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I’m not from Texas, but I have a special bond with the state. My wife grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, so for the last 20-plus years, our family has made the drive from Lawrence, Kan., to McAllen or South Padre Island to visit her late father and his wife. It’s a 15-hour drive, so we’ve made frequent overnight stops in Dallas, Waco, Austin and San Antonio.
A Texas flag proudly flies in the Hall of Justice, my garage-turned-sports-bar. When I’m grilling, I’m probably in a “Come and Take It” apron I bought at Buc-ee’s, as I remember the Alamo.
My 2026 got off to a quick start, with back-to-back trips to the Lone Star State. First, it was the Executive Retreat, hosted by Jeffrey Scott in Fort Worth. Then, three weeks later, I was in Dallas at GROW! 2026, hosted by The Grow Group. Both events had many friendly, familiar faces and tons of highlights. My notebook was overwhelmed with cat-scratches of great sound bites and nuggets for readers of LM.
At the Executive Retreat, Jeffrey Scott advised attendees that it was time to reset and look forward. “What lessons can we learn from 2025? You have to say OK, here is where I should have turned left instead of right. That’s behind you. You have to look ahead.”
Karen Siciliano, former president of Siciliano Landscape, now retired, stood out as a speaker. Her one-hour presentation lasted a little more than 30 minutes, then she opened it up for a question-and-answer session. Her honesty and directness made her stand out. She told one attendee that she realizes now, in hindsight, that she tried too hard to please her famous clients. She told another person that her most valuable advice was to “remove the impediments to your growth to achieve success for you and your clients.”
Three weeks later, I was in Big D for GROW! 2026, which was held at Complete Landsculpture. Regular readers of LM will recognize Chris Strempek, CEO and founder, and Gene Freeman, vice president, of Complete — they’re fun semi-regulars on our LM Gallery page (and they’re back there again this month!) and they were also featured on our cover in a tumultuous 2020.
This GROW! was especially noteworthy because it was the first GROW! to feature a repeat host. Ten years ago, Chris and Gene opened the doors to attendees from around the country, not quite knowing exactly what they were getting themselves into. In 2016, the event welcomed 250 attendees to a modest hotel and a modest Complete Landscuplture. In 2026, more than 1,000 attendees stayed at the downtown Hyatt Regency Dallas and visited a Complete Landsculpture that had tripled in size (No. 130 on the 2025 LM150 list of largest landscape and lawn care companies in the industry, with $27.5 million in revenue).
I asked Marty Grunder, CEO of the Grow Group and founder of Grunder Landscaping Co., about the journey Complete Landsculpture has been on, and he told me that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
“(For Complete Landsculpture) it’s been a lot of blocking and tackling, it’s been a lot of hustling, it’s been a lot of doing what they said they were going to do and going out and getting it,” Grunder told me. “If you hustle, you get back to people, you go for it, you’re nice to your people, you’re a leader … it makes the organization better. They’re bigger, but a lot of the same principles they used to start the business, they’re using them today. “
Gene was on stage when he pondered how things had changed over the last 10 years for their business. He had one regret — he wished he could have hosted GROW! 20 years ago to better jumpstart the business.
“For the young entrepreneurs here, the access you have today, that we didn’t have back then, to education and a peer network is priceless,” he said. “I wish we could have had all this 20 years ago. If we had access to this information, this knowledge base back then? We’d be twice as big as we are today.”
They say everything is bigger in Texas. I say everything is bigger — including the opportunity — in this great industry we serve.
