The work was hard, but worth it

We were examining the needs of our business and becoming more aware of our limitations as leaders.

We wanted the company to become more professional and more structured. We also felt a bit stagnant, like we needed some new ideas.

Our industry is known to be behind the times and Rob brought corporate insights and a business mindset.

He acted as a mediator and helped us achieve alignment by asking pointed questions to help us clarify expectations, roles, goals, and tasks.

In over 10 years of working together, we grew a lot – both as humans and business owners.

Having someone to be accountable to meant that hard stuff that would be easy to put off – like difficult conversations - got done.

Rob was never afraid to challenge us. He asked good questions to make us dig deeper.

He was honest with his feedback and didn’t hold back. Even though he always gave that feedback with humanity and dignity (even when we messed up)

The work was hard, but worth it.

We sometimes joke that we’re “too” professional now – we have a robust corporate structure for a small business.

The business has better financial reporting. We used to try to manage through a “rear view window” – seeing financials as a year end report card – and only looking at them after it was too late to change anything. Now we review our numbers weekly. This allows us to be proactive and make decisions based on facts.

Rob’s mentorship helped us weather some really hard times.

This is a tough business with low margins that are constantly being squeezed and high labor requirements with people not always available.

Others in our industry went under, we’re not sure we’d still be here if it hadn’t been for Rob.

~ Neil & Tommy Marek, Magnolia Gardens