Rory Lamberton does not subscribe to the now buzzworthy phrase “work/life balance.” In fact, he says he does not really take time off of work.
“I do things for my personal life throughout the week and work on my business ‘outside of business hours’ and over the weekend. I like to read about business and strategy, and I love watching how other businesses in other industries do things. I try to take the things I learn and adapt it to the ‘Emerald Isle’ way and incorporate what is a good fit to the company,” Lamberton explains.
Lamberton is a second generation landscaper who is now the CEO of Colorado-based Emerald Isle. Lamberton is constantly thinking to improve his $12 million commercial landscape company, and it is rubbing off on his team. His business-oriented mindset has positively shaped the ideals of his team as a whole.
“I try to be better as an individual today than I was yesterday. My company embraces the same ideology, and we are constantly trying to be better than we were yesterday, the week before and last year. We measure ourselves against ourselves,” Lamberton discusses.
While Lamberton himself likes to research other companies’ practices and strategies, as he mentions, he really likes to encourage his team to use their own progress as a metric for success. This has been one of Lamberton’s top motivational tactics for steady company growth.
So even though the employees of Emerald Isle clearly work extremely hard, their dedication makes for a happy workplace.
“We are a collection of people who are forging our own destiny and creating a company atmosphere that we are all happy and proud to be a part of,” Lamberton says.
Lamberton and Emerald Isle are not all talk, either. Lamberton’s philosophy of focusing on business first has had concrete results, with Lamberton planning on maintaining a 20 percent growth rate for the company. He is determined to achieve this goal all while Emerald Isle is internally transitioning software.
“Focus on building our markets, keeping the customers happy while maintaining a healthy growth rate,” Lamberton explains.
Usually this heavy focus on work and growth would wear on a person, but not Lamberton. In fact, Lamberton has found not even the beginning or the end-of-the-week drag affect this dedicated CEO. So does this drive ever burn out for Lamberton? Never, not even on Mondays.
“Every day is a chance to build the team, work on relationships with customers, employees and vendors,” Lamberton states.
Read more: Achieving Work/Life Balance with a 4-Day Workweek
