I frequently joke that when I was in my 30s and 40s, I'd come back from conferences all excited with new ideas for my team at Grunder Landscaping Co. I'm sure the seasoned members would whisper to new recruits: "Just wait. He'll be at a different conference next week with a totally different list of initiatives." 

It's a common trap, especially during conference season when there's so much to learn. Our industry is fantastic about sharing information, but that makes it difficult to narrow down priorities when we get home. 

That's why I'm grateful to peers, mentors, and teammates who hold me accountable - people who say "Hang on, you said you'd have that training system in place by March 1. What's the status?" 

At Grunder Landscaping Co., we hovered around $4.5M in annual revenue for years. My team and I had accepted that was our ceiling in our market. But a few things changed that helped us break through, and we'll do $18M in revenue in 2025. Here's what happened: 

1. We focused on metrics

 When we started to focus on real time data, we realized some things that changed our business permanently: 

• We had a ton of inefficiencies in our direct labor costs. When we fixed them by focusing on our utilization and onsite hours, we became more price competitive on commercial work. 

• We had a bias against smaller dollar value services, thinking they weren't profitable. In fact, services like mowing and watering were some of our most profitable while hardscaping projects had lower margins than we originally thought. 

• We could make new services like snow removal and lawn fertilization work within our model which added revenue which allowed us to invest in overhead faster. 

These changes had a large impact on our growth because they helped us see opportunities. From 2020 to today, we've more than tripled the size of the business without major acquisitions by doing what the data tells us to do more of.

2. We surrounded ourselves with the right people.

My team and I spend a lot of time around others in the industry, and we've relied heavily on our vendors for their expertise - as trends change or we offer new services, we go directly to people like our representative at SiteOne for up-to-date advice and guidance.  

3. We Got Accountable.

One of my favorite books to recommend to people is Winning with Accountability because it's a quick read and the lessons are so applicable no matter your role within a company. Accountability is huge for success, and this book really outlines a framework that works well for holding ourselves accountable. It's the first book all of our ACE Peer Group members read!

But that's often not enough, we also need others to hold us accountable to what we say we'll do. It helps us to stick with the plan even when it gets hard. It's why accountability is so central to the design of our ACE Peer Group Program - the biggest barrier to success in this industry is often just sticking with what we say we're going to do. 

As you attend industry events this season, keep this in mind: look at what your data is telling you, meet people who can help you grow, and build systems of accountability. One way to do that is through an ACE Peer Group. If you're interested in joining one in 2026, ACE Discovery is happening this month in Park City, UT. We would love to see you start your ACE journey!

Get in touch and have a great week!

Marty Grunder
Founder & CEO
The Grow Group & Grunder Landscaping Co.

P.S. My team and I have a busy winter ahead, and I'd love to meet more of you in person! Say hello to us this week at NALP's Elevate - I'm teaching a breakout session on Wednesday and we have a booth on the expo floor or catch me on stage at Brian Fullerton's Lawntrepreneur Academy Live on Saturday, November 8.