We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nicolas Zumino. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nicolas below.
Nicolas, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?
I go through the typical waves of ups and downs that business owners are familiar with. The ups are fairly simple to handle. I keep my head over my shoulders, give a few rounds of high fives around the crew, and I make a point in being generous with any praising opportunity. When things go wrong, I immediately reconnect with an old mental pattern of exaggerating the problem and giving it more power over me than it should have. Whatever the reason for the issue of the day, I 100% blame myself. When you are the business owner, that’s mostly a good thing since, well… you are in charge and there’s always something you can do. When you work in the corporate world as a cog in the machine, blaming yourself will just add to the misery. So that’s a big reason why I love being a business owner, vs an employee. My attitude towards adversity is better suited to the challenge of being fully responsible. That doesn’t make the problems any easier to fix, though. Something else happens when it gets really tough. I keep telling myself that these are the moments that will determine the future of my organization. If I can keep my senses, confront my limitations with all my energy and with a smile on my face, I will weather the storm and come out on the other side stronger. That’s why courage is one of our company’s value. And courage can only be tested in difficult times. That’s when we need it. I also don’t take it personal. Life is happening for me, not to me. All the challenges that I face, I chose them. I chose to work outside, have my hands dirty, sweating under 100d days, and agonizing over yard design ideas. That’s the kind of hard that I chose for me, and I’m not disappointed!
Nicolas, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
At GardenGOAT, we are outdoor living professionals. We help homeowners create enjoyable outdoor spaces. A cool, comfortable and usable space just outside the home makes a huge difference for our quality of life. Spending time with our kids playing soccer on the lawn, throwing the ball, or coming up with the goofiest dives in the pool, that’s what it’s all about. A nice shaded patio to share a dinner with the family, enjoying the view with your spouse at the end of the day. These moments require thoughtful planning, design and careful execution. These life opportunities are supported by the spaces we create.
I used to be a salesforce consultant, working in tech. It was fine. But I wanted my kids to understand what I was doing all day. And I wanted to do something real, that I could touch. I wanted to be outside, look at nature, not spreadsheets. I didn’t have any particular experience in construction or landscaping. But I knew I could pick up a shovel. So I bought a truck, a $25 LLC registration, and started GardenGOAT! I have learnt a ton, still learning everyday. I don’t build the decks or plant the trees myself anymore (or only as a helper when I have time), I leave it to the experts who do it much better then me, each in their craft, masonry, carpentry, landscaping. What I still do and love to do are the designs. It takes all our combined experience to make beautiful yard designs that are uniquely suited to their environment. We take pride in coming up with the best solution possible that combine the constraints and the objectives to deliver the best value for our customers.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
As a landscaper, there are some specific challenges in how we are perceived in the market. Homeowners are (rightfully) suspicious about the skill level and experience of landscapers. On the other hand, there is a perception of landscaping as a commoditized service, which would be performed in exactly the same way by anyone. Therefore, why pay more than the minimum? When customers are heavily drawn to the lowest bid they can get, the quality inevitably suffers. We have recognized this aspect very early on and we have differentiated ourselves in many ways to ensure our work is not compared on price alone, so that we can afford to deliver high quality, durable projects. We take the time to understand our customers requirements and objectives, asking thoughtful questions and listening carefully for what they are looking for. If we are not a good fit for each other, we decline the project. We provide detailed estimates, setting realistic expectations and budget numbers early on in the process. For the execution of the projects, accountability and reliability are values that have allowed us to build an excellent reputation and customer satisfaction.
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
One of the things I have learnt in sales is that we should have our processes and stick it, be a little rigid in this area. By instinct and temperament, I like to be friendly and acomodating to people, to facilitate the relationship. But our sales, I have forced myself to be more rigid and strict than I would normally be. For example, in our sales process, we ask “what would be the budget for your project?” Most customers say they don’t know the prices of materials and we are the professionals, we should tell them. I would them proceed to give them realistic price ranges for what they would like to get done. Not any more. Too many people would ask us to come to their house and give them a detailed estimate on 25 items they would like to do. Compiling these estimates would take us valuable time with a little chance of converting. Now, I explain that I am not asking homeowners to guess the costs of things, but what price they have in mind that feels fair to them. Is it a $10K problem, or is it a $25K problem for them? This works much better. We are the professionals and we have processes in place. If someone doesn’t want to follow our process, they will have to ask someone else to help them, and that’s ok. Last year, there was a very large project opportunity. I really wanted to do this project. Due to the homeowner initially resisting the way we work, I declined. It took me a great effort to stick to my principles and potentially lose an exciting opportunity. Far from being put off by my rejection, the customer was impressed by our commitment to our standards and we ended up building a relationship based on trust and did work very successfully on this project.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.gardengoat.com
- Instagram: @gardengoatatx
Image Credits
nicolas zumino