Brian
Scalise

Established Groundworks Consulting Group to provide advice and support to landscape business owners on aspects of the business that affect the P&L in sizable ways: on improving margin, sales infrastructure, operational systems, and financial architecture. This consulting and advice comes from doing the work, and doing the work at scale under pressure.

Each client engagement involves digging into your numbers, to understand how the money is moving through your business, and to find the weak spots. From there, we build a custom package to address whatever the business needs most, from sales to operations to revenue strategy.

Held P&L accountability across six divisions: maintenance operations, enhancements, turf care, construction, logistics/shop, and procurement. When the maintenance contract sales stalled, this also fell under my oversight: built a B2B market strategy, defining the ideal client profile, how outreach worked, balancing the long-term plan with shorter-term targets, structured the proposal process, rebuilt the maintenance estimate figures, and ran the pipeline.

Through this, originated $4.85M in new maintenance contracts in just over 10 months. This same year saw the company's revenue increase by 14%, and a drastic improvement in labor efficiency (the LER) pushed more than $500,000 to the bottom line.

General Manager for the SE Florida business unit of Aspen Grove (a $140M landscape company), a subsidiary of Asplundh. Oversaw three branches, P&L, team performance, drove retention of clients, and outlined enhancement sales behaviors. Grew the SE Florida contract book by more than 30% in a single year through client retention, route density, and understanding local market dynamics to price competitively.

Running a large operation inside a larger company teaches you something unique to that situation: you get to understand the business through comparing and contrasting your business unit with others. What is working for them, what works for me, and how does what they are doing work at scale?

Built Oakmont Springs from nothing to $1.8M in revenue and sold it. Sold the work, priced the jobs, managed the crews, retained the clients, and held every dollar in and out. That's where the real education happened — not in a classroom. When I talk to owners about margin, retention, or what it feels like to carry payroll on a Monday with accounts receivable sitting unpaid, it's because I've been there.

The exit from Oakmont Springs is also why the Exit Readiness Track exists. I know what buyers look for because I went through it.

Licensed Investment Adviser Representative at a registered investment advisory firm. Held Series 65 licensure — the professional standard for providing investment advice under fiduciary duty. Worked directly with clients on financial planning and portfolio strategy, and developed a working understanding of business valuation, capital structure, and how wealth is built and transferred from closely held businesses.

This experience is the direct precursor to GCG's financial architecture, CFO, and exit readiness work. The fiduciary mindset, combined with the operator background, is what makes the financial advisory side of GCG structurally different from most landscape consultants.