Seth’s Cut: How we’re finishing the year strong

Some members of the LM Team including Kevin Stoltman, CEO, Jake Goodman, Western Regional Sales Manager, Dan Hannan, Easter Regional Sales Manager, Christina Herrick, Editor, Bill Roddy, Group Publisher, Seth Jones, Editor-in-Chief, Allison Blong, Events Manager and Joey Ciccolini, Senior Digital Specialist. (Photo: LM Staff)

I just plopped into my office chair after a long day of travel. I have one more business trip this year (Pinehurst, N.C.), then I’m heading to Cleveland. Cleveland, AKA ‘The Land,’ is the home of North Coast Media, the parent company of Landscape Management magazine and our sister publications, Golfdom and Pest Management Professional (among others.)

I’ll tell you why I’m going to Cleveland: to celebrate the conclusion of a fantastic year with my co-workers.

I’ll get to my tour of this issue in a moment, but before that, I want to recognize the hard work my team put in this year. If you get this magazine, you know the effort we put in to make 12 worthwhile issues a year. And hopefully, you get our weekly e-newsletter, LMDirect!, which deployed like clockwork for 52 Thursdays this year. And hopefully, along the way this year, you saw some of our social media posts, our YouTube videos, attended our educational seminars at Equip Expo, attended our three-day LM Growth Summit in Orlando or attended one of our webinars.

Whew! These things don’t come together on their own, and for the last several weeks — since attending the first Elevate, really — it feels like we’ve been running on a treadmill set to a 7-minute mile. (Which would be a big deal to me. To some of my co-workers, no sweat.)

It takes a team

I’d like to point you to the names listed on our masthead. I’m the one who gets to write this column every month, and my name is in the ‘from’ field on the e-newsletter, but these are the people who get the job done every month: Christina, Tracie, Joey, Rob, Courtney, Kendra, Danielle, Pete, Marisa, Bill, Craig, Jake, Dan, Chloe, Karen, Michelle, Allison, Bobbi and Antoinette. Thank you for another incredible year — perhaps our best yet. We shared breaking news, exclusive stories, unveiled our annual LM150 list and made it look good along the way. Well done!

So, team … what will we do in 2023? I can’t wait to find out. On to this issue …

Our annual State of the Industry Report, sponsored by our friends at Vanguard, has a lot to take in with the report as we look at the current state of the industry, what it might look like in 10 years and some of the challenges facing the industry today.

We pull this feature together by first surveying, then interviewing our readers. We once again had a strong response from our readership in support of our survey. As promised, I would like to thank a few randomly selected readers for their participation by sending them $100 gift cards. Andrew Moberly, senior irrigation manager at Yellowstone Landscape; John Langton, vice president of Langton Group and Joshua S. Reed, supervisor of Landscape Maintenance, you all have gift cards coming your way. And Scotty Kelley, owner of Superior Lawns of Western Oklahoma — I’d like to buy your crew lunch this upcoming spring. I’ll be in touch soon; maybe I can even do it in person.

Also in this issue, we share our Battery-Powered Equipment Guide. We’re going deeper down the electric battery rabbit hole this issue and asking two tough questions: 1) how do you keep these batteries charged, and 2) how is the performance of the different batteries judged? You can find this special section inserted in the middle of the magazine.

Finally, this issue also features short articles on battling dallisgrass; compact equipment attachments; landscaping trends that can save water and I have my 5 Questions interview with Mike Morin of Morin Turf in Sioux City, Iowa. Mike has quite the recollection when it comes to working in this industry. How many guys do you know who remember the economic downturn of 1973?

Once again, thank you to my team for another great year of Landscape Management magazine. And thank you for your readership.