The GROW! Show

By Marty GrunderBusiness Entrepreneurship Leisure Management Home & Garden

The GROW! Show episodes

October 31Don’t Let Your 2027 Plan Collect Dust with Vince Torchia
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Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (Tucson, AZ - November 17-20, 2026)
Master Aspire Software at the GLC Aspire Workshop (Dayton, OH - August TBD & December 2-3, 2026)
Register for GROW! 2027 Annual Conference (Savannah, GA - February 17-19, 2027)
Episode #193: You’ve built your plan for 2027. You’ve set your goals, established your budget, and mapped out where you want your business to go. But how do you make sure that plan actually happens? In this bonus episode of The GROW! Show, Vince Torchia shares how to track progress, keep your team aligned, and make adjustments when things aren’t going according to plan.
BOBYARD is an AI-powered takeoff and estimating platform that automates the most time-consuming parts of bidding work. Contractors report up to 65% reduction in takeoff time and 3-5x more bids submitted per estimator.
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Key Learnings
Picture a Pyramid. The whole system cascades from the top: quarterly meetings, monthly updates, weekly conversations, daily numbers. Everything connects.
Past, Present, Future Is the Cheat Code. Jim Calie’s agenda for any quarterly meeting. What happened? Where are we now? Where are we headed? That one framework handles any check-in.
Six Hours, Not Three Days. Quarterly meetings don’t need an offsite. Block the second Thursday of the quarter, bring the right people, and you can accomplish more than most teams do in a week.
Bring in Rotating Voices. Leadership stays for the full meeting, but select up-and-comers or team members from a focus area come in for a midday block. They get context, they add perspective, and they feel heard.
The Monthly State of the Union. Grunder’s “Grow Meeting.” The whole team hears the same message from the same room on the same day: revenue goals, hiring, future planning, the metrics that matter.
Rotate the Presenters. When only one or two people talk at the monthly, it stops landing. Rotate department leaders and other voices so the team hears from the people they work alongside.
Weekly Leadership on Monday. Ninety minutes, open dialogue, progress tracking. Monday matters because the leaders then bring the right four or five points into Tuesday’s sales meeting and Wednesday’s ops meeting.
The Pyramid Flows Both Ways. Topics that keep showing up in weekly meetings deserve a monthly update. Topics that keep showing up monthly belong in the next quarterly. The team’s attention is the signal.
Daily Numbers in Public. Grunder runs an earned revenue system with a public dashboard in the shop. Every day, every language, everyone can see where they stand against the goal. Transparency isn’t a problem to solve, it’s a tool to use.
Acknowledge When You’re Off Track. If you can see it, the team can see it. There’s no sugarcoating. State it clearly: we’re off, here’s why, here’s what we’re doing.
Within 10 Percent, Flag It and Move. Note it, don’t launch an investigation. The sales team needs to be selling. The ops team needs to be operating. A meeting about missing the number rarely closes the gap.
Activity Closes the Gap. The conversation about being off track is not the thing that gets you back on. Protect the rhythms. Protect the operating hours. Then course-correct through activity.
Reflection Questions
Do your quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily rhythms actually connect, or does each one live on its own island?
When your team sees you’re off track, do they hear about it from you first, or do they hear about it from the dashboard?
What’s one topic that keeps showing up in your weekly meetings that belongs in the next quarterly instead?
Additional Resources:
BOBYARD
Aspire
Exmark
ACE Peer Groups
Virtual Sales Bootcamp
Grunder Landscaping Field Trips

The Grow Group
Grunder Landscaping
Marty Grunder LinkedIn
16 min
October 28Build a Sales Engine That Works Without You | Chris Psencik and Kevin Keim of McFarlin Stanford
Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)
Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (Tucson, AZ - November 17-20, 2026)
Master Aspire Software at the GLC Aspire Workshop (Dayton, OH - August TBD & December 2-3, 2026)
Register for GROW! 2027 Annual Conference (Savannah, GA - February 17-19, 2027)
Episode #192: If your best salesperson left tomorrow, would your company still hit its sales goals? In this episode of The GROW! Show, Marty Grunder sits down with Chris Psencik and Kevin Keim of McFarlin Stanford to discuss how landscape business owners can build a sales engine that delivers consistent, predictable results without depending on one person to make it happen.
BOBYARD is an AI-powered takeoff and estimating platform that automates the most time-consuming parts of bidding work. Contractors report up to 65% reduction in takeoff time and 3-5x more bids submitted per estimator.
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Key Learnings
Hope Is Not a Sales Strategy. The owners who get stuck are the ones hoping the phones ring. The ones who grow are proactive, boots on the ground, with a plan for Q4 and Q1 already in motion.
The Owner Is Often the Best Salesperson. Transitioning out of owner-led sales takes systems, not luck. Hope in the hiring process is just as dangerous as hope in the pipeline.
If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It. The biggest mistake Kevin sees is owners without visibility into their pipeline or process. CRMs don’t fix that. Accountability does.
Panic Kills the Strategy. When volume spikes, teams drop their ideal client profile and send proposals to anyone. When it crashes, follow-up disappears. Both failures start with panic.
Prioritize Like a Pro. Not every opportunity is equal. The best salespeople push the right jobs into the right windows and don’t fill the schedule with work that bleeds money.
Shoot With a Sniper Rifle, Not a Shotgun. Chris on targeting. Pre-qualify every opportunity against density, bonding, insurance, and the kind of work your team can execute profitably.
Target Comes Before Attract. Marketing only works when you know who you’re trying to reach. Where do your best five clients live, shop, serve on boards? Build the attract strategy around that.
Delivery Is Your Best Sales Tool. The work you already sold, done well, is the next sale. Walk the customer through the handoff from sales to production and stay alongside it.
Think With the End in Mind. Chris would rather have 10 deep, long-standing relationships than 100 shallow ones. One job this year, three next year, six after that. Compounding, not chasing.
The Untreated Acre. Kevin’s framing: expanding with existing clients isn’t competing against competitors. It’s competing against yourself.
The CRM Is Not the Engine. It’s a tool. The engine is the defined sales process behind it: how a lead moves from stage to stage, who owns it, when it advances.
Three Numbers to Watch Weekly. The opportunities in your pipeline, the last touch point on each one, and the total dollars sitting in it.
A Three-Month Backlog Is the Healthy Benchmark. The strongest organizations in October aren’t talking about October. They’re talking about Q1 2027.
Weak Sales Processes Ripple. It doesn’t just hurt revenue. It hurts production, staffing, cash flow, and profitability.
90-Day Homework. Build the defined sales process. Create a rhythm of accountability calls with your team. Evaluate and tweak as the business evolves.
Reflection Questions
If you stepped out of the sales seat tomorrow, would your pipeline keep moving on its own?
What’s your three-month backlog look like right now, and is it the result of a process or a stroke of luck?
Where in your sales process does hope substitute for a defined next action?
Additional Resources:
BOBYARD
Aspire
Exmark
ACE Peer Groups
Virtual Sales Bootcamp
Grunder Landscaping Field Trips

The Grow Group
Grunder Landscaping
Marty Grunder LinkedIn
35 min
October 24The Truth Your Business Needs to Hear | Receiving & Applying Feedback
Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)
Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (Tucson, AZ - November 17-20, 2026)
Master Aspire Software at the GLC Aspire Workshop (Dayton, OH - August TBD & December 2-3, 2026)
Register for GROW! 2027 Annual Conference (Savannah, GA - February 17-19, 2027)
Episode #191: In this episode of The GROW! Show, Marty Grunder checks in with three past GROW! hosts: Gene Freeman from Dallas, Texas, Jason Cromley from Columbus, Ohio, and Annette McCarthy from Des Moines, Iowa. Marty asks each of them the same five questions to find out what they’re seeing in the market, what’s working in their businesses, and what they’ve learned along the way.
BOBYARD is an AI-powered takeoff and estimating platform that automates the most time-consuming parts of bidding work. Contractors report up to 65% reduction in takeoff time and 3-5x more bids submitted per estimator.
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Key Learnings
Feedback Is a Gift. But not every opinion carries the same weight. Judge the quality of the feedback, not whether you like the person delivering it.
Ask Your Salespeople First. They’re on the front lines hearing objections, pricing concerns, and the reasons customers buy or don’t buy. Ask them point-blank what’s preventing them from selling more.
Then Ask Operations. Production knows if salespeople are setting the right expectations. Ask what gets sold that causes problems and where estimates fall short.
Talk to Three Customer Groups. Your best repeat customers, the ones you recently lost, and the prospects who said no. Don’t assume you know why they chose or didn’t choose you.
Pull in Trusted Outsiders. Your ACE peer group, a mentor, another landscape owner who understands the business. They see what you can’t because you’re too close.
Who Not to Ask. Don’t build strategy around the person who complains about everything but offers no solutions. Don’t let one unreasonable customer dictate how you run the whole company.
Three Questions, Not Twenty-Five. What’s working that we should keep doing? What’s not working that we should stop or change? If you were in my shoes, what’s the one thing you’d change?
Ask the Follow-Up. When someone says proposals take too long, don’t just write it down. Ask for an example, ask how often, ask what they would recommend. Chase the root cause.
Ask Yourself the Hardest Question. What am I, the owner, doing or not doing that’s getting results I don’t want?
The 15-Minute Feedback Exercise. Get the team in a room. Three minutes to write down what’s working, what’s not, what to change. Go around once, no debating, just listening. Look for themes.
Feedback Without Action Is Just a Conversation. Ignore what people tell you long enough and they stop telling you.
Look for Patterns, Then Prioritize. One person flagging a slow estimating process is worth investigating. Five people saying it means you’ve found a problem. Pick two or three fixes with the biggest impact, assign ownership, put a deadline on it.
Close the Loop. Go back to the people who gave feedback. Tell them what you heard, what you’re changing, and why you’re not changing the rest. That’s how you build trust.
Great Companies Don’t Get Better by Accident. They get better because leaders are willing to listen, learn, and change.
Reflection Questions
When was the last time you asked a lost customer or a prospect who said no exactly why they chose someone else?
Which pieces of feedback have you been collecting but not acting on, and what message does that send to your team?
What is one thing you could ask your team this week that would surface a problem you’ve been missing?
Additional Resources:
BOBYARD
Aspire
Exmark
ACE Peer Groups
Virtual Sales Bootcamp
Grunder Landscaping Field Trips

The Grow Group
Grunder Landscaping
Marty Grunder LinkedIn
14 min
October 21Five Questions. Three GROW! Hosts. Plenty of Lessons | The GROW Show! with Marty Grunder
Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)
Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (Tucson, AZ - November 17-20, 2026)
Master Aspire Software at the GLC Aspire Workshop (Dayton, OH - August TBD & December 2-3, 2026)
Register for GROW! 2027 Annual Conference (Savannah, GA - February 17-19, 2027)
Episode #190: In this episode of The GROW! Show, Marty Grunder checks in with three past GROW! hosts: Gene Freeman from Dallas, Texas, Jason Cromley from Columbus, Ohio, and Annette McCarthy from Des Moines, Iowa. Marty asks each of them the same five questions to find out what they’re seeing in the market, what’s working in their businesses, and what they’ve learned along the way.
BOBYARD is an AI-powered takeoff and estimating platform that automates the most time-consuming parts of bidding work. Contractors report up to 65% reduction in takeoff time and 3-5x more bids submitted per estimator.
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Key Learnings
Gene Freeman (Complete Landsculpture, Dallas)
The 5/10 Rule for Communication. Any communication received before 5:00 PM gets responded to the same day. Anything after 5:00 PM gets responded to by 10:00 AM the next business day. Shared with clients, subs, and vendors as the standard they can hold you to.
Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan. On Monday you shouldn’t be asking “What are we gonna do this week?” That happened Wednesday last week to get it lined up for Thursday and Friday.
Relationships Matter at All Levels. Vince and Marty give Gene credit for this one. From smaller operators to peer group heavy hitters, Gene asks questions because the smaller guys are closer to where the tire hits the road.
Referrals Are the Number One Lead. A happy client is your best salesperson. Intentionally ask satisfied customers for Google reviews to strengthen trust and brand.
No Return Visits Protect Profit. Return visits kill profits and erode trust. Incentivize safety and precision because broken windows and dropped margins come straight off the bottom line.
Standardize Your Plant Palette. 111 degree heat index in July, freezes in winter. Spec plants that work in your market. Fewer SKUs, fewer parts, fewer tires, consistent fleet.
Educate the Client, Then Void the Warranty. If a client insists on a plant that won’t survive, put it in after educating them, document that it’s not warrantied, and move on. You’re not saying no, you’re giving them value.
Jason Cromley (Hidden Creek, Columbus)
A Director of Revenue Takes the Pressure Off. When you miss your sales goal three years in a row and you’re the one in charge, it’s time to hire someone who sits beside the sales team daily and holds them accountable.
Culture Is Your Brand. Brand isn’t a logo on the truck. It’s what people say about you when you’re not in the room.
Do What You Say, On Time, With Quality. Clients are simple. Let them know when you’re doing it, when it’s done, and that it’s right. Everything else is noise.
Warranty Budget Is Marketing. Clients fear construction companies won’t show up. Warranty is the proof you will. That’s the next referral in disguise.
The Project Kickoff Meeting. Once a job is sold, bring in the designer, salesperson, operations manager, accounting team, and project manager to review every detail. A million-dollar job deserves half a day.
The CD Sign-Off. Bring clients back in to review construction documents. Tile, grout color, grout joint spacing. All the details that go sideways the day the job starts if you don’t nail them down first.
Nine Types of Waste. Pallet placement, truck parking, four pallets of returned stone. Walk any job site and you’ll see them. Fix them and profit stops leaking.
Annette McCarthy (RJ Lawn & Landscape, Des Moines)
Make the Core Focus Simple and Real. Not whatever AI gave you with 47 words. Theirs: create beautiful spaces and experiences for clients and team. Beautiful work, great experience, happy team.
The Team’s Experience Matters Just as Much. Happy people with purpose have smiles on their faces, do work right, and impact clients because they’re the ones touching them.
Setting the Next Person Up for Success. The question every team member should ask: “Am I making this ready so the next person has a better experience, and the client has a better one?”
Cancel the Credit Card as a Reset. Switch cards or get a new number. It forces you to re-enter payment on every subscription and expose the ones you don’t actually need.
Use AI to Audit Expenses. Give Claude your last three months of statements. Ask which charges are subscriptions, which fluctuate, which are redundant. Scope creep hides in autopay.
Reflection Questions
Could your team state your core focus in one sentence, and do your daily operations actually reflect it?
When was the last time your warranty, your communication cadence, or your sign-off process generated a referral instead of a complaint?
Where is scope creep quietly leaking profit out of your business right now?
Additional Resources:
BOBYARD
Aspire
Exmark
ACE Peer Groups
Virtual Sales Bootcamp
Grunder Landscaping Field Trips

The Grow Group
Grunder Landscaping
Marty Grunder LinkedIn
57 min
October 17Hope Is Not a Sales Plan
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Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (Tucson, AZ - November 17-20, 2026)
Master Aspire Software at the GLC Aspire Workshop (Dayton, OH - August TBD & December 2-3, 2026)
Register for GROW! 2027 Annual Conference (Savannah, GA - February 17-19, 2027)
Episode #189: Setting a sales goal is easy. Building a plan to actually achieve it? That’s where the real work begins. In this bonus episode of The GROW! Show, Marty Grunder breaks down how landscape professionals can build a realistic, actionable sales plan for 2027, and why simply hoping for more revenue isn’t a strategy.
BOBYARD is an AI-powered takeoff and estimating platform that automates the most time-consuming parts of bidding work. Contractors report up to 65% reduction in takeoff time and 3-5x more bids submitted per estimator.
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Key Learnings
Hope Is Not a Sales Plan. “We want to grow 10% next year” and “we want to do $8 million” aren’t plans. They’re wishes. Every number needs a compelling reason behind it.
Start With the Financial Plan. More sales don’t automatically mean more profit. You can grow yourself broke. Decide what kind of company you want to build first, then back into the revenue.
Break the Big Number Down. A $5 million target isn’t one giant number. It’s recurring maintenance, renewals, enhancements, backlog, snow, and only then truly new business. Make the number smaller, visible, and someone’s responsibility.
Retention Is Sales. If you lose $300K of maintenance contracts, your sales team is starting in a $300K hole. Every recurring account needs an owner, a renewal date, a strategy, and a next action.
Go Where You Already Have Trust. Your existing client list is the most valuable sales tool you own. Walk the properties, look for opportunities, follow up on that outdoor kitchen conversation from three years ago.
Revive Unsold Proposals. Somebody who said no six months ago might say yes now with a follow-up. Pick up the phone. Not an automated email. A call.
Your Schedule Is a Sales Scorecard. If you need $400K for March and you’ve only sold $175K, you have a problem, and you need to know it in October. Where the schedule is empty, it’s too late to start selling.
A Filing Cabinet Isn’t a Pipeline. Open proposals with no follow-up and no next action aren’t opportunities. They’re paperwork.
Every Sale Needs a Next Action. A call Tuesday, a site visit Friday, a revision Wednesday. No next action means you’re not managing the opportunity, you’re hoping.
Order Makers, Not Order Takers. Good salespeople create activity, follow up, ask questions, find opportunities, and ask for referrals. They don’t sit around waiting for leads.
Turn the Yearly Plan Into a Weekly Plan. A $2M annual goal is a monthly number, a weekly number, an appointment count, and a follow-up count. Manage the activities, not the end-of-month pressure.
Sales and Operations Must Talk. If sales sells $3M for April, can operations actually produce it? People, trucks, equipment, materials, cash. The plans have to connect.
Protect Your Margins. A million-dollar job at a lousy margin isn’t a win, it’s a loss. Revenue is vanity if the work doesn’t make money.
Action Beats Planning. A beautiful spreadsheet won’t sell anything. A CRM won’t sell anything. People sell. Follow-up sells. Disciplined weekly activity creates predictable sales.
Reflection Questions
What percentage of your 2027 revenue is already secured, and what are you doing right now to protect it?
Looking at your existing client list, where are the unaddressed opportunities you’ve been meaning to follow up on?
Does every real opportunity in your pipeline have a next action with a date, or is your pipeline really a filing cabinet?
Additional Resources:
BOBYARD
Aspire
Exmark
ACE Peer Groups
Virtual Sales Bootcamp
Grunder Landscaping Field Trips

The Grow Group
Grunder Landscaping
Marty Grunder LinkedIn
16 min
October 14Relationships, Results & Lessons Learned: Catching Up With Gene Freeman and Chris Strempek
Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)
Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (Tucson, AZ - November 17-20, 2026)
Master Aspire Software at the GLC Aspire Workshop (Dayton, OH - August TBD & December 2-3, 2026)
Register for GROW! 2027 Annual Conference (Savannah, GA - February 17-19, 2027)
Episode #188: In this episode of The GROW! Show, Marty Grunder catches up with Gene and Chris from Complete Landsculpture, hosts of GROW! 2026 in Dallas, to see how the goals and initiatives they shared with attendees have played out over the past year. Gene and Chris talk candidly about their push to grow maintenance, the impact of losing major accounts, and why strong client relationships remain one of the most important pieces of their strategy.
BOBYARD is an AI-powered takeoff and estimating platform that automates the most time-consuming parts of bidding work. Contractors report up to 65% reduction in takeoff time and 3-5x more bids submitted per estimator.
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Key Learnings
Flat Numbers Don't Mean Flat Progress. Despite nearly $2M in new contracts sold, two key losses early in the year kept maintenance numbers flat. The team used the year to build systems that will pay off for years.
Managing, Not Mowing. Account managers walk every property and record videos for clients, noting enhancements and ownership. "Anybody can mow grass. One weed can get you canceled."
SharePoint as the Central Hub. All communication, schedules, and visibility across business units in one place. A real operational win in 2026.
The Platinum Rule. Don't just do unto others what you'd want. Do unto others what they expect. This filter catches the quality gaps that technical execution alone misses.
"She Didn't Feel Loved." Chris met with an unhappy client who confirmed CLS had done everything they promised. The problem wasn't the work. It was that she didn't feel cared for.
Hard to Fire a Friend. Account managers taking clients to lunch isn't a soft skill, it's a strategic moat. Relationships are what survive competitive bids and board changes.
Live Video Property Walks. Account managers walk the property with their face on camera, personalizing with details about the client's family or weekend. Removes the "can't reach them" excuse entirely.
Back Porch Parties as a Trust Indicator. When clients and vendors take time away from their work and personal lives to show up at your office, that's a sign the relationships are real.
Purchasing Discipline. Two team members bought the same thing on company credit cards with a 65% price variance. Centralize purchasing, share information, don't buy the T-shirt twice.
Humility Compounds. Frank Mariani sat in on Grow at CLS 11 years ago doing $50 to $60M and asked more questions than anyone in the room. There's no neutral in this business.
AI as Connective Tissue for 2027. The Asset Include Go platform launch plus AI integration will connect data streams that currently don't talk to each other.
Know Your Numbers. It's not top-line revenue. It's the bottom-line numbers you need to know. Manage to those and things head in the right direction.
Revenue Follows Relationships. Marketing is expensive and complex. Don't hunt the next deal at the expense of the ones you already have. Farming beats hunting over the long haul.
Reflection Questions
Where are your clients hearing from you between visits, and does the touchpoint feel personal when they do?
Could you identify a client right now who is technically being served but doesn't feel cared for?
Are your account managers measured on relationships and property walks, or just on dollars and renewals?
Additional Resources:
BOBYARD
Aspire
Exmark
ACE Peer Groups
Virtual Sales Bootcamp
Grunder Landscaping Field Trips

The Grow Group
Grunder Landscaping
Marty Grunder LinkedIn
33 min
October 10Plan Before You Buy: Equipment Planning for 2027
Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)
Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (Tucson, AZ - November 17-20, 2026)
Master Aspire Software at the GLC Aspire Workshop (Dayton, OH - August TBD & December 2-3, 2026)
Register for GROW! 2027 Annual Conference (Savannah, GA - February 17-19, 2027)
Episode #187: In this bonus episode of The GROW! Show Marty Grunder breaks down how landscape professionals should be planning their equipment needs for 2027, and why that plan should always start with the business plan.
BOBYARD is an AI-powered takeoff and estimating platform that automates the most time-consuming parts of bidding work. Contractors report up to 65% reduction in takeoff time and 3-5x more bids submitted per estimator.
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Key Learnings
Equipment Plan Follows Business Plan. Don't start with what equipment you want. Start with the work you're going to do next year and back into what you need.
Start With the 2027 Sales Plan. Revenue target, service mix, crews added or cut. Everything downstream depends on it.
Inventory Everything You Own. Trucks, trailers, mowers, skid steers, snow equipment. Age, hours, reliability, cost to maintain. Decide what stays and what goes.
The Smartest Purchase Is Sometimes a Sale. Get rid of what's breaking down or no longer fits. You're in the landscaping business, not the equipment business.
Talk to Your Crews. Group leaders and crew leaders know what breaks, what you rented too much of, and what one more unit would save in labor. Listen to what they need, not everything they want.
Buy Labor Savings, Not Price Tags. Don't ask what it costs. Ask what it lets you accomplish. One Boss sidewalk machine replaces four guys with shovels.
Repair, Replace, Rent, or Buy. Four questions on every major purchase. If you use the machine six days a year, don't own it. If you're renting the same thing every week, maybe you should.
Utilization Decides Ownership. A machine sitting in your yard isn't making you money.
Build the Budget in Three Categories. Must-have, should-have, nice-to-have. Forces discipline when every shiny truck looks tempting.
Order Early With a Plan B. Supply chains don't care about your production schedule. Know the lead times, and have a contingency if the truck doesn't show up until June.
Reflection Questions
Does your current equipment list actually match the work you're planning to sell in 2027?
What should you be selling before you buy anything new?
What are you still owning that you'd be smarter off renting?
Additional Resources:
BOBYARD
Aspire
Exmark
ACE Peer Groups
Virtual Sales Bootcamp
Grunder Landscaping Field Trips

The Grow Group
Grunder Landscaping
Marty Grunder LinkedIn
13 min
October 07Interview Series: The Culture Behind Coastal Shores | Hosts of GROW 2027!
Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)
Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (Tucson, AZ - November 17-20, 2026)
Master Aspire Software at the GLC Aspire Workshop (Dayton, OH - August TBD & December 2-3, 2026)
Register for GROW! 2027 Annual Conference (Savannah, GA - February 17-19, 2027)
Episode #186: In this episode of The GROW! Show, Marty Grunder sits down with GROW! 2027 hosts Rob and Jessie Shrieve of Coastal Shores Landscape to talk about their journey from starting small to building a thriving company centered around great people, strong leadership, and premium service.
BOBYARD is an AI-powered takeoff and estimating platform that automates the most time-consuming parts of bidding work. Contractors report up to 65% reduction in takeoff time and 3-5x more bids submitted per estimator.
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Key Learnings
From Indiana to the Lowcountry. Rob and Jessie moved from Muncie, Indiana to the South Carolina Lowcountry in 2002 with one little girl, no job, and no landscape experience. The business started with Rob cutting grass on five properties Jessie managed.
Doing What You Say You Will Do Is Still a Competitive Advantage. In the early days, clients were shocked when Rob showed up on time and delivered a quote he promised. That alone built the business before he knew much about landscaping.
Premium Starts With Your Team. Coastal Shores applies premium to how they care for their team first: high benefits, high training, high respect. That trust earns the right to hold the team to a higher standard for clients.
Core Values Need Measuring Sticks. Posters on the wall are not enough. Every value needs tangible, measurable behaviors behind it or the team drifts without knowing why.
SALT Training Reinforces Culture Weekly. Spiritual, Attitude, Life, Teamwork. The third Wednesday is Life skills, where team members have learned direct deposit, financial literacy, and even how to change a diaper.
Help People at Home and They Work Better. Mama J's philosophy is that personal life and work life always intersect. Smoothing one smooths the other.
Not a Culture of Flattery. Build enough trust and care first. When hard conversations come, people are receptive because the deposits in their emotional bank account are already made.
From Doing to Coaching. Rob's biggest shift as an owner was moving from knowing every detail of every job to coaching, mentoring, and looking for root causes. He described himself as "a blanket on the team, holding them back."
A Healthy Sign of Scale. When the owners find out about a big job neither of them knew was happening, it means the team is actually running the business.
Define Your Ideal Client Narrowly. Coastal Shores asks what community you live in before anything else and will decline work outside their footprint.
Specialization Enables Scale. Middle management and divided roles are not optional at scale. Delaying those decisions costs profit and burns out the people stretched across too many jobs.
Owners Need Defined Roles Too. Rob and Jessie's roles evolved over 24 years. Rob sets vision and strategy. Jessie runs day-to-day operations. For years they were both doing the same thing and driving staff crazy.
Commit Fully or Don't Buy the Software. Coastal Shores set a hard switch date for Aspire, went live on time, and never retreated. Jim Calise said it best: the best software is the one you use.
AI Is Already Changing the Game. Rob uses Claude for Teams at around $212 a month to analyze data, build sales scorecards, and extract insights from their Google Docs library in minutes instead of weeks.
The Multiplying Effect Is Real. A thousand employees in a room represents hundreds of thousands of lives touched through families and vendors. That is a responsibility, not a transaction.
Reflection Questions
Are you applying your definition of premium to your team first before you promise it to clients?
What tangible measuring stick do you have in place today for each of your core values?
Where are you still acting like a blanket on your team, holding them back by needing to know every detail?
Additional Resources:
BOBYARD
Aspire
Exmark
ACE Peer Groups
Virtual Sales Bootcamp
Grunder Landscaping Field Trips

The Grow Group
Grunder Landscaping
Marty Grunder LinkedIn
1 hr 1 min
October 03Planning for 2027: Build a Financial Plan That Works
Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)
Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (Tucson, AZ - November 17-20, 2026)
Master Aspire Software at the GLC Aspire Workshop (Dayton, OH - August TBD & December 2-3, 2026)
Register for GROW! 2027 Annual Conference (Savannah, GA - February 17-19, 2027)
Episode #185: In this bonus episode of The GROW! Show, Vince Torchia walks through the fundamentals of financial planning for the year ahead. He breaks down how to set a realistic revenue target using historical performance, determine the right mix of services, evaluate your sales and production capacity, and plan for margins, overhead, profit, and cash flow.
BOBYARD is an AI-powered takeoff and estimating platform that automates the most time-consuming parts of bidding work. Contractors report up to 65% reduction in takeoff time and 3-5x more bids submitted per estimator.
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Key Learnings
A solid 2027 plan starts with a revenue number grounded in historicals from 2025 and 2026, not what you hope to sell
10% growth is the baseline for any company on the planning journey. 20 to 40% is aggressive and requires a specific driver (new market, acquisition, big contract)
Revenue is only useful when broken into the right mix: construction, maintenance, lawn care, snow, seasonal services, and enhancements
Every revenue target needs a compelling why on both the sales side and the production side. Can we sell it? Can we produce it?
Sales teams are increasingly specialized. The old unicorn who sold, designed, estimated, and project managed is giving way to focused roles
Industry benchmark margins: 50% on construction, 40% on maintenance, with enhancements pulling maintenance margins up toward construction levels
Recurring services are the gift to the industry, the mailbox money that stabilizes cash flow
Overhead is everything below the line that gets paid whether work sells or not. The ACE benchmark is 30% of revenue
Investing in people early can spike overhead in the short term, but revenue growth should bring overhead as a percentage of revenue back down over time
Know your renewal windows, your sell seasons, and your production seasons. Historicals tell you when the cake gets baked
Jennifer Murray's framework: every month is either a burn month (losing cash) or a build month (gaining cash)
Cash planning is a separate exercise from revenue, margin, and overhead planning. Debt payments, equipment, taxes, bonuses, and distributions all pull from cash
A financial plan boils down to four categories: revenue, direct costs, overhead, profit. Everything else is a line item
Every number you present to your team needs a compelling reason. Don't make it a hope. Don't make it a dream
Reflection Questions
What is your compelling reason for the revenue target you're setting in 2027?
Which months are your burn months and which are your build months? Do you have a plan to smooth the year from a cash perspective?
Where is the biggest gap right now between your sales capacity and your production capacity?
Additional Resources:
BOBYARD
Aspire
Exmark
ACE Peer Groups
Virtual Sales Bootcamp
Grunder Landscaping Field Trips

The Grow Group
Grunder Landscaping
Marty Grunder LinkedIn
18 min
September 30Production Meetings That Actually Work | Marty Grunder & Bill Rosell
Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH)
Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (Tucson, AZ - November 17-20, 2026)
Master Aspire Software at the GLC Aspire Workshop (Dayton, OH - August TBD & December 2-3, 2026)
Register for GROW! 2027 Annual Conference (Savannah, GA - February 17-19, 2027)
Episode #184: In this episode of The Grow Show, Marty Grunder sits down with Bill Rosell, Director of Production Operations at Grunder Landscaping Co., to break down what an effective production meeting actually looks like. They share how the GLC team uses weekly meetings to improve communication, plan ahead, coordinate crews and equipment, address safety and scheduling issues, and catch problems before they reach the jobsite.
BOBYARD is an AI-powered takeoff and estimating platform that automates the most time-consuming parts of bidding work. Contractors report up to 65% reduction in takeoff time and 3-5x more bids submitted per estimator.
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GLC Production Meeting Agenda Meeting Template
Key Learnings
The Purpose Is to Make Production Run Better: Not to have a meeting. Not to get everyone in a room. If people leave without knowing where they're going, what equipment they need, or what problems are coming, you had a gathering, not a meeting.
Different Meetings Have Different Purposes: Don't try to accomplish everything in one big meeting. You'll end up with 25 people listening to a conversation that applies to three of them.
Start With the Mission Statement: Every GLC production meeting begins with the mission statement. It anchors the room in why we're here before we get into what we're doing.
Have the Right People in the Room, Only While You Need Them: Zach (fleet assistant) presents his fleet updates first so he can leave and start his day. He doesn't need to sit through personnel discussions that don't involve him.
Meetings Should End in Laughter: Bill's number one sign of a great meeting is when it ends in laughter. Direction and clarity are the two must-haves, but laughter is what tells you people leave energized.
Team Leaders Look at Today and Tomorrow. Group Leaders Look 2 Weeks Out: Great group leaders are not walking in every morning asking "what do I need to do today?" They knew last night. Bill wants group leaders looking two weeks out on equipment and materials.
Sales and Production Cannot Live on an Island: Bill attends the first 20 minutes of every sales meeting. If production has a hole, sales needs to know. If sales has a monster project coming, production needs to know. Bill's job is to help sales know: whatever you sell, we can get it done.
Break Big Projects Into Small Ones: A 3,000-hour job is overwhelming until you break it into phases. Then it becomes a series of 50-60 hour jobs. Team members can see progress and see the end in sight.
Know What Stresses Your People: Bill knows what stresses Gaston, so he takes those things off his plate. On big projects, Bill stays the main point of communication early on to protect his group leader from being overwhelmed.
One-on-Ones Every Other Week: Bill schedules face-to-face one-on-ones every other week. Sometimes Teams, sometimes phone, sometimes a luncheon. It benefits Bill just as much as the group leader because he sees firsthand who is stressed and where he can step in.
Text Doesn't Cut It: If you text someone "how's it going?" they will say "great." That doesn't tell you anything. Call them or go see them. It's the only way to actually know.
Set the Schedule Board by 4:00 PM the Day Before: Salespeople know, clients get automated notifications, team leaders can check the notes at night and think through tomorrow. The next morning rolls out smoothly because the work happened yesterday.
Chaos in the Morning Means Chaos All Day: The morning rollout only looks smooth because of everything set up the night before. The board is set. Trucks are parked in the same spots. Names are on the trucks. Materials are staged.
Don't Confuse Meeting Length with Communication Quality: Bill's meetings never go over an hour. Marty's sales meetings target 45 minutes. Why? Because we want people selling, not sitting.
Keep It Simple. Prioritize and Execute: If a production meeting is running too long, Bill wonders what production actually looks like in the field. The whole point of the meeting is to make the field better.
Reflection Questions
If your team walked out of your production meeting today, could each person tell you what's on their plate for tomorrow, next week, and two weeks from now?
Who is in your meetings the entire time who really only needs to be there for 10 minutes? What does that cost you every week?
When was the last time your production leader and sales leader sat in the same room and actually planned together?
Additional Resources:
BOBYARD
Aspire
Exmark
ACE Peer Groups
Virtual Sales Bootcamp
Grunder Landscaping Field Trips

The Grow Group
Grunder Landscaping
Marty Grunder LinkedIn
33 min

About The GROW! Show

From the publisher's feed

The GROW! Show is a show that highlights Marty Grunder's annual conference, GROW!. The GROW! show will showcase how anyone in the green industry can grow themselves, their team, and their business.