There are 18 hours of daylight, the time change is four hours earlier than Eastern Daylight Time and at times, the bears are as common as deer.
Those are just a few changes from the normal day-to-day for the nine lawn care and landscape companies, two industry consultant companies and one industry trade publication that made the trek to Alaska earlier this month. This ACE Peer Group — co-hosted by McFarlin Stanford and The Grow Group — first stopped in Anchorage to visit Titan LLC, a design/build company started by CEO Todd Christianson 42 years ago. The group then held meetings on the top floor of the Hotel Captain Cook, a member of the Historic Hotels of America.
From there, the group took another flight further south and west, to King Salmon, to stay at Rapids Camp on beautiful Bristol Bay, for three days of fishing, bear watching and camaraderie over meals, shuffleboard, darts and even a little bit of karaoke.
“Even when we’re having fun, we make sure we get business done,” says James Cali, founding principal, McFarlin Stanford. “It’s an opportunity to get away, spend time together and bond. It’s more about breaking bread with those you work with and build relationships with. Whether it’s your peer group or your team back at home, when you create memories and experiences together, you all get so much closer.”
Using technology to stay organized
ACE Peer Groups usually take a long road trip together like Alaska in the three- to five-year range of meeting together, Cali told LM. ACE Peer Groups have been taking this Alaska trip for five years now. After the stay in Anchorage, the group relocates to Rapids Camp, in a remote area of Alaska.
(OK, to be fair, most all of Alaska is remote.)
Before the more relaxed setting at Rapids Camp began, the group met up in Anchorage. The trip to Titan LLC gave the nine visiting companies an idea of how a fellow landscape company gets the job done. Snow removal is a huge aspect of Titan, along with fencing and decks.
“Most of our competition is dying, there are so many obstacles here … primarily labor,” Todd Christianson, president and CEO, told the group. Titan overcomes this by recruiting labor from the lower 48 to work in Alaska. It’s working: the company has grown 30 percent then 25 percent over the last two years.
Alongside Kevin Thompson, construction general manager, Christianson showed the group some of the new technologies the company is putting to work, including ExakTime (an employee time clock app), Trello (a digital job board) and Buildertrend (construction management software).
“We discovered the faster we grew, the more technology helped organize the company and allowed less items to be missed,” Christianson told the group. “The technology we’ve implemented helps us save time, money and allows us to adjust quickly to changes.”
A unique aspect of Titan is that the company doesn’t have crews report to the shop in the morning. Instead, they are to report directly to the job site. The necessary tools to get the job done are delivered by three trucks called “expediters.”
“We are always doing 14 jobs, with another 14 jobs lined up for the future,” Thompson said. “You have to always be thinking 14 (current jobs), by 14 (upcoming jobs), by 14 (future jobs.) And what mini-exs, mini-steers, it takes to get the job done.”
“(The expediters) are smoking,” in the busy summer season, Christianson laughed. In the winter, the crews — to the tune of 200 people — are busy with snow removal.
Down to business
As the tour of Titan (named after the brand of Wayne Gretzky’s hockey stick) ended, the group returned to the Hotel Captain Cook for lunch and a busy agenda. On the docket for the rest of the day and half of the next day were two case studies:
- The onboarding of any leadership-team-level new hire.
- What positions to add and when, when experiencing a growth phase.
The group also discussed the book “The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort to Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self” by Michael Easter.
To conclude the formal meetings the group went around the table, one by one, to give updates on their respective companies and action items discussed in previous meetings. The group would ask each other about different projects (“Did you make that change back in December?”); different staff members (“Just remember, if you take your foot off the throttle, he’ll become less interested.”) and overall business concepts (“We almost doubled our marketing budget … and it’s working.”)
An experience
Vince Torchia, vice president, The Grow Group, says that ACE Peer Groups meet four times a year; three meetings a year are held at a member of the peer group’s main office and a local hotel conference room. The fourth meeting is the annual ACE Summit, which includes all peer groups meeting together at the same location.
The program was started by Marty Grunder, founder of The Grow Group, some 25 years ago. Today, the program has over 200 active members and over 175 alumni.
The Alaska trip is what’s called an “ACE Experience” meeting — a chance to do something they normally wouldn’t do with their peer group.
“Alaska is an amazing place for us to host an ACE Experience because we have access to a great fishing lodge and we happen to have a member in Anchorage,” Torchia says.
Torchia says he believes people join peer groups because business owners have information they want to help others with, and they also want to learn from others.
“They’re people that naturally like to learn in a group setting, however they’re also really passionate about growing their business,” Torchia says. “Typically, in our ACE Peer Groups, a company will double the size of their revenue within three to four years of joining the group, and increase their profitability two-times over that time period.”
Best industry in the world
Garret Hergert, CEO, GRO in Vancouver, Wash., joined this ACE Peer Group four years ago. What drew him to it was to be around business owners who were more successful than he was.
“I think being a part of an ACE Peer Group like this, and surrounding yourself with people better than you, are some of the most important things you can do in an industry that has its ups and downs,” he told LM. “Being a part of the ACE Peer Group has given me the ability to surround myself with people who have larger companies than me… they have more experience and have hit different hard times than I have. The peer group has been essential to some decisions I’ve made, and how I made them and when I made them.”
Chase Coates, owner of Outback Landscape in Idaho Falls, Idaho, told LM he joined a peer group in 2017 because he wanted to find like-minded people who were working in the same industry as he was. He says since joining a peer group, he’s grown his business and expanded his network for when he has questions that come up with his business.
“It’s an awesome experience hanging out with all these guys, it’s rare you get to spend a lot of time together outside the office, not in meetings, not sitting in a conference room,” Coates says. “When you get to hang out, that’s when you really get to know people, and dig into what they’re working on back home in their business.”
“It’s why our industry is probably the best industry in the world — that’s what peer groups are all about, that’s what the industry is all about — share whenever you can,” says Jason Cromley, CEO, Hidden Creek Landscaping, Columbus, Ohio, who will host Grow! in 2025. “The good companies want to see that success for other companies.”
Companies represented at the 2024 Anchorage ACE Peer Group trip:
- Complete Landsculpture, Dallas
- G&G Landscape, Charlotte, N.C.
- Hidden Creek Landscaping, Columbus, Ohio
- GRO, Vancouver, Wash.
- Lifescape Colorado, Denver
- Milosi, Nashville, Tenn.
- Outback Landscape, Idaho Falls, Idaho
- Sunline Landscapes, Salt Lake City, Utah
- Weller Brothers, Sioux Falls, S.D.
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