The Edge March/April/May 2026

TALKING WITH TITANS

WHAT ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF WHEN YOU LOOK BACK AT YOUR CAREER AND THE COMPANY’S JOURNEY? The lives we’ve been able to impact. We’ve got folks who work with us and a lot of our brands who started their careers with us 30 years ago and are still around. We don’t just talk about creating opportunities. We’re actually out doing it. We’re putting the money where our mouth is. When I think about my journey and my decision to continue to really grow and scale the maintenance side of the business, my goal was to provide and create the same level of opportunities for our people that we had created for ourselves. My brother, Joe and I, we have always fundamentally believed that we owe it to our people to continue to create opportunities for them, and we’ve done a really good job of doing that. WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGE LEADING SCHILL GROUNDS MANAGEMENT? The biggest challenge for me as we’ve grown and scaled across eight states and Canada has been trying to maintain that level of connection to everybody who works for us. It is a very humbling

and not just in our geographic expansion, but in the tools, the resources, the tech stack, the people we hire, all of those different things are super important. But I truly believe that we can get to a billion dollars. Some people have even said to me, ‘Well, that seems like a very superficial kind of goal.’ It’s not a goal to grow to a billion dollars to be selfish. It’s really to do good, and that’s ultimately what I’m trying to accomplish. WHAT CHANGES WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE IN THE INDUSTRY? What I would encourage people to do, and what I wish people would do more of, is spend less time focusing on being the best landscaper they can be and focus a lot of their time on being the best business person that they can be. Be the best entrepreneur that they can be. When we do those things, we continue to professionalize this industry. I would just encourage people to not just embrace their passion of doing great landscaping work, but focus on continuing to elevate their entrepreneurial experience, and they will be able to do incredible things. TE

experience to know that you have folks who wake up every single day, rain or shine, 20 below zero or 100 degrees, and go out and perform for our customers and the rest of the organization. I still love getting to the branches. It’s just getting harder and harder to do that. I would say the second part of that is, as you continue to grow and you make investments in people, you have to be able to trust and then verify. I have gotten a lot better at that over the last couple of years. Even as the owner, the CEO, the founder, whatever you want to call yourself, you can never stop working on yourself. You have to be willing to evolve just like the business is evolving, and when you surround yourself with really smart people, you want to surround yourself with people who complement you, so you can step away from the business and really focus on your unique ability. WHERE DO YOU SEE SCHILL GROUNDS MANAGEMENT IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS? I want to be a billion-dollar company. We are a maintenance driven organization that does a little bit of snow. That’s why we’ve been able to remain extremely disciplined,

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30 The Edge // March/April/May 2026 Contact Drew Garcia today: drewgarcia@ranchomesa.com | 619-937-0200