Just imagine... No boundaries. No restrictions. No barriers. Nothing but "blue sky" space to think about things you normally don't. It's like those long summer days when you were a kid and had a world of time to dream big things and make stuff up. Let's open the doors and windows of your mind to just... imagine.

In 2015, The Fall Event was in Orlando and we had the opportunity to have Simon T. Bailey present to The Group. His presentation was based on his then most current book, 'Release Your Brilliance'. Simon said, "Up to the age of 4, most children are operating at a genius (or brilliance) level." He went on to say by the time they reach their early 20's only 20% are there and by their early 30's, only 2% are operating at a genius level. He added, by the time the average child is 17 years of age they have heard the word NO 150,000 times and YES only 5,000 times. Simon has continued on his quest to help everyone find their brilliance. Since then, he has authored five additional books to help encourage his audience's brilliance. You can see them HERE.

Duncan Wardle, who spent 30+ years at Disney and was Vice President of Innovation and Creativity, in April 2018 he asked the question to his audience, "Who here in the room was a child once?" Obviously, the answer was EVERYONE! He told the story of giving his nephew a new bike for Christmas, all wrapped in a huge box, and most of the day was spent playing in the box rather than on the bike. His point was children have a wide-open imagination and giving them something to explore their imagination was much more exciting. Duncan's message parallel's Simon's with adults limiting creative imagination because of structure. By the way, Duncan will be the keynote presenter at TPIE 2022's General Session (more details below).

Simon's message reveals how we build boundaries around our imaginations that limit our creativity and imagination. How can we venture beyond these self-imposed limits?

You may be wondering about the photo above. It is one I took of our grandson, Collin, in January 2019 when we visited the Georgia Aquarium. The aquarium's largest tank, Ocean Voyager, holds 6.3 million gallons of saltwater. It's the largest single aquarium tank in the world, and the experience gave us a chance to see a young 3-year-old's imagination at work. Ocean Voyager includes over 50+ species of fish including the largest fish species, the whale shark seen in several of the photos below. (You can see a live video feed from Ocean Voyager by clicking on the link above.)

Collin is looking into what appears to be the ocean as he cannot see the opposite side while large schools of species swim by. As I saw him staring into the water, I could only imagine what he was thinking, or the multitude of questions he would ask.

What your Garden Center offers is just as amazing and wonderful as Ocean Voyager... and you don't even sell tickets!

For those of you who were with us at The Fall Event 2021 and at Longwood Garden's Conservatory, you will remember some amazing sites as well. We were in awe at the magnificent nature on display. Sam Brown of Fiddleheads Garden Center (Dalton, Georgia) wrote in his enews, "The 4-acre conservatory welcomed us with green walls and incredible orchids. The setting was the most incredibly beautiful indoor environment I have ever experienced. I was humbled and grateful as was Crystal and the peers from Ohio who dined with us. Following dinner, we ventured all over the pristine gardens and the massive pump house that controls the MANY fountains that have been operating since the 1930s. The gardens were perfectly manicured with massive mature specimens of many species. The conservatory has so many awe-inspiring areas - children's gardens, desert house, formal gardens, and bathrooms surround by 150' long green walls planted with various ferns. The most amazing individual plant was a rabbit's foot fern hanging basket that was 8 feet across!"

The same week JD Boone (Dothan Nurseries) wrote in his enews, "The most amazing, jaw-dropping, beautiful thing I have ever seen. I cannot properly put into words what this place did to me. I finally just stopped taking pictures and took it all into my mind. At one point, I got lost in there, all by myself, surrounded by the most beautiful perfection I have ever seen, and I cried a little. I have never seen anything so perfect and pretty in my life (except for my wife!)"

So how can you open the windows and doors to creativity for your Center? How can you imagine new ideas to share plants and gardening with your audience? Here are two videos to help you set the stage at your Center for you and your team:

First is Simon T. Bailey's short message (3:35min) about 'How to Be the Best Parent'. It shares the details of children's natural abilities to be brilliant. It also has a great message about what's most important... family time. You can see it HERE.

The second is Duncan Wardle's message 'The Theory of Creativity'. It tells the story of his nephew and the bike (and the cardboard box) and more. You can see it HERE.

And here's a bonus message from Duncan titled, 'Creating Relationship Magic'. In this one, he says "Marketing will be replaced with Experiences in this decade." See it HERE.

I can just see it now... your "Marketing" team member will be called an "Experience" team.

I hope this can be a spark that sets the imagination and creativity in motion for your Center! And I am anxious to hear about and see your progress!

TPIE 2022 has announced Duncan Wardle will be featured at the General Session, to be held Wednesday, January 19 at 9:00 am, just prior to the TPIE 2022 Show opening. As Head of Innovation and Creativity at Disney, Duncan Wardle and his team helped Imagineering, Lucasfilm, Marvel, Pixar, and Disney Parks to innovate, creating magical new storylines and experiences. Duncan now brings his extensive Disney expertise to audiences around the world using a unique approach to Design Thinking, helping people capture unlikely connections, leading to fresh thinking and disruptive ideas. Duncan is a multiple TED speaker and contributor to Fast Company, Forbes & the Harvard Business Review. He teaches innovation master classes at Yale, Harvard, and Edinburgh University.

Session Details: Embedding a Culture of Innovation into Everyone’s DNA

Michael Katz is no stranger to The Group. He has presented at The Fall Event in past years and this past February, he presented at The GROUPtalk LIVE Series with the title "Using Your Authentic Voice, Personal Stories, and Industry Expertise to Grow Your Business in 2021." He is one of our best resources for creating and managing effective eNewsletter programs.

We are happy to announce another chance to gain access to his online video series at a special price for Group Clients. The 10-session online training course is regularly $399, is offered to you for $197. ORDER NOW. Offer good through Friday, November 19th - don't wait!

And finally this week we feature a "thought-provoking" message from Sid Raisch, challenging everyone to be "like-minded" in our Group purposes of striving to learn and do things better, and as a result, to be working ON the business and not IN the business, all while still being independent thinkers!

Danny

We’re in a group. We might be subject to Groupthink.

Like-minded is different from groupthink, and it is important to know the difference, so let’s clarify that definition now. There is no wiki definition for the phrase “like-minded”. Here is the Urban Dictionary definition:

We’ll come back to discuss like-mindedness further down in this article.

The fact that The Garden Center Group exists indicates that its participants are vulnerable to groupthink, the same as any other group you might engage with. Not only are we vulnerable collectively, we are also vulnerable individually.

It takes a special kind of person to appreciate The Garden Center Group. We call them “joiners”, because we are willing to join with others to gain benefits we perceive from our investment. Two of the most appreciated benefits of The Group are, 1) sharing, and 2) ideas. These benefits are valued, encouraged, supported, and appreciated.

There are other benefits of The Garden Center Group such as access to credible experts and thought leaders (with deep experience in the retail garden industry), whether we want to hear what they have to say, need to hear it, or agree with their perspective. At least we can overcome the fallacy of following groupthink of common practices, status quo, and rules of thumb to make more informed decisions. We hear, read, learn, and hopefully are inspired and guided by information shared across The Group whether in these email newsletters, on The Group's many eList, or at The Fall Event.

As with anything else worthwhile, it takes work to go deeper, to participate at a level where we are individually (and as a company) challenged and guided to actively engage, participate fully, to learn better practices, and become like-minded (should we choose to do so) to organize our companies around the full experience The Group and its Service Providers offer. Some companies who have been in The Group a while were more engaged in the past than recently. We might question if we’ve been riding on the lift of past involvement to the point where it isn’t working because we no longer are “working it” or that things have changed. Others have joined and haven’t yet taken the deeper dive. Both are effectively stuck where they are. Socrates said, “The unexamined life isn’t worth living.” Examine whether the level of engagement, the depth to which we’ve explored, whether we’ve drifted rather than kept our sharp edge sharper. How are we really doing?

Are we retaining profitability? Are we and our people developing in understanding and ability? Is the value of our company increasing? Is our personal net worth (as owners) increasing? Do we have a solid understanding of our place and potential, and what must go between the place our bar presently is and the place we’re trying to raise it to?

How we think about what we think about is as important as what we think about it. Like-mindedness is thinking in accordance with certain principles, objectives, and goals. We share a like-minded perspective that we’re better together. We are like-minded to strive to learn and to do things better as a result.

It gets a little tougher from there. We have like-mindedness about working on the business, and not just in the business. The Group shares like-mindedness about and aspires to a higher level of operating margins and profitability with greater consistency. These are just two of the ways we measure progress.

While we can be like-minded about how we think about what we think about, there are differences to respect as well. I learned long ago that the majority of garden centers are basically the same, with different appearances. Differences are as easy to ignore as they are dangerous to ignore. There are cultural, regional, weather, and seasonal differences that make doing business in one location very different from another. There are also very different expectations of owners. I call these “owners’ prerogatives”. Some owners value higher profit, others value community involvement, among other differences but yet others don’t define, communicate, or protect and defend their values well enough.

There are some ever-present threats to our businesses to guard against. The danger of taking on groupthink is one. Another is the danger of applying what “works” in one situation to another very different situation. Let’s define reality for a moment. When we hear a word like “works”, or “all” or “everyone” or “most” or (one of my favorites), “lots”, and other generalizations, there is often a dangerous thinking misstep being taken. Think about how treacherous it is to think that “lots” of people want to buy the newest thing to come along at the mart or at the trade show, or in the ads and media buzz” Yes, those words can come back to haunt us. Among the most dangerous thinking is that something that works for one company will work equally well for another, especially when in almost every case, the definition of what “works” means that it hasn’t been clarified, especially in economic terms.

I’m going to pick on just one of those things that “works” so well that is rarely well defined and even more rarely is measured correctly as a convenient example of what I’m talking about, and that is the value of a “Loyalty Program” – to the customer. Measuring the “success” of a loyalty program is a tricky business. As Mark Twain once said, “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.” Quantifying the success of a loyalty program is trickier than a newbie figuring out which side is up on a caladium bulb/tuber/corm - it’s going to take some careful explaining! Loyalty is a feeling, not a program. A loyalty program only has the word loyalty in it, and never the actual feeling.

There’s talk going around The Group about what to expect in 2022 or any future years’ demand and availability in the supply chain. Here’s something to be like-minded about but not to adopt a groupthink about. We’re not yet in a post-pandemic world and nobody knows if there will ever be one. That doesn’t keep many of them from guessing. We’re in a “Plantdemic” (thanks to Chris Beytes’ Acres Online), and nobody knows when it will end, but everyone keeps guessing. One thing for sure is that we’re each in a world of our own and whether or not everyone else is in it. We will succeed only in proportion to our preparedness for the opportunity that is presented to us. Most deaths are by a thousand cuts. While it appears COVID caused many deaths lately, it was always only the last nail. Statistically speaking, the vast majority of businesses never make it to their next ownership and they die the same way, a death of a thousand cuts while suffering along the way. Each of us has the job of deciding if ours will, and if we decide it will we decide how it will get there. Groupthink will not get a single business into its next generation or to its next owners. With like-mindedness, we have a fighting chance.

Like every other year, the next one will be what we make it to be. The best response is to prepare for it and to adjust according to the differences as they come to be known. Being fluid and resilient in all the ways we can is the best way to have a “good year” every year. Don’t be caught in a situation where you can’t adjust your business at least 20% up, or 20% down, or 20% in any direction if you can help it, and you can if you design it that way. Who would have ever guessed a company could even handle a 20% or more increase in sales in one year as so many did in 2020. Some didn’t get there, and others did better than that. Was the difference a prepared state that allowed for more growth? Was it that those with smaller increases weren’t as well prepared or that they were slower or resistant to adapting? I ask the same of companies with the largest increases. Could, even more, have been accomplished with better preparation, and more responsiveness? The point is, that coming up with a groupthink answer isn’t the best way, the right way, or even in the ballpark to figure out what to expect for 2022, or any other year.

The best way to determine what the next year will be like is to do our own forecasting based on our own situation by evaluating our own category performance each month looking for the opportunities to do better, making specific plans, and taking action on those. Then when the next year comes, we can also be quick to recognize changes, flexible, adaptive, and act expeditiously to expand or contract according to our own situation. I once worked in a corporate environment where this process was used to determine the budgets, the results, and ultimately - whether the executives kept their jobs, or didn’t.

It’s all too easy in an independent business to “wing it” and go with groupthink and not do the work of working on your business.

As momma said, “Think for yourself” and “don’t jump off a bridge just because everyone else does." Common sense and like-mindedness aren’t common, but groupthink is. We can now be like-minded about that.

“Keep your friends close, and your Service Providers closer.”

You are invited to join fellow Group Centers as well as other retailers as we gather at upcoming events to find new products together. Follow the links provided for more details and signup!

MANTS is the largest trade show in North America for woody plants and related products featuring over 1,500 booths and attracting 12,000+ total attendance. The Garden Center Group invites you to a "Best of MANTS" reception at the end of the first day to share details of the day's highlights.

It's a great way to start a list of what to see the following day!

Tropical Plants are one of the hottest categories and TPIE is the only show of its kind. This year it moves to a new location... Tampa, Florida. Join Danny Summers and fellow Retailers to search for the best new plants and products to award the Cool Product Awards. Work the show on Wednesday, January 19th at your own pace then meet others at the end of the day to share details of what you discovered and see what everyone else found as well. Cool Product Award Judges receive a FREE Show Badge.

Optional Tour... arrive in Tampa on Tuesday by early afternoon and join Danny Summers and others to tour Kerby's Nursery, located just a short ride from the show site. Watch for more details coming soon.

It is pretty easy to tell, we really like Constant Contact. It is the only email marketing system we have used for The Group since the beginning and there's good reason for that. It's the best! Now, our connection with Constant Contact is even closer with our partnership with Constant Contact to help Group Clients save 10 to 25%. Just see what you are paying now and check out the possible savings over the entire 2020 year.

Already a Constant Contact Customer? You can transfer your account under The Group's Partnership and SAVE! Ask Danny for details!