After receiving help from industry pros, Jason Cupp decided to give back his time and help other business owners in the industry.
Photo courtesy of Jason Cupp
Jason Cupp spent the bulk of his career building a landscaping business in Kansas City, Kansas, but his biggest passion is helping other business owners succeed.
After growing and managing a landscaping business for 20 years, Cupp resolved to give back to others in the industry by volunteering time to industry associations and starting a consulting service. He began his consulting business about 10 years ago, and today he helps hundreds of clients across the U.S., many of which are in the green industry.
Even though Cupp has developed an extensive client list, colleagues describe him as personal and down-to-earth with everyone he helps. Julie Farrow, founder and president of Plantscapers – an interior plant design firm in Irvine, California – attributes her business’ growth to Cupp’s consulting work.
“Without his prodding and strategy, we would have kept dragging our feet (on a decision),” Farrow says. “I think we’ve grown 45 percent with his leadership. His level of consulting is something you don’t see in the green industry a lot. He’s reasonable and passionate about his clients and what he does – it’s infectious.”
Unintended career path.
Cupp first landed in landscaping almost by accident at 12 years old. “My dad was doing some part-time real estate at the time, and he had two relocation properties that needed to be mowed,” he says.
Cupp spent his weekends mowing two properties for about $100 per week. What started as a weekend job eventually turned into a business. Cupp officially launched The Kincaide Company in 1986 to service customers in Kansas City.
Cupp didn’t plan on pursuing a full-time career in landscaping. When he graduated from high school, he went to the University of Kansas to study advertising while working at The Kincaide Company on the side.
However, halfway through college, he received a job from a homebuilder that would generate about $1 million in annual revenue by itself. He says that job opened his eyes to the possibilities he had with his business.
“I started to see opportunity in landscaping,” he says. “I had clients who believed in me, and I saw myself making money and building careers for other people around me.”
Cupp received his bachelor’s degree and decided to focus full-time on growing his company.
Donating time back.
Cupp never received a formal education in landscaping or business, so he credits a lot of what he learned to trade publications and associations. In particular, he learned a lot from industry leaders involved in the Associated Landscape Contractors of America, today known as NALP. Cupp says he connected with many industry leaders who came before him – Jim McCutcheon, Ron Kujawa and Frank Mariani, to name a few.
In 2004, after a few years of learning from these leaders, Cupp signed up to be on the association’s board of directors. Cupp joined ALCA’s board at a challenging time.
Dan Foley, the president of DHCC Management Corporation, says the association was going through a merger with PLCAA, the national lawn care association. The two groups officially merged in 2005 and were renamed the Professional Landcare Network.
“It was an interesting time for the national association,” Foley says. “There were two national associations that got together and a whole group of people coming together – doubters, believers, old-timers and new-timers. (Jason) continued a legacy of leadership in an important time. He (took) his role as a leader with extreme responsibility to the point where I think sometimes he cared more about the association at times than for himself or his own business.”
Sabeena Hickman was also joining the association around that time as its new CEO. The association was in the process of moving and merging its national education event, now called LANDSCAPES, into the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute’s GIE+EXPO show. She says Cupp helped to organize and develop what the event has turned into today.
“I know he was spread thin, but I feel like he never showed it,” she says. “He gave 100 percent to everything, which says a lot about his character.”
Coaching others.
As Cupp led PLANET, he also realized he had a passion for consulting work. Cupp received Kolbe Index certification in 2006 to improve hiring in his own business. The Kolbe Index measures people’s natural instincts to help business owners understand their employees better. After receiving the certification, colleagues began asking Cupp about the Kolbe Index for their own companies, including Foley for his business. When Cupp administered the Kolbe Index training at Foley’s business, he says he had the “most satisfying day of work” ever.
“I remember getting into the car and thinking about the long-term impact that day would have on (Foley’s company), their employees, their finances,” he says. “It was the first time in my life that I felt like I had worked, but I didn’t really work.”
At that point, Cupp refocused his career on building his consulting business. In 2009, he officially informed employees of his plans to shut down his business. He sold off some assets and then closed the doors in November.
“Jason has always been one to help others thrive, whether it be through peer groups, his consultancy or helping out a friend,” Hickman says. “He has touched and improved so many businesses, caring for them as if they were his own.”
Since then, Cupp has been fully dedicated to consulting other businesses. He tries to meet with clients in person as much as possible, so he estimates he takes about 140 plane rides each year.
“He does traditional Kolbe certification coaching, but he works with teams on more than that,” Foley says. “He turns different scenarios into coachable moments.”
Making the grade, managerial change and weather woes
Features - Turnaround Tour 2018
The three companies recap how their summers went and where they want to improve for the fall and beyond.
Michael Mould & Tiffany Tucker, owners, New Visions Lawn & Landscape
Photos by Jon Arman
The three Turnaround Tour winners have wrapped up the summer season and have eyes on finishing 2018 strong. New Visions continues to collect revenue at a record-breaking pace, but needs to keep an eye on the quality of the work performed. LaCholla Landscaping had a recent change that owner Gabe Lobato will need to be navigate. Outdoor Expressions continues to be slowed down by bad weather in 2018, but that hasn’t stopped the company from lining increased sales for 2019.
Quality Focus
Last time we checked in:
Michael Mould and Tiffany Tucker were coming off their highest grossing month (March) since taking the company over in 2016. Mould hired a foreman to manage paver jobs, leaving him more time to sell maintenance and enhancement work. Mould said he was concerned about the quality of the work on some jobs and wanted to improve in that area.
Latest updates:
Michael Mould and Tiffany Tucker continue to shatter records at New Visions. This time, the duo made $120,000 in July, which was their highest revenue number since making $79,000 in March of 2018.
But the rapid progress is no surprise, considering they joined the Turnaround Tour to get help managing that growth.
“It's like a controlled chaos now instead of chaos,” Mould says. “We feel like we've got a grasp on the day-to-day operations and scheduling and everything like that. Even though there's a lot of work that’s hitting the schedule, we're doing pretty good on getting to everything.”
But just like in the spring, the growth was causing the quality of work on properties to slip.
To combat that, Mould has instituted a grading system. Each crew gets assessed on three yards a week. Crews start with a hundred points, and Mould takes off two points for any major mishap on that yard. If they go below a 90, they failed that property. Some examples of major mishaps would be weeds bigger than 3 inches, shrubs not trimmed and leaving debris in a yard.
Mould has implemented a grading system to ensure a good quality of work.
When crews pass two out of the three yards, they get an extra dollar per hour they were worked that week. Mould hopes to eventually get to the point where passing all three yards is the norm to get a bonus.
“I don't think (the crews) were used to doing yards as thorough as what we are trying to move towards – improving our quality,” Mould says. “So, it'd probably be discouraging. I wanted to give them those bonuses at first to encourage them, and then move to passing three out of three.”
Mould will soon pass off his grading to a new maintenance manger he just hired. Mould met the new manager when he had a flat tire last year while he was working at another company. The two built a relationship for over a year and now he has joined Mould at New Visions. Mould will train the new manager over the winter and have him ready to go for next spring.
With a manager for the paver division in place and now one for the maintenance division, Mould will reduce his amount of direct reports to just the two managers.
“I’m going to thin out our customer base and get rid of the ones that we aren't really making much money on. I'm going to get rid of them, and then I'm going to go get commercial accounts. I'm going to sell enhancements. I'm going to push (the new maintenance manager) to sell enhancements, and I'm going start recruiting better people.
Wet weather has posed an issue for Tucker and Mould, especially with customers who have maintenance contracts. The rain has caused them to miss some mows, but the way New Visions structured contracts, they have some rain dates built in.
“We schedule for, on average, 41 cuts a year,” Mould says. “We only charge them for 38. If weather permits, they're actually going get 41 cuts instead of 38. We just explain that to them and let them know that they're actually getting extra services with predictions that there will be rain from time to time.”
Harvester’s take:
Mike and Tiffany are doing an outstanding job in growing their company. Of course, a vibrant economy where they are located certainly helps. Despite the typical problems and close to monsoon weather in that portion of Florida, it looks like they are going to triple their sales over last year, closing in on their first $1 million.
They attribute a good portion of this to extensive radio ads, great response from their website and a strong referral network. We suggested rewarding those people giving them the referrals with something tangible like gift baskets and thank you cards. With extremely fast growth comes challenges and as with most it always centers around people. They are experiencing great success due to hard work and planning but we advised them that they should be using the Harvest mini-budget so they don’t veer off course. They agreed to do that ASAP.
Gabe Lobato, owner, La Cholla Landscaping
A new ingredient
Last time we checked in:
Lobato had delayed using a calling service to contact commercial properties in order to get more commercial maintenance work, but he was still considering it for future use. After initially feeling overwhelmed working a large commercial property, he was getting a better grasp on the job and gaining confidence in winning more commercial work.
Latest updates:
After feeling comfortable with the commercial job and his relationship with the property manager, Lobato learned that the manager was no longer in charge of the property. Lobato is set to soon have a meeting to walk the property with the new manager. He’s confident in the work LaCholla has done on the property, but there is still some anxiety in meeting the new person in charge.
“There's just that anxiety of them wanting to terminate it and hand it to one of their buddies,” he says.
The calling service wasn’t what Lobato expected. He thought the service would be scheduling appointments, but instead was passing him leads that he had to contact and schedule a time to meet. So far, none of those leads turned into appointments.
As far as residential accounts, Lobato had noticed the company wasn’t getting as many residential property leads compared to previous years during peak season. It turns out, a few of his major keywords had fallen off page one to page two in Google searches, so he worked with someone locally to have that cleaned up.
Lobato also e-mailed a newsletter to his current client base with a discount for a monsoon cleanup.
“Literally, within like an hour or two after it went out, we had a handful of leads come in after that,” he says, adding that some of those leads turned into jobs. But even with those new jobs, Lobato’s overall revenue hasn’t increased. “Numbers wise, gross sales wise, it's pretty much right on par from last year,” he says.
Harvester’s take:
We have implemented several ideas to try and break into the commercial market to help Gabe build a more balanced portfolio and to replace the smaller sized residential accounts he now serves in the Tuscan area. We have had very limited results. But Gabe can absolutely grow his business in the residential sector.
We suggest Gabe add a referral program for existing happy customers. This is where Gabe would offer a month's service for free or a portion there of to an existing customer where their referral signed up for his services.
We would also suggest a “four post” program in neighborhoods where he has several satisfied customers. He or a team member would drop off a flyer or even a gift certificate to homes nearby his existing customers.
These would be next door, both sides, across the street and behind the existing customer, hence the name “four post.” We will help Gabe with building a flyer that will get the neighbors interested!
Kimberly Rowe & Lamont Hess, owners, Outdoor Expressions PA
More weather woes
Last time we checked in:
A cold and rainy spring forced Lamont Hess and Kimberly Rowe into getting a late start (early April) on jobs. They were still struggling to add quality employees but did have some success using a temp agency. Hess continues to get good leads and facetime with decision makers by visiting offices, but still struggles learning to bid jobs.
Latest update:
While the rainy weather in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (it was the fourth-wettest July ever) continues to make performing maintenance on yards difficult, Hess is pushing through and trying to get to them before they grow too long and damage mowers.
“We had some places that grown up to a foot and you know, we're out there trying to mow it,” Hess says. Most of the week, Hess has two, three-man crews each, but the way the jobs fall they are working together most of the time on HOAs because they are so big.
The delays in being able to service yards hasn’t forced Hess to jump on a mower and help, but he has been doing some trimming while still selling new jobs.
He’s got bids on two developments that are almost $100,000 each and he’s sold two new residential accounts, one small commercial account and is in the running to get another HOA, which would be another $20,000 to end the year on.
We didn't get anywhere close to our goals this year,” Hess says. “But if I get some of the bids that I'm doing right now, we should be in great shape for next year. That's just, if I can figure out how to bid right.”
One property manager, whose property Hess bid on, told him she would be willing to pay more for better quality.
“What was really fun about the experience is to take the manager and drive the property and we drove it the day after it was serviced and she's pointing out what they had done and writing it down. These guys missed all kinds of stuff,” he says.
And even though Hess has been able to have success selling for 2019, he is concerned the quality of his current jobs has been slipping.
“Like weed eating – guys zip around and they miss little areas,” he says. During a morning meeting, Hess goes over any areas they can improve or that a customer complained about. “Then I get the blame game. ‘Well, he did that. No, he did that.’ I'm like, 'Okay, I don't care who did it, but if this looks like this next week, I'm going to have a problem with somebody.’”
Hess would still like to spend more time on finding better labor. He found a part-time employee through Craigslist. Another part-time employee found Hess through searching for landscaping jobs, and one through referral.
“I've actually turned everybody over this spring except for two people,” he says. “But I actually have a pretty good crew right now as far as everybody works hard.”
The Harvester’s Take:
Although LaMont suffered from job inefficiencies in the beginning of the season and many of the jobs he inherited with the purchase of the company were underpriced, his main problem has been, not enough sales.
As a result he doesn’t have enough sales to cover his overhead each month. The best thing he can do between now and the end of the year is carefully watch the amount of hours used and sell as much work as possible. He has already scrutinized his overheads and is operating as lean as possible.
If he can keep his payroll down and increase his enhancement sales, it won’t be a soft landing but he should make it.
He will be in much better shape next season because he has sold a substantial amount of work for next year already, at much higher prices and he has a year under his belt and better understands how to operate a successful landscaping business.
Lawn and landscape leaders create industry culture of learning and growth
Harvey Firestone, founder of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, once said, “The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.” Thankfully, we commonly see this sentiment displayed by leaders in the lawn and landscape industry as they invest in their customers and teams while also encouraging innovation, which is essential for industry growth and success. To honor those who achieve this important balance of industry development, Syngenta is proud to sponsor the 2018 Lawn & Landscape Leadership Awards.
Syngenta values opportunity and growth and wants to see your business thrive. We are committed to supporting you with products and resources like our new Soil Temperature Alerts found on GreenCastOnline.com, which offer personalized alerts for potential pest activity based on 10 years of soil temperature archives.
Additionally, the GreenTrust® 365 program offers yearlong rebates to help maximize your business’s purchasing power, along with the opportunity to sign up to earn GreenTrust Rewards points for added savings and bonuses. We’re also spearheading innovation with products like new Manuscript® herbicide, which provides post-emergence control of mature grassy weeds like crabgrass, tropical signalgrass and more in certain warm-season turf species.
Congratulations to the Lawn & Landscape Leadership Class of 2018! Your dedication to our industry, and to the personal advancement of yourselves and your colleagues, inspires us to be reliable partners for tools, programs and products that can help you succeed. We look forward to growing beside leaders like you for years to come.
For more information about resources for your lawn and landscape business, please visit GreenCastOnline.com/Lawn.
Do the right thing for the right reason. That’s the philosophy that has driven Nada Duna throughout more than 30 years of work in the green industry. Making her way from gardener to foreman, all the way to senior vice president for Valley Crest, now BrightView. She’s currently the chief operations officer of maintenance at Gothic Landscape in Valencia, California, but her core values of people, passion and persistence haven’t changed.
Those who know Duna describe her as people person who’s extremely driven, and her enthusiasm for the industry rubs off on those around her. She takes the time to get to know who she’s working with and provide support in any way she can.
“We really believe in service leadership and she’s a living definition,” says Jon Georgio, president of Gothic Landscape. “She puts everyone else – her staff, her clients, her trade partners – she puts all their needs before her own. She’s really rolled up her sleeves in dedicating to have everyone around her accomplish their goals.”
For example, one Saturday, when Gothic Landscape was just starting a new location, Duna went out to meet the first five employees hired for the branch. The crew needed to get to a job, but they quickly realized that no one had the proper driver’s license. So Duna drove them an hour and a half to the job, worked with them all day and then drove them back.
When asked why she did it, she simply replied, “They needed to get the job done.” Plus, she had a good time doing it.
Duna’s determination and talent have earned her a reputation among her peers as a fierce competitor and an asset to any company.
“She makes her expectations very clear and then holds people to that,” says Bruce Wilson, former vice president at ValleyCrest. “Some people – when they hold people accountable – are kind of gnarly or don’t make it a fun place to work and she always did. I think that’s kind of a unique talent. I think her personality just engages other people.”
Finding a passion.
Duna was born in Lebanon and while her siblings wanted to grow up to be medical doctors, she had a different calling. “I just loved plants,” she says. “I love plants; I love the outdoors and I love people.”
So she studied agriculture and horticulture with a minor in business. Then, during the Lebanese Civil War, she started working as a research assistant for a Professor Bob Rice at Cal Poly who sponsored her to come to the U.S. on a student visa. She says without him, she wouldn’t be here today.
She arrived with $5 in her pocket and started studying horticulture again. It was then that she got a job with Environmental Care (which later became ValleyCrest) moving her way up the ranks from gardener to foreman to supervisor and all the way to senior vice president.
But it wasn’t easy. When she first started, some of her Spanish-speaking coworkers were taking bets on how long she would last, not knowing that Duna speaks five languages, including Spanish.
“They raised about $200 and when they found out I spoke Spanish and I understood them all this time and I kept working there, they wanted to give me the money,” she says, laughing. Duna refused, and instead they threw a party with the pot of money.
She kept learning as much as she could from each job she held and eventually gained an extremely thorough understanding of the industry from the business, the management and the technical sides.
“If you ask those that have competed with Nada, she’s fundamentally raised the bar for what excellence is because she is so customer-focused and her teams do such great work,” says Roger Zino, former CEO of BrightView. “She’s just raised the bar for excellence and innovation in the industry.”
Duna speaks five languages: English, Arabic, French, Armenian and Spanish. She loves to travel. Her favorite place is Paris and she wants to take an African safari some day.
Taking the time.
Duna is constantly driven to improve the lives of those around her, whether it’s by creating a beautiful landscape, helping an employee develop their skills or inspiring great work. “Resolving issues and coming up with solutions is kind of fun so that’s what keeps me going,” she says. “It’s a very special industry because every industry deals with people, but the impact people have on clients and our environment is amazing here.”
And people are the most important thing to her. During her time at ValleyCrest, she knew the names of all 500 of her employees. She’s adept at identifying talent, putting the right person in the right job and helping them grow, Zino says.
“Her ability to develop people is just phenomenal, but she does it by spending a lot of time,” he says. “She’s really observant and she asks a ton of questions, so she gets the right people lined up against the right things and then she invests the time in them and you just watch them thrive. It’s just really cool to watch.”
Her intelligence and forward-thinking nature have made a big impact on Gothic Landscape as well, Georgio says. She’s made the company quicker to act on decisions, staying up to date on the latest sustainable techniques for Gothic’s projects.
“We believe, and she believes, that growth is only followed by doing the right things for the right reasons and she’s done this by quickly creating a lot of energy and excitement,” he says. “She’s made us much more nimble and quicker in our decision-making, and that’s really propelled us forward.”
Leading by example.
As someone who’s constantly driven to do her best, Duna inspires great work from those around her. She knows where she wants to go and knows how to get there, but she doesn’t try to go it alone.
“She has a vision of where to go next that’s better than where it is today so that’s helpful and exciting for people,” Zino says. “She does a nice job of articulating that vision and explaining to people how they fit in going forward. She’s not delegating the work; she’s there working with you and it’s just infectious.”
And Duna has some words of wisdom for those working their way up. “Learn everything about the job. Don’t just learn the business aspect of it,” she says. “Learn, listen, focus on people and be persistent.”
Her basic philosophy involves a lot of Ps, she says with a laugh. “People create performance and performance creates profit and it’s not the opposite,” she says. “It starts with people. Think about the things you’re improving for people and plants and the planet.”
Consensus builder
Leadership Awards - 2018 Leadership Awards
The past decade, Scott Grams moved the Illinois Landscape Contractors Association to the next level through his expertise on legislative policies and hosting educational events.
Scott Grams might be a relatively new face to the green industry – his introduction to the industry came about a decade ago when the Illinois Landscape Contractors Association hired him as its executive director. But ILCA members and colleagues say he’s gone above and beyond his job description.
“He brings so much more to (the job) than what a typical paid person would bring,” says Mark Utendorf, president of Chicago-based Emerald Lawn Care and ILCA board of directors member. “He’s created a tremendous sense of community within the association and within the green industry.”
Utendorf describes Grams as a “consensus builder” because of his ability to unify the association’s board of directors. With a more cohesive board, Utendorf says the association looks much more professional.
“There’s a tendency within the marketplace where people think that there’s a lot of landscapers who aren’t as professional as they should be,” Utendorf says. “But the level of professionalism Scott brought to (ILCA) contrasts that negative image.”
Rethinking finances.
Prior to stepping in as ILCA’s executive director, Grams held a few other association management roles. He interned at the Illinois Road & Transportation Builders Association and once he graduated, he was the education manager at the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association.
While Grams intended to pursue a career in local government, he says his internship prompted him to focus on a career in association management. So, when ILCA posted a job opening for the executive director role in 2008, he knew it would be a great fit.
Grams had no experience in the green industry. He jokes that he didn’t even have a landscape when he was hired. However, he did have a soft spot for helping small business owners. “I liked the environment of being able to take a strategic plan, dissect it and use resources and volunteers to hopefully get closer to achieving those efforts while also making the industry better for the people who are in it,” he says.
When he joined ILCA, the economic health of the association was struggling. Grams says ILCA had many educational programs, but it relied on just one to profit: its Mid-Am trade show.
And in Grams’ first week on the job, ILCA met with Mid-Am trade show management to discuss the show’s declining revenues.
“The management company basically said, ‘The show is starting to decline, and booth sales are drying up,’” Grams says. “It’s my second day in the office, and I’m being told to make a decision on the largest revenue-producing event that we have.”
Grams suggested Mid-Am integrate more top-notch educational sessions to draw people to the show. And it worked. The show went from 200 to 600 attendees as a result. Mid-Am survived a little longer, but trade show management decided to make the 2013 show its last.
The day after the last Mid-Am, Grams and ILCA decided to create a new trade show for 2014 that they dubbed iLandscape.
Although Grams only envisioned iLandscape to be a small educational show to replace Mid-Am, the show grew much larger than anticipated. The show has grown from about 4,500 attendees to 6,300 in 2018 with 450 booths and 30 educational sessions this year.
Scott Grams improved communication between members and directors when he transitioned to executive director of ILCA.
Smoothing out relationships.
Grams has also helped to improve relationships within the association. When he started, Grams noticed that relations among ILCA staff, the board of directors and ILCA members lacked good rapport, so new ideas were seldom implemented.
Lisa Fiore, vice president of operations at Don Fiore Company in Lake Bluff, Illinois, and immediate past president of ILCA, says Grams is always responsive with communication. “He’s always providing us with spreadsheets of updates on progress,” she says. “He’s really good about trying to get back to us on time-critical matters.”
In addition to improving relations within ILCA, Utendorf says Grams also helped merge smaller associations into ILCA. In 2016, Utendorf says the Illinois Professional Lawn Care Association approached Grams about merging with ILCA.
“With IPLCA we had a group of guys doing everything but not enough bandwidth to get things done,” says Utendorf, who was a founding member of IPLCA. “Scott put together a terrific blueprint to fold IPLCA into ILCA. That’s not easy to do.”
Grams kept many of IPLCA’s programs in tact after the merger, and he warmly welcomed those members into ILCA.
Pulse on policy.
Along with being a team builder, Grams has been instrumental in gathering industry professionals together to lobby for legislative issues. As Grams started his career with ILCA, he says there wasn’t nearly as much legislative advocacy work being done.
In 2011-12, he helped members navigate a prevailing wage issue.
“Prevailing wage is a wage that has to be paid to anyone working on a public works contract, which in Illinois was $56 an hour,” Grams says. “So, when a landscape contractor was doing a public works job, every single employee, every single hour was getting $56, which was very difficult for a company that would normally be paying employees $15 an hour to try to navigate.”
And just last year, Grams helped ILCA fight against Senate Bill 9, which would have placed a 6.25 percent service tax on landscape industry companies, as well as companies in other service-based industries.
Grams created and shared a packet of information with phone scripts and emails to ILCA members to make it easy for them to get involved. He also did a lot of radio interviews to promote the issue statewide.
After a few months of lobbying, the landscape industry was removed from S.B. 9.
“He really understood the lingo and how to talk to people to make an impact,” Fiore says. “When Scott is advocating for us, he’s right in the throes and passion of the industry not as a landscape business owner, but still a lover of the industry.”
Megan Smalley
