Marisa PalmieriNov 3, 2023
The industry is being squeezed between lowballers and big national contractors,” a reader wrote to me recently. I have heard this dilemma before in several…
Busyness is a way of life for many of us. Ask someone how they’re doing, and there’s a good chance he or she will reply,…
Have you ever visited a company and instantly knew that everyone who worked there was on the same page—and wondered how they got there? That’s…
I can vividly recall sitting next to Bob Dolibois, retired executive vice president of the American Nursery & Landscape Association (now AmericanHort), on a bus…
Imagine your business is a castle. Does it have a moat? According to Warren Buffett—renowned investor and chairman of Berkshire Hathaway—businesses worth investing in have…
When I first heard about “The Four Tendencies,” I’m sure I gave an eye roll. Do I really need to take another quiz to give…
No matter what you call it, a companywide effort to run more efficiently has the potential to sound negative to the crews you’re hoping to…
With an unemployment figure near a record low and a problematic seasonal guest-worker program, landscape companies are strapped for legal labor options. Some landscape company…
The term “bucket list” has made its rounds over the last decade or so—popularized by the 2007 movie of the same name starring Jack Nicholson…
I don’t typically like to ask readers to immediately skip all the way to the end of the magazine, but this issue, I encourage you…
It’s difficult to ignore the news about prominent people losing their jobs over allegations of sexual misconduct in the workplace. Today it happens to be…
“I don’t know how you did it when your husband was deployed,” a coworker said to me the other day. His wife was out of…
Another year, another edition of the LM Business Planner. We’ve covered various themes in our annual growth-focused issue over the years. For 2017, we thought…
Want to make all your managers self-conscious at one time? Talk to them about business etiquette at a company meeting. That’s what our CEO did…
Keep it simple seems like good advice when it comes to employee incentive programs. It’s the first of a few rules of thumb offered by…
As we put the final edits on this issue of LM, I was struck by some of the similarities between the owners of GreenEarth Landscape…
There’s always a corporate crisis du jour in the headlines, whether it’s a social media gaffe (#McDStories), physical altercation (United Airlines) or unpopular decision (Mylan…
An employee slumps over in a meeting, unwilling to participate, seemingly disgruntled. An irate client calls, accusing your crews of leaving grass clipping all over…
Landscape professionals are often optimists, I’ve noticed. Have you ever observed the same? I’m not sure why exactly. Maybe there’s a causal relationship between optimism…
As I boarded a flight from Cleveland to Fort Lauderdale with my family in January, I received a text message from an unknown number. “Good…
This month we welcome Envisor Consulting’s Ken Thomas and Ben Gandy as our new columnists. They are industry veterans, consultants and have been valuable periodic…
When a small group of landscape industry communications pros gathered at the Las Vegas Convention Center in early December during the 2016 Irrigation Show, the…
I must have looked like I was preparing a thesis on Patrick Lencioni last week, as I walked out of the library with a stack…
Marisa PalmieriNov 10, 2023
The landscape industry’s largest trade show, GIE+EXPO, got even larger this year. There were 230 new exhibitors —a good sign assuming they all have done…
