Envisioning Green: An Extraordinary Small Business

When Steven Johns started mowing lawns at the age of 12, he never imagined the summer job would grow into an entire lawn care company. Four years later, he hired another person part-time. By his senior year of high school, Steven had taken enough classes that he could leave by 1:00 p.m. every afternoon to work. 

Back then, Steven mowed up and down his street, enjoying the freedom that earning money afforded him. His wife, Erika, joined the team in 2013, and today Envisioning Green is a husband-and-wife-owned, boutique-style landscape construction and maintenance company being featured in a business book. 

I first met the couple while speaking at an event. I instantly connected with their gregariousness, love of life, and desire to learn and grow their business, but it wasn’t until some years later that I visited their operation and my suspicions were confirmed. 

Keeping Clarity

You can often judge the success of a company by the style and substance of its leaders, and it was easy to see that Envisioning Green is a stand out company in what is often a tired and uninspired green business. The difference? Both Erika and Steven understand the power of clarity in their company: “Clarity to us is like success,” they agree. They know that you don’t really get one without the other. 

However, the couple also knows that it is not something you ever really achieve. Clarity is an ongoing process: “Just because you’ve achieved it today doesn’t mean that it’s going to be as clear tomorrow. You must always be striving for clarity in what you do and how you speak to your team.” This doesn’t make the effort futile by any means; it just makes your efforts all the more important. Even if perfect clarity may never really be achieved, the owners of Envisioning Green still believe that a certain level of it can be maintained. 

“You know you’ve achieved clarity when the systems you’ve put in place work without needing our direct assistance. And when the decisions that your team makes are filtered through the same filters and four values we built our business on, we know we’ve been successful.” This can require a certain amount of creativity because the Johnses recognize that clarity for one person may not be the same for another. It is obvious that they value their employees as individuals, rather than simply a means to an end. 

The Best Part of Your Day

They place the same value on everyone they encounter: “One thing we always say is ‘Be the best part of everyone’s day’ and it’s awesome when someone takes that to heart.” This principle is also evident in the other key elements of their founding beliefs. 

While most companies adhere to the 80/20 rule, Envisioning Green tries to include the whole team in the training process, rather than most of the training being done by a small portion of the staff. ALL of the staff should have the same enthusiasm as a recruiter, so that the core values are instilled in new employees early. Steven and Erika hire for attitude and train for skill. If someone is really qualified but is terrible to be around, they won’t be a good fit. 

What’s In a Relationship

The care that is put into training employees inspires their loyalty, an aspect important to the business’s survival, but no less impressive for that. The green business is generally considered a seasonal role, which means that employees are often left with little or no work during the off season. This can endanger the stability of their home lives, and many will find other work to keep themselves afloat. While necessary, it means that the business loses many employees from year to year.

Envisioning Green responded by finding methods to keep these employees working through the off season as well. They built a second warehouse to fabricate materials for orders or high use items (kitchens, fireplaces, fire pits) for future jobs. This creates productive work through February, preparing for their Home Show in March. Though keeping their employees busy year-round has occasionally put them in tough straits financially, they feel that having high-quality help during their busy seasons is worth it, especially since they rely on experienced workers to help push their product.

Much of their business relies on what they call “relationship marketing.” In short, charisma and quality work make them pleasant to work with and, when combined with the fantastic results, customers are generally eager to tell others. For example, a job Envisioning Green completed three years ago led to six new customers. One of these was the president of a different business who was visiting the original customer and was so impressed with what he saw that he asked them to come work on his building too—several states away. 

Planting the Seeds of Inspiration

Just as often, however, that trust will be created through an interaction with a passionate employee. One in particular came to mind for Steven and Erika: “Planter Peter” as he is affectionately known, frequently impresses potential clients with his unwavering enthusiasm for his work. A perfect example of the hire for attitude—train for skill concept, Peter is inspired to make people feel good and the people he interacts with sense it and respond in kind. On one occasion, a couple made a $106,000 proposal after a single conversation with Peter at the Home Show. He is frequently requested by name, and Erika and Steven recognize that this is a direct result of his inspiration showing through. Here is an example of the kind of feedback Envisioning Green gets about Peter: 

To: Steven Johns

From: Mike Hickey

Hi Steven, hope this finds you and your family well.

I just wanted to take a minute to recognize Patrick once again for his outstanding customer service and ability to handle issues in a professional and timely manner. Patrick’s actions truly epitomize the definition of excellence.

Wikipedia defines excellence as “a talent or quality which is unusually good and so surpasses ordinary standards.” I define excellence as Patrick Smith. I cannot begin to express how impressed I am with Patrick‘s ability to carry out your organizations mission statement. You have chosen a winner!

To inspire others, you need to be inspired. Steven’s inspiration lies in legacy; he hopes that he will be remembered as a leader with a positive impact—a builder of people who makes a difference in people’s lives. Erika also wants to be a positive influence. She loves people and believes in them, but just as importantly, she wants them to live with a purpose, secure in the knowledge that someone believes in them. Thus inspired, the couple tries to make sure that their employees are similarly impassioned. 

 “We make sure that our people know that we’re grateful for them,” they explain. This is done through handwritten thank-you notes, constant expressions of gratitude and pats on the back, and by praising them openly. They encourage and reward creative thinking both with customer experience and on jobsites. The track for success is clearly outlined for ambitious employees to see where to focus their efforts in order to progress; they even provide training events and both professional and personal speakers. However, Envisioning Green knows that a healthy business needs more than just financial drive—it needs human connection. 

Maintaining Culture

“Our culture is fun and positive,” says Erika. “we aren’t afraid to laugh and joke around but we know how to work hard. You spend more time with your co-workers than your family a lot of the time so it’s important to have some fun at work.” The couple aspires to a culture of joy, hard work, and contagious positivity, and designed theirs with that in mind. The culture of their intention is one in which each person feels confident in their identity as part of the company and knows how to act—not because it’s the “rule,” but because they genuinely believe it’s the right thing to do. Trainees, who come in with the right attitude, have these values instilled in them by similarly inspired seasoned employees who go above and beyond because they want to, not because they are told. 

The goal is for a kind of family setting with fun as a key point. Their business is hard and intensive work, so it helps to keep the attitude light and airy. As such, they hold several events throughout the year that invite their employees to bring their own families in and enjoy themselves. The Christmas party is always fun—arcade games and laser tag have been main activities in the past—and it helps them to see the people they work with as real people, not just employers and coworkers. 

It’s important for the families to be involved because they affect the overall contentedness of the employee; if their family isn’t happy, then they aren’t happy. The employee knows that with Envisioning Green, their family comes first. If something comes up at home, their company will help them sort it out. 

Steven and Erika also hold monthly breakfast meetings, which they have catered. They do follow an agenda to keep everyone up to date on what is going well and what is not with positive testimonies and examples, but they also try to keep it fun with a game called Bean Boozle. Everyone receives tickets, which are then put into a drawing. The person who is picked must answer a question about the company or give an example of someone who demonstrated a core value. If they get the answer wrong, they have to eat a jelly bean, which are of a variety that could be anything from fruit to dog food. If they get the answer correct, however, they get to pick another person to go. 

It’s a great method to equalize individuals. No one is off limits to choose, and Steven in particular is chosen a lot. He’s there to play the game too, after all. Everyone sits mixed in together at level tables to rehearse the core values. The meeting then helps everyone to feel comfortable at work. They know they can talk to Steven or Erika if they have a problem, and the couple will be considerate of their emotions. 

Cultivating Emotion

After all, Envisioning Green’s system is designed to deliver positive emotions. Most leaders have never asked themselves what emotions they are trying to create and which they are trying to avoid. Steven and Erika, on the other hand, are quite clear in which emotions they hope to create in both employees and clients.

EmployeesClients

Interestingly enough, the lists for both employees and clients are fairly similar. The emotions fit well with the idea of being the best part of everyone’s day, joy and appreciation especially. Envisioning Green has its own way of doing this with their customers. A significant aspect of creating positive emotions with clients is maintaining professionalism, a problem that many other companies in the green business struggle with (i.e. not answering the phone, not returning calls, a general lack of communication, and more). 

Envisioning Green aims to provide a professional customer experience from beginning to end. Rather than other landscapers, they consider their competition high-end businesses such as Mercedes or Flemings. Creating positive customer emotions is therefore imperative. This is not necessarily an easy concept to put into action, however, especially if the client is predisposed differently. 

Steven recalls an instance of a client who was particularly tough—not very open to friendliness with the people working on his yard and just generally cranky. He may have had other factors contributing to this attitude that the employees from Envisioning Green did not know about, perhaps the loss of a loved one or a difficult situation at his own job, but all the employees could do was go about being their normal friendly and helpful selves and hope that the client would loosen up with repeated doses of kindness. 

After a month of terrible behavior, the client came out as someone was loading incorrect materials, and he began yelling. Not a great situation. However, once he found out that the error had occurred at the business who had sent the material, rather than with the order put in by Envisioning Green, his entire demeanor changed. He was suddenly much nicer; he started chatting with the workers and asking about their weekends. Sometimes it may feel like talking to a wall with some clients, but people are listening, and they do appreciate a task well done, even if you don’t find out about it until later. 

We Can Too

You hear the refrain frequently and maybe you’ve used it yourself: Sure, that works for them, but not for us. I included this small business example as proof that intentional leadership isn’t just for the large or the corporate, but for any business that aspires to thrive and grow. Try taking the sentiment and turning it around: If they can do it, then maybe we can too. 

This is an excerpt from my book, The Intention Imperative. It is available here.

Mark Sanborn is an award winning speaker and Leadership Expert in Residence at High Point University, the Premier Life Skills University. For more information about his work, visit www.marksanborn.com. 

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