Considering I have more than three decades in publishing under my belt, you’d think I’d know better than this, but I remain regularly amazed at the impact the work we do at Landscape Management has on our audience and the notoriety that work can generate.
Case in point was a humbling (but pleasant!) encounter I had during Marty Grunder’s GROW! 2025 event in Columbus, Ohio, back in February. For the uninitiated, GROW! is an annual professional development event put on by Grunder, a longtime LM columnist, and his consulting group, The Grow Group. It includes networking, a trade show and a tour of a local landscaping company.
GROW! has, well, grown to the point that it attracts more than 1,000 landscape and lawn care pros from all around the country, and the edition in Columbus was my first since joining the LM team. For an industry newcomer like me, it was a great opportunity and a great experience.
That said, for every one person at GROW! I already knew or had at least met in my year on the job, there were probably 10 or 15 I had never laid eyes on before. That’s why I was taken aback when an unfamiliar face turned to me on a long, slow elevator ride and said with a smile, “Hey Scott, how are you liking the new job?”
It took me a second to process his question because, as I said, I had no idea who this person was or how he knew I had taken a new job in the last year. Slowly, though, the old brain started to kick into gear, and I realized he knew me because he read LM, he had seen my face attached to this column, and he knew I had taken a new job because I mentioned it about 15 times in this very space.
As soon as I put two and two together — and I really hope that process only took a couple of seconds and not the 10 minutes that it felt like in the moment — I thanked him for asking, told him how much I was enjoying the magazine and the industry and formally introduced myself. As we continued chatting, several others chimed in about the magazine and stories they’d enjoyed, and by the time I stepped off that elevator, I had four new familiar faces (and their business cards) to add to my personal network.
It was all a nice reminder for me that, at the end of the day, the work we do here at LM matters to our readers. They really do value the content we produce, whether they’re consuming that in the print magazine, through a video on our website or a quick glance at social media. That can be easy to forget when you’re neck-deep in the pressures of producing a monthly publication, so I can’t tell you how rewarding this encounter was for an old dog like me.
I think each of you can take away something from my little story, too, because it reminded me how open and willing to help this industry can be. Even though it would be naïve to ignore competitive considerations, I’ve found folks in landscaping and lawn care to be almost overwhelmingly welcoming and collaborative, whether to a magazine editor like me or a fellow industry professional looking to share stories or best practices.
So, I hope this encourages some of you out there to take that leap and interact with your colleagues as a way to improve your own business. Head to GROW! 2026, which will be in Dallas next February, check out Jeffrey Scott’s Summer Growth Summit, Aug. 19-21 in Cleveland or hit any of the industry’s upcoming conferences and trade shows — Equip Expo (Oct. 21-24 in Louisville) or Elevate (Nov. 2-5 in Phoenix). You’ll be surprised how easy it is to expand your network and connect with a few new friendly faces. I know I was.
