Tony Bass is the CEO of Super Lawn Technologies and Tony Bass Consulting. He is the host of the Growth Summit.  He works with lawn and landscape business owners who would like to double profits or double sales in 12 to 24 months.

Tony will be teaching the implementation principles of the Automating Hiring Machine at this year's Growth Summit. His techniques have been used by small, large, new and old companies to attract high quality talent while screening out the bad hires, leaving the good ones. Count on case studies and reviews from existing clients in this presentation.

Dr. Allen is Professor of Landscape Management at Brigham Young University. Students enrolled in this program are required to complete courses in horticulture as well as landscape design, construction and management. Students complete a business minor as part of their degree. Dr. Allen is also an active scientist, researching seed performance under adverse conditions. He has published 90 articles in books, journals and internet outlets. Dr. Allen served as the first faculty member on the Professional Landcare Network’s Board of Directors from 2008-2014.

Dr. Allen will be sharing how to recruit college students into your lawn and landscape company. You could be one key person away from taking your company to a new level. Improve your chances of recruiting college-educated team members by attending this training class. Learn from one of the country's top educators in landscaping on how to find and recruit students and set up an internship program.

Jerry and his business associate started a design/build commercial landscape, irrigation and landscape maintenance firm in 1975 and sold it 28 years later. Jerry was chairman for the development of the Landscape Certified Landscape Technician Program for South Carolina and represented SC in the founding group developing the program for ALCA (now NALP) and was awarded Nurseryman of the Year in 1991. He was the first landscape contractor to receive this award.

Jerry is a successful estimator and entrepreneur who has bid hundreds of millions of dollars in landscape construction and maintenance projects, has consulted, and lectured for the Green Industry in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico,  Bahamas, and Guam on budgeting, overhead recovery, estimating and bidding, managing work crews and overall business management and planning. Jerry helped many small and mid-sized companies with financial success while working with Charles Vander Kooi as senior associate for 17 years. In these challenging times he guides his clients financial performance bringing with him the experience of guiding his own company through the difficult economy in the late 1970's.

Jack Scherer is founder and president of SALESTALENT, a sales performance agency that focuses on three key areas: Targeted Sales Recruiting...Customized Sales Training programs...and Sales Strategy Playbooks.

If you've ever wanted to hire someone to help you with sales in your company, you should listen to Jack. He has decades of experience in selling a wide variety of products, and for over a decade he's been helping companies find, recruit and hire salespeople for a variety of organizations.

Over the last 12 years, Jack and his company have worked with many types of businesses--in Technology/IT, healthcare, marketing, manufacturing, and many more. SALESTALENT delivers increased sales performance!!

Van Hoots is a commercial insurance broker. He has been working in the green industry for more than 30 years, and he is one of the greatest experts on insurance today.

Van will be talking about several mistakes companies are making in their insurance policies that are costing them thousands of dollars. Our review of over 300 commercial insurance policies for lawn & landscape companies has revealed serious mistakes in over 60% of those policies reviewed. The average mistake costs the business owner $3000 to $6000 per year in excess fees.

Van will help you to avoid overpaying on your insurance premiums by using a simple checklist, and will also help you to make sure you have proper coverage with no gaps in your policies. Additionally, Van will be teaching some of the language you'll need to manage your relationship with your insurance agents. This will be a very valuable session with Van!

Joe Palimeno has been an associate of Vander Kooi and Associates since 1998. He began his professional career learning the landscape construction business from the ground up, beginning with performing in the field, and eventually becoming sole owner of Ledden Palimeno Design Build Landscape Co.

After successfully implementing the effective cost recovery system and management approaches he learned from Charles Vander Kooi, his revenues and profits increased to a significant level, allowing Joe to travel the country making contractors profitable through private consultations, estimating workshops and lectures.

Ben is the Founder and Owner at Native Land Design. He will be sharing the process he has used to transform Native Land Design from a primarily residential design-build contracting company to a commercial lawn maintenance organization with three locations in Texas. If you've ever wanted to learn about how to sell commercial lawn maintenance work, you should listen to Ben because he's been there and done that in a very big way.

Richard "Dick" Bare owns one of the largest & most profitable lawn care operations in the USA. He serves THOUSANDS of home owners with weed control and fertilization programs. Dick has built amazingly efficient operations that moved him off the truck and into the role of CEO decades ago. He will talk about the key moments in his career when he had to change to go to the next level. Count on great jokes along the way. Dick always makes me laugh!

Social Media Marketing Expert Sherman Standberry will show you step-by-step how to find high-paying customers and hard-working employees using cutting edge social media marketing techniques.  This presentation will open your eyes to the lowest-cost and most-direct methods available in the entire world of marketing.  You’ll understand the process and be armed with new techniques to grow your company.

Barrett Ersek has been in the lawn and landscape industry for many years and has been tremendously successful. He is now the Founder and CEO of Holganix, an organic fertilizer supply company. But he is helping people grow more than just green lawns.

Barrett's company is passionate about helping people grow healthier landscapes and lawns as well as more profitable and healthy businesses. He will be talking about how to use organic fertilizer applications to build a recurring revenue with high margins using the microbiology of healthy soil.

Barrett will also be talking about how to differentiate your business from the others out there. It's one thing to do a great job for your clients, and it's another to be able to market your unique product or service in your marketplace. He's going to introduce a concept called "The Purple Cow". Listen to the video as Barrett explains this concept. This is going to be a great session!

If you want to accomplish big things in the lawn and landscaping business, then you've got to learn how to become a big planner. Estimating is the science of arriving at what a job will cost your company in the future. But even the best laid plans sometimes will change.

Brad Johnson will share his experience planning a "five month vacation" away from his lawn care company to hike 2175 miles on the Appalachian Trail. For many of us, leaving our company for 5 months would sound like a disaster... but not for Brad! Brad will explain how preparing and planning for his five-month sabbatical actually helped his company to double in sales and drive profits to record levels. Brad will also share how he raised over $100,000 to support 5 charities.

Just recently, Brad sold his lawn care company for a handsome profit, accomplishing yet another major life goal by building a business that works for him not just because of him. Join us to learn how you can achieve your goals using YOUR lawn and landscape company.

Internationally known keynote speaker and legendary landscape industry consultant Charles Vander Kooi sets the stage with lessons every business owner needs when it comes to building the perfect team.  This message will be amazingly entertaining, possibly offensive to slacking employees but right on target for the rugged independent business owner.  You will walk away with a specific game plan on who you need to hire, who you need to fire and who you better avoid or you could lose your entire company!