If you're like most of the landscape business owners I talk to right now, you've got a lot on your mind heading into spring. Across our 19 ACE Peer Groups and 250+ members, three themes keep coming up over and over and I think they're worth talking about: leadership, financial knowledge, and whether you're actually serving the right clients. 

Building Leaders Inside Your Organization

Most of us have great people. The question I keep hearing is: what kind of environment do we need to create where someone can make a decision for a customer, invest time or money into the organization, and go take action without having to come ask the owner every time? In sports, the best coaches don't just produce great players, they produce other great coaches. The same is true in your business. The more leaders you develop inside your organization, the better you will do.

Knowing Your Numbers Beyond Owner Math

A lot of pros are great at “owner math”. You know how many trucks are going out, what the routes look like, and you can tell by morning activity where you’re at from a capacity standpoint. That's great for gut checks and short-term decision making.

But a lot of owners are realizing their cash isn't matching their P&L, and when you start digging into why, there are usually some gaps. The owners who are winning right now are the ones getting more comfortable with their own numbers, not just the gut check math, but what's actually happening on the P&L and the balance sheet.

Are You Serving Your Ideal Client?

Every spring, when we're at our most stressed, the question enters our minds: should we be doing this work for this client? That's a normal and natural question. Honor your contracts this year, but use the busy season as a lens to evaluate your client base. A simple red, yellow, green exercise can bring a lot of clarity fast, and having an honest conversation with your team about where each client falls makes a bigger difference than most people realize.

I went deep on all three of these in a recent episode of The Grow Show - give it a listen this week to learn how you can actually do each of these things.

And if these are the kinds of conversations you want to be having year-round with peers who get it, we've got ACE Discovery coming up the last week of March in New Orleans. Come spend a few days with us, meet your fellow ACEs, and see what being in a room with other landscape business owners who are wrestling with the same challenges can do for your business in 2026.

We'll talk to you next week.

Vince Torchia
Vice President & Director of Strategy
The Grow Group & Grunder Landscaping Co.