In the fall of 2017, Sam Gembel stood in a hotel lobby in Louisville, Kentucky, with 10 of his employees, eager to attend Hardscape North America (HNA).
The team was ready to get certified as installers and take Gembel’s company to the next level. There was just one problem—the company credit card had been declined.
“My wife was with me. And we have all these people excited to be there. We’re building our culture. We’re building our rapport,” Gembel remembered. “The last thing we want to do is say, ‘Hey, your boss sucks, and we have no money.'”
But while this pivotal moment could have represented the end of Gembel’s hardscape career, it was just the turning point in his journey as the owner of Atlas Outdoor, a now thriving and award-winning landscape and snow management company headquartered in Flint, Michigan.
The Leap of Faith
Gembel’s path to owning a successful hardscape business started modestly. For years, it was a part-time side hustle.
“I was cutting grass, so I mowed lawns for a local lawn care company, and that led into kind of a little bit of landscaping and hardscaping stuff,” he said.
In 2010, he and his wife had their first child. A year later, his wife wanted to leave her role as a human resources manager at a local hospital to spend more time at home with their daughter.
“I was like, how many more patios can I sell and lawns can I cut to be able to support her giving up her corporate job and the corporate benefits?” Gembel said. “June 10, 2011, was one of the scariest days of my life. I had to go all in.”
Initially, he focused on recurring revenue through lawn cutting and fertilizer services, but he noticed a growing demand for patios. Though he’d previously been referring those jobs to others, he decided to try his hand at hardscaping.
“I enjoyed it. I understood the basics behind it,” Gembel said, noting that he had done some training with the Interlocking Concrete Pavement Institute (ICPI) at the time. ICPI merged with the National Concrete Masonry Association (NCMA) and became the Concrete Masonry & Hardscape Association (CMHA) in 2023.
His first hardscape project was a $5,000 sidewalk. From there, his projects quickly grew. A $10,000 larger sidewalk, then a $30,000 patio and then his first $100,000 job.
“It was a big learning lesson. But you don’t grow in your comfort zone,” Gembel said.
His team broke the large project into manageable segments, completed it successfully, and the customer loved the finished product. This success helped Atlas become an authorized contractor with Unilock, starting a trajectory toward building award-winning projects.
The Struggle Behind the Success
By 2017, Atlas had grown to about $5 million in revenue. On the surface, the company appeared to be thriving—winning awards and getting magazine write-ups. But internally, things were unraveling.
“There were so many systems that were created by default, not by intent,” Gembel said. “We were hurting financially.”
The stress took a personal toll.
“I would literally sit in my truck at our old building and cry before I got out to meet my team. Because I’m like, ‘I’ve got to put on this happy face for them.’”
This was the context for that fateful trip to the 2017 HNA. Atlas was a company struggling despite its outward appearance of success. The credit card decline was merely a symptom of deeper problems.
But that trip also marked the beginning of Atlas’s turnaround. At HNA, Gembel met someone who would become his first business coach.
“I didn’t know that coaching was even a thing,” he said.
This coach came to Atlas in spring 2018 and helped put the pieces back together, supporting a year of transformation.
The Growth Mindset
After working with the coach, Gembel’s focus shifted from just selling jobs to developing his team.
“My team needed a leader, and when I pivoted from managing to leading, everything changed,” Gembel said.
He was able to transform his relationship with his business and put systems in place that allowed him to pull back from the day-to-day to focus on sustainable growth.
“I am in love with my business now, where before it was like it owned me. I didn’t own it,” Gembel said. “When we shift our mindset from ‘have to,’ or ‘I need to,’ or ‘I want to’ to ‘I get to do this,’ it completely changes everything.”
The growth mindset has become central to Atlas’s recruitment philosophy.
“The number one trait that we’re looking for is growth mindset. People with the growth mindset are going to be much hungrier to want to be part of the fast pace that we’re operating at,” Gembel said.
“We’re looking for people that are looking to grow, people that when they interview ask, ‘How do I get to be a project manager?'”
Building a Culture of Continuous Learning
Supporting this growth mindset also meant changing the company culture to match.
Gembel recalled a day when he encountered two new hires standing and looking lost at the company door. They had been told to show up at 7:30 a.m. for work, but nobody had met them there or explained their roles.
“We’re losing these people right from the start,” he said. “There was no training. There was no proper onboarding. There was no soft release out into the field.”
In the first years of the company, Gembel had focused on constant attraction and recruitment. Now, he has shifted into a focus on training, development, and retention that is the new cornerstone of the Atlas Outdoor employee experience. Gembel’s wife also played a pivotal role in this new company culture, bringing her corporate expertise in human resources and recruiting to the business.
“Now people want to be part of what we’re doing because they know that they’re going to come in and get educated on the right way to do things. I think that so often we lead and manage our businesses like reptiles, which is just completely reactive. Their goal is to just not die today. There’s no love. There are no long-term goals. And how do you attract good people that want to come in and build a life for themselves like that?” he said.
“…I think that that’s been a big game changer for us. We just let people know, ‘Hey, we’re going to release you when you’re ready. You’re going to be held accountable, but we’re going to make sure that you’re comfortable with what you’re doing every day before we just toss you the keys to a $100,000 dump truck and say, ‘Go do this job for somebody.’”
Advice for Aspiring Hardscapers
For those considering entering the hardscape industry, Gembel emphasizes the incredible opportunities it presents.
“The landscape and the hardscape industry as a whole is the largest service providing industry in the world,” he said. “There is a chance to really do something special with it. You can really make an impact in the world.”
He encourages industry participation and continuous learning through organizations like CMHA and events like HNA.
“Go to the classes. Go to the education side, go to the side where you’re going to be around more growth mindset people,” he said.
“I think it’s really important to have mentors and a coach and to be around people that are elevating you to want to be better. lf you’re the smartest and most successful person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”
This is advice Gembel takes himself.
“It all starts with me,” he said. “If I’m not growing, nobody else around me is going to grow. Growth doesn’t start at the bottom. It starts at the top. People don’t trip and fall their way into growth—you push for it every day.”
Sharing His Story
Today, Atlas Outdoor has two locations and 110 employees with about 25 percent of their business in hardscaping.
Gembel now shares his hard-won business success story with audiences across the country, including an upcoming education session at the Hardscape North America, something he never could have imagined when his credit card was declined at the 2017 event.
But his first business coach always saw his potential.
“He said to me, ‘Someday you’re going to tell your story on a stage,’ and I just kind of laughed about it,” he said.
“It’s so wild. I get goosebumps when I think about it. It’s wild to think about it now – the growth we had, the path we were paving. What a journey.”
