September 10, 2025

Leadership: 5 Essential Focus Areas for Landscape Business Leaders

25 minutes

The devil is in the details, and smart leaders know that the hardest part of their job tends to be consistency. In this episode, Marty shares 5 things that landscaping company leaders need to be doing or thinking about in order to be successful in their roles.

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Episode Chapters:

00:30 - The Power of the Family Group Chat

02:12 - The Importance of Generating Business

03:35 - The 5 Things Every Landscaper Should Focus On

04:01 - Breaking Down Efficiency Rating

05:31 - Have Consistency In Your Brand

06:55 - The Social Media Test

10:00 - Cleanliness Standards

10:18 - A Leadership Lesson From Pam Morris

14:12 - Team Member Wellbeing

17:20 - The Rehire Question

19:53 - Playing Favorites and Accountability

20:35 - Leaders, Check Your Ego

21:45 - Know Your Strengths & Weaknesses

23:20 - Recap of the 5 Areas to Focus On

Resources:

Virtual Sales Bootcamp

Grunder Landscaping Field Trips

The Grow Group

Grunder Landscaping

Marty Grunder LinkedIn

Stihl

Show Notes:

Efficiency Rating as Universal Language – Calculate budgeted hours divided by actual hours. "If you bid a job for 150 hours and it took 140, that's good. That's bueno. If you bid 150 and it took 175, that's bad. No bueno." Everyone understands this metric regardless of language barriers.

Aspire Software Integration – Green tickets mean you're profitable, red tickets mean you're losing money. "It's a rally cry for sure... it's an amazing way to stay on top of that." Visual dashboard makes efficiency tracking simple.

Brand Consistency Builds Recognition – 30 years with the same logo in Dayton created strong brand recognition. "If all of our trucks were a different color, if we got burnt on our saddle and decided to change the look... we would not get there to that point."

Branding Is Everything You Communicate – "Your branding is everything that communicates who you are and what you do. It's the sensory stuff... What does someone feel, hear, touch, and even smell?"

The Social Media Test – "Go back and look at your most recent social media post... Ask yourself, what would a complete stranger take away from that post? Would your post make a prospect want to call you and hire you?"

Pam Morris Leadership Lesson – Former CareSource CEO's response to "your expectations are too high": "Somebody around here better have high expectations." CEOs shouldn't apologize for demanding excellence.

Focus Time on Top Performers – "We spend way too much time on mediocre performing employees, and when you do that, you take time away from your best ones." Avoid taking good performers for granted.

The Rehire Question – Mentor Ed Apley's advice: "Given what you know about this person now, if you had an opportunity to rehire them, would you? If the answer is no, what are you waiting for?"

Playing Favorites Is Honest Leadership – "If you do what I like, I like you and you're my favorite. If you don't do what I like, I don't care for it. You're not a favorite." Good managers naturally favor good performers.

Leaders Must Be Great at What They Expect – "You gotta be great at what you want your team to be good at. The more you make success about you, the less success you will have."

Know Your Strengths and Weaknesses – "No one at our company is better at running a meeting with a client than I am, and no one is worse at putting in a patio for a client than I am."

Practical Applications

Implement Efficiency Tracking – Use software that provides visual indicators of job profitability. Train the entire team to understand the metric.

Conduct Brand Audit – Review all customer touchpoints (trucks, uniforms, social media, office) for consistency. Eliminate mixed messages.

Lead by Example on Standards – If you expect cleanliness and attention to detail, demonstrate it personally through your actions.

Time Allocation Analysis – Track how much time you spend with A players vs. C players. Reallocate to invest more in top performers.

Regular Team Assessment – Apply the "would I rehire them?" question quarterly to ensure you're not carrying underperformers too long.

Strength Zone Recognition – Clearly define what you're best at and what you're worst at. Communicate this to the team so they know when to engage you.

...more

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By Marty Grunder

3535 ratings