About Robert Shawn Knight
Robert Shawn Knight, a true embodiment of the entrepreneurial spirit, is the CEO of GreenEarth Landscaping Company and the Co-founder of GrowthBridge Coaching and Consulting. His firm offers business consulting services for SMBs, guiding them toward expansion and future profitability. Born in Winter Park, FL, Shawn Knight has spent most of his life in North Carolina. He attended Appalachian State University, where he earned his Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) with the goal of becoming a self-made businessman. He has accomplished this goal with perseverance through challenges and keen business savvy, building multiple landscape businesses and selling to private equity to increase personal profit and expand into multiple territories across the country.
Knight attributes much of his business success to his ability to build teams that accomplish fantastic growth in the landscape and horticultural services industries. Starting his Santa Rosa Beach, FL., business in 2005 with limited resources and relying on his ability to establish key partnerships in commercial and residential landscaping markets, Robert epitomizes the entrepreneurial spirit. His ability to identify opportunities and capitalize on calculated risks has cemented his legacy as a serial entrepreneur and spurred his decision to launch a business coaching and consulting firm, GrowthBridge.
At GrowthBridge, Shawn Knight supports business owners in strategically navigating the complexities of growth. He uses his personal insights, processes, and proprietary methods to help SMBs scale and eventually take the next step of taking the company to market or being a true business owner without direct day-to-day management. According to Knight, the end goal is for business owners to maximize the value of their service business, which can offer many benefits, including increased revenue, greater customer reach, and more sustainable, long-term growth. The company’s services offer a strategy supported by a performance plan for those looking to take their businesses to the next level.
CEO and Landscaping Entrepreneur
After obtaining his business degree in Health Care Management from Appalachian State University, Robert Shawn Knight made a fateful decision. Instead of entering the healthcare field, he would embark upon his own journey as a businessman, starting his first landscape company in 2005. Through hard work and determination, he grew the small business into an enterprise, offering basic landscape maintenance and a full range of horticulture services to encompass the care and cultivation of grass, shrubbery, and trees to promote health and growth.
Shawn Knight sold his first landscaping startup for a healthy profit after growing it into one of the top 100 in the country with multiple locations across many states. Along with his landscaping business partners, Knight has an aggressive 10-year plan to expand his current business. The company is well on its way and has four branches, which generate about $30 million annually. Robert’s success as a landscaping entrepreneur is truly inspirational.
He took the basic service model of commercial landscape solutions to the next level, competing with the business model of larger corporations like TruGreen and BrightView. GreenEarth offers premium lawn, turf, and shrubbery maintenance services, technical landscaping services, and consultations. These include water management, landscape lighting, and premium design/build and installation services to increase properties’ value and curb appeal. What sets GreenEarth apart is its commitment to sustainable practices and innovative design solutions, making it a leader in the industry.Another pivotal aspect of the success of GreenEarth is the company’s franchise business model and core purpose, which is to create opportunities for growth for every associate connected with the company to grow personally and professionally. The result is a business model that is about more than business but is about people. From their customer service to their hiring practices and to establishing workflows that work to improve each employee’s skill level, Knight and partners have developed a business model in which owners and employees can grow together, feeling valued and integral to the company’s success.
Business Coach and Consultant
Robert Shawn Knight is the CEO of GrowthBridge Coaching and Consulting, a firm he started to connect companies with strategies that offer growth potential and business development. His company is known for using the most direct and efficient route to building long-term value by taking advantage of high-growth markets and other methods that generate scale. These methods include strategic planning, market analysis, and operational optimization, all of which are gleaned from his team’s success and direct experience in scaling multiple landscaping companies and then scaling or selling them to achieve true entrepreneurship value.
Shawn Knight recognized that many business owners and top executives often faced challenges when aspiring to grow a company into new territories, products, or services. Additionally, many SMBs are so focused on serving their existing “home-based” markets that they are unaware of the enormous opportunities available to grow a business. GrowthBridge offers clients a way to generate long-term enterprise value that increases revenue or positions the company for a profitable sale to investors. Knight believes that counterbalancing a company’s dependence on a local market by diversifying through strategic growth and relationship-building is key to establishing an increased market value.
Personal Life
Shawn Knight has a home in Inlet Beach, Florida, where he is a very active participant in living a healthy lifestyle, including weightlifting, diet, and nutrition, and has participated in several half-marathons. He is an avid hiker and has hiked 34 of the 14ers in Colorado (mountain peaks that have an elevation of 14,000 ft. or higher). He is also a passionate traveler, having visited Peru, Colombia, Spain, Portugal, the Caribbean, Japan, and Chile, along with extensive travel in Central and South America. When not working, traveling, or hiking, you will likely find Robert immersed in the financial market news and trading stocks.
