The Ultimate Landscape CEO - Jeffrey Scott

In this episode, Jeffrey Scott sits down with Kelli Anh Shaw, COO of HYRE (HYREup.com), a boutique offshore staffing and virtual assistant management firm based out of Overland Park, Kansas. Just two years old as of January 2026, HYRE has already placed around 80 virtual assistants across client companies and built an internal team of 11 — hitting $1.7M in revenue and proving fast that their model works. Kelli shares the real story behind how HYRE was born — out of a moving company that grew 863% in three years, landed on the Inc. 5,000 multiple times, and then nearly unraveled when the housing market froze. Facing massive overhead with shrinking revenue, her team turned to offshore staffing from the Philippines and Latin America, eventually saving $350,000 annually on admin costs alone. What makes HYRE different isn’t just the placement — it’s the deep discovery process, hands-on onboarding, and dedicated account management that helps landscape, HVAC, plumbing, and other trades businesses actually integrate virtual assistants in a way that sticks. Whether you’re looking to support your sales team with CRM hygiene and cold calling, free up your field managers from scheduling chaos, or find a bilingual assistant to help manage your H-2B workers, this episode breaks down exactly how it works, what it costs, and what to expect in your first few weeks.

Takeaways:

HYRE was born from real business pain — a moving company near collapse that saved $350K annually after going offshore
Just 2 years old, HYRE has already placed ~80 VAs and grown to a team of 11 with $1.7M in revenue
Trades companies (landscaping, HVAC, plumbing, electrical) are HYRE’s bread and butter
VAs can fill roles across all three areas: sales support, operations, and accounting/admin
HYRE does a deep discovery process first — they build the role around your company, not the other way around
Bilingual Latin American VAs are a major asset for landscape companies running H-2B programs
Pricing starts at $10–$12/hr all-inclusive, with senior-level talent up to $25–$30/hr — no headhunter fees
Every account gets a dedicated manager handling oversight, payroll, and daily check-ins
ROI can show up fast — some clients are winning by their very first weekly call
AI and virtual assistants work best together; the human touch is becoming more valuable, not less
Get started at HYREup.com — book a discovery call and go in with questions, not a finished job description

The post Virtual Assistants for Trades Companies: Supercharging your Sales, Operations, Admin and Customer Service, with Kelli Anh Shaw of HYRE appeared first on Jeffrey Scott.

In this Olympics-inspired episode, Jeffrey Scott draws powerful parallels between the 2026 Winter Olympics and running a high-performance landscape business, sharing 10 actionable lessons every CEO can apply right now. From Lindsey Vonn’s fearless leadership under injury to Italy’s surprising rise as a winter sports powerhouse, Jeffrey unpacks how Olympic principles — team synergy, real-time scoring, leaderboards, coaching from the sidelines, and relentless efficiency — translate directly into business wins. He challenges leaders to stop being player-coaches, start building client-facing cultures, obsess over margin efficiencies, and never stop tracking the competition, all in pursuit of building a business that performs like an Olympic team.

Sales Symposium – March 10th. Register before February 26th for special pricing.

https://jeffreyscott.biz/sales-symposium/

Key Takeaways:

Lead like Lindsey Vonn — Push through adversity and raise the bar for everyone
Teams go farther — Build synergy through shared training, celebrating, and support
Coach from the sidelines — Your team needs your guidance more than your hands-on labor
Real-time scoring — Use KPIs and dashboards daily, not just at month-end
Post the leaderboard — Visible rankings drive pride and engagement without extra incentives
Know your home team advantage — Identify, promote, and rally around your unique competitive edge
Great coaching beats raw talent — The right technique and coach can outperform more talented teams
Performance over convenience — Build a client-facing culture and make NPS scores as visible as profit
Margins matter — Obsess over efficiency in sales, operations, and admin
Track your competition — Mystery shop, visit job sites, and always bring fresh ideas back

The post Gold Medal Leadership: 10 Olympic Lessons for Building a High-Performance Landscape Company appeared first on Jeffrey Scott.

In this episode, Jeffrey Scott sits down with Chase Mullin, CEO of Mullin Landscape located in St. Rose, Louisiana, to discuss the strategic decisions and leadership lessons behind scaling a regional landscape company from roughly $5 million to nearly $30 million in revenue. Chase shares how continuous improvement, tough business decisions, and strategic focus helped drive growth — including dropping hardscape services, eliminating residential divisions, and doubling down on commercial maintenance to improve efficiency and profitability. He explains how outsourcing certain services created operational leverage, how applying the “hedgehog concept” clarified their core strengths, and why regularly inspecting systems and processes is critical even when a company appears successful. The conversation highlights leadership evolution, capacity management, building strong teams, and balancing visionary thinking with operational accountability.

Register for our virtual Sales Symposium, which takes place March 10th, 2026 – https://jeffreyscott.biz/sales-symposium/

Takeaways:

Strategic decision-making and continuous improvement in scaling a business
Why dropping services can accelerate growth and profitability
Applying the “hedgehog concept” to define core business focus
Outsourcing vs. in-house services: when to add or remove offerings
Transitioning from residential design-build to commercial maintenance
Leadership evolution and empowering senior teams
Importance of systems auditing and software process cleanup
Managing growth capacity through people, processes, and strategy
Trust but verify: inspecting operations without micromanaging
Lessons learned from rapid expansion and operational challenges

The post The Discipline of Growth: Using Continuous Improvement to Make Smarter Strategic Decisions with Chase Mullin appeared first on Jeffrey Scott.

In this episode Jeffrey Scott tackles the critical topic of sales goal setting in preparation for an upcoming Sales Symposium. He challenges the traditional top-down approach to goal assignment and advocates for a collaborative method where salespeople participate in creating their own commitments rather than simply complying with quotas.

Jeffrey breaks down how to structure effective sales goals by type and month, connect activities to outcomes, and create genuine buy-in from your team that translates to resilience when market challenges arise.

Register now for our Sales Symposium, which takes place March 10th. The early bird ends last week of February.

Takeaways:

Replace top-down quota assignment with collaborative goal-setting to transform compliance into genuine commitment
Break sales goals down by month and type (maintenance, enhancements, new sales) rather than using simple annual targets
Set activity goals as leading indicators to track inputs like phone calls, proposals, and site visits alongside sales outputs
Monitor both conservative baseline goals and stretch goals to account for natural performance variation across your team
Involve salespeople in creating monthly targets to enable mid-month adjustments and coaching opportunities
Align sales goals with production scheduling and revenue planning for company-wide coordination
Track closing ratios and deal size to connect activity inputs with sales outcomes

The post The Art to Setting Highly Effective Sales Goals and Achieving Massive Buy-In with Jeffrey Scott appeared first on Jeffrey Scott.

In this episode, Jeffrey Scott sits down with Mark Sedley, CEO of Granum, the parent company behind LMN, SingleOps, and Greenius, to explore his entrepreneurial journey and bold vision for the green industry. From knocking on doors as a teenager to leading software platforms serving landscaping and tree care businesses, Mark shares how his background shaped his leadership style, why landscaping is harder than running a software company, and how technology, education, and labor solutions must evolve together. The conversation dives deep into industry fragmentation, the growing complexity of landscape operations, and why training, middle management development, and workforce empowerment are critical for the future of the green industry.

Key Takeaways

Entrepreneurial mindset vs. caretaker leadership
Why landscaping operations are uniquely complex
Tree care vs. landscape market dynamics
Software consolidation vs. organic growth
The role of education and middle management training
Greenius’ evolution into a labor and learning marketplace
Solving the green industry’s labor and skills gap
Lessons from scaling and exiting software companies

The post The Innovative Spirit of Granum (LMN, Greenius and Single Ops) with new CEO Mark Sedgley appeared first on Jeffrey Scott.