Look in the Mirror Before You Look at Your Team

In this powerful solo episode Jeremiah Jennings speaks directly to business owners who feel tired overwhelmed or defeated at the end of the year. He shares why transparency matters in leadership and why the most influential people in our industry are those willing to admit their struggles and failures. Jeremiah retells the well known story of Sam Gembel from Atlas Outdoors whose company credit card declined at Equip Expo during one of the lowest financial moments of his career. He explains how that story has helped him push through his own hard seasons and why remembering the challenges others have faced can keep you grounded and grateful. The episode expands into a bigger reflection on discipline personal responsibility and maintaining a healthy mindset even when the business is not performing the way you want. Jeremiah encourages listeners to face the truth grow as leaders and remember that most of the world would trade places with them in a heartbeat.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Jeremiah, hello and welcome to the growing green podcast. Your host, Jeremiah Jennings is the owner of growing green landscapes in Birmingham, Alabama, and has a passion for growing the entrepreneurship community. For those who are young in business, being a business owner isn't easy, especially in the early years, and that's why, in this show, we dive into a wide range of topics, covering all the challenges small business owners deal with, even if your company is generating a million dollars or more, the stories from our great guest and Jeremiah's own firsthand experiences will propel your business forward. And now here's your host, Jeremiah Jennings, what's going on? Everybody? Thank you for tuning in to episode today here on the growing green podcast, I am excited to come with you today with another fresh new episode for your Wednesday. I want to ask you a question before we hop into the show. Are you tired of the same old, same old? Do you want to change? You know, sometimes I catch myself listening to other podcasts and I won't tune into a show for, I don't know, six months or a year. Potentially, there was a time where, I'll give you an example, like, there's a time when I was listening to Andy forla Every day, every couple days, and I just don't, I just don't listen to them that much anymore, and I still like what they talk about and things I just but I've been going to the gym recently and been listening to show while I've been at the gym, and I turned back in, I tuned back in for the first time after No joke, probably six months, as I listened to a show at least. And it's the same exact thing every single time with the intro, and they go on for like, two and a half to four minutes, roughly, of talking about the show is the principles of the show, you know, all that stuff. And I'm kind of like, you know, is that and there's no change? Is it kind of stagnant? I get it because, you know, not everyone listens to the same like they don't listen to every show, and a new person could be tuning in on that show. So you want to tell him what it is, but I don't know, where do you fall on that as a consumer, if you were listening to this show, I would love to hear some feedback on it, you know, shoot me a DM and say, Yeah, we want something new. Or, you know, I like the way that's rolling now. And I would love some feedback from you guys, because I don't know, is it do Is it time to change it up, right? Is it time to change the format, maybe a little bit. Is it time to get more guest interviews on it's time to discuss higher or lower level topics? You know, what is it that you guys are looking for? Because as we head into a new year, I I know where we're going we are. So let me give you a little backtrack here. Last year, we hosted an event in January, an online event, and it was the roadmap to a million bucks. And we're going to be releasing some of those clips here soon, to give you a little feet, just a little teaser of what that is, little feeler, because we're going to host another one of those events in this winter, spring season, and I'm working on locking down dates and speakers now for it, but that is coming, so stay tuned for that. We're probably going to host on a Saturday because we had some we had some attendance last year that couldn't make it because they had snow rolling or something. They had guys in the field they needed because we did on a Wednesday last year. But I think we're going to rock it on Saturday this year and just knock it out and maybe three quarters to a full day, I don't know. Last year we did a full eight to five attended very well. Great feedback. If you listened to it, if you were attended, I would love some feedback from you, maybe a testimonial on it. But we were, our goal was like road back to a million, getting budgets set, getting that stuff set up and ready to go, dialed in for springtime, because we did that. We did have in January last year, just so you could get ahead of the curve this year, I'm thinking more February ish, right before the season really kicks off for all of us down on the south. And then you guys up north got another about a month to take and take action on some things and some planning. And so I'm working through these details now, and just wanted to at least give you a little teaser and share you share with you where kind of what our plan is for it, but just give you let you know it's on the horizon. But that's where we were. It was roadmap to a million. How do we get this thing rocking and rolling? Basic principles and some in depth stuff too, on getting that million dollar budget and foundation set, and we have done that this year. We had a good year. Revenue wise, we had a rough year financially. Slash team member wise, we brought on some good team members. We lost some good some turnover we had. We figured out where we had issues, and we fixed those. And in a bad year financially, we've still set our foundation to really grow and go vertically up, like straight up now, and I'm really excited for that. And I think I took a lot of the principles from that event and applied them going into the year, and I messed up on a few. Look, that's just part of life, right? Like you have to own where your mistakes are. There's a lot of guys out there that are running multi million dollar companies that will tell. You, yeah, I messed up a lot along the way, and I still mess up daily. If you sit in on any leanscaper calls, one of the guys that I think I admire the most is Jason Cromley with Hidden Creek. Jason actually has been on our show before, and he doesn't know, yeah, but probably try to get him to speak at the at the event this year in February, and schedules are busy that month. I don't know. We'll see, but anyway, because grow is that month, and landscapers in January. But anyway, Jason was on our show, and Jason is on just about every landscaper call every week and the accelerator program, and Jason is running a 15 ish, million, 1620, I don't remember. Don't quote me on it. Sorry, Jason, if you ever hear this, but 15 to $20 million company, roughly in Ohio, and he gets on there every week and tells openly for hundreds, three, four or 500 people on these calls where they're messing up, like where their problems are, where their issues are, and guys, some of the issues that he's having that he's honest and upfront about, I'm like, really, like, that's the issue that you have at that level. And yes, like, that is just he's real and relatable. And that is what I think that I love about Jason and a lot of the guys in this industry, is they're not just sugar coating things and not just hiding things. They are vulnerable. And I encourage you, as you grow, as you go through this phase of growth, zero to a million, million to 3 million and beyond that, you are vulnerable. And you ask questions, and you let people know what the status of the company is, and you don't have to tell them every every little penny and financial statements you have that is not public information. You can tell as much as you want, but, like, you don't owe anybody that. But I think what I consider myself to owe people is, like, the truth and the truth of, hey, we have struggled here, and we're working on this, and we have struggled here, but we're getting better here, right? And this is actually a win. We actually did solve this problem. We actually have this win here. Really solid win, right? Let people know that, because showing the wins does give hope to some people who are in a deep, dark hole, right? Maybe like there are, there are times when, and I'll tell you, I tell you what a story I haven't even told Sam this yet, but there's times where we, like this season, we just, we just had a rough year financially. And I will sit there, and I'll think about Sam tell the story of when he was at Sam gamble with Atlas outdoors, when he was at equip Expo, his whole team was there, went to checking into the hotel or the Airbnb or whatever, pay the card, and that card declined, and he had no no money. They maxed it out. And I look at what Sam's doing in his company now with Atlas and like the culture they've built and the wins they're having, and Sam would be the first one to come on this show and say, yes, yes, yes, but we're still struggling. Like, we still have errors, we still have mistakes, but that little story right there. I've thought about that so many times. I'm like, Sam, Sam was at the bottom. Sam was at the bottom. Like that was so hard. That was a rough point to be at because let's there's remember this, right? If you're maxed out a credit card, you're, especially at Sam's size at that point, 50, 6070, $100,000 right? That's maxed out. I don't know the car number on that, but you're talking that plus line of credits plus equipment. You know, you're hundreds of $1,000 in debt, essentially. And you know, when you are in a season of going through some tough times. And maybe it's not financials, maybe it's something personal. Maybe it's like you're down and out, and you just can't seem to get a grip on things. You can't seem to get leave, float in the door, you can't seem to figure this one thing out in the company, when someone tells a personal story of their own journey and the problems they had along the way, and they are vulnerable, and they do let you know the problems that they had. Like that gives people real content to relate to, to be able to say, hey in this moment, oh, I remember he went through this and look where he's at now. He made it mark on the last lien. Recall gave an example of person who worked for his company. Didn't they like, didn't blow out a chain link fence, and it was crazy. They didn't, didn't do something in a parking lot, or it was something that was like, not that crazy, but kind of bad. Should have been done. It was with a massive client of theirs, and they lost, like, a 10 or $15 million client in profit. That was what they were does, what they were profiting off this client year over year. I don't know there's too many dollars per year, but they had a long standing relationship with them, this and the other. Again, I don't know details. I'm just talking high level here. Principles are, somebody didn't know what they're supposed to do. They lost a massive client, 10s of millions of dollars in profit that they lost. Hey, that's a rough time. That's a rough time you have. You have, you think you had, you think you have a bad because somebody ran a mower in a pond and you're out 10 grand on a mower like, hey, we lost millions of dollars in profit because someone didn't do their job with a client. That will wake you up to reality and say, You know what? We got. It pretty good. And I think that's what I want to. Relay to a lot of you is like, Guys, you probably have it pretty good. If you wake up every day and you're somewhat healthy, you're breathing. If you breathe, you wake up every day and you're breathing, right? You got it pretty good. If you wake up every day and you can get up and move and walk around and go to work every day, you got even better, right? Better than a lot of people in the world. You have water, you have food, you have shelter, you have kids, you have wives, you have family, you know. And then when you start walking through these things, you may not, you may not have these things. You may not have these beautiful pieces of life that some others, some of us haven't, some of us don't have, right? But whatever that is, you are a blessed human, and you should thank God for that daily. And you need to go into things with a more positive mindset, of like, it's not Woe is me. And even if, like, if this is something that you struggle with, and it's something that you really are putting effort into, I commend you for that, because that is a hard thing to overcome. But what I want to say, and what I just want to level with you is is just think about everyone else in the world and how bad they have it. Like you're getting to get up and complain about things in your business that you get to own and you get to take money from. Every year, there's people in the world that don't know where they're getting water from this morning or food, or they're sleeping under a bridge, or they're in Africa and they don't have a bridge to sleep under. They're worrying about lions killing them in the middle of the night, right? Like, those are the problems that a lot of the world has. A lot of our problems are, someone didn't show up for work today, my checks not going to deposit because we don't have payroll enough in the bank for payroll. Like, those are legitimate issues, don't get me wrong. But let's look and level here on what we're actually talking about. And when you can do that, I think that you will have a much, much better outlook on life, and you also will be much more likely to share with people and give them the truth and be open and be raw and let them know, like, hey, yeah, this was a rough year, but guess what, we still have it pretty good, and this is something that I like. Want to I hope that you can sense I have passion about and I've been open with you guys all year long about where we've struggled and what our wins and losses have been, and what we've done right, what we've done wrong, and I will tell anybody in depth, whatever, whatever the problems are that we've gone through. I speak high level on the show, just because I don't want to bore you in the weeds of things that we've we've done right and wrong. But I'll tell you, if you ask right and you have the ability to impact someone's life just by sharing their stories. You don't have to be a content creator, you don't have to be an influence. You don't have to be an influence. You don't have a podcast or an Instagram or anything like that. You just be real in your conversation. But you also have a mindset of, yes, we did struggle, yes, we did go through this, but it never kept me It never kept me down. It never turned me into a sourpuss, right? I was never so we never had so bad off that I was just complaining all the time. Look at Sam gimble. Sam gimble is one of the happiest people I've ever met. Now, look, he's thriving, right? He's growing a great business. There's probably some things going on behind the doors that you don't even know or see or think about that he's having to go through, but he has a strong relationship with Christ. That is a huge Foundation, right? That I think a lot of people will overlook is they think they see Sam and they think, man, he's got all the employees, got all the trucks, he's got this that all the all the shop, and he's hosting this and great team and great culture. And, yeah, but Sam puts his relationship with Christ first every day, like Sam has a text string that he sends out with a prayer, morning prayer every single day at 4:30am never misses a day, right? He puts that first, so he does see reward from that on Earth, right? Sam's one of the happy people I've ever met. He's happy to share his faith. He's happy to share his journey. He's happy to share the ins and outs of his business. When he was going through the tough times, I wasn't personally around him, I would dare to say, and I've gone on a limb here and say, he probably wasn't a woe is me person, and if he was, if it wasn't timeless that it is, when I'm recording tonight, I may call him and try to get him on the show, actually, and talk for 10 minutes on this. That's probably what I may try to do. If you don't, we'll see that's just real time my brain working. Because I would love to know Sam salt on that of like, you know when this was happening? What, what was going through your head? Sam, what was, what was gonna get you out of bed the next day when your credit card declined? Right? But that story is changing lots of people's lives. There's lots of people that have heard that and said, You know what? If he can make it through it, I can make it through it. It's really not that bad, right? What am I again? Let's really look at what I'm dealing with in grand scheme of the world. I just want you to think about that a little bit today. It's. We're going into the end of the year, things may be tough. Payroll may not be there to make I get it right. I get it. You may have guys calling out. You may feel like you're the only one that wants to do anything. Your team is not where you want it to be. This year wasn't the year that you wanted. You've struggled with all these things. I get it all. I understand it. You have to keep your head up and keep pushing. How hard can you and how long can you endure the heart? How long can you do the things that no one else wants to do without receiving any satisfaction or reward from it? Maybe that, maybe you're not seeing progress, but you're doing and you're doing and you're consistent, and you don't stop, and you don't load up, and you keep going. How long can you do the things that no one else wants to do? That's discipline? How long can you do things that you don't want to do over and over and over and over again until you get the result that you want? You may not see results in the beginning. You probably won't that. For me, it's going to the gym. I despise the gym. I hate it. I hate it. I never liked it. I just can't get in a good groove there. I don't know what it is. I just do not like it. And my problem is I don't go. I just don't commit the time to go for six, 812, months straight, where I see the results. I go for a month or two months, and I don't see any results in that time. So I'm looking at whatever I was giving up. I'm telling you, like, that is vulnerable. That is where my problem is when it comes to discipline in the gym, I'm like, I just, I just don't have the discipline to stick it out and do it. Where is that for you? Is it the cold calls, is it the lead gen? Is it the is it the paperwork, right? The routing, the hiring. Where is that in your business? Where is it in your personal life? Maybe you have a personal aspect in your life where you're lacking and that's bleeding over into your business. Look in the mirror first and say, Where can I get better? Why? Where can I grow? Because when I grow, my team grows, like we add a leadership meeting last week, my guy sat there and looked me in the eye and said, Yeah, because we I told him, like, look, this is 26 this is, this is the year, and 26 starts now, like 26 started in that meeting last week, like, these are things that have to happen. And I make sure they know that. And they look both looked at me and said, Yeah, like, we agree. Like you said this to us earlier than you. You said that growing green stops it right right now. It stops at the level that Jeremiah grows to, and that is the matter of a fact. So how do we fix that? How do we how do we grow that? I have to grow personally. I have to hire people that know more than I do, that have better skill sets than I have, that can do things better than I can do, and I need to stay in my lane and do the things that I do well and let other people come in and take over. That's not easy to do though. That's not easy to give up, that's not easy to delegate, right? That's not a process that just happens overnight. You have to learn how to do that. You have to learn how to lead. You have to learn how to delegate. You have to learn how to actually move the needle forward without you being the one that actually moves the needle forward directly. You have to take a few steps back to move a lot of steps forward. And that's not easy. You have to grow. You have to lead. I just want you to please think about the position you're in to end of the year, 2025, mid December, when you're listening to this, you probably have it better than most people out there. Don't forget that. Please do not forget that. Rest with that, sit, think, meditate and thank God for the position that you're in, because a lot of people in the world would beg and plead to have the problems that you're complaining about right now. So whatever those are, put them behind you. Get your vision. Set it out there. Go get it. Learn how to lead. Learn how to be disciplined. You can do thanks for tuning in to the growing green podcast. It is an honor to have you listening, and we hope you receive valuable advice to help take your business to the next level. Don't forget to follow the podcast so you'll be notified when our next episode drops. You.