A conversation recorded at the NALP Elevate Conference 2024 in Charlotte, NC between host Paul Giannamore (Managing Director of The Potomac Company) and Sam Gembel, CEO of Atlas Outdoor, a Michigan-based landscaping and snow management company. The discussion covers Gembel's early struggles scaling from a lawn-mowing side hustle, the wake-up call that prompted a leadership rethink, and the changes that made the business scalable and profitable. Key topics include lessons from rapid growth, shifting from working in the business to leading it, common scaling mistakes, building company culture through onboarding, talent retention, modern recruiting versus traditional hiring, mentorship and coaching for CEOs, and business books that influenced his approach. Chapters also cover achieving high employee retention (cited as 93%) and moving from goals to a growth mindset. # Video Identity Observations — "How Coaching Sparked a Flint Business Revival" ## Format - **Interview/conversation format**: The video is a two-person sit-down interview between a host/interviewer ("Max") and a guest ("Sam"), founder of Atlas Outdoor, a lawn care and landscaping company based in Flint, Michigan. - Evidence: Guest opens with "Sam, it's great to sit down with you. Yeah. It's an honor, my brother." - The conversation closes with "Sam, listen, it's been fantastic sitting here chatting with you… Thanks, Max." - **Recorded at an industry conference**: Hashtags in the title (#NALP2024) and multiple in-transcript references indicate this was filmed at the NALP (National Association of Landscape Professionals) 2024 event. - Evidence: "what I love about conferences like this," "I talked about this in my talk this morning," and "there was a person in my session this morning, they have like 600 employees." - The guest mentions being introduced by a mutual contact: "I'm glad Jason introduced us." ## Intended Audience - **Service-industry business owners and leaders**, particularly in lawn care/landscaping, interested in growth, hiring, retention, and leadership. - Evidence: Title tags #ServiceIndustry #Entrepreneurship; discussion of scaling from ~$50K to $7–8M revenue, hiring 110–120 employees, retention, and onboarding. - **Owners facing growth/leadership pain points**: The conversation centers on topics like "overselling and underleading," the value of business coaching, delegation, and the transition from operator to CEO. - Evidence: "at that revenue, 50, 60 employees, I should have solely been acting as the CEO of the business and I wasn't." ## Claimed Scope & Self-Description - **No explicit channel self-description** appears in the transcript (no "on this channel we…" statements). Identity must be inferred from demonstrated presentation. - The channel demonstrably features **founder/owner interviews in the green/landscape service industry**, conducted at trade events, with a casual, rapport-heavy style. - Evidence: host jokes ("no idea that Jeff Bezos was going to be doing my interview"), discusses a prior interview with "Tommy Mello from A1 Garage," and the guest references "events like this." - The host shows familiarity with business coaching culture and guest entrepreneurs, positioning the channel around **entrepreneurship and business-growth storytelling**. ## Demonstrated Presentation Patterns - **Long-form narrative interviews**: Guest walks through full origin story (GED, first lawn job in 2001, founding Atlas Outdoor in 2011, growth to multi-million revenue). - Evidence: "went all in, quit the day job… started it first year, we went live June of 2011." - **Themes emphasized**: business coaching as a turning point, company culture, employee retention ("93% retention from last year to this year"), CEO self-development, and recommended books (*Buy Back Your Time*, *The Power of One More*, *Good to Great*). - **Tone**: informal, humorous, and motivational rather than technical. ## Claims vs. Demonstrations - **Creator/guest claims**: All revenue figures, retention statistics ("93%"), and business outcomes are guest self-reports, not independently verified. - Evidence: "we broke a million dollars in revenue… grow a million dollars a year after that." - **Demonstrated**: The channel's interview format, conference setting, and target owner-operator audience are directly observable from the material itself. # Delivery Observation: "How Coaching Sparked a Flint Business Revival" ## Format - **Interview/conversation format**: One speaker (the interviewer) asks structured, career-journey questions; "Sam" gives long, story-driven answers. - **Stable evidence of format**: Interviewer questions appear throughout — *"So, how did you get into this business?"*, *"What do you do now?"*, *"What sort of improvement then from the darker years to present..."* ## Tone & Register - **Casual, colloquial, conversational**: Frequent informal markers from the guest: - *"if the lead in the water doesn't kill you, the lead from the bullets will"* - *"You're not trying to get five grand to solve your issues"* - *"we've been so blessed beyond belief"* - **Humor and banter**: Both speakers joke, especially at the close: - *"I had no idea that Jeff Bezos was going to be doing my interview with me today."* - *"I was thinking about getting into the chart on the wall business for 100k"* (interviewer) ## Recurring Linguistic Habits (Guest) - **Fillers and stutters**: Heavy use of *"you know,"* *"like,"* *"uh,"* *"I mean"* — e.g., *"So, you know, Flint it's it it is definitely kind of a depressed area."* - **Repeated restarts/stuttered phrasing**: *"it's it it's a special area"*, *"we we we literally accidentally grew."* - **Folksy address terms**: Calls the interviewer *"my brother"* and *"dude"* — *"It's an honor, my brother"*, *"I mean, I'm here. It's just crazy the difference, dude."* - **Self-catch and rephrase**: *"I don't want to say like suck that juice out of the the fruit, but..."* ## Storytelling & Teaching Patterns (Guest) - **Narrative anecdotes with concrete detail**: The Louisville conference/cockroaches/declined-credit-card story told at length with specifics (*"$7,000"*, *"10 of us in this house"*). - **Quoted dialogue within stories**: Renders past conversations verbatim: *"he said, 'Sam, nobody grows to a four to five million dollar business and says, I would be happy.'"* - **Numbered/quantified claims**: Revenue figures recur as evidence — *"$330,000 in revenue"*, *"broke a million dollars"*, *"93% retention"*. - **Memorable aphorisms / takeaway framing**: - *"lawn care and landscape was the girl that brought me to the dance, but really for me now it's like we're in the people business. Our people are in the landscape business."* - *"once you've had a taste of significance, settling for success and hitting goals will never be good enough."* - *"the more you grow in your journey, people tell you what you want to hear, not what you need to hear."* - **Book references as frameworks**: Cites *Buy Back Your Time*, *The Power of One More*, *Good to Great* (Hedgehog concept) — a recurring habit of grounding advice in reading. ## Interviewer Delivery Habits - **Brief affirmations and mirroring**: *"Cockroaches."*, *"That's how I learned."*, *"Yeah, exactly. Exactly."* - **Recaps/paraphrase before follow-ups**: *"So it sounds like you maybe established a minimum hourly rate for yourself..."* - **Framing questions with praise**: *"You have recreated yourself from a high school dropout to a CEO of a very fast growing company."* ## Patterns vs. Isolated Moments - **Stable patterns**: Guest's anecdote-plus-aphorism structure, quantified storytelling, casual address ("dude," "brother"), filler-heavy speech — observed repeatedly. - **Isolated/uncertain**: The exact statistic *"82% of employees in 2024 say that they find their identity through their work"* is cited once without a named source; cannot confirm it as a habitual sourcing practice. The closing Bezos joke is a one-off, not a pattern. ## Uncertainty Notes - Timestamps in the transcript are line markers, not timecodes; timing of delivery cannot be assessed. - Speaker attribution is inferred from conversational turns; a few exchanges (e.g., around *"That's how I learned"*) switch speakers rapidly and could be misattributed. # Position Record: "How Coaching Sparked a Flint Business Revival" (NALP 2024 interview) **Primary speaker:** Sam (as identified in transcript), founder/CEO of Atlas Outdoor, Flint, Michigan area. **Interviewer:** unnamed host (jokingly called "Jeff Bezos" and "Max" at the close). ## The Coaching Catalyst - Sam recounts meeting a coach at an NALP event and saying, *"if we could just stay this size and just figure it out to where we can make money, I would be happy."* The coach replied: > "Sam, nobody grows to a four to five million dollar business and says, 'I would be happy.' ... Deep down inside, that's a cry for help." - Sam credits a later business coach (hired ~2018, when the company "really couldn't afford it") as the first person to tell him: **"You got some problems here... Your people are good. You're the problem."** - Sam's stated principle: as leaders grow, *"people tell you what you want to hear, not what you need to hear"* — an outside coach with "nothing to lose" offers honest perspective. ## Business Origins & Growth Trajectory (Sam's account) - Dropped out of high school after his wife (then girlfriend) graduated; got a customer service job at the Flint Journal (~1998) because he could type 90 wpm; earned a GED to keep the job. - 2001: joined a local lawn care company; *"fell in love with it."* - 2005: bought a home on Atlas Road — origin of the company name; built 40–50 side clients. - 2010–2011: replaced wife's corporate income; went all-in on Atlas Outdoor via a Facebook post. - Revenue path: ~$50K prior year → ~$330K first full year → broke $1M in year two → grew ~$1M/year until 2017–2018. ## The 2018 Crisis ("Oversold and Underled") - Sam: at ~$5M revenue, 50–60 employees, he was still acting as salesperson and involved in operations — *"operating what should have been a phase five company, we were operating at like a phase two."* - His coping mechanism: *"my way of fixing the problems was just to go sell more work... use [deposits] to fund more growth. So it worked, but yeah, I would never advise anybody to grow that way."* - Louisville conference incident: company credit card declined for a ~$7,000 hotel; wife said, *"Just put it on our personal credit card. We'll figure it out."* Team was unaware of the financial trouble; only Sam and his wife knew. - A foreman promoted to a construction leadership role had to be let go; Sam learned *"nobody in the business really knew how to complete the level of projects this guy was"* — the man *"should have never been put into that leadership role."* ## Post-2018 Restructuring - Sam identified his "superpower" as **sales and casting vision**; delegating operations and installing software added "a couple million" in revenue and profitability. - At the **$7–8M** mark, he "replaced myself in the sales role 3 years ago." - Current role: CEO focused on **relationship development**, banking relationships, cash flow, and not becoming "the lid" on growth — pursuing acquisitions of ~million-dollar companies rather than only smaller deals. ## On Personal Development - Books cited: **Buy Back Your Time** (Dan Martell) — "biggest game-changer" on valuing his time; **The Power of One More** (Ed Mylett); **Good to Great** (Hedgehog concept: passion, best-in-class, profitability). - Practices: coaching from someone further along; "beginning with the end in mind" — writing a 10-year narrative backward. - Motivation shift from goal-oriented to **growth-oriented**; from "success" to what he calls **significance** — e.g., a foreman buying his first home. ## Background & Motivation - Inner-city Flint upbringing; mother a CNA, father a General Motors "jack-of-all-trades" — *"no life of abundance given to us as kids."* - A mentor warned him: *"when you don't come from much, it's really easy for you to feel like you've made it and then you just stop."* - Aspirations now include succession planning and generational opportunity for his kids and ~110–120 employees. ## On Flint & Market Strategy - Flint: *"if the lead in the water doesn't kill you, the lead from the bullets will"* — a "depressed area," but he built a strong business serving suburban wealth; opened a second location in metro Detroit (2024) because Flint's market is limited and the workforce differs. - Few large competitors in greater Flint ("we'll sell some, he'll take some, we'll hire his good team members") vs. many small ones to watch. ## On Service Expansion - Firm **no** on diversification for now, per the Hedgehog concept: *"lawn care and landscape was the girl that brought me to the dance, but really for me now it's like we're in the people business. Our people are in the landscape business."* - Exception noted: added **Christmas lights** last year — joyful but not highly scalable. ## On Hiring & Retention (2024 vs. 2015) - Claim: using the same recruiting tactics as 5–10 years ago means "you're in trouble" — citing a 600-employee company in his session still using unchanged methods. - Onboarding diagnosis: two new hires once stood unattended 15 minutes at the front door — *"our problem was starting right at the onboard."* - Claimed results: **93% year-over-year retention**, "unheard of in our industry." - Methods: - **Buddy system** — loyalty flows through foremen/production managers, not the CEO, who "speaks a different language" with entry-level workers. - **Training program**: new hires not left unsupervised until comfortable producing — *"80% with momentum is in the right direction."* - Contrast claim: most industry training is "5 hours or less" before employees run $20K mowers or $100K trucks. - Culture claim: *"82% of employees in 2024 say that they find their identity through their work"* (cited as "studies," no source given); best employees *"use their work as a tool to provide for the life they want, not the other way around."* ## Interviewer's Positions (briefer) - Notes Flint's auto-industry history; suggests less competition in Flint vs. Detroit suburbs is "a blessing and a curse" (Sam agrees). - Skepticism about high-priced coaching: relays Tommy Mello paying ~$100K/year to Martell — *"I couldn't understand what he was paying for... seemed like he had him do some chart on the wall."* - Analogy shared by both on coaching credibility: a business coach who has "only ever been a coach" vs. someone who's faced payroll crises — "like going to AA and your sponsor has never had a drink." ## Unresolved Tensions - Sam simultaneously credits aggressive sales-led growth for scaling and states he'd *"never advise anybody to grow that way."* - Retention figures and the 82% statistic are speaker-reported without sources. - The interviewer's coaching-price skepticism stands alongside Sam's strong endorsement of coaching — disagreement preserved, not resolved. # Speaker Attribution & Provenance Record ## Video Overview - **Title:** How Coaching Sparked a Flint Business Revival #NALP2024 #ServiceIndustry #Entrepreneurship - **Format:** On-camera interview, recorded at what the guest refers to as a conference (NALP 2024, per title/hashtags) - **Metadata provided:** Transcript only; no curated speaker metadata, no comment availability information ## Identified Speakers ### Speaker 1 — **Interviewer / Host** (addressed as "Max" at close) - **Role:** Interviewer (unidentified full name; guest calls him "Max" and jokes he looks like Jeff Bezos) - **Evidence:** Asks all questions ("Sam, it's great to sit down with you," "What do you do now?"), thanks guest, credits "Jason" for the introduction - **Notable:** References a personal conversation with **Tommy Mello of A1 Garage** regarding Mello paying Dan Martell ~$100k/year for coaching (third-party claim, unverified in this video) ### Speaker 2 — **"Sam"** — Guest - **Role:** Guest; business owner/CEO of **Atlas Outdoor** (lawn care/landscape company, Flint, Michigan) - **Evidence:** First-person narrative of founding company in 2011, lives near Flint, gave a talk "this morning" at the conference - **Background stated by guest:** Flint native, high school dropout (later earned GED), former Flint Journal customer service employee ## Referenced Third Parties & Sources (claims only, not endorsements) ### Named People - **Sam's business coach** (unnamed): hired ~2018 after credit card decline incident in Louisville; told Sam "You're the problem" - **Coach at NLP event** (unnamed): quoted — >"Sam, nobody grows to a four to five million dollar business and says, 'I would be happy.'... Deep down inside, that's a cry for help." - **Tommy Mello** (A1 Garage): pays Dan Martell ~$100k/year per interviewer's account - **Dan Martell** — author of **Buy Back Your Time** (book cited by guest) - **Ed Mylett** — author of **The Power of One More** (book cited by guest) - **Jason** — person who introduced the two speakers - **Sam's wife** — joined the business in 2012, HR/corporate background - **Unnamed foreman** in a failed leadership role (~$900k construction division) ### Named Books/Concepts - *Buy Back Your Time* — Dan Martell - *The Power of One More* — Ed Mylett - *Good to Great* — Hedgehog concept cited by guest ### Referenced Events/Statistics - **NLP / NALP conference** (Louisville conference; "breakfast with champions" event) - Guest cites an unnamed **study statistic**: "82% of employees in 2024 say that they find their identity through their work" — source not identified in transcript - Guest's company figures: 93% year-over-year retention; ~$330k first-year revenue; broke $1M year two; grew ~$1M/year to 2017–18; now ~110–120 employees; second location opened (metro Detroit) ## Promotional Segments - **None explicitly flagged.** The video promotes no product/service directly; conference hashtags (#NALP2024) and guest's favorable framing of conferences, coaching, and cited books constitute implicit promotion but no explicit promotional segment is present. ## Uncertainty & Availability Notes - Interviewer's full identity beyond "Max" — **unconfirmed** - Guest's full name beyond "Sam" — **unconfirmed** - All business metrics, quotes, and the 82% statistic are **self-reported by the guest**; no independent sources available in the transcript - No comment availability, description, or curated metadata supplied Well, I was actually at NLP and met one of the coaches there. Great dude. And I was telling him, I said, "You know, if we could just stay this size and just figure it out to where we can make money, I would be happy." And he said, "Sam, nobody grows to a four to five million dollar business and says, 'I would be happy.'" He said, "Deep down inside, that's a that's a cry for help." Sam, it's great to sit down with you. Yeah. It's an honor, my brother. So, you're from America's wasteland. Flint, Michigan. Is that where you grew up? I grew up in the city of Flint. Yep, Flint Central, uh Flint-born and Flint-native, but uh me and my wife and family reside about 30 minutes south of there now. It So, you you you I guess you have escaped to certain degree, right? You're You know, there's there's something about Flint. There's a there's a hardness about it that I'll say that it gets this, you know, misconception for obviously if the if the the lead in the water doesn't kill you, the lead from the bullets will. And I and I will say like it's it it's a it's a special area and it's kind of sad what's happened to it, but on the flip side, you know, we've been able to build an incredible business there and one of the things I've learned and we'll kind of unpack the journey here today, but one of the things that I've learned we opened a second location in the metro Detroit market, which is a much larger market than the city of Flint. No doubt about it, hence why we wanted to be in that area, but it's just a a completely different workforce in that area than what Flint is. So, even though, you know, Flint it's it it is definitely kind of a depressed area, like we work, you know, the bulk of our work is in the suburbs and there's some great people there and there's a lot of wealth there and we've been able to kind of just um get that, you know, I don't want to say like suck that juice out of the the fruit, but you know, obviously people are attracted to what we're doing and it shows in our sales. So, Yeah, I mean, joking aside, obviously Flint has got a storied past. It's been a very important area, is particularly for the US auto making industry, right? Um and you probably face less competition, I would imagine, than in the Detroit kind of the closer Detroit suburbs. And that's so that and I think that that's a blessing and a curse because yes, in the greater Flint area, there's only a few of us that I would, you know, consider like a a a top competitor and we kind of just bounce clients back and forth. We we kind of, you know, we'll we'll sell some, he'll take some, we'll hire his good team members one of his guys and um so yes, it is definitely less competitive on the the large scale and but there are a lot of smaller companies. So, you know, we definitely they're the ones that we have to keep an eye on because they're, you know, they're out there. So, there's not a lot of big players though, like the metro Detroit market. Absolutely. So, how did you get into this business? So, I started uh um met my wife in high school. I think it's an important part of the journey. So, my wife is 2 years older than me. You wouldn't know it if you met the two of us. Uh but when she graduated high school, you know, I was still going into my senior year and the thought of being at school was like, this sucks. So, she is off to college and I was like, couldn't find any purpose with wanting to be there anymore. So, I ended up dropping out. Um I got a job at the Flint Journal back in this is like 1998 when there was a a paper there. Got a job in customer service uh because I could type 90 words a minute back then and they didn't And and they didn't ask like this And it was all like peck typing too, you know? And anyway, so got the job there and I did that for about a year and they said, "Hey, um we never got a copy of your diploma or your GED. Uh we need to get that." So, I was like, "Oh, crap. If I don't get my GED, I'm going to lose my job." And I loved working there. So, went and did the GED thing, kept my job. Well, in 2000 uh 2001, uh one of my close friends got me a job working for a local lawn care company. So, I ended up quitting my day job, the the the office job, and started cutting grass. And just like many, you know, people in the industry, I just fell in love with it. Like, to the point to where uh just the smell and just being outside, like it was it was awesome. Uh so, because of that, I got really good at it. I got really good at cutting grass. And, you know, fast forward a few years, uh my me and my wife bought our first home in 2005, couple acre lot on Atlas Road, hence the you know, name of our company, and that's a whole 'nother story we'll get to. But, we uh we bought that home, I bought a zero turn to just cut my own lawn. And as time was transitioning, I was kind of getting taken out of the field at my my day job, and I and I missed that. I missed the cutting grass. So, I kind of just started like forming, you know, cutting grass on the side and going through that journey, and didn't realize that I was kind of building 40, 50 clients just driving up and down Atlas Road. Um 2010, we had our our first child, uh our daughter, and my wife wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. She worked for the corporate America world. She wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. And so, now I'm like, I can I can sell 20 more clients and be able to replace her income. So, I I did. And what I realized then was I needed to make a decision. Like, I either need to go, you know, go all in at a day job, and, you know, make 70, 80 grand a year at a salary job, or build on this business we were kind of building, but it was more of a of a hobby, I would say. And uh super my wife was always supportive of it, never like let the financial side of it kind of drive things. And in 2011, went all in, quit the day job, and just made a post on Facebook saying, "Hey, I'm starting you know, going all in on my company. We're going to call it Atlas Outdoor." That's the road I lived on. And started it first year, we went live June of 2011. Um and in just that first year, we went from like 50 grand in revenue the year prior. First year going all in, we did about 330,000 in revenue just hustling full-time at it. Um but our second year, which was like our first consecutive full year, we broke a million dollars in revenue and went on to grow a million dollars a year after that till around 2017-2018, which, you know, if there was ever a point when I wanted to give up on it, it was then because we we literally accidentally grew. Like there was just I I oversold myself. But I was overselling and underleading. And so that was kind of our big like pivotal year of change to like pump the brakes, you know, ended up hiring a good business coach to kind of come in even though we really couldn't afford it. And brought him in and and kind of just saw things from a different perspective. What did, you know, you oversold and underled? How did that manifest in your life and in the business? What did that What did that mean? Like you were working 24/7, you were 100% working 24/7, but more importantly, like when you're trying to when you're trying to lead a million to million and a half dollar company, you know, the owner's very much involved in everything. Well, I was leading or I would say managing a five million dollar a year company, and I was involved in every single thing going on in the company. Every decision, you know, my my wife ended up joining the business in 2012, which brought a different perspective to things because she brought the corporate kind of HR side, which we needed. Uh so she comes in. So that was a blessing to have her, but like I was still trying to manage what she was doing and and we were we were operating what should have been a phase five company, we were operating at like a phase two, where the owner, you know, at at that revenue, 50, 60 employees, I should have solely been acting as the CEO of the business and I wasn't. I was literally I was the sales guy. I was involved in the operations. I mean, there were a lot of day-to-day stuff I wasn't doing, but I never really did that to begin with, right? So yeah, that's what I meant by that. Like I when we were we had so many problems and my way of fixing the problems was just to go sell more work. It wasn't to actually fix the root issue of it. It was sell more work, get some deposits and use that to fund more growth. So it worked, but yeah, I would never advise anybody to grow that way. So I'm interested in what happened in your mind back then. So you're you know, your solution to problems was just do more. So at what point did you wake up and say I need a coach, I need help, I need something? Oh my gosh, it's been such a journey, but I I remember it very, very clear. So I I took we had to we had to let go of a of a person that I had empowered into a leadership role that was running our construction side of the business. And that was around right around 900 grand in revenue because it was never as big as our maintenance and snow side. And we had to let him go. And what I learned about that was nobody in the business really knew how to complete the level of projects that this guy was. He was a great foreman, should have never been put into that leadership role. So I took a group like our culture was just going to crap. I was like putting on this happy face every day. Like I said, we were literally like big money problems at this point. You're not trying to get five grand to solve your issues. We need 100 grand to solve the problems that we're having. And so I took uh I took a big team of of employees to Louisville to the big conference there and I'll never forget like, "Hays, culture, team building, we're going to do this." They had no idea how bad the financials were. The only one who knew was me and my wife. And so, we're we're in Louisville and I book us uh like a Airbnb cuz I called it the team building house. No, it's cuz it was way cheaper than a freaking the hotels in downtown, right? So, we get this Airbnb and there's like 10 of us in this house and we wake up the first morning of the conference and there's cockroaches in this thing. Cockroaches. So, my team's like, "We're out of here. We're going back to We're going home to the Ritz-Carlton." So, I'm just like, "No, we No, we need to be here." So, my wife's like, "What are we going to do?" Said, "Well, we'll go We'll go get a hotel." So, we go downtown Louisville. We're going We got to book There's you know, there's two people to a room. There was one female separate from my wife. So, she's got to get her own room and it was like $7,000 for this to to finish the conference, basically. And we go to pay for the room and our company credit card declines. And I remember my wife like looks over at me and all of our team's outside like ready to have a good time. This conference is going to be it. And my wife's like, "Just put it on our personal credit card. We'll figure it out." And I just remembered like being there and being in that moment and that was actually when I had met who is now a friend of mine that became our He was our coach for a couple years. And I met him there and he was the first one that we ended up I'm like, "I don't know how I'm going to afford you, but I have to afford you." And brought him into our business. I had never even heard of a business coach before. I didn't know that that existed. And he came into our business and he's the one that's like, "I get it. You got some problems here." But he said like, "Your people are so receptive to what you're trying to accomplish." Like most of the times when you I get the such a privilege and honor I get to coach and mentor 100 companies now. And so I know that feeling when I go into companies now, and sometimes people are like, "Oh, the coach is here. This is great." Other times there's this wall up where people don't want to talk to you cuz they know that they might be the problem, right? Well, this guy comes in and he's like, "Well, we you got some issues over here, all that. Your people are good. You're the problem." Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And he And he goes, "Man, but there's You guys have a culture that I don't think I've ever witnessed before in all the companies that he had worked with. And it was really like he was the first person that gave me inspiration that we could fix it." Because honestly, in my mind, I'm going, "Dude, I could just take this thing back to a million, million and a half in revenue, and like control it." And I had some great mentors along the way just speaking with them. But really just hearing another perspective that wasn't in He had nothing to lose. He was just being honest. And I think that that's one of the problems as leaders is that the more you grow in your journey, people tell you what you want to hear, not what you need to hear. And that's what I love about conferences like this is there's people here like you think you got your poop together, then you're talking to a $150 million company, and that guy's not going to sugarcoat crap. And so that's what I love about. So that was kind of when I realized that there was something there and that I needed to really analyze what I was doing every day. And I had so many $15 an hour task on my plate that I'm like, instead of working on $1,000 an hour stuff, I'm doing you know, admin stuff and email crap and just stuff that I couldn't focus on working on the business. I was 80% in the business on the day-to-day. So that was kind of the the big switch moment in 2018 for us. Okay. So it sounds like you maybe established a minimum hourly rate for yourself and didn't do anything that was below that hourly rate. Is that one of the things you did? That's relatively newer to me after reading a couple really good books to really realize on what our time is worth. Um, but even back then my superpower was sales. So, I'm like, why am I focusing on anything else other than sales and and casting the vision? So, when I could solely focus focus on just that and have a couple of really good operators, I think that was like our pivotal moment was realizing like, this is what I'm good at. This is what I'm passionate about. Let's focus on that. So, that took us another couple million dollars in revenue. Now we're starting to be profitable because there's people watching the jobs. We put a software in place. Like, stuff that we just weren't doing before. And that really took us to the next level. But then that like that $7 to $8 million point, now I couldn't even be the main rainmaker anymore. I needed to back off that. So, I kind of replaced myself in the sales role 3 years ago. And now, I mean, I mean, I'm here. It's just crazy the difference, dude. What do you do now? So, honestly, like my day-to-day stuff, I'm I'm obviously, I'm the the CEO of the company, but most of my work now is like relationship development. So, we've got a couple of like seven-figure clients. So, I'll work with them. But, you know, the the higher caliber of the client, the lower maintenance they are. So, that's, you know, a few times a year. But, really my day-to-day stuff is just keeping keeping fi- you know, keeping the financials going, uh keeping cash coming in, whether that's through like dealing working with our banks to make sure that we can continue to fund our growth. Um, I never want to be the lid to our growth. And if one day one of my, you know, directors comes to me and says, "Hey, um there's this company that wants to sell. It's three crews. You know, it would be a great fit for our portfolio. Uh what do you think about that?" And if and if instantly my mind goes, "There's no way we're going to be able to fund that." I've now became the lid to the business. So, really it's my you know, my meetings are with with our banks and really just people that are leveling me up to think more like a CEO and to think more like a a hundred million dollar business because if I keep thinking like a five to seven million dollar a year business, we're not going to focus on the the the acquisition of growth that we're kind of wanting to get into now, which we did that early on, but they were all like smaller deals. Right now, we're looking at like million dollar companies because that'll expedite our organic growth with acquisition growth. What other things have you done to kind of level yourself up as a CEO? It's been said that I'm probably borderline obsessed with personal growth and development. Um but like for me, obviously I have I have a coach that's much further along in the journey and he's he's probably one of the only people that'll tell me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear. Um but really yeah, like my just learning to understand like the dichotomy of business um and really beginning with the end in mind and instead of thinking like what does tomorrow look like, where do where do I want to be? Where do where do I feel my senior leaders at the company want to be in 10 years? And then kind of write the narrative backwards from that. So, being with people that level me up um make me think bigger than where I'm at. It's it's those kind of uh in- influential people and inspirational people that obviously make me think longer term to realize like, you know, I never would have thought there was an end in sight. I'm going to do this till they find me in a plow truck. And now like I do see that like there's some generational things that can happen and uh so yeah, I would say like just being around people that make me think bigger than being in the day-to-day stuff is probably my main level up thing for sure. What sort of things you've been reading lately? So, I just read a book that was probably That's a great question. I just read a book called Buy Back Your Time. And Dan Martell's book I feel like that book was one of the the biggest game-changers for like what is your time worth? Thinking about that because even still at you know before I came to this conference, you know, I used to be the guy that would like we do team member of the month every month and I would be the guy that would like get you know get everything done in preparation for that get their photo get them printed and I'm like man there's I have an incredible team of people that can that can take over those little tasks that we don't realize how much time they take. So Buy Back Your Time has probably been my most recent recent great read. Right now I'm reading The Power of One More by Ed Mylett and that's like that's right up there with Martell's book for sure. Interesting. Yeah, I I sat down with Tommy Mello from A1 Garage a couple months back and he was telling me he pays I don't know Martell like 100k a year. I think that's on the low end. He's probably giving Mello a deal. Yeah, perhaps he is. I I couldn't understand what he was paying for. Um Many would ask that same question. That's beyond That's beyond where I'm at, brother. Yeah, it seemed like he had him do like some chart on the wall or something for 100k. I was thinking about getting into the chart on the wall business for 100k, but uh that's a discussion for another time. if you read if you read the book about his claim to fame and how he got his start and then how he turned that into a hundred million dollar a year company, you know, I think that that's all too often with people that want to get into like that coaching and mastermind thing is they don't have a chapter of the book that shows like hey what could you know what can you do? Like I remember even being at a I remember being at NLP years ago and going to the breakfast with champions event and the guy that was the facilitator for my table, he was a you know his card said he was a business coach, but he was like out of college he had no you know he had nothing that showed like He's only ever been a coach. He's only and like dude, so what is it like when you're employed, when you can't make payroll? Tell me about that. You know, they'd never been on that side. I know for me, I mean, God forbid this ever happens, but if I ever, you know, needed help diagnosing a syndrome or something, if I'm dealing I want to know from somebody who's been in it. It's like going to AA and your AA, what do they call it? Your pop I know what you're talking about, right? yeah. Sponsor has never had a drink before. He's read about it. You don't even yeah, you don't know. If I'm ever like I think we can get some of our best marriage advice from people that have been divorced because I'll ask him and say, "Hey, like tell I love I love my wife more than anybody. Tell me what not to do." And they they've lived it, right? And a lot of them are open and go, "Dude, do this, take time for date nights, take time for each other, don't quit dating, rinse, wash, repeat, you'll have a great marriage." You have recreated yourself from a high school dropout to a CEO of a very fast growing company. You know, where the aspir- I would imagine you got kind of a new lease on life post 2018 and things are really starting to move smoothly. What's your aspirations for this business? That's a great That's a great question. You know, it's been like early on when we were starting to kind of get traction with day-to-day things like I realized that if I set a goal or set a sales goal or set a operational goal or a developmental role, we would hit them. Like we would hit those goals. So, it was almost kind of like how do we switch from being goal oriented to being growth oriented? Well, we're just growing every single day. Um but now looking at the business where like, you know, from any outside view like we have a successful company. Humbly said, we have a successful company. But for me personally like and and and a mentor of mine said this to me once. We were around 4 million in revenue. Um I remember reaching out to somebody who I was actually at an and met one of the coaches there, great dude, and I was telling him I said, you know, if we could just stay this size and just figured out to where we can make money, I would be happy. And he said, Sam, nobody grows to a four to five million dollar business and says, I would be happy. He said, deep down inside, that's a that's a cry for help. That's you saying, sucks right now. I need to like I need to change something or I'm I'm done. And like hearing him say that was like, okay, I get that. Then he went on further to say, you know, I know for me cuz again, I grew up inner city Flint, dude. My mom was a CNA, so my dad would call her a professional butt wiper. And my dad was like a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none, General Motors guy, but like he worked to eat lunch. Like there was no there was no life of abundance given to us as kids. And so I remember when I was first, you know, we're starting to grow, and I remember when I was able to pay myself a hundred grand a year. Like that to me was like, dude, I'm God's gift to entrepreneurs at this point, right? And what this person who was at another level said to me, he said, Sam, when you don't come from much, it's really easy for you to feel like you've made it and then you just stop because at that level of growth, dude, I mean again, I really felt like I was like this is the life that I never thought I would be able to have. Yeah. And so, you know, when you when you get a taste for like a you know, a little having a little bit of jingle in your pocket, it it kind of just like changes things. So like now, you know, again, like dude, we've been so blessed beyond belief to be where we're at. The life I get to provide for my kids, like that we never have, it's we have to be careful not to overdo it with them, right? And so now looking at that and looking at like what I what the the generational style opportunity. I don't want to say wealth, the opportunity that I want to leave for my kids, like we're succession planning to do that, right? So, I look at all that and go, "Okay, what else? What else is there?" Well, I look at the 110, 120 people that call Atlas home and I go, "Man, I want to create opportunity for these people." And so, when I hear of a foreman that was able to like buy their first home and, you know, move his family, I hate to say it, out of the city and get into one of the nicer sub, you know, suburb areas, that to me is is what I call significance. And once you've, you know, had a taste of significance, settling for success and hitting goals will never be good enough. So, in order to keep providing that, like we have to keep growing. So, like we opened our second location this year and that's because, you know, our first location, I mean, at the end of the day, it is Flint and it's not a huge market. So, we did have to tap into that Metro Detroit market because that's unlimited at that point. So, if we can't create, you know, every year it's like, how much longer do we keep going at this this growth rate? But now, this new thing is like, "Wow, this I mean, it it's such a larger platform to scale growth that uh I see a lot of things that are going to be phenomenal coming from that." Have you thought about adding on additional services to that business? After reading the book Good to Great and in the book Good to Great, they talk about the Hedgehog concept, which is uh are you passionate about it? Can you be the best at it and can you make money doing it? And, you know, based off that, like I think this is one of the things that growing early, it it helped us get go, we would do everything. Like the reason our company was Atlas Outdoor and not Atlas Landscape was because we would pressure wash, we would paint, we would do everything. But, like I hated that stuff. Like, so, you know, I would rather us and when you come to events like this and you see the the size of our industry, it really does make you think like there's so much more growth to be made here. Like I won't get to see the potential of it because we could keep doing the same scale we're at and I'll be dead and gone before the opportunity runs out. So based off that, you know, I'm my my passion is around people and I want their passion to be the industry. So, you know, yeah, lawn care and landscape was the girl that brought me to the dance, but really for me now it's like we're in the people business. Our people are in the landscape business. And we get offers and opportunities all the time. You guys should get into this. You should start offering that, but it's like until we see that we're we added Christmas lights last year, which is kind of a a great little service offering. It brings a lot of joy, no pun intended. Um, but like the scalability of it for us is not anything crazy. So, you know, based off that, it would have to get to a point to where we would outgrow what we're passionate about and then bring some stuff on. But other than that, no. I think we're going to stay right in our lane where we are. What's the difference now in 2024 versus 2015 in terms of hiring and retaining employees and how you think about that? How you think about recruiting and how you think about managing? We could do a whole session just on that topic right there. imagine. And but yeah, it's a great it's a great question. So to go back to, you know, us being in the employee business and our employees are in the landscape business. Um, and I talked about this in my talk this morning. Uh, if you're using the same marketing tactics to attract and recruit and retain now that you did 10 years ago or even 5 years ago, you're in trouble. And there was a person in my session this morning, they have like 600 employees and they were there cuz they're having, you know, recruiting problems. And, you know, when I asked them, like, what what are you guys doing, right? Like, and who am I to tell this guy, but like, he was there wanting to learn, right? And when I asked him what they're doing to try to attract and recruit, it's been the same since they started. And that's kind of out they've outgrown that that scale, that metric in, you know, in in that or that process now in 2024 and they're really starting to feel it. Um so, you know, like our every single thing back one in those darker years when I talked about like profitability and all that, one of the issues we had was like we were doing really good with the people that made it past 90 days, but there was this revolving door in the up the in the door and up to 2 months. And here I am sounding like every other cowboy landscaper, nobody wants to work. Everybody wants a job, nobody wants to work. Well, I remember going to the office one day, one morning in like 20 2017, 2016, 2017. And I go in the office and there were two new guys standing at the front door and I could tell like they were new. They didn't have a shirt on yet, anything like that. And they sat there for like 15 minutes and nobody told nobody went up to them and said, "Hey, you know, can I help you with something?" We had probably around 60 employees at this point. And so, I'm kind of watching through the corner of my office that these guys are hanging out. I finally had to go out there and say something. Like, "Hey, can I help you guys with something?" Yeah, we were hired yesterday. Okay, well, who were you told to report to? They didn't say. So, I'm looking at this going, "Oh, this is a problem." Like, our our problem was starting right at the the the onboard. We had no training, there was no process to get them in the door. So, now to fast forward to today, you know, it's so many people's lives outside of work are just reckless. Like they're just crazy. Marital problems, financial problems, we got inflation, you know, all the things, right? And if if if we can provide an environment where team members can come to work and feel settled, feel like when I come to work, like I got a job to do. Like I know my check's going to be there this Friday. Like it's it's it's crazy to think like cuz I feel like the best people, the best employees are the ones that use their work as a tool to provide for the life they want, not the other way around. So many people use their family as a tool to provide for their work. Um then people will just find such a purpose in their work that they won't want to leave. And there's actually been studies at this, like this new workforce, like 82% of employees in 2024 say that they find their identity through their work. And I know that that's like super like uh not colloquial, but it's like opposite of what it should be, right? Your identity should be what who you are outside. your identity was your only fans. That that's uh that's a whole another That's that's a part of your other But yeah, so that, you know, when you can provide a platform where people feel settled when they come to work, they will become your biggest ambassadors to want more people to want to be a part of that. And that's what I feel like we're creating that environment where our employees are like it's crazy to think, but they would they would rather be at home than be in at home. I'd rather be at work than be in at home. So we're trying to like go, "Hey, like how can we bring your family and do more family appreciation events where like the spouses and the kids can see what mom and dad what they do all day." And uh so there's just got to be way more emphasis today on like literally a good company culture starts at that onboard. Like if you can keep them more than 90 days, that that will prove your culture is okay. But if you're losing them early, you probably have an onboard problem. So, what sort of improvement then from the darker years to present have you seen in that initial 90-day period as well as long-term retention? So, we had a 93% retention from last year to this year, which is like unheard of in our industry. And I think one of the biggest things we are doing different is there's there's a loyalty that that employers and middle-level leaders miss. It's that buddy system between a mid-level manager or a foreman and the loyalty with an employee. The way that I talk to and relate to like say the up-and-coming weed whacker guy, we speak two different languages. So, but he has a great relationship with his foreman or even with one of our production managers. So, having what I would call the buddy system where like it nothing fills my heart more than when like I'm working at the office late and I see one of our ops managers sitting out on our patio, you know, having having a conversation with four or five guys around. Like I just don't have the ability to do that anymore. Like I've kind of outgrown that process, but I do that with my direct reports. And so, they recognize that like, "Hey, if these guys leave, I'm screwed." So, they're doing their hardest work to keep them wanting to be part of the culture. So, I mean as as an owner now, like if I said what my my biggest day-to-day responsibilities are, it's setting the vision, where are we where we going, and then I set the tone for the culture. So, you know, every day like how are we developing these new employees? What's our training program look like? And so, now to keep people in that first 90 days, we remove so much pressure from the foreman because we're putting all this pressure on our foreman to hit numbers. You know, you got to get your your throughput numbers every hour. Uh don't you know, there we want you to re uh to retain your team members, right? But, you also need to train the new guy who's never done it before, but he's got great character. He wants it, but it adds a lot of pressure to him. So, one of the things that we changed was really just a training program where the new hires come in and until they feel comfortable to go out and produce, we don't we don't let them out of our sight. We don't let them out of a training person's sight for the most part. I mean, it's not it's not perfect. It's at 80% I'll say, but 80% with momentum is is in the right direction. But, it's truly made a difference. And like most companies in our industry, this is a sad truth. Most companies' training program is 5 hours or less. And then we put them on a $20,000 lawnmower or go drive a $100,000 truck with no driver's training. No we let them go mow the lawn. That's how I learned. My first lawn job, my boss put me on the lawn in front of our shop and said, "Don't leave turn around marks. Come see me when you're not leaving turn around." That's how I learned. And to think about that now, like just not letting people feel comfortable when they're going out into the world to be able to produce, game changer. Game changer. Wow. Well, Sam, listen, it's been fantastic sitting here chatting with you. I'm glad I'm glad Jason intro- I'm glad Jason introduced us. So, thanks for spending some time with us today. It's been truly an honor. And I had no idea and no idea that Jeff Bezos was going to be doing my interview with me today. Thanks, Max. You know, I knew that was coming out. All right, brother. Appreciate you, man. Appreciate you, my man. You're You're