If you have a good company that does good work, provides good customer service and has knowledgeable representatives and account managers, you should have no shortage of sales. Yet companies struggle to get the sales they expect.

As we enter peak selling season, pursuing opportunities for enhancements, small construction jobs and new maintenance accounts, it’s worth looking at common obstacles that stand in the way.

1. You’re bogged down by the sheer number of proposals.

Sales reps and account managers become so involved with proposals, estimating and content creation that they can’t do anything else. In my company, we improved account manager morale and increased productivity and turnaround by expanding our proposal team to include our estimator and landscape architect. To simplify execution, we repurpose our best proposals and pull from a well-organized inventory of graphic files, customized messaging and target market data. Our customers love it because we show them what we can do and how well we do it, and how much we respect their time by being prompt.

2. Capacity and backlog.

Keeping sales and operations in balance is a constant struggle. Make sure that information between departments is shared which helps account and production teams satisfy delivery objectives and become less overwhelmed. Taking some of the load off the account managers having to do all the work frees them up to sell more.

3. No clarity around unique value proposition.

Your value proposition is not a one-size-fits-all understanding of what your customer values. Each customer segment (HOAs, commercial real estate, hospitals, schools, etc.) benefits differently from the services you offer. Ask your customers what matters most to them. Spend time with them to understand their perspective and priorities so you can better anticipate what they need and when they need it.

Selling successfully requires that you address and eliminate obsolete messaging that has lost its relevance.

4. You’ve lost track of how your customers buy.

Customer buying preferences are changing. Selling successfully requires that you address and eliminate obsolete messaging that has lost its relevance. Generations, genders and demographic groups each respond differently to your message and each have a separate list of things that keep them up at night. Improve selling by understanding the uniqueness of your customer, their business model and budgeting cycle, and sell to them the way they and their businesses want to buy. When proposing enhancements, spend your customers’ money like it’s your own. Ask yourself, if this were my landscape would I do this?

5. Lack of documentation.

In this day and age, “fast beats slow.” Invest your resources in technology to streamline processes. Cloud-based tools and systems track customer activity and help you to see what’s working. They will also improve your opportunity pipeline at every stage. The more you know about your customer, the better you can sell to them. The better your workflow and reporting systems, the easier it will be to generate revenue.

A new era.

Customers are getting used to on-demand delivery in everything from streaming entertainment to meals at their door and their expectations for turnaround can be unforgiving. Meet regularly with your team to discuss and fix obstacles, and work on adopting a companywide mindset that puts customers’ needs first. It will improve your sales, your credibility as a company that’s easy to do business with and, ultimately, your growth.

Bruce Wilson is principal of green industry consulting firm Bruce Wilson & Company.

Merriam-Webster defines a benchmark as “something that serves as a standard by which others may be measured or judged.” I agree with this definition. However, when we speak of benchmarks, we usually think of standards that take the form of numbers. Business benchmarks come in many shapes and sizes. There are benchmarks in the form of profitability ratios, debt ratios, financial ratios, production standards, etc. The most important of these we refer to as critical numbers. These numeric benchmarks are quantifiable, analytical and objective. We measure them with a calculator.

There’s a second group of benchmarks that I call intuitive benchmarks. These standards deal with the quality of one’s life. They are more real than their quantifiable counterparts because you don’t measure them with a calculator, but by means of direct experience.

intuitive benchmarks.

To explain intuitive benchmarks, consider the following qualities of life:

• Peace (tranquility, stillness of soul) as compared to anxious.
• Faith (hope that the future will be good) as compared to despairing.
• Purpose and meaning as compared to aimlessness and frustration.
• Joyful as compared to morose.
• Freedom, independent as compared to inhibited, enslaved.

The concept of Flourishing.

Merriam-Webster defines flourishing as: “marked by vigorous and healthy growth.” You, as a human and landscape professional, should flourish in all areas of your life. You measure these areas intuitively by monitoring the emotional and spiritual state. You know it in your gut, so to speak. Are you stressed? Do you hate your job? Are you in bondage to bad habits? Or are you enjoyable to be around? You experience these qualities rather than calculate them. If the benchmark is to flourish in all areas of life and your experience tells you otherwise, first recognize this fact. Then take corrective action.

in the field.

Bill was 50/50 partners with Ted. They each received the same salary. However, Bill worked late hours and bore the brunt of running the company while Ted went home at 4:30 p.m. every day. Bill knew things had to change but he couldn’t bring himself to change things.

Eric had a great company, but he had weak middle managers. His brother, Justin, was one of the managers who was given special treatment. He’d show up late for work, not complete his tasks and enjoy extra time off. It was a bad example for the other managers. Eric knew this was a problem, but he refused to take corrective action. Justin’s poor performance is a hidden cancer that is destroying the company culture.

Jacob’s dad, Wendell, founded the company 50 years ago and was its sole owner. Jacob grew up working for his dad. He hoped to one day take over the family business. Wendell was an angry control freak who wasn’t necessarily a good business man. He made many mistakes, but everyone was afraid to say something or else they would incur the wrath of Wendell. Fortunately, he relinquished ownership to Jacob. The change was immediate and refreshing.

Barbara had built a great company with a great team – except for her father. Dad did not have any ownership in the business but he had helped Barbara build it over the years. His presence in the business had become toxic and he was destroying the team atmosphere by undermining Barbara’s authority. She knew she had to fire her dad but the thought of doing so was emotionally stressful.

Jake and his brother, William, were 50/50 partners. However, William had a serious substance abuse problem. Numerous interventions and stints in rehab failed to improve the situation. William’s irresponsible behavior had potential legal implications for the business and Jake’s future.

Conclusion.

In each of the above scenarios, a responsible landscape professional and owner faced a toxic situation with a close friend or family member. These situations caused an inordinate amount of stress for these entrepreneurs and preventing them from flourishing. First, these individuals had to recognize this fact. Second, they had to obtain emotional support. Third, they had to remove the toxic person from the business. Some did so. Some still have not. It’s like facing a bully in the school yard: get a team to back you up then face down the bully.

If you find yourself in a similar situation with a toxic friend or family member, get help and take action. The emotional stress that you’ll go through confronting and dealing with a toxic person will be far exceeded by the joy and freedom you’ll experience once you remove them from your business.

Jim Huston runs J.R. Huston Consulting, a green industry consulting firm.

It may be hard to believe after the long, cold winter many of us have had, but spring is about to spring. And when it does, landscape pros will go from calm to chaos as we’re launched into what my friend and mentor Mike Rorie calls the 100 Days of Hell. Like Christmas for retailers, this is the time that makes or breaks our companies’ year. How do you not only survive them but thrive, financially, emotionally and physically?

Let’s start with the money.

We all know in business, cash is king. Require deposits from your clients up front with their signed contracts, bill immediately upon completion of their projects and don’t be shy about collecting. If you’re struggling in this area, put one person on your team in charge of billing and collecting. It’s great to have a line of credit, but at Grunder Landscaping we try to get through the 100 days without using it.

You can also ask your vendors for help. Visit them in person now and see if they’ll allow you longer terms. If your mulch supplier expects payment 30 days after you take delivery, ask them if you can go 45 days during your busy season. Do this with your top five vendors. Sure, they are facing the same financial challenges as you, but you don’t know what they can do for you if you don’t ask. If they value your business, they’ll work with you to keep it.

Lastly, make your work orders as detailed as possible. Make certain they clearly list the hours bid for the job so your team knows exactly what numbers they need to hit. I have seen the business owners I coach improve their profitability significantly just by focusing on this. You will never create a culture of accountability at your company if you do not make your expectations clear and explicit.

Pay attention to how your team is feeling.

You’re going to be asking a lot of your people in the next few months. Inspire them now with a vision of where you want to be in 100 days and the crucial role they’ll play in getting there. Foster a HOT – honest, open and transparent – environment in which they know you will listen to their concerns and work together to allay them. And no matter how stressed you may become or how great the challenges are when you’re at your busiest, do not complain in front of your team. When leaders do that, they give license to everyone else to complain too, and that drags down the whole company. When problems arise, you can and should discuss them with your team, but in a way that is focused on finding solutions rather than venting frustrations.

Don’t overlook the physical.

There’s no getting around it that landscaping is hard work. It can take a real toll on your team. We think we can get more out of our crews by pushing them, but sometimes all we’re really doing is burning them out. Instead, look for other ways to get more work done. At Grunder Landscaping, we use labor-saving equipment like dump trailers, bed edgers and mini skid-steers to load trucks with heavy edging and wheelbarrows with mulch. A lot of our work in the spring consists of clean-ups, which do not require the skill and talent that, say, installing a landscape does. This means we can hire a couple of temps to push wheelbarrows and make our normal three-man crew a five-man crew. This helps ease the burden on our permanent team members and enables us to complete more jobs in less time. We will also rent trucks if it means we can take on more work. We affix magnetic signs with our company name and logo on them and we’re on our way. Talk to your team about what else you can do. I guarantee you they’ll have ideas for improving efficiency you haven’t thought of.

Good luck with your 100 Days of Hell and be glad for them. It means you’re busy, and that’s always good for business.

Marty Grunder is a speaker, consultant and author. He owns Grunder Landscaping Co.

The National Association of Landscape Professionals hosted their 2018 Leaders Forum in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, Jan. 25-27 where employee motivation was a main topic. Here are some highlights from the event.

Why employees show up.

When you take a look at your staff, there’s a good chance that only 30 percent of the group is highly engaged in their job. About 50 percent are not engaged and are just there for a paycheck. Even worse, 20 percent are highly disengaged.

Erica Dawson with the Samuel Curtis Johnson School of Management, Cornell University, gave those numbers during her keynote, “Why we work.”

“There is a disconnect over what managers do to motivate and what actually motivates the employee.” – Sean Martin, assistant professor, Boston College

“If you have 10 employees only 3 are saying they are actively into the work they are doing,” she said. While the 20 percent who are highly disengaged is basically a lost cause, the 50 percent who are not engaged can be won over, Dawson said.

They may enjoy the job, but it’s not a place of satisfaction. Happiness is judged by how far away they are from their weekend.

“This is a huge missed opportunity in the workforce,” Dawson says. “There is a lot more that is possible for these people.”

But before you just throw money at them, even if that is what they ask for, realize that may not be the best solution to making that employee more engaged.

“There’s not a lot of evidence this is true,” she said of just increasing pay. “Pay is unrelated to work satisfaction.”

Dawson said the best way to engage employees is to find out their core values and bridge those values to the job.

Core values aren’t the following: Competencies – things you are good at; shoulds – “I should have more control, I should have stood up for myself;” wishes; or a company motto or virtues.

“Your core values are much more personal than that,” she says. “Your values are really your north star.”

To discover your core values, Dawson recommends looking to someone you admire and asking yourself what is so compelling about that person. Also look to moments where you sacrificed something – look at the reason why you made the sacrifice and the answer could lead to a core value. Finally, talk to someone about a “peak moment” in your life and explain why you felt so happy about that moment.

If you can find out your employees’ core values, you can craft their job to mean more to them.

This is what you should be doing as a business owner, “Instead of finding a bigger bonus for somebody,” Dawson said.

Motivating forces.

Sometimes a gift card to a nice restaurant isn’t the best way to recognize an employee’s good work.

Such was the case for a client of Sean Martin’s, when the assistant professor at the Carol School of Management at Boston College was a business consultant. This client always gave employees a gift card to an upscale restaurant to show the company’s appreciation for a job well done.

Except one day, an employee gave the gift card back to the human resources manager. The HR manager couldn’t believe it because the manager would love a gift card there, Martin said.

But the employee explained the gift card meant she had to buy a nice dress, find a babysitter and if they go over the gift card amount, it’s money out of her pocket.

“There is a disconnect over what managers do to motivate and what actually motivates the employee,” Martin said. Martin’s session, “Diversity that is hard to see: Motivation and the psychology of social class,” at the Leaders Forum dealt with how lower income employees view motivation differently compared to upper class employees.

Here are some tips from Martin on hiring and retention:

• Stay away from groups. When you want unfiltered feedback on your company, don’t ask employees in a group setting. They won’t give honest feedback, or maybe any feedback. “They are afraid of looking stupid,” he said.
• Invite conversation. Martin said to avoid telling people, “Don’t bring me a problem unless you have a solution.” That’s a great deterrent in finding out about problems in your company.
• Understand priorities. Martin said studies show that people from lower class incomes prioritize community/family more than any job. “That social capital they develop in their community is far more important than a paycheck,” he said.
• Put in extra effort. Martin said many lower income employees don’t want to speak up when there is a problem because they operate under a “don’t complain, don’t speak up” point of view. “You might have to put in an extra effort,” to train the workers to speak up, Martin said.
• Illustrate the value of the work. A study was done with low wage people who made calls to solicit donations for a university. The job was so bad it had 350 percent turnover. The study broke the employees into two groups.

One group continued to do the job as is, and the other group had lunch with students who received scholarships because of the phone calls the employees made. A week after that lunch, a number of job performance measures increased including donations and phone calls made for the group who had lunch with the students.

UNFILTERED thoughts.

The CEOs Unplugged panel featured: Paul Fraynd, Sun Valley Landscapes; Chris Joyce, Joyce Landscapes; Jennifer Lemcke, Weed Man USA; Jason Mathers, Monarch Landscapes; and Mark Tomko, Metco Landscape.

The panel, facilitated by Scott Jamieson, vice president of community partnerships & Midwest division leader with Bartlett Tree Experts, touched on topics such as work/life balance, managing email and morning routines. Below are some lessons from the panel:

• Describe the position. Mathers said his company was losing people as it grew. The employees would fit when the company was one size, but as the company grew bigger those people weren’t a good fit anymore and they would be fired. To stop the turnover, the company began doing profiles of key performers and use them as a benchmark of who would fit at the company and then write a job description. As the employee was mentored, Mathers could track key indicators and work on the areas the employee was struggling. If it didn’t work out and you had to fire someone, you could pinpoint the area that caused it.
• Accept reality. As business owners and executives, Lemcke said sometimes you have to accept you can’t be all things to all people, and sometimes a good work life balance isn’t possible. “Once I accepted that I gave myself a little bit of a break,” she said. Joyce said he started to realize that he wasn’t always going to be the best dad and learned to accept it. “Let’s be honest, you do what you have to do,” he said.
• Rise and shine. Fraynd said he doesn’t look at his phone for an hour after waking up, and it’s helped him ease into his days. Joyce goes to a 7/11 for coffee every morning where he can hear the same group of guys sit at a table and complain about life as he gets his coffee. He then drives to work and has his fill of negatives for the day. When he’s at a meeting he reminds everyone attending to be positive and not become a member of the “Breakfast club of broken dreams.”

Sponsors of the event included: Caterpillar (Platinum), Bayer (Gold), John Deere (Silver). Other sponsors included: Toro, Aspire, GIE+EXPO, Syngenta, Bartlett Tree Experts, Gravely and Vermeer.

NALP updates.

NALP Executive Director, Sabeena Hickman said the organization has seen 35 percent growth, and will continue with their focus on increasing the workforce through moves like their career website and a planned career day in April.

The winner is.

NALP also handed out some awards. Woman Entrepreneur of the Year: went to Jennifer Lemcke, COO Weed Man USA. Lemcke has been with Weed Man for more than 25 years, working alongside her husband, Chris, and father, Roger Mongeon, CEO of Weed Man. Lemcke has been instrumental in the growth of the franchising of the company in the U.S., recently reaching the $100 million milestone. Lemcke said when she is at industry events she is usually the only woman in the room, but recently taught a class at Brigham Young University and half of the classroom was female students.

“It was very encouraging,” she said.

Lifetime Leadership Award: Frank Mariani, CEO of Mariani Landscape in Lake Bluff, Illinois. Mariani is the second generation to run the family-owned Mariani Landscape, building it into an award-winning company, servicing some of the most prestigious properties in the Chicago area.

Mariani said one of the most important lessons he’s learned during his decades in the industry was that not everyone was like him.

“I lost a lot of good people that way,” he said. “You can learn from those mistakes you make and share them with somebody else so they won’t make the same mistake.”

Marc McTeague, partner with SeibertKeck Insurance, has been involved in insuring green industry businesses for about 25 years.

During MGIX 2018 in Columbus, Ohio, McTeague broke down a few standard areas of insurance and why these things should be covered.

Stuff that sits still.

This is your building, the contents inside and any of your inventory. “If you lease your building, you absolutely need water/fire legal liability coverage,” he said. Anything inside your building is known as “contents,” even if it can be moved. Mowers and other equipment are all considered “contents.”

Stuff that moves.

Large equipment, trucks, rented equipment and some materials need to be covered by insurance for when they are in transit or operation.

Your people.

McTeague said employees can be the most dangerous part of your business in terms of liability.

The “people” side of your insurance includes workers’ compensation both in state and out of state and employment practices liability.

“Employment practices liability covers all those ‘isms’ you could encounter,” he said. “This includes racism, sexism, ageism, harassment and wage or hour disputes.”

McTeague said this type of coverage is essentially paying for your attorney if a situation occurs. But, companies need to understand that this may only apply to intracompany incidents.

He also suggested having key person life insurance. If something were to happen to a key player in your company, there would be life insurance on that person.

Your work.

Insuring your work will protect your products, property damage, subcontractor relationships and even mistakes.

“Error and omissions coverage will cover you if you misread a plan and have to restart your entire project. You will have a cushion with that coverage,” he said.

Having insurance on property damage will protect anything that may be damaged while in your care, custody or control. Additionally, when using a subcontractor, they are covered as if they are part of your company with this type of insurance. However, McTeague recommended subcontractors also get their own insurance to be safe.

Your customer.

You will be able to insure anything in your care, custody or control on a jobsite. McTeague also considers issues regarding client feelings. These third-party employee policies cover liability claims brought by nonemployees like customers and clients.

The public.

Companies should consider additional protections for your business. You’ll also want to look into your liability when it comes to issues in neighboring properties. For instance, if you’re spraying a yard and the wind carries the chemical next door and kills all the flowers. “You must have an umbrella policy,” McTeague said. “Everyone needs this no matter your size.”

Pesticide bans and restrictions, immigration laws and leaf blower restrictions are just a few legislative topics the National Association of Landscape Professionals (NALP) is looking at this year. And digging deeper to the state and local levels, even more of these topics emerge. With that in mind, NALP appointed Bob Mann to serve as its director of state and local government relations in September, which was a newly created position.

“It’s not something that the association hasn’t done before, but it’s the first time we’ve had a position with this label on it,” Mann said.

Prior to working with NALP, Mann served as an agronomist for Lawn Dawg. He was a landscape industry certified lawn care manager and certified pesticide applicator in six states. However, he also had experience helping with local and regional policies in Massachusetts, as well as with serving as president of the Massachusetts Association of Lawn Care Professionals.

Lawn & Landscape met with Mann to learn more about his new position at NALP and which legislative issues are of the most concern to the association this year.

Lawn & Landscape: Why did NALP add the position of director of government relations again last year? Are there more legislative issues than usual?

Bob Mann: Politics is like a pendulum. It goes back and forth between the extremes. For a very long time, there wasn’t a lot of activism on the state or local level. Most of that activity was taking place at the federal level, especially with prior administration. With the election of Donald Trump and his selection of Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA, you notice that of course there’s downsizing of the agency, a lot of people let go and things they were doing over prior administration were either shut down or restricted. You notice that activism is now reverting to the state level. And in speaking with friends who happen to be on the other side of the argument, they recognize that this is a trend. They embrace it and say this is our opportunity to affect change at the state and local level. Now there is activism at the local level, that wasn’t there a couple of years ago.

L&L: So, do you see more of these bans emerging in communities?

Mann: Yes, I think that’s where that is trending now. You see anti-pesticide groups that are mobilizing localities to work on a ground swell at local levels. The current hotspot for this kind of activity is in the Portland, Maine, area. The Portland City enacted the most stringent pesticide ordinance in the country back in January on a unanimous vote.

This ordinance, and similar ones in South Portland and Ogunquit, Maine, exist in the absence of state pre-emption of pesticide regulations in Maine, one of a handful of states that do it this way. Anti-pesticide activists organized in these communities a couple of years ago giving one-sided and open-ended presentations to political boards with the intention of enacting local ordinances. Once passed, the activists use the victories as leverage in the next fight.

We saw this when a bill that would strip state pesticide pre-emption was debated in Massachusetts in October 2017.

An activist testified in front of the Joint Committee on the Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture telling of their success in getting local ordinances passed in Maine and how wonderful it would be if they could do that in Massachusetts.

L&L: Are there any other laws emerging in the last year that are concerning to you?

Mann: We see there’s a particular class of insect controls that we use that are called neonicotinoids. It’s an insecticide that’s used extensively in agriculture and also in horticulture and lawn care. The beauty of these insecticides is they’re systemic in nature. You apply it, it goes in the plant so there’s not an awful lot of it on the outside, so it doesn’t have a lot of effect on non-target insects. Then (there is) colony class disorder. This is a problem with managed honey bee colonies where the bees would just fly away. Where’d they go?

They don’t know where they are. Another symptom is they drop dead outside the hive. There was great deal of concern as to why these bees were acting this way – there were tremendous losses up to 40 to 60 percent of the hives were being destroyed. If you are on the outside and don’t understand what the reason is, it’s very easy to go and say, “It must be pesticide.” A knee jerk reaction.

It took a lot of research to dive into it. And we found out it was sort of a multifactorial kind of thing – there’s a lot of things going on with it.

But if you happen to be an anti-pesticide advocate, you just want to remove pesticides from the market regardless of the reason. You seize upon something like this and say, “Let’s go after that.” There have been a number of bills filed across the country that seek to either restrict or eliminate the use of neonicotinoids regardless of whether they’re a problem or not.

L&L: Are there any regions of the U.S. where anti-pesticide advocates are more common?

Mann: Yes – it’s a red state, blue state equation. Up in the northeast where the states are very blue, there’s an awful lot of activism. I live in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and there’s a lot of activism up there. And all the way down the corridor into D.C., those are all very blue areas. But you don’t find a lot of activism in agricultural states. In more rural areas, people have more intimate knowledge of pesticides because they live in farming communities. So, it’s really down to a red state, blue state equation in my estimation.

L&L: What are some other challenges NALP is looking into?

Mann: Many of our members rely upon labor that’s available to them under the H-2B program. It’s a fight that has to be refought on an annual basis. There are so few H-2B visas available that makes it difficult for our members to get enough people they need to have work done. But (this topic) gets tossed into the big, ugly snowball of illegal immigration. Even the president doesn’t seem to appreciate the fact that as an owner of golf courses, his golf courses were using H-2B labor.

That’s public knowledge. It’s kind of surprising that the administration is so harsh on this particular issue. Be that as it may, it’s a different administration with a different battle plan.

L&L: We’ve also noticed there are reports in the news on towns banning leaf blowers, either due to noise violations or the use of gas-powered equipment. Has NALP been looking into this?

Mann: It’s curious that one of our members was listening to a radio broadcast based in Boston and this was the topic of conversation. The city of Newton just outside Boston is a very progressive city. They are contemplating a complete ban on gas-powered leaf blowers, which was driven by complaints. People were complaining, complaining, complaining.

They would call the police department, and the police kept record of complaints. They narrowed it down to roughly 15 to 25 people in town who made up the vast majority of the complaints. It’s not a small town – there’s a lot of people living in Newton. But only 25 people made all the noise about the leaf blower use, and one person in particular who never put the phone down.

The ordinance is apparently empowering the police department to write tickets for people who use their leaf blowers – including contractors. And police are saying, “We don’t want anything to do with that – we have far more important things to do.” The last thing they want to do is deal with leaf blowers.

So what we’ve done in conjunction with OPEI (Outdoor Power Equipment Institute) is put together guidelines for landscapers to use as a communication device for with media and politicians to explain to them the proper way to operate these types of equipment. A lot of time you hear a leaf blower and those are from circa 1962, and they don’t have a muffler or they’re blowing smoke. But what used to be a giant, horrible, deafening machine is now much quieter and does a better job.

Unfortunately, if you happen to be a detractor of this type of landscape equipment, you don’t appreciate the fact that the industry is making advances. It’s a difficult situation to overcome.

L&L: What should landscapers do to help advocate on behalf of these issues?

Mann: We desperately need more people to come out – not only belong to the association – but become active in the association. People are busy, there’s only so many hours in the day. And it can be hard to impress upon landscapers how important it is to be politically active in your industry. But there are people out there trying to put you out of business. Just because you don’t see them on a daily basis, it doesn’t mean they’re not there. You can’t be reactionary. If you show up to try to defend your business and don’t have a relationship with your representative, senator or governor, it’s already too late. It’s all over. It’s important to understand and appreciate who it is that’s representing you.

L&L: Contractors are busy and working more hours than they’d like – but how do they make time to meet with senators and representatives?

Mann: First, you’d be surprised to learn who some of your customers are. Back when I owned my own business, one of my customers was Elizabeth Warren. Go figure. Sen. Warren and I are opposite ends of the political spectrum. But when we do the Renewal and Remembrance Event in Washington, D.C., every year, you spend the second day on Capitol Hill, meet representatives and senators and say what things are important to your industry where you live. When I went to Sen. Warren’s office, I sat down with her and her staffer who worked with environmental issues but we had a good time.

I had a meet-and-greet with her after and she remembered me from when I worked for her and her husband. I don’t think people appreciate the fact that these people representing them at a national level are actually their neighbors, and in some cases, you probably have some of them as customers.

I had an incident not too long ago where there was something important that needed to be done. I reached out to horticulture groups and asked for help. Someone got back in touch with me and said, “It so happens there are two people on the legislative committee in my town, they’re good friends of mine I grew up with.” It’s a constant network of relationships that grow and you initiate. But you have to invest in these relationships for them to come to fruition.

After 25 years, horticultural tradeshow New England Grows is discontinuing operation. The Grows board of directors, representing the four founding partner organizations, made the unanimous decision to dissolve and disband both the Grows event and the organization.

“The decision to dissolve New England Grows was difficult, but we all believe it is the right decision at the right time," said Grows president Michelle Harvey of Lakeview Nurseries in Lunenburg, Massachusetts. “Changes both within and outside of the industry contributed to the decision to close Grows, but this does not diminish the significant and positive contributions Grows has made to the local green industry."

The 25-year-old organization will disband with the dissolution of the trade show.

Founded by New England Nursery Association, Massachusetts Arborists Association, Massachusetts Nursery & Landscape Association, and Massachusetts Association of Landscape Professionals in 1993, New England Grows' mission was to educate, elevate and support the region's commercial horticulture industry. Over the course of more than two decades, the nonprofit contributed millions of dollars in educational grants to the industry through its partners, as well as to horticultural and community groups like Cooperative Extension, the Horticultural Research Institute, FFA organization, local vocational schools, and the Boston Schoolyard Initiative.

“We want to thank each and every one of the countless volunteers who worked tirelessly to produce Grows over the past 25 years, as well as the loyal exhibitors who supported the show from day one," said Virginia Wood, executive director of Grows.