LM’s Seth Jones chats with Nolan Gore, owner and general manager of Top Choice Lawn Care, about key factors he applies to being a business owner after his time in the Marine Corps. Gore also shares ways he caters his business to meet the customers’ needs and build trust.
Transcription:
SJ: Seth Jones
NG: Nolan Gore
SJ: Hey everybody, it’s Seth Jones, editorial director of Landscape Management magazine. Today I’m being joined by Nolan Gore. He is the general manager and owner of Top Choice Lawn Care out in Austin, Texas. Hey, Nolan, how’s it going?
NG: Seth, thank you so much for having me.
SJ: And tell me about the business itself.
NG: We are a residential maintenance company first: mow, blow and go. We currently got 1733 routine maintenance customers only for mowing, and then we have a whole bunch of other packages. Now what we’ll do is bread and butters, mows, but on top of that, we’ll sell all sorts of other services up into design build. So we don’t do construction, but we will do high level enhancements. So redesign beds, full irrigation, planting, treat smaller tree, installs stock, mulch, all that kind of stuff.
SJ: Anything that you’re noticing that your customers are more likely to ask of you these days, or something that they’re more into, or just any trends that you’re seeing that you think, hey, this might be something that I need to kind of mentally prepare for.
NG: So short circuiting the sales process with a product, as opposed to any you can even you can expand on that by saying we had a super deal with two large trees and five small shrubs and an irrigation package that, altogether cost, as opposed to, hey, what do you need? I suggest two trees. I suggest, you know, that’s one big thing I’m thinking about from a customer perspective. Two, we’re working really hard right now on, on being front of mind for the customer, and even putting the ideas in the customer’s brain, not necessarily for this week, but for the coming months and years. And so what I mean by that is we’re working really hard to every single customer. We’re going to touch their property, which obviously there’s a lot of business models where you do that naturally, but ours we don’t necessarily. We’re going to say, ‘here’s the things I think are good, here’s the things I think are better, here’s the things I think you absolutely need to do now and this is what it would cost you.’ And customers go, ‘I didn’t ask for that’. And we go, ‘no problem’. And then a lot of people are like, ‘Oh man, that’s more. I don’t want to do it, not right now’. And then the other customers say, ‘do it’. And at the worst, you don’t trust. And at the best, you’re selling more things.
SJ: I noticed that you got some pretty amazing art up on the wall back here. Tell me about your family.
NG: It’s very expensive. If you want to buy it, I’ll sell to you for a big deal in any of the audience, if you’re looking for some pieces for the office. I married my high school sweetheart, God bless her. Tricked her when she was young. We had our first kid while I was in the Marine Corps, my daughter, and then I’ve had three sons since then, so four kids now at this point. It’s eight, six, four, one. Our fourth was born extraordinarily premature, like four months early. He was in the hospital for five months. That was last year. He’s doing very well, but it is still an extraordinarily challenging situation for our family. That’s been a big impact on the on the business for me to be able to focus, but I also have much more empathy for suffering now, and I understand difficulties in life in different ways than I ever have before.
SJ: Well, first, thank you for your service in the Marine Corps. I’m curious, anything that you can take from your training in the Marine Corps that you can apply directly to being a business owner or being in the in the lawn care industry?
NG: I just had a bunch of hard conversations with guys about their performance. I was given the tools that’s needed to do that. So when I came into the business here at 27, barely 27, it wasn’t strange to me to have guys older than me working for me. It wasn’t strange for me to be able to hold them accountable and to recognize and respect their level of competence, but also hold a certain bubble of authority and a different skill set. What that allowed me to do is say, ‘Hey, I know what you’re good at, and I know what I’m good at. We’re going to figure out how to be better together, and you’re still going to listen to me, because that’s how we’re going to work. But if you’re right and I’m wrong, then I’m going to figure out how to come to your direction, but we’re going to figure out we’re going to have one person in charge here.’
SJ: You know, I’d love to ask people what their best advice is, if they have, like, a motto they go by, or anything that really stands out in their mind.
NG: I remember calling my dad and going, ‘Hey, does it ever feel more stable’ and like, unhesitantly, he was like, ‘nope’. And just sat there. I was like, oh, okay, so I guess I’m not doing it wrong. And that was encouraging. And also just like, hold on, if you want to do this, you got to be ready for that.
SJ: Everybody, this is Nolan Gore. He is a general manager and owner of Top Choice Lawn Care in Austin, Texas. I’m Seth Jones. Thanks for watching us here on Landscape Management TV. Thanks, Nolan.
NG: Thank you. Bye.
