Taking it to the NextLevel

Karen Gardner

As a 24-year-old woman who runs a start-up rose nursery (yes, we only grow rose bushes), I was over the moon about this trip. And not only for the dead-of-winter getaway—hey, it was in balmy Ft. Lauderdale, Florida after all—but for what I could bring back as the leader of my fellow Rose Pros in Oklahoma. My better half and business partner, Stuart, was in tow, primed and ready.

Upon arriving and navigating the throngs of traffic to our hotel, I snapped candid photos of our first keynote speaker, Futurist David Zach, and posted them to social media. He didn’t find it rude more than amusing. What is a Futurist, you ask? “Anyone thinking, ‘What do my decisions mean?’” says David to his attentive crowd. “Or ‘What are the implications of the implications of those decisions?’”

He was the first of many avant-garde, fascinating and non-industry-related speakers in the lineup. David’s everpresent reverence for varied philosophers, authors, politicians, apologists—whomever with whatever title, as long as their thinking was straight—set the tone for the conference: boundaries between industries are largely false constructs, something that OFA and ANLA clearly sought to emphasize upon forming AmericanHort.

For example, in what ways do my responsibilities mirror that of an architect? A graphic designer? An economist? To understand the layout of NextLevel is to understand our least common denominator in that we’re all first and foremost fallibly, cautiously and gallantly carving our paths toward uncertain futures. Most of us want to do it to the best of our abilities and to the benefit of mankind. The obvious tactic, therefore, is asking how we can achieve this by working together.

Well, maybe not. Sometimes the conclusion is that of irreconcilable differences. When my husband, Stuart, and I were forced to choose between which classes we would attend, we made two immediate resolves: 1) to stick together—at the risk of coming under AmericanHort CEO Michael Geary’s anti-clumping scrutiny—in order to collaborate upon key ideas versus teaching one another what we’d separately learned; and 2) to attentively attend Wayne River’s “Top 9 Reasons Family Businesses Fail.”

The Highlights
Wayne is the president of The Family Business Institute, a company geared toward creating sustainability and balance for those of us who choose to work amongst family. He freely admitted that even his own firm dealt with some of the burdens family businesses can bring with it—a lack of common vision, poor self- and time-management, poor next-generation leadership development and/or an unwillingness to address problem issues. Clients seek him out when navigating the perilous waters of firing spouses or parents. Sometimes, two visions collide and one must prevail.

From there, Stuart and I chose to attend Brian Kight’s “The R Factor,” where he would discuss the role of “social physics” within the challenge of situational and self control. Brian’s easy-to-use frameworks were appealing: when an event takes place, outcomes will form. What’s the one controllable factor?

The dapper, young president of Focus3 argues that the biggest variable in any business isn’t the events or circumstances that people encounter, but how they’ll respond. You largely have two choices: to respond above the line or below the line. An “above-the-line” response is intentional, on-purpose and skillful. A “below-the-line” response is impulsive, on autopilot and resistant.

“We all have 20 square feet of belief and behavior,” says Brian. “Twenty feet of influence in which we develop our business culture and strategy.” How you guide your team’s journey from good to great—ahem, achieving the Next Level—is personal first and organizational second. Brian diligently instructed us on how we can proactively respond above the line to prevent coming unglued … because, despite our best attempts, it does happen.

Self-Reflection Time
Reeling from the day’s teachings, Stuart and I separated into our Hubs to discuss various take-aways with our peers. Deborah Hamlin, the CEO of the Irrigation Association, leading the “Grow” Hub was less pedagogue, more kindergarten teacher. Don’t be deceived; this is a high compliment. Friedrich Fröbel, who coined the word “kindergarten,” believed greatly that people should be nurtured of and nourished “like plants in a garden,” which is exactly what Deborah did.

Recognizing physical barriers contribute to a semi-territorial lack of communal involvement, she called upon the strongest of the group to turn our table-riddled conference hall into a sharing circle, where 30 of us green professionals—some competitors, some friends, many guarded strangers—slowly revealed the universal vulnerabilities that we encounter in our businesses. Instead of adhering to constrictive professionalism, sticking to one denomination, i.e., the growing of plants, sanitation practices or the latest update on neonics, we were all able to be curious people. As suggestions were shared, Deb wrote key points on massive sticky notes that were color-coded and hung on the wall. It was divinely human and friendships were forged.

At strategic intervals, there was important industry-related number crunching conveyed, but it (refreshingly) wasn’t the be-all and end-all. Dr. Marco Palma delved into the many poignant benchmarking statistics concerning us nurserymen and floriculturalists, while integrating varied forecasted trends from the housing market to improved media outreach. Why does this concern us? Implications of implications. The verdict: things are looking up, things are changing and those that want to stay in the race should buck up and adapt.

Finishing Up
One last short and sweet interaction was that with Art Parkerson of Lancaster Farms, whose talk was entitled “Craigslist With a Hope and a Prayer.” Using Craigslist as a recruitment tool might seem unrelated, too broad or even risky and yet it’s these underestimated or underused methods that tend to amass great success. We ourselves have used Craigslist at Roses Inc. and were excited to compare methods with our speaker. With five of us intimately gathered, a bow tie-clad Art began by reading us the ad that bagged Mary Poppins. What can we glean from this? The length, the diction, the tone, the humor and the little clues scattered within the text for that one special reader to potentially pick up on. Use this tool for specific positions and don’t ask for a resumé; this will help weed out the unattentive responders, which, yes, you do have to graciously reply to even with a pithy thanks but no thanks.

At the end of the three days, after business cards were exchanged and projectors were packed up, Stuart and I returned to our hotel room overlooking a beautiful inner-city riviera. We’d planned to indulge in at least one peninsular activity—a glass-boat ride, snorkeling, beach canoodling. Instead, we napped for five hours.

As these things go, the average time to implement any of the significant takeaways within your business is 36 hours. After that, people tend to abandon the excitement of new knowledge for their more comfortable former mannerisms. Which topics do you save for next year and which do you immediately enact? How do you do so without overwhelming your bedgrudgingly winter-worn staff? We’ll let you know how that turns out. GP

Karen Gardner is Green Profit’s 2014 Young Retailer of the Year Award Winner and owner of Roses Inc. in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.