The Moment He Let Go of Ego… His Business Exploded

We didn't stay for the company, we stayed for the culture there. We stayed for the people that we worked with.

We are joined today by an amazing individual. We have Corey Brewer with us now. Corey has built Beyond Landscaping into a multi million dollar company. He now employs over 40 full time professionals.

We treat them well like, we treat them like family. My ego is one of the things that I had to let go. How am I going to trust other people to do what I do really well? You aren't the best person at every task in your company. I think back to a book I read called Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday. And my ego is one of the things that I had to let go. Learning how to trust and delegate was one of the first things I'll never forget. Because I'd been mowing lawns for four or five years. I had had maybe six or seven customers that I was mowing regularly. And when I went to hire, when I went to hire my first person, I was like, well, how can I trust them to cut the, the lawns properly? Like, how will they know the, the proper depths to put the lawn mower on? And that was my big stress in my first year of business is how am I going to trust other people to do what I do really well? And I think back and I laugh at that now because now I'm having salespeople quote 500 to a million dollar jobs with full autonomy. So it's funny that delegation and trust and letting go of that ego that you know you aren't the best person at every task in your company and that you can hire some amazing staff to do things for you, that was a big hurdle that I had to get, get past for sure. Lots along the way as well. Hiring my first office person and trusting that they're going to get back to customers and take over the phone calls and the emails, that was a big hurdle for me. And all along the way, from whatever position I hired, whether it was a salesperson, whether it was an office person, and then eventually scheduling a dispatch every step of the way was a bit of a challenge to let go and allow and trust other people that they're going to be doing a job almost as good as me.

Yeah, that's almost just a sharp, another sharp example of a rite of passage. As an entrepreneur, you know, we all, we all go through that and in terms of that, that bottleneck and getting past it and setting our ego aside. And I found that what's helped us in many of our businesses is just really providing Very, very clear expectations, but also inspecting what you expect so that you can deliver really great constructive feedback. So that whatever the desired outcome is, how manicured the lawn is or what depth and all of those things that it's, it's really clear to, to your team and they understand what the expectation is.

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I mean, clearly, I don't know how many landscaping businesses have, you know, piled up even a fraction of the quantity of five star reviews that, that you've piled up in your business. And so that's a signal to rich. And I, I can't speak confidently for rich too, like culture clearly matters. And so how do you, how do you build a team that cares enough to deliver that consistently?

Now we do something very differently, but when I started the company, I took a lot of the learnings I had. I worked at the KEG Steakhouse and Bar. It's a steakhouse franchise. And one thing that I noticed there is people would stay at that restaurant for quite a long time. And it was a lot of the work that the company and the managers did there to build culture. And we didn't stay for the company, we stayed for the culture there. We stayed for the people that we worked with. And in a industry similar to mine where the turnover is somewhere between three months and a year and people are constantly coming and going, how do you get to, how do you get staff to stay longer term? And construction industry is notorious for short term laborers. People coming in for short stints, hiring and firing quick. And when I started my company, I took a lot of the lessons I learned there about building culture and brought into my business. So some of the things we do are weekly team barbecues. So I find it really important to have a beer with the staff at the end of the week. We get a keg of beer for them, we have burgers, we hang out every Thursday. I mean, I'm not there every Thursday like I used to, but enough that I still get that time face to face with all the new staff and really get a bond that way. We do as many staff parties as we can, whether it's golf camping, paintball, anything that we can do to get the staff together outside of work hours and then really bond over a couple of drinks. I find that really helps a lot. And then obviously, treat treating our staff as best we can. You know, we pay them fairly, but more importantly than that, like, we treat them well. Like, we treat them like family. And we really try and build a really good culture.

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