We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brad Stephenson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Brad, appreciate you joining us today. Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

Here’s the story: I came to New Castle Lawn and Landscape 17 years ago. When I started, I was hired as a “supervisor” but we really did not have anyone to supervise, so I pretty much looked after myself, though I knew there would be an opportunity for ownership in the future. New Castle had 8 employees and we were at about $800,000 in revenue. I, to be frank, worked my ass off and steadily moved into higher management positions before achieving minority ownership around 8 years ago. As I worked my way up, I sought to bring in people I worked with previously. My goal was to surround myself with a strong team as I was moving up in the ranks. The first person I brought on was Mark. I worked with him before and knew he was smart. I once attended a seminar with Mark’s former boss and we got talking. He said “Brad, Mark is going to leave my company and I have to let him go so he can grow.” I then asked him if I could interview Mark for a job at New Castle and he gave his blessing. Mark has been with us for 13-plus years and is on our leadership team. We were also in need of a designer, and I remembered a one I worked with at another job. I didn’t know her last name, so it took me close to 6 months of Facebook stalking to find her. Today, Tricia has been with us for 10+ years and is one of our head designers. When I reached out to her, I asked, “Hey, what’s your sister (Stacey) doing now?” I worked with her as well, and I knew Stacey was smart. I then got Stacey to visit me. I interviewed her and told her I really didn’t know what she was going to do, but I wanted to hire her. Stacey has been with New Castle for more than 10 years as well. The funny thing is, she said she only wanted to work part-time. Now she is my Sales Manager managing 10 people and is on the Leadership Team. That’s just a taste. I have more stories like this, for sure. When I know good, smart people, we hire them. That’s how we got to $10 million in revenue with 82 employees and we are still growing.

Brad, 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?

I am not college-educated and I barely got through high school. I failed the 7th grade including Summer School. I was diagnosed with extreme ADHD before anyone knew anything about it when I was 12 or 13 years old. I hated the label that was given to me, and to be honest, I am getting emotional just thinking about it. I thought everyone was calling me stupid and I began to rebel. That changed me. I harbored an extreme amount of anger and blame towards my parents regarding my ADHD diagnosis and I refused to take the medication I was prescribed. This inspired a mission that I am still on today. I can tell you all about the great projects we did and how awesome things are, but to be honest, my goal for our company is to give more people employment that may not have been given a fair shot in life. That being said, we have highly educated, highly skilled and trained people at New Castle. From elaborate 3D Designs to outdoor kitchens to awesome plantings with continued interest to green weed-free lawns to certified arborists that trim trees properly to lines in turf that would make your dad jealous – they do it all. What I am most proud of is our team. I believe we have the best culture in the industry and we were just voted the #2 Lawn and Landscape company to work for in the continental U.S. When you have great employees, you have great projects, maintenance and customer service. If you want an outdoor oasis or maintenance and you care about your property and the people that are on it, New Castle is your go-to! We also are very involved with kids with Autism. We have an intern right now who is killing it and we will be offering him a full-time position when he graduates.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

I believe our brand is known way more now than it was before Covid. During Covid, we didn’t know what we were going to do. We met as a Leadership Team and said, “we are going to give back no matter what.” We weren’t sure if we were going to stay in business, but we were going down swinging. That kicked-off our efforts to help out in the community. We didn’t do it to get more clients; we did it to truly help the community. From driving CDL trucks at the local food bank, delivering food, to buying groceries for the elderly to giving blood, you name it, we did it, and it was all for free. That has since snowballed into a community-first company that we are today. I am currently on several nonprofit boards and we sponsor different events and truly give back like we always wanted to, but were too scared that we may not have the money to sustain it. That has helped form the core values that we stand by and hire, fire and promote with. We aren’t looking to solely hire All-Stars. We are looking for good people that care, that are determined to improve personally and professionally, and that have a good attitude. When you have employees like that who give back their own time to help, it’s a winning combo. We didn’t do it for the wrong reasons. For that reason, I believe we aligned with great clients that we didn’t know existed previously.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I’ve had a lot of pivots. Sometimes I feel that’s all I do, and I love it. Back in the day, we relied on 23-25 H2b employees. They are legal migrant workers that we get temporary Visas for through the government run program. In 2018, we found out two weeks before our mowing season that we weren’t going to get all 25 guys. That meant we had no one to mow our properties. This was the same year we decided to implement Gino Wickman’s Traction System and got our Leadership Team together. So, with no one to mow the grass, we conducted a massive hiring campaign. It was the worst year we ever had. We brought people on that just didn’t work. That year, I bet we hired 70 people and were left with three really great guys in the end. All managers were out mowing; owners were out mowing; everyone was mowing. That year we decided to go with a cheaper lawn application material that was supposed to be a slow-release fertilizer. Well, I believe we had four working days without rain in a 3-month period. It rained every single day. With all that rain and cheap fertilizer, the slow release turned into fast release and the rate at which the grass was growing was ridiculous. We just couldn’t keep up. In between mowing lawns, I had a 4-month period that all I did was field complaints. This was something that was new to us; we never got complaints. During 2018, I cried almost every day. It was the worst and best year we ever had. I seriously was hiding in bushes to take a break from mowing because I thought I was going to die. We lost $350,000 that year. Here is what we didn’t do: we never gave up. We continued to meet and gel as a leadership team, solving issues as they came up. We didn’t miss a single meeting. We all came together as a group and gutted it out. We discovered we were a very strong group even though it didn’t look like it from the outside. We made so many changes that year, including ownership the following year which saw me become a Majority Owner along with my Partner, Brian Cuccaro. Without 2018, our other partner at the time may not have retired, which opened the door for me and the entire company to step up. We have since added another Partner, Dan Marshall, and have doubled our revenue since 2018. We also now only rely on 8 H2b guys and we help 2-4 per year get their Green Card, which has changed their lives. That’s why I believe 2018 was the best thing that ever happened to us.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.newcastle94.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/94newcastle/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/94newcastle/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brad-stephenson-7381897b/
• Other: Please see Tricia Williams for this