My team at The Grow Group is busy now gearing up for the 2019 NALP Field Trip: Frank & Marty’s Excellent Adventure this August in San Diego, where we’ll be helping to present a day of interactive educational sessions followed by a tour of the local branch of LandCare.

In my 35 years of running Grunder Landscaping and another 20 or so running a green-industry consultancy, I have toured more landscaping companies than I can count. And yet I never, ever tire of it. Why? Because, in my experience, it is the single fastest way you can learn ways to make your own business better. From every tour, without fail, I come away with a brilliant tactic or a game-changing insight that helps improve the way we operate at GLC, or saves us money we didn’t realize we were wasting, or challenges us to set bigger goals for ourselves and inspires us to chase them.

That’s why I’m especially excited to tour LandCare in seven weeks. What CEO Mike Bogan has accomplished there since taking the reins in 2014 is pretty amazing, by any measure.

By putting their people first, LandCare has become an enormously successful national powerhouse, with 50 branches across 20 states. They’ve figured out how to operate leanly and deliver consistency on a large scale, while still fostering autonomy and innovation at the local level. And we’ll get to see how that actually works—and how we can make that work too at our own small businesses—when we go behind the scenes of their San Diego branch.

In addition to being one of the sharpest minds in the business, Mike Bogan is also a fantastic teacher and presenter, with a genuine passion for our industry and for helping us all to make it better. You can bet I’ll be there taking notes the whole time and thinking intently about what I can beg, borrow, and steal to move Grunder Landscaping forward.

Hope to see you there in August, and I’ll see you here next week!

P.S. As those of you who joined us last year in Portland know, the NALP Field Trip is a great way to develop and reward your team at the same time. The training is focused, with takeaways and tactics you can implement when you return home, and the San Diego setting and hotel venue are spectacular, with plenty to do and enjoy in the evenings or before or after the event.