One Big Fat Outtake w/ Taylor Pike | Ep. 161

In this audio only episode of the Biz/Dev podcast, David sits down with long time friend and local businessman, Taylor Pike, owner of Witherspoon Rose Culture, the premier source for roses, products, services and knowledge throughout the southeast. They chat family, legacy, sustainability, succession plans in one big fat outtake of an episode.

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David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:03] David and Matt: Hi everyone. Welcome to the BizDev podcast, the podcast about developing your business. I am David, your host, and I am joined today for the first time. This is a live in person recording. We are in a little podcast studio. It's not ours. I do not own Star Wars here. But we're trying to tell Taylor's a friend of mine.

Who also happens to be a business owner and he has agreed to be a guinea pig on our first in person kind of show and so we're still learning, so I'm sure this is going to be magical. Thank you for being here. One big fat outtake. Yes fair, and I've already apologized to my editors because this is going to go swimming.

I have no doubt. What could possibly go wrong? What could possibly go wrong? How are you? I am well. You are well. Yeah, a lot of balls juggled. December used to not seem like a thing. As a kid, I got four kids. As a kid, it was like sprint to Christmas. That's all you can really think. That was the exciting time of the year.

Thanksgiving, a couple of weeks of school, Christmas. And then something changes when you become a grownup and it's you don't really understand what all your parents were doing behind the scenes. Oh yeah. I try to explain that. I use the analogy of camping. It's not an analogy. It's true.

When we take our kids camping, They think it's this great time like hey, what if we went camping for one day, right? Like it's this easy breezy thing. Yeah Boom, and they go and we have no idea. It's like the Swan. They don't see the legs kicking. Yeah And my wife this is way too much information. My wife was always wanted an RV Okay, and but she's now realizing as an adult that her memories the fond memory She has a growing up her parents big RV years She has that childlike.

Yeah. It just all was easy and fun and she would go and they would sleep and they'd be in different places. Never seen her mom cooking and cleaning constantly. And I think Christmas is a lot like that because our kids get gifts and they're magical and they love it and they don't realize the stress it took for the last six, eight weeks to get to that moment.

And I don't know if technology has caused that problem to get worse or better. Cause it's oh yeah, we just put it in a cart, just keep building and then click them by and we're done. Back in the day, it was like run to the mall, run to that mall, run to the one in Greensboro. I, to me, Amazon has changed Christmas completely.

I love shopping on Amazon because I can spread it out. We'll add stuff to the cart, and we'll buy them in pieces, so it's not this massive thing. We can spread it out. It's not as I say that I don't get stressed very often. I'm just a relatively low key guy. And My wife though insists upon being involved like I knew there were years ago I did all no one my kids don't even know this I did all of the christmas show right for years and years because she would Yeah, get anxious.

I was like girl just I got this. Yeah, we had lists. Everyone sends us lists And now just like bam done. She's like I want to be involved Okay, so now we have to do it where she doesn't freak out. Yeah, and we still get it done and all that fun stuff So now we have dates, which is actually Dates where we go, but it's all shopping is now at starbucks and amazon.

Yeah, so get this. Okay Not the idealized It's snowfalling. Sure, yeah. Oh, it's cold. Bundle up. No. You're like you get the panic look and the phone's dying and the people are Yeah. No. I've convinced that one, almost all of the famous Christmas songs that everyone knows.

One, I find it interesting. They were mostly written by Jewish people, which I find so fascinating. White Christmas. I'm dreaming of what's I'll be home for Christmas. Yeah. All written by Jewish people, which I find just so funny. Yeah. But I believe they were all talking about New York. Yeah, for sure.

I don't. And except for ones that talk about, there's not going to be snow cause it's, yeah, they're in LA. But it's just the dream Americans have of Christmas is New York city. Yeah. It's white and it's beautiful. No one's ever done it. And no one, when you live anywhere else, I grew up in Dallas and Christmas was, it was cold, but there was no, no snow on the ground.

There was no, just everything was dead. It was great. Yeah. All right. Yeah. The reason I wanted you on here, I think you're a great, besides we're friends and you got to deal with this insanity. You run a business different than anyone else we've had on the show. In that, you are involved in a family business.

I talk about C12 and our business group pretty often on the podcast. And one of the things that differentiates me and my company versus almost everyone, not everyone, but almost everyone in C12, is the fact that I don't know what six months from now looks like when most of c12 have family run businesses that's been around for 50 plus years So the idea that the company's going to fail is completely foreign because it's always I mean in your case your grandfather started your business first off I should say because no one knows what you do you run witherspoon rose culture, right?

Which does fancy rose gardens and maintains them. That's a safe bet I have one. It's lovely. You call it leggy because my rose is 47 feet tall. And actually one is. The rest of them are sleeping. But anyway So you do that and you guys have been doing that since when? 1951. 1951. So you have never known, because you're not that old.

You've never known a world that business didn't exist. Yeah. What is that like? I would say, take it for granted for sure. But the, I think the other side of the coin, like you were getting at, it's you don't worry about, oh man, are we going to make it next year?

Yeah. My grandfather never had any aspirations for this. And I didn't learn this until two or three years ago. The things that just come out in random conversations with my dad is like, Oh, this is the house that your grandparents started the business. It's we've driven past this house every day for 20 years, and just now we find out that's where the business started.

I know a lot of the family business, especially the older ones, the original idea was completely different. Yeah. I sold lawnmowers out the back of my truck, and now it's this massive thing. What was the original idea? I think this was his idea. His original idea. But the business, he was partners with a guy who did tree work.

So he'd get up and cut out limbs and do all that kind of stuff. And they also had a about 10 or 15 rose gardens that they cared for. So again, like you're getting, it never started from zero rose garden care to now 2, 700 customers. It was a handful, but the main thing was doing a tree service.

The guy who I guess founded that company, hired my grandfather he fell out of a tree and died. And so then my grandfather kind of talked with his wife and sorted out, how to transition that. And he said, I don't want to be up in the trees. Especially after that. Yeah. Thank you. That was a big relief.

It would have been a big relief. I'd have been a part of that decision, but yeah, we're almost as tall as a tree. It really wouldn't have been a problem, but for some reason I'm scared of heights. That's ironic. How do a study on people who are tall, people who are short, and the fear of heights. How do you stand up?

I'm a brave man. I'm a very brave man. He's sitting right now. You don't know this, but he's 6'8 Yeah. I'm 5'6 Whenever we stand next to each other, because we've known each other now for Yeah, probably yeah. Arnold and Danny DeVito. It's not far. Arnold's still not as tall as you are.

So it's not, he, I think Danny DeVito's 5'3 so he's almost my height. But you were six inches taller than, so it's worse than twins. It's worse than twins. Anyway. Yeah, so he started the company at that point just to focus on roses. And a handful of customers at that time. And he was like, yeah, I was paying the bills and making money.

And then my dad married into the business. He, my mom got married at 78 because it was your mother's father's mother's father's company. So from that point, he'd been doing it for a while from 51 to 78 and I think he just was like, yeah, I mean I've done what I wanted to do and I'm ready to stop doing work like off more.

Yeah. And so my parents officially bought it in the eighties from what I understand. And I think at that point my dad was like, it's fun. I love the customers. It's always been how we got the energy that has driven the business is, the love for the customers. 

 One of the things we talk about a lot with entrepreneurs, startups, newer companies is what we call the slog, which is the time of when you start your company to the time anyone cares, which can be anywhere from months to years.

But your company has been around for so long. Is that even a thing? Or are you saying each city is a slog? I think it, yeah, I think it's each city. One that has been a really long journey for us is Asheville. There was a lady that was doing roses up in Asheville. She called us, said she's done.

Don't want to be a part of this anymore. I'd be happy to sell you the customer. So we're like, great. And she's, I'll stay on and I'll help you out. And I think once we gave her the check, she was just like, See, which is fine. Maybe that was her goal anyway. But it's a dense town. There's plenty of money.

There's plenty of golf courses. Like our target clientele is retirement age, had some kind of a life change, empty nesters, retirement, those kinds of situations sold the business near golf course and near water. Asheville checks every box garden friendly. Yeah, everything there is Asheville, but for whatever reason, it's just no, no energy.

I don't know if it's because People are coming in or whatever, we were going there taking care of Biltmore. We'd get up four o'clock in the morning to get there and get out of there before the people came. We're been coined the phrase garden ghost where we just, you don't even know we're there, but you can tell that we've come, that kind of stuff.

And yeah, it's just a lot of hard work put in to grow in an area that just seems to like, There's too many hippies. Maybe that's what it is. I love everyone in Asheville. Dude, I love Asheville. If you've never been, one, you should go. But, Asheville is a town that is, it's like Austin and Texas.

It's different than everywhere else. It's unique. And it is it's own place and it's full of hippies. Which is awesome, like the best restaurants, the best music, it's a fun, great town. But it is very different than anywhere else in North Carolina. But you know Richmond, we started that area later and we've grown bigger.

Maybe about the same time. I think we're at 70 or so customers in Richmond. And that's a long ways away. We have nothing between here and there. Just Richmond, and just getting that pocket of community, maybe that's what it is. Maybe folks in Asheville are just different, but yeah, the slog is getting it from three to five customers to, making that trip worthwhile.

It takes some time. So you're just losing, and you're driving. The guys don't love it because they're in the truck riding like, for example, we've got a few customers at Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia. It's out in the middle of nowhere. Have you ever been out there? No. Pretty town, pretty area. You drive all the way out there, twisty back roads, one lane, two lane roads, all that stuff.

Do your job for 25 30 minutes, get back in the truck, drive again. And so you're just ugh, how is that cost effective? The hope is that it becomes cost effective. So you're losing money now. Yeah, loss leading, yeah, in a sense. But you're hoping that guy has neighbors and we'll start talking about it.

Do you do anything special when you arrive? I've got one customer, I've got a beachhead, as it were. Yeah. Do you do anything to make it, and how many do you need? Five, ten, fifty? What? The typical so it depends on the size of the client. So how many plants you have is how much you're going to pay.

Okay. If you have seven bushes, 20 bushes, somewhere like that, it's going to be a struggle. But like this customer, they're ultimate customers, they subscribe to all of our services. They've got a nice size garden. It's fantastic. It's in a good golfing community, on the water. Hey, what do you know, we checked three boxes at one time.

This is a, you would think this is a unicorn, but it's also the vacation area. So do you go and do, like, whenever someone's coming to clean the windows for our neighbor down the street, I'll get a flyer saying, hey, we're coming into your area. Do you want someone to clean your windows? And we're like, no, but, do you guys do that kind of thing?

Is that a growth strategy for you? I think so. I think that's where we are self limiting. Out of that just respect for the neighborhoods that we serve. I'll give you a little backstory. So when we would drive home from work, we lived, three or four miles away from the office.

We drive the same back road every time. My dad driving down the road every car we passed, he waved to every single car. He didn't know any of these people, but the same kind of thing translated. When you're in the neighborhood, we tell the guys like, wave to the neighbors that you're passing. Everybody's a neighbor to my dad.

That's just the way he looks at life. That's a nice way. And so in that same sense, you're in these neighborhoods, no soliciting sign on the door. No soliciting sign when you drive. Everybody's some of them are high profile neighborhoods, Governor's Club's got, everybody from Michael Jordan to Marc Jacobson it's everybody in there.

And not everybody wants to, not that they might be in the windows, but, you run the risk of looking like a sightseer. In a 10, 000 square foot home neighborhood, that kind of place. And we try to just, keep our head down and just grind and hope that our reputation will proceed us.

That's, I would say that's the growth strategy. So we leave money on the table and not being aggressive. I would say that would be the answer to your question. It's the difference if you convert it to a text term tech term it's like the difference between going to a site and you getting smashed with a pop up immediately when you get on the site.

It's I can't even, I don't even know if I want to see the site, but I get, Oh, coupon, save 25, store buy. I'm gone. That would be the hanging door hangers on everybody's house, sticking signs in the front yard. We're more of like the, we're here. Browse our site, enjoy it, look at our neighbor, look at their garden from across the backyard, ask the neighbor what's going on, show up at the Christmas party, ask about what's happening.

It's, we're a slow play, being that we've been around for as long as we have been, it gives me personally the confidence to okay, let's not be aggressive, let's not rush into any mass marketing schemes or anything like that, so the next obvious question of being in a family business is, What's it like being in a family business?

Like drama. Not specifics and that's fine. But yeah, like I would imagine like I don't my wife works with us and that's lovely. Yeah But I don't have family members and my son, when my son did work for me, I purposefully put multiple layers between me and him because I thought that would get weird.

So you can't avoid family. Your dad, which this, now he's not, but he for a long time, he was your boss. Your sister works for the company. Your mom was involved somehow in the company. You can't avoid it. Now you're not as bad as somewhere. It's like cousins and it's insane. But how does that dynamic work?

Do you, are you able to say, getting a fight at the office and then go home and have Thanksgiving, like, how does that work? Yeah. So when my youngest sister came into business, so I guess we reset a little bit. This is all I ever wanted to do. So like day one, my school bus would ride past the office and we're just looking out the window like, man, I'm just ready to be out.

I'm ready to be over there doing all that stuff. I love it. It's in my blood. My younger sister was headed towards kind of kinesiology, physical trainer, that kind of stuff. And it was a lot of hoops you got to go through. And I felt like she, maybe she lost the love for that in the meantime.

And so she came to me one time, I was like, yeah, I'd like to come work. What do you think? And I told her that point, we sat down in my office. I remember clear as day. I was like, You're going to see your dad at the absolute worst. There's no way to avoid it. No more hero worship, right? Yeah. All that bubble has been burst.

You're going to see him act like an absolute idiot. You're going to hear people, when he does something great, tell you that he is the dumbest person on the planet, the most idiotic human being. You're going to do stuff that, you're going to see me do stupid stuff. We're going to disagree about things, if you can't overcome that.

To your point because we still got to have the rest of the things going on. If that's going to be a roadblock, I would not even, don't even take another step forward. This is, and that's fine. So being upfront about, yeah, I have another sister who worked for us for a little while and I think that was what got her is she was just like, I can't keep having my boss and my dad as the same human being for everything in life.

So I feel like it has something to do with the personality of the person's ability to compartmentalize. Yeah. Yeah. It's the only thing I can rationalize. Right now, three of my four kids work with us. And to your point I try to set them up with layers in between. And for the most part, that's easy to do and no problem.

However, in a sense, growing your kids Training It's instilling it and it's demonstrating it. It's pulling the curtain back. It's showing them that the job is more than training.

nine to five, more than a paycheck, more than an end to a mean a means to a end getting money, getting paid, that kind of stuff. If you don't show him that side of it, then all is dad coming home stressed or dad on the phone fussing at somebody, or, somebody beating dad up over, something he didn't do when he said he was going to, all that stuff.

You got to give them that glimpse into the bigger picture. So I really wanted them to be around. So my oldest right now, she's in school, she's thinking about possibly doing accounting work and all this kind of stuff. She's majoring in business. A lot this past summer, I was like, I just want you to sit in there with Denise.

So she's sitting right behind our head of bookkeeper 20 years, whatever. And that isn't a position she aspired to. I just locked her in there and said, I really want you to get some exposure here and just see what you think about it. Because. In my mind, I'm, I am starting to think what's going to be next, how's this going to go next?

And I would hate to get to the point where, whether by choice or by tragedy, the business is being transitioned and nobody knows enough about it to care about it. There, there's a balancing act of instilling not forcing but encouraging or at least exposing your family to the company that I think is, like with your son, you brought him in at least gave him a look behind the curtain where it's you're not a logo.

I know dad loves coffee, but he doesn't just go to coffee shops for money like that. It isn't his job. I think that's a big thing, but I it's real. The struggle is real. There's not a trip that we go on or a holiday or a vacation or any of that kind of stuff. me and my parents or my wife or my kids or whatever, we're not thinking roses or customers or whatever.

And they're in Asia. They still love it. My, my dad used to drive us, we'd go to Greensboro. That's where he grew up, which I were there to see his parents and all in the way, let's just ride by. I'm going to take a little detour. We ride one little loop around this little neighborhood before we get in my grandparents house.

So he could look at the gardens. This guy. Yeah, I do the same thing. I used to hate it. I'm sitting in the car with him. I'm just like, this is the worst. I don't care. I don't want to see these customers. And now, it's just like that pride of these people, they love us. They love what we do.

Look what we did out there. Look at that roast garden. It's so amazing. And I'm hoping the kids catch that same bug. You lose one of them? Yeah. Yeah, I, my kids have zero interest in what I do. I'm, in my family, except my wife, who obviously is in the business and knows about it, but generally speaking, no one has a clue what I do.

Yeah. And so all I do, I'm in software. I build websites, which is the worst. That'll make me cringe. But that's what most people think that I do, and I don't correct them. It's not worth it. But It is funny to me. My kids, my son got a little glimpse, but still even that he was forced to, he was our editor for the podcast.

So he had to hear me talk every week. He's I'm tired of your voice. But okay, so let's train transition. Ha. You see where I'm going to transition. So you bought the business and This is such a loaded thing because it can be so fraught and there's a million ways to do it in your case Like some people we know in c12 their dad just gave them the business.

Here you go Other people bought it from their families and I think that's pretty standard Correct me if I'm wrong because dad needs to retire right and dad worked really hard or mom whoever's owning the business worked really hard for their careers and They I find there's two ways.

Either they want to stay and get a salary for until they die. That's one way. And I, ideally, I think that's not the greatest or they wants to see some sort of benefit for all that hard work. Give me a big check. And purchasing a business I've learned through C12 and stuff and watching you go through it.

It's such an interesting thing. Because it's the only purchase that you personally don't have to buy. The company buys itself. Generally speaking. And we know examples of people who literally wrote a check out of their personal account. But most people when they buy a business, and I had no idea of this until just a couple years ago, the company absorbs that debt and pays it off over time rather than you writing a personal check.

Now I don't know exactly the specifics to you, but that's like the only purchase I can think of I can't go buy a car and someone else goes, I got it. Yeah. I guess anything that you're going to invest in, you're going to want to have enough return on investment that it does pay for itself.

So fair to your car analogy if you're buying a car that's not going to be used for anything, you would find that to be a really bad purchase. So I'm sure you buy more laptops than most people. Fair. They don't pay for themselves. However, if you don't have a computer of some sort, you're, I'm a total lapson.

You're really not going to. Yeah. So from that side of it, I think that when you have that okay, I want this to be my future. I think that you've got to, you got to really weigh all the options. What else could I do to make money? Period. Yeah. Is this something that I want to invest in because I want to, maintain that or own it for a long period of time.

Same kind of thing with the car. Like most people aren't going to just go buy a car and then three weeks later, I really did wish I bought a truck. It does happen. People probably buy businesses and then realize pretty soon afterwards that they're done with it. But I think that this, the idea of stability is a big value and that would be for the outgoing member as well as the incoming member.

So I think that one of the things that's business through transition is to have a longterm desire for success. And I think that's probably the biggest driving factor. Like I think if my parents didn't care about what we did, then their response would be either Everybody's making, as a business owner, you're making enough money to pay your bills.

Sure. Everybody would love to come to the point in life where they're making money and not having to work. That this is not a biblical reality. I don't think that's ethical to an extent. But yeah, I think that you've got to have a transition like you're describing to move the future, the generational stuff.

But. Yeah. Having that like concern that it's going to survive is, it's pretty important. I think my parents were, they valued that part of it. Instead of it's Oh yo, so the John Deere landscaping, just somebody who's just going to smear it into the ground, consume it completely, rip out the heart, stick in, mow and blow and turn it into run of the mill landscaping company.

There are national brands who just look for that kind of stuff to happen. Sure. One of the other markets I've seen, it seems like it happens a lot. People set out to be mom and pop or just do it yourself, whatever you want to call it. Like I do HVAC. I'm going to come to your house.

I'm going to do HVAC. I'm really good at it. I'm going out on my own. I'm going to be the HVAC guy. And then he gets, pretty good, maybe has six or eight employees. And then here comes big HVAC. Yeah, big guy. And consumes them up and just rebrands them and takes the soul out of them. And now they're, I don't want to name any other brands out there, just somebody who's just do it, just churning, I've heard.

Private equity P. E. companies are really into buying dentists offices. It's what in the world? And what they'll do is they'll buy most of them in an area. And that's probably if you're in any large enough town, a lot of times the dentists and that kind of service that you don't have a choice, you have to go to they're owned by one company and they do that so that they own it.

And then they raise the prices slowly because they can't. And so a lot of the dentists are actually secretly owned and it's, it's, that's true for almost anything. This is just nothing about nothing, but I learned in the grocery store, there are the vast majority of everything cereals, all that, just think of any, there's only nine companies.

Okay. That run literally almost everything in the grocery store. Only nine. Every other brand. Everything is just another thing of Unilever. Yeah. Or whatever. It's city area. Or P& G. Family owned. Yeah. Family owned. Whatever. Johnson. There's literally nine companies and that's 90 percent of the grocery store.

Which is crazy. Anyway. There a burden you feel? I don't feel a burden to pass this to my kids. Because I'm the first. My kids don't seem interested. If they are, lovely, we can have those conversations. But do you feel, because you're third generation now, do you feel a burden that you have to keep this going in such a way that it's ready for your kids?

That you have to pass it down? I think it's a really good question, but honestly, I think it's more about the potential and the customers. You've had a rose garden for what, four years now? Two? Two, okay. This past year, we've had a, all my life I've had a rose garden. I watched my dad do this, something similar to this.

He would cut roses anytime we went somewhere. Somebody's house for the first time, cut a little vase of roses. It might be another solo cop, boom, nothing fancy. We did a door dash, not a door dash, a grocery instacart kind of thing. And we don't usually do that. It's not our M. O. We like to go to the store and kind of shop around ourselves.

We did one of those at a time, everything was just scheduling was tight, here comes a lady, it's 8 o'clock at night, she brings her stuff, and every time we order something I'm always like, ah, I forgot to cut roses. This time we remembered. Because the roses have to look good on your card.

Yeah, I'm gonna tell you, here's how it goes, you cut the roses, put about 4 or 5 stems in the cup, you carry it out there, and when they hand you the bag, you hand them the roses, boom, magic happened at this point. We cut them before they got there, they texted, hey we're on our way, I was like, ah, buddy go grab some, cut the roses, bam.

She full meltdown in the street. And I was like, I'm standing at the door, I'm like, what's going on? Good things don't happen to me. I can't. She had her hands up, she's backing away. Wow. And we're like no, it's for you. That's a visceral reason. I was like, this is for you.

She's y'all gonna make me cry. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And she's just this has been one of those days. And, oh my gosh. She's like, when I tell you nothing good happens to me, nothing good. This right here, you just made my, you made my life right here. And I'm like. We were going to throw them away.

You know what I mean? Sure. Because it's just plants. On the surface, nobody cuts their grass, collects the clippings, dries it, mounts it on their wall. If you came up to the Instagram lady and you gave them a pile of grass, I don't think she would have given it. I'm going to give you some fruits of my labor.

It would have worked really hard to have some grass. I'm sure, this is going on the internet, I'm sure somebody out there does, but. I want to know you. Please email me. Please email me. Please email me. But so that reaction, and like I said, I've seen it happen before in my life. It just reminds me that there are people out there who some small gesture like this, I mean it would just boom, just totally change their lives.

Maybe just for a short moment, but yeah, like that is our mission. I'm very passionate about that. This isn't just anecdotal. If you do this, good things will happen because I don't believe the karma side of it, but we've had some customers over the years. Every time I come out there, I'm like, here we go.

She's about to just, and why is this leaf yellow? Why do I have some more CA bug? What? Yeah. Why do I have army ants? Man, nobody has army ants. That doesn't happen in North Carolina. We go back and check. Yeah, actually we had sent them to the entomologist. They are army ants. No one in North Carolina knows what to do with this.

We, we learned how to do a treatable, but it was like every possible problem you could have. She had, or her husband goes to the hospital, has some heart issues. She was like, I ran into her, wasn't supposed to be there, but in perfect time, perfect place. She's come here. I was like, oh boy, here we go.

She opens up the fridge in the garage, which as most of the garage fridge is reserved for alcohol. Boom, she opens the door and it's full of roses. She's like, all I've had time to do is just cut stems and throw them in my garage. And I just text my friends, just run in there and grab some roses.

Just run in there and grab some roses. So she's like all the friends in my church all the friends in the neighborhood are just coming by and she's and I am Just overwhelmed and I'm like, You haven't been home except to just cut them and throw them in the vase and stick them in your garage But you've got more balloons and you can even shake a stick at so there's just something about when you just Let go and just lean back and just look at what's happening I mean you can really appreciate that miracle of these flowers.

I mean it is Passionate. There is so much that happens with this. And so to see a customer get to do that, I live off of that story for years. It's been years since her and I had that interaction, but it just gets me so excited. And the lady, the Instacart lady, she texted, I remember, it was on election night and she texts back red heart, blue heart, it was just like, we're going either way.

But it was just like so valuable to her. And so here we are in North Carolina, we got Virginia, we got a little bit of South Carolina, but the company could be anywhere. You know what you're doing. It could be anywhere. So yeah. I look at it like I, I bury, I bear the burden of reaching that next batch of people who've never thought of.

What do you mean a rose garden at your house? Like I've got knockouts and it's dude, you don't need to know. We're not even on the iceberg. So much as the tip, I will tell you. So I have a small rose garden courtesy of you and my in laws live with us. And she will, she loves. The reason, one of the reasons we got it, she loves roses, and she grew up with them.

Now, in her mind, roses were knockouts. Knockouts are the roses that literally you've seen everywhere except in grocery stores. And then those are Lincolns, right? The red ones? They're just floors grown, greenhouse, they have varieties, but there's five kinds of roses that you've ever seen. The, she gets the biggest kick out of, she trims the roses.

Now, I pay you guys to trim them, but she'll go out there and harvest and grab them and we have a little cup full. And that reminds her of her childhood and she loves that. But, our roses are all weird colors. We have 17 plants. And I think we have three duplicates. So they're all, it's just a crazy wild thing of color.

Typical. For you, I would imagine so. I had no idea. Yeah. Not to pimp out your stuff, but. Yeah. I had no idea that roses did that. Yeah. That. And so my son's do we have like exotic fancy roses? And I'm like, just because, they've been around forever. It's not like they're special to us, but you can't just go to Lowe's or Publix or wherever you go and find these roses.

It's very cool. Yeah. Okay. Wrapping up. So I want, you're now thinking, you're a young guy, I'm not saying, this is not imminent, but what does transition look like? And I'm not holding you to it and your kids can't hold it if they hear this. Yeah. Do you plan on selling it? Do you plan on giving it?

Let's just say It's a i'm not saying it's gonna be messy. Let's say one kid has definitely stepped in and they're gonna be it Just like you were do you want to follow in the footsteps of your dad? Do you think you're not saying to rank him, but how do you see transition eventually for you?

Yeah. I, personally, I feel like we always think we know it better than the previous people. Sure. Yeah. And we always do exactly what's done. It worked first. And I think it's unintentional. I think we even cloak it with, I've got a great idea. And what do you know? It's exactly the same tooth fairy when you were a kid or whatever the situation is.

Yeah. Yeah. It is interesting to watch my four kids talk about it because they are already ranking such and such, they're the boy, or such and such, but they're the oldest, and it's like, y'all should probably talk, there's already pre sum, pre sum positions made. What I would like is just to see people, my kids have some kind of drive and want it.

If, and I can't imagine, this is the thing. Because you, and there's other folks that we've been in C12 with who have had experiences where they say, My kids have, they want nothing to do with the company. Yeah. And I can't, I just can't wrap my brain around it. I don't know if, I don't know if it's because we're unique.

Although, I don't think we are. You know what I'm saying? I think it comes down to you, your company doesn't require a specific skill set. You could just be, love flowers and you could find something to do. Like you were like, I've known, I don't know your father, but what I understand of him is that dude is all roses all the time.

He's like one of the world's most authorities on the flower. That ain't you. You are a business guy at heart. And yet, so two very different people, very different personality, very different skill sets. Both of you were able to find a good place and run this business. My business for instance, requires a certain, skillset.

If you can't do that skillset, like my kids were great at marketing. You're not going to run my company. You might work for the company, but running it would be very hard. Yeah. And I think that is the question is what will anyone aspire to? And I would want to make sure no matter what, the next generation, I'm leaving it in good hands because of that obligation to the customer generational customers.

It is interesting because certain businesses, I believe doctors are in this situation. Yeah. No lawyers are. You can't own a law firm unless you're a lawyer. Yeah. Engineers. Yeah. It seems odd to me because it in the sense of liability, cause we've got to have all of our licenses and all that kind of stuff.

But just because you can get a license doesn't mean you have any idea how to run a business. Sure. Just because you know how to run a business, doesn't mean you have any idea how to grow roses. And it's what you're saying, like it's a balancing act. And I wouldn't want somebody who's just a plant nerd to run the company, but I also wouldn't want someone who's just a.

Numbers guy to run the company. I think at this point I love the stage that we're in where everybody's just excited about it, that they're, that they see it as a gift. Man, it is just, when you see that, that rose come across and I got girls in prom age and it's still funny to watch.

So they all went to get ready at one of their friend's houses. And so my daughter carried a big vase of fresh cut roses, boom, set them on the table. Some of the moms have brought stuff from the grocery store and all this. They snatched up our roses like that because they have a fragrance. Can they have color?

Do you think they're exotic or different? The, as long as that is still happening, I'm excited. You know what I mean? That's the goal is I just want to see everybody enjoying where we're at now. There's still a lot of time to figure that stuff out. You're asking a very direct question. You probably want to direct it.

No, it's fine. But I think that there is, I hope that I'm building value. be worth something to somebody. Hopefully your kids. Yeah. That would obviously be a priority is to just see that go. They say that the third generation is always the one that sells the company. And a lot of times I find myself being the, yeah, but not me.

And so you're going to have the chip on your shoulder kind of thing. I think that there would be a level of stewardship that I would be relinquishing if I let it go to a PE or venture capitalist or something like that. I just can't see it going outside of a private environment like this. So I don't know.

All right, last question. I'm going to, so we asked a question to end every podcast, but I'm going to switch it a little bit for you. Normally I ask for advice for a new business owner, but I think you're in a unique position. What would, if someone is running their family business or wants to run their family business, What three piece of advice would you give to that person?

Yeah. Oh that's a good question. I think first you've got to balance working on and working in the business. So I'm making an assumption that you've already worked your way up from the ground level. It is easy once you've gotten established in a management lifestyle to not hear the voice of the customers, not feel the pressure of the boots on the ground, to get yourself back in the front line.

One of the things that we're doing right now in the business is our management team is like trying to get out trying to talk to customers Our ops guy today is out in the field driving around making visits, just being there. Yeah, that presence is extremely valuable Staying connected to the customers why you work because I think The longer you're in a family business the more insulated you could feel.

Oh, it's always going. Oh, yeah, it's great I don't have to do anything, but you know keeping that like connection with the customer is super valuable You I think that anything that you can do to keep the passion going for yourself because again, my entire life more years than most people have worked anywhere now has been involved in this one thing.

So you've got to make sure that you're switching things up enough that you're not just stuck in a rut. So that's what I'm saying. If you're in the field, most of the time, finds another people in the back office looking at numbers. If you're a back office person, get out in the field.

Let's see. Outside of that you, three things of what I would recommend to somebody who is wanting to pass or to take over I think learning it from the inside out. I've had some friends who recommend like the kids got to go work somewhere else and get promoted there. I'm a proponent of don't waste time somewhere else.

You don't know what's going to happen. The proverbial bus can happen. The diagnosis could happen and the leader is checking out and you want to make sure you're not wasting any time learning anybody else's bad habits or issues or bad management skills. I know you can learn some good things from being in another company, but I think just as much as you can gather and glean and learn it as fast as possible is big.

So I said, just, jump in as soon as you can. As soon as you feel like you got that bug, go ahead and explore the business, figure out where you can work. And that's it. Other than that, I think having like maybe I like my parents did for me, they gave me a little bit of a choose your own adventure, kind of opportunity where I got to explore some things without it being a really longterm environment.

They gave me director of corporate development title and I had a lot of influence and I didn't have a lot of responsibilities. So I got to play, but they still had a whole lot of control and kept any big mistakes from happening. I think it really helped me with the financial side.

It's all this stuff that I'd learned conceptually in college and I got to actually sit in my office and just come up with a new way of looking at this, route, profitability or stuff like that. And I think it's helped in the long run to just, sniff around and find stuff that you really are interested in and that way you can build a reputation or a concept around the house Nice, so if anyone wanted to learn about witherspoon or you in particular Where would they go?

Yeah, witherspoonroads. com. It's our website instagram is similar and all that kind of stuff We have two offices one in durham and one in charlotte We do classes and all that kind of stuff as well So if you want to involve be involved with us face to face that's a good way to do is come to our classes We are definitely interested in engaging people in real life.

So yeah, digital is there. But one of the requests we had just recently was I'd love to see more pictures of your flowers, on, on the website. It's man, a picture is worth a thousand words, but seeing it up close, they even like what you described. The colors are magical.

Everything's different. That's what we like. So come to walk through our gardens. Both of our shops have got a big garden that you can walk through and just explore. And our team's just love exposing people to roses. It's a lot of fun. Thank you so much for joining on this HodgePodge new kind of way of doing it.

And thank you everybody for joining us and we'll be back next week. Thanks. 

[00:37:56] OUTRO: Hi, I'm Christy Pronto, Content Marketing Director here at BigPixel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the BizDev Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email, hello at thebigpixel. net.