Coaching Your Coaches, Building Your Bench
Strong teams don’t happen by accident, and neither do great leaders. Building a strong leadership bench requires more than identifying your next manager; it means creating a culture where employees are encouraged to grow, experienced leaders know how to develop others, and emerging talent has opportunities to step into greater responsibility.
Join Sarah Polzin and members of the management team at Down to Earth Garden Center & Landscaping for a practical look at how they develop leaders from within. Drawing from their own experiences, the team will share how they identify leadership potential, coach managers to become better coaches themselves, diversify the voices and perspectives involved in leadership, and create meaningful opportunities for employees to grow.
You’ll hear what leadership development looks like in practice from recognizing potential before someone has a management title to creating a healthy company culture that supports learning, accountability, and advancement. Whether you’re preparing your next supervisor, strengthening your current management team, or thinking about who will lead your business in the future, you’ll leave with ideas for intentionally growing the people already within your organization.
Tuesday, November 17, 2026
12:30-1:30 PM ET
Included with AmericanHort membership; $49 for non-members.
Our Speakers
Sarah Polzin
Co-Owner & VP of Retail
Down to Earth Garden Center & Landscaping
Sarah Polzin of Down to Earth Garden Center, located in small-town Wisconsin, has worked full time in her family business since 2019, combining her passion for creating sustainable business systems and encouraging employee growth, resulting in a thriving small business community. Sarah has worked with her husband, Ben, and his extended family, creating a multi-million-dollar operation, actively living out the philosophy of lifting others as you climb.
Sarah graduated from the University of Wisconsin Stout with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management and spent 15 years in the medical profession working for Mayo Clinic, St. Jude Medical, and Abbott Laboratories in the field of Electrophysiology. She left the medical field and went back to her small business roots to work alongside her husband in expanding their garden center and family of shops, going strong for 28 years and counting. As a Co-Owner and Retail Operations VP at Down to Earth, Sarah works diligently to create an environment that promotes both employee and business growth; planting their people well.