communities. They share their inspiring journey of transitioning from agricultural services to conceptualizing master-planned communities.
I learn about their groundbreaking project, Indigo, an organic farm-centric community in Richmond, Texas. Clayton and Scott reveal their entrepreneurial backstories and how their passion for farming and experience in real estate development converged in their work.
I also come to understand the delicate balance of maintaining culture during growth. Clayton and Scott provide insights into the significance of soft skills, fiscal responsibility, and a culture of positivity. We explore the unique dynamics of their partnership and leverage diverse strengths.
It is fascinating to see how these entrepreneurs have fused urban farming with real estate development through their trailblazing work.
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(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Chris Hanslik
In this episode, you will meet Clayton Garrett and Scott Snodgrass, founding partners of Agminity and Maristim Communities. In this episode, you will learn how they have built an innovative company that brings urban farms to master plan communities, and done so by focusing on caring about people, being passionate for farming and delivering healthy food. Alright, clayton and Scott, I want to welcome you to the Building Texas business. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having us. Yeah, absolutely, let's get started. You've got some great stories to tell, but let's just talk about, I guess, what your company or companies do so they give the listeners a background on kind of the type of business you're in. I know you have Maristim Communities. You also have Agminity, so tell us about those companies and what you do for inside those companies.
Scott Snodgrass
What happened. You know we originally had Agminity. It was our first company together that we've been running for a number of years now and Agminity provides agricultural amenity services to developers. That's a big chunk of big words. So we usually break that down by saying that we put urban farms into master plan communities, into neighborhoods, and we do that in partnership with the developers that we work with there. So we had been around the real estate development world for a while providing those services, but really from a farmer's point of view and very much. Clayton and I had both been on the ground doing farming work there with Agminity and then that transitioned into Maristim Communities.
Clayton Garrett
And Maristim is a community developer. In our context in Houston we call those master plan developers, and so we're doing, in this instance, a master plan called Indigo in Richmond, texas, so southwest of Houston, and Maristim's goal is to connect people to amazing places. So, in fact, our tagline is places for people and we're focused on the design and the framework and how to connect interesting spaces. So, as you can imagine, we also put an organic farm in Indigo.
Chris Hanslik
You're very sure, Be odd if you didn't.
Clayton Garrett
Yeah it would be very strange. It's something we're incredibly passionate about and easy for us to do where it's a big challenge for other developers. So we've oriented a community around that and we're super proud to bring it to market in January 24.
Chris Hanslik
Great, so it sounds like a common evolution, with this Agminity being a service provider to developers and then transitioning now into a developer yourself of the full community.
Clayton Garrett
We had a property and we went to the development community and said, like, if this was your property, what would you do? We just asked questions, right, and we had known some things about what we're interested in prior to you by just being associated with it. So we're kind of the we're a consultant to a lot of other master plan developers and so we get to sit in the room when they're talking about where they're going to put a community center or how they're going to connect spaces, and so we were able to really engage on that front. And then when we had our own property, we didn't set out with a goal in mind, we were just other than like, hey, we have some, we've seen some things that didn't work in other places, like why do they make these decisions, and so we kind of framed our plans around what that was going to be.
Scott Snodgrass
But people look at us and they're like you're not developers, but you're doing development. And how did that happen? And then when they find out agriculture was in our history, they're like from farmer to developer, like that's a big shift, and so we have to explain that. You know, we had been sitting in those development meetings for years with a number of different developers and so we'd seen behind the scenes and we started to ask questions about why decisions, certain decisions, were made. I think we were also shocked that it may just be two or three people making the decisions for what's going to be a more than billion dollar community.
When it's done like that was kind of shocking to us how small the actual employment side can be for those teams. And we said, okay, well, we have this property now and we heard some other people's opinions and it didn't really nothing resonated with us. We didn't find anyone we really wanted to partner with, and so we said, okay, well, you know, let's look at what we're going to do here. And we started going down the route of looking at, like maybe some light industrial, just ways that we could use some of the property, you know, return some income from it but also keep a farm there. We had a farm at that property as well, and then you know I don't know if you heard of it, but COVID hit. I did breach something about that recently.
So what happened with COVID was, in the real estate development world, basically everything. There were only two parts of the market that were still active, so the like logistic side of industrial started to explode because everybody was ordering everything at home. All of a sudden, amazon needed a bunch of more distribution centers and fulfillment centers, and then also single family homes went through the roof as everybody was stuck at home and realized how unhappy with their home they were, and then the people who could afford to were looking to add a home with another office or zoom rooms became a thing at homes that people were starting to move into. So the single family market went kind of crazy in Houston, and still is, right now even. And so we said, okay, we've been walking alongside all these master playing communities. We really understand the human side of it and the connections between people and how important it is and was something that we were interested in fostering, and so we said, okay, I guess we looked at each other and we're like I guess we're going to be master playing community developers.
Chris Hanslik
I love how that just organically happened, and no pun intended with agriculture and organic. But let's go back to the beginning. What was the inspiration behind of your background in farming, if there was one? Tell us a little bit about how that just all came together and you two partnered up.
Clayton Garrett
Well, we're sitting in a lawyer's office, so my story I'm a licensed attorney, which is recovery.
I like to say as well. So you know that wasn't a great ultimate fit for me. I was interested in building something. I've always been sort of more connected to small business side, but Scott and I joined forces in 2008 and at that time Scott had an edible landscaping company and I had seen a couple of models of large scale organic farms that were in the ecosystem, and I was really interested. I came from a food production background. I was managing an artist in Bakery in town that had about 70 employees.
At that time, we had just finished purchasing Whole Foods as Bakery when they were kind of moving out of it, and so I wanted to be in the food space and I also want to be connected to agriculture, which I have, my family has a history of.
So that was the genesis for me, and Scott was doing something really interesting in town, and so you know then after that, from my perspective, it's just been a series of opportunities coming our way, us looking at them in a unique light, I think, trying to be in a niche, qualitative business, not trying to have a discount model, which, you know, it's just not something that our personalities can wrap our heads around, and so, you know, agminity was an opportunity presented to us, a landscape architect in town brought us in and was like hey, we're trying to do this interesting thing with one of the great developers here in Houston, johnson Development and can you guys help? And so that you know a series of conversations later we're creating a farm with them, advising them on the plants that are going to be without throughout their community, and then that was the same sort of conversation around purchasing a farm here in town and kind of going after that vision.
Chris Hanslik
How about for you, Scott? What kind of got you started in this? What was that inspiration?
Scott Snodgrass
Yeah, so I was. Actually. I was managing a coffee shop and then shifted into actually buying coffee from Central American countries, primarily Nicaragua, and so I had been traveling in Nicaragua and really working on both sides of the relationship in the US trying to teach people about quality coffee. In 2006 and 2007 and even in almost 2008, when I was doing this work, the coffee scene in Houston was pretty lacking. There were, I think, three coffee shops. There were three of us like trying to actually do good coffee in Houston. That has now bloomed and now there's great coffee shops all over town.
Chris Hanslik
It's exploded, right. I mean they should open a new one down the street. I saw this week in Cuckoos. Yeah, yeah, of course we have slow pokes in the building. There you go. Yeah, yeah, and so we knew that was changing.
Scott Snodgrass
So trying to teach people here in the US that they should pay for quality coffee. So what is quality coffee? Enjoy it, learn to enjoy it and then pay a little bit more for it. And then cutting out the distributors who acted as the middlemen in the process and working directly with farmers or cooperatives of farmers in Nicaragua. So I was traveling down a couple of times a year talking to farmers, testing coffees, negotiating with them pricing and everything, and then importing it back into the US and, as a part of that, started getting asked all these agricultural questions and I was like no, I'm the sales and marketing guy.
You know I'm your buyer and then I'm helping you with your marketing in the US. Basically, I don't know the ag stuff, but I realized their only access to information most of the small towns didn't even have an internet cafe in them at that time, so they had no access to the internet and the only access information they had on the ag side was the chemical salesman in their town who was in charge of selling all the chemicals. So of course every problem they went to him with he had a solution they could buy that fixed the problem. But it might also create another four or five problems for them. And so in seeing that, I was like, okay, well, I'm trying to help these farmers out anyway. On the sales side I have access to information.
So I started to go start doing some research on my own and so started just like watching YouTube videos and reading things on the internet and checked out a few books at a library to learn about coffee production, and I think the bug kind of bit me and really got into agriculture then. And so I had started an urban farm and run it for three years here in Houston and then Clayton, and I joined up soon after that and also, you know, interestingly enough our lives had unbeknownst been intertwined In the past. We were both at UT at the same time, graduated a couple years apart, but there at the same time never knew each other. And then both of our families are from Lubbock, both involved in cotton farming in Lubbock, and my, my mom and my uncle both graduated just like in the class or a class away from Clayton's dad in Lubbock. So small world.
Chris Hanslik
You know, leading these intertwining paths to bring us back together, right, yeah, well, that's great. So then you hook up and you start working with these developers. Give us an idea, I guess. How did Agminity start to grow and what were, what were, some of the growing pains you experienced through that process?
Clayton Garrett
Yeah, you know, starting Agminity was really about sort of fulfilling one particular client's needs, right, and they were trying to do something. They were amazing in understanding that we were headed from a concept that had been sort of around in the US. I mean, there were probably at that time maybe 10 to 12 agri-hoods that were sort of known and they were trying to do it in a different way, sort of a more mass way, let's say, instead of a very curated, passionate project by a developer. So it was kind of walking alongside them and growing over time, really understanding what that individual project was. And then how could we start to apply it to other people and places and what is the market? Right, we felt like at one point we felt like we were doing something that was very specific and then over time we realized, oh, we, there's some ways in which we can use some of these lessons to apply them to different places. And so you know, I think that the market for Produce that's sort of connected to community and that in the, in the community, that farm can create within the broader context, I think that appetite is huge.
I think people, from a development perspective, when we talk to developers, you know they're just like. Their questions are pretty rudimentary, like how does this work, like what is the structure involved, what is the compensation? And when you start to sort of go down the line, it's sort of a no-brainer for a lot of folks that are engaged and interested in it. So you know, it was just a matter of time. These development projects take a long time, as many of you know, and and so part of that process is just Having a timeline being available, having consistent communication around the people who are kind of the early adopters, and then broadening the appeal, saying that you know, this is available for lots of different people in different ways.
Scott Snodgrass
In each project is a big undertaking for us and we have full-time embedded staff at every farm. So harvest greener first project. We have four full-time staff members on the ground.
Chris Hanslik
They're farming and teaching classes every so Agminity that kind of goes to a question I was gonna ask. The Agminity actually runs the farm inside the community. So you employ people to do that right, just get paid by the developer, right by the homeowners association in other states we get, we may get paid through like quasi public financial Bodies.
Scott Snodgrass
On Florida's, cdd's tend to be the groups that are paying. So okay, so we employ and then get paid for doing that.
So it's an amenity service that we're offering and then residents get to enjoy it, and so we were. You know you asked about some of the struggles there. Hiring has been, I'd say, the number one struggle at Agminity. We were first started just looking around in Houston because we were a new company, we were learning what we were doing. We didn't expect to like bring in top talent from around the country. You know to do this and we had already known this but struggled through it even more that there's not an urban farming scene in Houston. It's very small.
Yeah we're already friends with all of the people who are in that scene and knew that none of them were, you know, interested in leaving what they were doing. They're all entrepreneurs themselves. None of them were gonna leave what they were doing to come join us at Agminity. And so it really was a struggle and you know, we went through a few rounds of employees of trying to figure out like who is the best fit, what sort of person is the best fit for that? And you know we have a CEO at Agminity now, justin Myers, who does a great job. He handles all the hiring now.
Chris Hanslik
Thankfully I didn't see, but he smiled. Yes, scott, big smile. He said that.
Scott Snodgrass
Thankfully, both to take it off of our plate and also because he does it better than we ever could have. Yeah, and I think we've really as a team kind of narrowed in on who is the right kind of person to come in and be one of these positions, because the reality is most farmers in big-scale agriculture they have that job because they like to be in their tractors alone, most of them they don't necessarily like being around people a lot.
Yeah they tend to be more introverted, and so at our farms it's an amenity service, so our teams have to. They get interrupted constantly by residents who want to ask questions and see the farm and meet the goats and all those sorts of things, and so our team has that both sides. They have to be able to put their head down and do hard work in a hundred degree weather Outside in the afternoon, and they also have to be friendly and smile and talk to residents when they come out.
Clayton Garrett
I didn't have to be passionate about both of those things.
Scott Snodgrass
I mean, that's right, you know the people who we hire.
Clayton Garrett
This is all they want to do. This is a mission for them. So our company adminity reflects the mission drive that they have.
Chris Hanslik
So let's just to drill down a little deeper, because Hiring is the key to the kingdom, right? I think I don't care what business you're in, if it's an, especially the service side, yeah, hiring the right people that they had the passion for what your company's mission is critical. So what were some of the things that you learned, I guess, along the way mistakes in the hiring process, and what was the learning and the correction you made to kind of hone the process so that you could find the right fit?
Scott Snodgrass
Because I think there's a lot of learning for people in that yeah so Clayton mentioned passion.
Passion is really important, but passion without grounding in experience is not great, and we went through a number of hires where there's these romantic ideals around agriculture and people are like, oh, I've been working this desk job for the man and it would be so great to get out in nature dance with the butterflies, and that's just not the reality of it. It's sweat and dirt and blood sometimes, and so it is very difficult work and so you need that deep internal passion that's realistic, that says this is going to suck a bunch of the time, but also the impact that I'm having on people having access to fresh produce.
Learning about where their food comes, is so impactful to me that it'll keep me going, because it's difficult work and at the same time, we have to make the job better and continually find ways to. We can't change the weather in Houston Just the two of us and we're in other places.
Clayton Garrett
Just for a sense of scale, agminity is in the process of in various stages of development. We have seven agricultural farms within developments and it sounds like across different states. Yeah, across different states. So here there's four in Texas and then we've got three in Florida and one coming on. Our eighth one would be in Alabama. So it's across the Southeast and with different developers doing different sort of scales of development, which is really interesting, from sort of mixed use projects to larger master plans, traditional neighborhood design plans, so sort of more walkable.
But I think the scale is relevant for what we're interested in, and so the competencies that people need to have. I mean our hiring process. It used to be sort of we needed somebody and we hired very quick At a desperation, yeah.
And now I think there's a written component of our application process. There's probably, I think, over six interviews, hour-long interviews. There's a team, there's on the ground working days. There's sort of a filtering process where somebody gets kind of brought into our framework and they have to meet other people in the team and they get to hear it from them. So the goal is hey, you have to hear it To ground people in reality. Talk to Nathan on the farm and he'll tell you what his life is like right On a very real basis. And so and I think one of the other things I think we've learned is I want people to be as calm and as grounded as possible in interviews. So I really want them, I really want to get down to a non-stressed environment for them so I could see what they are in a non-stress environment, because there will be plenty of stress when they're on the farms or in any sort of engagement, and so those stress times are different than a normative time for most people.
Chris Hanslik
And that is a transition.
Clayton Garrett
I think a lot of people of our generation are looking at instead of the old ways of hiring where you're trying to put people on the spot or what it is.
Chris Hanslik
So what, if anything, do you do to kind of keep your team and immunity connected Throughout the state of Texas and across the state? Do you do anything to kind of build the culture for those?
Scott Snodgrass
employees. We're just talking about that today. Actually, right now we have Texas, that's kind of a hub, and then Florida is going to be a hub, so those two hubs are going to have their own connected kind of subcultures within the community. Alabama may get lumped in with Florida in that regard too, or here it's about halfway. But how we do it corporate-wide is a question we haven't answered yet. So we've talked about is that like a corporate retreat for all employees where we go somewhere, and so maybe it is going to one of these farm resorts? There's Flora Farms in Cabo.
Chris Hanslik
I was just there last week.
Scott Snodgrass
So Flora Farms is a good, something like that, or maybe it's Blackberry Farm in Tennessee, or maybe it's another location. Are we taking team members somewhere, letting someone else do the work, but still letting them enjoy the same kind of experience that they get to give other people, and then doing a series of workshops and team building and that sort of stuff? We've got to find some way to get everyone together. Right now. Our leadership on the ground in Florida. She was one of our leaders here in Texas, so we've been able to transfer the culture over there that way.
But we recognize that it's like, the faster you grow, the more people you bring on, the quicker you dilute the culture that you have and the more influence aggregated that all those new employees have. And so we don't want to grow so fast that we just lose that dynamic culture that we have, because right now it's really healthy. So we're trying to find out kind of how to do that and you hire people who fit into your culture relatively well and who add to it and change it. That's one step, but also I think just making sure that those two groups stay connected so that they don't end up, you know, ending up diverging too far, will be really important.
Clayton Garrett
I mean we have a very strong leader at Agminity too. So common language, common framework, really caring about people and having other people care about fellow employees. I think everybody recognizes that there are easier ways to make money than to do this work, and so the people who are invested and engaged, they want to be recognized for the challenges that are there, but also the opportunities, and so most of the people are interested in food and plants, and so we speak to them in that vernacular often, and it's been incredibly rewarding. We don't really have a retention issue. People leave for great opportunities, which is something we're really proud of.
Chris Hanslik
Very good. So you started in Agminity and the farming game. We talked about this a minute ago. Let's go deeper. You transition into a Development company. What really was the calling there? That's not, like you said, a long time, long lead time projects and stuff. So what was the the bug or the catch for you to make that transition?
Clayton Garrett
Really to stubborn, very stubborn people Ha just incredibly obstinate about Accomplishing a vision. Yeah, I think having a company like amenity that has such a high mission and is is with truly lovely people as a Teams encourages, I think, a certain type of behavior from all of our other businesses from Maristome. So I mean, from my perspective it was, you know, we really looked at our property and our project and sort of what could happen in the ecosystem and we tested. We did a bunch of pressure testing with the market, let's say, and so we asked other developers, we asked consultants, you know, for feedback, and so we went to the market and got feedback and that feedback we liked some of it, we didn't like other of it, yeah, and so then we just decide, you know, like Scott mentioned earlier, we decided we need to own and control this, and so once we made that decision, then this is sort of there's a cascading effect, right and so if a
sense of scale, where it's a Maristome is developing indigo and Richmond and indigos has will have 650 homes, residences, 120 multifamily units with a commons around a 42 acre farm.
So when you think about master plans in Texas, you know relatively small, about 235 acres. When you think about, you know our California friends and our East Coast friends, you know that's a pretty big project, right, about 400 million dollars of assessed value from a taxable value standpoint. So that's a very different scale than Agminity is a consulting business, right, right. And so we had to have great partners and so through our years of working in Around real estate, we understood we needed to get some great consultants, and so we had seen some amazing people doing large-scale projects. So, for instance, one of our consultants is Terry Slavik Siyuki, who was the CMO of Newland communities, which is one of the largest master plans Companies in the US. So, like that level of talent we needed to bring on our team because we were first-time developers and so to be able to attract folks like that and to kind of help them, like, have them help us plan and conceptualize our project, was really impactful, both in raising capital and, you know, bringing on other team members as well.
Chris Hanslik
So sounds like you know, with Meristem you're managing consultants where at many, you were managing employees. What's that? One of the similarities? What have been the differences and the challenges in the stem construct of managing contractors?
Scott Snodgrass
There's been, yeah there's been so many similarities that have been surprising, I think you know, first, when you're out there trying to select consultants for a project, so say we're doing indigo, we need to have a land planner who helps us develop the land plan for the community. We don't have expertise in land planning on our own, so we need somebody's gonna help us do that. It's not unlike hiring someone, right? You start talking to people about how you're doing this thing, asking do they know anyone who does this work that they'd recommend, just in the same way that you would look for an employee through those sort of good relationships. And then you know. Then they come to you and they present their work and what they've done before and why they think they're a good fit for you. So the interview process Relatively the same in that regard, and then we've really found that like, like we said, you know you see these billion dollar projects only with two, three, four employees working at that firm or in that division of the firm, but there's a group of 10 to 15 consultants that are there doing a significant portion of the work.
And I think that the difference is that it's very easy because those people work for another company with its own values and its own vision. It's very easy for your vision as a developer, to again be watered down through all of those steps. Like we don't have the expertise in land planning, civil engineering. Like I don't know. I don't know all of the nuances of getting sewage from someone's house to the wastewater treatment plant and getting it treated and I'm not interested in learning.
Clayton Garrett
Yeah.
Scott Snodgrass
But our civil engineers.
Clayton Garrett
It needs to work.
Scott Snodgrass
It really isn't very important, and so our civil engineers have to know how that works, but their value set isn't necessarily our value set at Maristown communities.
And so how do we make sure those things align?
And we're learning more and more that that being in the development chair, wearing the development hat, is really about crafting a vision and then, as much as you can, through all of the steps in the process, trying to hold on to that vision in every way that you can.
Because inevitably you come up with some great utopian idea and it gets punched around by your consultants first, and then it gets, you know, severely drugged through the mud by the municipalities, your county and your city and other people, right. And then, once you actually go Out to the public, you're gonna get public commentary on it, it's gonna get beat up a little bit again, and so it's really about how do we craft a vision that's strong enough to make its way through all of that and then, through the whole process, be willing to take the hits and get back up and still keep that vision. And so not only do we have to hold that vision ourselves, but we have to convince each of our consultants in that process to hold a vision which is very similar to a company culture. Sure, in many ways.
Chris Hanslik
What you're gonna think it about on the financial side. What are some of the lessons that you've learned? Maybe wish you had known, but you learn the hard way that helped you maybe Manage growth and that you might tell a. You know a listener that's an aspiring entrepreneur. You know. Try to avoid this. You know, pothole if you can. We're serial entrepreneurs.
Scott Snodgrass
So we had another business we haven't talked about yet, which was a farm. It's the property we're now developing and at that farm we we took a really like go big swing on the farm, and I think that was the big financial lesson is like we made sure to have the capital we needed to go out and do everything. So on the financial side we had everything set up. But if you don't have the back end handled really well too, and then you're just gonna bleed all that money that you've arranged for, and so we really struggled on the staffing side of having the right staff to keep that like really grow that business and get it to the size it needed to be to support the financial Infrastructure that it demanded, and so I think that's one.
It's just always I think most entrepreneurs go the opposite way and we have done that before where it's like you don't capitalize yourself well enough and you're just bootstrapping constantly. Right and that's a big struggle and it doesn't put anyone in the right mental place to do their best. But if you go the opposite way, you know you can have the same problems if you overcapitalize but you don't have the operation side handled right.
Chris Hanslik
I mean, since I might collect anything to add to that, you know.
Clayton Garrett
I mean so many lessons around financing. I mean, I think when we were financing this project, you know we did everything that every bank, institution, private lender asked us to do and still they were, you know, having trouble wrapping their heads around sort of us as a development entity, a new entity, right, and sort of. Our vision and you know, it's really fascinating to me is the things that people would comment on them being a fiscal challenge around is really which means risk Right, is the thing that we're getting the compliments and is creating the most value for us. So, for instance, indigo's a walkable neighborhood with traditional neighborhood designs, which means alley load. Houston, if you're familiar with it, does not have a lot of alley loaded home types and so.
But when we looked at, we did some market research. When we looked at the market is massive for that, there's a huge appetite on a relative basis for that and you can see lots of reasons why I think, if people have ever lived in that sort of Framework, so that is the thing that is creating a tremendous amount of value for us and the sort of financing world Considered that to be risk right, and so to really try to understand what that is, I think is a critical lesson and how to overcome it. And I think you know people told us no, all over the place told us we're crazy. You know those lessons are very familiar for us at this point. But also we've been able to be stubborn, like I said earlier, and kind of craft our vision and hold our vision. And you know we're, you know we're set up for this project to be very successful and have an identity in the future as well.
Chris Hanslik
That's right, let's talk a little bit about leadership, and I asked both of you kind of how do you describe your leadership style? How has it evolved over time? How do you try to show up for your people?
Scott Snodgrass
So, this has been a big learning process for me, I think, since the first time I was an employer right, the first business I had, it was just me and a business partner. We didn't have any employees. That's. It was really just about learning that partnership relationship, and Clayton and I continue to evolve that and see all the benefits in being founding partners together and not just alone.
Chris Hanslik
Yeah.
Scott Snodgrass
There's tremendous value there. But on the leadership side, with employees, you know I very early on I don't have it's easy for me to perform highly in the work that the company does, and so I would place that same standard on every employee, expecting every employee to be able to accomplish the same amount of work per hour that I was, or at the same level of detail that I could. I have a high capacity for stepping into a new space, quickly figuring out the ecosystem and then understanding how things work and crafting a plan.
And I'm very ideological, it's like a line for me, this step, and so I've had to learn to put a little more effort into the soft skills side of things and to recognize that, like, my role in the company needs to be different than anyone else's role in the company. And so then, therefore, I can't have the same expectations of anyone else, or even, you know, like Clayton and I, can't have the same expectations of each other, even though we're in the same role, because we're different people. And so just I think, recognizing the differences in people and then having some more of the soft skills, being able to slow down a little bit and say, okay, in this moment we need to make sure this person feels cared for. The work doesn't matter right now, let's just care for this person. And so shifting more and more to a focus, I think, on humans, which is what.
Marisem does as a development company, so we have to do it from an employment standard as well.
Clayton Garrett
Right, clayton, and I think the job of leaders to be a servant to the company. I mean, we, you know, people think we we have this conversation occasionally with our kids or wives like, oh, you own the company, you can do whatever you want, you know right. And you're like, no, that's not how it works, right, we are serving, we are servants to the sort of overall framework of the community.
Chris Hanslik
So you know, I think there's a.
Clayton Garrett
One of the things I think is a job is to prioritize a number of different things. But from a leader standpoint, you really do have to prioritize various things. Like top of the list is payroll every two weeks for us, right, and so that's a high priority. I was talking to a leader of a company with a couple hundred employees and I asked her she's the president. I asked her, like do you still think about payroll, you know, and she's like yes, in fact, we're talking to our owners, our principals in our company about that every day, because they need to be on board about what needs to happen. And when we think about cash and we think about all those other things, and and I was just relieved to think that it never I mean it never goes away from the sense of like this is a priority that a leader needs to understand and they need to understand the cash position at all times and you understand sort of their fiscal responsibility. And then there's all the soft skills Right, are you being true and authentic? Are you showing up? And I think you know, I think that's relatively easy for us to do because we're passionate about what we do.
I think, scott, I think we have the at times. I think we have the absence of when people complain about work or what they're doing or it doesn't matter. It's like we just have the absence of that. We don't. We feel like what we do matters, but it's less about. It's less about promoting a positive ideal than just not having the negative right Right which people experience, and so people in our organization are excited about typically what they do and how they're doing it and they can show up in authentic ways. So I think there's some other good lessons, like being playful around what we do, you know, trying to play as an organization and be curious, you know. Do you believe that's a big part of the lesson for leaders allowing that space to happen?
Chris Hanslik
That's great. So let's talk about this. Scott, you kind of mentioned it, but what has been the learning and the value for the two of you than being co-founders and partners, because that's not always an easy thing and, in fact, can be the downfall of an organization. If they're more than one at the top and they're, you know they get sideways. So talk us about that a little bit.
Scott Snodgrass
You know, I mean, it's no surprise we talk about it in marriage terms. Quite a bit you know, and you know both of our wives, I'm sure, are here plenty and are like, yeah, and you do the same thing.
Clayton Garrett
You come over here you know, and they're not wrong.
Scott Snodgrass
And so I think it's actually. I think it's really helpful because there are things that your employees, no matter what level that they're at, are going to struggle to share with you, to tell you about who you are, and it's a little bit easier when you have someone who's at the exact same level as you, has the exact same authority that you do, and so, like we're 50-50 in everything we do. You know, we anticipate doing all of our businesses together. If we open new businesses in the future, anticipate doing that together. It just keeps things simple and we're a good pair. I think we're very complimentary. So if you had two people who were the same personality, that might not be great, because you're bringing the same things and you're lacking the same things when you come to the relationship. And I don't know that when we became business partners, we knew that. I think we just lucked into it.
Clayton Garrett
And we had struggles.
Scott Snodgrass
And that's why it's lasted so far, but I do think there's a lot of value in that. And then also, I think having two partners it's also great for your employees in the regard that like if someone's having an issue with one partner, they have another partner they can go to and talk to them and say hey, you know, help me deal with this situation. And we're, you know, we have different employees who were, over the years, have been naturally drawn to one of us versus the other, just because of personality, fit being better, and so I think there's a lot of great benefits to it. No doubt it is a struggle at times, but I think that struggle is the kind of refining fire to a degree, and it's when Clayton and I can't agree on something.
We're 50-50, so no decision can be made unless we can agree on it, and so we're kicking the idea back and forth, we're both beating up each other's arguments, and then you know, figuring out in the end like which one is coming out of this fire, and even stronger than it went into it.
Chris Hanslik
Right, that's great. That's a really good, healthy process.
Clayton Garrett
I was joking the other day with Scott that we're designing buildings and frameworks around buildings now, right and relatively large-scale master plan and I was like we were arguing about something and I was like how about we just each design our own buildings?
Chris Hanslik
Like, let's just do that.
Clayton Garrett
Let's just divide the line. But you know, sometimes you do want to put a piece of duct tape down the middle of the room and be like you stay over there and I stay over here. But I think the lesson I mean I think structurally I think one of the most important lessons that we've been very true to is Scott mentioned it but we've never changed the incentives. So there's been lots of different ways, lots of different times, lots of good reasons to change incentives around what we do. But from my perspective, what we're trying to accomplish is this macro vision, and so all of the minor sort of day-to-day stuff even capital calls and you know, various things like that is sort of secondary to what we're trying to accomplish, and so for me that's been a critical structural component. That's been really helpful and it just feels like we have a.
I feel like I have a partner. I'm in this like if I want to go on vacation or if there's life happens, which it does right. We've been in this eight years now and we've both had numerous babies and like life and deaths in the family, right, and so you need somebody to help. In fact, I feel tremendously lucky to have a partner and I look at some of our business friends who own businesses, don't have a partner, and I'm like man, that is a challenge to not have somebody to rely on in lots of different ways. So you take the good with the bad not that there's a lot of good, but we also have fun.
I mean, I think that's another part of it's. Like we celebrate wins. That's a big part of what we try to accomplish. Like we're on this, our spouses and families are on this journey, but like really, the two of us are on this very specific journey and so we have somebody to share and reflect like, can you? I mean, we talked about our story a little bit. It's like we started out of a landscaping company. We knew there was something there and we've come to the place where we're, you know, doing a $400 million community. Like that journey is shared and so we get to talk about that. Yeah, and which is amazing, that's really cool.
Chris Hanslik
All right, we're very dynamic story, so I appreciate you sharing it. I mean, it is very to me innovative and I can see why there's been so much success. But I can see where the interest is around that. Let's turn a little bit to the personal side. So both of you, I'm actually both Tex-Mex or barbecue Tex-Mex.
Clayton Garrett
Yeah, same.
Scott Snodgrass
Okay, this is why we're good partners, that's why you're good partners. We're gonna be very similar, you agree? We?
Clayton Garrett
would agree on all the best barbecue restaurants in town, though.
Chris Hanslik
So we would go down. All this to you Very good, all right, and then. So I'll go with you. First. Scott, if you could take a 30 day sabbatical, where would you go? What would you do?
Scott Snodgrass
Oh goodness, probably Central America and like take the kids and kick around in the cloud forest a little bit. Very cool yeah.
Clayton Garrett
Very cool, like I'd love to get a Japan and really experience like a very different culture than what I'm used to, so that would be something interesting. Very good.
Chris Hanslik
Well, guys, thanks so much for taking the time to come on the podcast. Love your story and best of luck to you With Indigo. I know it'll be a success, Thanks.
Scott Snodgrass
Chris, yeah, appreciate it no-transcript.
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