Karina: Welcome to the Landscape Ontario Podcast. I’m your host, Karina Sinclair. Today I welcome Grant Harrison back to the show. Grant has spent his entire career in the landscape industry from starting at age 15 with a shovel in hand, and then working his way through all levels of business. He has seen it all.
And today he focuses on helping teams build structure, improve profitability and find real satisfaction in their work through his consulting firm. I’ve asked him to offer some advice to landscape business owners on how to effectively choose and implement software solutions. We talk about the common challenges businesses face with technology adoption, the essential categories of software for operational efficiency, the importance of involving your team in the selection process and how to overcome resistance to ensure a successful rollout.
And we dive into the evolving role of AI in the industry and how businesses can stay ahead using artificial intelligence. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re looking to scale, this episode has actionable insights that will help your landscape business thrive. This episode is also available in both audio and video form, so head over to the Landscape Ontario YouTube channel to put faces to the voices.
And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you can stay up to date on the topics and issues facing landscape professionals in Canada. Now on with the show.
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Karina: Grant, thanks so much for coming back to the Landscape Ontario Podcast. You’ve been here on the show a couple of times now, and you always bring. Great advice, actionable, relatable, useful advice that landscape business owners can use to make their businesses run more smoothly and effectively. So I’m excited today to talk about software solutions, how to choose them and how to implement them so that they actually make a difference and help a business be more successful. And I know you’ve got lots of wisdom to share with us, so thanks again for coming onto the show.
Grant: Oh, thank you so much for having me. And again, it’s great to see you, great to be on the podcast and uh, looking forward to hopefully, like you said, giving some good advice on how to deal with software in your business.
Karina: And I know you’ve been through all the paces, right? You’ve owned a landscape company and now you help other landscapers make their business processes run more smoothly. So I know you’ve got some real insights to this. We can talk about how a lot of landscapers and the business owners, they have a ton of great skills, right?
They know what they’re doing in the landscape, running all that big equipment and working with clients and, and building crews. But maybe software solutions isn’t something that has been top of mind for them and maybe they’re struggling with some of that business technology. What’s the core issue you see in the industry right now around this when it comes to adopting technology? And what are some signs that business owners are using it in the wrong way?
Grant: Like you said, most business owners in the landscape world are great technicians. They love to build stuff. They love being outside, cutting grass,
plowing snow, building retaining walls. That’s what they’re passionate about. That’s what they got into the business for.
And so many of us have been in the industry for so long that there wasn’t the software when we first started. And the software seems to be coming faster and more and more options every year or even right now, every day it seems like there’s more and more options.
So I think for most landscape contractors, they’re a bit overwhelmed. There’s so many options now, they just don’t know where to start. Getting through the whole “what do I need, what do I not need?” We find there’s two schools of thought for most landscape contractors.
One is they don’t want any of it. They pride themselves on being like, we don’t have any software. We’re just old school. We love pen and paper. And it’s like almost they push back, like they’re proud that they don’t have it. And then the other pendulum swings is we have some contractors that we know that just overdo it. They’re just, everything is a software. Everything is a process. And then they have so many softwares that it’s just not feasible. They don’t leverage them well enough. The staff don’t use them because there’s too many of them. They don’t get good information out of it. They don’t leverage it enough.
So, it’s finding that middle ground right now for what you need in the business, what’s gonna actually be useful, what’s gonna save you time, what’s gonna make you some more money and then obviously implementing that. And that’s, we’ll give you some hints on how to do that well.
Karina: Oh, that sounds great. And it is so fascinating that there are those who want nothing to do with it and those who think it will solve all the world’s problems and it neither is necessarily quite true. So finding that happy medium is gonna be a great thing to do today. Now the software and apps, there’s all kinds of solutions out there and they can help with all kinds of business parts. What are some of the main must-have categories of software that contractors should be looking at to use? And maybe do you have any examples of how using a piece of software has made dramatic improvement in a business’s operations?
Grant: So I’ll go, kind of go through the major ones.
Obviously as we’ve gone on, and even, like I said, it’s changing dramatically. But I think if you’re starting out and maybe don’t have any software, I’d always say accounting is the first one. So the majority of contractors are using a QuickBooks platform, QuickBooks Online.
There’s a bunch of other ones that you can use, but right now that software is going to have the most amount of impact on your business versus just using Excel. So understanding how to run payroll through it, how to do your invoicing through it, how to budget through the software, how to get reports, like, just knowing how to job cost.
There are just so many benefits from using some sort of accounting software but also leveraging it. And a lot of times with accounting software, that’s something I would recommend you finding someone, like a fractional bookkeeper, if it’s not something that you want to do. Hiring someone out to set it up and to maybe maintain it is probably adding good value for that accounting software.
But it can do so much for your business. It gives you clarity. It tells you exactly what your business is doing and then it takes the emotion out of it. The numbers don’t lie. When we don’t know the numbers, we start to make stories up, but the accounting software doesn’t allow you to do that. And then when you want to go get a loan or you want to leverage the business in other ways, people are always asking you, can you send me your numbers?
So if your numbers aren’t clean and you don’t have software to leverage that or to organize it, it does impede the business when it comes to that. So right away, accounting software would be the number one thing I would pick.
The next one after that, some sort of operational software. There’s all kinds of ’em out there right now and a lot of the operational software right now that’s offered is actually built by contractors. Which is great because a lot of those contractors have started it, they started working through it. They’ve built it up, they’ve gone through the learning lessons of what works, what doesn’t work.
So to me, something that can schedule your crews, can help you with budgeting, can help you with scheduling. Just something like that, that allows the operation to work better. And again, if you can get that operational software to sync with your accounting software, that’s even better.
So a payroll if you got operational software that’ll do time tracking for you, if it’ll sync into your accounting software, it’s even better. Because that’s one less step you have to do on an admin task, which every time you do something on an admin task, it creates an opportunity to make mistakes.
So a lot of that software will sync as well, which is good. So yeah, some sort of operational software will help just organize yourself as a business, and again, it just allows people to be able to do that and it gets rid of a lot of paper as well. So that’s really good.
The third one I would focus on would be some sort of HR software, human resource software. Again, there’s lots of different ones out there right now, but just somewhere, one place that’s focused that you can have all your HR stuff. So somewhere where you can have job descriptions somewhere. You, a lot of the HR software right now you can do postings on, so it’ll work with a LinkedIn or an Indeed, and you could put a posting, it’ll post for you and then it’ll track all your leads coming in, all the resumes.
You can actually have it so people can book time off, right? They, you can put your payroll in there, rates, all that type of stuff. Your annual reviews for instance, so it has all that HR ability in that software all in one area. A lot of good HR software allows the access of the staff into the software as well, so they can go in themselves and book time off. But it also is security. So not everyone can get into it. Because obviously HR documents need to be secured. There’s some privacy that goes along with it. Again, there’s a couple different ones out there, depending on what you want to do, but this would be one area that I see a lot of contractors not leveraging when it comes to that.
The other one I would say that we don’t see enough of and in the industry we have so much equipment and so much fleet and people are just running blindly. So some sort of fleet management software that has some sort of GPS in it. Just one place that you can put all the fleet into it.
Like what were the service records you had for this equipment? When did you purchase it? What was the value of it? What’s the buyout of it? You know, what are the lease payments or financial payments on it? Just something that keeps it all in one spot that you can go to. A lot of that fleet software, the staff can actually make service requests for it. So if it needs an oil change, someone in the field can actually request an oil change to someone in the office. So that just saves again. That oil change from not being noticed or not being told by the fleet manager to be able to do that.
So again, it’s just really important. So much of our money goes towards fleet, we don’t leverage software enough to manage the fleet. And it’s usually all over. A lot of times it’s like files. So if you’re financing a piece of equipment, paper into a file and it goes into the file. But this way it’s all in one spot, just like your HR type of thing. So it consolidates everything in one location and makes it easier, especially for the finance department as well as if anyone’s, whoever’s managing your fleet, just keeps it organized for them to be able to do that.
So the other one that’s really good is some sort of document storage. I think most of us have document storage like on our desktop or there’s all kinds of different ways to document storage. But I suggest, as a company, to try to commit to one form of document storage.
If you’re a Google, if you love the Google platform go with Google Drive. If you’re Microsoft, go to OneDrive. Some people use Hubdocs. There’s all kinds of different ways you can do it. But just commit to one platform, and then what that does is that allows everyone to use that same platform.
And don’t save stuff on your desktop. We’ve seen this too many times, like someone loses their computer or their computer crashes. If you’re uploading all your documents uh, into a OneDrive or Google Drive, it’s in the cloud. It doesn’t matter if your computer gets broken or gets stolen. It’s all there and then everyone can access it.
So another great option for that. Again, most people are using storage, but they’re not using consolidated storage that we would see that would be helpful, especially if you’re a small company, it’s growing.
If you’re a mid-size company and people will always say our storage, our Google Drive, Microsoft Drive, is a mess, right? So you actually need a good naming process at the very start when you start it. Because if not, like pictures, for instance, like I just see people put pictures everywhere. So if you don’t make a good naming process on your shared drive, whatever it is, it gets out of control really quickly. And then it becomes a big job for someone to go in there and start organizing it.
Karina: Oh, I can totally relate to that. Offload a camera and it automatically names everything “image underscore random length of numbers”, and then you just have thousands of those on a drive somewhere. There’s no way you can possibly find what you’re looking for later.
And then that’s money down the drain, because you’re wasting time and you’re wasting the asset that you have, but you can’t find it. And so that’s definitely a good tip is to make some great naming conventions early on and have everyone stick to it. And I like all your suggestions because this is a sense of keeping the information in one source of truth that is accessible by more than one person.
I think a lot of times, people who, who operate a business, they have a lot of that information up here in their heads. And this could be the relationships that they have with their clients and their suppliers. This could be technical things. This could be remembering when to have that oil change. And all of that is held up here, swirling around in a big mess.
And that takes a lot of mental calories to keep track of as well. So if it can be offloaded into a piece of software that helps maintain those records accurately, then that frees up your critical thinking into really excelling at other things that you’re meant to excel at and really shine and blow your clients away with your fantastic landscapes. So I like all those categories and I think those are a really good place to start for most businesses.
When it’s time to choose one of those solutions, we’re looking at a marketplace that has lots of options, so how does a business leader work with their team to try to define what they need solved and how can they effectively define those requirements when they start looking for software solutions?
Grant: So just like you said, the number one thing you can do is engage with your team. We’ve seen, and I’ve done this before, I go to, and maybe I go to a trade show or I go to a conference and I see someone do a presentation on it, and I get all excited about it. And I come home and I’m like, “Hey, this is what we’re going to do.”
And that typically doesn’t end well, because it doesn’t get buy-in from everyone. And then, I am not a good person to follow it through to the end. So I get excited about it and then I don’t get the team on board and then it falls off. So getting your team involved from day one prior to even looking at a software is probably the best way to do it.
Meeting with your team, so it doesn’t really matter, maybe it’s accounting software or fleet software, like let’s use fleet software ’cause that affects everyone within the company. So going around and asking, you know, your mechanic like, “If we were to centralize all this information, what would you want to see it look like? What information would you like to see? How would you like to see it?” And then going to the field staff and said, ” What are some pain points you have with some fleet? What would you wanna see? How would you want to be able to communicate this to the fleet manager?”
Again, talking to accounting, like, fleet involves so many aspects of the operation that almost everyone touches it. So going to the accounting department saying the same thing, “What would you like to see?” Because the accounting department’s gonna have a much different ask than the person in the field running the piece of equipment and also the mechanic.
So having everyone give some sort of say in what it is and then narrowing that down to a wishlist. And then from there, I, again, I would send one or two, maybe three people to look for demos and to actually sit there and say, “Okay, here’s some suggestions.”
Again, you can Google search it. Google search fleet management software. I always like asking other contractors what they’re using, so get a referral, ’cause that’s always the best. Just like anything else. If you can get a referral, “Here’s the software we’re using. This is what we like about it, this is what we don’t like about it, here’s our experience, onboarding it.”
But then doing a demo with the software company, but making sure that someone’s doing that checklist along the way. And making sure it’s checking all the boxes. For sure, it’s not gonna check all the boxes, but you gotta prioritize
it, right?
Does it hit 80 per cent of check boxes for us? Then that’s great, that’s good enough. Do two or three different softwares, but follow the same process for each one of them. Don’t fall in love with one. Because as soon as we fall in love with one, then we get blinders on. That’s why if you do it as a team, it’s better than just especially the owner doing it themselves.
So gather that information. Don’t overcommit to the first one that you see ’cause you get excited about it. Make sure you’re asking your fellow contractors for recommendations, and understanding it won’t do everything for you. But it will solve a bunch of it.
And then the other thing we see when selecting software is so many people will maybe not select a software because they actually have to choose. They actually might have to adjust how they run the business in order to work the software. And people are like, “We don’t do it that way, so we’re just obviously not gonna do it.”
But to me, you’re going to have to adjust how you run the operations or how your SOPs work or how you process it to adapt to the software. And a lot of times when we see pushback from contractors is their process that they’ve been using is not as good as what the software is recommending.
And so it’s just saying, “Okay, here’s some change management techniques we have to use in order to make this change.” But it’s actually a lot of the time it’s like, yes we have to identify early on that we’re gonna have to change how we do some stuff in order to adapt to the software. Because again, the software won’t adapt to your business. It doesn’t work that way. So those are some of the things you could do.
And then once you agree on something, then implementing it is typically the next hurdle that most people struggle with.
Karina: How do you suggest people get past that analysis paralysis? There are some who, they’ll do all the demos, they’ll look at five different options. Each one
maybe gets to about 80 per cent. This one has this feature we like, this one has that feature we like, I can’t choose, so I’ll just choose none.
Grant: Yeah.
Karina: How do you get people past that?
Grant: I think the 80 per cent is good enough rule as much as that makes some people cringe. But it is, if it’s 80 per cent good enough, then you need to go through and do it. And sometimes that’s just some people’s personality, right? Like they would like all the the boxes checked, but again, just going into the start of the process, thinking if it does 80 per cent of what we want to do, then that’s enough to be able to do it.
And I think as long as you’ve committed to a team and there’s some accountability there, the person that’s hesitating has people around them to be like, “Hey, we gotta make this decision,” right? Again, it’s a team decision. It’s not necessarily one person’s decision to do that. But it does help you create that accountability.
And again, if you go back to the checklist, you can see, “Hey, here’s all the things we wanted, and it does 80 per cent of these things really well. So let’s not hold back. Let’s go ahead and do it.”
Karina: Let’s talk a little bit more about that adoption and the next step. So you’ve got that piece of software, hopefully you’ve got more buy-in. Maybe there’s one or two people on the crew who are a little resistant. What are some good strategies for ensuring that everybody comes together to implement this and gets past some of those biases they have in their own process?
Grant: The one mistake we see, or the, maybe the one opportunity that we see is that the software companies hire good salespeople. Okay? These people are hired to sell software, right? They’re really good at their job, they’re trained to close this deal, right?
And they’re trained to tell you stuff, to push you in the direct direction for you to get the deal closed. Now, sometimes what we’ve seen is a lot of times, and it’s no fault of their own, but the implementation that the software companies say is typically way shorter than what it actually realistically is. So I always say to clients or contractors, I’m like, “If they say it’s gonna take you three to four months to implement this in your business, I’m like, just double that time,” because really that’s the time it takes. If you had nothing else going on, if you didn’t have a business to run and you weren’t overwhelmed with all the other things, it might take you three or four months.
The problem is you have a million other things going. You know, depending on where you are in the season. Are you in winter or summer? Are you doing your transition between those two seasons? It’s going to take you longer than what you think. My rule of thumb is always double what the sales person’s going to tell you is the implementation time.
So the second one you’re gonna have to do is identify a champion. So someone within the organization that’s going to champion the software implementation. Typically we see a lot of times it’s been an admin person who’s maybe in the office or maybe has a little bit extra time that someone can do some video calls, implement it, do some training.
But it needs a champion. It needs one person who you are gonna identify, that’s really part of their job description for the next 1, 2, 3, 6 months. That’s going to do the proper things that need to happen in order to get it implemented. So once that person gets identified, then that person’s job really is to project manage this software.
So dealing with the software company, getting signed up, if there’s extra levels they need or security levels they need, like identifying which staff are gonna need what? Identifying if there’s any technology, that hardware technology, that needs to get to. The guys need smartphones, they need iPads. Do people need laptops? Whatever it is, identifying that stuff early on, ’cause there’s a cost to implementing that software, but that champion really is the project manager moving forward so that, person setting up the dates for the training, bringing the right people in the room that need to get trained. Maybe doing some in-house training but they are the point of contact for the software company, but also for the staff, and especially for the owner. And typically the owner should not be the champion.
Again, I am a typical owner. I am 80 per cent good enough. That’s not what you need. You want a champion that’s a finisher. You want that person who is that one hundred percent. I’m gonna get this across the finish line. I’m gonna make sure everyone’s good. That’s the type of personality you’re looking for, that’s gonna get all the details down and make sure that it’s being used efficiently and that it’s being used properly.
Karina: It’s so interesting that you mention having somebody who is a finisher as part of this process and that’s a personality trait that not everybody has. So when we’re looking at building out our teams, keeping that in mind that maybe you wanna have somebody who really likes to close a deal, really likes to see a project right through to the very, very end and cross all those t’s and dot the i’s.
That’s a great skillset to make sure that’s been hired for your team in, on admin and on all sorts of teams. But I wanna back up just a little bit about the sales and you said software companies and these apps and these solutions, they have really excellent salespeople. Are there any red flags that you think a business owner who is in the process of trying to find the right solution for them, should they be aware of any promises, pie in the sky solutions that seem too good to be true, that probably are. Like, how can you identify those and help weed them out early on?
Grant: The couple questions I would ask for sure is, we talked about this a little bit earlier on, but ask for a referral, so someone within our industry. If it’s not an industry specific type of software, and it’s just more general, if you took an accounting or HR software, ask them, “Who would you recommend we talk to within our own industry?” And that industry could just be the trades in general. It doesn’t have to be like, a landscape contractor does plow and maintenance. But just something close to the trades as possible. Like someone working in the field, has an office team, has a lot of fleet, just something that’s close to that.
So just ask that up front, like, “How many of the landscapers are using the software and would you be giving me a referral to them?” And like I said, they’re not lying to you. They truly believe in their software. Like the software is typically really good. But it’s just making sure you can adapt it to how you know, our industry at least so they understand.
The other thing I’d like to know is they typically will give you an implementer. So there’s a typical sales person that will help you close the deal and then they will move you over to an implementer. And really that implementer is where the rubber hits the road. So you really want to almost have a good relationship with them, right?
They need to understand your business. They need to understand how you do it, because that implementer can either make or break your implementation process, right? If they understand your business, they understand how your staff works, all that type of stuff, they’re gonna be able to set you up from day one on the process and make it faster, easier than them, trying to build it and then realize that all the time and effort you put into it doesn’t make any sense. We build the relationship with the sales team and then we get handed off to the implementer implementing team, maybe, perhaps.
So typically we see that there’s a little bit of a hiccup there sometimes as well. So just getting that relationship early on and knowing that.
Karina: So once you’ve had these software solutions implemented for say, a year, what are some good KPIs for identifying that yes, this was the right solution, we continue to use it. Or do you identify like, no, maybe we need a different solution?
Grant: I think if you were to look back after a year, whatever software you’re doing, majority of contractors we work with or see, have dropped off on using the software. So let’s say the software has eight modules in it. For instance, it does these eight things for us, during the process of implementing it they maybe run into some staff that aren’t necessarily technology enabled.
So they push back and maybe they implement three of the eight or four of the eight and then they just lose steam when it comes to that type of stuff. So I would say after a year, I would do an audit of the software, how well we’re using it, who’s using it, who’s not using it. And a lot of times we see most of the software is under implemented. Like so much of software right now, like on a fleet management software, it can do so much for the fleet, but people are just using as a real expensive Excel program, right? They’re not leveraging all the technology behind it. But they’re in it, right? And they’re just like, okay, this is the most we can do.
And I think that’s where an implementer is takes it over. That implementer’s job is to make sure we’re using it. If we’ve committed to using these eight modules, then we need to use all eight modules. Now, again, it may take us a year to get all those eight modules implemented, but make sure you’re doing it.
The other pushback we see that hurts the business is the staff, typically the field staff, right? You really have to explain the why to the field stack before you roll out a software for them, because you’re gonna get stuff like, “I don’t get paid to do this. Like I’m too busy right now putting production in the ground. Now you want me to stop and fill out a time in and time out and make notes and take pictures. Like, I don’t have enough time now. Like the ownership team is pushing me already on production. Now, you need me to do this for every site,” and at that point we failed to explain the why.
So understanding, let’s say we use an operational software for winter operations, for instance, right? So saying to a plow operator, “Hey, listen, at every site I need you to clock in and clock out. I need you to take some pictures of the finished work.” And they’re like, “I don’t wanna do that. I’m already behind. Like it’s, it’s still snowing. I got 10 more sites to do. Like, I don’t have time for this.”
But saying to them, listen, you have to understand that this software for us creates a whole ability for us to fight a slip and fall. It creates accountability for our clients to show that we service, maybe we get billed based off your time in, time out. If you don’t do it, this creates a whole liability for us and puts the business at risk. Puts your paycheck at risk, puts your family at risk, puts the whole business at risk, right? So just saying to ’em, “Listen, we’re not doing this because we want to do this. We’re doing it because we need to do it,” right? It helps it with job costing. It makes us more profitable. So just explain to the field staff why we’re doing it before we actually do it is really important. Again, we see that over and over again.
And then typically the other thing we see all the time is instead of just doing a big launch to the whole staff is doing a soft launch. So a lot of times taking a couple people, let’s say you’re gonna implement some stuff in the spring, so taking a couple of your younger staff, maybe some people that love technology and just doing it for them first. So getting them adapted to it, getting them using it all the time, making sure they’re working out the bugs and soon as they start to speak highly about it, like they start going, “Oh, I love the software. This is really good, or this is really cool,” then other people around them will start to think that as well.
But if you launch it all at once to all your staff all at once, typically what you’re going to hear, the people that are the most negative towards it are the loudest. And then the other people around are like “Well, I kind of like it, but maybe Tom who’s been with forever doesn’t like it, so maybe there’s something I should not like about it.”
So again, trying to launch software with your most positive people and then rolling it out at a pace by the time maybe some of your oldest or more senior people are there. They’ve already heard about it, maybe they’ve heard great things about it, so they’re already positive towards it already.
It is really important when implementing it to the staff, ’cause if not that negative tone will permeate through and then make it really hard to implement it and keep it going and keep the positive tone.
Karina: And what if somebody just will not adopt this new piece of software and cannot get in line with everything else that has been brought in, even if all their staff are using it, processes are working, there’s proof of success. What about those resistors who just take a stand?
Grant: Yeah. And that’s a reality. Someone in your organization is going to push back hard. And that’s just normal. We’ve seen that everywhere we’ve been. And every, anytime we’ve worked with people before we get that, so I would say you have to push back really hard. And maybe you just gotta double down and be like, “Listen, how would I do some one-on-one trading with you?” Maybe they don’t learn the way. Maybe instead of doing a big group training on how the software works on the phone, maybe it’s like taking them one-on-one aside, right? Just understanding how that specific person learns and listening to them and figuring out why they’re pushing back so hard on the software.
So one story I’ve had. This was a mistake I made early on. Actually. I think our first operational software I was ever part of. We had a gentleman workforce for years and we implemented the software and he pushed back. It was just a basic time in and timeout software.
We could not get him to do it, and he would just fight us for it. And he would fill up paper time sheets. So finally we brought him in one day and we were like, “What is going on? Like, how can you do this? “And he just pushed back. ” Listen, I just can’t do this. Either you allow me to keep doing paper time sheets or I’m gonna quit.”
And we’re like, this is a really, really bad stance. This is like you’re willing to quit your job. So finally we just asked more questions like, why? You’re gonna quit your job. You’ve been here for X amount of years, like you love you here. Why? And then finally he just broke down and he is like, “I don’t know how to read.”
We’re like, what? He’s like, ” I memorize my time sheet. I go home every day, and my wife writes my time sheet out and I bring my time sheet back every day.” And we were like, oh my goodness. We didn’t know that. But he was embarrassed to say, I didn’t know how to read, so he couldn’t do it during the day.
So that’s an exception to the rule. So we’re like, no problems whatsoever. So we’re like, “Keep doing what you’re doing, and bring your time sheet in. One of the admin people will do it.” So again, I just didn’t ask enough questions. I was making some assumptions of why he didn’t want to do it. “Oh, he’s just an old man. He’s cranky. He doesn’t like change.” But at the end of the day, he was just embarrassed ’cause he never learned how to read. But we didn’t think that because his time sheets were so accurate every day. So he had a workaround that we screwed up when we implemented the software.
So there’s always exceptions to the rule, but to me, if you’ve asked those questions and there’s no real reason, something specific they can’t read, then it is one of those you’ve gotta push through. If you start to make too many exceptions for those type of staff, then the exception is gonna become the rule. Right?
And then it’s just, “Tom doesn’t have to do it, then I don’t have to do it.” So try to stay away from that as much as possible, ’cause it is a slippery slope when you start to get through that. But again, figure out how people learn. Talk to them, figure out, ask good questions if they’re pushing back ’cause there’s typically a pretty good reason why they’re pushing back.
Karina: That was a really great story because it shows the value of having a psychologically safe workspace where people can come in and share something that they feel vulnerable about and that could have a huge impact because you might be assuming that he knows how to read manuals or postings that are put up in the health and safety board or understanding all kinds of things. And then thinking he is just being resistant for the sake of being resistant. And that’s not the case at all. And there’s all kinds of things that go on in people’s lives that we don’t know, and it comes and manifests in these ways that are baffling to us, but it is meaningful to them.
So kudos for taking a chance to actually listen to that and understand it. And that shows that it’s. Software is important and process is important, but it’s nothing without the people who are gonna be a part of it.
Grant: Yeah.
Karina: So at what point is a good time to consider software solutions? Is there a business size? Somebody starts out as a solopreneur. Over a couple of years, they maybe build up a small crew. Is that when they start implementing or do they have to wait until they have 20 employees or more or less?
Grant: I think based on the software will determine when you need to purchase software. So I think for me, if you’re just starting out within any trades business, landscape business to me, I think the accounting software is day one.
Having that from day one is really important. It’s inexpensive, it’s easy to use. Tons of people know how to use it. So if you’re just starting out on day one, I would have some sort of accounting software in place. On the operation stuff I would as well. If you can start out from day one with some sort, again, fairly inexpensive. Typically it’s mostly operational software’s per user. So if we only have two or three people, then it’s very inexpensive. Obviously as you get bigger then it becomes more expensive and a lot of the software companies have set it up per user. So there’s absolutely no reason why to me, as you start out you shouldn’t be using some sort of operational software to get the business.
Again, you just start off on the right foot. You’re not creating paper and systems that you’re gonna end up replacing by software anyways. I think the HR software is probably something you don’t need right away. Maybe you get to 20, 15, 20 people. Then I would look at some sort of HR software. Obviously for less than that, a paper file or a locked down Word document is fine.
But as it gets bigger, for sure, same with the, some sort of fleet software. Again, as you get more fleet, more equipment, more trucks, more trailers, it does become more of a pain. And tracking that type of stuff is really important. Even stuff like insurance. Like, a lot of the time your insurance company will want an annual report of all the equipment you have, right? So just having that one location is really good.
Document storage. We talked about that. That to me is day one. If you can set that up from day one. Just again, if you just have a personal computer and you’re using it on your personal computer and that personal computer gets lost or broken, then you’ve put all this effort into everything you’ve done over the last couple years. So just again, from day one, I would totally use that.
Some other stuff you can do, like design, we didn’t talk about design software, but that can be something if you’re a design/build, a hundred per cent, you can use that right away.
Again, just stuff that you can implement right away makes it easier. Then you’re not grading things twice. Just saves you long term and like you said this, you can then concentrate on other things in the business that you don’t need to be thinking about. We all wake up at two o’clock in the morning as business owners to be like, “Oh yeah, did that get done? Or did that oil change get done?” Or all that type of stuff. So just like you said, getting it centralized and good.
The other one that’s really big right now, and depending on when you listen to this, you know that we’re gonna record this in December of 2025, but, six months from now this could totally change. But AI is unbelievably moving quickly right now, so it can do all kinds of things for you. Just depending on who you talk to, how fast you wanna implement it. But AI is going to change the industry and for the good and bad so how do you leverage AI within your business right now? It can do all kinds of different stuff for all of these areas, right? And maybe AI will take over some of these areas in total.
But it’s changing quickly. And like I said, if you listen to this podcast a year from now, it’ll probably look much different than what AI can do today. But yeah, so that’s type of things. As you scale, you’re gonna need some more stuff especially around the people, fleet, some health and safety stuff, that’s always good at a scale.
But you’ll know. To me, once you have a pain point like, “Where do we put this stuff? Or this is a pain,” the pain will identify when to start to get that software and when you need it.
Karina: Yeah, that’s true. And hopefully before it gets snowballed into a critical point where it actually is costing the business money or clients, or even staff turnover, things like that.
But to touch back on the AI for a minute. That’s interesting and we are seeing it change and evolve so quickly. How do you see businesses using it right now? What are some of the wins that they’re getting by using AI?
Grant: We’re seeing a lot of it in operation stuff, a lot of regular tasks. So things like creating SOPs for instance. None of us like creating SOPs so we’re always asking, people would always email me like, “Do you have an SOP for this? I don’t want to sit down in front of a blank piece of Word document, and try to create an SOP for how to hook up a truck and trailer,” right?
We all know that we all need these SOPs within our business that are checklists, but so many of us would either have to ask someone for one or we would look at a blank screen. So right now you can put that into AI and be like, “Hey, can you create an SOP for hooking up a truck and trailer for landscape business?” And it’ll shoot out something 80 per cent, right?
You’ll have to adjust it for your business and all that type of stuff, but it’s going to give you that first crack at that content that’ll save you hours of time and energy.
For content. If you’re doing social media stuff, again, I don’t, people are starting to see through full AI content.
But I think for me it’s that first draft of AI and then you need to personalize it. So it’s not a matter of taking it out of AI and then posting it, but just being like, “Okay, here’s the first crack at it. Here’s the words, here’s what it sounds like for me.” That’s the type of thing.
Email drafts are great. A lot of times if I have to make a hard email or a difficult email, I’ll put it into AI first and be like, “Hey, soften this. Or can you make it a little more stern?” Lot of HR stuff, anything HR right now, if you need any templates, anything like that, they’re being used there.
There’s lots of people using it for, just, tons of different areas that you can use it within it. I’m using it right now for minutes of meetings. So if I can’t attend a meeting, I upload the minutes and it gives me a summary of what the meeting was about, right?
So that saves me a lot of time to be able to do that. So a lot of those routine tasks that we do as business owners can be leveraged on that type of thing. But again, like that’s just a short period of time that’s been around and the little bit that I’ve done the research on. But there’s all kinds of opportunities to leverage it in other ways within the business that we don’t even know about yet, I don’t think, that are just not even thought of. So that it’s gonna come quickly and it is going to change how we do the business.
And the opposite side of that is, I’m starting to hear some, maybe some negative stuff towards AI is that you’re losing the relationship of people, right? So some of those things that we can easily, like just automatically do just whatever it is you don’t need that human interaction. Like some of our clients are using it for ordering supplies and stuff like that, but there is something still about our industry, about the personal interaction with people. And just having a relationship with someone rather than just a straight email text, or an AI bot working. I fear that with the technology is that we will lose the personal interaction. And that’s why I love about our industry. I love the relationships we have. I love being able to go to Congress and in, in the relationship that I had with you. But if we leverage too much technology, we’re gonna lose that personal touch.
And I just, I’d hate to see that happen with that. So just be careful, just like anything else. There’s nothing wrong with it. But if you lose that personal touch, then, or that relationship part of it, I think it will affect you and your staff.
Karina: It’s a little ironic that you had mentioned that to write a difficult email, you might ask AI to soften the tone a little bit. Which to me, like that’s a human thing to do, right? To soften the blow of something difficult. But then AI is also getting in the middle of building personal relationships and or strengthening those relationships.
So that is such a fine line to walk through. And a lot of people are still very wary of being able to use AI and feeling like, if I start using it for this, am I just opening up the floodgates to a future that I’m not really comfortable with. Or am I creating more opportunities that will make sure that all my staff have long lucrative careers with my business ’cause we’re so successful because we’re so automated? Right. Like, that’s, that’s a tricky spot to be in.
Grant: Yeah. And again, that just is, we’ve never been down this road before, right? So we can’t just go back and say “Oh, when this happened last time, this is what we did.” So like right now, we’re seeing a very soft, you know, a recession right now, really. And I can look back and go, “This is the third time we’ve had an economic slowdown in my career as a landscaper.” So I’m like, last time we did, this is what happened. And we can start to see the trend of that, right? So you look back and go, okay, there’s wisdom. That’s what happened in the past when you remember what’s happened in the past.
And this is what, almost not, it can’t predict the future, but it just gives you a sense of security. We’re gonna get outta this, right? This is normal, but with this whole AI thing, we’ve never been through it before. We don’t know where it’s going. And for some people that is scary.
And I think as a business, that’s where being sensitive to the people within the business is really important. To have that conversation with them, you know, where do you think, should we implement this? Just because we have it doesn’t mean we should. And I think that’s where yeah, we don’t have to, right?
This is a great tool that we have, but we don’t have to do it if we don’t want to. Uh, if it doesn’t move the business ahead, if it doesn’t make us more productive, if it doesn’t make us more money, then should we do it at all is really important. So I think that what’s scary about AI right now is that no one has ever been here before and we really don’t know where it’s going, good or bad.
Karina: Luckily so far AI can not do the actual physical work of installing and maintaining these amazing landscapes that professional landscapers are capable of across the country. It’s really interesting to see AI almost like toes being dipped into this industry. But it seems like overall it’s gonna be pretty safe that you and your crew and your jobs are probably a whole lot safer than my own, because we already know that podcasts can be created by AI and this is not! For anybody…
Grant: This is not yet.
Karina: …who is wondering. This is, I’m not a hologram yet. But it is a very fascinating time in history to be like seeing these tools, using them, wondering about them and having big feelings about them. Maybe next year at this time we’ll be talking about it in an entirely different way, or the robots will be talking about it for us in an entirely different way.
Are there any resources that you think would be useful for people when they’re thinking about how they plan and decide what new processes need to be put in place and what software solutions that they need to start looking for? Any advice for how they begin that process?
Grant: Network and ask your fellow landscape contractors what they’re using. That to me is still the best way to do it. Again, this is why I love the landscape industry so much is because so many contractors are willing to share what they’ve used and they’re gonna be honest with you. They’re gonna tell you, “Hey, we did this. Maybe we didn’t implement it. It wasn’t software fault. Maybe it was our fault.” But that’s the type of thing that I would totally leverage other contractors around you.
Ask a supplier. Do you know anyone else that’s using this software to be able to figure that out? But yeah, the industry is so good for that.
If you have a question, we can put my contact information down. I’m a third party so I can tell you the pros and cons of the software and point in the right direction. Again, it’s based on the business you have, and what you’re hoping to do will determine the best software for you.
But there’s tons of resources out there for you. You can start by Googling it, but I would totally get a referral. Get your team involved and you’re gonna have tons of success in picking it and implementing the right software within your business.
Karina: Those are all great ideas. I was gonna ask if you thought looking at online reviews was a worthy endeavor, or should we just consider at this point that those are probably inflated by bots anyway?
Grant: Yeah, I think it, yeah, it’s just hard, right? Like I think, to me, I love personal, right? So I still want to hear from someone rather than an online review.
And again, I think the online reviews are good. I think the online reviews, if there’s some negative ones, I think those are the most important to look at. And again, just don’t look at the stars, but look, see if someone can give you some sort of explanation below. But to me, I’m just, I love the personal touch, so I’m always wanting to talk to people to see what they think rather than just a 4.7 out of five stars really doesn’t give me that much. And again, especially when it can have such an impact in your business. This is not cheap, right? This isn’t buying a product off Amazon. This is a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of energy. If you don’t do this well the first time trying to implement, let’s say you pick a management software, for instance, and you pick one, you try to implement, doesn’t work out well.
Picking the second one. Doing the second one is even harder, right? Because you’ve broken the trust of the staff. So getting it right the first time is really important. So again, and just like I said, taking the time to figure out what it is and how it works for the business is important.
Karina: That kind of goes back to that analysis paralysis of the worry of not getting it right the first time might prevent people from actually just making a decision at all. And like you said, trying to give it a try and then that doesn’t work. So you give something else another try. Now you’re changing from your original processes to the second set and it just goes on and on. And at some point you just need to say, this is what we’re doing and we’re gonna stick with it and make it work somehow.
But yeah, you’re right that it is expensive because most of these solutions are subscription based. It’s not something where you can just go to Best Buy, buy that CD, install it, and you’re done, right? Now we’re paying subscriptions. That is an ongoing cost, so it’s gotta be worthwhile to maintain that cost. Otherwise it’s just money down the drain.
Grant: Yeah, for sure.
Karina: Well, Grant, thank you for all your insights today. I hope this is going to help business owners who are currently feeling a pain point or who are about to feel a pain point and need some guidance in their solutions moving forward. So thanks again for coming on the podcast to share your insights.
Grant: Thank you so much for having us and yeah, thank you. Hope to talk to you soon.
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I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Grant Harrison today. From accounting and operational software to HR and fleet management, there’s no shortage of options and possibilities for implementing technology to streamline your operations. If you know someone in the landscaping business who could benefit from Grant’s insights, be sure to share this episode with them.
And as always, we have a full transcription of today’s interview on this episode’s webpage at LandscapeOntario.com/Podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe so you can stay up to date on all the conversations we have here regarding the landscape and horticulture industry in Canada. And if you have any ideas for topics or guests, please send them my way at Podcast@Landscape Ontario.com.
That’s all for now. Until next time, keep growing.
