How Bob Grover Built One of the Top 20 Landscape Companies in the U.S.

Anthony Codispoti (00:02)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codaspodi and today’s guest is Bob Grover, president of Pacific Landscape Management. Founded in 2001, they are known for being a full-service landscape asset manager, offering solutions like water conservation, snow and ice management, green roofs, rain gardens, and more.

They focus on creating beautiful outdoor spaces while minimizing environmental impact. They’ve also been recognized for their commitment to sustainable landscapes, receiving praise throughout the region. After falling in love with the green industry, working at a retail nursery in high school, Bob studied horticulture at Oregon State University. After graduating in 1983, he went to work for Northwest Landscape Industries. After their acquisition in 1998 by True Green Landcare,

Bob became regional manager of the Northwest. In 2001, along with his longtime colleague, Elias Gatinez, they founded Pacific Landscape Management. And with over two decades at the helm, Bob has led the team in prioritizing sustainable practices and delivering high quality results. Under his leadership, the company has also grown across Oregon and Southwest Washington, serving many commercial and HOA properties.

Now to aid in expansion in 2021, Bob partnered with Southfield Capital and expanded to Seattle through acquisition. This led to forming a parent company called Osprey Landscape Management Group to facilitate expansion throughout the West. Recently, Osprey partnered with Earthworks of Texas and now ranks as the 20th largest landscape company in the US. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency.

where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. Imagine being able to give your employees free access to doctors, therapists, and prescription medications. And here’s the fun part. The program actually puts more money in your employees’ pockets and the company’s too. One recent client was able to increase net profits by $900 per employee per year. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, founder of Pacific Landscape Management and Osprey Landscape Group Company, Bob Grover. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Bob Grover (02:39)
Hey, thank you for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (02:42)
So Bob, you studied horticulture in college and then started working for a landscaping business right after graduation. Did you have an idea pretty early on that this was the industry for you?

Bob Grover (02:45)
Yes.

Not necessarily. ⁓ I just had a glove for the out-of-doors. I thought I wanted to be maybe a forest ranger. ⁓ was really the experience at the retail nursery and honestly it was because it was a block and a half from my house I could walk there before I could drive. It was the easiest job to get and I went there and found my love of plants. I thought I wanted to be a nursery man early on and went off to college and learned a little bit about the landscape trade.

and you know started working ⁓ in the landscape trade during college and I’ve not had a job outside of a paper route or picking berries ⁓ as a youth outside of the green industry next year I’ll be celebrating 50 years in the green industry.

Anthony Codispoti (03:37)
Wow. And it looks like you worked for other people for about 18 years in the industry before making that decision to go off on your own. What was behind that decision?

Bob Grover (03:48)
Well, interesting. Out of college, I went to work for the company Northwest Landscape Industries, a regional landscape company, very ⁓ culturally based, really focused on ⁓ quality and really team building. And ⁓ when the two owners tried to determine what their exit strategy is, that was right when our industry was starting to consolidate. And they sold the TruGreen land care. ⁓

I ended up with a great job there. was regional manager managing 500 employees over Portland and Seattle. But the business really changed. ⁓ Being a part of a ⁓ Fortune 500 publicly traded company, it became all about the financial metrics. And I lost my connection to my customers. I lost my connection to my people and I lost my connection to plants. And I didn’t want to spend the rest of my career ⁓

you know, as a financial manager and never thought of myself as an entrepreneur. But when faced with what do I do next? ⁓ I thought about, should I maybe go to work for somebody else? I actually decided one day this wasn’t for me and I decided I’m going to take a little sabbatical after 18 years and decide what I wanted to do. I thought maybe I’d get out of the industry. I’m a addicted homeowner remodeler. I thought I may be house flipper for a while and decided after doing a major project on my house that I was

not going to be good at that as I was at landscaping. decided to be an entrepreneur and we started from scratch and never thought we’d get to as big, as prominent as we are. And I’m really proud of the work that my partner and I self did and the great people that we’ve attracted to our organization and been able to retain. It’s a magical place when you have a great team that is inspired to do great work for people.

Anthony Codispoti (05:34)
So you never really viewed yourself as an entrepreneur, ⁓ yet you took the leap. Did you have some mentors along the way, some coaching programs you went through? Like how did you kind of get leveled up to be ready for this?

Bob Grover (05:49)
You know, I’d never really prepared for it. So I don’t know if I was ever leveled up for that. I learned in my 18 years, you 15 years with the privately held company and even three years as a part of a publicly traded company. I’d learned a lot about the business, not just about landscape horticulture, but about how to operate a business, how to treat customers well, how to inspire employees. So I think I have a really, really good foundation and it was really interesting to, to start from scratch ⁓ after running a

$50 million division of a company to start off of me and my partner and a couple of people. It’s like, my gosh, I can’t wait till we’re big enough to have all these other resources that I’ve had in the past. it was a fun, interesting challenge. I think the education I got from having been in business for, I’m always, people go, my gosh, how did you grow to the business as big as you’ve grown it? And I, well, I…

I’ve managed a business this big or bigger before, and I learned through those experiences. Learned what to do well and what to do poorly, you know, that I wasn’t going to do.

Anthony Codispoti (06:51)
So you had.

Yeah, you had been able to be a part of that tremendous growth and see the systems and processes that were put in place. And even though you discovered that being part of a publicly traded company wasn’t for you, I’m going to guess there were some things that they put in place that you were able to learn from as well. And tell me if I’m right or wrong here, Bob, probably learn some things that you wanted to copy. And then you learn from things that you didn’t want to recreate in your own environment.

Bob Grover (07:20)
Correct, correct. And I think ⁓ the catchphrase that I would say, ⁓ do the right thing and the money will follow. If you ⁓ focus on financial metrics, you won’t do the right things every time. And I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes that as businesses grow and get larger, you start making bad decisions based on strictly financial metrics. you can’t be ignorant of financial metrics are important. You have to make money to be able to support your business.

By God, you got to make the right decisions for your people and your customers. And when you do that, magic happens and the finances come together.

Anthony Codispoti (07:58)
Can you maybe think of a specific example of that? ⁓ Doing something that’s the right thing that maybe on paper doesn’t look like the right thing financially, but it plays out well for you in the end.

Bob Grover (08:10)
I think probably the biggest thing is pushing the envelope on what you can pay your employees and the benefits you can provide your employees. And in my business, 90 % of our cost is labor. ⁓ And so, you know, if you have one thing you can control, ⁓ it would be the cost of labor. So how many hours you bid into a job is one piece, but how much you pay those people

and the benefits you provide and the opportunity you provide. And I think sometimes people, I hate the word human resource because it makes it sound like a sack of fertilizer. These are people, they are supporting their families. ⁓ They have aspirations like I do personally. And you got to treat them like people and push the envelope on what you can do to help support them and provide them opportunity. So they want to stay here and they want to aspire for greatness.

Anthony Codispoti (09:07)
So you make the decision to start your company. How did you get that very first client?

Bob Grover (09:13)
You know, I think that is kind of interesting. ⁓ One of the things, I had a non-compete agreement, so I had to find people that I could serve for the first year. I was off about five months, so it really was only about seven months. I couldn’t talk to anybody that I had served or knew. ⁓ So I had to go out and kind of beat the pavement and find some people. ⁓ And one of the things that I found, especially after my ⁓

non-compete agreement ran out, I can start talking to people. And one phrase that is I met people and talked about, can I provide service to you? They said, well, hey, I’m really excited for you, Bob. Let me know when you get things going and come back and see me. they go, well, I kind of want you to help me get things going. ⁓ but again, nobody wanted to be the guinea pig, but I found enough people that were willing to do that. And it’s amazing. And I remember

Anthony Codispoti (09:57)
Nobody wanted to be the guinea pig.

Bob Grover (10:06)
When I was putting together marketing material, my first reference list of six people was all six of my customers. ⁓ But we quickly developed a good reputation because we were doing good work and we were really focusing on taking care of the customer. And we have a phrase, it’s all about, we take care of landscapes, but it’s really all about people. Our business is all about people. It’s about our customers and it’s about our employees.

Inspired employees will take care of great customers and you have to have both of those in connection.

Anthony Codispoti (10:39)
Yeah, and seeing the theme developing here. ⁓ what are some things, know, competitive labor market, ⁓ especially for what you do, I would assume, you know, what are some things that you’ve found that have been helpful for you in recruiting and retention?

Bob Grover (10:54)
One of the things that we have done being a growing company, we’ve grown for 25 years, ⁓ creating opportunity, our growth. And one of the things that when we started this company, you know, way back 25 years ago, it’s like, gosh, can we build an organization that would support Elias and my families and our growth? ⁓ as we grew and we started attracting people to us fairly quickly, we determined,

This is not just about Bob and Leis. This is about those people that we brought on board. We need to provide opportunity for those people as well. So much of our growth over our history has been to continue to provide opportunity for people. it’s not just about paying people more to do the same job for the rest of their life. It’s trying to create an opportunity to where as we grow, we’re creating opportunity for people to grow in around us. So. ⁓

people that, you we have a number of people that are in managerial positions that started out as laborers with us. So, you I went to college, a number of our managers went to college, not all of them did. ⁓ And it’s a ⁓ creating an opportunity, ⁓ creating training and development programs to help and help people further and benefit themselves. So really focusing on what can we do to help build and create opportunity for people is a magical tool ⁓ for helping inspire people.

hey, if I stay around here, I’m going to have more opportunity. If I work hard and I learn, I’m going to have greater opportunity to make and make more money. So ⁓ it’s not just about paying more. It’s about creating opportunity where they’re worth more and then you can pay more.

Anthony Codispoti (12:29)
You know, I’ve had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people in the restaurant industry and I hear them talk in a similar way where, people can do well and kind of work their way up in that industry without maybe having like the, you know, best educational background. You don’t need a college degree. Sometimes people come from some, you know, rougher backgrounds, but people who are willing to apply themselves, learn the trade, buy into the system, they’re

there is that opportunity for advancement. That’s the same kind of thing I’m hearing you talk.

Bob Grover (13:02)
Absolutely. You don’t necessarily have to be highly educated when you get here, but you have to be willing to educate yourself and we provide lots of opportunities for people to do that. So if you just want to be a laborer the rest of your life, that’s fine. You’re probably not going to get ahead. But if you want to learn and develop skills and we do in-house training, we support outside education and created this culture that there is opportunity. you know, they have to have skin in the game. They have to want to

grow and develop themselves and we’ll provide that opportunity.

Anthony Codispoti (13:35)
Okay, so let’s get into explaining sort of the breadth of the services that you provide and maybe first start with, are you mostly commercial? Do you do residential work as well?

Bob Grover (13:45)
We don’t do any true residential work. ⁓ We consider ourselves commercial, but in commercial, we take care of homeowner associations. So common area and around condominiums and most homeowner associations today or most homes built today are in homeowner associations. So that’s been a growing segment of our businesses. ⁓ we do commercial maintenance.

⁓ Our relationship with our customers based on an ongoing relationship, a year-round service of their property, but about half of what we do is construction related because as landscapes age and mature, they need to be fixed, repaired, updated. but we don’t do new installation per se, and we don’t do individual residential home maintenance or installation.

Anthony Codispoti (14:31)
Why not ⁓ new installations? It seems like you guys have the skills if you’re going in to do rebuilds that that would kind of fit too.

Bob Grover (14:39)
We do and we have been encouraged ⁓ or challenged to do that in the past. And some of that is my education from where I worked for the 18 years working for the other company. I went through several economic cycles and maintenance growth would slow down a little bit and construction growth would disappear and we’d have to lay off people, maybe sell equipment and the, you know, it’s very cyclical in

the business climate and I just didn’t want to go through those kind of experiences. It’s nice to grow and grow faster when things are good, but grow slower when things are bad. Even in the 2008, 9, 10, we still grew a little bit. We always considered ourselves recession proof, well, we’re recession resistant. Construction is devastating in a recession.

Anthony Codispoti (15:32)
Yeah,

that makes a lot of sense. The maintenance side of things is going to remain more stable. People need that regular routine care, but the new projects, you’re going to deal with that influx that up and down as the economy moves. Yeah. And then it’s so painful, especially for a group like yours, Bob, where you guys put such a big emphasis on the culture and employees and wanting to remain loyal to folks to have to staff up and then staff down, let folks go.

Bob Grover (15:45)
and come and go. Yep. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (16:01)
That’s not the kind of culture it sounds like you guys are trying to build there.

Bob Grover (16:05)
Absolutely, absolutely. To take care of our people, we need to have a consistent, ⁓ stable business, growing business.

Anthony Codispoti (16:13)
So tell us more about the specific services that you provide in the maintenance work then.

Bob Grover (16:19)
Basically, it’s full service. If you have a property, we take care of everything outside that has anything ⁓ plant related. We don’t do parking lots. We don’t do sidewalks. We don’t do windows, but everything related to the out store. So, you know, typical lawn care, typical shrub care, weed control, pest control.

A couple things that are kind of interesting about our industry is ⁓ we’re slower in the winter in most of the regions. So we’ve become the snow service provider. So whether it’s plowing snow, shoveling snow, de-icing sidewalks, ⁓ that, you know, when it happens in the Northwest, that’s a service that we provide as well. So.

⁓ Big piece of what we do today and talk a little bit about our sustainability efforts, but water conservation, ⁓ water cost have skyrocketed across the country, but specifically here in the Portland and Seattle markets. We ironically have a reputation of being a very, very rainy climate, but Portland and Seattle are some of the driest areas in July, August and September outside of the desert, South West. ⁓ So irrigation is critical and water is become very,

it’s some of the most expensive water in the nation, ironically. So water conservation is a huge thing.

Anthony Codispoti (17:33)
I would not have guessed that. I feel

like every time I visit Seattle, it’s cloudy and it’s raining but

Bob Grover (17:38)
Well, come here in July, August and September, it’s God’s country, 85 degrees and no humidity and no rain.

Anthony Codispoti (17:45)
Okay, all right, there. One of many things I’m gonna learn today. And you’re talking about sustainability. I you guys have expanded to nine branches and there is this big emphasis on sustainability. Is that driven by just what feels good at your core or is it good for business? How do you guys think about this?

Bob Grover (18:07)
It’s a little bit of both and the sustainable movement in general, think has been ⁓ inspiring and frustrating at the same time. ⁓ A lot of things that we do in our industry have changed dramatically in my 40 years in landscape contracting. ⁓ We are using less chemicals. We are using more fuel efficient equipment. We are using less water through water conservation. ⁓

But one of the things in this sustainable movement is some people, I think, treated it a little bit more of a religion. We will be 100 % organic. We will stop using gas-powered equipment and vehicles. We will use no water. Let’s do it in the zero scaping. And I always compare it to if you buy a Prius back in the day, a hybrid car, or a Tesla today, you’re still buying a manufactured car that gets you from home to work.

⁓ So to say that I can’t use fertilizers or chemicals or gas powered ⁓ or you know that there’s a cost associated with or you know sustainability is three pieces. It is sensitive to the environment, it is affordable, and it provides a product that’s acceptable to the customer. So you have to do those three and when you say I just want to eliminate all inputs to landscaping

you’re probably going to be too expensive. ⁓ can’t pull a weed until you see it. And it’s got to be acceptable to the end product. So we found that we do everything that we can to lessen the impact of the methodology of maintaining landscapes while maintaining the positive aspect of the landscape.

at the same cost as it would be otherwise. So back in, you know, the early 2000s as this detainable movement got started, we were trying to develop a package of, here’s what we could do that would be more sustainable, all this kind of stuff, and it’ll cost, you know, five or 10 or 15 % more. And as soon as you start talking about it’s going to cost more, our customers’ eyes would glaze over. And then we started saying, okay, if there’s an additional cost to it, people are probably not as interested, but

what can we do and we figured out every year we’re a little bit more sustainable, a little bit less chemical, know, conversion to electric equipment versus gas powered equipment. ⁓ All those kind of things that we’re doing of it’s not a stop today, it’s what can we do a little bit better next year and you know 15 years later we’re doing a lot of things significantly different.

Anthony Codispoti (20:42)
You know, it’s really interesting to hear you talk like that. Excuse me, because you’re right. Like if, if you go to one extreme very quickly, you’re going to price yourself out of the market. You know, the company is not going to be around. You’re not creating those jobs. ⁓ and so this incremental change, okay. You know, we need to replace, ⁓ you know, how many weed whackers this year, can we do an electric version of that? You know, ⁓ and, sort of doing it incrementally step by step, ⁓ makes a lot of sense. Talk.

Bob Grover (21:04)
Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (21:11)
more about what the water conservation looks like that you guys are doing. is just choosing different types of plants. Are you guys running sprinkler systems that operate differently?

Bob Grover (21:22)
That that I’m glad you asked that question because what we found is oversimplifying it is okay. We just need to deliver the water better to the landscape. So drip irrigation, so not spraying sprinklers on shrubs. ⁓ Weather-based irrigation is if it’s hot today you water more if it rains tomorrow you water less having the irrigation system automatically do those kind of things. What we found is a significant part of water conservation is reevaluating your landscape. ⁓

turf lawn is the cheapest.

landscape that you can install. So, ⁓ and it’s desirable. People like grass, you know, America loves grass. ⁓ But it’s also the cheapest aspect of what you can install shrubs and trees are more expensive per square foot to install than lawn. So there’s a lot of lawn out there in places that maybe shouldn’t be. So ⁓ an example, if you go into a business park or a homeowner association, and there’s a parking island where people are parking on both sides of it, a lot of times those are

Well, it’s hard to get your lawnmower in there and it’s really hard to water it because there’s concrete on both sides, there’s probably gravel underneath there, it’s a horrible place to grow grass and…

We think that it takes three or four times as much water to grow lawn there to keep it looking nice. Parking strips along the roadway between the sidewalk and the road, you really common to have trees and a lawn in those areas. Very difficult to, so we’re saying let’s reevaluate the landscape where it’s difficult to water. Is there a different ground cover or a different planting that we could put there?

So sometimes it’s modifying the irrigation system. The new irrigation technology is better. Sometimes it’s modifying the landscape and we can make it not just save water, but sometimes it looks better when you have trees in a parking strip, the trees are out competing the lawn and you have brown patches around the trees. It’s not attractive and it’s taking a lot of water to try to try to do that.

We’re improving a landscape, some of the renovations, updating we do remodeling is water conservation related and it looks prettier when you’re done.

Anthony Codispoti (23:32)
That makes a lot of sense. you know, you’re basically becoming consultants or advisors to your clients and saying, hey, I think there’s a better approach here in this part of the parking lot rather than grass. Let’s do something else that’s not going to require as much water. Maybe the installation of it is going to be a little bit more expensive than that grass, but long term, the maintenance is going to be easier and you’re going to spend less on

Bob Grover (23:49)
Thank

Yep, and that’s why we consider any in that description of us. We consider ourselves a landscape asset manager because whether you’re a homeowner association or a business, that’s part of your physical asset and we want to help people not just make it look pretty, but cost effectively. What is the best way to invest in it? What’s the best way to maintain it properly to where it looks good tomorrow? Five years from now, 10 years from now. Could we change things today that makes it more efficient and attractive?

in the future and a ⁓ lot of times we’ll do ⁓ ROI cost studies on hey this is a way you could save over in over five years you could pay for this project with water conservation or reduce maintenance costs by doing things different so we consider ourselves a landscape asset manager not just a maintenance contract.

Anthony Codispoti (24:39)
Hmm.

So talking a lot about water conservation, explain to me what green roofs and bioswales are.

Bob Grover (24:47)
Okay, a green roof, ⁓ a typical building. ⁓ When it rains, you have an asphalt shingle roof, flat roof, downtown. ⁓ Water hits the roof, it goes into the drain, it goes right straight down into the storm drain system and it overwhelms.

⁓ the storm drain system and it also takes dust and other particles with it down in there that creates a lot of problems. So a green roof is a way to partly to slow down the water from going into the storm drainage system and maybe utilize some of it and clean that water up before it goes in there. So ⁓ that is not as common. ⁓ Newer buildings are more likely to have green roofs. It’s sometimes hard to renovate an existing building into a green roof.

a bioswale or a bioretention sweep.

Anthony Codispoti (25:36)
Hang on, before we go onto the bio-soil, I want to make sure that I

understand the green roof. So does that mean that you’re putting soil and plants on top of the roof?

Bob Grover (25:43)
very very light soil and usually sometimes there’ll be shrubs but usually it’s a low ground covering kind of thing that ideally you don’t you’re on the roof of a building you don’t want to have to prune stuff and try to take stuff away so sedums is a very common thing usually shallow soil and some kind of ground cover sedums that are very drought tolerant and don’t create a lot of debris that you have to take off of the roof.

Anthony Codispoti (25:58)
Yeah.

That makes sense. Plus you don’t want a lot of soil because it’s going to add a lot of extra weight to the roof. especially if the roof hasn’t been designed for that, that can be problematic. OK, so bioswale, what’s that?

Bob Grover (26:16)
Correct.

So ⁓ water, again, in the parking lot, ⁓ if you go back 50 years, it went right straight into the storm drain system. lots of debris, whether it’s ⁓ from the oil spilling on the road or whatever, a lot of times it’s just dust that collects on the road. And as soon as it rains,

that washes into the storm drain systems and that is polluting a lot of times with just mineral elements that come out of the dust and soil that grow algae and problems with where the water ends up. So a bioswale is also designed to capture that water, process it, clean it, slow it down from going into, a lot of times it goes into a river.

⁓ and try to clean it up before it goes in there. those are just vegetated areas where it’s grass or shrubs or a variety of different plant material that it’s a big pond that’ll usually fill up when it rains heavily and slowly ease out. Some of it will go into the ground, but a lot of it still goes on into the storm drain system into a river, much cleaner, much cleaner.

Anthony Codispoti (27:29)
And then how does that bioswale get cleaned out itself?

Bob Grover (27:34)
Well, that’s an interesting… Over time, bioswales will need to be cleaned out because a little bit of that residue, if you leave a quarter inch of silt on the bottom of it 20 years later, that’s six inches of silt and that’ll fill up. So bioswales need to be managed and maintained. They were over-promised when they were put in to say, just…

Anthony Codispoti (27:35)
Or does it just sort of collect all of that, that residue?

Bob Grover (27:58)
will plant native plants around it and it’ll take care of itself. It won’t need any maintenance. Well, a lot of times they fail and a lot of times people run into trouble of they have a failing system or the city comes back and says, hey, it’s not the way it was designed. If you want to do a renovation or a major new expansion to your property, you have to do something or other to bring your bioswale back up to.

the standard that it was built to. And so we’re seeing a lot of restoration projects in and around bioswales and encouraging people that you should probably put those into your maintenance program so you don’t get in trouble down the road.

Anthony Codispoti (28:33)
And so visually, what does a bioswale look like? Is this just sort of like a retention pond that, you know, I’m seeing from the surface? Is it like sort of underground somewhere that’s covered?

Bob Grover (28:43)
There are some that are underground. Most of them are above ground. Usually it’s a depression. You’ll find the lowest place in the property. Sometimes it’s the front of the property. Sometimes it’s the back of the property because you have to let the water get there naturally through just gravity flow. Sometimes they’re just a vegetated swale and allowed to grow up and be, I think, kind of ugly. Sometimes they’re designed as a part of a landscape element and attractive.

And we try to encourage people of, if you want to, you you have to have a bioswale. You should have it be part of the landscape and maintain so it’s functional, but not a eyesore in your landscape area. you know, some customers, you hey, if it’s in the back, maybe you don’t care, but sometimes the low point and the property is out front. And if it’s your front door, you probably want it to be nicer and not grow up and be ugly.

Anthony Codispoti (29:34)
I want go back to your time at Northwest Landscape Industries, which then became True Green Land Care, and talk about a particularly challenging experience and how working through that has influenced your leadership today.

Bob Grover (29:53)
I think a lot of it gets back to the decisions that you make. Sometimes the easy button is I’m going to stop doing something rather that I think I can get away with that the client won’t notice. Sometimes the easy button is I can’t afford to pay my people ⁓ what maybe they need to ⁓ be a good environment.

We have over our time learned to, if you say I can’t, it’s a pretty quick no. If you say, gosh, I gotta figure out how to do that. And there have been a lot of examples to where we’ve done things over the course of our history that have been challenging. We figured out how to make them financially work when maybe at the surface they did through the last number of years. There’s been some significant inflationary.

impacts to to our business and um needing to pay we’re paying um twice the wage that we did eight years ago which is a really good thing for industry um getting closer to yes speaking at the the laborer level um our entry level laborer level for unskilled labor is 21 an hour um now that doesn’t sound great if you’re a college graduate but if you were an unskilled laborer um that’s

way better than, you know, $10 an hour. And that’s been challenging. We’ve not been able to pass that directly onto our customers. So we’ve had to learn how to be more efficient. whether it’s the way we do things, the schedule we do things, the equipment that we’re using, we’ve been very, very creative on figuring out how to continue to pay our people the wages that we need to pay to have them to be able to support their families and redesign how we operate to still provide the same

quality product ⁓ with less labor because our customers aren’t paying twice what they paid eight years ago while we’re being able to pay our employees twice.

Anthony Codispoti (32:00)
So how do you find those efficiencies then? You have to increase the amount that you’re paying your labor, which is your largest expense, but you can’t pass on all those increases to your customers. What are you guys doing in the middle?

Bob Grover (32:04)
Well, that’s…

Well, part of that is, you one of those cultural pieces of honoring your employees of it takes a village to figure out how to be more efficient. So ⁓ we are very encouraging to people across the spectrum of trying, experimenting, and making suggestions on what we could do differently. And we’re constantly looking for new creative ideas on how to do things slightly differently that would be improving our efficiency. And those come from all rank and file members, not just managers. It just

And that’s one of those things where in some of that environment, an employee-centric environment is everybody’s opinion counts. Now, there some crazy ideas out there, and sometimes those crazy ideas come from the lowest level, hey, why don’t we do this a little bit different, and how we operate. And it’s been very exciting to have everybody be a part of that process of helping us improve our product and improve our efficiency.

Anthony Codispoti (33:08)
So you were with ⁓ Northwest Landscape Industries for a number of years. And you stayed with TruGreen for a few years, a publicly traded company. Decided that wasn’t the right environment for you. You got disconnected from your employees. You got disconnected from your clients, disconnected from the plants. It was a big reason why you wanted to go out on your own and start your own thing. Now you have a partnership with an equity group.

How are you ensuring that those same issues that inspired you to leave True Green Land Care won’t occur with us?

Bob Grover (33:47)
You know, I think that’s, I’m glad you asked me that question because that is probably at this point in my career, I’m 64 today. And when we started in this process of determining, you know, five years ago, gosh, my business partner and I, at some point,

We need to transition out. we going to sell our company? Are we going to create an ESOP? Are we going to do a manager buyout? Are we going to give it to our children? And there’s lots of options on how you transition out. ⁓ And having had a bad experience in the past on selling to a complete, know, or previous owners sold to another company, ⁓ they sold to a company that didn’t completely understand our business. Excuse me.

True Green Land Care was owned by Service Master. They’re a residential service-based organization. Residential service is totally different than commercial service, even in landscaping. And our range of services that we provide, True Green Land Care takes care of fertilization and weed control in lawns and landscapes. And they’re very good at that. And they’re very efficient at that. And they know how to sell that. And they know how to operate that.

⁓ doing full server landscaping for a commercial operation ⁓ or commercial property is much more ⁓ complicated. And one of the things that I don’t think they understood or appreciated is how you interact with your customer is very, very important. We consider ourselves a relationship-based business to where

Every customer has different expectations for their landscape. Some are long-term hold. Some are a strategy to buy, ⁓ fix it, and sell it. So you got to understand your customer strategy. And I don’t think they appreciated that. ⁓ making sure that we are managed and run by

landscape managers that understand the landscape business. ⁓ When we took on our partner ⁓ four years ago, ⁓ this was a transition out that I said, I’m probably on for five or six years and then I will retire. We’ve hired actually now a CEO for the Osprey Landscape Group. We created a parent company. We’re gonna grow outside of the Pacific Northwest. We’re gonna partner with other companies, with other brands.

And our ⁓ CEO that we brought on, he’s like me, spent his entire career in landscaping. ⁓ The equity group that we chose is somebody that honored and appreciated us wanting to retain the magic of not trying to do something different because they knew how to run our business. So ⁓ it’s been a gradual transition of me leaving the organization, getting prepared to leave the organization. But we brought in somebody as CEO that understands our business and we promote

some people under me that have grown up in our business and understand our business. I’m very, very comfortable that we are going to continue to be staffed when I am ready to retire and leave because these are landscapers that understand our business and understand service and understand how to manage the ⁓ commercial client and how to take care of and inspire and develop people.

Anthony Codispoti (37:07)
What do you think the timeline going forward looks like for you to kind of fully step away from the?

Bob Grover (37:14)
You know, and I’ve asked that a lot ⁓ over this time. I’m not sure exactly how long. ⁓

I’m my wife retired five years ago about the time that we did this and I promised her that I will retire at some point. I’m becoming more flexible. So, I, I don’t have to go to the office every day. work probably more out of my home office and here I’m traveling more, some, ⁓ for the business and, and some personally. So, ⁓ I, I wouldn’t be surprised if I stayed connected for, you know, five or six or seven more years in a very, very limited capacity.

⁓ I have no operational responsibility anymore. I consider myself an advisor and an ambassador and I’m really enjoying that role, really enjoying. ⁓ Not, you like I said, I’m.

I’m sitting here in my home office today. I was working for a couple hours before this came on board. ⁓ And I’m going to do some stuff ⁓ for my business and I’m going to do some stuff personally. And I have that flexibility and I’m loving that. I’m staying connected to the organization I love and having more flexibility to take care of my wife and take care of my house and travel.

Anthony Codispoti (38:27)
That’s great. We’ll have to check back in with you in a couple of years and see how that transition is continuing to unfold. But I’m curious, ⁓ up until this point, the growth strategies that you’ve found success with, what’s kind of been the biggest lever that you’ve pulled that has helped with that?

Bob Grover (38:32)
Thank

Well, ⁓ in our business, as I said, it’s a relationship business. ⁓ It’s difficult to sell work to a new customer or sell additional work to folks just by, know, people don’t go on the internet.

and find a landscape contractor, ⁓ most of our work comes off of referral or comes off of our reputation. So we spend a lot of time working in real estate trade associations. There’s an organization called BOMA, NAEP, IRM, IFMA.

that work with ⁓ real estate owners, whether they’re ⁓ commercial property managers or homeowner associations or facility managers. ⁓ We’ve gotten very, very involved in those organizations to be able to interact with people. Our customers at those will introduce us to other prospects. ⁓ We’ll learn and find people. And just being present in the environment where if you walk into somebody’s office, you’re going to bug them. If you meet them,

at a real estate trade association event, they’re there to meet other people, to be in a social environment. And we found that that’s been very, very effective of where they’re seeing our existing customers and they’re meeting new customers and being in their environment is probably the biggest area. We do sell, ⁓ but we probably market strongly and we sell when people ask.

We’re looking for people that are disappointed with their current vendor. If somebody, you if we go out, if you’re happy, I don’t want to sell you. If you’re not happy, I’m going to do everything I can to show you that I can make you happy again. And that’s what we found is, is, you know, what can I do to put you in a car today? I wasn’t looking for a car today. ⁓ Hey, I want a car. Let me help you get the right car. ⁓

My landscape contractor is great. I’m happy with them. I got a great relationship. They’re doing a good job. Hey, I’ll stay away from you. Call me when you’re not happy. And I’m going to keep talking and touching you. And someday I’m going to find you’re not happy. And that’s going to be my opportunity.

Anthony Codispoti (41:01)
I talked with a ⁓ president of a commercial cleaning service, know, so they clean buildings, and he had kind of a similar approach, excuse me, ⁓ where, you know, their sort of motto was, I don’t want to be your cleaning company, I want to be your next cleaning company. And it’s a similar kind of mentality that I know at some point, you’re going to become unhappy with your service provider. So let’s stay in touch so that when that happens, then we’ve got a chance to talk and

Bob Grover (41:09)
Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

Anthony Codispoti (41:31)
and work together, yeah.

Bob Grover (41:31)
Exactly.

Anthony Codispoti (41:33)
And Bob, as you kind of look back over your life and your career, what’s a serious challenge that you’ve overcome, whether it’s something personal or professional, how’d you get through that and what did you learn?

Bob Grover (41:46)
Well, you know, I would say one of the greatest challenges was when I determined that, ⁓ you know, working for a Fortune 500 company, I didn’t really like my job anymore. I never considered myself an entrepreneur. Trying to make a decision on what to do and then deciding I wanted to start my business. It’s not easy to

come up with the capital it takes or take the risk it takes. And that was a huge, huge step in, you for a while I thought, hey, maybe I should go to work for somebody else. What I should do and, you know, how I overcome that, you know, the support of my wife, I think was incredible. She was a school teacher and we were in the ability to, I could live off her salary for a year or so.

as I started things up and just as I said, I never considered myself necessarily an entrepreneur and had that desire. So starting from scratch and trying to figure out how to build something from zero was a ⁓ huge challenge and a ⁓ huge risk. I don’t know what the percentages of business startups that failed, but it’s over 50%. So ⁓ that was a scary moment. It was inspiring, but it was also a very, very scary moment.

in my life of I need to do something different. What’s the right thing to do for myself, my family, and recreate the environment that I wanted to and I determined I needed to give it a shot myself and you know the support of my wife and family and I had young kids at the time so really more the support of my wife was just really really appreciate her.

And when I said, think I want to do that, and she says, you’ve got a year, Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (43:43)
You’re on the clock. Go. So how did you pull together

the funds in those early days to make this happen?

Bob Grover (43:51)
Well, ⁓ having been 18 years into my adult life and career and being a relatively conservative financial ⁓ person, we had some savings. But I was also very surprised at where I needed capital, equipment, trucks, ⁓ we could finance those. ⁓ I was pleasantly surprised how financially easy it was. Now, as long as I continue to generate revenue to pay for those truck

⁓ truck payments and vehicle payments. ⁓ I rented some property from a friend that had a business that the end of his warehouse that I started out with, you know, it’s just like trying to be creative on how to be very cost effective ⁓ in how we operated. ⁓ And, know, we surprisingly ⁓ didn’t need a ton of capital resources to get going and

The landscape maintenance business is very cash flow basic. we, bill people, ⁓ amortized over 12 months. So you’ve got, you sign a contract, you’re getting a check every month and they’re pretty good about paying that. That was the other thing in that construction business is a lot of times you have a huge capital outlay. got to buy plant material, you to buy soil, got to buy irrigation products and you get a bill as you, ⁓ complete work. And sometimes they don’t pay you quickly on time and maintenance.

or they pay net 30. So we generated good cash flow that could pay those costs of those equipments and leases and, you know, these supplies that we needed to buy. So it was scary, but it worked out, worked out really, really well.

Anthony Codispoti (45:33)
And now with the big growth plans that you guys have, I heard you say that you’re looking to partner with existing firms, landscape companies and different geographies. How does that work?

Bob Grover (45:46)
Well, part of it is we’re looking for partners that can add to and have similar cultural values as us. We’re not looking to buy and fix. We’re not a fixer-upper kind of organizations. We want to buy quality landscape companies. Maybe people are in similar situations as we are. They want to grow. They may need capital to grow. They want to expand. Or maybe there are, if it’s on some stage in their career where they’re wanting to have a long-term strategy.

And, you know, there’s a lot of competition. Our industry is becoming consolidated and some people are doing it well and some people are doing it poorly, which creates opportunity for us, but it also creates a lot of competition. I’m very involved in our landscape trade association. I know a lot of folks across the country. And, you know, some of our effort is on, you know, connecting with people that I’ve known for a number of years that I

know have a good reputation through their involvement in our trade association and aware of their operations. So we’re being very selective in who we approach ⁓ and are looking for really quality organizations that we don’t have to fix.

Anthony Codispoti (47:01)
You said that there are a number of companies that are doing this consolidation poorly. What is it you guys are doing differently to set yourselves apart?

Bob Grover (47:11)
Well, I think number one, we’re being very, very careful to ⁓ make the right choice for acquisitions. So some people might be acquiring more or faster. I think the fact that we’re building an organization that is run by people that have been in landscape their entire careers and understanding that ⁓ to do well in this business, you have to know this business. think those are really the two cores of, we don’t want to make an acquisition just to acquire. We want to make an acquisition that we’re going to be proud of.

and is going to add to our quality. And by gosh, we’re going to run it like landscapers. Very sophisticated, skilled business landscapers. But you need to understand this business. You need to understand how to manage and inspire employees. You need to understand how to serve ⁓ and communicate with customers. if you haven’t done that in this trade, you probably are going to make some mistakes. And we’re very, very focused on making sure that we do it the way a landscaper should.

Anthony Codispoti (48:11)
What’s your superpower?

Bob Grover (48:15)
Well, interesting, think I will share my superpower with my business partner, Elias. I am highly motivated and I’ve learned over my 40 years of how to properly communicate and honor a customer. And I get on my stump all the time in training and the development of our people.

and helping inspire them how important it is to, we need to be the easy button. know, one of my philosophies are if a customer calls you and tells you something about their landscaping that you don’t know, you don’t know enough about the landscaping you’re managing for them. So we want to be the easy button. We want to be one step ahead of our customers. And we want to always tell them something or other before they find it out on themselves. I’m a huge fan of when we screw up, telling you screwed up and you’re fixing it.

I think natural ⁓ behavior is, gosh, maybe they didn’t see and I can fix it before they find out. They always find out before you fix it. So I’m a huge believer in humbling yourself when you screw up because we all, know, everybody screws up. There are problems. ⁓ My business partner’s superpower ⁓ is probably more focused on he was our, you know, is our operations manager.

runs and trains and develops our ⁓ production folks. ⁓ Very, very inspired. He’s a landscaper, but he’s a people builder. And he just so happens to be a landscaper. I think I probably have more love of plants for him, but I’m the people pleaser, the customer pleaser. He is the employee pleaser and developer. it’s those skills and focus and passions for people on both sides is our superpower.

Anthony Codispoti (50:09)
I love that. I love that you brought him into the answer. How about some daily habits or rituals, things that help to start your day or keep you on track?

Bob Grover (50:20)
Well, whether that’s ⁓ a superpower daily habit, I am very, good about ⁓ managing when those calls come in, when those emails come in, probably my daily habit at the end of the day of making sure that I have made a priority of those things that have come in that I need to deal with the next day. Do I need to deal with them right now? ⁓ I kind of have an ⁓ end-of-day process of, my gosh, this is something that I

didn’t get accomplished today, have to start out the next day of getting that accomplished. So making my list of these are the priorities, more so based on the stuff that comes to me as opposed to, hey, I want to take care of this. I want this as an objective that I want to do. A lot of times those are longer term, but my daily deal is don’t let the day end without making sure that you know what came in of a request that you need to facilitate and get taken care of. If you didn’t get it today, by God, you got to do it tomorrow.

Anthony Codispoti (51:18)
Best decision you ever made for your business. Best decision you ever made for your business,

Bob Grover (51:19)
People are, what?

Well, partnering up with my partner, Elias, is probably the best decision I ever made. I knew I didn’t want to go it alone. I’d worked with him for about eight years at the previous company. I probably underappreciated how skilled and gifted he was in training and developing people. that, you know, it’s it’s, I can’t imagine having gone it alone, but I could have gone it.

in partnership with somebody not as skilled a gift as he was. And I just pinch myself of having been exposed to him and talking him into joining me when I decided to make this journey.

Anthony Codispoti (52:05)
and you guys first met at True Green, is that right? You were working together there?

Bob Grover (52:09)
And they Northwest prior, yeah, prior, yeah, yep.

Anthony Codispoti (52:11)
at Northwest.

Okay. Yeah. You brought up his name very affectionately multiple times today. So I can tell a very, very good and complimentary relationship. Yeah. how about for our listeners, any recommendations on books, podcasts, courses, any resources that have been helpful to you?

Bob Grover (52:15)
1990. So when is that?

Yeah, 35 years we worked together. 25 as partners, 35 as assistants.

Well, I am an avid ⁓ reader or any more a listener. ⁓ I’ve found that I can read for pleasure better than I can read for learning. So I am a audible. ⁓ I have listened to hundreds of books on that. ⁓ The one that I listened to or it’s been inspiring me the most, in fact, ⁓ it’s called Unreasonable Hospitality. It’s a book about

the restaurant trade. And ⁓ I’m trying to remember now really quickly that it’s one of these ⁓ greatest restaurants in New York of how they aspire to surprise, you know, giving people something they didn’t expect. You you expect to have a great meal at this restaurant, but they will exceed your expectations. And I love that idea of one of the things that I’ve always said is people have basic expectations when they buy something from you. So anytime you can

and surprise them, one of our key cultural values is being heroic. I don’t want to create a situation where I need to be heroic, but by God, when the opportunity creates itself, we will do whatever it takes to be heroic. Whether it’s doing something where they’re in the middle of the night or responding to an issue. One of the things I’ve in my career is like, customer calls says, hey, oh my gosh, I know you probably can’t do this, but.

I don’t care what they say after that. They’ve set me up to be a hero. I will do everything in my power.

Anthony Codispoti (54:04)
Give me one example,

give me a specific example of when you guys were a hero.

Bob Grover (54:08)
Well, one of our most heroic things is when it snows or freezing rains or we get winter weather, it, you know, it, shuts down the city and how we can be prepared to get out and about and take care of, of, of, you know, those snow and get things cleared. I’m, I’m constantly, ⁓ really proud that we’ve cleared a parking lot, for a business before the city has cleared the street out in front of it. ⁓ irrigation in the summer.

⁓ When something breaks, we provide 24-7 coverage. And if somebody calls and there’s a problem, we’ll get there with an hour. We have people on call all the time. And one of my favorites is, I forgot to tell you, I’ve got my asset manager or my owner coming in tomorrow. ⁓ Can you take care of this particular item? No problem. We’ll be there.

Anthony Codispoti (54:59)
I’ve just got one more question for you Bob, but before I ask it I want to do two things first everyone listening I’m gonna invite you to pause for just a second go to your podcast app and Just leave us a review follow us subscribe all those things make sure that you continue to get more of these great interviews into your feed and they help other people find the show too Bob I also want to let people know the best way to either get in touch with you or your company. What would that be?

Bob Grover (55:26)
Well, my email address is my name, Bob Grover. It’s bob.grover at Pacscape, which is Pacific landscape, P-A-C-S-C-A-P-E dot com.

Anthony Codispoti (55:38)
Great, we’ll include links to that in the show notes. Last question for you, Bob, you and I reconnect a year from now and you are really excited. You’re celebrating something big. What’s that one big thing you’re celebrating one year from

Bob Grover (55:52)
Well, it probably will be adding a couple of more partnering with a couple of more companies. ⁓ It was a big move when we partnered with the folks ⁓ in Texas, Dallas and Houston. We’re talking to a couple of groups in California. trying to, you know, we’d love to be a Southwest, a West Coast and Southwest regional in Texas and Portland and Seattle far away. But there’s the Bay Area and Southern California that we’ve got a couple of opportunities.

love to tell you when we talk in a year that, hey, we’ve secured a partner in Los Angeles and we’ve secured a partner in the Bay Area.

Anthony Codispoti (56:28)
Love it. We’ll check back in to see how that’s coming along. Bob Grover from Pacific Landscape Management. want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Bob Grover (56:39)
Thank you, appreciate the opportunity to share my story.

Anthony Codispoti (56:44)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.