Interview Series: The Culture Behind Coastal Shores | Hosts of GROW 2027!

Join Us for a GLC Field Trip (Dayton, OH) Connect with Fellow ACE Members at ACE Connect (Tucson, AZ - November 17-20, 2026) Master Aspire Software at the GLC Aspire Workshop (Dayton, OH - August TBD & December 2-3, 2026) Register for GROW! 2027 Annual Conference (Savannah, GA - February 17-19, 2027) Episode #186: In this episode of The GROW! Show, Marty Grunder sits down with GROW! 2027 hosts Rob and Jessie Shrieve of Coastal Shores Landscape to talk about their journey from starting small to building a thriving company centered around great people, strong leadership, and premium service. BOBYARD is an AI-powered takeoff and estimating platform that automates the most time-consuming parts of bidding work. Contractors report up to 65% reduction in takeoff time and 3-5x more bids submitted per estimator. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Leave a Review for the Grow Show! ️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️  Subscribe to Our Youtube Channel! Key Learnings From Indiana to the Lowcountry. Rob and Jessie moved from Muncie, Indiana to the South Carolina Lowcountry in 2002 with one little girl, no job, and no landscape experience. The business started with Rob cutting grass on five properties Jessie managed. Doing What You Say You Will Do Is Still a Competitive Advantage. In the early days, clients were shocked when Rob showed up on time and delivered a quote he promised. That alone built the business before he knew much about landscaping. Premium Starts With Your Team. Coastal Shores applies premium to how they care for their team first: high benefits, high training, high respect. That trust earns the right to hold the team to a higher standard for clients. Core Values Need Measuring Sticks. Posters on the wall are not enough. Every value needs tangible, measurable behaviors behind it or the team drifts without knowing why. SALT Training Reinforces Culture Weekly. Spiritual, Attitude, Life, Teamwork. The third Wednesday is Life skills, where team members have learned direct deposit, financial literacy, and even how to change a diaper. Help People at Home and They Work Better. Mama J's philosophy is that personal life and work life always intersect. Smoothing one smooths the other. Not a Culture of Flattery. Build enough trust and care first. When hard conversations come, people are receptive because the deposits in their emotional bank account are already made. From Doing to Coaching. Rob's biggest shift as an owner was moving from knowing every detail of every job to coaching, mentoring, and looking for root causes. He described himself as "a blanket on the team, holding them back." A Healthy Sign of Scale. When the owners find out about a big job neither of them knew was happening, it means the team is actually running the business. Define Your Ideal Client Narrowly. Coastal Shores asks what community you live in before anything else and will decline work outside their footprint. Specialization Enables Scale. Middle management and divided roles are not optional at scale. Delaying those decisions costs profit and bur... Chapters (00:00:00) - Start(00:00:28) - Welcome to the GROW Show(00:01:39) - Meet Rob and Jessie Shrieve(00:04:27) - Doing What You Say You’ll Do(00:06:32) - Jessie on the Early Survival Years(00:09:52) - What Premium Really Means(00:11:58) - Building Systems to Scale Premium(00:14:37) - Defining the Ideal Client(00:17:51) - Core Values With Measuring Sticks(00:24:48) - Not a Culture of Flattery(00:27:13) - Thank You to Bobyard AI!(00:27:47) - From Doing to Coaching(00:31:43) - The Hardest Parts of Growth(00:33:39) - When Roles Must Split(00:35:01) - Letting Go as Owners(00:35:46) - Married and Running the Business(00:40:00) - Choosing the Right Technology(00:40:43) - The Aspire Commitment(00:45:26) - AI, Claude, and Smarter Data(00:49:10) - GROW 2027! Early Bird Pricing NOW!(00:49:37) - W