Rancho Mesa's Alyssa Burley and Greg Garcia, Account Executive with Rancho Mesa recap NALP’s ELEVATE Conference and share takeaways for the landscape industry.

Show Notes: ⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to Rancho Mesa's Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Host: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Alyssa Burley⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Guest: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Greg Garcia

Editor: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jadyn Brandt

Music: "Home" by JHS Pedals, “News Room News” by Spence

© Copyright 2024. Rancho Mesa Insurance Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

TRANSCRIPT

Alyssa Burley: Welcome back, everyone. My guest is Greg Garcia, Account Executive in the Landscape Group with Rancho Mesa. Today, we’re going to talk about the Elevate conference that took place just a few days ago.

Greg, welcome to the show.

Greg Garcia: Alyssa, thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

AB: Well of course, we’re happy to have you. Now, you’ve attended Elevate: The National Conference & Expo for the last five years or so. And, it makes sense since you focus specifically on the landscape industry. 

So, will you give our listeners just a quick overview of the event, who typically attends, and where it was hosted this year?

GG: Yeah, absolutely. This is an event that we love to go to. Like you said, we've been going to it for a number of years now. NALP is a great partner of ours. And anyway we can help out the green industry, we want to do our part.

So we headed out to Charlotte, North Carolina this year. It's a multi-day conference event that is basically surrounded around safety, learning, networking. It's a really, really great event. I would say the landscape companies that attend are usually companies that are trying to improve in a number of different ways, and mostly the ones that I talked about earlier, like safety or just learning different types of mechanics about the business, about the industry.

And the thing that's great about the event in terms of who attends, you get startup landscape companies all the way to $150 million revenue companies. So it's a wide variety, it's a really nice industry in terms of sharing knowledge and there's a lot of networking that's going on. So really a great event for us to go to and to continue to sponsor for years to come.

AB: So it's kind of, it has maybe a little bit for everybody, all different kinds of sizes?

GG: Yeah, exactly.

AB: All right, so what brings you back to this event every year and why do you think that industry professionals should attend?

GG: Yeah, no, great question. I think for us, what brings us back, I kind of hit on it earlier, is just continuing to give back to the industry. This is mine and my brother Drew's focus; is the green industry. So how can we help? We felt like one of the ways is by sponsoring this event year after year. And it’s kind of changed throughout the years now because I think you're getting into year five, six, seven and eight of sponsoring this event. We also go to this event now to connect with our clients. It's great because we probably had 10 to 12 clients attending this year's event. So it's great to see them. It's great to bring them all together and let them meet each other.

And then also just continue to be a resource for the green industry. You know, when we go to these events, we just want to be there and help out any way we can. So if it's with insurance, great. If it's people that are just looking to make sure they're in a good spot, we can do that as well. So it's a good chance to connect with people and I really do feel like we've become friends with a lot of these people now too. So it’s like seeing old friends throughout the country. So really, really great event and really fortunate to be a part of it.

AB: Now you mentioned that we had some clients there and I heard that Rancho Mesa hosted a cocktail hour for our clients and maybe some prospects. So tell us about that event.

GG: Oh yeah, it was great. We set up an event at the Fahrenheit or something like that. It was the top of a hotel, overlooking Charlotte's downtown skyline, which is really pretty by the way. I'd never seen it before. It's similar to San Diego in that a lot of the buildings have some neon lighting, so it's really pretty to look at. And we had the top floor, we shared it with a couple other people, a couple other events were going on, so a lot of intermingling there.

But to your point, we had a lot of our clients there, some prospects there. And it was a great chance for everybody to meet each other. I can say with all honesty that insurance was not being talked about at all during this time. It was talking about the conference, how families are doing, upcoming trips, vacation, so it was kind of nice just to have those types of conversations, really get to know people on different levels and things like that. I know we ended the night talking about baseball, which is obviously big in our family, so overall, great night. I think our clients really enjoyed it, and I was happy we were able to host that.

AB: Yeah, so that sounds like it was a lot of fun and a great event, and I'm pretty sure that we're going to do it again next year.

What was your favorite part of the Elevate experience?

GG: I would say it was hard to top that night that we had at Fahrenheit, but if I wasn't able to do that, I would say I really enjoyed being on the expo floor. We had a booth set up. Me and Drew were able to set that thing up. It was, it's like a 12 step process to set that thing up, but we were able to do it. Just getting able to connect with different people on the expo floor. It's laid out in a big convention hall with all sorts of vendors from equipment to different types of technology and then you got us. And people coming up to us asking us what we're about and just trying to learn more about Rancho Mesa and kind of, “What's this insurance thing? What do you guys got going on? What makes you guys different?” So having those types of conversations and really leaving with some really good opportunities for us is exciting because I think we can make some impacts on some of these people that we're able to meet. So I enjoyed meeting new people and connecting at that expo. for sure.

AB: It sounds like it was a worthwhile event to attend.

GG: Absolutely, yeah, no question about it.

AB: Yeah, so Greg, if listeners have questions about managing their landscape business's risk, or they're interested in learning more about the NALP, or maybe even the Elevate event, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you?

GG: Yeah, I can be reached at 619-438-6905 or at ggarcia@ranchomesa.com.

And yeah, if you're having any questions about NALP or any of these events This is just one of about three or four events NALP puts on every year. They're all great, and if you're on the fence about. “Do we go is it going to be worth it? Where's our return on investment?” The amount of networking that you get alone – this is what I hear from clients and other people – it's more than worth the travel and the cost of admission. So if you're on the fence about it, let this podcast be the nudge to get you in the right direction and get you out to these events, because they're a great time.

AB: All right, well, I appreciate it. And Greg, thank you so much for joining me in StudioOne™.

GG: Awesome, thanks for having me, Alyssa.