Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lindsay Scherr Burgess. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Lindsay, thanks for joining us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

Green Wallscapes came about completely by accident. I saw a moss art piece on Pinterest that was manufactured in Europe and I wanted one. Five years ago, there were very few companies that did this work in the US, so we decided to make it ourselves. A few hundred dollars of craft supplies later, the first moss wall was created. After that, we shared a photo on social media and someone asked us to do it for them. Everything grew very slowly and organically. I opened an Etsy shop and shared our pieces on my personal social media. I did it very part time for over a year. In 2018, my other job finished, and my husband encouraged me to try the business for a few months and see if I could make it work. From there, I began to advertise more heavily with ads and on my social media outlets. Friends and family supported us at first, and eventually I was able to hire my neighbor to help part time. One of our first projects was some lettering for Southwest Airlines! After a few months, my husband told me we had to get the moss out of the house (it was EVERYWHERE), and we rented a 600 sq ft office in Downtown West Palm Beach, FL. We moved into a second and third location quickly thereafter and now are in 2,500 sq. ft.- sharing with my husband and his two businesses.

What I am not mentioning is that I spent almost 20 years building my network – 10 of it in South Florida – mostly in the architectural, interior design, and real estate development communities. It has been wonderful to be embraced by this community and to have worked with incredible people all over the US. We hired very talented designers and artisans, and began to expand the styles into not only moss, but preserved plants and faux succulents. We kept just answering requests in a timely manner and providing exceptional customer service. We now have a team of 11 people (mostly full time). We keep innovating and coming up with new designs. We kept the pressure incredibly low at the beginning, so it was easy to just enjoy the side hustle at first. The start up costs were minimal because we were just buying the quantities required on a project by project basis. At this level, there is a ton more complication (many of the walls we do are over 100 sq ft), but we started small and just kept trucking!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Green Wallscapes provides no-hassle preserved moss walls, logos, lettering and art for a myriad of residential and commercial clients all over the US and Canada. We are 100% self-funded, and organically grew from working in our backyard to a team of 11 amazing team members. Our client list includes Starbucks, Amazon, Autonation, Hilton, Stella Artois, Wal-mart (corporate offices), major real estate development companies, as well as hundreds of yoga studios, coffee shops, salons, spas, hotels, condo associations, etc. People like our walls because they do not require light or water, so they are virtually maintenance-free while bringing a calming natural presence to the space. The Palm Beach Daily News once called our work “a lavish expression of botanical joy”. I absolutely loved that and adapted it into our work and our core values.

I love making job opportunities for others, watching people grow, making beautiful things for the world. I love branding (I know, that is weird) – especially when it intersects with our plant material how we can elevate it to art. I love when our clients are delighted. I love that there are people that see our work and feel a bit calmer because they don’t see many trees or beaches or mountains where they live. I get to reconnect people with nature in often really sterile corporate environments. I get to bring some earthy quality to a world that is often really far away from it.

Two things set us apart. We offer five star service. We take incredible care of our clients, and we always deliver on time and on budget. We are very careful about what we say so that we underpromise and overdeliver, we take 100% responsibility if there are issues and come up with solutions quickly. I also think our design work speaks for itself. We spend a lot of time thinking about innovative ways to use this material and elevate it. It’s very easy to do this so it looks crafty – it takes a lot of skill to make it look consistently like art. We spend over 60 days training all our employees, so that the work meets our standards. We aren’t afraid of color or pushing the boundaries. We’ve done moss projects with 22 colors, moss on the ceiling, and love a creative challenge.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Any entrepreneur who has owned a company in the last few years and made it through is an example of never ending resilience. Covid, supply chain issues, skyrocketing costs, the great resignation, and now recessionary fears – we’ve been through a lot. I would say that for me, everything has forced me to become even more creative. We’ve had to streamline processes, we’ve had to change our team, we’ve had to put continuous improvement plans in place. We constantly review how we are doing things. There hasn’t been any time to get comfortable. We’ve grown leaps and bounds, even with insanely difficult headwinds.

Probably the worst thing that happened in our business that helped us leap frog forward was two employees quit with no notice, a week before our biggest installation of 2021. We came up with a new process which has made it much faster and more consistent for apply the material to boards. The rest of the team rallied and got a project done in the nick of time, and we still used those fabrication tricks to this day. It’s been a game changer, that would have never happened had that not happened. The pain forced massive action. I think most of business ownership is just stepping up even if you have nothing left, staying nimble, and being open to trying new things.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

We create all of our green walls in our studio in West Palm. When we started, we knew nothing. We had to figure out everything from where to get the moss (it’s much more difficult than you think – especially at scale!) to what adhesive to use so that the moss will not fall off (there are not a lot of great options for this either). Our space is very niche, but we work with building grade materials, have to fireproof our boards, we have to hold the right kinds of insurance, and run this like a professional organization. Our clients have very strict timelines. We practice the Toyota-developed practice of continuous improvement called Kaizen – we are always looking out for small ways to improve what we are doing. It’s part of our conversation every Monday when we meet is a team – did we come up with any kaizens this week? It’s part of our terminology, it’s part of our culture. It forces us to continuously try new things. We’ve speeded up significantly since we started by implementing this mindset. We’ve developed project flows to make it go smoothly and quickly, while providing an exceptional product. Everything from ordering materials to how we design to how we fabricate have been touched by this process. We’ve gotten rid of so many issues just thinking this way. It’s absolutely something to consider as part of your weekly process.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.greenwallscapes.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/greenwallscapes/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GreenWallScapes/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/greenwallscapes/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/greenwallscapes
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKErgLCha7Qg_EXpRO0OC_w
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/greenwallscapes/

Image Credits
Photo Credits: A, Smallcomb, M, Kostival, and J. Arsenault.