How do you react when landscaping companies equal in size and experience say your uniforms are in bad taste and your shop is too messy? Do you listen and take action. Or take it as an insult?

CoCal Landscape Owner Tom Fochtman uses industry peers to serve as an informal board of directors.

It happened to Tom Fochtman, co-owner of CoCal Landscape, based in Denver. For him, the criticism was far from offensive. "The next day we had a clean shop," Fochtman says. "This year we went with the best uniforms in our history."

But Fochtman's critics weren't just any contractors from the sidelines. They are among five landscaping companies involved in "The Next Level Network," a peer-networking group that meets three times a year to discuss everything from snappier uniforms to obtaining legal workers. In a unique way, "The Next Level Network" allows the nation's top landscape management company owners to act as a board of directors for each other and exchange ideas and feedback on issues within the industry.

"It was the drive of the idea," says Fochtman, who took the concept of peer networking and approached Bruce Wilson, a business consultant, to facilitate the group. Fochtman also got in touch with Dave Daniell, who at the time was co-owner of Heads Up Landscape Contractors in Albuquerque, who had been involved in peer groups before and was looking to join a new one.

For one thing, they wanted to invite contractors based on their business model, ownership and geographical territory. Namely, gather a band of contractors from different markets whose primary services included landscape maintenance and construction. The three invited a list of potential contractors and soon enough, HighGrove Partners in Austell, GA, Pine Ridge Landscaping in Chantilly, VA, and Vila & Son Landscaping, headquartered in Miami, FL, joined. The owners first met for a kickoff meeting in January 2004 to brainstorm bylaws and the mission of the group and by the following May, "The Next Level Network" held its first official meeting.

What competition?

Geographic location, Fochtman knew, was an important factor in who could be involved in the peer group. Obviously the contractors didn't want to be competing for business, the reason why one is based in Colorado while the others do business in other regions of the United States. "We weren't worried about chasing business because we operated in different markets," Fochtman says.

And it wasn't because the owners wanted to be elitist that they kept the group small. There's a limited amount of time at their meetings, which take two days. Also, Wilson, the "Next Level Network's" business facilitator, likes to cap those involved in the group at six companies.

"We feel that [with] more than six, you couldn't really give the companies enough time in a 2-day period to cover everything," says Wilson.

Each company gets about two hours to cover a range of company issues while the host company gets extra time.

And with these meetings comes serious homework. Every meeting requires lots of preparation, the owners say. Wilson asks for financial benchmarking information and topics for discussion about six weeks prior to each meeting. At the meetings, strategy feedback and best practices recommendations are swapped. By the end of the each session, owners commit to make positive changes within their companies by the next meeting. This aspect of preparing for the meetings adds an important accountability factor to those in the group and is the core of "The Next Level Network's" value and success.