Jenny (00:29)
If you are interested in growing your flower farm for a long time, you're in this for a long haul, maybe you have family involved, it's a family farm, you want to pass this on to your kids someday. This is the episode for you. I'm sitting down with Carl from Green Park Nurseries, also known as the Stick Man. And we are talking about his giant family farm, how they run it. We're talking about scaling, the kinds of skills you have to acquire to actually scale a farm to that size.
The multi-generational aspect to it, working with family, transitioning. We talk about labor, labor management, actually finding people to work for you, employee retention. We talk about so many things in this podcast. We could have talked for hours, but I think if you are somebody that truly is serious about growing your flower farm and being in this for the long haul, you have to hear from Carl. We get right into it. So I won't keep you waiting. Let's go.
Karl (01:27)
Hi guys. Go. All right.
Jenny (01:29)
Hey, yeah, we're good. So
Carl, tell us just a little bit about for people who aren't familiar with you and Green Park Nurseries, one to two minute version of how long the farm has been around. What do you grow? What do you do? Who do you sell to? Like your scale? Quick rundown.
Karl (01:47)
Alright, guys, so I'm Carl Wehrmeyer, Green Park Nurseries. I'm a second generation farmer. my father started in 1980, and we started as a nursery growing trees and shrubs for the landscape industry and for garden centers. In the early 2000s, we morphed into cut branches and cut flowers. we started with pussy willow and curly willow, and we
Morphed into cut lilacs and spring cut flowers. And slowly through the years, we gained enough interest in what we were growing that we discontinued growing nursery stock for our customers. And now we primarily just grow cut flowers and cut ornamental branches. like I said, my father started the company in 1980. I'm second generation along with my
brother and my sister who are also shareholders in the company along with my father and I have two boys that are now gonna be working for us full time and third generation is moving in slowly.
Jenny (03:00)
Awesome. Thanks, Carl. So for anybody who doesn't know, Carl is also, I think, fondly referred to as the stick man for all the woodies and everything that he grows. He's an expert in that. I have so many questions for you today around business, scaling, labor, leadership, all that stuff. But because you already brought it up with your family, this is very much a family business. And you guys have been in business for a long time. So I'm curious.
how you and your family have built this resilient business where you've been able to survive for this long, not only survive, but thrive. You've seen, you know, changing trends, recessions, supply chain issues, labor shortages, like I'm sure you've seen it all. So tell me a little bit more about how you've been able to have such a resilient business.
Karl (03:50)
So when when when I think of the question resilient business, it a lot of it goes back to my father. You know, my dad often reminds us kids that we have not lived through a recession. We have not seen the really bad times. I'm 43 years old. I'm sure if you're in your late 50s, early sixties, you will remember the early 90s, the 80s.
when things were not good and interest rates were sky high. So my father was always very money conscious. And even to this day, our father often reminds us of if the money is not in the bank account, you are not purchasing it. So we run a very lean business where we do not borrow an awful lot of money because my dad has been burned
More than once. And so resilience for us comes through having the funds to purchase ahead of time. We do not borrow an awful lot of money in this company. So yeah, that's to to
Be around at the end of the day. we want to, we're we're in this business to we want to be doing this 25, 30, 40 years down the road. So you know, a big part of that for us is not ex overextending ourselves to the point where a big mistake could really do a lot of damage. Does that that kind of make sense?
Jenny (05:33)
Yeah, absolutely. that's similar to how I've approached my business as well as like we've never taken on business debt. We've always just kind of slowly with what we have. Our business was built on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. And I think it can be painful for people trying to grow quickly to do that. And I'm not saying that this is the answer for everybody, but I think it's really helped build a resilient business where if we do have
something that happens or an off year or a crop that doesn't perform as well as we thought, it gives us that buffer. Now
Karl (06:11)
Right, right.
Jenny (06:14)
I remember, so Carl, you and I met at this flower farming retreat thing years ago in Maine. Yes, which was
Karl (06:22)
In Maine, in the middle of the winter. That's right.
Jenny (06:25)
actually one of the best flower farming, it wasn't really a conference, but meetup experiences I've ever had.
I remember that, I mean, I don't remember what year that was, but it was a very long time ago, pre-COVID. And I remember you talking about your kids coming into the business. And you said something like when they were like 10 or 12, you'd put them on payroll and you'd like teach them how to invest and all that kind of stuff. Tell me more about what that looks like, because you and your family strike me as the kind of business owners that make really solid business.
financial decisions, but it seems like you're also trying to pass that on to your kids. So maybe a little off topic from flower farming, but I think a lot of people would appreciate hearing your approach to it.
Karl (07:10)
No, no, that that is
that's fantastic. And and and like I said, man, we should have my dad on this podcast, not me, 'cause this goes straight to my father again, where, you know, myself as a child, when I was ten years old, my dad realized that yes, my kids are gonna work for me, but they're also gonna be paid a fair wage. If they're gonna work alongside me eight, nine, ten hours out in the field at the age of ten, then then they're gonna be paid accordingly. So
The rule was always at the age of 10. we started working half days, and we were told to keep track of our hours. We had to be in the lunchroom and record our hours, and if we did not, we did not get paid. So you made sure that you wrote down your hours, and we all received a paycheck every two weeks, and we were all brought to the bank, and we all opened our own bank accounts as a 10-year-old child. And
Yeah, and we got to watch that money grow. back in the day, that's when we actually nothing was online and we each had a little book, and you would hand the book to the teller and she would deposit the check. We would we would go with dad every other Friday to the bank. And it was neat as a kid to see, you know, that's where you could physically see your bank account grow as a little child, where the teller would hand your little book back and she would update it and it would print all the new numbers on on the book and
And so that morphed into my kids now, where same thing. They all were required to start working on the farm at the age of ten. And we started with half days. And and same thing, keep track of your hours, and you're on the payroll. And of course things have changed now. Now it's all direct deposit and they're in charge and they have the debit card instead of a book and and whatnot. But yeah, that very much that introduction to money.
I think is is huge for for kids, especially today. if I go back to when I was a young teenager and this goes back to when the nursery for us, even before Cut Flowers, was not doing very well. we were all privileged as kids to attend Christian Education, which is on the parents' dime. And we grew vegetables out in the field, and we did a farmer's market with my father.
All five kids every Saturday. So Friday nights we were packing the truck. And as young kids, we were when when the older lady handed you a five-dollar bill and a quart of green beans was $1.50, how much change do you give back to the lady? And customer relations. And even if she squabbled about the price, how do you reflect kindly towards this lady and kindly stand your ground? And so I
I give my dad a big hug every day for for the knowledge that he passed down to us and the knowledge that we get to pass down to our kids. So it yeah.
Jenny (10:15)
I love that. I feel like I grew up similarly working at my parents' farm stand. They taught me how to make change, how to talk to people. And I think that skill has really served me well. But one thing I want to ask you about is you guys now have this multi-generational farm. And I hear from farmers all the time that they really want their kids to be involved with the farm that they have. really want
would like them to take over someday or be more involved, but a lot of times the kids are not interested in it. What do you think is different about your situation that has made you wanna work on the farm with your father and your kids wanna work with you now?
Karl (11:00)
I don't know if it's genetic traits that have been passed down that we just can't stand school. I I really don't have a definite answer on
Jenny (11:08)
hahahahah
Karl (11:14)
why. but I have watched especially my two boys and even now, even now my daughter, who is in grade ten going to grade eleven in September, they are not school kids.
They are definitely dirt under their fingernails working kids who excel at it. and so I think I look at myself, I never went I never had an education past grade twelve, also, and my education came from my father, and which in turn I assume my kids will pick up what I have learned from my father.
And I also learned by doing. and by watching other people. I'm very fluent in I'm I can watch somebody do something once and be like, I can do that. I I I am not a book smart person, but very hands-on. So yeah. I often joke with my kids that if they didn't want the farm.
Mom and dad would have a beautiful nine hole golf course on the farm someday. And and so, you know, I love what I do, but I'm not gonna be doing it forever. But the fact that I have two, potentially three children that want to continue what their grandfather or dad started, I'm I'm all in.
Jenny (12:45)
Love that. I think that that's just such a cool thing that a lot of people want for their families. And so I think that they have a lot to glean from you and your experience. Now, I kind of want to shift gears a little bit. And I want to ask you about actually running the business because you guys obviously are a larger scale farm. How many acres? Tell me a little bit more about your scale.
Karl (13:13)
So we are roughly about 150 acres in production spread across six farms in southern Ontario. for those that kind of want to put a map to where we are, we are in Canada, in Ontario, and we are sandwiched right in between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. So we have Lake Ontario is about a 15-minute drive directly to our north, and Lake Erie is a 15-minute drive directly to our south.
So we are right in the middle. And we do have a hundred acre farm, an eight hour drive north of us. that is our northern division. if we have time we can get into that a little bit later, but that's scheduled for production for two thousand thirty. So that's in the works.
Jenny (14:02)
I just want everybody to hear what Carl just said, how far out their planning is required. And I meet farmers all the time who are thinking about next season now, which would be, I don't know, right now we're recording this in July. They haven't even started thinking about next season yet. And it's like, you got to start thinking like three, five, 10, 20 years out sometimes. And so I just wanted to put a little
ding of attention on what you just said. Would you agree with that?
Karl (14:34)
Yes, absolutely. And and even like, you know, you mentioned, you know, for Christmas, like our our Christmas price list went out in April already for this Christmas. So we're we're always planning six to eight months out in advance just for what people routinely think is a day to day, you know, thing that you have to do. We're we're even even within the year, we're still planning six, eight, ten months out and
you know, taking purchase orders and making sure that's gonna be ready to go. And so it can be stressful. I I I I'm more of
Jenny (15:10)
yeah.
Karl (15:13)
a hey, this is what we're doing tomorrow. I I'm not so much planning that far in advance, but it it when you get to the scale that we are, it has to be done.
Jenny (15:23)
Absolutely. Now, you, so are you guys still trying to actively scale the business even more than?
Karl (15:31)
So, our idea of scaling the business has always been organically. We have never once wanted to push the issue. We have never once sat at a board meeting with my siblings and my dad and saying, This is what we want to go in the direction we want to go. This is where we want to project ourselves, you know, to
five, 10 years out. we've often just kind of grew with our customer demand. and and a test yes,
Jenny (16:10)
So more of a pull than a push.
Karl (16:12)
absolutely 100%. this business can be stressful enough. to add the added pressure of pushing yourself just because is is not something we like to do. So a testament to this is
We have blocks of product where we'll have two rows here, and then we'll have four rows on the other side of the farm, and then we'll have eight rows at another farm, and then we'll have twelve rows of the same product at another farm, only because that's what happens when you grow organically with your customer demand. You start with two rows and then you don't have enough and you double it, and then and so it it it gets confusing, and in the last five years we have
consolidated where we now have our numbers where we've where we have grown the last fifteen years. So we now have ripped those two rows out and those four rows out and we've now consolidated into bigger, bigger blocks because our numbers have just finally gotten to that size. So growing paints.
Jenny (17:19)
Yeah, no, I love that you brought this up because I think people expect business to not be as messy as it is sometimes, but the truth is it's just very messy. And
you're always
Karl (17:30)
Very nice.
Jenny (17:31)
gonna look back and be like, you know, I wish I did this differently, or I should have, you know, put this somewhere else. And it's just the way that it is. But like you said, it sounds like now you're finding ways to kind of streamline that and make it more efficient.
Karl (17:46)
I one hundred percent. Yep, you nailed it. Yep. Now we're we finally have we feel like we have arrived and now the goal is efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. Take what we have and make it more efficient.
Jenny (18:02)
Now you guys have, since you've been growing the Woodies and like the Hydrangeas and all that stuff, you've always sold wholesale, correctly? Or is that, am I wrong? Always.
Karl (18:13)
No, you are you are correct.
we have always been wholesale. we'll bring up my father one more time where he's he he's
Jenny (18:21)
Maybe not the last time.
Karl (18:22)
he's happily been married for for over over thirty years and well forty years I think now and and a big part of that was not having customers come up his driveway. farm is very much a safe place for us and even if it's one or two pills, we will deliver.
Jenny (18:42)
Stay off the farm.
Karl (18:44)
They are off the fire.
Jenny (18:46)
So looking back, what would you say, like what business skills have been some of the most important ones for you to learn that maybe has nothing to do with growing amazing plants or being an amazing farmer?
Karl (19:05)
navigating an Excel spreadsheet. If
Jenny (19:07)
Yeah
Karl (19:09)
there's one thing I would actually take a night course for, I I I guess we can't get too far in the world these days without learning how to navigate an Excel spreadsheet. Off the farm without flower growing, I have learned that if I want to continue to just
Be a simple farmer. I have actually hired people to do the stuff that I don't want to do. And so my off-the-farm like learning skills is learning to put the right people in the right place where they can flourish. to me, I think that's worth more than.
Me struggling through night courses at a community college trying to learn things that I really don't care for. A simple example is my oldest son is engaged. He will be getting married in June. And his fiance right now did a three-year degree in business and did a four-year degree in human resources in HR.
And the scale that we're getting now, she will be a plug-in if she would like. She has already mentioned that she'd like to join, but that is where I see where I can find the proper person and plug them in into a role that they actually enjoy and something that this company can benefit from.
Jenny (20:57)
think that's actually a huge skill to be able to do that.
Karl (21:02)
Yeah, so for me to you know further my education, I I I think that that that's that's gone, that's past. But I I use my skills and my gifts of of searching out the proper people and and I get a kick of watching other people flourish and you know, a meaning to life. You know, we can all come to work and just put in our time, but to actually enjoy what you do, that would that's everything.
Jenny (21:30)
Yeah, I think that's one of the keys to having a resilient farm is to actually keep enjoying what you're doing. And I was just talking to a group of farmers in our program the other day about, we were talking about like accounting and bookkeeping. And I was like, guys, the best thing I ever did was just hire a bookkeeper. Like the 300 bucks or whatever I spend every month is so worth it. It's that I don't have to deal with it. and that's not, like you said, that's not my zone of genius. Like, yes, I can do it. I know how to do it.
but I'm better put somewhere in my business where my, like I get to focus on my zone of genius to move the business forward, which sounds like exactly what you're doing is
Karl (22:11)
Yeah.
Jenny (22:13)
you're doing that. So I'm also curious based on your response of, you know, navigating the Excel spreadsheet and finding the right person for the right position in your business to help you, what parts of the business
have ended up taking more of your attention than you ever expected to happen as you guys have scaled.
Karl (22:35)
Answering emails.
Jenny (22:37)
Hmm.
Karl (22:38)
It's as simple as that. That that has and and it's and I should clarify answering emails, it's you know, when you do grow, your customer base does expand. So when your customer base expands, you know, when when you have five customers sending you one email every day, and then all of a sudden you have a hundred customers sending you two emails every day, or you go back and forth, you know, that does eat up a lot of time.
And so that's where myself, over the last 10 years I've really had to learn to delegate and take some pressure off of myself because to give those listening some background, it is myself, my dad, my brother, and my youngest sister that are all involved in the business. you know, my dad is slowly on his retirement exit strategy.
But it is mainly myself and I look after the customer base, the packing of orders and the purchase orders. My brother does, he looks after all the staff, all the hiring and firing and and delegating instructions and cut lists. And my sister is in the office and she does payroll, invoicing, all that back end stuff. an amazing person that you can give a stack of papers to and stay deal with this.
So so that's just a little bit of clarification on on how our roles and we all intermingle, of course. So, you know, there are times where it's all hands on deck and you know, we're all packing in the cooler when it's a very busy day, or I'm helping my sister do some invoicing when there's a backlog. So that's kind of how our roles all all work on the farm.
Jenny (24:22)
Yeah, I think that I'm so glad that you're talking about this because I see one of the struggles with flower farmers as they're trying to grow their business or trying to scale. They often end up feeling really overwhelmed and overworked, which we all know that's just like a natural result of farming at times, but like way more than necessary because they're trying to hold on to every single piece of the business.
But what I'm hearing from you is in order to actually grow and scale and have a sustainable business is there has to be other people that own some outcomes and you
Karl (24:57)
Yes.
Jenny (24:57)
have to be able to delegate things and have people responsible for different pieces of the business.
Karl (25:02)
Yes, and and and you'll have to learn that as you grow and if you want to grow and expand that in your hiring process, it doesn't matter who you hire, they will only be able to do it seventy-five to eighty percent as good as you. They will never, ever, ever be able to do it a hundred percent how you want it done. So you have to
I wouldn't say lower your expectations, but you have to learn that when you bring people into the business, they won't be able to do it exactly how you want it done. So you have to learn to live with people that will only do it 75 or 80% as good as you. And you have to be okay with that. And it
Jenny (25:47)
Yeah, that.
Karl (25:48)
that was a learning curve for us, and especially for me, who is very perfection oriented. So
That there is some internal work that has to happen when you expand.
Jenny (26:01)
Yeah, and like you said, it's not that you're necessarily lowering your expectations. It's just that you have to let go of control a little bit in order for growth to happen, right? Now, you guys must have quite a number of employees and I'm curious, I feel like I've heard you, maybe you've had a conversation about this before about the type of people you employ or like people you find to help around the farm, but I think labor,
is one of the biggest challenges in flower farming and agriculture, right? Because just the nature of the work. I'm curious how you handle labor and employees and maybe how you balance the fluctuations of workloads throughout the year. Because right before this call, you were telling me, we're kind of on our summer break, we're getting ready for the big push again. How do you manage that?
Karl (26:54)
Okay, so the way we do grow on this farm, it is very feast or famine. when the highs are highs, the highs are high. And when the lows are low, they're low. So we have always kept our summer months where it is just a growing season for us. There is no harvesting, there is no shipping, there is no emails, which is amazing. So we do have about two months, about the 15th of
June to the 15th of August, we are just growing and maintaining our crops. We're not actually out in the field harvesting. And so those two months and that that trickles into August. We have just summer students. So right now we have eight summer students. they're on the farm. and our summer hours are we start at 6 a.m. and we're done by 12:30. That way, roughly those kids and they range from
grade eight all the way up to college and university students. So and my own kids are included in that mix. And so that way they roughly get about 30 hours a week. So it's just enough for them to have a good job and allows the bosses to also have afternoons off. a lot of them enjoy golfing, have sports, you know, want to go swimming in the afternoon. So they enjoy the the hybrid model of start early done by twelve thirty.
Mm. and they get their afternoons off.
Jenny (28:28)
What about the seasons where it's go time? You're feasting, it's not famine. What does that look like?
Karl (28:36)
So go time, and that is basically fall, winter, and spring for us. we are complete opposite of most flower growers where they have winters off. Winters, because of our pussy willow and our branch crops, we are busy all winter long. And so we have our core group of
I always take some flack over this. they are our stay-at-home mom group. I am not being biased by any stretch of the imagination. if if there was any stay-at-home dads, we would gladly welcome them also. and the reason we call them that is because we allow these moms that have children in school to start at nine o'clock in the morning and they work till three o'clock in the afternoon.
this was something we started about 15 years ago. and we looked at it where if we needed to hire two full-time people, well let's hire four moms that really just want to get out of the house while their kids are in school and want some grocery money and want some extra money for Christmas presents, and they just needed an outlet. And so we did that and they are amazing.
You know, we get to bless them with coming in so they're at home to get their children on the school bus in the morning and they're home to take their children off the bus in the evening. And it's worked fantastic for us. the other method we use is we have a local temp agency that we deal with and they are fantastic, and it is primarily Vietnamese men and women.
And so we do have our core four Vietnamese employees that will start in September and they'll be with us right till the middle of June. And with a one phone call, I can have as many as twenty or thirty for the week or two weeks or month that we need them. And it's it's been great, great to deal with.
Jenny (31:00)
just think it's so promising to hear somebody of your scale kind of figure this out. I mean, I know most people of your scale have figured it out, but it just seems like I have a lot of conversations with people who are just like, where do I find people? How can I find people that want to come and work and do this? I think the stay at home mom thing is so cool. I was actually just having a consultation with a farmer who had two stay at home moms work for her.
And she was kind of feeling a little frustrated because she wanted to be flexible with them, but they couldn't start until nine. But she wanted to start harvesting traditional cut flower crops earlier in the morning. And I was just like, is it really the end of the world if you start at nine and you get several of them so you're done by 11? So you can have that opportunity for them to work.
you know, is it the end of the world if you start harvesting at nine versus six? And she was like, I'd never thought about that before. And I was like, there you go. And so now that's what she does. And it seems to be working really well for her. So it's really cool to hear that you have been employing that.
Karl (32:10)
Yeah, and and and to piggyback
on that, like what we have done is our full time staff, they actually do the harvesting early in the morning and a lot of it is or some of it is done by time the women arrive and then they do the processing part in the greenhouse. And it works really well for us because by three in the afternoon, a lot of times all the hard work is is been done and all we're doing is packing in the cooler.
for trucks leaving early the following morning. So we don't really need that many people for just packing carts and boxes and all that stuff. So, you know, they are really there for those crunch hours that we really need a lot of people. We don't really need a lot of people early in the morning or later in the afternoon.
Jenny (32:54)
That's perfect. I'm so glad to hear that that's been working out. Now, what about your philosophy on retaining great employees once you have found?
Karl (33:08)
We've never
I've never had to think about that question before. I I guess Pardon?
Jenny (33:15)
But you have people who, sorry,
you have people who've been working for you for years, right?
Karl (33:22)
We do. well I shouldn't say that for years. I would say our longest standing employee has really only been with us for you know, ten years or so. It's not like we have had employees That's a long time. Okay. So but
Jenny (33:37)
That's a long time, Carl. That's a long time. Most flower farmers,
they're like one season and done.
Karl (33:49)
no no no no we we have employees and even for our our our temp employees like even though that they have summers off and they go to another job for the summer months they're actually always fighting to come back and they can't wait for September to roll around. I I don't wanna toot my own horn, but people have always
wanted to work and and enjoyed working for us. We've we've always tried to make it, you know, you know, a good working environment. So I I guess by doing the work and and and being kind and and working alongside your employees and doing the exact same tasks that they do, we're really big on here. I I've had it where
you know, a s a Saturday, Saturday cruise sorting snowball viburnum with the students on a on a Saturday and I was right there, you know, I was the one, all right, is this stem fifty centimeter, sixty centimeter, eighty centimeter? I was in there and bunching and and it was fun. We had the radio blaring 'cause it was a Saturday and we were all chatting and and we got it all done. So work alongside your employees.
Jenny (35:04)
Yeah, I think that's great. I'm asking you this because I know that you have had great employee retention and I know that people love working for you. And I hear from flower farmers all the time that they struggle to get people and they struggle to retain them. And so I know that it does sound a little oversimplified when you say it. You're like, well, I'll just do the work alongside them and make it
Karl (35:26)
Right. Yeah yeah.
Jenny (35:28)
a fun, good working environment for them. But
You seem like the person to me who really prioritizes making sure that they enjoy their job and the work.
Karl (35:39)
Yeah, and and also if if I go back to we'll go back to the temp agency that we use. primarily they're all Vietnamese workers. so play to their strengths and the retention is and this is what we do all the time with them is those kind of people, with their eth ethneticity, is that the right word? Close enough? All right. you cannot give them
A list of tasks for the day. So you cannot give them a list saying, go to this part of the farm and cut me five pails of this, and then go to this other part of the farm and cut me five pails of that, and then bring them all into the cooler, and then grab these five pails and process them into these lengths. They cannot do that. What they can do is I can put them in a field of pussywillow.
That is 25 acres in size. And I can bring them out on a Monday morning and say, This is how I want it harvested. And this is what you're gonna be doing for the next five days, for the next month, for the next three months until the field is complete. And they will go out there and they will do an amazing job and cut it exactly the way you want it. And whether it's two feet of snow on the ground.
They will be out there with a smile on the face and they love it. So you have to, when you're hiring, you have to play to their strengths. And so, you know, if if I was trying to force these Vietnamese workers to do something that they're not capable of doing, my results would be poor. But playing to their strengths, they're doing things that them
The mundane things that everyone well else would go start crazy doing, they absolutely love and do an amazing job. So that's where I think you can play with, you know, some of your retention with employees. You have to play with what they are good at.
Jenny (37:48)
Yeah, learning different management styles is what I got from that as well. Like maybe
Karl (37:54)
Yes.
Jenny (37:54)
someone doesn't want to be managed a specific way and you have to kind of learn maybe a different management style to make that relationship work. So that's really, I am so interested in this because I feel like as you were saying, oh, you can't tell somebody go do this, this and this. I was like, oh, that's exactly what I do with my employees. But
Karl (38:14)
Right. Right.
Jenny (38:16)
Different management styles, different people. So that's so interesting.
Karl (38:21)
Yeah, and even I give an example of our summer students. I started this actually a couple weeks ago where I we all have iPhones. Our students all have their phones on them. I am okay with them carrying their phones during the day. if I see them on them, I'll yell at But I just started a a group chat. It's called Best Employees Ever. And because they start early, sometimes I don't want to get out of bed early. I don't want to be out of bed at five o'clock in the morning and start work at six.
So at eight o'clock the night before, I give them a list of directions for the day. But what's nice is they're all on the group chat. They can all respond back and forth as employees on the chat, and they all receive the instructions. So they're accountable to everyone. So everyone is involved, everyone knows the instructions. If someone forgets, well, it's on your phone. And so and I see it's neat where
I see my son who's managing them, they're chatting back and forth. Hey, this crew goes there, that crew that goes there, this is what you're gonna doing this morning. So I kinda get an overall view as the employer of what they're doing when I'm sipping my morning coffee at seven o'clock in the morning.
Jenny (39:34)
That sounds great.
Karl (39:36)
But you have to be okay with them carrying their phones. So there's there's pros and cons to everything. There may be times where they're checking their Instagram in the middle of the field while they're supposed to be hoeing. It it comes with the territory. It has to be a give and take.
Jenny (39:53)
Yeah, there's trade-offs to every decision you
Karl (39:55)
That's right.
Jenny (39:56)
make as well. Yeah. I think that's great. And all of our employees carry their phones with them. so we use, like, we always ask, like, if you don't feel comfortable, like, we have a farm phone here you can use, but, we use our task management software, and they all have access to it on their phones. And that works really well for us. And, like, you know,
I'm working with mostly grown adults and they're like, no, not to be scrolling on Instagram when there's stuff to get done. yeah, think managing people was one thing that was really hard for me as I started growing my business. Because I would rather be in the field cutting flowers than managing a group of people to do that and this thing and the other thing. And so for me, that was a huge learning curve and learning how to
how to learn what someone's management style is, learn about leadership and what a good leader looks like and how to have hard conversations in a respectful way. That was all really hard for me. And I think it's something that a lot of people don't realize is coming as they are growing their business.
What?
Karl (41:11)
Yeah. It
my father is very much like yourself and he was the founder of the company. I think there's a reason a lot of the founders of companies, you know, and we're talking about the floral industry of the floral industry, are I I don't want to say well, lacking in lacking communication. they just very much it was only them in the beginning. And when it's one person starting in the beginning.
And everything is riding on what they are doing and trying to achieve. they have a feeling where it has to be right because it's the difference of whether I'm gonna have food on my table next week and a roof over my head. So when that is in the forefront, communication goes out the window because it just has to be done. You you don't have time or flexibility to
Deal with an employee. So that was very much my father in the beginning. The scalability and the expansion of our operation really has come through the second generation who saw the beginning and realized by watching what needed to change to flourish.
Jenny (42:33)
I've never heard someone put what I had felt into words like that. So thank you for doing that. Like when you said the founder, everything relied on you. Like if something goes wrong, it's a matter of like, are you gonna be able to buy groceries this week or not? Like, is the business gonna fail or is it gonna succeed? And founders carry this immense pressure all the time. Like I know I feel it all the time, especially as we're growing and we're hiring more people, like the pressure.
feels more than ever and it is a skill to be learned to try to learn how to manage that. So, yeah, I've never heard anybody describe it like that before, really, you know, put that into words. So that was cool.
Karl (43:15)
Yeah, and and I'm
I'm second generation. By the time I joined the company, it it was it was established. You know, when I joined, when we walked in as siblings, my dad had gotten to the point where he finally felt like it arrived. Where, you know, us kids, we could come in and we could make a decision. And even if that decision messed up and say we lost ten thousand dollars because we wanted to try something new and different.
It wasn't enough to throw the company into bankruptcy. So us as a secondary street, we came into the luxury of being able to try new things and and and do that where my father could not. It was very much this has to work, because if it doesn't work, we are in trouble.
Jenny (44:03)
Yeah. So looking back over that experience in the last, you know, 30 years, what's a decision that maybe, maybe seems small at the time, but completely changed the trajectory of the business or maybe something that you implemented that had a really big effect on how everything was going.
Karl (44:25)
Okay, so I look back to about seven or eight years ago. we had some we had employees working here. and the husband and wife they emigrated from Holland about fifteen years previous, so they were actually very new immigrants to Canada from Holland. And he was a grower in Holland before he immigrated. And he retired, he was also a flower grower, and I served on
The flower auction board with him in Toronto. So we got to know each other quite well. And I called him one night and I asked him, There's a big show coming up in Holland. If I pay for your plane ticket, would you come with me and show me around Holland? Very well knowing that he still speaks fluent Dutch and he's from the area. And he said, Yeah, absolutely. My dad still lives there. We're gonna stay at his house.
We have a spare bedroom upstairs in the old dairy barn that we converted, and we're gonna rent a car, and this is what we're gonna do. So he took me to the show, and little did I know, he was looking forward to it because the nursery district in Holland, he grew up with all those guys that own those businesses. He went to high school with them all, and so I had an automatic shoe into about 10 or 12 different operations.
Where we just showed up and we had coffee and I had an immediate connection with all these growers in Holland. And that is where I met Peter Colster from Colster in Holland. And we sat down and we have worked so closely together over the last six or seven years with brand new varieties coming to Holland. And that is where our snowberry production originally came from.
Our new varieties of smoke bush, and a bunch of different varieties that we grow now. And it's it's been a life-changing. It has immensely changed our product lineup and what we're able to grow and be first to market with a lot of these varieties. So that is one small thing that I never thought.
thought would amount to where it has become.
Jenny (46:49)
Let's talk about relationships for a second then, because I know that you are a very relationship-driven business. I know you have good relationships with your customers, your wholesalers, and I talk to flower farmers all the time who, I don't know what it is, but a lot of times they feel afraid to talk to people or nervous to put themselves out there or develop really good relationships with different people. But from everything I've experienced,
Business is all about your relationships with your customers and with your employees. It's relationship driven if you want to have a successful business that is resilient. So tell me a little bit more about that and how you feel about that.
Karl (47:36)
So I am I am very much a people person. So that that helps quite a bit with with communication. And I was always big on you know, to get personal. About 10 years ago, I did have a huge anxiety attack and panic attack, and I was down and out for half a year. I did not work. But what that taught me getting better and working through that was
I did not want to be 85 years old someday and looking back on my life being, man, I wish I would have done that. You know, what's stopping me? And so I really focused on exploring and networking with different people along the way. And so I looked at attending trade shows. every year I tried to attend, you know, one or two trade shows across the world, just to be out there.
You know, I might be selfish a a little bit, but I look back and I figured, you know, if I can meet one or two people that can really help me or, you know, work together and I have their contacts that I can stuff in my pocket and I'll have those for the rest of my life. I might not need them for five years or ten years, but there might be and and vice versa. You know, I have a lot of people that I have met over the years. Look at us.
We're recording a podcast because we met in Maine, because we took that initiative to, you know, put ourselves out there kind of into a scary world, but look at the rewards that can come of it.
Jenny (49:21)
Yeah, exactly. Now, it's totally OK if you don't want to talk about this because I know it's personal. But I do want to talk about briefly how owning a business, any business, especially a farming, anything in agriculture, stress is just a part of it. And a lot of people, think, to wish away the stress. mean, obviously, we all want to wish away the stress, right? We wish there wasn't. But at some point, I feel like I just really had to accept like,
If I wanna do the things I wanna do and I want, that stress is just gonna be a part of it. How do you feel about that? And are there any ways that you have found over the years where, you know, the stress has gotten easier for you or maybe you've found different ways to manage it or accept it? I don't know.
Karl (50:13)
With the expansion of the farm, the stresses have changed. you know, as my roles change. So where I was once very concerned with how this plant looks or the way it's growing, with the expansion that now becomes somebody else's stress.
who's in charge of that? And so, you know, so now my stresses have become very I my stresses are not day-to-day stresses anymore. filling the order, can we harvest enough? Can is this gonna work? You know, my stresses have now become very much overhead stresses. you know, the planning, the the legacy part of the business.
The back structure of the business. so my stresses are now thinking a year out, two years out, five years out. I give an example of the expansion of the farm up north. my stresses now are last year we had a tile drain project that had to be completed. now I'm working through plans for
Building a structure up there because we're gonna have to have facilities up there, cold storage is gonna have to go up there, logistics are gonna have to be dealt with. How do we get product from A to B eight hours away? Are we gonna have a team up there? Are we gonna go back and forth with employees from this farm? So that is where my stresses have morphed from day-to-day operation to
Big overhead stresses.
Jenny (52:10)
Sounds like a lot of logistics.
Karl (52:13)
It it will be. But
but I'll be eighty five years old someday, Lord willing, and and and looking back and saying, Guess what? We did it and I didn't run scared and we actually tried it. Hey, it could be a complete flop for all I know yet, but we we we put one foot in front of
Jenny (52:28)
think so.
Karl (52:28)
the other.
Jenny (52:30)
You know, I have sort of
I mean, just from the outside looked at farms that have these multiple farms. Like there's a few down here that have these big peony farms and they start south and just move their crew up north. And it's so fascinating to me. And at one point early on in my career, I was like, you know, I think I could do something like that. That would be really cool. And then I started to go down the rabbit hole and I started thinking about all the things you just said. And I was like, you know, maybe right now not the best idea in my stage of life.
And I kind of wrote it off because there are so many logistics and so many things to think about, but it is so cool. what you're embarking on, what you're doing. I'm excited to hear about it in a few years because it's awesome.
So I asked you about one of the decisions you made that seemed small but had a huge impact. I'm curious next about a mistake that you've made that is haunting you still. Maybe you can help some other flower farmers on your journey. Is there any mistakes that you've made? Obviously, every mistake is a learning opportunity, but is there anything that sticks in your mind as something that has changed the way you look at farming or business?
Karl (53:52)
I wouldn't really I don't really have any mistakes that I regret. I'd like to call them learning opportunities. How's that? I have done
Jenny (54:07)
Yes.
Karl (54:08)
I have done a million things wrong. from ordering the wrong things to putting the wrong pre emergent down and killing plants.
To all kinds of stuff. I if you're a flower grower learning, you know there's multitudes of the multitudes of things that could go wrong while you're trying to grow a flower that and immediately dies the moment you cut it. You just use your imagination. If if you've done it on your flower farm, I've probably done it here. You know, I don't look at them as mistakes, I just
It's it's only a mistake if you don't learn from it. you know, and I and this morphs down to how we treat our employees. You they're gonna make mistakes. It it's inevitable inevitable that they're gonna make mistakes. Take the time. Did you learn from it? Are you gonna do it again? Why did this go wrong? What did you do for this to happen? And explain it to them. You can't just be like, don't do that ever again.
Well you know, so you know, show them, take take the time. You you almost have to you're almost a kindergarten teacher.
That philosophy, you know, these people are coming in pretty green. They don't know, you know, and you can't give them instructions while you're walking away with your back towards them down the row of flowers. You literally have to show them.
Jenny (55:46)
Yes. And I love that you said it's all just learning opportunities because people can get so discouraged. I mean, we've all been discouraged after we make a giant mistake before or things don't go the way that we want them to. But when you learn from that, that's really the only way to keep going, right? Is to learn from that. And
Karl (56:03)
Yeah. Yeah, I I
have I ha I have the pre-mergent. That's a mistake I made last week. The hydrangea flowers
Jenny (56:11)
Hahaha
Karl (56:12)
were just with the weather we've had and the extra fertilizer I've given the flowers were out just a little bit further than they normally are this time of year. I went down the rows with pre-merge to keep the weeds clean while we're harvesting the flowers for the next two months. I burned all the flowers about twelve inches up. The top ones will be fine.
But guess what I get to look at every time I go down my driveway? Brown flowers. So guess what Carl's gonna have the employees do next week? They're gonna go cut all the brown flowers off so Carl doesn't have
Jenny (56:42)
Ha!
Karl (56:42)
to look at anymore. But hopefully next year I've learned my lesson and I don't
Jenny (56:45)
You
Karl (56:47)
do it again next year, and I I'm more in tune with the the bloom size of the flowers and I'll make my adjustments accordingly.
Jenny (56:57)
Yeah, but that's the thing. even however many, I don't know how many years have you been farming? How old are you? You don't have to answer that question, like,
Karl (57:02)
My whole my whole life.
Jenny (57:04)
right. Yeah, I've also been farming my whole life, but every year is a different circumstance. Every single year is different and there's different things that you're doing. And I make mistakes every year as well and learning opportunities. And so I think it's
Karl (57:19)
Right.
Jenny (57:19)
important for people listening that when you mess up, you just keep going. And it's like, okay.
get past that. But also what you said with the employees, there have been so many instances where I've had employees do things and I'm just like, in the moment, you see red, right? But then you take a breath in, then it's like, okay, you just explain. And a lot of times they just truly didn't know or they truly didn't realize. And once they learn that, they're never going to make the mistake again. I mean, if they're a decent person, an employee, which most people
Karl (57:54)
Right.
Jenny (57:54)
are.
So it's definitely something that I think is a cost of doing business, right?
Karl (58:04)
It it is, it is. I can give I can give a really real life example. This spring we were like I mentioned earlier, we were sorting snowball viburnum on the bench and we had a disease issue in the spring, so we were literally throwing half our flowers out. I had two employees that got the memo that they were supposed to throw the junk out on the floor and while they were sorting and one employee that did not. And so what happening was by time it got to the bunching line, there was a lot of times being eight good ones in a bunch.
And two bad ones. And so now we're talking about all these pails that ended up in the cooler. And each bunch had between seven and eight good ones and two to three bad ones. And each bunch, five bunches in a pail, times hundreds of pails. So I had to walk this employee into the cooler and explain the work involved to correct this issue. Now these hundreds of pails have to come out of the cooler. We have to bunch we have to take these bunches apart. We have to redo this.
And some of those pails ended up to customers and the credits and the claims. And so just to have a real life discussion, a decision that was made, and this could have been on my end not explaining properly. That is also
Jenny (59:22)
Mm-hmm.
Karl (59:23)
in the equation. You know, I am not a blame game. The blame is just as much mine as it is the employee.
So here's a real life example of the magnitude on how a simple instruction mix up can just screw up a whole week's worth of work. So this is real life coming from a guy that's done it for
Jenny (59:41)
Yes, that's...
Karl (59:45)
forty years.
Jenny (59:47)
Yes, but I think that's something I have learned in business is that as a business owner, when something goes wrong, it's my fault. Everything is my fault. And
Karl (59:59)
Always.
Jenny (59:59)
it's hard for some people to accept that, that you as the business owner, you are actually responsible for everything that happens. And when mix ups like that happen, you have to say, I have to take some blame for this because maybe I didn't explain this.
correctly or maybe I didn't have a system in place that was good enough. And it hurts sometimes when you realize things happen that are your fault, but everything is your fault as the business owner. And it is like a crazy acceleration in like personal growth when you go through that kind of stuff. Just learning how to handle it. So, yeah. OK, Carl, we could talk for hours, but I
want to ask you one more question. I feel like it's kind of a cliche question, but coming from you specifically, because you've been doing this forever, I want to ask you if you could give a newer flower farmer a piece of advice. Think somebody who's in year three to seven, and they want to do this for the long haul. Not growing advice, but business advice. What would that one piece of advice be?
Karl (1:01:16)
My advice would be to search out someone in the community. it doesn't even have to be someone that you know personally, but search out somebody that knows the nuts and bolts of business. it could even be a chartered accountant, somebody that knows money.
take them out for breakfast. Pay for their breakfast. Take them out, you know, for supper once a month. It's a cheap, you know, thing, a cheap expense to gain their knowledge. I was very fortunate that I have a father that is very in tune with money. and so that was very much.
Handed down to us generation over generation, and he has taught me so much. if I did not have him and his expertise of that in my life, I would be most definitely be searching somebody out in the accounting world. do I dare say like a financial advisor? somebody that you can talk to on a regular basis.
Just for any questions and they will have, you know, hopefully they can relay information on the business structure and the back end. And as you grow and expand, there are financial things that have to be put in place earlier than later, so that if you do have a next generation coming in, things are in place.
Boy, we could open a whole nother podcast for another hour on legacy and future planning and all that stuff. And so that would be my advice to a newer grower in that three to seven looking to expand. that information is so, so, so valuable. You can do everything right growing flowers, but if you don't have the back end financial stuff right, it can be a complete disaster.
Jenny (1:03:40)
Yes, I love that you said that because I've seen like a theme of farmers saying something very similar to that. They have been in business for a while. Like my husband works for a larger agritourism farm and the father, well, actually the grandfather started it similar to your situation. They're now into the third, maybe even the fourth generation. I don't know, but they actually feel like a very similar to you or they have had this
great financial background and they have kind of invested in relationships with people and learned a lot about money and the business. And it has been so cool to see them succeed and this new generation taking over, taking what they've learned and just growing it like wildfire, honestly, because they have that background and that knowledge. And it's also really rewarding because this particular farm
hosts financial classes for all of their employees. So they have something like 250 high school and college students that work for them in the summer. And so they put on these financial classes for them, teaching them about basic investing and saving for retirement. And it's so rewarding and great to see them giving that back. actually, now that I'm talking about it, you just remind me a lot of them. And I hope to be able to give that to my kid someday.
I think it's great advice.
Karl (1:05:11)
Baby steps.
Jenny (1:05:13)
Baby steps, baby steps for sure. Well, Carl, thank you so much for coming on. Maybe we'll have to do another episode sometime about legacy and transition and family planning, all that stuff. I almost said family planning. think that's a different topic. But you guys know what I meant. Is there any last thing you'd want to share with us before we say bye for now?
Karl (1:05:37)
I just wanna thank everyone that's tuning in and listening. I I hope I could give some insight into what we're doing here. and I hope you enjoy this podcast and thank you Jenny for having me on.
Jenny (1:05:54)
Awesome, if people wanna connect with you, Carl, where can they find you?
Karl (1:05:58)
So people will laugh at this for a company that's been around for almost 50 years. we have zero website. We do not
Jenny (1:06:06)
You
Karl (1:06:07)
have a website for our company. if you're on social media, Green Park Nurseries, you can find us there. quick search will bring us up. that is very much what portrays our family life on the farm. It is not a page for product, product, product, product. It is simply a farmer.
in everyday life. You will see my kids, my wife, my autistic daughter. you'll see us planting pumpkins as a huge entire family when grandpa says it's time to go planting pumpkins. So very much a family affair on that page. And if you want to give a follow, we'd love to have you follow along.
Jenny (1:06:46)
Awesome. Thank you so much, Carl. It's been such a pleasure. So thanks again. And thanks, everyone, for listening to another episode. Don't forget, we publish new ones every Monday. So we'll see you next week. Same time, same place. Bye for now.
