We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Stuart Shoemaker a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Stuart, thanks for joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard
We choose not to max out our employees. It’s all too common in the landscape industry for people to work 10-12 hour days through peak season. Base pay in the industry is not particularly high, and many companies, and employees, make up for this by working 60 hour weeks. We’ve found that by staying relatively small as a company, and by offering specialized services we can pay our employees better than average wages that in turn allow them to get by without having to work excessive hours. In the end, we’ve found that this helps with long-term employee retention, maintaining a healthy work-life balance, and overall health and sustainability within the company.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Blue Spruce Horticulture is a boutique garden and landscape design company located in Fort Collins, Colorado. We work with both residential clients and public institutions to develop sustainable, cutting edge garden and landscape installations.
Colorado, and the West in general have seen an increase in drought conditions over the last 20 years. We take a sustainable approach to landscape and garden design by helping our clients convert to lower water usage through thoughtful planting design and irrigation techniques.
In high school, my two favorite classes were entrepreneurship and botany. It’s been a revelation to look back on those times 15 years ago and to see where I am now, running a successful horticulturally focused business. To me it really feels both serendipitous, but also as though I’m doing exactly what I was meant to be doing. It hasn’t been easy, but I wouldn’t trade the last 5 years of growth, development, and experiences for anything else career-wise.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
I’ve always treated my employees as co-workers and business partners rather than inferiors. While recognizing that not everyone is cut out to be making high-level decisions, that doesn’t mean that employees don’t have something to contribute to the organization. I’ve found that maintaining this mentality helps to foster a sense of ownership in the employees, which in turn encourages them to actually care about everything that happens within the business, and not just in their position. It also creates a space in which employees feel comfortable sharing thoughts and ideas, which could potentially help the business grow or become more successful, or could also create a better working environment for the employees, or the bosses.
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
Staying true to our mission from day one. I’m not saying we haven’t pivoted to meet the market needs when necessary but we’ve said no to a lot of potential revenue streams and service offerings that haven’t been true to our passions. I think that our clients can tell how passionate we are about gardening, horticulture, and design, and that’s led to them having more reverence for us as an organization. Neither myself nor any of my current employees got into this industry for the money, if that comes eventually then great, but we’re mostly doing this for passion and genuine interest. On top of that, anyone who’s ever done gardening or landscaping knows that it’s not for the faint of heart. I think that when our clients and potential customers see us as young passionate people who are working hard at what we love, that’s taken in, shared, and spread throughout the industry.
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