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Cover Story: With a little help from my friends
1 Oct, 2009 By: Daniel G. Jacobs Landscape ManagementOh, I get by with a little help from my friends ... Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends ... Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends who knew 42 years ago The Beatles were delivering some solid business advice in their classic "With a Little Help From My Friends." OK, so maybe the second line of the chorus doesn't quite fit, but we're going to assume they meant higher profits.
 Peer groups offer business owners insight into their own operations. |
Business advice takes all forms — rock songs, books, family, friends, customers, strangers, professional associations, trade magazines and consultants, to name a few — and they all offer varying degrees of credibility. Of all these, few extend the intimacy of the peer group.
"Anybody who is interested in having their business grow should be a part of something like this," says John Rennels, owner of A Plus Lawn and Landscape, Lawrenceburg, KY. "The information is invaluable. As a business owner, whom do you bounce your ideas off? I'm constantly looking for areas where I can pick up information. It might be on a service offering, on financials or on customer service. This is an opportunity where you can share people's successes and failures and learn from those, and maybe save yourself some heartache and financial loss."
Rennels isn't alone. More Green Industry professionals are joining peer review groups, sharing more openly and honestly their issues and shortcomings, which often leads their sales and margins to new highs — with a little help from their friends.
There are a number of approaches to the peer group process. This article explores one.
Rennels has spent a little more than a year as part of a peer group run by consultant, author and business owner Jeffrey Scott. Having spent years in Europe and the United States both running and participating in groups, Scott now runs a consulting operation facilitating peer groups. And he's written a book on the subject, "The Leader's Edge," which at press time was on its way to the printer.
 John Rennels |
"You learn good stuff," Scott says about the peer group process. "The core process is the opposite of how (a group) of guys getting together without a facilitator might work. What they do is just bat around ideas. We try not to do that. We try to have somebody there to put a specific problem on the table to discuss."
Why it works
Scott assembles his peer groups from business owners around the country.
Members of Scott's peer groups must open their books and operations to other participants, so having non-competing group members is essential.
"The more you share with the group, the more the group is going to help you," Scott says. "You'd better be comfortable sharing everything, really."
Matt Kulp, owner of Showcase Group, New Holland, PA, agrees.
"These guys basically became my Board of Advisors," Kulp says. "I finally realized I'm not the only one in the Green Industry dealing with these same issues. It is about meeting with others confronted with the same issues. We are all able to learn from each other."
Learning from unbiased peers is one thing that makes the process valuable, Rennels says.
 Matt Kulp |
"If you were to ask your employees or your friends any family business-type questions, you will get a slanted answer," he explains. "Unfortunately, a lot of times (employees) are going to tell you what you want to hear, and friends don't want to hurt your feelings. And friends don't necessarily come from a position of knowledge about what you're doing."
That's not the case with members of a peer group.
"It's invaluable information," Rennels says. "They're honest. They're going to tell you information whether you want to hear it or not."
The group meets formally four times a year either through a phone conference or a visit to one of the group member's offices.
During a conference call in April, Rennels mentioned he was working between 100 and 120 hours a week. Yet he took four hours out of one of those weeks to participate in the peer group — and that doesn't include the time he took to prepare for the discussions.
"People join because they think they're going to copy the other guy's good ideas," Scott says. "That's not what happens. What happens is, the other guys hold up a mirror and help you uncover your own opportunities you're not seeing within your business."
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