Kiwi Business Story: Tim Goom at Goom Landscapes

Tim Goom is the Founder and a director of Goom Landscapes and an Owner Manager Programme alumni. 

This Kiwi Business Story is based on a podcast from 16 February 2023, and all figures quoted are from that time. You can enjoy the complete podcast here. 



How did you get involved in the business?

It's a long one for me, because it's a family business. My father started the landscape business 40-something years ago, and I did everything in my teenage years and early career to fight and not go into it!

About six months into that my father rocks up and says, ‘I’m retiring. Either I'm closing it down, or you're buying it.’ That was an interesting dilemma at 24… so that was quite a challenge!

What happened next? 

I bought in a business partner, who wasn't involved in the business at the time, and him and I grew it for ten years, which is really cool, but then he exited. Anthony [Washington] – who a lot of Icehouse people will know – is my brother-in-law, business partner, and best friend. He came into the business nine years ago.

Together we grew the business and, four years ago, we purchased the nursery business and brought that into the fold, which has been fantastic as a nice bit of visual integration there. Another three years later we purchased a swimming pool business, which again integrates beautifully into the landscape side of things.

Can you explain that feeling of walking up a driveway and not knowing what to expect on the other side?

You might have a snippet from a one-line email saying: ‘I want a swimming pool!’ But often you get there and think, ‘Yeah, this is a really challenging one!’ 

Other times [the client] hasn't been there for very long – I had one this week where the family hadn’t yet moved into the house. So, we're both walking into the house, effectively for the first time, and on the cuff trying to ask them how they live and how they work.

For me, and the landscape team, that is one of my major passions. I've got to be careful with my job - not to take over because I end up having to hand it to one of the design team, to then put their twist on it! My job is to get clients signed up and understand how we can help them through the process, and what pieces of the puzzle we can help with.

How did you find out about The Icehouse?

It was Anthony who pushed me on to the Owner Manager Programme (OMP). It was the first thing he did, as his prerequisite to buying into the business was that I had to do OMP. 

Anthony did OMP 7, and I did OMP 33. [The idea was] we'd be aligned because he had done it for his previous businesses, and if we weren’t thinking the same way, it wasn't going to work, and we would have been on different pages. It’s just aligned thinking – if anyone's thinking of one partner doing it all, don’t, you've got to both do it. That's really important… separately!

Did you have any hesitation about jumping on to OMP?

Absolutely. School wasn't my forte, I left school at 16 and never went back. So, I was nervous about going into any learning environment. I suppose you're nervous about just having to open up to other people because I thought I was still young and naive and didn't know much about it. All I knew was this little wee landscape business that I was involved in and nothing else, so I was pretty nervous rocking up to Auckland on the first day.

What were your key takeaways?

Go on OMP, because you know nothing about business! Landscaping was all I knew. I knew how to build stuff, and a little bit of design stuff at that point. But you don't know about all the things you don't know – about tax, finances, and employee hiring and firing, and all the things you’ve got to do when you're in business. 

I think that's the key learning… I just learned from the ground out because you get to that point where you think: ‘actually, I do need help here’.

What excites you the most about 2023?

It’s probably seeing the team that we've developed grow into their roles and see the productivity that they can produce this year. There’s been a lot of effort on that – on the design team and operations team as well, and I think they're going to blossom this year. That will be pretty cool to watch.