Ezra McCarthy
Hello and welcome back to Lawn Care Blueprint, the show dedicated to practical insights and strategies with the goal of growing your lawn and landscape business. Today, we’re sitting down with Doug. Wow, that’s a tongue twister. McDuff, co-founder and president of Landscape America. Doug grew this business from a small startup into a thriving lawn landscape company. Telling me before we got started that they should hit 11 million this year doing commercial snow, commercial maintenance there in the Massachusetts and Rhode Island area. So Doug, sure glad to have you here today.
Doug McDuff
Yeah, I’m happy to be here. Looking forward to a fun conversation with you.
Ezra McCarthy
Yeah, and I was just off the cuff. We were talking earlier and I said, well, stop, stop, stop. We need to record this. I was curious, AI is kind of the rage and some of it, I think a lot of it is fluff, but there are some things that are useful. So we were just discussing how, especially at your size of business, how are you using it?
Doug McDuff
Yeah. And I wouldn’t say that we’re using it to all of its capabilities by any means, but we have implemented it in some areas of our business. One key area is helping us read contracts and decipher areas that we might be at risk or where we need some guidance—reading terms and conditions on contracts. So we’ll actually take the contract, put it into ChatGPT and ask a simple prompt, like, where are we at risk or what are some areas we should look at for exposure on this contract? And it gives back potential addendums that we can make to the contract. We’ll send that to our client. We’ve successfully negotiated some terms based on doing that, and it just saves us some attorney’s fees.
I certainly don’t want to minimize the use of attorneys in those situations, but for a company like ours, we read a ton of snow contracts every year. Many times it would be almost impossible to have an attorney read every single contract during the bid process. We’ve used that as a tool to help us there, and it’s done a good job with that.
Then we use it for summarizing some emails, helping us clean some things up on the email front. Simple things like—we do work anniversaries. Every time someone hits a one, two, three, five-year, ten-year anniversary, we try to make a big deal of it with our company, especially the five and ten years.
So we’ll plug in either key metrics or some words that we think describe the individual and have ChatGPT help us write out a nice little speech to commemorate their time and honor them. Sounds better than what myself or my brother might come up with on our own. So just a couple of little tools and tricks.
Ezra McCarthy
It’s so helpful, and what the listener may or may not realize is on the paid version—which is super cheap, like $20 or maybe $30 a seat—they just changed it. I use it in my business for all of our team members. Depending on your business, you may not need it for everyone, but you can literally customize it. You can create a custom GPT by putting in instructions.
There are certain phrases—and it’s getting better—but it’ll reuse everything: “state-of-the-art,” “everything’s transforming,” “everything’s vivid.” If you’ve used it, you know what I’m talking about. So you can literally put in prompts like, don’t use this word. I literally put in there: don’t use “state-of-the-art,” don’t use this. And then you can even add: don’t sound AI, sound like a human, or even change the tone.
So it’s really interesting how you can craft it. A lot of times I hear people talk about it and I’m like, okay, is this even practical? But I’ll put in quotes, or I’ll upload a PDF and ask, did I make any mistakes on this document?
Because I don’t know about you, Doug, but I’ve made up a contract before—or we don’t do long-term contracts—but I’ve done up a proposal, sent it to someone, and just human error, I forgot to change something at the bottom. It can catch stuff.
Like you mentioned, if you’re doing legal work, have a lawyer look at it, but it can catch simple things that, in our humanity, we just miss.
Doug McDuff
Yeah, you just reminded me of something. I took a class actually, maybe a year ago, on ChatGPT—a sort of workshop—and we learned how to have ChatGPT use our voice. So we put in some writings that we had done. Could have been emails, or a blog, or a newsletter, and then some things about our company that spoke to the culture.
The person teaching the course helped us guide ChatGPT to use our voice in its responses. That was kind of cool—to learn that I can let it do its thing, but also have it use my flavor in the way I say things, the way I word things, or even talk through Landscape America’s culture a little bit in the responses it gives when prompted.
That was kind of a cool trick we learned. I did actually find that it helped out on some emails and things I was responding to clients on.
Ezra McCarthy
Do you find it actually does?
Well, let’s get into the Landscape America story. You started this straight out of college. What made you decide to make this a career—not just a little side job? What made you transition to that rather than going another route?
Doug McDuff
Yeah, so I’ll back up a little bit. Out of high school, I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do with my career. I was sitting with my guidance counselor when I was a senior, and I told him I just wanted to be outside. I didn’t want to have an office job.
And it’s funny—because you and I are sitting in an office right now and this is what I do a lot now. But I said, I want to be outside. I love the outdoors. Maybe I’ll be a park ranger. My guidance counselor said, well, my nephew’s going to this school for landscape contracting.
I had done landscaping with my grandfather in the yard. My brother was the same. So I was like, all right, I’ll give it a whirl. I applied to one school, which was at UMass Amherst—the Stockbridge School of Agriculture. It’s a two-year school within UMass. I got there and I loved it.
So it was sort of just an odd conversation with the guidance counselor that drove me to want to go to school for landscaping. That summer before, I worked for a landscaper and I liked it. It was fun. I liked the work. But when I got to UMass, I really enjoyed learning about trees and plants and soil. I stuck with that and realized I had this passion for it.
I was actually applying myself at school. In high school, I think I could’ve been a better student if I had applied myself, but I was doing it in college, which was cool.
I worked at a large-scale tree and landscape company at the time—this is back in 2001. They were about $10 million at the time, so it was a good-sized company. I did landscaping with them, climbed some trees, did some tree work, and learned a little bit about arboriculture.
My brother Andy, who’s my business partner, he ended up taking the same path. He’s three years younger than me, but he went through the same school—Stockbridge at UMass—for landscape contracting, and then was working at Hartney with me.
So I actually did two degrees in four years. I went for my two years at Stockbridge and then another two at the university itself—an associate’s and a bachelor’s degree. Then I was working full-time at Hartney. Andy at that time was full-time as well.
We’re in 2006 now, and I told my boss that I wanted to sell. I loved interacting with clients. I loved the way I could help clients work through situations and come up with solutions. I felt like getting into sales would be a fun job for me.
My manager was like, settle down, you need to learn the ropes a little bit more. At that time, I was a foreman running crews for them. So I was like, you know what? No, I think I’m going to go off on my own and try this thing out.
So Andy and I left in 2006 from that company, and we started Landscape America out of my garage.
And yeah, in 2007—our first full year—we did like $400,000. The next year we did six. The next year we did a million, then 1.2, 1.3, 1.6. So it grew.
It grew fairly quickly, and that was 2007, 2008, 2009. We were in a recession, but we were too dumb to realize we were in a recession. We were just grinding, working as hard as we could.
I got married in 2007, and my daughter was born in 2008. So that kind of made me shift a little bit and slow down—maybe just a little. Like, I wasn’t working Sundays at that point. But we were grinding.
So yeah, we’ve had good growth. And this year we should eclipse $11 million. It’s been a good, fun journey. And I think we feel like we’re a startup at this point. We feel like we’re just getting going.
We’re almost 20 years in. We’ve kind of turned things and shifted our focus. Residential was what we predominantly did for the first 15, 16 years we were in business. And now we’re 100% focused on commercial work.
Ezra McCarthy
To circle back—because this is just something I’m curious about—you know, a lot of people started in this industry almost by accident. And maybe there’s someone younger listening to this. What would you say are the benefits of going to college?
Because obviously, you took those two years, and I didn’t catch what your bachelor’s was in, but I know the two years were in landscaping. Would you say that it has helped you? And would you recommend someone else possibly going that route as well?
Doug McDuff
I would highly recommend it—not just from the point that you learn horticulture and the science behind it, but because I think it teaches people how to learn. It teaches them how to network with others and how to up the ante, to figure out how to get to that next phase in whatever they’re doing. I do think there’s an importance to that.
But specifically for landscaping—yeah, my two-year degree was in landscape contracting, and I learned so much about horticulture and plant and soil science. I don’t apply that now to my job, really, but for the first 15 or so years we were in business, we definitely applied it.
My second two years of school were in urban forestry. That was a little more geared toward the arboriculture and tree side of things. I did take some business courses too—not enough. If I could do it over, I probably would’ve taken more business courses. I’ve had to learn a lot of that on the fly.
But again, I think I learned how to get educated, how to educate myself. I learned how to network with people and become a fact finder—getting information from sources and people that I knew and trusted. And I think that’s helped me grow personally and helped our company grow in a lot of ways.
Ezra McCarthy
Now, you mentioned when you first got out of college, you were working—I think you said—for quite a large landscape company. It seems like in our industry, there are two routes. There’s kind of the solo route, maybe one crew, one or two trucks. And then there’s the route you’re taking—maybe not even quite as large as you, but maybe $1 million and up.
Do you think that first job out of college influenced you? Or when you started, did you think, hey, I want a multimillion-dollar company? Because at this point, I have a feeling you’re not touching the hardscape blocks, you’re not touching the lawnmower.
Doug McDuff
Yeah, working at that company exposed me to how big our industry really is—how well-run it could be and what a great culture looks like. There was a whole host of things we took from that organization and applied to ours.
Had I not worked there, I wouldn’t have known we could achieve certain things. And yeah, our industry is very fragmented. It’s becoming less so with all the acquisitions and mergers happening now and the private equity money coming in. But it’s still a very fragmented industry. There are way more companies doing under a million than there are doing over $10 million.
Some of that might just be because the individuals running those companies don’t realize how big the industry is and what the possibilities are when it comes to growing and scaling. Or maybe they just prefer running a small business. They like having their hands in everything and being involved in all aspects—which is cool too.
But yeah, at this point I’m fortunate to have a great team around me that’s helped us grow the business. So no, I’m not putting the pavers or the plants in the ground anymore.
That said, I still love to do it. I do it at my house, on the weekends and so forth, but not for the company anymore. My job now is more focused on vision, strategy, the high-level direction—where we’re going and how we’re going to get there. And making sure we’re always driving our culture forward, sticking to our core values in every decision, and staying as financially savvy as we can while navigating the path ahead.
Ezra McCarthy
You mentioned a pretty stark transition from residential to more commercial. And probably everyone listening to this knows commercial is a lot more price sensitive.
So as you transitioned—from probably more of a volume model to perhaps a cost model, or maybe you could correct me there—how have you kept profitability? Because we all realize it really doesn’t matter how big your business is if you’re not making any money.
How have you managed that transition? And how do you avoid just being the lowest-cost provider and competing purely on price?
Doug McDuff
It’s hard. When we were doing a lot of design-build on the residential side, that was predominantly what we did. For example, in 2018, I think we were probably doing maybe $5 million in revenue—and three and a half of that was residential design-build work. Then we did a little bit of commercial work, and the rest was residential maintenance.
So it was a big piece of our business, and we were always of the mindset: let’s charge as much as we can possibly charge. Because we were delivering a lot of value, and it’s very easy—in the residential design-build space, in my opinion—to charge what you’re worth.
You’re going to compete with a few other companies, and it’s really easy to differentiate yourself in that market. We were doing big jobs and dictating our price, able to flex pricing quickly in that space.
But the commercial space is vastly different.
Our profits aren’t as strong as they were before. I wouldn’t say on the whole, but if I compare commercial maintenance to residential design-build, it’s different. Even residential maintenance versus commercial maintenance—it’s different.
We’re in a market where price might not be the number one factor, but it’s number one or number two. Usually number one. So that’s been a mindset shift for us.
We’re not able to just say, hey, we’re not making enough money on this project—let’s charge more on the next one. You can’t just throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. With residential, you’ve got so many projects throughout the year that you can pivot and adjust.
In our world, it’s a condensed timeframe where we’re bidding the work—for the most part—especially because we’re in the Northeast. There’s a certain season. Ideally, we’d love for our clients to be making decisions in October or November for the following year, but let’s be honest—you get a few that do. A lot of them ask for quotes in the fall, but they make decisions in February or March.
And so it puts us in a tough position. We don’t have a lot of room—we don’t have a lot of runway—to change our pricing if we feel like we’re off. We have to live and die by the price we give the customer on that first round of bidding. We can adjust during a renewal process, but not much before then.
How we differentiate ourselves is that we’ve built a reputation that we care. We communicate. We try to do the best we can. We live by our core values. We treat the customer with as much of that residential feel as we can—which I think is different than some of our competitors.
We’re also able to pivot in our decision-making process. Not necessarily on pricing, but in helping customers with situations that pop up during the season. Or even just navigating some of the red tape that the bigger corporate companies in our industry tend to get bogged down in.
We’re big enough to handle a regional portfolio, but we’re small enough to still offer that customer feel—that sort of white-glove treatment, if you will—to our clients. Some of the bigger companies just can’t do that because there are so many levels of leadership. The people dealing with the client are often far removed from the people making decisions for the corporation.
So we feel like we’re in a sweet spot. We do win work at a little bit of a higher price, but it can’t be 50% more, typically. We’ve got to be in the ballpark, or else they’re going to pass over our bid.
So yeah, we’ve kind of taken on a new thought process when it comes to pricing.
Ezra McCarthy
So how do you incentivize and engage those team members? Because especially in the commercial industry, you’re constrained by your competition in a lot of ways.
How do you make sure your team members—especially those in the field—aren’t slacking off? Because you don’t have the margins for a lot of waste. To be effective, to earn profit, to give your team members great jobs, they’ve got to own the metrics.
So how do you incentivize and keep them motivated to produce at a high level?
Doug McDuff
We talk about our financials constantly. We show them our numbers. We show them how many hours are on each bid. We show them how we expect them to complete the work. And then we ask for their feedback—and we listen to them.
I think getting buy-in from our team is how we’re able to keep our profit up and also keep our team members around. I think it leads to retention because a lot of people who work in the field, they do want to win. Their goal is to win every day.
They’re not going out there—at least from my experience—just to collect a paycheck, especially if they feel like there’s a purpose behind what they’re doing. So we try to create that sense of community around sharing our financials, sharing our numbers, and giving the team the tools they need to win. That includes coaching and guidance from our production managers.
We started practicing open-book management in 2018, I think—maybe 2019. The philosophy is that business is a team sport.
We want to share as much information with our team as we can in order to help them be successful. We want their feedback. We want them to have a say in what direction we’re going, how they’re going to tackle the jobs, and ways we could be better.
Whether it’s finding a new piece of equipment to get the job done faster, or parking our trucks in a different spot so they reduce walking waste when refilling fuel—whatever it is, all the way down to how we handle our culture in the company.
We’re constantly surveying our team, looking for feedback, asking what they think, and then putting their ideas into action. That way, they feel like they have a say not just in how we run the business, but also in how each account operates.
We have our field team sit in on production reviews. We use Aspire—I think a lot of commercial companies do. It’s a software platform, and we’ve got a tremendous amount of data we can pull from.
It’s our job, I think, to share that with our team so it’s not just a few bureaucrats looking at the information and telling people, “You’ve got to go faster. You’ve got to do this faster.”
Instead, it’s: here’s what we estimated, and here’s what we’ve actually been doing. These are the real numbers we’ve seen week over week. We estimated it would take this much time—so where did we miss? How do we get those hours aligned?
Can we find ways to be more efficient? Can we go back to the client during the renewal process and get a scope change, or a price increase, or add more hours to this particular service?
We have those conversations with our team—our field team, our account managers, and production managers. I think it’s that sharing of information, combined with a willingness to listen, that really helps drive our culture.
Ezra McCarthy
So I’m curious—how specific do you get when you share numbers? Do you tell them specific cents—like, this is how much we made, this is how much this job made? Or do you give them general overviews and percentages?
Doug McDuff
We talk in dollars with them. The metric that we track and really drive to the team is gross profit dollars. So when we’re talking about financials at the company level, we’re talking in dollars.
But when we’re looking at a specific job, we talk about hours. We’ll give the team whatever information they want about the job specifics—right down to gross profit. But we find it clicks more with our field team when we speak in man-hours instead of dollars.
When we have our open-book forecasting meetings or talk at company meetings, we talk about gross profit for the company—and that’s in dollars. But when we’re saying, “Mike” or “Juan” or whoever, let’s look at Customer A, we talk about hours.
Like, we bid this job to mow the place in 23.4 hours, and it’s taking us 27.2. Is there any way we can shave off a man-hour or two this week to get more in line? Or, hey, you guys are crushing this—are we possibly missing something?
Because we have way more hours on the estimate than what we’re actually using. So are we skipping some areas? Or could we maybe spend a little more time over here?
So we use it in conversations. I guess to answer your question—it’s kind of both. It depends on the conversation.
Ezra McCarthy
Now this is helpful, and I’m curious—what’s the process like? Say you’re sitting down with Mike or Juan and you realize, hey, we bid this right, but it’s not getting done.
Can you walk us through your correction process? How would you speak to that team member to say, “Hey, as far as we know, we bid this right, but it’s not getting done”? How do you go about fixing that problem?
Doug McDuff
Typically what we do is make sure the production managers have that information handy. We ask them to put some time and energy into figuring out whether it’s one team member’s route that’s way off or one particular job that’s off—but we start by identifying it.
We have a tool that sends out a scorecard for hours every single day for each foreman. It goes out to all of our production managers and account managers, but it’s also displayed in our dispatch room so the crews can see it as well.
So that’s a tool we use, and when someone’s…
Ezra McCarthy
Is that through Aspire? Someone listening might be thinking, wow, that sounds neat—what is that?
Doug McDuff
It’s called Bomb Data. So it’s not Aspire, but it links with Aspire. It’s basically a tool that extracts the information and makes it more digestible for your field team and production managers.
It works off of efficiency of hours. If you have 100 hours in the estimate and you complete the job in 100 actual hours, you’re going to get 100% efficiency, right? So it tracks efficiency and shows the crew where they’re at. It shows every foreman and every crew their performance.
If we see someone that’s getting red-flagged, we’ll put some energy around it. First, we’ll send the production manager out there to do what, in lean management terms, is called a Kaizen—basically, sit back, observe, and watch what’s going on.
Then they’ll help with some coaching and talk through things like, “Maybe we could do this differently,” or, “What do you think we could improve here?” Some of those conversations are important.
We use this analogy sometimes: if you picture a masonry team that’s going to build a wall—linear feet of wall—and you just send them out and say, “Here’s your stone, build a wall,” they’ll get a certain amount done in a day. But what they think is “enough” is subjective. One might think 20 feet is great, another might think 10 feet is great.
If they don’t have direction, they’re not quite sure what they should be hitting.
We push our production managers to help them by saying things like, “Hey, you’re going to build wall today, and I’m going to take paint and draw it on the ground. I’d like you guys to get to this point today.”
They might’ve been building 20 feet of wall, but when you spray paint the ground and give them a target, they figure out how to hit that mark. Then they build 30 or even 40 feet that day. And the next day, you might stretch that mark a little further to keep driving them—to make them want to achieve more because you’ve given them a finish line, a goal.
We apply that analogy to mowing, maintenance services, spring cleanups—whatever it is. We rely on our production managers to have those conversations with the foremen and help coach them through the thought process of becoming more efficient.
It’s about: how can we get this done with fewer man-hours, without sacrificing quality? It’s really just about driving waste out of the process.
Ezra McCarthy
So in your experience, what is a good efficiency at Landscape America? And what would be considered a bad one, percentage-wise?
Doug McDuff
I mean, 100% is what we’re trying to hit. We’d love for our crews to consistently hit that. I think on a lot of our sites, we can get there.
In our experience, the new sites are more challenging for us. And we’ve only been using this Bomb Data tool—we demoed it for about six months, and it’s kind of a new tool. We just went live with it in the last month. So we’re still working through the discussions with the team and helping them get used to it.
What we’ve found is that the new projects are the ones where we fall behind. Maybe the previous vendor didn’t do a great job with the fall cleanup, so our spring cleanup hours are way over. But we’re trying to give the customer that “Landscape America” experience. So we’re spending the time to make sure all the edges are redefined, the grasses that didn’t get cut back are ready for the season, and the pruning is done.
Those are the tough conversations with the team, because the team…
Ultimately, the team wants to do the right thing—but they also don’t want to look at the scoreboard and see that their hours are way off compared to their peers.
So, yeah, ideally we’d love to have 100% efficiency. But it’s more about giving the team the information, helping them understand the process, where the bid came from, and why we estimated X number of hours. And it’s okay if we go over on this particular job—because we know that next season, when we do the spring cleanup, the place is going to look dynamite and it’ll take us half the time.
It’s that back-and-forth with the foreman that’s really important. Seeing if we can just shave a little time off and pick up a few points of efficiency.
Every Monday morning, we send an email to the whole team with the bottom 10 and the top 10 projects from the week before. Then we have our production managers focus on the bottom 10—because we feel like if you can fix the basement, it’s more impactful than focusing on the ones that are already close to where they need to be.
Go pick up some of that low-hanging fruit on the lower-performing jobs. That’s where you put your time and energy. And that email has been really helpful for that.
Ezra McCarthy
I’m just curious—where did you learn all this? You mentioned you just implemented this tool. Are some of these systems and processes things you learned when you were working at the company you started with?
Or did you have a management consultant help you implement them? Where did you find this management or information style?
Doug McDuff
All of the above, actually. At the company I worked for 20 years ago, we learned the importance of culture and the importance of education. I wouldn’t say any of the tools we use now were available back then, but it was that mindset—you have to have a strong culture to succeed, and you have to continually educate and look for better ways to do things.
I’ve always been a driver of continuous improvement. We’ve been really involved in our state association and our national association. And I’d say probably the biggest help for us was joining NALP—the National Association of Landscape Professionals.
We’ve met mentors through that. We’ve had great connections at conferences and learned a lot from others—different software, different approaches. That’s where I found out about Aspire. And through different industry connections, I learned about Bomb Data.
I also met my coach through the industry—Dan Foley—who’s now a good friend. He helped us implement open-book coaching.
So yeah, it’s been a mix of joining associations, networking in the industry, and just staying connected. If I ever have a business question, I have access to hundreds of people around the country. I can just send a text or give someone a call and get the answers.
That’s really been the driver in helping us learn and move quickly—we can trust our friends in the industry and learn from them, without having to reinvent the wheel every time we want to implement something new.
Ezra McCarthy
I’d be surprised if a lot of people have even heard of NALP. Some might be familiar, but for the listener, could you tell people what it is—and maybe who it’s a good fit for, and who it might not be?
Doug McDuff
NALP is the National Association of Landscape Professionals. I think we have maybe 3,000 members. It’s a national organization. We host—and I say “we” because I’m really ingrained in NALP. I serve on the board of directors now, I’m on several committees, so I’m really engaged in this because I believe in it.
We host a couple of great conferences every year. We also host field trips with companies around the country, where you can get an inside, behind-the-scenes look at how they run their organizations.
Honestly, I think there’s so much value—whether you’re a $100,000 or $200,000-a-year company looking for tips and tools to grow your business, or even if you just want to connect with other people in the industry. And there’s value all the way up to the $50–$100 million companies.
We have a wide range of membership and offer a ton of resources for landscapers. It’s really all about elevating the industry.
The big conference we host every year is called Elevate. We usually get about 2,000 landscapers there. It’s three days of intense learning and networking—and it’s a ton of fun. I highly recommend it to all my friends in the industry.
Whoever I meet that’s in the landscape business, I always tell them—just go to that one conference. You’re going to get way more than you anticipate. You’ll get so much ROI from it. I really believe in that national association.
But also, our state association is great too—the Massachusetts Association of Landscape Professionals, or MALP. That’s been tremendous. My brother sits on the board for that. I’m a past president. We bring our team members to those dinners and events. So it doesn’t matter where you are—if you get involved in these associations, you’re going to network and meet people who can help you solve problems.
As landscapers, business owners, and managers, we run into challenges every day, every week, every month. Having that network to call someone and say, “Hey, did you deal with this before? How did you handle it? Can you help me talk through it?”—that’s huge.
And our industry is so open and willing to share. There’s just so much value there, and at a very minimal cost—just pick up the phone and call someone.
It’s a great place to look at software, find a new business coach, learn about horticulture—but also, like I said, most of my friends are landscapers. And that’s because of these associations I’ve joined.
Ezra McCarthy
Well, I know we didn’t get to about half of these questions, but this has been really fun. Just a couple of closing questions here.
If someone’s listening—other than joining NALP, which clearly has been beneficial for you—what’s one important piece of business advice you’d give to a business owner who’s looking to scale?
Doug McDuff
Someone once told me the phrase, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
And I’ve always felt that and lived by it. I truly believe it. If you’re putting your energy into your team, your people, your organization—basically, how your team feels at work—that’s your culture. And if you’re investing in that, you’re going to be successful.
That’s what helps you scale. Your team will be engaged. They’ll want to win. They’ll want to work hard for you and for each other. It creates a sense of community inside your organization.
And it gives you, whether you’re a manager or the owner, the ability to step back and work on other parts of the business. When you know your team is engaged and accountable in their roles, it creates space for you to grow as well.
So yeah, I think putting more energy into culture is one of the most important things any organization can do.
Ezra McCarthy
One last question for you, Doug. If you had to recommend one book to somebody—and one podcast—what would that be? Or just an interesting one?
Doug McDuff
My favorite book is Shoe Dog—the story of Nike, by Phil Knight. I’m a big Audible guy. I’m always listening to books, and that’s a fantastic one.
If I were going to go the business route, one of the first books that was recommended to me that really helped was The E-Myth by Michael Gerber. That one helped me understand the difference between the entrepreneur mindset and the manager mindset. That was super helpful for me. But honestly, there have been so many great ones.
As for a podcast—I actually listen to quite a bit of The Joe Rogan Experience. I’m a big health guy too, so I love finding…
Ezra McCarthy
Thought you were going to go with the dragon, Believer.
Doug McDuff
No, that’s one thing I don’t align with him on. But I do love the biohacking tips and the healthy lifestyle mindset. That’s something I know I didn’t pay enough attention to in my 20s and early 30s—I neglected it. It was always my last priority.
Now, I’m more focused on it. And I think it’s really important for business owners, because we get so stressed out. We deal with tough conversations, tough problems, and that can easily lead to stress, depression, anxiety—all of it.
So it’s really important to take care of yourself. I listen to a lot of podcasts that center around health and wellness.
Ezra McCarthy
So true. And one comment on the book by Phil Knight—that’s the founder of Nike, Shoe Dog—an interesting note there. I love that book.
He talks at one point about how, when they were just starting Nike, they were so broke. He was in the office, opened one of the desk drawers, and saw a stack of paychecks. One of his team members—maybe a couple of them—had just left their checks there, uncashed.
They cared so much about the business that they kept coming into work without cashing their paychecks.
And if you want to talk about culture—that’s culture. That someone cares enough to do that, to keep showing up, because they believe in what you’re building.
Anyway, really good book. Great recommendation for anyone who hasn’t read it.
Doug McDuff
Yeah, it’s awesome. That’s a great one.
Ezra McCarthy
Well, Doug, thanks for sharing this—some great insights on open-book management, culture, and business.
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