IM Landscape Growth Podcast

Hosted by Intrigue Media

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110

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Oct 2026

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About the show

A landscape growth podcast where entrepreneurs help entrepreneurs grow faster, better, and stronger in leadership, sales, recruiting, and operational excellence.

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October 20, 202629 min

How Voice AI Landed an $8K Landscape Job in 30 Days | Scott Budreau, Intrigue Media

00:29 Rob welcomes Scott Budreau, the brains, sweat and tears behind Intrigue’s Landscape CRM. 01:10 Scott’s background: building and implementing CRMs for companies, plus running his own home services business. 01:41 What the Landscape CRM is: the only sales and marketing CRM built for landscapers, with about 100 clients and just under 500 active monthly users. 02:10 The big question: what’s the primary growth constraint holding green industry entrepreneurs back? 03:24 Why adoption has to come from the top down, connecting with tools like LMN and Aspire, automating the five minute rule, and the sales process that comes built in. 05:53 The mindset of the most successful clients: tie the CRM to revenue goals, get the whole team on it, and live by “if it’s not in the CRM, it didn’t happen.” 07:20 Rob’s observation: 99 out of 100 companies track job costing and profitability, but sales and marketing get no visibility at all. 08:42 Operational tools vs. a true CRM, and why capturing every lead (website, phone, ads, referrals, a neighbor’s info on a napkin) keeps deals from slipping through the cracks. 10:14 The reverse math: tying your revenue goal to close rate, quotes, leads and ultimately your marketing budget. 11:47 How hard is it to get started? Scott explains why your process is probably not as unique as you think. 12:38 The biggest surprise of the last two years: how much changes when owners simply start tracking what they’re doing. 13:45 Beyond sales: email marketing, social media, Google reviews, and replacing tools like MailChimp. 14:29 Ian from Terraforma builds a mulch email drip campaign that generates $75K, then $115K. 15:54 Hormozi’s “black box that prints money” concept from the Acquisition.com workshop, and how Ian built one. 17:23 Voice AI explained: an AI agent that answers when you can’t, after hours, weekends, or during busy season. 20:02 How many calls are you missing? Rob puts the number at 33%, and nobody leaves voicemails. 21:21 John from Enviroscape goes from pen and paper calendar to “AI rockstar” with Mary, his voice AI receptionist. 22:51 Teaching Mary to pronounce Enviroscape, and the $8K after hours project she captured in the first 30 days. 24:27 What’s next: a mobile app, AI sales coaching features planned for 2027, better email campaign insights, and bi-weekly training and open office hours (open to non-customers too). 26:46 How to reach Scott and learn more about the Landscape CRM. 27:13 Scott’s recommended read: Who Moved My Cheese by Dr. Spencer Johnson.

October 15, 202636 min

Greg Botson (Higginbotham) on Cutting Insurance Costs and Raising Enterprise Value

Insurance specialist Greg Botson from Higginbotham, explains how landscape and snow contractors can avoid audit surprises, survive non-renewals, close dangerous coverage gaps, and lower their cost of risk by becoming a better risk. Rob Murray even admits he's excited to host an insurance episode, which may be a podcast first.

October 13, 202638 min

Stop Feeling Your Marketing, Start Measuring It | Michael Palmer, Landscape Collective

00:30 Rob welcomes Michael “Palmer” Palmer of Landscape Collective, a guest with a nontraditional path into the green industry. 01:11 Palmer’s background: design school, branding, agencies, restaurant launches, and startups before joining a commercial landscape group that had completed a dozen or more acquisitions and needed help scaling. 03:11 The core growth constraint: referrals and relationships get you far, then plateau. Most owners dip a toe into new channels without committing the bandwidth or budget to make any of them work. 04:47 The myth that commercial clients never search online. Palmer’s counterpoint: property managers aren’t experts in every trade, so they do what everyone does and type “landscaper” into Google. 06:06 Proving it market by market. A modest search budget found commercial maintenance leads in markets where competitors weren’t investing. Ten of fourteen brands are now enrolled, with more coming online. 08:05 Year one was consolidation: pulling scattered domains and website hosts onto one system so leads flow from online form to HubSpot to Aspire to a proprietary KPI dashboard for a full funnel view. 09:41 How he got buy-in: crawl, walk, run. Work with existing tools, prove a win in one market, then take that win to the next. 11:12 The biggest recommendation: pick one thing, set it up so you can follow it all the way through, and only then move to the next test. 12:41 “I can feel it” is not a metric. Palmer wants to hear that $1,000 in spend produced $5,000 in revenue. 13:50 Saying no with discipline. Social and other channels wait until the current priority is proven and running, while cold email and LinkedIn get small, quiet tests in the background. 14:30 Choosing the most urgent problem with the biggest impact. Organic growth was the goal a marketing team of one could move fastest, and getting everything on one chassis made that possible. 16:08 With lead gen running and the team doubled to two, Palmer shifts to the next big goal: retention and renewal. 16:33 Getting sales on board. Palmer converted reps one or two at a time, used early adopters as ambassadors, and let the data spread the word. 18:10 Online leads have intent. They put their hand up, and ignoring them makes no sense. 19:44 Speed is the number one factor. Top reps respond right away by email, follow with a call, and set a reminder to follow up again. An automated intro email acts as a safety net when something slips. 20:14 Rob’s story: a company hired a full-time lead response person at $40K a year who closed $150K in deals in three months just by responding quickly. 20:50 Why speed wins with property managers: they’re busy, often fill out several forms, and want the problem off their plate. 22:54 What’s next: using AI for speed, data analysis, content, and customer tools, plus a noticeable rise in AI referrals compared with traditional search. 24:44 No silver bullet. Know your audience and meet them where they are, from LinkedIn to industry forums. 25:00 SMS lead gen: the opt-in and legal constraints, and why lapsed customers are the most practical place to start. 26:33 A hypothesis that didn’t pan out: Palmer expected missed phone calls to be a goldmine, but call tracking data showed the bigger opportunity was in online forms. 28:08 Where Palmer draws inspiration: property management and HOA forums, industry organizations, and authors focused on perception and audience. 30:07 Old tricks, new tech: an AI-powered proposal builder and personalized LinkedIn ads that deliver one-to-one responses at scale. 32:14 Lifetime value thinking. Landscape Collective aims for renewal above 90 percent, and an average customer stays a little over six years, so each acquired dollar is worth roughly six times its first-year return. 36:23 Why Palmer might accept 3.25x or 4x return on ad spend when 5x is the usual target: a lot of that first-year revenue keeps coming back. 37:14 Closing thought: operators bring serious rigor to operations and project management but often very little to sales and marketing. If you’re spending the money, watch what it’s doing.

October 6, 202631 min

Landscape FX's Paul St. Pierre on Hiring Key Leaders to Unlock Growth

00:29 Rob welcomes Paul St. Pierre of Landscape FX (LFX Group), a Windsor-area operator in business since 1987. 01:15 Paul's origin story: a land developer dad, landscaping at 15, flying home from Laurentian University on weekends to work, and skipping teachers college to go all in. 04:01 The scale today: design build (residential and commercial), property care, maintenance and snow, plus Rochester Place resort, a 16-acre supply center, a local publication, a golf course and land development. 06:21 The Gordie Howe Bridge port of entry and the battery plant: back-to-back large-scale projects in Windsor. 07:00 The biggest growth block: thinking he could do everything and just work harder instead of paying for key people. 09:25 The tipping point came with executive and management hires, around the seven to eight million range. Then comes the identity shift from doer to leader. 10:30 The question Paul asks his team: what do you need from me? Why he trusts from day one and lets people make mistakes. 12:29 Coming back from Florida, ready to plow, and finding no keys and a card-lock fuel system. 14:17 The "in the business / on the business" hat: flip it around so the team knows which mode you're in. 15:43 Why banking relationships, budgets and strong financial statements matter when you're growing fast. 17:48 Surviving downturns by adding offerings and vertically integrating: ready mix concrete, trucking, a supply center and salt. 19:30 The partnership with Troy: hot pink salt supporting families affected by cancer, plus Paul's plan for a bagging plant. 21:29 The surprise 1976 Chevette: Paul's son, dad and family bring back the car he started in. 23:29 The old 220 square foot office (a retired exterior bank machine) and how it anchors onboarding and humility. 24:38 Mentorship: meeting Jean Paul Lamarche (JPL), Mark Bradley's influence and the value of masterminds. 28:29 Book and mentor shout-outs: Crucial Conversations and Tony Garerri. 30:50 Wrap-up and thanks. tbzNBCIYlilHXeo0tvnG

July 30, 202639 min

Stop Chasing AI Visibility Scores: Mick Selman & Aaron Towlson, Intrigue Media

00:29 Rob introduces Mick Selman and Aaron Towlson. 01:07 Mick and Aaron explain their roles: Mick handles SEO strategy and research, Aaron applies it with clients. 02:10 Why this episode exists: a flood of AI SEO noise and questionable AI-generated SEO audits. 03:02 The two audiences every business writes for: robots and people. 03:14 What it means to earn a robot's trust, and why Google's guidelines still lead the pack. 03:37 EEAT defined: experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness. 04:38 Aaron's reframe: Google is just trying to answer people's questions well. 05:38 The AI slop problem and why volume of content isn't the goal. 07:13 The biggest AI content mistake: hitting play on a tool and never reviewing the output. 08:01 Better input equals better output. Feed AI tools real experience, testimonials, and specifics. 09:06 What experience actually looks like in a blog post, not just years in business. 10:33 Why experience and content compound like an investment the earlier you start. 11:09 The case for starting SEO now even when the payoff is a year or two out. 13:11 Google Ads as the hit, SEO as the cure. Why SEO is a long term strategy, not a quick fix. 14:12 Authority score explained, and the tools that measure it: SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz. 15:13 What separates a lead-generating authority score from a weak one. 15:57 The three ingredients of authority score: traffic, backlinks, and natural link profile. 17:36 How to actually move the needle: create reasons for people to visit and make the site easy to find. 19:00 Why domain authority plays differently for local landscapers than for national SaaS brands. 20:32 Social media's real role in SEO: more places for people, and AI tools, to find you. 24:29 Why backlinks matter and why most clients ignore them before working with IM Landscape. 24:50 The honest answer on backlinks: earn them with great content, or pay for them carefully. 28:32 The pillar blog and supporting blog content model, localized project by project. 30:37 AI visibility scores debunked as an unreliable, unregulated metric. 32:17 Where real AI visibility data will actually come from: Search Console and Bing. 33:44 The AI readiness checklist mirrors EEAT: helpful content, site structure, backlinks, and buzz. 35:02 Priority one for AI readiness: make sure your site is indexable and check it in Search Console. 36:35 Mick's number one starting move for landscapers: post your own content, consistently. 37:18 The gym analogy: twenty minutes a day beats fifteen hours once. 38:06 Where to go deeper: Google's own EEAT documentation as a starting point.

July 23, 202641 min

Weston Zimmerman (SynkedUP): Why Your Timesheet Data Is Your Most Valuable Asset

00:29 Welcome back Weston Zimmerman, founder of SynkedUP 01:40 What an MCP server actually does and why SynkedUP built one 03:07 The "Sorcerer's Apprentice" analogy for AI without guardrails 05:00 Deterministic vs. generative AI, the core distinction 07:25 Why vibe coding isn't a replacement for proven systems 10:31 The smarter move: connect vibe coding to the tools you already have instead of replacing them 12:11 The three way fork: contractors who dive in, tread water, or stay agnostic on AI 16:33 The one task to automate first if you're hesitant about AI 19:04 What SynkedUP is seeing from clients who are leaning into AI 22:26 Why most contractors' internal data isn't ready for AI yet 23:23 The two things Weston would track religiously: job-tied timesheets and recorded sales calls 25:44 What systems thinking actually looks like in practice 28:54 Complexity is expensive, simplicity is cheap (with the pond builder example) 31:23 Dan Martell's "Buy Back Your Time" and the Camcorder Method 34:12 Inside SynkedUP's new AI estimating agent 38:14 Where to find SynkedUP, the AI hourly rate calculator, and the agent waitlist

July 16, 202630 min

Down to Earth's Jay Worth on Fixing the Hiring Excuse Landscapers Love

00:31 – Introductions and how Rob and Jay first crossed paths on the industry circuit 01:18 – Jay's path into the green industry, from door to door lawn care during the Great Recession to Single Ops and now Down to Earth 04:03 – The question of the show: what is the primary growth constraint holding landscaping entrepreneurs back 04:26 – Jay's answer: the inability to adapt and staff effectively, in both the field and the office 06:26 – The clearest symptom of a company that has not adapted: everything runs through the owner 07:04 – Red flags to watch for, including being unable to step away or trust anyone to pick up the slack 09:33 – Why "there are no good people in my market" does not hold up, and what to do instead 10:15 – Contrasting a boss who created chaos with Jerry Link, the owner who won his team over by learning their language 15:12 – The variable speed highway analogy: why giving people time and space to think helps them move faster later 17:38 – Where leaders actually get stuck when trying to delegate, and the tendency to hold onto the tasks they enjoy 19:57 – "Dirty delegation," Hans Finzel's term for handing off a task without ever letting go of it 25:03 – Shifting into sales: lead response times, follow up, and where landscaping companies leave opportunity on the table 26:06 – Why five minute callbacks are not always the right move, and what same day follow up should look like instead 28:20 – The case for a documented, consistently followed sales process 29:10 – Books and resources Jay draws from, including How to Be a Rainmaker and Unreasonable Hospitality

July 9, 202627 min

Nina Mason (Pro Landscaper): Why Recognition Fixes Your Labour Shortage

00:31 Intro and welcome 01:06 Nina's background and the 44 Group story: Pro Landscaper's 15th anniversary, Futurescape, Saudi Arabia expansion 02:21 Pro Landscaper International and the awards program 03:14 The number one growth constraint across every market Nina covers: recognition and perception 05:34 Why culture, not perks, is what actually retains talent 06:49 The "train them and they'll leave" fear, and why it's the wrong risk to worry about 07:59 Recognition initiatives: 30 Under 30 (UK) and Rising Stars (US) 09:01 What Futurescape USA actually is and why it exists 10:45 How to register (futurescapeusa.com), September dates in LA, new Florida show in December 12:02 How to nominate someone for Rising Stars 12:43 Communication: the most common, and easiest, growth blocker 13:45 Practical fixes: catchups, newsletters, WhatsApp groups 15:31 What surprised Nina bringing Futurescape to the US: labor and visas 16:32 UK vs US: who's actually ahead on sustainable and climate resilient landscaping 17:48 Biodiversity net gain legislation and what it's doing to the industry 18:42 Ten years in the industry: how the conversation shifted to tech and AI 20:52 AI as a tool, not a replacement, and where it distorts your branding 21:47 Rob's take: organizing your data structure as AI's real ROI 23:21 The AI tools people are actually using day to day 24:14 What Nina wants the North American industry to know 25:14 How to contact Nina 26:01 Nina's recommendation: Nigel Dunnett and urban greening

July 2, 202633 min

Shai Egosi (Pool Perfection): Scaling from From $3M to $12M

00:31 – Intro: Rob welcomes Shai Egosi, whose meeting in El Salvador led to this episode 01:47 – How Shai went from software career to pool company owner through a loan gone sideways 04:01 – The six-year scale from $3M to $12M in sales, exit completed July 2025 04:34 – What Shai is building now: Workflow Perfection, a management platform for construction companies 05:19 – The real growth constraint in the green industry: finding people who buy into the vision, not just collect a paycheck 06:33 – Why a well-built "castle" attracts good people before you even have to sell them on it 07:56 – Focusing on customer happiness over the physical task ("Don't build them a pool") 10:28 – How to delight customers with simple, consistent basics instead of grand gestures 11:37 – The real starting point of the turnaround: paper everywhere, 40% of time lost searching for information 12:52 – Setting up project-based communication channels (WhatsApp) instead of one messy company chat 13:52 – The personal touch: Shai calling every customer himself right after kickoff 15:05 – Automated Monday morning project update texts, now AI-assisted 16:34 – Why organized data is also what makes AI actually useful 17:04 – Starting with Trello, then building custom software from real field problems 19:02 – Timeline of the gains: Trello to Workflow Perfection, then COVID hits and demand spikes 20:15 – Friday breakfast meetings where the whole team learned and improved the software together 21:15 – The compounding payoff: profitability, five-star reviews, and standing out while competitors failed during COVID 22:47 – How to actually start: get the right people in a room and map the full information flow 24:59 – Getting a skeptical team on board with new systems 26:02 – What Workflow Perfection does: phases, materials tracking, inspections, commissions, chargebacks 27:36 – How a clean system made Shai's own exit smoother (read-only buyer access, no surprises) 28:56 – What it actually takes to onboard a system like this, and how fast teams feel the impact 31:29 – Where to find Workflow Perfection (workflowperfection.com) and how to reach Shai 32:02 – Book recommendations: Bold, Build, Abundance, and Never Split the Difference

June 30, 202639 min

Kevin Scott (Muskoka Landscapers): The Hire That Mattered More Than Another Excavator

00:31 – Welcome and intro to Kevin Scott, president of Muskoka Landscapers and founder of The Wealthy Landscaper 01:33 – Kevin's path: golf course construction, a horticulture degree, growing Gateville Malloy from 80 to 500 employees, then starting Muskoka Landscapers 18 years ago 04:42 – The core question: what's holding landscape entrepreneurs back 07:05 – The symptoms of being under-skilled as a leader at $2.5–3.5M: missed timelines, upset customers, a thinning team 08:52 – The personal cost of running too thin (and the moment his wife had had enough) 11:34 – Why office hires often outperform field hires in ROI 13:16 – The mentor's line that changed everything: "the money you spend in the office is better than the money you spend in the field" 14:25 – The 18-month culture struggle and letting go of people he should have supported with systems instead 17:16 – Why entrepreneurs overwhelm their teams after every podcast or conference ("I got 68 takeaways") 21:46 – Good people vs. good systems, and why building SOPs with your team beats handing them down 26:14 – What separates $10M+ owners from $2M owners: a vision with a roadmap, not just a wish 28:33 – Books that shaped his thinking: Good to Great, The Mountain Is You, Buy Back Your Time 30:50 – The real stage gates for hiring management: $1M for maintenance, $2.5M for design-build 33:46 – Muskoka's 120-step customer process and the danger zone of post-sale, pre-construction silence 36:25 – The one-year warranty visit as both a service win and a quiet sales call 37:31 – How to connect with Kevin and what kind of business is a fit for his coaching