The Edge March/April/May 2026

TALKING WITH TITANS

Talking with Titans: Jerry Schill

By Jill Odom

JERRY SCHILL IS THE PRESIDENT AND CEO OF SCHILL GROUNDS Management, based in Westlake, Ohio. Schill started the company with his brother, Joe, in 1993. They developed a reputation for high-end design/build landscape construction and maintenance services.

but you become entrepreneurs, and you’re really trying to build the best business that you possibly can. In order to do that, you have to surround yourself with good people. I think where I’m at today, part of this is just a byproduct of being older, I’m 55 today, but it’s about them. As I think about my career, and I look back at the journey and realize really how fortunate we were to get to where we are today, I don’t take that for granted, and I’m still truly humbled by the success that we have ahead. For me today, success means everybody around me gets the opportunity to win. That’s what success looks like for me today, and at the end of the day, we talk about it all the time. As a leadership team, our job is to replace ourselves, and in order for our organization to continue to grow, we have to look for the future leaders of this organization and give them the tools and the resources that are going to help them elevate their own careers within the business. I think we would be doing the business a disservice if I didn’t start thinking about succession planning and continuity planning in terms of thinking about setting up the future leader of the organization to be successful. I would be doing the business a disservice if I didn’t work myself out of a job. WHAT’S A STRONGLY HELD BELIEF YOU’VE CHANGED YOUR MIND ON OVER THE YEARS? I would say this concept of expense versus investment, as we grown the business, I realized you cannot overpay for the right talent in your organization. When you find talented people, it is an investment in the organization, because those talented individuals, those investments are what are really going to allow you to propel the business forward. As owners of these businesses, we tend to get so bogged down in the day-to-day, and it’s hard to think past what’s in front of you. When you surround yourself with amazing talent and you’re making invest ments in those folks, versus viewing it as an expense to the P&L. What you’ll see is top-

HOW DID YOU NAVIGATE SPLITTING THE COMPANY FROM YOUR BROTHER JOE? I guess from an outsider’s perspective, it could be viewed as splitting. As the business continued to evolve over 16-17 years, so did he and I. We introduced commercial maintenance to the organization in late 2011, and my passion had shifted to the maintenance side of the business, and his remained on the design/ build side of the business. Truthfully, the two separate passions within the business created some inherent challenges, like where do you focus your time and energy? How do you split and divide resources? It made sense for us, although for a peri od of time, it was a little bit difficult to think about, having been in business for 17 or 18 years together, to essentially go in different directions to follow our passions. At the end of the day, it’s just part of the natural evolution for us. What it allowed us to do was get laser-focused on what we love to do, and I think that’s the key takeaway here. If you’re in a partnership or relationship where you have, conflicting passions or conflicting values, it becomes extremely difficult to be successful. As a result of he and I splitting up and parting ways and deciding to go in separate directions, both businesses have thrived. HOW DO YOU DEFINE SUCCESS TODAY COMPARED TO WHEN YOU FIRST START ED THE COMPANY? Just like anything, there’s an evolution. For me, that evolution when you start asking define success today, I heard this concept around‘me, we and them.’Early on, when my brothers and I started, it was really about us; we needed to survive. You’re in that survival mode. You’re building the foundation. You’re really trying to grow the business. Then it moves into this ‘we’ stage, where you start making some key hires. You’re really starting to really focus on building, not just a landscaping company,

In the 2010s, the company shifted its focus to commercial landscape main tenance. Then in 2020, Schill Grounds Management began to grow beyond the state of Ohio through acquisitions. After completing more than 16 acquisitions, the company is one of the nation’s largest commercial landscaping companies and operates across eight states and in Canada. WHAT WAS IT LIKE WORKING WITH YOUR BROTHERS EARLY ON IN THE BUSINESS? Truthfully, I couldn’t imagine starting the business without them. Obviously, there’s a significant amount of trust, and there’s the support, the ability to bounce ideas off one another. One of us was more operationally focused, and that was me. My brother, Joe,

was more sales-focused. I think it was a really good, complementary relationship that allowed us to really focus, even from an early stage, on the business, not necessarily always working in the business.

28 The Edge // March/April/May 2026