Ezra McCarthy
Hello and welcome back to the Lawn Care Blueprint. Today I’m excited to chat with Brent Moore, the founder and CEO of Outdoor Living Southeast. Brent started with just a small team and through faith, strong leadership and a lot of hard work and a heart for a community, he’s built a thriving business. So stick around for some practical advice and inspiring story if you’re going about your business. Brent, sure great to have you here. Don’t just take us back to the beginning. What’s the story behind starting Outdoor Living Southeast and what? Maybe you even want to start it in the first place.
Brent Moore
Yeah, well thanks for having me. And long story short, I had a really good childhood, great family and great parents, but I kind of went down the wrong path and found a path of drugs and alcohol. And so that kind of steered where I was going in life. When I was in high school, my ISS teacher, I call him my ISS teacher, that’s where I spent most of my time, told me, said Brent Moore, he said, you ain’t gonna make nothing of yourself if you don’t straighten up.
And so I took that to heart and I believed him and I didn’t think I was ever gonna really make anything of myself. And then one day, Lord got a hold of me and I straightened up. So because of my background, it was very hard for me to hold a good job. I wasn’t very employable. I have been arrested seven times. And so it really affected who would hire me. And so long story short, I had a good friend of my mom’s. They owned a farm and they said, hey, we need somebody to come weed eat.
Mow and stuff for us. And so I actually want to start my own pool business. And so I went to work for them, but for 10 bucks an hour back in 2011, just to be able to have a little bit of money so I could build my own pool company. And about a year and a half later, I met my wife and we started dating and then got married eight months later. We dated for four months, engaged for four months and was married. And the Lord tells you when you know, you know. And so I knew the Lord just really laid some stuff in my lap to allow me to build my landscape maintenance side of the business.
And at that time, I’d already, whenever I met my wife, I started really falling in love with cutting grass. I just kind of picked up a couple of accounts here and there just to help build my pool business really. And then I was like, I’m gonna do this pool and lawn service. Like I’m the only one I’ve ever met that does both of them. So let’s run with this. And so we marketed that and it was a big marketing tool. One stop shop for all your needs. And it’s kind of how we started the lawn maintenance. But then like I said, I was kind of just handed an opportunity to maintain a large commercial account here in Badausta.
And that’s just kind of been our launch pad for really starting all of our commercial landscape maintenance. And then we just kept growing that side of the business and just by doing the next right thing and making sure, we’re under promising and over delivering and just make sure our customers are taken care of and offering customer service. It just evolved. And I just fell in love with commercial maintenance and that’s been our focus. And I’ve pretty much sold off all of my residential accounts.
And all of, I actually sold my pool business last year to focus solely on commercial landscape maintenance. That’s kind of the story in a, in about a minute and a half.
Ezra McCarthy
So I want to zone back in on what is an ISS teacher?
Brent Moore
So that’s in school suspension. I had my ninth grade year, I had my fourth block class. I was actually kicked out of the class and I had to go to ISS every day for that class. I just continually got in trouble. So they just told me I held the record at Lowndes High School for most in school suspension. I just was a class clown troublemaker, that kind of personality. And so I took my job seriously. Yeah, but I mean, Mr. Tony was his name and I see him around town from time to time.
He always says, Brit Bo, I’m proud of you, man. I’m so proud of you. And so I held the record and I graduated, I think 726 out of 770 in my class. So I was at the bottom of the line. And so they always say, though that sees that everybody, all the A and B students work for the C students. So I’m all of that.
Ezra McCarthy
Yeah, it’s funny. I grew up in Ontario, Canada, and you have to take French there. And I joke when he told me I spent more time in the principal’s office in French class. I won’t blame the teacher. I was a terrible student then. Yeah, that’s pretty amazing. So was it right after high school that you turned your life around? Or was there a gap there that you were kind of struggling? No.
Brent Moore
I mean, it was a three year gap from the time I graduated high school till I sobered up. And I just kind of went off the deep end and I was 16. I started drinking five to seven days a week and I took it pretty seriously. Everything I do, I’m all in or nothing. So then that led to cocaine and then that was a three to four day a week adventure for me. You can’t sustain that life. And so I was away for about 200. I lost 20 pounds now, and was 165 whenever I decided to spend my life to the Lord and do right. I just love partying and having fun, and that’s still my personality. I just do it for Jesus now.
Ezra McCarthy
You know, it’s so encouraging. I was just down in a city where I live and it’s so sad because I was going to get my truck. We were at a hotel and there was a lady there. She was deep in drugs. You could tell she was just sitting there on the curb ride. And to be honest, I was a little nervous. I haven’t been around that thing. I never got involved in that. But it’s such a ditch to get out of. Obviously, I’m a Christian. Obviously, God helped you there. What was the catalyst?
Was there a point where you really hit rock bottom? Cause I, I look at that poor lady and I know that she can change, but I’ve like, and there’s so many there in that town, like how, how is there hope for someone like this? What can we do to help them? Cause I don’t know that giving money is going to help them. And I mean, I’m all for giving people food. Can’t do much bad with that, but what really turned your life around? And obviously you’re not in that world at all.
Brent Moore
Yeah, so I’ve, like I said, I was always alive for the party. I loved the party. And with that comes lots of friends, call them acquaintances more than anything. So the turning point for me, my sobriety date, March 20th, 2011 was actually the date when I actually broke down inside of a dirt road and nobody would answer the phone. And I was one of those people I’d call and anybody would answer the phone. And I said that I called everybody I could think of.
I sat there for an hour and a half when eventually, you know, the Lord just kind of spoke to me or I just really spoke to the Lord honestly and I was like, God, I’m done. I’m tired of running. I’m tired of dealing with this. Take this from me and I want to live for you. I grew up in church. I knew all the church stuff. I knew what a relationship with Jesus should look like. I just never surrendered to that. And so that was really the turning point for me. Back up about a month, it could have been two weeks to a month before that. My mom, my truck, the reason I was broke down inside of a dirt road was early model Chevrolet’s and anybody who’s ever had one of the 2000 models, the gas gauge would go out on these trucks.
And it was just a very common thing. And so my gas gauge didn’t work. And so that’s why I was out of gas. Well, another day I’d ran out of gas on my way home from work. I was still working for a pool store then. And my mom picked me up and I just remember her crying and looking at me going, when are you going to stop? When is enough? I was like, what are you talking about? She’s like, I’m tired of seeing you live this way. When is it going to be enough?
And I was like, I just need some money, mom. I just need to get some gas in my truck. She said, no. And she took me to a gas station. I remember the gas station. She bought me a pack of hot dogs and a loaf of bread. And I think she bought me a Coke or something like that. And she said, I’ll make sure you don’t starve, but I’m not giving you a dime. Let me know when you’re ready to get your life together. And I tell so many people in recovery, parents that same story about quit giving them money. Just quit enabling them, quit doing those things. Make sure they have food to eat.
But every dollar you spend on them for a cell phone or for insurance or per car or gas or whatever, that’s one more dollar that they’re just gonna have for drugs. And so they’re not gonna spend the money on food. I’ve never met a drug addict who spends money on food. It’s always alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, their phones so they can get a hold of their drug dealers or whatever it be. And so that’s always my thing of what I try to tell people to help the people get from that point.
If I know somebody’s gonna keep feeding me with money and resources and keep giving my job back and keep doing all these things, why would I want to change? So that would be the, that’s one of the big things. And that was kind of my turning point, but I did, I had hit rock bottom. I got tired of going to jail. I got tired of having nothing. I’ve always been a very ambitious person and goal-driven and I had goals and I had things I wanted to accomplish in life and those things kept getting in the way. but so many people I’ve ministered to and been able to coach along the way, they just don’t have that.
And it’s very unfortunate that they don’t. And so that’s one of my big things whenever I sit down on one-on-ones with anybody is, what are your goals? And my goal as the owner of this company is to help not only my customers achieve the goals that they want, what their landscape needs, what I wanna, my main focus is my employees and my team members. I want them to achieve their goals, whether this is a stepping stone of a career for them or whether this is a long-term career for them, I want to make sure they reach their goals.
And so I want to help whoever it is, whatever it is, you want to become a firefighter, you want to become a pilot, whatever it is, like, let me know, let’s, let’s help you get to your goals. And if I’m helping you achieve your goals, you’re going to only naturally help me achieve the goals that I have for this organization. That’s what I always do, inspire people to achieve goals.
Ezra McCarthy
This is so good. I just have one more question here for you and then we’ll dive a little bit into the business. I’m just curious as someone who’s been there and that started in place and this is something I’ve struggled with. How would you recommend someone say like that individual I saw, how could you reach out to help someone without enabling them?
Brent Moore
Plenty of resources in every community is, and that’s just getting plugged into those resources. For the longest time, I was like the guy that people called in our community. Our community is not huge, we have 160,000 people in my county. But in the Christian community, I was known as the guy to call for recovery people. I know, if somebody went to church and they’re like, man, I got this guy. They’re like, call this guy. He helps everybody. It’s like, I’ve tried to, you know what I mean? But it’s like.
It’s like, they call me like, think I’m to be this Mr. Fix It. And I’m like, I just know people, that I can help get them into this recovery residence or this treatment program or whatever. But having those, making sure you know what needs, what their options are. And you just have to give them the options. It’s up to them to take that. I mean, somebody would have come to me like, Hey man, you need to go to rehab. I’d like, dude, I’ve got to work tomorrow. I’m not going to rehab. But because of the people I had in my life, my mom and my dad and I had a couple other key individuals that played a very pivotal part of that story in my life of just continuing just reaching out to me and encouraging me and saying, man, love to see you at church or Hey man, let me know if you ever need anything. I’m here for you and I love you. those small things. And so, uh, I’ll never forget this story. Huddled or waffle house one morning. Do you have a waffle house where you live?
Ezra McCarthy
There’s not much where I live, but I know what it is.
Brent Moore
Okay, so, and this dude passed out. It was six in the morning. I had one in there for breakfast. I was meeting somebody about business one morning and this dude passed out at the table drunk from the night before. And I left him one of my ministry’s business cards, wrote on it, call me if you ever like to talk. I have a men’s faith-based recovery residence for guys when they get out of rehab. And so I just prayed for him right there. And it was like,
Ezra McCarthy
Was he awake? Are you just praying while he’s asleep?
Brent Moore
No, he was asleep. He was asleep. So I kind of nudged him. He acknowledged I was there. So about four hours later, I got a text message. He says, all he is, hey man, do you know where my hat is? And I said, who is this? He said, old buddy from Waffle House. I just knew it was him. And so I’m like, I mean, at least he took my card. Maybe one day he looked at that card and said, I need help. And he went and got help somewhere else. Most people look at it and go, there’s no hope and they just turn away.
And sometimes, I mean, unfortunately that we feel that that is the case. Never give up. I mean, I’ve watched some miracles with some guys. I’ve got one guy, he’s been arrested. I don’t know how many times. I’ve been to 27 rehabs and he’s 52 years old when he finally decided to say he’s done. He’s one of my best leaders on my team and nine, seven, nine years sober. I was told he’d never see his son again. And a son lives with him, a thriving high school star student on the football team.
I mean, just a phenomenal testimony of somebody that you would have looked at and I would have looked at and said, there’s no hope for this guy 10, 15 years ago. There’s no way that’s, that’s what we have to do. But, knowing the answer to the question, know the resources that are available in your community. Starting with the local church, Celebrate Recovery is a great program. It’s a national organization. It’s a faith based 12 step program. You just Google, celebrate recovery in my area. And there’s generally one, and then just contact them, local recovery programs, drug court, whatever it may be. Somebody will be able to secure you in the right direction. That’s giving them the resources and encouraging them to take advantage of the resources that are available to them.
Ezra McCarthy
This is really good. Now, Brent, you talked about you’re just getting started. You go work for that farm at this point. Do my research. I believe you have over 40 some employees, large company. Yeah. Will you tell us what your journey has been from going to that? Just barely be able to get a job, someone kind of having mercy on you. And now here you got a large company and married.
Brent Moore
Yeah. So, uh, like I said, the reason I wanted to really start my own thing was I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur. My mom was an entrepreneur. I watched her through the ups and downs of her own business. And my dad worked two jobs my entire life until he was medically disabled a few years ago and just phenomenal workers. I mean, there’s no shortage of workers in my family and everybody that I know of in my family is hard workers. I always knew I wanted to work hard and I knew I wanted to own my own business. And so where I was working at, was actually given the opportunity verbally, hey, we’d like you to take over or start up a pool store in Tifton Forest. And would you be interested? I’m like, absolutely.
So that’s what I have my vision on. I’m going to be the manager of this pool store. It’s a big company here in Boston. And so I was like, that’s what I was excited about. Well, then they came to me. like, Hey man, we ran your background. You can’t drive our vehicles anymore. You’ve got two DUIs, so we can’t let you drive our vehicles anymore. Was this actually clean? No, this was about two months before I sobered up. But I was managing, like they knew I drank a lot, but they didn’t care.
They’d bring me a beer to the job site. But I mean, I wouldn’t be drunk at work. I might have a couple beers at the end of the day. I was a high functioning addict is what I was. And so I didn’t do drugs at work. I never did. Never went to work high. I’d just call it to work. So that’s what I was like, man, this is my out. This is where I’m gonna make it in life, be this manager. And then that fell apart.
So that’s when I was like, I’m just going to do my own thing, I guess, since nobody will employ me. I try to get a job at UPS, FedEx, all the big corporations here, you know, distribution warehouses and those kinds of places. I knew I couldn’t drive, be a truck driver or anything. And if somebody didn’t go to college, it’s just what you’re going to do. You’re going to go work on a dock somewhere and eventually move up and to a supervisory position and hope you can make 25, 30 bucks an hour one day. And so then I was like, I just got to start my own thing. And that’s what I did.
My goal was to have five employees in 10 years. And I remember sitting on the back porch talking to a guy one day, he was a business owner and he said, what’s your goals in your business? And I said, five employees in 10 years. And he said, I think you can do it. At that point, I think I had one part-timer. Fast forward a couple of months, I hired my first full-time guy. And I think I had two guys whenever I got married. I had a pool truck and I had a work truck. I had a little Toyota Tacoma that I had all my pool stuff in.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, me and my guy would go back to the house, me and my wife rented. It was backed up to my garage and we’d hop in the pool truck and we’d go clean all of our pools, in two days a week. And then we’d get in the other truck and we’d go cut grass and then we’d go work out the farm still. I did that for about three years and then eventually I had enough pools to do one route full-time, hired a full-time pool cleaner. And then I stayed in the truck for the first time, about 2014, 2015. So three and a half, four years, I was in the truck every day and I deleted about $10,000 worth of work off of my cell phone where I just, people left me voicemails and I didn’t ever call them back and I forgot.
And so I was talking to one of my customers and he said, what are you doing? And I’m like, what do you mean? He said, you’re just killing yourself, man. He said, quit trying to do everything. He said, everything you don’t like doing, pay somebody else to do it. Then I hired my mom to come to work, answer my phones and handle other business stuff for me. And that took a lot off my plate. And then I was like, I got to quit riding a lawnmower every day and another guy, businessman, tour of mine.
He was the best man in my wedding. He was just a good friend. I said, man, said, you’re never going to make money sitting in a lawnmower seat. I said, what are you talking about? It’s the best way to make money. He’s like, I promise you, get off a lawnmower seat and your income will go up. He said, it’ll double within a year. I promise you. And he was right. So I got off that lawnmower seat and now I’m allergic to grass. That’s a big joke around our company.
Ezra McCarthy
Are you serious? You’re literally allergic to grass?
Brent Moore
Yeah, so we just opened up a new branch about an hour and half south of here and we’re learning the properties and stuff. So I’m having to go down there, try to get the branch going. And I do love, I love to get out there and work. I love to work hard. And so I went out last Friday, I brought another guy from town and we were just going to kind of drop mowers and help them get caught up. And I was supposed to be meeting with the customer and kind of looking at a lease on our office and everything. And I ended up being stuck on the kind of. And so I was playing around, racing one of the guys in llama, or just trying to have fun with him.
And we have several group texts with just a bunch of banners in the company. And I sent a text out of me racing the guy in the llama, where I was videoing it while I was doing it. I don’t recommend doing that. But one of the guys said, I’ll take you anytime, Brent. And I said, you don’t want none or something like that. And one of the guys responded and said, all you have to do is throw grass in his face and he’ll break out and you’ll beat him. And I’m like, man, that’s messed up. Like you would call me out about being allergic to grass.
But yeah, I have to take allergy medicine every morning. If I know I’m going to go on the field, I have to take allergy medicine. It is quite funny.
Ezra McCarthy
So what did your trajectory look like from there, that part-time employee to now where you are? It obviously at this point, 14 years you’ve been doing this, but was it a slow kind of steady? Was there any kind of peaks where it really jumped up? And if so, why?
Brent Moore
Yeah, I would say that it was pretty steady. I would say that it was a rapid steady. I mean, I think I never, see, I never understood numbers. I remember in 2016, 2017, we played with the Small Business Development Center here at the local university came in and helped us with our QuickBooks, getting all our QuickBooks cleaned up. And she was awesome. She said something about your P &L statement. And this is five years in the business.
I don’t even know what that is, she’s like, your profit and loss statement. I was like, okay, what does that mean? And she’s explained to me and then she’s explaining different accounting terms. And I’m like, I’m just here to cut grass and make some money. And she was like, well, you really need to understand this. And I was like, well, in your profit, how much money is in the bank? And she’s like, not really. And then she tries to explain it to me. was like, no, that’s profit. Whatever’s in my bank account is profit. She’s like, no. Then it was, I outgrew my smarts really in the beginning. But it was, I would say it’s a steady growth.
So I really never tracked all of that stuff until about 2020 is whenever I really started kind of like I’ve got something here that I need to really focus on. But I would say probably average a 30 to 50 % growth a few years and then trickle down to 20 to 30 % growth. Since COVID we hit a 30 % growth for three years. Last year we purposely didn’t grow any. We stopped a lot of stuff and just kind of gelled back. Like I said, we sold my pool business, sold off a lot of my residential lawn accounts and just quit taking on a lot of work. And so we didn’t grow any last year, but up until then we were 30 % growth since 2020 and we’re on track to do 30 % growth this year. But that’s kind of been our, our steady is about 30.
Ezra McCarthy
Did you find that once you did get a handle on the numbers you mentioned right around 2020, where you really realized, this is something? You notice a drastic increase in seeing where you’re going? And then also profitability with that.
Brent Moore
Yeah. I mean, I would say we saw it and just made us more conscious of it. It didn’t necessarily change my decisions. I’ve never been one to be scared of taking risks. A lot of people are going, how do you operate every day and not knowing all of your KPIs and some of these peer groups I’ve been in and some consultants I’ve talked to like, if you don’t know your cost of acquisition on each lead converted rate to a customer to however many seconds those guys are spending on that customer, you don’t know what you’re doing.
I get what you’re saying, but never really liked being one to like to say that that was what it was that it was really just that the fact that we got a grip on our numbers. I will say that it helps to be more mindful. And that was kind of one of the things last year was like, okay, we went into let’s grow, let’s grow, let’s grow. And then we went into April 1st, and I pulled a P &L statement, a year to date comparison from the year before 23 to 24. And we had overspent $100,000 on payroll with the same amount of income compared to the year before.
And so that’s whenever I was like, pump the brakes something’s not. We got top heavy. We weren’t building on enough work. We weren’t, you know, our enhancement division or install division. It wasn’t building out what it needed to build out in order to sustain. We’re doing a lot of work around the office. I got to re-landscape the office, done some work out at my farm. It’s because we were kind of slow. We had some projects to fit in here and there, but there was nothing like pressing. So we just kind of put everything on the back burner and was like, hey, do this, do that. Not focusing on our numbers like we should have been.
Ezra McCarthy
What was wrong?
Brent Moore
And then we were just overstaffed from the law maintenance division where we were just letting guys ride the clock just because we wanted to get more hours. When all we had to do was we had plenty of work to sell and plenty of work to go execute. We could have kept everybody busier, probably working five more hours, 10 more hours a week, billing out an extra 20 to 40,000 bucks a week. But instead we were just kind of, nobody was paying attention. Everybody was getting their paychecks. Everybody was happy. Everybody was not stressed. So it was like, we’re not going to worry about this.
And so then that’s whenever we were like, bye. We got to stop this. So that’s whenever we didn’t make a shift. That’s whenever I stopped and said, Hey, we’re fixing some this year and we’ll focus on growth next year, which was hard for me because I’ve been very growth focused since 2020. I’ve kept the top 100 list on my wall, to be on that list for one day. And so it was tough for me to say, Hey, we’re not growing this.
Ezra McCarthy
What made you, especially with gross in mind, sell off a division? Was it not as profitable, or you just wanted to get more focused to reduce complexity?
Brent Moore
Focused to reduce complexity. I love people. People are obviously what makes the world go around and what makes techs come in and us to have employees and all those things. But residential customers are not our target market. realized that years ago when we really started focusing on the commercial growth sector, we just really realized that it was causing too much chaos and stress to deal with all the influx of residential customers. And we had one customer call in and to the office.
My wife was here helping train office manager and helping with the transition there. She’s an amazing stay at home mother who keeps our family in line, keeps me in check and makes sure that I’m taken care of so well. And so it’s never great for her to be here in the office full time. But she’s like, this customer has called four times in the last two weeks. Just about nitpicky stuff. I was like complaining, but he’s like, Hey, when’s somebody going to come out and meet with me and talk to me about fine straw? Hey, when’s somebody going to come out here and look at this? Hey, they missed a weed. Quick question.
One of our largest accounts spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. I said, since you’ve been back here for the last six months, how many times has she called? And she’s like, none. I’m like, exactly. Why are we doing this? This dude was spending 150 bucks a month with us. We just did bed maintenance for the guy. Like we literally would just go to his house and trim his bushes and maintain his beds. I mean, like once a month, I think is what it was. Maybe once every two weeks. And we made decent money off of the job, but I was like, ain’t who we are.
That was the big reason. The pool was mainly because I really lost my passion for that specifically. And I had a buyer. I trained three or four different managers for the pool division. And my last one came into my office and said, weekly Tuesday, one-on-one. He said, imagine, I’ll let you know I’m moving to Arkansas in two months and I’m going to put in my notice. I said, all right. And I didn’t even get it from the table. I texted my buddy and I said, you want to buy a pool business? And he called me immediately and said, yes.
And took us about two months to negotiate and get everything closed and he bought it. And man, I couldn’t imagine if we still had it. I wouldn’t have been able to survive the last nine months if we wouldn’t have done that. So even with losing that income, we’ve still grown, which has been huge.
Ezra McCarthy
You know, commercials can be kind of a buzzword. People talk about it a lot. People like big numbers. But what people don’t realize is your margins can be lower. So how are you navigating that? Maybe with larger contracts, you mentioned that one person, $150 headache, but then you’ve got perhaps lower margins. How do you balance the two and what is your perspective on it?
Brent Moore
Yeah, I mean, it’s just, it is going to come with lower margins. I mean, that’s all there is to it. But one of the things that I’ll say is it’s worth it. If I’m going and doing an install project, I think everybody would rather go do a hundred thousand dollar install project that takes just say four weeks to do, make a 20 % margin on it. So you’re going to make 20,000 bucks over four weeks. That’s $5,000 a week versus having 50, $2,000 install projects that you’re going to make 20 % on.
We’ll just call it 30 % on issue if you make 30 % which is 10 % greater margin Anybody would take a 10 % better margin in any industry at the bottom line I don’t think anybody would argue that Especially when you’re talking you’re already only getting a 10 to 20 % margin in this industry for the most part very high-end Install, gonna get 20 to 30 percent I think is what the benchmark study say but I don’t know I would rather a 20 % margin on one $100,000 install project and a 30 % margin on 52,000 install projects. That’s 50 side visits you got to make at least twice.
You got to go to sell the job and then you got to go to collect on the job or inspect the job. And then out of those 50, I can promise you 25 of them are going to complain about something. You got to leave this over here. He rotted this up. He did this. He did that. And so that’s the same approach we’ve taken with the maintenance. I call a customer that spends $500,000 a year with me. I have a couple of those and I say, Hey, what do we need to improve on? Man over here at the heart tower, you need to do a little bit better on the weeds.
I’ll text you if I see something else. That’s it. If I called, try to do that. Try to make a half a million dollars in phone calls on residential accounts. You couldn’t do it in a month. There’s no way you could do it in a month. And if you did, you wouldn’t be able to address those people’s needs.
Ezra McCarthy
This is the other side of that. You mentioned this individual spends $500,000. But here’s the problem. What if that person leaves? Obviously, that side of the contract is going to take $10,000 of equipment and great team members.
Brent Moore
Man, I’m gonna tell you something. There’s a lot of prayer that goes on in my family and in my leadership team in the years that our contracts are new. I’ll put it that way. I’m a firm believer in prayer. I’ll tell you this with one of my big accounts is our hospital contract. They have 30 something properties. And so it’s a pretty large contract. I’ll never forget whenever I was told that I was possibly gonna be able to get the contract. Every time, our town’s not that big.
But every time I drove by the property, I’d pull in the parking lot and I pray every time. I mean, this had to go on for four months. And every time my wife, she was counting, still praying for it. And our prayer was, God, may we get this not to make us richer, not to make us rich, not to make us have these possessions, but let us get this so that we can build your kingdom and so that we can grow this business to what you would have it to be.
And that was our launching pad. That contract was our launching pad for our organization, which gave us a lot of respect and publicity in the community for a commercial landscape company to say that we have this contract. So that’s been our prayer every time that contract renews is, God, if it’s in your will for us to renew this contract, we beg you for it. And it’s a risk that you take. We run pretty lean as far as equipment and vehicles. I’ll probably have, I could bill out another half a million in maintenance right now with what we have aside from lawn mowers.
And the only reason that is, is because we’re running a manufacturer issues with lawnmowers that we’re trying to get through and which we’ve kind of almost crossed over that hurdle. It wouldn’t be the end of the world. It would be a huge gut punch. And we would have to just really, we would cut all spending for a little while. And because believe me, I mean, I’ve never lost sleep over it, but I’ve laid in bed a million nights thinking about what if this happens? And I’m a thinker when I drive, I always do a podcast. It’d be 20 minutes in a podcast and I don’t know anything I was talking about because my mind got off on some other subject and seeing that’s one of the things that does come up and that I do think about.
Ezra McCarthy
You mentioned praying in a team meeting. You mentioned your company culture. I hear all the time and you probably do too. I can’t find anyone good. There’s no one. And you mentioned that the team member gave you two months or at least told you two months in advance before he was moving. How do you find quality team members that actually care about the business? Cause someone telling you two months in advance is someone cares about you, you Brent and the business. That’s not I’m Dom next week or Hey, I’m Dom.
Brent Moore
Yeah. So I mean, it’s hard for every five applicants that we set up an interview with one person to show up to an interview. My office manager just brought her back in December, got her into hire mode in March. She was like in our, uh, in our weekly meeting, we do a positive focus. Like what’s the positive focus? She’s like, I got five interviews set up for tomorrow. Me and my general manager looked at each other, started laughing. She’s like, what? And I was like, one or two of those people will show up. And she’s like, no, uh,
And I was like, I promise you. And one of them showed up. We hired him and he lasted two weeks. And so I would say for every 10 applicants that we set up an interview with, one of them will last longer than two weeks and then double that and only one of them will be a culture fit. And it’s sad and it’s a very unfortunate situation and circumstance, but it’s the nature of the beast. And a lot of that could be fixed in our hiring process. Out of those 10 applicants that we set up interviews with, we probably only should have interviewed two of them.
Maybe three of them, but we know that statistically, like let’s just set up 10 interviews and maybe we’ll get two. As far as like Austin was his name, pool guy, he’s running another pool company in Arkansas now, doing amazing. He texted me the other day, and we stayed in touch. He sent me a podcast here, there. He was a culture fit and that’s why I gave the two months notice. I mean, he was, our core values are coachable, unity, professionalism, integrity, drive, and do everything with love. And he was a fellow believer as well. And we have found that the people who align with our culture, our vision, our values, and even our beliefs.
I’m not saying you have to follow Jesus, but we have found that the people who have a good relationship with the Lord and people who have a good relationship with their families, we’ve seen that too. People who have a terrible marriage, it drags into work. And so that’s just kind of what we’ve seen, but it’s hard. It really is. I mean, it’s obviously the number one challenging thing that I deal with on a daily basis is recruiting. I don’t think it’s getting any easier.
Ezra McCarthy
So are you consistently advertising then? Because obviously you’re not losing, you’re still in business. So you still have people with you. So are you consistently having to advertise? And then if so, where are you doing that?
Brent Moore
We were just social media and then just indeed hiring websites. We do a terrible job at it. It’s something we’re trying to bring in as somebody to actually kind of oversee that. I just hired a marketing guy a few months ago and that’s kind of been one of his things is to try to market to that. But it’s something we’re not doing well and it’s something that we definitely need to improve on. We talk about it in almost every leadership meeting. What can we do better? How can we? We just reworded one of our job postings.
Project manager, we’re looking for a division leader and we can’t find division leaders, let’s just find a project manager that can manage these projects. And so boom, we changed the title and it makes us think differently. So then we hire differently. This whole time we’ve had this mindset of we’re looking for somebody who has this, this, this, and this whenever. Careless at this point, if you’re not a plant and plant, I can teach you to plant a plant, but can you manage six people, two crews, half a million dollars of equipment? Can you do that? If you can do that, I can teach you how to plant a plant in Lesad. As long as you can communicate and those kinds of things, I can teach you all that.
Ezra McCarthy
So what are some ways that you’re investing back into your team to keep them around? Obviously we’re just talking about the value and then keeping the ones that you have. How do you give back or maybe that’s not the right way, but incentivize to be part of the culture and stay.
Brent Moore
Yeah, so we’re big on our culture. I try to be a very giving guy to the guys and give back as much as I can through not just paying them more than a fair wage. We pay higher than any other of our competitors here in Valdosta and I’ve fact checked that multiple times. So we’re already doing that, but let’s be real, people don’t work somewhere just because they make a dollar or $2 more an hour than the next place. They’re worried because they feel valued and we don’t always get it right. I just lost a guy last week who I had to let go. And one of things he told me after I fired him was, you never once came to me and told me that you appreciated me.
And he was right, I didn’t. I didn’t have a relationship with him. We never talked one-on-one much. I’d see him in the morning. I’d give him fist bumps, shake his hand. How are you, man? Good to see you. I knew him by name, personal last name. It wasn’t like I didn’t know who he was. He was quiet, so I just never had that. But the biggest thing that we do is we do a monthly breakfast and devotional where it’s optional for people to come. Order Chick-fil-A or somebody’s, one of his wife cooks amazing food.
So she cooks breakfast, casseroles, and have somebody that does a devotion, whether it’s me, one of my managers, or I’m bringing in a guy in a couple of months. Then quarterly, we do quarterly meetings. That’s, I mean, I spend a lot of money on that. Between five to 10,000 bucks a quarter is what we spend on it. We do Q3, we go to Brazilian Steakhouse and Topgolf. Maybe to me and you, Brazilian Steakhouse isn’t that big of a deal, but I would say more than half the guys have never had a $40.
$50 meal and so that means, they feel like they’re kings when they walk in there and they can eat all the steak they can eat and ribs and chicken and everything. Then, and then we go, we used to do top golf, but now we do airsoft. So that’s Q3, Q4, we throw a big Christmas party, their families, bounce houses, shoot guns, play games, do giveaways, that kind of stuff. Q1, we always do a golf tournament and it’s hilarious seeing 40 grown men, 30 of them have never swung a golf club in their life on a golf course.
Q2 last year was our first year we went to a theme park. We usually just do something fun, Q2, because it’s really busy, spring, summer. last year I just, we took the whole day off for every one of these, paid everybody for eight hours and we went to have fun. So we went to a theme park, which now we have a contract at. We get them discounted tickets for their families if they want to bring their families, but they all get tickets to the theme park.
I mean, there was five or six guys who had never been to a theme park before they came. That’s what we do a lot. They’re really helpful with our culture and we’ll do random challenges and giveaways and fun stuff too. But that’s kind of what we do to try to get back. And we just implemented a profit share for all of our, my leadership team. I feel like I compensated them very well. We haven’t implemented it for them yet. What we’ve done is we’re just kind of looking at the numbers every month and then kind of determining a number to put in a pot based on tenure.
In my class last month I picked two core values and one thing that I wanted to focus on that I felt like they were doing good. And I built this formula out. just do a share across anybody who’s been here for a year or longer. So in order to be eligible for that, you have to be here a year or so. But it got some people excited. I mean, there’s one guy at 800 something bucks last month and then he’ll probably get six to 600,000 bucks this month. That’s what we’re doing.
Ezra McCarthy
It’s really good. Now I respect your time. There’s been a lot of great value. So we just had two more questions where you hear one, what is one piece of advice, maybe a new business owner listening in or maybe they think they’re at a couple hundred thousand and they’re thinking, man, this guy’s got one contract bigger than my business. Five hundred thousand dollars. What advice would you give or maybe even a Christian that’s listening in and sometimes in the business world, people don’t want to talk about it, but I think it’s helpful. Sometimes what advice would you give to them?
Brent Moore
When it comes to the business side, you have to set goals. You have to know what you want to do. You have to know where you want to go, what you want to be. Every, all the time I think, what do I want to do when I grow up? Like, and I still think that way. What’s grown up now to me, now, growing up to me 10 years ago, it’s in my thirties or forties. Now it’s the fifties and sixties. And so, that’s what I put in mind. So then I built my business to support my lifestyle. That was one of my first coaches he ever had. said, build your business to support your lifestyle. You want to be off every weekend, build your business to that. You want to take off whenever you want to but still maybe work on the weekends, build your business to sustain that.
You want to be an absentee owner, build your business to be that. You have to know where you want to go and what you want to do in order to be able to build your business around what you want. If you want to be a sales guy and a major customer service guy, build your business to do that. Doesn’t mean you have to write a law mower, but for me, it’s wanting to be able to retire in place at any point that I want to. I don’t have that day picked out yet, but if my kids go off to college somewhere and play sports or whatever, I want to be able to say, I want to go with them.
I could do whatever with them or take off for six months and travel the world or whatever. And so that’s what I’m building my business for too. So I would say as far as the business sense goes, do that. And then as far as a personal realm, one of my greatest mentors that I have now and a dear friend of mine, 20, was just at the gym with this on it about an hour ago. Said, I’m about to get on podcasts. The last two podcasts I’ve done, I’ve actually mentioned your dad and kind of chuckled and I said.
So I’ll probably mention him again today, but the greatest advice he ever gave me was he says, God, family, health, career. And he said, that’s the order. And those are the four most important things in your life. God is first and foremost, your family is second, your health is next, and then your career. And he said, sometimes you’re going to get them out of order. He said, I’ve been doing this for a long time. And he said, no, still get them out of order. He said, that’s okay. If it’s temporary, that’s okay. He said, you need to quickly get them back in line. He says, sometimes your business comes before your health.
You know, sometimes it’s going to be a season where you can’t make it to the gym in time, but you just need to try to eat decently. But then you need to make sure you tell your business, hey, I got to get back to my health and priority. And sometimes your family, you go on vacations and you’re doing this and you’re doing that and you can’t make it to your church commitments as much. And he said, that’s okay, just get it back in line. And he said, but you’ve got to keep God first and you got to keep your family second. And he said, and the other ones, he said, sometimes they’re going to get in the way and sometimes they’re going to be different.
They said that would be the things that would tell you the most important things in your life. And that’s been so true for me. Anytime I get them out of order, whenever my health gets out of order, I gained 20 something pounds over the last year and a half. And it was just weighing on me. I mean, it affects my sleep. It affects my marriage. It affects the way I talk to my kids because I just don’t feel good. I’m not healthy and it definitely affects my business because I’m feeling more lazy. I would say that would be my biggest advice for any entrepreneur, but especially the young ones or the ones who aren’t at that size they may want to be at.
And then also don’t compare, but I’ll never forget there was the guy who actually sold his business to the guy that bought my pool business. He built, actually bought out his pool business too in 2015. But in 2013, I started my company. I had to be going for two years. He started his, going for like three months and he had more pool accounts than I had. I remember just being mad. Like I was angry. Me and him went to church together. He was a deacon at our church. I mean, good dude, I love him to death. We’re in a life group together. And I was mad at him. Like I was, I was just angry and jealous.
I was like, God, why are you giving that to him? Why not me? What have I done? And I just was so angry. And I can tell you exactly where I was in my truck when I was crying to God saying, God, take it away. I can’t handle this. I had prayed for something I wasn’t ready for. I was like mad at God that I didn’t have enough work, that I didn’t have as much work as this guy because why does he have more business than me?
God’s like, it’s in my time, man. And I’m gonna take care of you. You just chill. That’s what essentially what I got from it when I was sitting there crying, mad that I had too much work to do. But I remember calling my wife and I, I can remember exactly where I was and I was crying. I was like, I don’t know what to do. I’m a grown man with a big old beard. That time I was really heavy. Like I’m just so mad. Like I got so much to do and I don’t know what to do. And God was like, I told you I got this. So don’t compare.
I looked at the top 100 chart and I went to the business builder summit, set the table with guys doing, I think he’s doing $160 million in revenue. I mean, I set a table with just me and you like having a conversation now. Super guy, real approachable. And I know I can be there one day. I don’t have to compare myself to him. I would say that. Like don’t, don’t look at that and go, I wish I was him. Use it as a goal. Use it as a launch pad, as something to drive you to get there.
Ezra McCarthy
So good. One last question here for you. What is one book, business or otherwise that you’d recommend someone’s looking to grow personally or professionally?
Brent Moore
Bible. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of 75 hard. Have you ever heard of that? Yeah. So I just finished that up at the beginning of the year. I have to admit, I got really sick on day 50. And so on day 50, I did not do it. But other than that, I did all 75 days. I had to read.
Ezra McCarthy
That’s a good one. So did you do 75 hard then?
Brent Moore
Nope, I did not. I did not. But other than day 50, I did. But it still doesn’t count. That’s why I disclaim it. I read four books in that time period. I read a Louis Giggaloo book. It’s called Goliath Must Fall. It’s a really good book. It talks about the giants that we have in our life. I think that a lot of people have giants that are in their way. Most of them are self-esteem. I like that I’m good enough. I’m never going to be strong enough, big enough, bad enough to be able to conquer my goals, those kinds of things. So that’s a good book.
All of Dave Ramsey is good. I love Dave Ramsey to death. was on his podcast last year, his Entree Leadership Podcast, I sent in a question and got on.
Ezra McCarthy
What date was that? I’m going to look that up.
Brent Moore
It launched in July. Mine was the title. Said, should I hire a CFO? I think that is what it was. That was my question. I think it said $6 million business. Should he hire a CFO or not? Something like that. All of his stuff, I love Dave Ramsey. I respect everything he’s about. I believe in all of his debt-free principles and everything. Personally, aside from my mortgage, I am personally debt-free. I do have business debt.
We can all disagree and agree to disagree on his principles on debt. And I do manage mine. I don’t have anything unsecured. All of his stuff is good. Any book that he recommends and that he writes or does forwards on I’ve read all of his stuff is good. I wish I would have got this list for you, but there’s so many good ones. As far as a business book, all of the Entrez leadership ones are good. E-Myth Landscape, Michael E. Gerber and Tony Bass. That’s a really good one. Tony Bass is a friend of mine and a phenomenal dude in the industry.
Look him up. He wrote a book with Michael E. Gerber, the E-Myth. I don’t know if you ever heard of that. There’s tons of different E-Myths out there, but there’s one specifically for our industry. Attraction, that’s a good one. Leadership and self-deception, I just got done going through that one with a lot of my leaders in my company. That’s a good one. I love to read, leaders are readers. That’s what Dave Ramsey always says, leaders are readers. I read five books my entire life until 2020, probably. And since 2020, I bet you I’ve read 30 books, 20, 30 books. I love reading now.
Ezra McCarthy
That I try to read one a week. That’s my goal.
Brent Moore
My ADD and attention span can’t do it. So I can get about 10 pages a day. I’ve listened to a lot of audibles. Oh, that’s another good one. Uh, dream manager, dream manager is a really good one. If you want to talk about culture in your company, that was a good one. listened to that audible.
Ezra McCarthy
Who wrote that?
Brent McCarthy
Type in dream manager book. I don’t know any of the authors of any of my books except for Dave Ramsey and Louis Giga.
Ezra McCarthy
It has been really helpful if someone wants to find out more about you or perhaps look your business up. Where’s the best place they could find you?
Brent Moore
Yeah, OutdoorLivingSE.com is our website. Its OutdoorLivingSE is in Southeast.com. I’m always open to talk to anybody and help anybody I can. I only charge $1,000 an hour. I’m just kidding. I’ve talked to a lot of entrepreneurs and I’ve had people that spoke into me for a long time. My first coach, he told me, I met with him five times. I was like, dude, let me pay you something. He said, you’re not going to pay me nothing until you’re sitting on the beach making money one day. And I was sitting on the beach one day making money.
And I texted him about a month later and I was like, all right, I’m ready to pay. I paid him 20,000 bucks over a year, now, to do some consulting with me. And, and, uh, so that’s, I would love to help anybody, but my email is Brent, B R E N T at outdoorlivingsc.com. That’s B R E N T at outdoorlivingsc.com. That would be the best way to get a hold of me.
Ezra McCarthy
Well, thanks for tuning in to hear Brett’s story. There’s been a lot of value here. I’d recommend you take notes there, especially that book. I’ve got that written down for that one, Dream Manager, to look at that here. If you got value from this episode, be sure to share it with another lawn landscape pro and be sure to leave a rating and review and we’ll see you on the next one.
