James | Gladstone

Quick background for everyone I haven’t met yet: - Boston area small business owner by way of buying a residential landscaping co in March ‘21 (note: try to not buy a company 2 mo before having your first baby) - Previous work chapters included time at PwC and BCG, where…

🚴‍♂️ Excited to ride 162 miles for the Pan-Mass Challenge (my 7th year in a row riding)! 100% of rider-raised funding goes to Dana Farber cancer research, and every donation makes a big difference. Please help us find a cure! 🙏 pmc.org/je0105 #PMC2024 #CancerResearch #RideForACure

Not all acquisition stories end up well. Someone in one of my peer groups was having some cash flow issues and stopped showing up on our call. Checked in on him and confirmed he's shutting the business down. Make sure you understand this is a very real possibility before signing that SBA guarantee.

As a 'big mulch' representative and propaganda spreader... rocks for your planting beds are an absolute disaster. Best bet if you have the depth / room: - Install 3/4" clean washed stone about 1' deep against the house foundation (helps with splash back, drainage, and pests) - Mulch planting beds in front of stone, and install metal edging between the stone and mulch to keep the materials separated. - Make a crisp natural edge to separate the mulch bed from lawn. - If you mow your own lawn, use a weedwacker vertically (like a pizza slicer) along the edge to help maintain the appearance. This separation helps the lawn from growing into the plant beds. - Cobblestone or brick edging also ok if mulch needs to be retained from washout due to slope. - Leaf mulch is best for plant nutrients but loses aesthetic appeal quickly. - Don't ever use weed fabric for anything ever. It might be one of the biggest scams going. It doesn't work, will start peeling up, and is a huge PITA anytime you go to plant something else. - Spread some Preen in early spring right before you mulch and will help slow weeds down. Do it early before the weeds start growing. - If you MUST do rocks, do something at least 1.5" or larger like river rocks, otherwise they'll get all over the place when you blow leaves for spring and fall cleanups (if you live somewhere with a full blown spring and fall). youtube.com/watch?v=8wm5Rjr7…

We balked at Aspire a few years ago - really limited for residential landscaping use (great / gold standard for commercial). When they were bought by ServiceTitan I figured just a matter of time before the integrations and feature sharing would make it more palatable. This is a good step.

Loss aversion bias is fascinating. It comes alive most acutely for me in grocery stores (@roblabonne ). I never pay the extra $.05 for a bag. I'll make 27 trips to my car cradling cold cuts before I pay for a bag. But... if I get offered a discount for not using bags, I never do it. Bag me bro. It feels much more 'bad' to lose money (pay extra) than it feels 'good' to win money (get a disount). In our business, if I wanted to incentivize pre-payments, I would structure the offer something like: Payment option #1: 10,000 if paid in full Payment option #2: Add 5% ($10,525) over 10 monthly installments vs. 1: $10,525 over 10 monthly installments 2: Save 5% if pre-paid in full ($10,000) Do you think about loss aversion bias with customers, employees, spouses etc.? How have you seen it work in real life?

So many of the residential plow operators I talk to don’t offer salting as an add-on. It’s very high margin and very easy to do (compared to plowing and shoveling).

Going to do a post on residential snow management. What do you guys want to know more about?

What's everyone's process for staff reviews? our current model: 1x summer, 1x year end reviews... these are when we discuss performance and any comp adjustments year end rating (1-5) tied to performance across our core values / focus areas. Bonus matrix with role and rating, prorated for new hires. in addition to year end, anyone that's not full time gets $500 loyalty bonus paid on 7/1 of following year (if they come back after winter). i sit down with ops manager and verbally go through everything with him and then i do all the write ups in a google doc (probably doing this in gusto next year). coming from big corporate all i know are bloated review processes that everyone hates, so i feel obligated to do something like this. not perfect but I'd guess 95% of landscaping companies <$5m in my area don't do any sort of reviews, let alone written ones. example of write up for one of our better guys:

Just learned @thesamparr and @STLChrisH went to high school together? Really hope there’s a @myfirstmilpod episode in the works here.

I just wish @WilsonCompanies was a bit more candid + direct in his newsletter