Real Training for Real Landscapers: No Actors Needed

Matt Crinklaw Matt Crinklaw: [00:00:00] So change is hard, but I heard this last week and it, I wish I heard this 18 years ago, but priority creates capacity. So you always say I don't have time for this. I don't have time for this. But when something becomes a priority for you, you all of a sudden have time for it because priority creates capacity. Speaker 2: Welcome to the Roots of Success, the Premier Landscapers podcast that brings you the latest tips and strategies for successful landscape business. I'm Jim Calli, one of the principles and coaches of McFarland Stanford. Jason New and I started McFarland Stanford to coach landscape businesses after years in the industry ourselves, now more than 10 years since we began, McFarland has a deep bench of coaches and subject matter experts who work with our clients on very specific issues of business. Whether you're struggling with people. Profits or just day-to-day challenges Our coaches and guests have the real world experience and practical advice to help you build a thriving and profitable landscape business. Chris Psencik: Hello, and welcome to [00:01:00] another episode of Roots of Success. I'm excited to be here and joined by Matt k Klaw founder of Greenius, Granum's Greenius. And so Matt, thank you for joining us. I know you've had a busy week as you're closing out your 2025. Meeting with your leadership team and looking at what next year's gonna look like. And really appreciate you taking the time to visit with us. I know you've got a ton of insight that you're gonna bring today to all of our ACE members and everybody that's listening and excited to share that. And so thank you for joining us. Matt Crinklaw: Awesome. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Chris Psencik: So well, Matt I know you and I have had some awesome opportunities, I guess to travel the country. You and I are on the road a lot. We get to see each other a lot as we travel and get to meet with people all across the country. And so as I've gotten to know you, I think my favorite fun fact from you has been the fact that you and I have shared more stories now about both of us being dads of three daughters. And I don't get to run into that very often, but I'll tell you, I empathize with [00:02:00] everything you always say, and I laugh sometimes. I know I've shared that with my wife about just how much fun it is to get to talk with somebody else who's in the exact same situation as me as we travel and do all this fun stuff together. Matt Crinklaw: Yeah it's, like we have our own little support group. It's, a unique scenario when you have three girls for sure. Chris Psencik: Yeah, it's like a self help group. And so as these girls get older, I know we're about to, we're both about to hit the teen years, so it's gonna get more and more interesting as we go. Matt Crinklaw: Yeah, I'm sure we'll be texting each other a lot more. Chris Psencik: So well, Matt, I I think the goal for me today is one, introduce you a little bit more. You are our newest ACE Advantage partner. We just launched this at our ACE Connect event this past month, and we're very excited to have you on board. And I, can just tell you from all of our ACE team, our mc team at McFarland Stanford, we are so excited to have Grano involved from the greenies. Side of things to be able to help all of our clients and really do some phenomenal stuff with their [00:03:00] businesses. And I would love, just in your own words, if you could just, man, give us a, what is greenies in your own words, give us a personal, what is it, how did it come about? What were you doing when you decided Hey man, I think I wanna spend time teaching people how to do stuff. Gimme like, where did this start? Matt Crinklaw: Yeah, so it all started. One of my good friends owns a large landscape company. At the time, I believe they had 120, maybe 130 employees. He just saw the need for systemized training at his company. He had high turnover. He had people constantly coming and going, and when someone would leave, that knowledge would go with them. So they were constantly starting back at ground zero and just training and training in the same speech over and over again. So he saw an opportunity to really. Systemize the training, and it was very much his idea and he reached out to me and said, Hey, we wanna build this training program. [00:04:00] And I said let's make this an online platform and you need to go do A, B, and c. And that will get you started. And he said, okay, great. So he went his way. I went mine. I was working in advertising in web development and design and building customers websites and portals. And I'd say about a month or two went by and my phone rang and he was like. Hey, A, B and C are really, hard. He's like, why don't we do this together? So I quit my job and I went to work at a landscape company, and from there he brought all the industry expertise and I brought all the technical expertise and together it was a kind of a perfect business marriage and greenness was born. Chris Psencik: Yeah, it was funny. What does training look like? Chris Psencik: I know at ACE Connect you shared a really funny story about the skid steer and what it was like to get in a skid steer Matt Crinklaw: Yeah. Chris Psencik: training and tell me a little bit about what that meant. Matt Crinklaw: Yeah, so it all started with, okay, I'm now quit my job, [00:05:00] I'm now working at a landscape company and I was building our first course and it was blower training. So I never really used a commercial blower to that level. And when you see an experienced landscaper using the equipment versus a homeowner, it's night and day. They're so much more professional. But I had read the manual. I thought, Hey, I can film a course. So I went out in that Survivor man style with just a tripod and a camera, and I'd press record on the camera. I'd go start the blower, I'd press pause, I'd move the camera, I'd blow some leaves, I'd hit pause, and I filmed the whole course by myself. I edited it. I put it all together, and I went to my friend at the landscape company. I said, Hey, you gotta watch our first course. He watched it and it finished playing, and he said, Matt, I can assure you that is not how anyone in this industry would use a blower. He's you got it so wrong. So I was like, wow. It was first humbling. And then I said, okay, I need to know what it's like to be a landscaper. So I [00:06:00] wanna work on cruise for a while and really understand the industry. So I worked on a maintenance crew for a while, and then I switched over to Design build crew. And I was saying, I showed up on my first day on the design build crew and we're building a retaining wall, and they're like, they had just delivered a load of a gravel and they were like, get in the Kubota, bring that load of gravel to the backyard. And I'm like, I've never driven a tractor before. He's oh, you just get in. Turn the key. This is how you start. I got about one to two minutes of training and onboarding and within. Let's say five to 10 minutes. I'm in this tractor loading up a gravel, going between multimillion dollar properties with maybe two feet of clearance on each side, and I'm loading gravel back there, and my bucket's a quarter full. I'm going extra slow. The ground's really soupy. They're getting angry. I'm slowing everybody down. I felt like I wanted to quit on the spot because I could just [00:07:00] see in everyone's faces how annoyed they were with me. And at that moment I was like I think a lot of people experience that feeling, and maybe that's partly why turnover is so high in our industry. So at that moment, I really knew we could do something about this. So from there we started building our training courses and it just took off. Chris Psencik: So it, it's funny when I hear you say that, it makes me remember I remember when I was in, in college at Texas a and m and I was studying landscape architecture. And there was a time where I realized like. Man I, don't wanna be chained to a desk and, just be doing designs every day behind a computer. And having a conversation with my then girlfriend, now wife, about how I saw this opportunity in horticulture to, to take some of these skills I've learned in architecture and apply these to horticulture with the business twist and, then having the thinking through the conversation with her of I've gotta justify this woman. I'm gonna marry as to why landscape is gonna provide me a future [00:08:00] and why this is the path I want to choose. And then having to justify that to not only to her, but to my now father-in-law as to like why this is the future for us as a couple. Because it doesn't look sexy on the outside, so help me understand, like there's a million industries out there that need training. There's a million industries that need systems, that need process, that need all of the things you just described. What is it about the landscape industry that really attracted you? That you said, look I've, now I've got this tool, I've got this thing I can use. I think there's something here we can do something with, what was the affinity with landscaping that really drew you in and said, man, this is the niche I wanna explore and this is where I really wanna expand upon. Matt Crinklaw: Yeah, that's easy. It's the people. So when I'm around these landscapers every day, they're just salt of the earth, good people, and they're always laughing. They're always joking. They're like. Direct, they tell each [00:09:00] other what they think of 'em. They go out and solve problems, and at the end of the day, they're like artists. Like they turn these flat backyards into beautiful paradises. And I just, fell in love with the art, the people, and I was like, yeah I can, spend a lot of time in this industry because I'm a huge people person and like I really value relationships and chatting with people and. I just, the connected with the people so much and it was funny like. You work all week with them, and then you think on Friday you're gonna be sick of them, but by Friday night, Saturday night, you're going to barbecues together. You're going out for drinks together, you're on a sports team together, and you see 'em all weekend on social events. And then you pick up on Monday where you left off and it was like, wow, these are really good people. And I wasn't wrong 18 years later, and I still meet great people every single day. Chris Psencik: Yeah. I love that because I [00:10:00] think a lot of my answers are the exact same as yours. Like it's that relatability, it's that customer you get to have for life. That's just amazing. All right, so you mentioned it 18 years. Technology has changed so much in 18 years, and as you described it Matt, 18 years ago, you and I weren't using cell phones in our pocket to record all this stuff What does the Tech at Greenius Look LIke? Chris Psencik: So walk me through here's where we were at from a technological standpoint. Here's what this looks like today. Creating a system and a process for training development. You know what? What does that look like at Greens? Matt Crinklaw: Yeah, so you go back, I think YouTube just turned 20, give or take. So you go back 18 years ago, streaming video and internet speeds are not what they are today. So we had a huge technical challenge. So we. I couldn't find a video solution to meet our needs because it was so rare. So I actually coded and built our own proprietary [00:11:00] video streaming service from the ground up because there was nothing out there. So we developed our own system to stream video and load it and get it out onto the internet in a format where. Technology hasn't caught up to us yet, so we had a huge technical challenge to get through. Another challenge was going back 18, 20 years ago, convincing landscapers training was a priority, now you talk to a, landscaper, a business owner, like you ask 'em what's a big initiative? And training's usually in one of those top three answers. They know they should be doing more. They see the benefit of it. But you go back 18 years, training was not a priority. It was like. We just assume people were known how to born, how to no one how to, sorry. We just assume people were born knowing how to cut grass. So we'd hire 'em on Friday, throw 'em on a crew on Monday, and then we're angry by Tuesday 'cause their lines [00:12:00] aren't straight or they're going too slow. Or we got warranty callbacks or they're on a zero turn and they've tore the turf and now I gotta go resaw all these squares from where they were cornering and. There was a big disassociation between training and solving those problems. So I think we spent the first five years convincing landscapers they should just be doing training, and that was our first battle. And then the next step was convincing them that they could do it online. Our industry works outside. They work with their hands. They learn in the field on the equipment. So convincing them that they could watch a video and get some knowledge was just blasphemy. There's no way. So once we got through that barrier, once the technology caught up, and then once the industry caught up it just started taking off. So we were just [00:13:00] really 15 years too early. Chris Psencik: Yeah I laugh 'cause man, let's see. I came into the landscape industry professionally maybe 20, 25 years ago. And I'll never forget the first day I showed up working for a company in Austin, Texas. I came from Houston, where it's just blackland soil. There's not one rock to be found in, all of that area. And then I went to Austin where every single. The time you put a shovel on the ground, it's just solid rock. And I remember them handing me the rock bar. I remember 'em handing me the keys to the rock saw and saying, we need to install 20,000 linear feet of mainline. Here you go. And just going I've never used either one of these in my entire life. I don't even know how to operate this machine. And then being turned loose, having to do about a million and a half dollar worth of, irrigation work and thinking, golly, what I would've given back then to have had. Some skills like that, or at least something there was no YouTube you mentioned it all right, so you created this product 18 years ago. You're putting this [00:14:00] all together I'm a sales guy you do sales professionally. What does a sales call look like? Chris Psencik: What's that first sales call look like? Like when you had to go take this to market h how did you go about that? Matt Crinklaw: And one thing I love about this industry is how open all of the business owners are with each other. And I think that's why the McFarland peer groups are so successful because the business owners are open books about their problems and about how they solve them. The owner of the landscape company already had a network of landscape owners. Through that they would talk about basically an informal peer group. So we had launched it and he reached out to all of them and said, Hey, we built this, have a look at it, and we got some sales. Within the first week, we probably had five sales right away. And then we went to our first trade show and. The industry hadn't seen anything like it. [00:15:00] Like our booth had a lineup to, to talk to us. So we had thought, wow, we hit the jackpot. We're gonna be overnight millionaires. And then crickets, right? Like the interest waned off within a month. Our first year of sales was like. $80,000 maybe for the year, and it was at the core of those problems I was talking about where they weren't ready to train their people. They weren't ready to train online. So we took a whole new approach about. Partnering with them. So we weren't selling at landscapers, we were helping them build their businesses. So here's what people are doing. Here's the program, here's how they roll it out. Here's everything you need to go build a successful program and help them do it. So I've done. Hundreds of site visits where I'd go out to the customer, meet their team, train everyone on how to use a system, how to roll it out, ask 'em what day of the week are we [00:16:00] gonna do this? And I've, done that so many times where we became a partner instead of just selling, we were solving a problem. And that's where we were bringing the value. And from there, we just started growing and we started gaining some momentum and, through some deals with LMN and through all of our changes over the years, the whole grand and brand now has over 5,000 contractors through Chris Psencik: Oh wow. Matt Crinklaw: So it's just been crazy ride. And now we're, between the three of us, we're the number one software in the landscape industry. Chris Psencik: That's an incredible amount of growth in 18 years. And so what I echo there, that's so much institutional knowledge and lessons learned that, you've had to go through, that you've experienced over. That many clients over that much time. I, was a part of one day trying to figure out how we build our own SOPs, how we do our own videos. How does Greenius Partner with Companies? Chris Psencik: I think what has attracted me the most to gre [00:17:00] in the product offering that you have. And I'd love if you talk a little bit about this is the way you do partner with the company. Like, you take what they're doing and you're able to help them craft and use your backbone to create a system and a software platform that they can then put into use and utilize that relates to them. Talk to us a little bit about what that looks like and what that experience is as an Matt Crinklaw: Yeah. Chris Psencik: as a team, as you roll that out. Matt Crinklaw: One thing I've learned across my many years is. Everyone has the same problems. It's just the bigger you are, the more amplified it is. So everyone cuts grass the same. The equipment works the same whether you have five people or we have some customers now with 2,500 employees. Everyone has the same problems. It's turnover, it's equipment damage, it's warranty callbacks, it's efficiency issues. So we really found a way. Through really identifying patterns throughout all our [00:18:00] customers and the ones that were really having success and really making it work. What were they doing? And we saw, we started seeing. Some key insights and I'd really share three big ones that I think the most successful customers do is one, they commit to the program. So change is hard, but I heard this last week and it, I wish I heard this 18 years ago, but priority creates capacity. So you always say I don't have time for this. I don't have time for this. But when something becomes a priority for you, you all of a sudden have time for it because priority creates capacity. So first of all, our best customers committed to making and changing a training program and culture, and I was at one onsite. Four years ago, and there was two ops managers in the room. One was fully bought in, wanted to roll out green use, and [00:19:00] the other one was hesitant. And the one that was hesitant turned and said, Hey, this is really gonna change our culture. And the one that was bought in said. Exactly that's exactly what we're trying to do. We are trying to change our culture. You're a hundred percent correct. So what they did was they committed to the program, they rolled it out, they built, the second one was they built training pathways or career paths. So how do you go. From your day one of hiring to a branch manager or an ops manager, right? What, are the steps to get there? They map it all out. Each employee knows where they're at in the process. And obviously you can't have not everyone's gonna be a branch manager or an ops manager, but you can have various levels of technician you can have technician level one, technician, level two, level three, and the higher they get up in those skills, they're the, More technical equipment they're using or the, bigger jobs they might have. So they build out career [00:20:00] paths and they put each employee in a career path and companies that are doing this. Are seeing dramatic drops in employee turnover. We had one customer that's reduced it by 20%. We had another one that's got down now to less than 20% turnover, so they are solving their labor problems. And then we have one customer. He made a comment that I found really interesting because people are staying longer and they're getting more efficient. He needs less people. So he used to have 15 people. Now he only needs 10 because he is 10, and they're not overworked. They're just really efficient. They go out, they get the job done it, it's like a ballet. They show up. Everyone knows exactly what they're doing at that job site. They go do it. They know what each other's doing. They've worked together. They haven't had that turnover. So they know everyone's Chris Psencik: Yep. Matt Crinklaw: So now he only needs 10 people where he used to have 15. He can pay him more [00:21:00] because he has those five less salaries. Chris Psencik: Yeah, I would love because we I know as you're rolling anything out in a company. Whether that's your software package, whether it's where you're purchasing trees or materials or bushes it's about getting the buy-in from your team. If I have a purchaser that's purchasing materials and he's always gone to this grower for all of their materials, and I'm trying to push him to this one because it makes more, sense, cost-effective wise he's gonna have his own natural bias. If we're selling irrigation controllers, my irrigation tech has this bias towards this irrigation controller, and I have to address those things. You shared a story with me probably a couple months ago where you ran into some training where you guys had gotten everything translated into Spanish and you shared something with me, which I thought was so unique, but so applicable because having worked in the field with many teams and many cultures over the course of my career I know. Language barrier [00:22:00] is something that we continue to fight with, right? And there's a million different dialects of Spanish. There's a million different dialects of where you are in the country and how we relate to different stuff. And I'd love you to share how did you address that challenge of something as simple as how do we translate these trainings to make it applicable for my. Matt Crinklaw: Yeah, we learned a lot of tough lessons over the years and have you ever read the book Extreme Ownership? It really teaches you to not make excuses Chris Psencik: Yep. Matt Crinklaw: and you own it. And that's been instrumental in building greenies was, Hey, we made a mistake. No excuses, we own it and we're gonna go out and do better. And Spanish was one of those ones. So we had hired a translator. They worked at a landscape company but they weren't a professional translator by any means. And, but they were [00:23:00] doing all our translation and we really had no way to fact check it, for lack of better word. So we took it on blind trust. We had 'em all translated, we had 'em all narrated. We put out our courses and. The, technicians were laughing at some of our training because our translations were so wrong, and they'd be watching the video and the, dialect and the wording, or we used a word that might have a slang version and they were full on laughing. And it's hard to convey a message of trust and training when the, narration and translation doesn't match up. We identified we had a problem, so we reached out to an expert translator that partnered with the National Hispanic Landscape Association. And what we found was they don't only do translations, but landscape industry specific translations so they understand all the [00:24:00] nuances, the slang what the technicians actually call each piece of equipment versus I think we translated a zero turn directly. We translated zero. Turn, and whereas it's actually just a zero turn, right? So we missed so many marks. So we spent at a huge expense and redid all of our Spanish narration, all of our Spanish translations, and we fixed it and we redid every single video and we just owned our mistake and made, Hey, we got this wrong. This is what we did about it. We fixed it. Have a look. And since then it's gotten a lot better. Chris Psencik: I love that 'cause nothing frustrates me more as a guy who grew up in landscaping. Is when my kids come home from Spanish class and they're asking for help on their Spanish homework and I can't help them because my Spanish doesn't relate to the Spanish that they're learning in class. And so when you told me that story, it just so resonated with me. 'cause I'm just like, man. It's all about getting [00:25:00] buy-in with your team. And if your team doesn't buy in, they're never gonna use it. They're never gonna execute it. And as a, as an organization, you can't be successful rolling that out. And so knowing and hearing how you guys address that concern, how you guys listened to your customer, took the feedback. And did something with that at the expense of what you guys were trying to accomplish from the bigger picture. Man, I just I have so much appreciation for the links you guys went to on that to make it right. So as you see technology changing walk me through a little bit like what, where's, all right, so 18 years ago, this how we did it. Here's what that looks like today. Here's how we're continuing to sharpen the saw making sure that iron sharpens army and making sure we're putting out the best, most relatable content for our teams, and that this gets better every single day. What does that look like? Matt Crinklaw: Yeah. So man, look how far technology's come in the last two years, even with ai, right? So to keep up with it, we're actually doing a ground up [00:26:00] rebuild as we speak. So we hired. Four full-time devs. Within the last six months, we've hired a product manager and his job is to interview customers, gather up their feedback, put together designs beta tests. So we hired a product manager. We hired a designer. We hired a product marketer and we've also hired a content pod that has videographers, writers project managers. So we've hired in the last. Six to 12 months, probably 15 people to really dive into keeping up with technology and making a superior product. That's what we're doing on the technical side. On the content side, our content pod, we're gonna, we're trying to get to a point where we're putting out two to three courses a month, and each course is written by an industry expert. So we [00:27:00] never just. Open up AI and generate a course, or we never just jot something down behind every single greenest course was an industry expert who vetted the content. And that's important to me because if I can be blunt, landscapers call bullshit really quickly. And so we once hired actors. So when we were early on, we were filming our courses, we'd hire actors to use the equipment and. Man, landscapers knew right away. We, they're like, no. Chris Psencik: wrinkles on those faces. Matt Crinklaw: Yeah. And so we learned it's easier to teach landscapers to act than it is to teach actors to landscape. And that says a lot about our industry, that it is highly technical, like these guys are professionals. That says a lot. So we started using real landscapers and we would compensate them for their time and they would show up in all our videos now, so all of our videos. Our landscapers in the field and we just happened to be filming them. [00:28:00] So that was another lesson we learned along the way is landscapers know their stuff, so you can't. Half as it with them. You gotta bring quality content and we're refreshing our content. We just did an exercise where we went through, we have 150 courses. We identified 25 of our oldest, and we're gonna be updating those in the next 12 months. We're working on battery power training to update with the battery trend. We're keeping an eye on autonomous robot training and integrations with that equipment. Ai, we're looking at integrating AI with greenies. And that can really help with. Generating content. So if you're a business owner and you wanna generate a tailgate talk on truck circle checks, it'll get you 80% of the way there, but then you can polish it off the last 20%, right? So we're looking at integrating ai. AI video, like I said, is not there yet. So [00:29:00] anybody familiar with AI video creation tools, go ask it to make you a blower training video and you'll be purely entertained. They'll be like walking on fences. They'll be like backwards in a house blowing off dishes, like Chris Psencik: Yep. Matt Crinklaw: is not there yet for creating video content. So that's something we gotta be the best at and continue to be the best at. Chris Psencik: Yeah. So As, you're measuring success I, would love to understand a little bit what KPIs does do most successful greenies track. Like when I get into greenies a business owner, how may not be the guy on the ground implementing what this looks like, or maybe I am the guy implementing this from the perspective of rolling this out with my crew. But, what is I, as an organizational leader, what am I looking at to show that my team is effectively. Using the system and, getting our bang for our buck and really putting this thing to work. Matt Crinklaw: Yeah, [00:30:00] a big one is like training completion rates. So out of the courses you as assigned, how many got completed? How long did it take 'em to get completed? Another one. We have a performance management tool. So each crew leader scores their field workers and then so you would get an average there. So you can see all your perform. You can run reports on your performance reviews, so you can see your overall company average. You can see where each employee ranks against the company average, so you can identify those people that might need training. Sorry, one sec. I'm just battling a cold here. Chris Psencik: You're in Toronto. We're still down in the south where it's still warm, Matt Crinklaw: Yeah, we're like minus five, minus 10 this morning and we're full on winter, so it caught up with me here. Chris Psencik: Matt. It is 62 degrees in my office and I'm freezing to death with my heater under Matt Crinklaw: Oh, I wish we shot this in person. I would've flew down. But getting back to key metrics, so those training completion rates are very important. And then we have ingredients, a tool called the ENPS. And it's a, basically, you ask your employees one question, how likely are you to recommend this company to your friends and family? And they score it from zero to 10. Your zero to six are detractors. They're gonna take away from your score, your seven and your eights are neutral. And then your nines [00:31:00] and your tens add to the score. And the final score goes from minus a hundred to plus a hundred. So you wanna see your ENPS like. 40 to 70. And that'll tell you your employees are happy at your company, they're happy with the culture. They enjoy working there. If you have a negative number on your EMPS, you have a culture problem and you need to know about that. And that's a problem. You can't pizza lunch your way out of, you can't. Run an an EMPS survey. Come back with a minus 30 and then just start Friday. Pizza lunch. You gotta actually go out and talk to your people and you solve it with empathy and extreme listening. You understand their problems, you understand their struggles. Where do they wanna go at the company? What are their career goals? What, future do they want at your company? And then you go out and solve those problems. And that's how you really impact culture. That's, how you make a difference. Chris Psencik: Yeah, I hope all of our division. And [00:32:00] directors and owners of organizations just heard what you said. 'cause it's not about just writing the check and paying for the software, it's, you have to be engaged. You said it earlier, you gotta be proactive and prioritize these things. 'cause if you're not, don't expect it to move the needle on anything. I if I want sales, I gotta manage my sales team effectively through which means I have to check in and make sure we're making progress and make sure we're using these things effectively. Success Stories of Greenius Chris Psencik: And so I love that you shared those with us. Matt, I'd love to hear you work with a lot of people across the country. You mentioned thousands of people that you guys have subscribed to this thing. I'd love if you'd share a success story of somebody that you've met along the way that has put this into play and what you've seen in an evolution standpoint of what that's been able to do for them personally, professionally, and as an organization. Matt Crinklaw: Yeah, a big one that comes to mind is Justin White of K. Landscaping. So he's been a long time greenest customer and he was telling us, Chris Psencik: a, former Ace member of Matt Crinklaw: yeah, yeah, Chris Psencik: In fact, I was his facilitator for a while. Matt Crinklaw: there you go. And he had told me that he had really high turnover and his brother committed to building an employee development program. So Chris Psencik: this very well. Matt Crinklaw: yeah. So you probably know it better than I do, but he was telling me his brother laid out a full career. Development program at his company. Ingredients is part of that development program. And then they've gotten their retention to under 20, or sorry, their turnover is now less than he last told me he was in the low teens Chris Psencik: Yeah. Matt Crinklaw: had saw him last. So he solved the labor problem and he has so many employees that are now long term at his company and he's doing big things because he has really great technicians at his business. Chris Psencik: If there's one thing I know all operators know, and Justin knows this as well, and Shane who helped roll this out, I know knew is as you grow people is your number one challenge. And for those of you who know Justin, you know, he a man can sell. The man knows how to talk. He knows how to communicate with customers. He's very effective of that. And solving the back end keeping the door closed on the back end. It allows you to get that organic growth and those things you're looking for. So I love that. That's a great example. Alright, so for, let's talk a little bit about leadership and, vision and what the future of training looks like. What have you personally learned about leadership as you've been building green? Matt Crinklaw: I've learned. A lot about leadership in the last 18 years, I've learned a lot. So Element acquired greenness and then I got to work under Mark Bradley for four and a half, almost five years, and I learned a lot of leadership from Mark. He is all about professional development. I think we read books every other week and we were, we. We were really taught a lot about leadership and then now under Mark Segley who has his own leadership style I've got, I've learned so much in the last year, that's just skyrocketed and. Chris Psencik: drinking from a fire hose. He is a Matt Crinklaw: It, it, Chris Psencik: of knowledge. Matt Crinklaw: It's, been absolutely incredible. And a big part is two things, really. Empathy and listening is know your people. Get to know everybody. Talk to them. Learn about their lives. Learn about their families. Learn about their goals. What do they want from life? What do they want from your company? And help them. Help them get there and, be empathetic to their journey. Empathy isn't like you can walk all over us. It's oh, you can just come in late every day and have, leave early every day because I'm empathetic. It doesn't have to be that it, it's truly caring about the person and helping them grow and solve problems and become a better person and build a better life at their business. The second part is great ideas can come from anywhere, Chris Psencik: Yep. Matt Crinklaw: sure you're talking to everybody and the people in the field probably have the best insights to make your business more efficient and it, you really need to be checking in with them to, to seeing what we can be doing better. And the job's never done. You'll never, be done. You're constantly gonna be tweaking and getting better. Chris Psencik: Yeah. There's so much there. I, can't even dissect all that. My I, teach people all the time. Relationships matter at all levels and it's Matt Crinklaw: Hundred percent. Chris Psencik: world. Like the guy, the newest hire I have may be the most experienced skids steer operator that I have on the crew, and I may not even know it yet. And so how do we get involved with that? How has your thinking changed about what crews actually need to succeed? Matt Crinklaw: It's changed a lot. Before it was like. Just do this 'cause I know better than you to like. Let's grow your career here and now. People that are really focusing on helping their team members grow careers at their company are the ones seeing the best retention. It's like I was talking to one contractor, he asked people. If you could have any job at the company, what is that job you wanna do? And it could be a snow shovel that's just been hired and they're like, Hey, I wanna be a carpenter. And he's okay, great. We're gonna get you to the carpenter position. And he lays out a plan to get that employee from snow shoveler to carpenter. And man, his culture is through the roof, his retention's through the roof his employees, I think they would be. The first phone call they would make if they got in trouble, would be to that company owner. I think, honestly, that would be everyone's first phone call, and that's awesome. that's that's an unstoppable culture. Chris Psencik: That's amazing. Alright what's next for Greenio? What's next for Greenius? Chris Psencik: What innovations do you guys have coming down the pipe that you're just, you're jacked and you're excited about, that you're, pumped to bring to the market? Matt Crinklaw: Yeah. Green is 2.0. We're on track to be launching it in six months. We have a customer advisory team helping us. So we have 10 greenies customers that we meet every Friday. They have feedback on every feature. They, shape everything we do. They have insights on everything. And we're building a product that meets and solves their problems. So it's [00:33:00] gonna be. Not just a better green use, it's gonna be a new green use that's actually really built by landscapers for landscapers. I'm pretty excited there's gonna be gamification in it. Crews competing against crews. There's a lot coming. It's gonna be pretty cool. Chris Psencik: And I know you're hot off the plane. Coming back from y'all's year end leadership meeting you spent a tremendous amount of time thinking about this, but like when you think through what training's gonna look like over the next five to 10 years in the landscape industry you and I are huge advocates of looking at all industries across the spectrum and then understanding how we can relate that back to what we do in the landscape industry. Where do you see workforce training and development? Going as an industry in the next five to 10 years. Matt Crinklaw: Yeah, it's labor continues to be the number one problem, right? And it seems to be less access to people at the same time. So I [00:34:00] know many businesses that could grow, like the work is there, they could grow, but they don't have the people to grow. So I think training is gonna become really. A gateway into the industry. So one one thing I noticed recently, there was a McDonald's by my house hiring recently I think they had four open positions and I drove past it. And there must have been 300 people lined up for these four positions at McDonald's. Chris Psencik: Wow. Matt Crinklaw: And like my brain, my first thought was, why aren't they in landscaping? Like we probably have enough room for all 300 of you Chris Psencik: Tomorrow. Yep. Matt Crinklaw: it's like. How do we get them here? And I believe greenness is the gateway to that. So imagine a free greenness app where they can log on, do their training, and then become a gateway into the industry. [00:35:00] And greenness is gonna solve that problem for you guys. So keep an eye on. Chris Psencik: Yeah. All right. I got a couple just random questions, just things I'm personally curious about you as a business owner and an entrepreneur things I think other people would be interested to know. But Matt, what was the best advice you ever received as a young entrepreneur running a business? Matt Crinklaw: Ooh, that's a good one. There's, been so many, I would say, and even within the last few years, I've learned some more that. Has just been game changing and one is like I create. So I love doing this. At the end of every day, I create three goals for tomorrow, and those are three top priority things I have to get done tomorrow. And. Then in the morning, first thing I do are those three hard things and it just starts compounding, right? So that's a non-negotiable for me in my calendar at the end of every day is set my three goals for tomorrow. So that habit and it's really rewarding because every day as an entrepreneur, sometimes you feel like you got nothing done because you've been putting out fires all day, or you're. Paralyzed by the amount of tasks you do. None because there's too many set three goals, and every day you'll feel rewarded that you've done something to move the needle. And by the end of the week, you've done 15 things. And then by the end of the month, you've done. things, right? And then by the end of the year you've done 700 things and it just keeps compounding and you start seeing like huge momentum. At any stage of your business, set three goals you wanna get done every single day. That's been a huge game changer for me. And then blocking out the time to do it. There's a lot of noise right now, like dings and beeps from our phones and messages and texts. It's block out the time to go get that stuff done. Chris Psencik: Yep. All right. So I, since you have three daughters, your wife, you're in the landscape industry, you and I have to answer this question a lot. And I'm curious, and I ask this because I feel like I'm always trying to answer this for other people I meet outside the landscape industry, my wife. If you could summarize what you do and how you do it, and you had to explain it to your wife in a very quick, short sentence, how would you describe to her what you do? Matt Crinklaw: Yeah, that's funny because none of my family knows what I do. It's like. Chris Psencik: what I do either. And I just, I'm, I asked this question because I feel like I answer it. All the time, and yet every day I still get questions of people saying, my mom referring me to her friend saying so and so down my street, need you to identify this weed. I'm like, mom I, don't identify weeds anymore. Like I, it's not something I do on a daily basis. I can't really help you on this, but Chad, GPT can so I'm just curious, how do you answer that question? Matt Crinklaw: Yeah, the intrinsic reward is like I say look, I help. the industry to learn new skills, to get higher wages, to build better lives for themselves. Chris Psencik: Yep. Matt Crinklaw: And that's my intrinsic motivator. That's my personal mission, is to help these technicians get better lives, get higher wages. And then the quick answer is I build an employee training and development platform for people where landscapers can add their employees and they can get access to training. Chris Psencik: Yep. All right, so as we start to wrap this up I'd love to just quickly recap. I, Matt, there you shared so much insight with us today on just the journey of greenies, where it started, your industry experience and where you started. How you got from A to Z. We talked a little bit about the implementation of how you could be successful when it comes time to implement it. I think my favorite quote that you gave us was priority creates capacity. Matt Crinklaw: I love that. Chris Psencik: And I feel like I share that all the time, that if you don't dedicate the time, effort, and energy to solving the challenge, don't expect to solve it. And so that's gonna be the success story of how you roll greenio out. That's a success story about anything you're gonna do in your business. And so I hopefully, I hope everybody heard some of the lessons that you have for us today. As we talk through it, and I'm a big podcaster. I know I listen to podcasts all the time. It's my form of entertainment and education at this point. Sean Ryan's one I love to listen to. My favorite question he always asks is Matt, you meet people all over the country. I. You work with business owners all over the country. If there were a couple people that I needed to plug in with just to pick their brain and learn more about what they do to be successful, how they've been successful who would those be and how would you talk about them? Matt Crinklaw: Yeah, I've, I'm starting to meet more and more. Business owners that are just have really great insights. Like Sam Gimbel, we were at Atlas properties the other day and he did a site tour and he just had so much connection with his people and he was telling the story about one of his workers that's been with a long term and they really helped him out. And the employees started crying. He was so grateful. So Sam has a really cool business with lots of retention. Marty Gruer resource, right? I think we all can understand that, but every time I talk to Marty, I learned something new from Marty and the Grow Group. And then actually I got to meet a bunch of the Ace member is my first time at the Ace Connect in salt Lake City, the event a few weeks ago. And man, you guys got a keen bunch and I saw the value of being in those peer groups. It was Chris Psencik: Yeah. Matt Crinklaw: wow. Chris Psencik: Yeah, it's awesome. Matt, I have so enjoyed our time together. I could, talk to you for hours. I know you and I have a big [00:36:00] 2026 ahead of us with lots of schedules of travel and trips. You and I will see the country together in, in different capacities. But I know we're gonna cross paths a lot. And I want to thank you for joining us and taking the time on a Friday after you've been gone all week. For just sitting down with us this afternoon. I know you've shared a ton of insight that all of our ACE members and everybody listening will be able to take advantage of. And I hope you'll all join us again. Matt, thank you again for Route to Success and we excited to have you all join us again on the next episode. Matt Crinklaw: Thanks everybody. Chris Psencik: Awesome, man. Have a great day. All right, Matt, you wanna hang around? we'll, Speaker: Thank you for listening to this episode of Roots of Success, brought to you by the subject matter Experts at McFarland Stanford have a question you want our coaches to tackle in a future episode. You could submit that@mcfarlandstanford.com slash podcast. And to find more helpful content from McFarland Stanford, follow us on X, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. If this or any of our episodes have piqued your interest in ACE Peer Group. [00:37:00] We encourage you to join us at Ace Discovery. Just check out the events tab@mcfarlandstanford.com. This is Jason New co-founder and principal at McFarland Stanford. We'll see you next time.