The Systems of a $4 Million Landscape Construction Company - Riley Rivers - Rivers Landscaping

Riley Rivers, owner of Rivers Landscaping, shares his journey of starting and growing his landscaping business. He started the business with a friend in college and now, seven years later, they have a revenue of over four million and 22 full-time employees. Riley emphasizes the importance of taking care of clients and team members, as word-of-mouth referrals have been crucial to their success. He also highlights the need for systemization and delegation to scale the business. Riley recommends starting by focusing on doing what you say you will do, taking care of clients and team members, and gradually delegating tasks to free up time for business growth. In this conversation, Riley Rivers shares valuable insights on team management, sales and marketing, systemization, and open book financials. He emphasizes the importance of empowering team members to take initiative and find solutions, as well as the benefits of open communication and transparency in the company. Riley also discusses the role of sales and marketing in acquiring new clients, highlighting the impact of word-of-mouth referrals and social media presence. He shares the systems and tools his company uses, such as Google Drive, QuickBooks, and Slack, to stay organized and efficient. Overall, Riley's approach to business focuses on creating a positive work environment, setting clear goals, and fostering a strong team culture.


Rivers Landscaping Website: https://www.riverslandscapingmt.com/

Rivers Landscaping Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/riverslandscaping/

Chapters

00:00
Introduction and Background

09:22
Starting the Business and Early Challenges

12:09
Systemization and Efficiency

15:27
Learning from Peer Groups and Mentors

21:29
The Role of an Office Manager

24:28
Empowering Team Members and Focusing on Growth

25:42
Empowering Team Members to Find Solutions

27:18
The Role of Sales and Marketing in Acquiring Clients

31:34
Systemization and Organization for Efficiency

36:11
Open Book Financials: Transparency and Goal Setting

Takeaways

• Focus on doing what you say you will do and take care of your clients and team members.
• Gradually delegate tasks to free up time for business growth.
• Systemize your processes and create clear expectations for your team and clients.
• Networking and learning from others in the industry can provide valuable insights and ideas for improvement. Empower team members to take initiative and find solutions
• Open communication and transparency are key to a strong team culture
• Word-of-mouth referrals and social media presence are effective marketing strategies
• Use tools like Google Drive, LMN, QuickBooks, and Slack to stay organized and efficient
• Open book financials can help team members understand the company's financial health and goals
  
  
  
  Keywords
  
  landscaping, business growth, systemization, delegation, client care, team management, team management, sales, marketing, systemization, open book financials, empowerment, communication, transparency, word-of-mouth, social media, organization, efficiency, Google Drive, LMN, QuickBooks, Slack, positive work environment, team culture

If you are in need of marketing help for your landscape and hardscaping company, book a 1 on 1 call with me here:

https://calendly.com/landscapemaverick/discovery-call

Transcript

Enmanuel (00:07.677)
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Digital Toolbox Podcast. I am your host, Emmanuel Tejada Today I have a very, very special guest for you guys. I have Riley Rivers from Rivers Landscaping. This guy has a pretty amazing story and some pretty cool systems. So I'm super excited to have him on. Riley, introduce yourself, man. Let's do it.

Riley Rivers (00:25.893)
Yeah, my name is Riley. So I own Rivers Landscaping. We're in Bozeman, Montana. If you've ever seen the show Yellowstone, that's unfortunately about our town. But I was born and raised in a small town about an hour from here and started Rivers Landscaping with my friend in college. And then here we are today. About seven years later, we do a little over four million in revenue, 22 full -time employees. And we're just

loving what we're doing. So primarily do commercial and residential landscape install, and then we're also bringing on maintenance.

Enmanuel (01:05.596)
Awesome. Riley, let's get into it. I'm super excited to have you on Pagan. And so let's get into it. So you mentioned that you started your business with friends in college. So right before college, right before you met them, who was Riley Rivers in high school and what did you have planned for your career goals at the time?

Riley Rivers (01:22.597)
Yeah, I knew I wanted to go to college and for whatever reason, I thought I wanted to be an engineer, but I didn't have the grades for that or the fortitude to want to go through engineering school. So I quickly switched to business school and I thought I would figure out what I would do. But in high school, I kind of had a long care of business. And I say kind of because it just, it wasn't, it wasn't very like professional, but it just, you know, kind of paid the bills and brought that over to those. And when I came here for school and

Did that, realized I didn't like it. I don't really know why anyone hired me. I think I did a terrible job. but I did that kind of had that role and it wasn't, you know, anything too serious. And then started working in some construction jobs in the summer. And that's really where I found like a love for building things, construction, just really kind of fell in love with, you know, being able to create something and see it, see it come to life and, be there for three years to come. So.

It was kind of a blast and then that morphed into, you know, deciding that we wanted to, I wanted to start Rivers Ninescaping and kind of been rocking and rolling ever since.

Enmanuel (02:31.74)
Wow, that's awesome. And real quick, when you were in college, you went into school for business. Was it because you had entrepreneurial dreams and you had your own lawn care company in high school? Is that why?

Riley Rivers (02:42.053)
Yeah, I think ultimately that was that was what led to it my my grandparents and my dad kind of pushed me into it my family did that I would like business and I was right they were right rather as I'd say I very much enjoyed Enjoyed most everything that goes into creating a business and I happen to really love landscaping and so combining the two definitely made made sense and I Didn't know what I was gonna do for a career

Enmanuel (02:49.756)
Hmm.

Riley Rivers (03:10.149)
And then I kind of say it has kind of stumbled into it, but we definitely did a pretty good job of building this company up in the last seven years.

Enmanuel (03:19.324)
100%, 100%. And were your parents, were they entrepreneurs too, like the people that recommended business for you?

Riley Rivers (03:26.373)
Yeah, most about just about everybody in my life was in kind of entrepreneur. My dad's a CPA in our hometown. My grandparents were ranchers. So I mean, that's kind of their own business there too. My grandpa, my dad's side was also a CPA, had his own firm. So definitely, definitely came from, from entrepreneurs for sure.

Enmanuel (03:47.644)
Wow, that's awesome. And let me ask you the magic question, Riley. Was the business degree from college worth it? Like, did you learn things from it that you're implementing it in business now?

Riley Rivers (04:02.949)
Yeah, I mean, I think some things and I get asked this question a lot and I've asked myself that a lot. I think I'd probably still be roughly about the same as I am now if I didn't go to school and graduate. But there was definitely a few things that I feel kind of helped me get ahead and it is things that I have a hard time pointing to. But like I say, like my accounting classes, like if you're going to run a business, like you kind of you have to know accounting to be able to love that you have to be the one doing the books.

Enmanuel (04:14.94)
Mm -hmm.

Riley Rivers (04:32.869)
you have to know how to read a profit and loss that into bound sheet. Know what affects those items so that you can truly measure how the success of your business. Like you can't just measure it off of, you know, we're making money, but if you don't really know what's going into that. So definitely accounting, the couple of accounting classes I had to take as part of the degree. Those I look back on a lot. Some of the other ones, not so much. But the other thing that I think it did

Is it definitely, I think it opened up a lot of doors as far as like some good networking opportunities and meeting people. We've actually, while I was a student at MSU finishing up in my senior semester, I bid, the time was our largest project we'd ever bid. It was way over my head, but we bid a project for MSU at the university and we got it. And then it wasn't two more years until that

Enmanuel (05:25.212)
Right.

Riley Rivers (05:32.453)
They, you know, it was our turn for our scope to go. But when I told the project manager that I bid the, I bid the project to him when I was still a student, he laughed because he wouldn't, he didn't know that in 2019 that I was just actually just right down the door bidding it. So I think that definitely helped. I mean, you know, anybody, whether they went to college or not, could have got that job, but it's definitely a nice thing for myself.

felt like a good way of giving back to the school. We got to put our stamp on it. And now we're actually going to be doing several other projects with the university. We have one coming up this year around the football stadium and potentially some more next year as well. So those things about college were nice. I think I probably could have knocked college out in like a semester had I tried. I got an information that I needed to get. I will say when I was running my business and going to school, there was

Enmanuel (06:21.66)
Yeah.

Riley Rivers (06:28.965)
It made school a little bit easier and that I was applying it to exactly what I was doing. So the time I had my business, I was in my junior and senior year and school was a lot more focused on my major as opposed to just the fluff that they threw at you in the first few years. So that definitely helped, but wasn't necessary for sure.

Enmanuel (06:48.7)
Damn, that's awesome. So you, what type of project was it that you bid for MSU?

Riley Rivers (06:56.069)
Yeah, it was the there just like Bozeman. I mean, everything's building. So MSU on campus, they're building all the time. They were building the new American Indian Hall. So the Native American Center on campus, which they have been trying for 20 years to raise the funds for and then finally did. So it was this this great big building really architecturally pleasing and had this. Some of the pictures are up on our website and Instagram, but it was.

the landscaping for it. It was a little over like 2 ,500 plants and a bunch of those. And it was pretty cool because they were all native to Montana plants and the Native American community at MSU actually, before we started, they did a ceremony where they blessed the ground and they blessed the plants and they had a ceremony of it before we could start our scope. So being a part of that was definitely really cool.

and it's led to a lot of work since then.

Enmanuel (07:56.572)
That is awesome. Holy shit. What a story and how old were you? When you were bidding for because that was that commercial job. So how old were you? You were like what like 20 something?

Riley Rivers (08:06.597)
Yeah, turn to thing 21, 22, probably somewhere in that neighborhood. Yeah.

Enmanuel (08:10.748)
21, 22. And what was the school of the project I for as financials?

Riley Rivers (08:18.021)
so basically, yeah, it was a new, it was all new. it's gonna do, you know, irrigation system. like I said, it was around 2 ,500 plants. When they had a couple of trees, there was a bunch of stonework created a bunch of kind of neat looking, boulder walls and seat walls. And, then all the, instead of sawed around the whole building, it was a lot of, it was actually all native, kind of like wild, wild grass.

that they keep it tall. So like around the Native American center, it's all just this native, you know, field grass around it. That actually looked really cool. So.

Enmanuel (08:58.268)
That is awesome. Holy crap. And how old are you now by the way, Riley?

Riley Rivers (09:02.693)
I'm 28 now, so. Yeah.

Enmanuel (09:04.444)
28 holy crap. So in the matter of

Six years, six, seven years, you graduated college and now you're running a $4 million landscape construction company. Dude, I freaking love it, man. And let's get into Riley because I have so many questions for you because you're so systemized in what you do. So, so let me ask you, I mean, in the early days, what did your business lack?

Riley Rivers (09:22.213)
Yep.

Riley Rivers (09:31.493)
Right.

Enmanuel (09:40.124)
that you guys have down right now because right now you guys are at four million when you were at like maybe like 100k what was that like

Riley Rivers (09:48.293)
Yeah, I'm trying to remember back to that too, but basically we, you know, I was in the field, obviously, I just, you know, like anybody around the kind of the sub 500 ,000 or sub a million size, I was in the field and I would do all the office work in the evening or if I could catch a break, I would go out there and do that. But it was basically, you know, myself, Aiden and a couple of our employees, a team, and we were going to do in.

you know, kind of a small remodels, but basically kind of any jobs that we would feel comfortable doing. But we also got started right away with new construction. We were doing a lot of new houses, new developments, duplexes, single family homes. So we were constantly on the move and we kept busy. We never had to look for work. And so we're definitely really blessed that way. I think what we were lacking and you know, the first year worked out really well. Second year worked out pretty good. Now the third year,

third and fourth year, we experienced a ton of growth. We were running multiple crews. We had too many people. We actually had more people than we had now. We were no longer as efficient as we were because I wasn't in the field and Aiden wasn't in the field per se. So we lacked a lot of project management and leadership. We didn't have our way or process of doing it. This is how we do our jobs start to finish. That's something that we have down pat now.

Enmanuel (10:52.86)
Mm -hmm.

Riley Rivers (11:12.229)
We know very well like this is what we do. This is how we do it. And then we lay those expectations out to our client. If they're a general contractor, they have to have, you know, a certain amount of the project ready for us so that we can start and, you know, irrigation's leaving and water turned on to the building is a big one so that we can water the plants that we're planting. That's something that conversation I have to have in new construction all the time. It can't show up if the water is not turned on because I got to water my plants.

So we really, now we have a checklist of how we systemize and run the business. It's what we, it's taken us a while to get there. Now, we were talking like last year, we felt like we really, really saw the success from that and how much less burnout we had, how much more enjoyable it was for us, how much more efficient our team was with a smaller team. We were able to do more than we did the prior year.

And then financially, it was phenomenally better than prior years, just because we took the time to plan and execute accordingly so that we knew what we were getting into in the job and that we didn't have to.

Enmanuel (12:24.496)
Wow, and I can imagine yeah, I can imagine especially at first when you when you were land a Big job when you were still in the field. It's like, man, we just landed this job. Okay, cool Let's get the ball rolling and it's a very manual process Okay, what should we do first? We do this, you know, but yeah Yeah, just order the order the materials do this do that and then the smaller things always the water on and then you end up going you do the job and then the shit the Plains that the water is not on we didn't check that

Riley Rivers (12:36.997)
Yeah.

Enmanuel (12:50.748)
So then you get burned and then for the next time, you know to ask for that. So has it been more of like, on the, like learning as you go or have you guys had like a mentor that's had helped you guys out in the field?

Riley Rivers (13:04.517)
Yeah, you know, it's a little bit of both. I mean, we've definitely learned a lot on our own and learned a lot. Honestly, learn a ton through talking to people in other trades, not just landscapers. I'm friends with about every landscaper in town for the most part. And, you know, we get together and we always share ideas. And that's great. But another big, you know, mentorship piece that I had that not many of the companies around us have had at all. We're part of a peer group.

Enmanuel (13:15.964)
Mm -hmm.

Sure.

Riley Rivers (13:33.669)
I was part of a peer group for three years and with McFarland Stanford and that would take us, they would put us in a group with other landscape business owners around our same size, but from all over the country. And then once a quarter, so four times a year, we would travel to Florida to go see one of the guys' operations and whole setups so that we can see how things are done. Now that definitely helped. We've seen...

Everything I've learned from that and all the networking I've done, seeing so many different landscape setups, that has definitely been something that we've honed in on these last two and three years is these are the successes that other companies are doing. We also saw some of the ways not to do things and adapt it to ourselves. And anytime I'd go on one of these trips, I'd bring it back to the company, to the leadership team, be like, this is what I would learn.

like this, I didn't like this, like how do you guys want to implement any of this? And like we always did it as a team approach. It wasn't like I came back and said, we're doing it this way, this way, this way. We always came back, met with the team and said, I like this idea. I saw this, this was great. This is one way of doing it. And then, you know, we would adapt our ways to it. And so definitely a lot of learning, learning from others and then some, you know, some good business coaches have definitely made a big difference.

Enmanuel (14:54.844)
100 % and would you be comfortable with sharing the name of that pew group that you were a part of or is that?

Riley Rivers (14:59.173)
Yeah, no, absolutely. It was ran by McFarland Stanford and the Grow Group. So they're out of Dallas, but started by essentially a group of landscapers that had a large landscape company in Dallas. And so they still run pair groups. I decided to drop out for this year and I'll probably rejoin, but I just wanted to take a break and, you know, get into a different group a little bit later on with them. But yeah, it was anyone.

I wouldn't say to do it when you're starting out right away, but I like it that two or three year mark. And if you ever feel like you're kind of spinning your wheels, it's definitely something that you get a big leg up on because then you're not in, you're not, you're just not in the boat alone. You got a good group of people that you can bounce ideas off of and it really works out well.

Enmanuel (15:48.284)
I love it. Yeah, I'm definitely big into self -improvement and even paying for coaching. I think it's worth it. My family actually, I hired a coach at one point, a life coach, and they were like, why are you hiring a life coach for? You don't need that, this and that. But I'm like, hey, listen, I'm getting a lot of value out of it. And with the advice that he gave me, I was actually able to get the ball rolling with moving out of my parents' house.

setting up a couple things in my business and it was like damn it was a big it was a big help for me it was worth the value and you mentioned that you don't recommend people to join that p group at the start but join later on so at the start what should a landscaper or hardscape or be focusing on to be able to grow their business is it to get out of the field as soon as they can is it to make more calls what do you think it is to be able to crack that code like you did Riley

Riley Rivers (16:41.029)
Yeah, I think it's not just about getting out of the field. That's a big part of it. And that your goal shouldn't just be to get out of the field so that you can sit in an air conditioned office and call it a day. I don't have that either. My team does an incredible job, but I like to get out every now and again. They don't really want me to help anymore, but I like to get out, see the job sites, where things are going, give some advice if I can give it. Or sometimes they give me advice, honestly, we've got such a good team.

But I think, you know, starting out, the best thing you can do is just on it. It's simple, but like, just, just do it. Just do what you do. What you say you're going to do. Take care of your team. Follow through with your clients. I don't care what market you're in that, that word of mouth. If you take care of your clients, and your team that will go a very long way. and so being able, but also you got to take a look at your business. Some people, you have business people and you have craftsmen and.

the craftsmen create some of the most beautiful outdoor spaces you could ever see. Sometimes those craftsmen don't make very good business people. And when they try to do that, then the craftsman side goes away and the business side isn't doing very well either. So honestly, kind of figuring out who you are. I think I'm pretty good building what we build. I know there's people that are better than me. My focus is on

guiding the company forward so that we can continue to build Rivers Landscaping into an extremely well -known name in our state and be able to provide quality of life for all of our employees and be able to create just such quality projects that we're so proud of. So I think the big thing starting out is do it, stick with it. There's a lot of times that are absolutely going to suck and just got to power through it, just suck it up.

From there, kind of always look at one thing we still talk about today, like what hats can I take off? So if you're in the field, you're kind of the, you're project managing team. So you're ordering the materials, you're talking to the client, you're directing the crew how to go and do what they're doing. Start to look for those guys in your crew that, could they do that? Could that guy order materials? Can that guy run this crew? Can he run the job site? Do I need to be here? And like think about what hats you could take off that you pass on to your team.

Riley Rivers (19:05.157)
And that would be.

Enmanuel (19:05.551)
Do you have a do you have an order that you recommend the hats going off in? Yeah in order like like what were you take the hats off in the most optimal way?

Riley Rivers (19:11.013)
an order.

Riley Rivers (19:17.989)
Yeah, kind of, I mean, it was like got it to where it wasn't just me in the field. So then we had two crews. I was running, creating a little crew, but then then we got it to more so where I would check in, do what needed. So I would kind of start to pass off a little bit of the project management and the operation. Now I can almost fully have passed off project management and operation. And so passing that down and then from that point as a business owner, then you're going to be able to focus on estimating. And if you can.

Enmanuel (19:35.708)
Mmm.

Riley Rivers (19:47.557)
get more estimates done, you can win more projects, you can then grow the company more, get the equipment rounded up to have another crew start. So kind of definitely working yourself out of the exact mundane fieldwork and being the one that has to be there to make sure everything gets done. Getting out of that and then at that point, you know, then I think the next step that we took was we had an office manager and Paige came on and helped us.

really get organized. You know, we started thinking it was going to be a part -time position and that lasted all the month and it became a full -time position. I mean, she's such a...

Enmanuel (20:27.036)
some of the things that she does that she takes off your hands.

Riley Rivers (20:30.181)
She does a lot. Yeah, no, she does a lot and she could probably tell you more than I could. I don't know what she does most days. I just know that she does a lot. But she takes care of all the invoicing, making sure that we're getting paid check runs, the important part of the money coming in, but also the money going out, making sure that we're not overpaying, making sure that we're not paying an invoice twice. When we're writing $150 ,000 a month in checks to vendors alone,

Enmanuel (20:39.964)
Yeah.

Riley Rivers (20:59.94)
making sure that we're not overpaying, making sure that every invoice has been paid, but that we're not missing anything. She does a lot of HR stuff, helping with all the employees, making sure they have all their paperwork in order, runs payroll every week, make sure they get what they need of payroll. Definitely answers the phone and directs that to either myself or David in sales as far as what they might need to do. Insurance.

Basically all the things that I think most people who started landscape company really, really suck at. Someone who is an office manager, detail oriented, like they will take that off your plate and make sure it gets done. So it's another overhead employee for sure, but it's a crucial job and it's absolutely needed.

Enmanuel (21:50.94)
And so in order for her to do her role, did you have to train her on specific things? Because like, did she already have experience with like insurance and making sure that you had the right permits for the job and all that stuff?

Riley Rivers (22:06.853)
Yeah, not necessarily a lot of it. And I think anyone who works here would tell you we all kind of just, it's the same. We haven't, we just, we figure it out. We all have like learned and created our way of doing things. And so when I brought Paige on and I knew her pretty well, I knew her very well before she was going to work for us. She didn't have any relevant experience prior, but she's detail oriented and willing to help me build this. And so I approached her and I was like, Hey, here's what I kind of think the job will look like.

here's what it may end up looking like. Do you want to help me fill in the pieces and like help me build this position? And maybe it's something you do for three years. Maybe it's something that you do for 20, but can you come on and help me build what this position looks like? And one analogy I've used is like, it's similar to like when you buy a piece of equipment, an excavator, you think you're going to use that excavator strictly for digging or retaining wall. Well, then you find all these other uses for an excavator. And so

when you create these other positions in your company, you'll definitely figure out and find a lot of other value where that individual or also that person, that position can bring value to the company. So when I say I don't really know what my ops manager does every day, I know a little bit about what she's doing, but I just know she's handling so many of the things that need to be handled. And it's when you have at this side, but also before you're starting.

You don't think you're going to have that much. You're like, I could handle the invoicing. Well, I could handle the bill pay. Well, I can tell you right now, I was the one handling the bill pay right now. Bills either would have been missed. We wouldn't be paying them or we would have been overpaying bills because there's so much and it was so much harder to focus on that. But if you can start to take hats off and create these positions within your company, then it allows you to focus on what you should be focusing on the owner and profitability company.

Enmanuel (23:39.548)
Right.

Riley Rivers (24:03.013)
how your team's doing, what kind of coaching you need to give to your team, and making sure the company's driving forward. Another thing I've noticed when you pass off hats is my team always does whatever hat I give them, they always do that 10 times better than I ever did. So project management, we can just focus on that project management. Aiden is not worried about making sure that our checks went out to go pay.

You know, the paver supplier or that the payroll is being handled. That is not his job. We does not need to worry about it. And so he gets to just focus on project management. Same thing with Paige. She gets to focus on her job. She's not worried about if the guys are on time to make sure that we're going to meet schedule on these projects. So being able to focus like that, that's a huge, huge weight off my shoulders and our team.

Enmanuel (24:51.516)
Dude, I love it. Holy shit. And also having that right person in the right seat, somebody that actually cares, like Paige sounds, where even if it's something that she gets that she may not know how to do, she'll go ask the team, hey listen, how do I do this? Have you had any experience with this? Or Riley, what do I do with you? But they'll figure it out. That's a lovely attitude to have on any team because that person takes initiative and they care. They care about what they do.

Riley Rivers (25:17.605)
Yeah. Yeah. We definitely have that, you know, across our management and our field team across the board too, is, you know, being able to, we joke about it because it sounds bad, but figure it out. Like, I don't always have the solution for it by all means run an idea by me. I might have an idea of how to do it, but ultimately like I'm going to, I'm going to just allow you, when I say figure it out, it's like, I'm empowered. The nice way of saying is I'm empowering you to find a solution.

Enmanuel (25:42.46)
Dude, I love it. You don't even stretch it though, if it's not like a burden like, fuck, this guy just brought this thing to me. You're like, all right, this is an issue, you know, figure it out in a nice and empowering way.

Riley Rivers (25:54.405)
Yeah, you know, we'll brainstorm. If I have an idea, then I might give someone an idea. But if I truly don't know, I'm just going to say, haven't had to deal with that. I do not know how to deal with it. Let's see what we can figure out.

Enmanuel (26:10.364)
Love it. And I do, I'm a big proponent of the we, I do the same thing to work with my team. of course we're in different industries because I handle marketing for landscapers. You are actually a landscaping company, but the same thing. It's like, okay, let's figure it out. Like we will figure it out, but they take initiative. It makes them, it makes them feel like.

Okay, we're gonna figure it out. You know, like he's here for me. He has my back, but let me take the lead on it. Let me figure it out. And if anything, if I can't figure it out, I'll ask for help. And they feel that bond, but they also feel that empowerment to be able to go out and do something on their own to find a solution.

Riley Rivers (26:48.037)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, that's that's one of the better parts about it is, you know, once you once they figure out how to do it, they're probably not going to ask again. And now they feel empowered to be able to handle it again.

Enmanuel (27:00.255)
That's true and and on that same point if you were to help them or if you gave them an Answer because you know how to do it already, but you don't let them figure it out They're always gonna come back instead of learning it themselves like okay this worked for me last time Let me do the same thing. They're just constantly gonna bring issues at you

Riley Rivers (27:17.893)
Yeah, definitely. And so that's always been a big thing that I feel like we've done very well here is that we're really just able to help all of our team be able to learn more and handle situations. It's definitely been great.

Enmanuel (27:38.012)
Love it dude. And Riley talk to me about sales and marketing man because those two are very very important because that's how you guys bring on customers right now. Of course you guys probably get a lot most of your work from word of mouth but what percentage of it is from word of mouth? What percent of it is from social media, advertising? How else are you guys getting clients and marketing yourselves?

Riley Rivers (27:59.845)
Yeah, I mean, that's definitely a little bit of a tougher question because where we've been in our market, we've done very, very little marketing up until recently. And we were intentionally doing marketing because of our growth. We want to make sure that we've got a good backlog, but we also want to get our name out there more so that we can continue to grow. Most everything has been word of mouth. And then the products that we bid, they'll book us out for a year in advance.

So what we've been doing lately though, and we need to, we're working on how we can see the impact of it. But, like I mentioned earlier, we, we, brought on a social media intern this year at Hayden. He's been the reason that our Instagram looks really good lately. cause he's just been killing it. he's been killing it and that's been great. So there's that part of it. We've been doing a little bit of, you know, ad, ad work here and there.

I think we're getting some of the work that we want from that, but we don't really have a great metric on how that's working so far. But it will say that the bigger part of sales comes in from our reputation or name. So all of our trucks are the exact same. They all look the exact same. They have our logo on them, very nice and clean. Now they have a green hood just to something to stand out. That looks pretty cool. I think some people don't like it. We have that and so.

Enmanuel (29:23.132)
Alright.

Riley Rivers (29:27.301)
And all of our trucks and trailers are the exact same. And when the crew pulls up to the job site every day, they know who's working there. They know and can see how clean and professional we have newer trucks. They can see how clean and professional we are. We get a lot of calls from our vehicles driving around town. They'll see them parked on a job site. They'll put out a job site banner when they're there. That definitely helps a lot. The other part that helps is being involved. Like we're very involved in our local building association. I'm on the board for it.

We're very involved with the Chamber of Commerce, other groups that are well known in the town. And that works really well to be able to network and people just know who we are. And that helps when they have friends that need a project done.

Enmanuel (30:15.42)
Love it. And so those same people become your clients. A lot of them, the ones that from the board or the ones that you meet.

Riley Rivers (30:21.573)
Yeah. yeah. Meaning if it's events, a lot of them become clients, a lot of them refer them to, you know, they might be a realtor or another builder and they refer us, refer us to that, to that builder. And so, there's, there's a lot of that. I mean, that's when the word of mouth and then now, you know, our new building is right off of a busy road. and it's a very nice looking building, very clean, very organized, very modern. And having that people drive by it and they call us because of that.

Just the whole brand image is working together. All of everything we have, our office, our shop, our facility, our trucks, the traders, our equipment, everything is branded very nicely, very cleanly. It's not over the top. It doesn't list all of our services and bullshit like that. Very nice, clean marketing in that regard. And then that translates into how we take care of our job sites. Our crews clean up our job sites every single day at the end of the day. They don't ever leave stuff laying around. We keep all of our equipment on site.

Enmanuel (31:05.404)
Hahaha

Riley Rivers (31:20.645)
nice and neatly parked. All of our plant material that we're planting in, we're making sure that it's being taken care of properly. And so all these things just work together to just produce a really nice high quality.

Enmanuel (31:34.556)
Amazing amazing amazing and how do you systemize that by the way? How do you systemize? How your guys how repeatable your guys are is their training or is there just meetings that you guys have and expectations are set How do you how do you build that?

Riley Rivers (31:50.501)
Yeah, so that just becomes, we just call it part of the river's way. So we're very particular about who works here. We want to make sure that A, they're a hard worker and knowledgeable and trainable. We also want to make sure that they're really good culture fit. We can throw most of those things out the window. As long as they're trainable and are good culture fit, we can make them into a really good operator, crew member, crew leader. So a lot of it has to do with

our team, I feel, really trusts the leadership team and trusts the company and vice versa. And so that's where we can talk very openly about everything that we do. And they see the clean shop, they see the clean office and the clean trucks every day. It's almost second nature to just make sure that that's our job site, that our job sites are clean. Our project managers do check in, make sure that the job sites are staying nice and neat and clean. We know, and we will...

you know, we get kind of lazy about it. We'll point to other crews and we're like, Hey, you know, the concrete guys left this terrible mess over here. They were just, you know, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes over there all day. Like, do you guys want that to be us? Like, that's not a good image. You guys didn't think that looked very good. They made a mess. I'm not asking you to clean up their mess, but let's make sure that everything we were working on today is nice and neat, dialed in and clean. And people notice that. And so being able to compare it to other people definitely has helped. We have a lot of checklists and

and you know, SOPs in the company. usually those only come out once or twice. So we have a checklist for leaving the shop. And if you're going to leave the shop, you got to check the oil in your truck, make sure you got all the materials you need in your trailer, all your tools, it runs through a list of tools that you might need. All the trailers have everything that you're supposed to have. you know, that checklist before you leave the shop, we don't do as much anymore because they're, they're pretty well trained onto it, but

We would run through that to make sure that there was no happen to come back or no project manager happened to run to one job site to bring them a drip fitting because they didn't stock up their trailer. We've had a lot of that. We have a lot of checklists though. We became a big fan of those. I brought that idea up. I liked it. But then our team really just rolled with so many checklists. I have checklists for my job. When I sell a project, I have my checklist for how my estimate needs to look.

Enmanuel (34:03.58)
Wow.

Riley Rivers (34:16.645)
And then I have my checklist for what my handoff to the team needs to look like. We run through it all the time. Like step by step, step by step. And then that's how we just get that nice repeatable process, this checklist, basically.

Enmanuel (34:21.116)
I love it.

Enmanuel (34:28.764)
Checklists Wow, I freaking love it. I love it because I'm a huge fan of it of the systemization And so where does all that live Riley like where you guys store all these SOPs these checklists? Is it printed out? Is it on the computer on a tablet? How do you how do you how do you store it? How do you use it?

Riley Rivers (34:45.093)
We are huge fans of Google Drive. So Google Drive takes care of all of our stuff. And the crew leaders don't have access to everything inside Google Drive, but they do have access to all of the SOPs. Contact info for like emergency contact is a thing about somebody needed to call their parent that was on their team because somebody got hurt. Like everybody can look up emergency contact info. But in Google Drive anyway, they can...

Basically the way it's set up, the way Aiden made it is you can type in planting a tree inside there like a search bar and it'll find that SAP for how we expect a tree to be planted. So most of the time these only get used once or twice, but now like this is the river's way of doing it. This is how we do things. We're always open to new ideas when new people come, but we just want to make sure that the efficiency.

Enmanuel (35:39.836)
Yeah, I love it. Dude, I freaking love it because I come from a tech background. So you talking about Google Drive and managing access and making that data available to everybody. Dude, it gets me excited. It gets my geek mode enabled. So how does it work then? When you...

tell to a new employee for example, hey, welcome to the team. These are our SOPs. This is the Ripper's way. Here's your account. This is how you're going to access the SOPs. And then whenever they need an SOP, do they just open it up on their phone or on their computer? How does it work?

Riley Rivers (36:10.821)
Yeah, so I mean, what we do is we do a cell phone stipend for the crew leads so that they can... We tried tablets and we bought tablets and paid for a cell phone plan on tablets for the crews that have in the field. They didn't use them, they didn't like them. So we just do a... We do a cell phone stipend, but now all the crew leads have access to these. So when a crew lead is onboarded, the way that we go through that and we have checklists for onboarding and training. But yeah, they get access into the Google Drive. These are the SOPs, these are things that we'll run through.

Enmanuel (36:15.164)
So, thanks.

Riley Rivers (36:40.613)
And then when a crew lead starts with us, they go and work with our most senior crew lead for three weeks before they go out on their own. So that's where they kind of show them a lot of the hands -on, but they'll refer to those SOPs if they want. Don't ever create SOPs and think that they're going to get used like the Bible every day. They won't. I don't even know how many SOPs we have, but they're a really nice tool. And we've gotten...

feedback from the team that they're a nice tool to be able to refer back to when they're training somebody and they want to just make sure that they're training on like how we're supposed to do it. So Aiden made it all very searchable. So it all works out really well. I'm a huge proponent. I don't like paper, huge proponent of being able to have everything in the cloud the best we can.

Enmanuel (37:28.7)
That is a beautiful setup, Riley, really beautiful. And a lot of people, I think that especially in landscaping or home services in general, a lot of companies are reluctant to explore those options, the technology options, because they're like, no, I'm a hands -on guy. I don't like technology. I'm not good with computers. And then they never end up taking advantage of these tools. So on that same note, I mean, what other

tools what other systems do you guys have in place to stay organized do you guys have a crm how do you guys

Riley Rivers (38:02.021)
Yeah, we use LMN. I don't know if you know about LMN. I mean, landscape management network for our online software that we do all of our estimating. It has our CRM inside there. We use it essentially, I'll say the three softwares, four softwares that we use. We use LMN, does all of our estimating CRM. The guys clock in and out on LMN, they clock into the job. So we're tracking hours on the job, on the maintenance side, they're tracking into.

Enmanuel (38:28.7)
Mm -hmm.

Riley Rivers (38:30.341)
They're clocking into the job so we know that the job is done and how it was done. We can track our profitability. So LLMN is definitely the backbone as far as software goes in the company. Google Drive, we store unbelievable amounts of data in there. Project Notes, how we're doing things inside Google, how we're doing things for the company. All of our SOPs, basically any kind of what would be paperwork is in Google Drive. And then...

We also use QuickBooks for all of our remote keeping, element and QuickBooks talk to each other. But then another really cool tool, we use Slack for group messaging. Everybody, when they get onboarded, they get brought into the Slack. And we have a team Slack where everybody just communicates with each other, just openly. It's usually not about projects. We'll communicate in there if we need to delay work because of the rain or cancel work that day because of rain or whatever. Talking about company events.

Enmanuel (39:05.852)
You

Riley Rivers (39:29.797)
Another really cool thing they do inside Slack though, and this, I had nothing to do with this, but with our core values, if somebody lives up to one of our five core values, they get nominated inside Slack and they have to say why they're nominating that person for growth. You know, he learned a lot today. I want to nominate him for growth. When somebody gets nominated, they get a chip. And this was all Eden's doing. They get a chip and they can use, you know, cash in that chip.

anywhere from a pine glass with a logo on it to they get 20 of the river's ships. They can get a day off of work. So there was like work we did on these codes and the guys love it. And it's a really cool thing to do. And it's a probably a three times a week. We're in our group in our morning huddle. They're the Aidan's reading off the nominations, but the guys have to nominate each other in Slack. And if they do, they get it, they get nominated. They get a chip for living up to one of the core values.

that's been something that I think is really really good cool. We've done the last two years here.

Enmanuel (40:32.54)
That is freaking amazing. Cause it does two things. It rewards. It's like rewarding somebody for rewarding somebody else. So he's like, okay, that person is showing the core value. So they're going to exemplify themselves too. Cause of course who doesn't want to be nominated, but also it keeps them engaged in the platform so that they can have, you know, using Slack as a habit instead of texting each other outside of Slack. So dude, that is beautiful. Holy shit. It makes sense while you guys are at 4 million.

Riley Rivers (41:01.573)
Well, we want to get we want to we want to get even higher than that but yeah, we're very fortunate to have the team that we have for sure

Enmanuel (41:05.18)
Hahaha

Enmanuel (41:09.148)
Dude, that's amazing. Holy shit. And, one thing I want to hit on too Riley is we were talking about earlier is that you have, and you have a open book system for your business where like everybody in the business knows how much money is coming in, how much money is coming out, how profitable you guys are. Why do you do that? And, and what made you start doing that?

Riley Rivers (41:36.005)
Yeah, we do open book financials and I've learned of that through the peer groups that I was in. We're pretty good about making sure we do it once the month after we close the books for the prior month. But the way that it was said to me is you need to know the score so you can play the game. And so everyone in our company, we build a budget now. Everybody in our company knows our goal this year is 4 million and 20%. So we want to be able to hit those goals.

Enmanuel (41:53.788)
Mmm.

Riley Rivers (42:03.973)
Everyone in this company has a way that they can impact the P &L and how that's going to affect us, whether we're efficient on job sites. And it doesn't just mean that we're going to run through job sites super fast, because if we run through fast, then we're going to be having a big quality problem and have to come back. So once a month, we review the P &L with the team. And that's been a really big impact, because it's anybody from management all the way down to crew member.

anybody's welcome. It's a lot of numbers. It's definitely a little intimidating to some of the guys at first. But we just hit on the highlights like this is what our income is, this is where landscaping is, this is where we were last year. That we compare where we were at that point last year. Cost of goods sold, we go over that, we go over things, all the expenses. Now the guys know well enough, they're like, well, why is there fuel?

so much more expensive this year. And we start to think like, well, we added one truck, so we know that that, I think the guys are going with this. We added a truck, so we know that that'll bring it up. But like, we're still, we must be driving a lot more than we should because our fuel is way up from last year comparatively. And they come up with these things too. These are things that I look at. I really enjoy like financial side of the business. Being able to change things and have income, outcomes from how we do different things in the company. But as simple as passing it down to our team,

Enmanuel (43:21.756)
Haha

Riley Rivers (43:32.421)
I didn't go to school for any of this. They, it clicks and they like from everything that they've told me, they want to know how they're doing because they're like, damn, we want to, we want to beat these hours. We want to, you know, instead of throwing away a bunch of weed mat that we didn't need, like we'll keep it, we'll use it on the next one. Cause that'll be less, less that we need to buy and being efficient. So that's been, it's been a huge game changer is having that. I think the team feels more, you know, 4 million sounds like

You know, Riley's going to be a millionaire. And, you know, once you show them a P &L, they can really start to understand everything that goes into a company and everything it takes to run this thing. So, you know, on the P &L, individual salaries and pay amounts aren't on the P &L, so they don't see exactly what everybody else is making, but it's a lump sum number right there. They see that we pay, you know, we're already right now, we're up to half a million in payroll expenses right now.

They see those big numbers. We don't hide anything else and we don't hide the profit. And I don't think, I think if you're afraid of showing your employees, your team, who's the reason that you can even have a P &L in the first place, you're afraid of showing them that I think you've got the wrong thing going on. You've got the wrong vibe, the wrong team. Because, I mean, it's not like they're going to take all this information and go start their own company. They might, but you shouldn't be afraid of somebody also wanting to better their life. You can bring your team in and help kind of take that hat off and that burden of

of this company, it really, and they get to understand the whole picture, it really makes you feel like we're all in this together and it's not just up to a couple of people what we're doing.

Enmanuel (45:05.916)
Bye.

Enmanuel (45:15.196)
freaking love it and earlier today we I asked you the question do you guys use EOS because you guys are so systemized and out because I'm reading a book it's called traction and I mentioned the exact same thing you just mentioned which is the degree of the openness and the honesty of the team is to the degree at which level you will succeed so it's like dude you just hit it right on the head like if wow man

Holy shit, like it sparked something in me. I'm like, holy shit, I need to be open with my own team on the financials. So how do you, how do you, have you had guys leave you or feel like, you know, this company is making so much money, why are we not getting paid more? Cause I'd imagine that's what the listeners are thinking. Like, I don't want to let my guys know how much money I'm making.

Riley Rivers (46:03.429)
Yeah. Well in reality, you're probably not making that much anyway. Like that's what you think. Like that's the whole thing. Like you have to show employees like what, what the reality of the situation is. They see a formula and they're like, all right, maybe the company, you know, costs 2 million to operate at that size. So they make, you make 2 million dollars a year. We just show everything. And so it's as simple as literally just pull up a comparative P and L. We just walk through it and start at the top and go through the bottom. Just show them everything. So haven't had anybody leave and want to start their own, you know,

per se, because of that, if anything, I think it gives them a really good, you know, I never had that in my own companies before I started mine. It gives a really good, kind of, you know, reality checkpoint of what it truly does take to run a company. but they treat it like a game. They want to, they want us to get to that 20 % of that profit. They want us to know that that's our true number. Like we can land there and they're going to do what they can in the field every day to.

help get us there and we're going to do what we can on the management side. As a team, we're going to celebrate when we hit those goals and we're going to celebrate with some pretty substantial bonus.

Enmanuel (47:14.78)
Yeah, and what's worse? What's worse? What's worse for a company hiding numbers and hoping and praying that the team gets there or showing numbers and then having them See it as okay. We're a part of this, you know, we are responsible for making this happen That'll drive them to go harder and put in the extra work Dude, I'm a huge fan of that I'm actually gonna be starting to mention that into my own business too as far as the books and going through the Pnl How often do you do that by the way?

Riley Rivers (47:44.197)
We do it once a month. So when we close our books out, so usually that ends up being by like the right at the middle of the month, we'll have the books closed out and meet for the prior month. Leadership team, like myself, I'm looking at them right away and through the month, just to make sure that we're keeping everything on track. But yeah, definitely once a month. We were a little behind right now because our books have been behind because of our CPA, but yeah.

I think about here in a week, maybe week and a half, we'll be doing ours. And the guys really like it. I mean, I like it. I like to be able to show them how things are going. And it's little impacts. One of our drivers, he drives our dump truck. He's a great guy. We were looking at the P &L and our repairs and maintenance number was already 80 ,000 for the year. And we're all like, damn, we got to do better with that. The next day, the dump truck had a big problem and needed $10 ,000.

Enmanuel (48:40.732)
Hmm.

Riley Rivers (48:44.229)
And he said to me, he's like, that means we just made $10 ,000 less than our repairs and maintenance went up. I'm like, yes, that's exactly what that means. And the money just didn't come out of there. It's not like he couldn't figure that out on his own. And he's a very bright individual, but seeing it, he literally saw it on the P &L and how it affected. And then we talked about it the next month. There was the big hits from the dump truck and that money came right out of our profit.

Little things like that just go such a long way

Enmanuel (49:16.791)
Gosh Riley, you don't know what you're doing for these landscapers before this gems were dropping bro. Holy shit Holy shit. No, I fucking appreciate it and I the people listeners that are gonna be listening in and I'm gonna really appreciate it too because it's very different Watching some sort of influencer on Instagram making it look like it's so easy But all these tips and tricks that that you and you're only 28 27 28

Riley Rivers (49:34.981)
Yeah.

Enmanuel (49:42.62)
You know giving these pointers that actually make a difference instead of just showing off a lifestyle or showing off You know the work on the field and you treat your guys like and then they treat they're treating their guys like shit and all this stuff, dude I love it, bro

Riley Rivers (49:54.821)
Yeah, that's the biggest thing. Like I, you know, we, we post some social media for, for our team and our clients and being able to, we want to show our work and showcase our team. And I love that. But the, especially lately, you know, the amount of influencers that are out there telling you how you can do everything. Like none of them are ever going to tell you anything like this. And that's some of the most important things. I'm not going to come out here and tell you that you have to buy Ford trucks and cats get steered. That isn't going to do you any good. Stop worrying about that when you're trying to start a business. Stop worrying about those things.

Just start the damn business and do what you say you're going to do. Run the company right. And the rest will follow. You'll have a better lifestyle. You will have a better lifestyle for your team. And I also think you got to ask yourself, why, why do I want to start a landscape business? Is this so I can buy a Lamborghini? Cause I wouldn't start a landscape business if I wanted to start by a Lamborghini. But, or is it so that I can have a good life? I enjoy what I do. I enjoy running a company. I enjoy landscaping. I want to create some of the most bad -ass properties anyone's ever seen.

And I want to elevate the life of our, our team. One of our goals this year was to be able to pay, wanted to pay some of the highest wages we've ever paid. And that's absolutely what we're doing. And I wanted to, wanted our, our top guy to be able to break six figures and we're doing it this year. And like, that's, that's a rewarding thing for me personally, like to be able to, our company be built out the way that it is that we can sustain, true.

you know, career style level salaries and have a quality life for our team. Told the team, I want to give out $80 ,000 in bonuses. That's the goal. We hit our goals and we have the money to do $80 ,000 in bonuses that we'll give out across the board. And so share all those things with your team. Like everyone's there to help and drive you forward. And if they're not there for that reason, you got the wrong people.

Enmanuel (51:50.3)
Golden fucking nugget. Holy shit. Holy shit. No, seriously Riley. These tips were freaking amazing, dude. And I know it's getting a little bit later. I wanna be respectful of your time, Riley. But just in case somebody wants to reach out to you or if it's a potential customer over at Montana that's listening to this, how can they get in contact with you?

Riley Rivers (52:11.141)
Yeah, I think the easiest way, I mean, you know, visit our website, RiversLandscapingMT .com or on Instagram, we're, you know, just RiversLandscape on Instagram. Yeah, just reach out. Have you talked to anybody about anything, whether it's a project or anything that we talked about too. I always love to talk about business.

Enmanuel (52:30.588)
Awesome, well guys, you guys heard him. You guys heard the tips, you guys heard the advice. Go and give Riley a follow on Instagram. And if you're a potential customer that's looking for an amazing landscape, an amazing hardscape, a brand new patio, whatever it is, they do it all. Reach out to Riley and his team over at riverslandscape .com. Sorry, riverslandscapemt .com.

Awesome. Yeah. Well guys give him a follow hit him up Riley. Thank you so much for being on the podcast, dude It was a pleasure having you on you gave us some really good gems and I really appreciate you and I look forward to you guys hitting five million This year, maybe next year as well

Riley Rivers (53:09.989)
Awesome. Yeah, thanks so much. It was a blast. Appreciate it.

Enmanuel (53:12.828)
Awesome, brother. Sounds good. Take care.

Riley Rivers (53:14.853)
All right, see you.