Special thanks to this year’s program sponsor
These business leaders empower employees through education and infrastructure.
By Kyle Brown B
irrigationandlighting.org
uilding a company and encouraging growth while harnessing an engaged workforce in an active market isn’t easy for irrigation and landscape lighting professionals. It takes an understanding of the importance of educa- tion and culture, and sometimes a little bit of risk.
Te Watch Us Grow: 2023 Industry Standouts pro- gram celebrates contractors and business owners who de- velop both their revenues and their teams. For this year’s class, that means a drive for education of both yourself and your team as well as the willingness to put yourself on the line. We hope their stories guide your company’s next steps toward stronger employees and greater success.
The Audible Caller Aaron Walls, owner of Purple Walrus Landscape Com- pany in Lewisport, Kentucky, didn’t initially get into lawn care as a young entrepreneur the way that many in the in- dustry do. But he found himself looking more at working in the market after going through a dark point in his life. Walls’ background involves drugs and alcohol, landing
him in prison, an experience he openly talks about. He finished his sentence in the early 2000s and found his way to a job in a local factory.
One of the benefits of the factory job was that he had
plenty of time to listen to music or podcasts as he worked. Walls used that to his advantage, listening to podcasts to build his business and industry knowledge, like “Profit Time” with Wayne Volz on Turf ’s Up Radio. He called in to a few episodes of different shows on the network look- ing for more information on how to develop his opportu- nities in the green industry and connected with the hosts.
“Ten Darren Gruner called me at work, and told me
to try landscape lighting,” says Walls. “I thought, he’s lost his mind, there’s no way I’m going to make any money putting lights up on somebody’s house. I just want to cut grass.” Gruner won him over and got him connected with
manufacturer representatives who helped Walls learn the basics of landscape lighting, how to quote an estimate and complete a design. He printed out flyers to develop his market using a little of the cash from his factory job and started to pass them out after work in areas where home- owners seemed to have more disposable income. When he finally got his first lighting job, the represen-
tatives helped guide the installation. “I made more on that job than I did in a month of fac-
tory work, put together with a month of mowing,” Walls says. “Ten I thought, ‘Man, I need to get more of these flyers out.’” After another project came along and Walls started feeling more comfortable in developing his knowledge in landscape lighting, he talked to his wife about leaving the certainty of the factory behind and committing fully to landscape lighting. “I looked at my wife and said, ‘Te iron is hot right now.’” She supported his decision as long as they could make a living on his lighting work alone, even though it meant more time that he was going to be out trying to build the company. Even the name of his company is a reference to the risk he felt he was facing as he pushed the company’s growth. “Purple walrus” is one of the phrases Derek Carr, former Las Vegas Raiders quarterback, used to call an audible on the field. And acting as his own boss has been liberating for Walls, though it also means he has to be responsible to keep himself moving.
June 2023 Irrigation & Lighting 31
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