The Seascape
Newsletter of the CLCA
Central Coast Chapter
April 2021
Calendar of Events
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offering a 15% discount this year to members!
It’s always a good time to advertise in your local CLCA Central Coast newsletter. Advertise in The Seascape.
May 14, Wednesday, 10:00 am
Predictable Profit—Free to members/$10 non-members
Justin White, Central Coast’s favorite president of 2021 and CEO of K&D Landscaping is giving a presentation on “preditable profitability.” He will discuss business vision, roapmaps, “unstoppable culture,” sales and estimating, marketing and innovation, and more. Contact Justin White for details at justin@kndlandscaping.com You can sign up here.
May 28, Friday, 10:00 am
Landscape Irrigation Training—Free to members/$10 non-members
Creating Landscape Irrigation Schedules for Healthy and Beautiful Landscapes
Cabrillo College instructor and long-time Central Coast member Michael Johnson will hold a virtual seminar on irrigation…details to here. The course will be delivered via Zoom.
June 10, Thursday
Central Coast “Liar’s Club” Golf Event at Spring Hill!
Yes, Central Coast is holding a golf tournament! Tee time is 8:30 a.m and the fun will continue most of the day. More information is coming soon or contact Justin White for details at justin@kndlandscaping.com
August 13, Friday
2021 Beautification Awards BBQ
Time and location: TBA, but will be an outdoor venue
Yes, it’s happening! Mark your calendars and join us for a wonderful day of fun at our Beautification Awards BBQ! We’ll be showcasing outstanding local work in the green industry and celebrating 2021’s Central Coast Winners. Next month we’ll have a link to register here. We'll get information to you soon about how to enter and what catagories will be judged this year.
* Our Suppliers Night Event has been postponed due to difficulty scheduling around the COVID virus**
April 2021 Central Coast President’s Message
by Justin White, Chapter President, K&D Landscaping Company
“Turning The Corner”
Update on Central Coast Events
I have exciting news for you all today! The Central Coast Chapter has decided to move forward with three in-person events over summer and early fall of 2021. We have our first “Spring” golf tournament happening on June 10th. We will be hosting a Beautification Award event in August, (stay tuned for packet info). We will also be having an additional golf tournament in October! These three events will bring us all together to celebrate the wonderful work of our members and give us a chance to catch up on life. There is information within this newsletter about these events, and make sure you check your inbox for updates as we announce more instruction.
A stronger industry today than a year ago. I feel as an industry and an association, we are stronger today than we were a year ago. We have endured a lot of challenges together and we still have more ahead. Without the great people of the central coast and the CLCA, this last year would have been much harder for me and the rest of our industry. The CLCA played a large role in getting local counties to approve landscapers as essential workers, which helped us all continue to operate and keep our employees working. To every person who has sponsored an event, paid your annual dues, volunteered your time, or simply participated in the CLCA, you made a difference and I thank you.
Learning how to say no. As I speak with local landscape contractors and designers, I hear a common theme, "I'm so busy". We are all finding ourselves swamped with projects, leads, and more phone calls than we can handle. One of the best skills to master is the art of saying "NO". When you say yes to everyone in this type of an environment you end up with a lot of different projects on your hands. You, your crews, and/or designers are constantly trying to adapt to each new client and the type of project they bring. Instead of saying yes to everyone and running yourself ragged, find out what your team does best. What types of projects or clients does your team perform better at than others? If you are able to build an ideal client profile you can then begin to say yes to more of those and no to those that arent a great fit. You will have more consistent work, your crews will be more efficient and you should be able to create more revenue and profit with less time. When the tides shift and the phone calls slow down you may have to widen your client profile to keep your crews busy, but until that time why not be picky?
To our success,
Justin White
CEO, K&D Landscaping Inc.
justin@kndkandscaping.com
C: (831) 331-3476 │ O: (831) 728-4018
Students needing education dollars? How many of your students struggle with funding their education?
LEAF is here to help!
Over $38,000 in scholarship funds distributed to students in 2020.
The deadline to apply is April 15, 2021
In 2020, nine deserving California college students received scholarships from our LEAF scholarship program. These scholarships help make education attainable and boosts our industry's next wave of leaders.
Our scholarship winners come from a variety of 2-year and 4-year colleges across California. You can learn about our 2020 scholarship recipients here.
If your class is meeting virtually, we are available to speak about the LEAF scholarship and how it has helped students achieve their goals.
Please share this link with students and encourage them to apply, Help us spread the word about this scholarship opportunity.
We recognize many classes are virtual due to the pandemic, but if you would still like a LEAF scholarship poster or more information about LEAF, please email us at leaf@clca.org.
Thank you for your help. Together we can help students get the funds they need to continue their education!
2021 Central Coast Chapter Partners for Success Program
There has never been a better time to support Central Coast’s Partners for Success Program. Joining provides an opportunity to increase your visibility in the community, to be seen as a leader in the green industry by helping sustain the many educational and enrichment offerings of our association. For more information, contact Justin White justin@kndkandscaping.com. Or, better still, go directly to our online registration! Join us!
WE love our partners!
With much appreciation Our Partners in Success 2021.
PaRTNERS CORNER
Gina Stanley of CLCA Insurance Solutions
This month Gina Stanley is featured in our “Partner’s Corner.” Read more here.
Advertise in the Central Coast Seascape Newsletter!
THis is a great time to show your support for the central Coast CLCA and promote your business. Advertise in this newsletter! Reach your target audience monthly. Sign up for large, medium, or small ads. For specs and pricing contact: clcaccc.editor@gmail.com. OR sign up online here.
Online course through MonterEy Peninsula College
Two Saturdays in April
APRIL 17 — 9:00-11:15am & 1:00-2:30pm (Zoom) and
APRIL 24 — 9:00-11:15am & 1:00-2:30Pm (Zoom)
Creating beautiful and functional residential landscapes within defensible space is possible! Experts will give relevant landscape design and maintenance principles for fire country. We will review maintaining defensible space and hardening your structure. It's possible to have gardens for food, habitat and beauty while also maximizing your structure's survivability when wildfire comes. Presenters will include landscape architects and horticulturists, as well as fire science experts. This 8-hour course is valuable for garden designers, landscape contractors, tree services providers, homeowners, and anyone working and/or living where wildfire can occur.
Speakers will include Doug Kent, author of Firescaping-Protecting Your Home and Carol Rice and Cheryl Miller, authors of Managing Fire in the Urban Wildland Interface. Cheryl and Doug are landscape architects.
Monterey Peninsula College
HORT 210 - Section 1026 - Current Topics in Ornamental Horticulture (8 hours)
The course will be delivered synchronously by Zoom. Those taking the course for credit will complete assessments in Canvas.
REGISTER ONLINE: www.mpc.edu
Please direct questions to John Kern jkern@mpc.edu
Education Corner
Predictable Profitability Workshop
Wednesday, May 14, 2021—ONLINE—FREE to Members
Presented by the Central Coast Chapter of the California Landscape Contractor’s Association (CLCA)
Presentation by Justin White, CEO of K&D Landscaping, a full-service construction and maintenance landscape company located in Santa Cruz, California, and current CLCA Central Coast president.
Taking over the family company in 2015, Justin has focused on sustainable growth with increased profitability. Expanding upon a solid foundation his parents built over 30 years ago, Justin took K&D from a small, mom-and-pop operation to a humming $10MM, culture-driven company just four years later.
Justin and K&D are highly involved with their community. Justin sits on multiple non-profit boards and is the chapter president of the local California Landscape Contractors Association. He recently debuted on the cover of Lawn & Landscape magazine where they showcased the quick growth of K&D’s design build department. K&D also won the “Be the Difference Award” in Santa Cruz county beating out 500 other nominations to take the top spot. With momentum on their side, K&D and Justin are poised to continue their aggressive growth trajectory.
Justin has embraced technology over the last four years in order to help scale their company. This included installing new software to aid in growth predictions and profitability. As with any growing company, there have been many obstacles and challenges along the way. Leveraging his 12+ years in the industry, (from laborer to now CEO,) Justin has an expansive perspective and his presentations are exciting and engaging—you won’t want to miss this one!
What is Predictable Profit?
The ability to set a financial goal and come within 5% of the target metric
What is a KPI and what is a metric?
Setting goals to build confidence
How’s your golf game? Goal setting takes practice…Setting goals is a little like golf, it takes practice. At first you may end up way out of bounds and it may take you 10 shots to get the ball in the hole. Over years of practicing you will be able to shoot straight down the middle and get a par. But just like the pros goal setting can go wrong after years and years of practice so don’t beat yourself up when you miss a target from time to time
Some topics that Justin will cover:
“Keys to the vault”—how to unlock predictable profit in your business
Vision and Road Map
Unstoppable Culture
Sales and Estimating
Marketing and Innovation
World Class Execution
Financial Optics
All are welcome at this online event. The event is free to members/$10 to non-members. Please register below to receive the Zoom URL. Members FREE/non-member cost is $10. Contact Justin White if you have further questions: justin@kndlandscaping.com
Mark your calendar for May 14th and join us.
A Jerry Allison book review
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
I do realize that many of the books I review and recommend are challenging reads. Going back to The OverStory by Richard Powers I recall it taking real perseverance to follow the multiple story lines and have faith that at some point it would all make sense. Braiding Sweetgrass is a book best taken a chapter at a time. t is beautifully written and, like poetry, gives you pause and reason for reflection.
Braiding Sweetgrass is about plants and our relationship to them. More specifically, it is about the Native American viewpoint of their connection with plants and how their culture worked with plants. There is a chapter, for example, that discusses the native language of the Patawatomi people. The author is trying to relearn her ancestral language and it is not easy. Plants are not things, they are like people, not objects or things in that language. Therefore plants and animals in the Patawatomi language are never “other,” they are part of the family. This linguistic distinction doesn’t allow you to separate plants into things you can exploit or disregard as dispensable. You are forced by the language to understand that all who make up the world are part of the whole fabric of nature so you need to see the shared relationships.
If I was teaching a course on botany this would be required reading. There is so much here it is difficult to review it without rewriting the book. What I can say about it is you will come away richer having read it. It will make you appreciate planting, the life cycles we work with, the joy of spring and renewal and will give you a better understanding how our natural planet works. Hard to read, worth the effort.
“In some Native languages the term for plants translates to “those who take care of us.”
―Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
COMING SOON: IRRIGATION ONLINE TRAINING
Friday, MAY 28, 2021, 10:00 A.M. PST
Zoom Meeting - URL will be sent to all registrants
Join us for a webinar with CAbrillo College’s Horticulture instructor, michAEl Johnson on Irrigation management—FREE to members and $10 for non-members
Look for more information soon. If you’re on our mailing list you’ll receive an invitation. A link will be provided for registration in our next newsletter. Once you have registered we will send you the Zoom meeting information you’ll need to take advantage of this training session.
especially for CLCA Members
Board Meeting Minutes
Central Coast Chapter CLCA Board Meeting March 4, 2021
Justin White, Craig Stenehjem, Ki Bowman, Gregory Miller, David Ventura. Zoom meeting started at 12:00
Justin called the meeting to order at 12:00 PM. Everyone delivered their good news for the week.
Events Schedule
• Firescaping Event—Dave reported the event went well. There weren't as people as we thought there would be, but we still had over 40 people attend. All the presenters did a very good job. The training session was recorded.
• Spring Golf Tournament—Matt to look at a Thursday in June
Education
• Justin reported that he gave a presentation at ECHO. I hope I got that right.
• We are looking at taking advantage of other resources for training. Dave mentioned using Rescape as a source. Justin and Gregorgy mentioned using CLCA resources as well.
Membership Update
• We might be moving the awards banquet to Sept. More to follow.
• Justin mentioned Katia is still working on the baskets.
Newsletter and Website Updates
• Elise will be sending out the newsletter this weekend.
• Ki reported the brochures are ready to go. The brochure will be a two-fold and not a tri-fold after all. Brochures will be placed in several landscaping retailer stores, along with A1 Toolsheds, and several nurseries. Justin, Gregory, Dave and a few others will deliver them to the designated places.
Treasurer Updates
• Cathy couldn’t make the meeting so no report. She was going to email for approval.
Meeting was adjoined at 1:10