Some people have exit plans, you know, a lot of times, I mean, you’re told by a mentor… Hey, go into it with an exit plan. You know, know what you know, know what your exit plan is. I’ve got no exit plan. I live, breathe, drinks, sleep, eat every bit of this landscaping industry. I just love it. And I only do the pest control fertilizer part.
I don’t do the mowing. I don’t do the planting. I don’t do landscaping. No cutting, no anything. But that part of the industry is so special to me, and my father’s Polish. He’s in it, you know, he, and he’s, he’s been going strong for 40 years. I don’t see me ever getting out of it. I know I got a power ball ticket in my pocket right now, and that may change that. LOL
For right now I see myself in it until at least my seventies. — Jeff Juchnowicz, Terra Garden Solutions
(The following podcast is an interview between Bailey Peer of Peer Landscaping and Jeff Junchnowicz of Terra Garden Solutions.)
Welcome to the Landscape Cafe brought to you with support from Fort Myers Garden Service, maintaining and protecting business and residential landscapes. Visit https://fortmyersgardenservice.com/ or call 239-990-7494. The Landscape Cafe is a production of Peer Landscaping of Fort Myers, FL and the Niche Podcast. Learn more about Bailey, Katie, and the team by visiting https://www.PeerLandscaping.com.
What is up man? Good man. How you doing? Rocking and rolling. But thank you for having me on here. I’m excited to join the conversation and be a part of it. For sure, man. I definitely, definitely wanted to have you part of it. I look up to you a lot as, as far as like in our day to day, I really don’t know that much about the fertilizer part I’m learning, and I understand quite a bit about like the compost and the pH levels and how to, how to retain the fertilizer.
We make sure we put in compost with all of our jobs at here. Understanding all the chemicals and when to apply, when not to apply all the laws and it’s way over my head. I look up to you guys a lot and that’s one of the main reasons why I wanted to have you on and just talk, because I think in this conversation I’ll learn a lot.
And I also think a lot of our guests will too, just understanding what goes on in addition to the normal maintenance of a landscape. I think for the cost of fertilizer and how much the value of it, how much it basic, how much it adds up to implement into the landscape. Let me rephrase that. How much value and how much impact it has on your landscape, I feel like it’s very affordable. Does that make sense. Yeah. Yeah, because I feel like with your landscaper, if you, with like us coming each time, you know, that is the majority of expense. I feel like that’s way more than the fertilizer is itself, but the fertilizer provides just so much value.
If you don’t have that key missing, that key part, you’re missing out on a ton. I feel like that’s super, super important. You know, fertilizer costs a lot compared to your labor number in your field, your labor number and gas is like what you primarily look at, you know, for us, you know, fertilizers, 30, 40% of costs for, for our company, you know, so, wow.
It’s big, so for you guys, you know, maybe it’s a huge chunk, you know how labor is, you know, 80 or 70 and equipment, you know, 20 and gas is 10, you know, for us it’s, you know, chemical, 20% fertilizer, you know, 30, 40%, and then labor, you know, and gas and all the other stuff. Right. That gets expensive.
That’s a totally different ballgame then what I’m used to. So, yeah, it’s a different dynamic. I mean, it’s hard to, it’s hard to figure it. Really is. Yeah, absolutely. So do you buy the fertilizer in bulk? I know you charge very fair for your services. And that’s one of the reasons why I love to use your very fair price, but you’re also very high quality as well.
You know, you’re not cheap, but you’re very, very value efficient, I would say. How do you keep your costs? Yeah, well, you have to be efficient at what you do, right? They have to have a good program. You know, you guys have to know what they’re doing at the property when they show up. You know, they’ve got to leave early, they’ve got to come back late, and they’ve got to really, have that, you know, that blueprint program, you know that you have that everyone’s familiar with it and they’re rolling because if you have uncertainty on job site, you guys don’t know what they’re doing and they’re wasting.
You have a lot of, a lot of wasted time. You know, you’ve got to be efficient. So I mean, we’ve got gas tanks at the shop, you know, so that, you know, guys don’t at gas stations. Each home in a day matters. And if one team and or every team can get done with three or four or five more in a day, it just adds that much, efficiency onto the day, which allows our price point to be less.
I mean, there’s a lot of factors that go into where our price point’s at which. You know, from what I know in talking to people in the industry is we’re a value centric price point and we do a really good job and we do what we say we’re gonna do. we’re not the type of company that you’re gonna, I mean, sometimes we are, but we’re not the type of company that you’re just gonna give us for one house, you know, $5,000 a year. And it’s, I mean, I have some of these, I’m not saying that I’m, we’re not, we can’t be that. I mean, I have, I have about 10 of these homes that everything’s all included, but there’s some companies that, that is exactly what they do a hundred percent of the time is give me the lump sum.
Everything’s covered. And we’re not, you know, generally we’re not that for a lot of our clients, we’re a value centric company and we provide a really. An unbelievable system, an unbelievable program for people for a competitive price with a national competitor. Yeah, that’s, that’s incredible.
Something that you’ve taught me a lot is systems. It was so generous of you to invite Katie, my wife and I, down to your office, right, right where you’re sitting now, man, right. Where you’re. And, you taught us how to use systems, how to leverage these different, strategies and tactics without going into too much details, but you right now.
But you did go into a ton of detail and explained all that. Yeah, of course. Like, oh my gosh, man, I mean, you definitely helped us save because how. It’s really a challenge, like the cost of living nowadays rise so aggressively. Yes. So how can I retain talent? How can I retain good people? And one of the only ways you can, you can do is you can pay them emotionally.
So make sure you’re supporting them, you’re there, you’re there for them. there’s emotional income and then there’s also obviously financial income, which is you can’t overlook that needs to be high, that they have to have good income. For us to offer our services, the companies that are not, or to not do like a ton of bulk work, you have to be able to be right in that value centric, area that we’re talking about.
Yeah, and you have to be efficient because if you’re inefficient and you have a small company and you’re paying your guys really well, Yeah, your, your cus your prices are gonna be outrageous if, if you don’t have everything down to a science. But, from the system that you’ve actually taught us and we’ve implemented with Peer Landscaping and Fort Myers Garden Service is we’ve implemented those systems and now we can charge what we believe is a fair rate and we can give that customer an amazing value with technicians that wanna be there.
They wanna do a good job, they, they want to make sure that customer is truly. And they’re, they’re okay if, if, if we made an accident and the customer calls us back, our guys don’t have a bad attitude. They’re like, Hey, I accidentally made a mistake. Let’s go right back out to Ms. Jones. Let’s tweak that. No extra cost right away next day.
You know what I mean? Those types of things. Yeah. And, and man. That systems, those systems that you helped teach us and help us implement and do our business have, have been so transformational for us. and we’ve been, we’ve been super grateful for that. You’re, you’re doing that on a, on quite a bigger scale than we are in It’s, it’s impressive and something that I was just so curious about cause I am, ever since I started always so driven on quality, okay.
Everything’s got to be bought. Like, Jeff, how are you doing this on, on the skill that you’re doing it, but still doing in quality like that just doesn’t make sense. Like how are you doing that small business feel? But you, you are kicking butt. I mean, you’re servicing so many clients. Oh my gosh, man. Those tricks and, and, and systems that you have.
Oh my gosh. I mean, I don’t, I don’t know of any other company that are utilizing the new technology. 0 0 0 i’s unbelievable. I figured it out and it took years of thinking and tweaking and trying to figure out how can I be a small business owner that’s access. That rapid response, you know, we’re responsible, you know, resourceful and then how can I make that, scale right and get it right?
I mean a lot of people have no clue, you know, to the size that we are, number one, and other people have no clue that. You know that we even service the property sometimes. That’s how big we are. I mean, I, I was talking to a person at a Halloween event the other day and I said, where do you live?
And they said, A community. I said, oh, I do your lawn. Yeah. They have no clue. You know, cause they, they, I told them my company name and they said, no, we’ve never heard of you. And I said, where do you live? Oh, this community? No, I do your lawn. I’ve been doing it for a. Huh? Yeah. Okay. . That’s awesome. That is awesome.
Yeah. What has been, well, let me ask you this. Where did Terra Garden Solutions come from? What did, what does that name, where did it come from? What does it mean? Yeah, so the garden, is just as simple to my dad. My dad owns Garden Masters up at Sarasota, and that’s where I got my start. And then, we ended up picking up some contracts down here and he said to me, Hey, Jeff, we’re picking up some contracts down in Naples area and I was living in Venice at the time. And he said, you know, we could maybe, if you wanna start like a branch of Orlando or something, you know, I’m 23, right? Yeah. I wanna go to Orlando. There’s a lot of girls in Orlando. You know, you’re gonna go to Naples because I already picked up these accounts.
I need someone to do it. I said, right. So Naples eighth. And then, that’s how I got my start, started knocking on doors after. I started servicing these communities and, I just, I knocked on 10,000 doors a year for about four straight years there. And then, just told people I could make grass green and, you know, I just kind of, kind of did it.
But man, that was a, that was a real trip and now it’s a completely different ballgame where we’re at, you know, with how time’s gone on and how the industry’s changed a lot, and then how systems have changed a lot in everything that we. That’s incredible. So, you have probably, you’ve probably learned a ton from your father and all of, probably a lot of the old school stuff that I learned, from some other mentors of mine that were much more ahead of me.
But also to take your, your younger mind basically more technology prone by Yeah. And use your dad’s business models. Use your, use your dad’s stuff and. Grow your own branch on top of that and bend those together, man. It’s like, yeah, it’s like a super business man. It’s, that’s amazing. There’s so much value that those customers are getting that your, your company as a whole, like if you weren’t in your company, pumping that value and that knowledge into it, day in, day out, like you are, wouldn’t be the company that it is, but it’s pretty incredible that you’re able to.
Take all that stuff you learned from your father and his business and basically grow to where you are now. That’s so cool. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’m using, you know, a lot of his knowledge that he’s given me through 40 years of experience in the industry. And then, kind of how I think about it is you think about years of experience, how many years of experience that someone does someone have
And sometimes I feel like that’s a shotty number to go off of. For instance, if there’s a one one truck guy, he’s got, you know, 300 accounts. and that’s. That’s his, you know, he’s got 15 years experience. Who’s in his 300 accounts? Well, 15 times 300 is, you know, I, whatever it is. Yeah, whatever. Its, yeah.
So, so 15 times 300 is 4,500. So he’s got, he’s got, you know, to me that’s 4,500 accounts over 15 years that he’s got experience with. And then when I think. You know, the experience that I’ve gotten from my dad and, you know, through my own company and he talked about, you know, my dad’s company’s pretty big.
He’s got over 25,000 accounts. He services monthly for us. We’ve got thir 13,000 accounts that we service monthly. So for me, for someone to have 300 accounts, and you know, it would take them 40 years to get 13,000 accounts worth of experience. And I’m talking, dealing with high level horticultural problems.
I’m talking every month over 200 new installs of SOD that you have to manage. And, and I mean, sod from different sod companies from different parts of the SOD field. Mm-hmm. , different types of sod, the type of sod that goes in changes you have, you got your, your, you know, blue, whatever it is. And, you know, so these things change over time and you’re dealing with a lot of things first.
when you’re, when you’re kind of in the capacity that I’m at is you’re dealing with the Pro Vista initially, you know, whenever it came out, you know, 10 years ago or whatever. And, and so you, by the time it’s 10 years later, you’re super well versed in it while a lot of people are just figuring it out that it’s a thing, you know?
Right. So, right. And so, it puts me kind of in my company, kind of in the lead for anything, you know, really technical problems that, you know, are really hard to figure out. And on top of that, I still don’t know everything. Even though we have all this experience, there is so much changing. New viruses, new bacteria, new ne you know, you had, you know, your nematodes, you got new, you know, new fungi, and but you have to have, Someone to rely on in those moments that you don’t know the answer, or that maybe you’re not trusted to know that answer, right?
So you have a property manager that maybe is a skeptic, thinks that you know, someone else knows everything and you don’t, because maybe there’s some bias there. And maybe they want, you know, their, you know, sister’s, husbands, this guy and you know, he’s a very trusted, advocate for something else. And so in those moments, you have to have a team.
not team member. You need to have someone unbiased who’s gonna come in and confirm the God’s honest truth. You don’t need them to confirm what you say, right? You just need what is the solution? for us, we use Lynn Griffith a lot. Lynn Griffith has been fantastic because he’s one of the top porter cultures in the world.
He lives on the other coast. he. A very value centric price, and he deals with, top if you could catch him, you know, because he’s, he’s in the kingdom of Thailand. He’s with Amazon, he’s in Texas doing nurseries. I mean, you, you catch him here for a week or a weekend and you pull him over to, to, to this coast, to, you know, Southwest Florida, and have some jobs lined up for him to look at.
He’ll do it. He’ll do an excellent job. He’ll write your reports and you’ll look. Not a joke company, but a company that actual solutions from someone who is super smart and author and who’s brilliant. And guess what? That sister’s you know, the property manager’s sister’s husband, is no longer a problem, right?
Because not only have they either been proven correct or not, or you’ve been proven correct or not, it’s not about that. It’s about finding exactly what’s wrong with the property and solving that exact problem. So, That’s awesome. So that brings up a, a good, good point. So they, there’s so many issues, so many issues that can happen to turf.
What do you say when a customer’s, like, there’s something happening in their front yard and they’re like, it change bugs. I know it is. And then you say, Hey, no, it’s actually, it’s something else. I mean, are, are customers usually pretty flexible in saying, oh, okay. Cause I know there’s a lot of. That are really, you know, prideful in the yards.
Which, which is good. I mean, there’s a, I I totally can understand that, but have you had an issue with a lot of customers kind of trying to, to push you back and say, Hey, no, it’s not this, but really when you know what it is, Yeah. So I really try to listen to the clients a lot and ask a lot of questions before even getting to the point where there’s, you know, someone diagnosing something.
Okay. For instance, you show up on site and, and you know, the homeowner will say, Hey look, this is chin bugs. This is this. For sure. I already know it is. I’ve already done my research. You guys just need to come out and spray it or something, and I’ll just try to find out more information. Well, hey, look, I see this problem.
Let’s take a walk around and Lynn Griffith says this, horticulture is as much of an art as it is a science, right? And so you have to find out, patterns in the landscape, you know, you know, if there’s a brown spot coming off of a downspout where you know that, you know, there’s a pattern if it’s on all the downspouts and you had a pressure washing incident, you know?
Yep. And so, You have to really, show up, you know, ask good questions, you know, understand that that’s that problem, and, and make sure that they know yes, I, I understand that you have this problem here. you know, I don’t wanna speak out of turn. Let me have a look around first and let me look at a couple different things and then come back around to it.
You guys search for change bugs? Search for change. Bugs. It’s grubs. Look for grubs. You know, the truth is, is that some of the, some of the easiest things is just things that we could actually treat. You know, I mean, there’s a lot of things that are untreatable that we don’t have chemical for, that we don’t have.
you know, you know, we have resistance to certain things. So, long story short, the, the hardest. thing to deal with is things that you don’t have an answer for. I mean, if it, if it was as easy as fertilizing it, spraying with fungicide and spraying with insecticide and putting down some dialogues for some rubs, problem solved, you know?
Right. I’ve got a good story. Okay. So, so, I went out to a community of about a hundred homes and they were having over the past year, So decline, and we’ve been on this project for eight or nine years now. Know it’s HOA that we’re, you know, that really trust us and relies on us. But, you know, it’s difficult to see that, you know, there’s some areas in the, in the yards that aren’t getting better, no matter the spring with the fungicide, the insecticide, you know, no matter, you know, the fertilizer, it didn’t matter.
It was getting worse. And so, in this specific case, The board was not happy with the decline. And they looked at me like, Hey, like where are you at on this? You know, like, what’s your diagnosis? And you got to get pressured. And you know, you look at it and you say, well, maybe it could be irrigation related, but is it really No.
you know, and, and things just kind of didn’t line up. So, there was no spurge or weeds or anything in there. So I brought in Lynn Griffith because the best thing to do in that, It’s not guess. Don’t guess at that. Cause if you’re wrong, you’re gonna lose the contract. Yep. Lynn took a couple soil samples.
Lynn pointed out some things, met with the board and he just really impressed them. Soil samples come back. Lan nematodes are, it’s like LANs nematodes are supposed to be like below, like, like treatable amount is 50, you know, whatever units it is. Mm-hmm. and they. 350, like way over treatable amount. And, yeah.
And obviously the next board’s question is, well, why didn’t you catch this? Why didn’t you catch this? Nematodes are one of the last, you know, check, you know, boxes that you checked. So, you know, I mean, by the time I got to that box I said, well, let’s just bring in win. Cause we’ve done the exact side, we’ve done the fertilizer.
And I wasn’t seeing the patent and signs of the spurge because my girls that were doing the weed control in there doing a hell of a job, so Right. We didn’t have weed. So it was, it was difficult to see that those signs were there. And so, Lynn ended up doing a report on it, telling us exactly what to do, how to resolve the problem, and we ended up, you know, doing that treatment at the frequency that he recommended.
And next thing you know, I’m, you know, three months out from that they said we wanna do another, a set test to see if it worked. Lo and behold, the population was decreased, you know, 90% and, all the grass is coming back in and growing. Great. Their problem is solved. Their board members are happy with the resolution, and now they want to bring Lynn back once a year just to do a breeze through, you know, and not on high dime on their doc, right?
So, which is great because it’s just an, an ally that of a solution of a problem solver. Truthfully, a lot of us don’t have that type of background in this stuff, and we’re just here to solve someone’s problem. And if we can’t solve that, someone else will. Right? Absolutely. And Jeff, you know what impresses me about that too?
Is the fact that most people don’t care enough to, to go through that. Cause I know at night when you lay in bed, you’re like, crap, I wanna make this board happy. I, I need to make this board happy. Not because you, not because you need the business. You’d be okay if you didn’t have it. But that’s who you are.
That’s how you run your business and you’ve committed yourself to them. And you went the extra mile to bring Lynn in there to keep, to retain that contract. I think it’s amazing knowing that if we don’t know the answer or need someone that needs some help to get the answer, that we’re able to go and get it.
I think a lot of this industry is churn and burn. and yeah, whether that’s, and fertilizer or the maintenance or the installations, any part of this business, a lot of it’s kind of churn and burn. Okay. Just onto the next one, this one’s gonna be paint. And I’ve heard, especially as our areas growing, there are so.
People, individual, whether they’re homeowners or HOA boards that are just unhappy with the services that are, that they’re getting. Yeah. And I feel like there’s not too many people or companies that care about the horticulture industry like you and I do. yeah, I think they, they rather, cause they’re rather just focus on the business part.
Okay. Whatever, head with that client, I’ll just go sell another one or whatever. And going that extra mile and is so impactful not only for that, that board or customer that shows that you care, but also. Man that brings a whole, every time I go through like a challenge like that, whether it’s frustrating or, maybe it’s not frustrating, but just it’s harder to deal with in my normal day to day schedule.
I always come out of it growing, learning something so that way the next time something happens like that, you know, you can bring Lynn in just like that or whatever it is. But that’s something I. You and I have a lot in common of wanting to grow and not just, not just trying to burn the next contract, but grow and actually know what’s going on, figure out the issues and, kind of drive forward.
So that’s something that I love about you, man. I’m so glad you’re sharing that story. That’s. That’s so awesome. I don’t, I don’t know if it’s pain or happiness that drives me, but I just cannot stand seeking a neglected property. Right. Yeah, for sure. And especially with your name’s on it, your, your name’s on, on it and it’s like, oh boy, I can better better show up and make this happen.
Don’t forget the best place to rate or follow the show is @thelandscapecafe.com. The Landscape Cafe is a production of Peer Landscaping of Fort Myers FL and the Niche Podcast Network. Learn more about Bailey, Katie, and the team of Peer Landscaping here.
